Author: Dr. Zar

A Brief History Doctor Who, a pinball machine designed by Bill Pfutzenreuter (Pfutz) and Barry Oursler, and released by Midway (under the Bally brand name) in September 1992, is based on the television series of the same name.  In January 2016, FarSight Studios created a Kickstarter campaign here in the hopes of raising funds to make a digital version of the table available for their various versions of The Pinball Arcade. Digging Deeper This campaign is the fifth one started by FarSight Studios in order to raise sufficient funds to digitize notable pinball machines.  The previous four campaigns (all of which I have personally contributed…

A Brief History On the evening of November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris, France and its northern suburb Saint-Denis.  The attacks consisted of mass shootings, suicide bombings, bombings, and hostage taking, including bombings near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis.  The deadliest attack was at the Bataclan theatre where attackers took hostages and engaged in a standoff with police until it was ended on November 14, 2015. Digging Deeper At least 129 people were killed, 89 of them at the Bataclan theatre.  More than 350 people were injured by the attacks, including 99 people described as…

A Brief History On November 2, 1900, Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman (1854-1942), President of the First Philippine Commission, stated, “Should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the commission believe that the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy, which would excuse, if it did not necessitate, the intervention of other powers and the eventual division of the islands among them. Only through American occupation, therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, and united Philippine commonwealth at all conceivable.  And the indispensable need from the Filipino point of view of maintaining American sovereignty over the archipelago is…

A Brief History On June 24, 1398, the Hongwu Emperor of China died.  Soon after this emperor’s death, one of his sons, Zhu Di (1360-1424), began an ultimately successful rebellion to seize the throne from the Hongwu Emperor’s teenage successor, a nephew of Zhu Di.  By 1402, Zhu Di’s nephew was dead and Zhu Di, now known as the Yongle Emperor, began a reign that has gone down in history as one of the most famous and significant in all of Chinese history.  During his reign of over twenty years, the Yongle Emperor’s famed eunuch admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) conducted…

A Brief History On this date, September 29, 1825, American soldier, revolutionary, and farmer Daniel Shays (c.1747–1825) died at age 78 in Sparta, New York.  In those storied 78 years, Shays became most famous for being one of the leaders of Shays’ Rebellion, a populist uprising against controversial debt collection and tax policies in Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787.  The seeds of that rebellion were planted nearly a decade earlier amidst a revolution… Digging Deeper In a bitter struggle against the most powerful industrializing nation on earth, the thirteen colonies that would later be called the United States of America (U.S.)…