Browsing: August 7

A Brief History On August 7, 1679, a small ship named Le Griffon (The Griffon) that had been built under the direction of famous explorer of the New World René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was towed to a point on the Niagara River from which it became the first European sailing vessel worthy of the designation “ship” to ever sail the Great Lakes.  As the Great Lakes Region Native Americans did not build sailing vessels, Le Griffon was by default the first ship of any origin to sail the Upper Great Lakes.  European explorers had brought sail technology to…

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A Brief History On August 7, 1930, 2 African-American men were seized from jail in Indiana by an irate White mob, beaten, and hanged for the alleged crimes of robbery, rape, and murder.  They were the last 2 African-Americans lynched in a Northern state   A third Black male, only 16 years old, was rescued from the lynching by a White woman, though he was later convicted and imprisoned. Digging Deeper Defined as “extrajudicial punishment,” lynching can be any form of punishment without due process of law, usually by a mob or a vigilante, such as beating, tar and feathering, and…

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A Brief History Horror fans, here is your chance to be among the first in Cleveland to see the Warner Bros. film Annabelle: Creation, the prequel to 2014’s Annabelle, before it opens in theaters on Friday, August 11. Digging Deeper She’s back! From New Line Cinema’s highly successful horror universe that always keeps audiences on the edge-of-their-seats comes the next chilling installment of the possessed doll, Annabelle, who we first met in The Conjuring. In ANNABELLE: CREATION, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and some girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home several years after the death of their little girl,…

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A Brief History On August 7th, 1908, the Venus of Willendorf, one of the earliest depictions of female nudity, was discovered in Austria. In our previous article in this series, we had listed the top ten women famous for being naked, or who, at one point in their lives, had famously been naked. Of course there are many more prominent ladies who have disrobed in a public setting or who have been artistically represented in a state of undress. In this article, we examine eleven more such women. For the latest installment in this series,  the “Top 10 Black Women Famous…

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A Brief History On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines landed on an island few Americans had ever heard of, Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.  After months of being on the defensive, defensive victories at Coral Sea and Midway combined with the rapid buildup of troops and industrial production gave the U.S. its first opportunity to start taking instead of losing ground in the Pacific theater of World War II. Digging Deeper Although obscure in the minds of Americans, Guadalcanal is not an insignificant island.  Sprawling over 2000 square miles and with mountains soaring over 8,000 feet, it is the world’s 110th largest island, about the…

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