A Brief History On December 31, 192 AD, Roman Emperor Commodus was assassinated by his own inner circle, setting the stage for The Year of the Five Emperors in 193. Digging Deeper A typical Roman emperor egomaniac, Commodus saw himself as a demi-god and often had himself depicted as Hercules. Robust physically, he often participated in gladiatorial events, and his character was played by Joaquin Phoenix in the 2000 movie Gladiator (with Russell Crowe in the title role), a Best Picture Oscar winner. On December 22, 2015, we featured an article about the hazards of serving as Emperor of Rome…
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.
Read More
A Brief History On December 30, 1999, 56 year old former Beatle George Harrison was attacked in his own home by a stranger, later identified as Michael Abram, age 36. Harrison was stabbed more than 40 times in the head and body, and suffered a punctured lung. All that kept Harrison from being killed was his heroic wife, Olivia, who disabled Abram by beating him with a poker and a lamp. Digging Deeper Harrison had already been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997, and later died of lung and brain cancer in 2001, something he attributed to his long habit…
A Brief History On December 29, 1860, the first British oceangoing ironclad warship, the HMS Warrior, was launched, but she was not the first such ship in World History. Digging Deeper Contrary to popular misconception that the US Navy USS Monitor and the Confederate States Navy CS Virginia (rebuilt from the Union wooden ship, USS Merrimac) were the first ironclad warships, iron armored floating batteries had already seen combat during the Crimean War, and the French ship, the Gloire, in service since 1859 was the world’s first ocean going warship. In fact, the Monitor and Virginia were actually designed for…
A Brief History On December 28, 1503, the exiled Gran Maestro of Florence, Piero di Lorenzo de Medici, known as Piero the Unfortunate, drowned in the Garigliano River while trying to escape the advancing French and Spanish armies that had just defeated the Italians in a battle over the control of Naples. Digging Deeper Piero was the son of Lorenzo de Medici, also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (a much more positive sounding moniker) who died of natural causes at the age of 43 (not good, but better than Piero who died at the age of 31). The elder Medici…
A Brief History On December 27, 1922, the Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned the first aircraft carrier in the world that was designed and built as an aircraft carrier, the Hōshō. Digging Deeper Prior to the Hōshō, some ships such as the USS Langley CV-1 were converted (in 1920) to aircraft carriers from other warships or merchant ships. The Royal Navy (British) Ark Royal is probably the first of what we would recognize as a more or less modern carrier, commissioned as a carrier in 1914 after being converted from a freighter that was in the process of being built in…