A Brief History On January 3, 1959, the United States of America added the largest state ever admitted to the Union when Alaska became the 49th state. Purchased from Imperial Russia in 1867, Alaska is one of history’s greatest land bargains, at only about 2 cents per acre! Digging Deeper Alaska immediately comes to mind when you think of our Northernmost state, but in reality it is also the Easternmost and the Westernmost state as well! (Baffle your friends with this bit of trivia!) While Alaska was once the least populous state, the oil industry has changed things and Alaska…
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 January 2, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law a national speed limit of 55 mph. Prior to this law, the speed limits on most limited access highways in the US ranged from 65 mph to 70 mph, with a few remote places (Montana and Nevada) not relying on a numerical limit at all. The people of the US were suddenly saddled with roads designed to safely travel at speeds over 80 mph at an aggravating and seemingly crawling speed of 55 mph. This was in response to the OPEC (“Arab”) Oil Embargo of 1973…
A Brief History On January 1, 2017, we at History and Headlines have decided to live up to the “Headlines” portion of our name by re-capping the hottest fake news of last year! Digging Deeper After 2016 introducing fake news to the masses, with a fake news story about Israel threatening to nuke Pakistan resulting in a real Pakistani response threatening to nuke Israel in return, and in an idiot believing a fake news story about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop traveling to the pizza shop with a real rifle that he fired…
A Brief History On December 31, 1853, one of the strangest dinner parties held to that point in history occurred when the Crystal Palace Park of London was host to a dinner inside the mold of an extinct dinosaur. Digging Deeper Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen had been contracted to construct replicas of 33 dinosaurs by the Crystal Palace company, formerly the site of the Great London Exhibition of 1851. Commissioned in 1852, the exhibit of extinct dinosaurs and ancient mammals was called the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs or simply Dinosaur Court. Open to the public in 1854, the…
A Brief History On December 30, 1970, former heavyweight boxing champion Charles L. “Sonny” Liston lay dead on the bedroom floor of his Las Vegas home. There he would stay until his wife found his dead body on January 5, 1971, almost a week later. Officially, the Coroner said heart failure (your heart always fails when you die, just sayin’) and lung congestion. The body was already somewhat decomposed, making definitive analysis of cause of death difficult, and rumors started almost immediately. Digging Deeper Liston had won the heavyweight championship by beating Floyd Patterson in 1962 at the age of…