A Brief History On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam officer and African American nationalist, Malcom X, was gunned down prior to making a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. Digging Deeper Malcom had a falling out with the NOI and had received threats and warnings of imminent assassination. While one assailant blasted Malcom with a shotgun to the chest, 2 more gunmen fired multiple shots from semi-automatic handguns, hitting him with 21 bullets and 10 shotgun pellets. Malcom X was killed, and one of his murderers was beaten and captured by the audience, while the…
Author: Major Dan
Major Dan
Major Daniel Zar is a retired veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He served during the Cold War and has traveled to many countries around the world. Prior to his military service, he graduated from Cleveland State University, having majored in sociology. Following his military service, he worked as a police officer eventually earning the rank of captain prior to his retirement.
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A Brief History On February 20, 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states have the authority to require mandatory vaccinations against disease, well over a century before the controversy over the Covid vaccine in 2020 and 2021. Digging Deeper In the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court ruled that Massachusetts and other states had the right to enforce compulsory vaccination laws and that individual liberty is not absolute. In this case, the disease involved was smallpox, and the law in the Bay State required people over 21 to be vaccinated or face a $5 fine. …
A Brief History On February 19, 1954, the Soviet Politburo, the highest policy making organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ordered the Crimean Oblast to the Ukrainian SSR. The Crimea had previously been part of the Russian SFSR, and numerous cultures, kingdoms, and empires before that. Digging Deeper After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, a referendum of Crimean citizens voted to become an autonomous region within the Ukrainian SSR and in 1992, within an independent Ukraine. In 1994, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States agreed to the Budapest Memorandum, a treaty that addressed former Soviet…
A Brief History On February 18, 2023, the USA celebrates another National Battery Day! We would like to take this opportunity to briefly talk about batteries. Digging Deeper An electro-chemical device used to power any sort of electrical gizmo, we use batteries to start out cars, power our cell phones, light our flashlights, run our radios, power medical devices such as hearing aids and pacemakers, and they keep our computer data from being lost when the lights go out. Batteries were first invented way back between 150 BC and 650 AD, although we are not sure, the first known example…
A Brief History On February 17, 1600, Italian polymath and philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in the Papal States of Rome for the crime of heresy. Digging Deeper Bruno had the nerve to believe in the Heliocentric model of the solar system as taught by Polish astronomer Copernicus, and that the stars in the sky were really distant suns that had their own planets. Further, Bruno opined that unlike the Catholic belief, not only was our Sun not the center of the universe, the universe is infinite and therefore could have no center. As he was led…