A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on December 19th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On December 19, 1907, the Darr Mine disaster in Van Meter, Pennsylvania (Westmoreland County) killed a total of 239 miners, both men and boys. On December 19, 1912, US President William H. Taft pardoned the skipper of the ill-fated cruise ship, the PS General Slocum, which had burned and sunk on June 15, 1904, costing over 1000 people their lives. On December…
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A Brief History On December 19, 1974, former governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, was sworn in as Vice President of the US. Gerald Ford had previously served as Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace in 1973, meaning that both the President and the Vice President in late 1974 had both not been elected to office! Digging Deeper The office of Vice President has long been derided as a trivial position, with John Adams, our first Vice President, calling it “the most insignificant Office,” and John Garner, FDR’s first VP calling the job, “almost wholly unimportant.” Critics of…
A Brief History On December 19, 1912, US President William H. Taft pardoned the skipper of the ill-fated cruise ship, the PS General Slocum, which had burned and sunk on June 15, 1904, costing over 1000 people their lives. Captain William Van Schaick had been convicted of negligence in the incident and had served 3 ½ years in prison at Sing Sing prior to his pardon. Digging Deeper The General Slocum was a cruise steamship built in 1891 that had made a career of taking sightseers around the waters of New York City. Unfortunately, her owners and operators, including Captain…
A Brief History On December 19, 2018, we take the opportunity to review the latest blockbuster DC Universe superhero film, Aquaman, a major motion picture that opens across the United States on December 21, 2018. As you may know from previous reviews on this site, we usually only see movies we are likely to like, and like this movie we did! Seen in Real D 3D, the film is lots and lots of eye candy. The packed theater test audience included a better than usual representation of kids, and to say the kids got into the movie would be an…
A Brief History On December 19, 1907, the Darr Mine disaster in Van Meter, Pennsylvania (Westmoreland County) killed a total of 239 miners, both men and boys. Incredibly, this tragedy was not even the worst mine disaster in the US that month! Today we list the 10 Worst Mine Disasters in US History, ranked by number of fatalities. Lucky for US miners, none of the worst US fatal mine accidents rank in the top 10 deadliest mine disasters in the world (the worst of all time being in Benxi, China, in 1942 when 1549 miners died in a coal dust…
