A Brief History On April 5, 2010, the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia suffered a collapse, killing 29 of the 31 men working at the site. The tragedy was the worst US mine disaster since 1970, and resulted in the Massey Energy Company being issued 369 citations for failing to follow proper mine safety laws. Digging Deeper Coal mining is hard, dirty work, and the miners are always at risk for catastrophic accidents and cave ins, especially when safety regulations are not followed exactly. Even without spectacular accidents, the long term effects of coal dust in the…
Browsing: April
Read More
A Brief History On this April Fool’s Day, we not only wish you a happy April 1st, but to dispel some historical and current event misconceptions, we also want to share with you three strange events that actually happened in the history of the southernmost continent, Antarctica. Again, we want to be explicitly clear that what follows are NOT jokes. These events actually happened! Digging Deeper 1. The Nazis Attempted to Create a Colony There Yes, those guys! The Third Reich, enemies of Indiana Jones and Captain America… In 1939, Germany sent an expedition to explore a chunk of Antarctica…
A Brief History On April 30, 1993, tennis star Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a “fan” obsessed with rival women’s tennis star Stefi Graf. Seles was absent from pro tennis for 2 years after the attack, and despite being only 20 years old at the time of the attack never regained her championship form (formerly #1 in the world). We used this horrible incident to start our article “10 Bizarre Injuries to Athletes” back in 2014, and today we take a look at another 10 such bizarre injuries to athletes. Digging Deeper 1. Kirby Puckett, Baseball. In…
A Brief History On April 29, 1945, deep below the streets of Berlin in his “Führerbunker,” German Führer Adolf Hitler, beleaguered and possibly the most despised man in the world, married his long time mistress Eva Braun and designated Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor to lead the Third Reich, what Germany had labeled its current government. With the Soviet “Red” Army knocking on his door, Hitler knew the time had come that he and his dream of a greater Germany was coming to an end, and he was to kill himself the next day. Still, his vanity did not…
A Brief History On April 28, 1996, a 28 year old that had inherited over half a million dollars went on a shooting rampage in Tasmania, killing 35 innocent people and earning 35 life in prison sentences when he was later convicted of the crimes. Not surprisingly, the shooter was later found to have intellectual and/or mental/emotional problems. Digging Deeper Martin Bryant had inherited the money at the age of 25 in 1992, using it to go on trips all over the world, without establishing a career of any note. Along the way, he also purchased an AR-10 type rifle,…