Author: Major Dan

A Brief History On June 4, 1974, baseball history (not the good kind!) was made in Cleveland.  Although we have run many articles about great baseball performances, the event described in this article is not one of them. Digging Deeper On a beautiful June night in Cleveland, over 25,000 fans came out to the ballpark to watch the Indians play the Texas Rangers.  While there, they enjoyed 10 cent beer, a promotion that provided more of a draw than the baseball team on the field.  Stadium management wisely (that is a joke… we are kidding) limited fans to only 6…

A Brief History On May 30, 1914, the British ocean liner RMS Aquitania made her maiden voyage.  Larger than the Titanic, this giant was known as “Ship Beautiful” for self-descriptive reasons.  Serving in both World Wars, she was the last of the great 4-funnel (as smokestacks were called) liners and was the longest serving liner in history until surpassed by the Queen Elizabeth II.  Obviously famous in her day, the Aquitania is not well remembered, unlike the other 10 ships we list here whose fame has stood the test of time.  Apologies to the HMS Victory, the USS Arizona, the USS Missouri, the USS…

A Brief History On May 28, 1934, outside the village of Corbeil, Ontario, the first human quintuplets known to have survived past infancy were born.  The Dionne Quints, as they were called, became an international sensation. Digging Deeper In today’s world of fertility drugs and treatments that doctors and clinics specifically created to enhance fertility, we are no longer impressed with multiple births.  (Okay, we were impressed by “Octomom,” but in more of a horrified way.)  Triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets induced by fertility treatments and by the artificial implanting of fertilized human egg cells has made the multiple birth phenomena…

A Brief History On May 23, 1934, bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down by law enforcement officers.  For a change, the lawmen had the upper hand as far as firepower goes.  In the 1920’s and 1930’s gangsters had been arming themselves with automatic and semi-automatic weapons and out-gunning the police, with the police mostly armed with .38 caliber revolvers and sometimes 12 gauge pump action shotguns. On numerous occasions then and even in the 1970’s and 1980’s the police were woefully under-armed, but that is changing now.  Here is a list of some of the favorite gangster guns…

A  Brief History On May 13, 1998, Jakarta (or Djakarta) Indonesia experienced race riots directed against the ethnic Chinese minority. These Indonesians of Chinese descent owned many of the shops and stores, creating jealousy and ill will, resulting in looting and rape. Many countries have minorities that are discriminated against, either officially by law or by common practice. Here in the US we are most familiar with discrimination against African-Americans, but here and around the world there is much more than that. Here are 10 examples of minority groups struggling against such oppression. What groups would you add to this…