A Brief History On this date, December 12, 1098, in what is now Syria, Crusaders massacred 20,000 Muslims and ate some of them! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find European Christians launching what is now known as the First Crusade, an attempt to take back lands overrun by the sweeping Muslim hordes. Besieging a city at Ma’arra (various spellings) the Crusaders were at the walls on December 12, 1098 when the Muslims inside finally surrendered after about a month of resistance. Promises of the safety of residents to the contrary, the Crusaders began the systematic slaughter of the population. Frustrated…
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A Brief History On this date, December 10, 1907, a long running feud between the medical community and anti-vivisectionist activists boiled over into the worst of the riots and disturbances over the statue of a dog! Digging Deeper Digging deeper we find the turn of the century London medical community leaving the dark ages of medicine and trying to approach something more like the research we have today. Part of that scientific quest included the practice of vivisection, dissecting animals while they are still alive. This practice was used for research and also for the instruction of medical students, and…
A Brief History On this date, December 9, 1946, the “Subsequent Nuremberg Trials” began with the “Doctors’ Trial,” prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation. Digging Deeper As if shooting and blowing people up is not bad enough, the Nazis of Germany’s World War II regime took the horror of war a step further! Digging deeper, we find on this date in 1946 the start of 23 trials at Nuremberg of 20 doctors and 3 Nazi officials for war crimes concerning the cruel use of “medical research.” The bizarre excuse for what passed for research included experiments with…
A Brief History On December 5, 1945, a flight of U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers flew into history, providing grist for the paranormal mill that the Bermuda Triangle became! Digging Deeper The training flight of Avengers took off from Naval Air Station (NAS) Ft. Lauderdale at around 1410 hours (military time) for a routine navigation training flight. Oddly, although necessary for over water navigation (remember, maps would not help!) each airplane was missing its clock. Assuming the pilots had wrist watches, the flight took off as normal. Things seemed to be going as planned, with a practice bomb drop…
A Brief History On December 4, 1872, in the Atlantic Ocean west of the Iberian peninsula, the American brigantine Mary Celeste was found by the British brigantine Dei Gratia sailing east without its crew toward the Mediterranean. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find this most famous case of an unexplained derelict vessel to have started when the ship first known as the Amazon was launched in 1861 from Nova Scotia. 107 feet long, 16 feet wide and displacing about 282 tons, the Mary Celeste (as it was renamed by its new American owners in 1869 after her purchase in 1867)…
