A Brief History On December 5, 1847, Jefferson Finis Davis of Mississippi was elected to the United States Senate. He had been appointed to the Senate by the Governor of Mississippi in August of 1847. Davis went on to serve as the US Secretary of War (1853-1857) and was reelected to the Senate in 1857, serving until he resigned in 1861 due to the onset of the American Civil War. Davis went on to the notoriety of being the only President of the Confederate States of America, the leader of a movement that would see the United States torn apart. …
Browsing: December 5
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A Brief History On December 5, 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO, the largest confederation of trade and labor unions in the world. By 1979 the AFL-CIO claimed to represent 20 million union workers, but today has only 12 million members. Are union jobs going the way of the dinosaurs and Dodo birds? Today we take a brief look at the history of labor unions in the United States and the trends that have developed regarding working people. Workers represented by unions almost always have better pay and benefits…
A Brief History On December 5, 63 BC, Roman politician and famed orator Cicero delivered the 4th of his famous Catiline Orations to the Roman Senate, warning of a plot to overthrow the Roman government. Cicero is usually considered one of Rome’s greatest orators, and also one of the best speakers in History. Today we list 10 of those people that delivered inspirational messages via the spoken medium, whether we agree with their messages or not, and some of these people we admit we do not even like. (Note: There is no significance to the order listed.) Digging Deeper 1. Cicero,…
A Brief History On December 5, 2014, the American space agency, NASA, successfully launched an Orion space capsule with a Delta IV Heavy rocket supplying the lifting power. The unmanned Orion space capsule launched on this test flight is the first of America’s next generation of manned space vehicles. Digging Deeper The US has been without a manned space system of its own since the last of the Space Shuttles were retired in 2011. American astronauts have had to hitch rides with spacecraft from other countries in order to go to and from the International Space Station. The Orion, named…
A Brief History On December 5, 1964, Captain Roger Donlon, US Army Special Forces, became the first Army Special Forces member (ever) and the first US military person to earn a Medal of Honor in the Viet Nam War. Digging Deeper Donlon took a roundabout path to his moment of greatness, being born in Saugerties, New York among 10 children in 1934. Donlon joined the Air Force in 1953 after a year at the New York State College of Forestry, and was appointed to West Point in 1955. For personal reasons Donlon quit West Point, but enlisted in the Army…
