A Brief History On November 10, 1775, the finest fighting force in the history of the world was born when the United States Marine Corps was established in a Philadelphia tavern by Samuel Nicholas. Digging Deeper Even back in 1775 Tun Tavern was already an old established meeting place, having been built way back in 1686, making it almost 90 years old. Located near the Philadelphia waterfront, Tun Tavern was a meeting place for the St. George Society, the first Masonic lodge in America (St. Johns Masonic Lodge #1), the St. Andrews Society, served as a recruiting place for 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.
Read More
A Brief History On November 9, 1965, 22 year old American Roger Allen LaPorte, a former Catholic seminarian, sat down calmly, poured gasoline over himself, and burned himself to death in front of the United Nations in New York in a protest of the Viet Nam War. Digging Deeper LaPorte had dropped out of the seminary, but graduated from Holy Ghost Academy (Tupper Lake, New York) in 1961 and was active in the Catholic Worker Movement. Although fatally burned (he died the next day), LaPorte was able to talk before dying and said he performed his act of protest against…
A Brief History On November 8, 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen (or Röntgen) discovered what has become known as X-Rays. In an experiment with electromagnetic radiation for which he won the 1901 Nobel Prize for Physics (the first ever awarded), Roentgen both produced and detected the electromagnetic rays that were originally named Roentgen Rays in his honor. Digging Deeper Only 2 weeks after discovering X-rays, Roentgen devised a method of taking a picture of the skeleton of his wife’s hand on a coated plate, the first “X-ray” picture in history. The implications for medical use were apparent and almost immediate. …
A Brief History On November 7, 2000, the US DEA made a drug bust of one of the largest illegal LSD labs in the United States. What made this bust significant was that it was located in a retired ICBM missile silo in Kansas. Digging Deeper During the 1960’s the US, Russia, and eventually other countries constructed mass numbers of underground missile launch facilities to protect their nuclear armed ICBM’s (InterContinental Ballistic Missile) from enemy nuclear weapons in order to insure the ability to conduct a counter strike if the enemy struck first. Such was the nature of the Cold…
A Brief History On November 6, 1995, owner of the Cleveland Browns, Art Modell, made an announcement that broke the heart of Cleveland football fans, that he was moving the team to Baltimore. Ironically, the fans in Baltimore had lost their own beloved Colts after the 1983 season when they moved to Indianapolis. Digging Deeper Clevelanders should have known better than to think their Browns were sacred, since back in 1945 the NFL franchise Cleveland Rams announced a move to Los Angeles for the 1946 season. Incredibly, this came right after the Rams had won the NFL Championship in 1945! …