Browsing: The Bizarre

A Brief History On August 16, 1944, the Nazis flew the prototype of the Ju-287 for the first time.  Manufactured by the German aircraft company Junkers, it was a 4-engine, jet-powered bomber whose forward-swept wings made it radically different from any other airplane in existence at the time. Digging Deeper With a turbojet engine on each side of its nose, and another under each wing, the Ju-287 flew to speeds of almost 350 mph, which was fast but still not fast enough. Originally it was supposed to have been equipped with even more powerful jet engines, but developmental difficulties meant that Junkers had to go with what was available, the Jumo…

A Brief History On August 9, 1969, members of the Manson Family, followers of cult leader Charles Manson, murdered actress Sharon Tate, her unborn baby, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and three other people.  Manson would later stand trial for orchestrating the murders but was never found to be insane, though to the layman he certainly appears to be.  Many historical figures seem to be  insane but are never ruled as such by a court or by psychiatric professionals (except maybe after they are dead).  Here we nominate 9 such people for History and Headlines’s loony bin.   Digging Deeper 9. Insane Clown…

A Brief History On August 2, 1916, Austrian saboteurs managed to sink the Italian battleship, Leonardo da Vinci as the great ship lay in Taranto harbor.  Was the magazine explosion an accident, or did the Austrians use some sort of novel booby trap to sink the mighty vessel?  Either way, World War I, like other wars, saw the imagination of arms designers and military engineers run wild.  Here we list 10 of the weird weapons or contraptions dreamed up to help one side or the other win the war.  What items would you add to the list?  (See our follow on article,…

A Brief History On August 2, 1343, Olivier Clisson, a French nobleman from Brittany, was convicted of treason in Paris and beheaded.  He had been fighting the British in the Hundred Years War, and when his success tapered off, he was criticized and accused of treason, perhaps to deflect blame from French losses. Digging Deeper Olivier, miffed and sensing danger, then defected to the English for real and was later arrested.  Taken to Paris for trial, he was beheaded, as was the fate of traitors in those days.  His head was placed on display at Nantes, and his enraged wife (widow)…

A Brief History On July 16, 1439, the Parliament of King Henry VI of England issued a proclamation banning kissing. Digging Deeper This ban of something we now think of as being so personal was in response to yet another outbreak of plague. This particular plague was probably not the bubonic plague which caused an epidemic known as the Black Death in which entire populations were wiped out. In those years, the word “plague” was a general term used to describe any infectious malady that spread rampantly. So, was the Government getting involved in the personal matter of affection between…