Browsing: August 14

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on August 14th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On August 14, 1480, during the protracted Battle of Otranto in Southern Italy, a siege of the city between the Ottoman Turks and the Italian defenders of their homeland, the Ottomans, who of course were of the Islamic faith, took 800 Christian Italians hostage and gave them a choice, convert to Islam or be executed. On August 14, 1851, John Henry Holliday…

A Brief History On August 14, 1851, John Henry Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia.  He would grow up to become a legend of the Wild West as “Doc” Holliday, a dentist turned gambler, gunman, and friend of Wyatt Earp. Digging Deeper A participant in the most famous Western gunfight, Holliday was the son of a veteran of the Mexican American War and the US Civil War.  His mother and brother both died of tuberculosis, a disease that would eventually take his life. Doc got his nickname when he graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and became a…

A Brief History Because the Northeast blackout of August 14–16, 2003 came only two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the first thought in the minds of many people was that a terrorist attack had occurred.  Of course, the US government quickly reassured the public that no such attack had taken place, even though they did not have an answer as to why the outage occurred. Digging Deeper The problem turned out to be a software bug in the portion of the electrical grid controlled by FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio based electrical utility.  Tree branches contacting power…

A Brief History On August 14, 1480, during the protracted Battle of Otranto in Southern Italy, a siege of the city between the Ottoman Turks and the Italian defenders of their homeland, the Ottomans, who of course were of the Islamic faith, took 800 Christian Italians hostage and gave them a choice, convert to Islam or be executed.  The Italian Christians chose not to renounce their faith, and in turn beheaded by the Ottomans.  Sadly, this terrible incident is but one of many in which one side or the other has attempted to use force upon other people to cause…

A Brief History On August 14, 1937, the Japanese invasion of China that started July 7, 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, saw the first air to air combat of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and arguably the first air to air combat of World War II (presuming you consider the start of the war between Japan and China as the start of World War II).  While Japanese aviation and aviators are often given accolades as the best trained and equipped air forces in the Pacific theater early in World War II, this first aerial combat resulted in a resounding…