A Brief History On December 17, 2021, former police officer Kimberly Potter took the witness stand in her own defense at her trial for first-degree manslaughter (among other charges) for shooting Daunte Wright during an attempt to arrest him. Potter mistakenly drew her service pistol instead of her TASER gun and shot Wright as he attempted to flee the scene with another officer hanging from the vehicle Wright was driving. The Potter/Wright case is just another in the string of high profile police use of force cases that have been sensationalized and misrepresented in the media and political forums in…
Browsing: December 17
A Brief History On December 17, 1989, The Simpsons premiered on American television with their first episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” Not only does The Simpsons rank as probably the greatest animated television show of all time, it is also the longest running scripted primetime television series in TV history. Today we take a look at what we consider the 5 greatest animated television series of all time. As always, feel free to disagree with those that we have chosen and tell us which shows we should not have picked and what shows we have overlooked. (Sorry, Looney…
A Brief History On December 17, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight of a human piloted aircraft flown by Orville Wright was marked by another aviation first, that being the first supersonic flight by a human piloted aircraft that was built by a private company when SpaceShipOne, piloted by Brian Binnie achieved Mach 1.2 in a rocket powered test flight to a lofty altitude of 20.67 kilometers (almost 68,000 feet). SpaceShipOne is a privately developed space plane designed to take passengers into suborbital space flight, space being defined as at an altitude of at least 100 kilometers. …
A Brief History On December 17, 2017, Orthodox Christians celebrate the Feast of Daniel, a recognized prophet in Christianity, a recognized nabi in Islam (saintly or righteous man), and although Judaism does not consider Daniel a prophet, it does accord him status as a legendary example of a pious and good man. (Roman Catholic Feast of Daniel is July 21st.) Digging Deeper The story of Daniel is told in the Bible, appropriately in The Book of Daniel. The Bible relates that Daniel was a noble Jew from Jerusalem that was captured as a youth by the Babylonians and taken to…
A Brief History On December 17, 2009, a large but largely rusted tub of a ship, the MV Danny F II, sunk off the coast of Lebanon taking with her 44 humans (accounts vary with numbers of people from 39 to 47 rescued) and (as far as we can determine) a record amount of domestic animals. Digging Deeper The doomed ship was built in 1976 as a car ferry, but had been converted to carrying bulk live animals for slaughter, a practice long opposed by animal rights activists. A tad over 664 feet long and over 92 feet wide, the…
