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…
Browsing: December 19
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A Brief History On December 19, 2016, another part of our democratic process will take place when the 538 electors of the Electoral College vote in the official US Presidential election of 2016. All those millions of individual votes could either be confirmed or thrown out with the trash, depending on how the electors vote. Digging Deeper With a mandatory majority of 270 votes needed to be elected President, if no candidate gets that many electors to vote for him/her the vote would be remanded to the House of Representatives, who would then choose our next president. Who are these…
A Brief History On December 19,1961, the armed forces of India completed Operation Vijay, a land, sea and air assault against the Portuguese enclaves on Indian soil in the Goa region. The mini-war only lasted 2 days, but it ended 451 years of Portuguese colonialism in India. Digging Deeper Portugal had grabbed a piece of India during the age of exploration when European colonial powers were conducting land grabs all over the world. Portugal had established bases on the Indian sub-continent in the area of Goa and nearby regions, a modest holding by colonial standards, and Goa today is India’s…
A Brief History On December 19, 1941, in one of the most daring raids of World War II Italian Navy divers snuck into Alexandria harbor and heavily damaged two British battleships. Digging Deeper The Italian divers rode three torpedoes modified to serve as mini-submarines past the harbor’s defenses when the gates were opened to allow British destroyers to enter the harbor. The mini-subs, called “pigs” by the Italians, had been ferried to the harbor by the Regia Marina submarine, Scerie. Each of these manned torpedoes had a two man crew, equipped with magnetic limpet mines to be placed on the…
A Brief History On December 19, 1974, Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as Vice President of the United States, a job he was not elected to, to serve under President Gerald Ford, another guy not elected to the office he held, or even to the vice presidency before that! Digging Deeper This travesty of the so-called democracy in the United State was a result of Richard Nixon’s and Spiro Agnew’s malfeasances in office as the previous President and Vice President. Agnew was drummed out of office when he was convicted of fraud, and Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford,…