A Brief History On December 25, 1951, Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and Harriette V. S. Moore were killed by a bomb explosion at their home in Sanford, Florida. Unfortunately, for many people, Christmas has not always been a time of happiness and celebration, but a time of death and destruction. Today we examine several of the unhappy incidents that have happened on this otherwise jolly holiday. Feel free to nominate other incidents that could be included on such a list, or to take exception with anything we have listed. (The list is in no particular order and we…
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A Brief History On December 24, 1800, The “Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise,” also known as the “Machine Infernale Plot,” failed to kill Napoleon Bonaparte, then the First Consul of France, the de facto dictator of the French Republic. Not the first attempt to kill Bonaparte, on October 10, 1800, another assassination plot against Napoleon called “Conspiration des Poignards” had also failed, nor would it be the last. A man of great personal will and great charisma, Napoleon nonetheless evinced great animosity on the part of those that had previously held much of the power in France, including the Catholic…
A Brief History On December 22, 1984, the tables got turned on criminals when their victim shot them! Bernhard Goetz, a 37-year-old man, riding a New York subway believed himself threatened when approached by four men ages 18 and 19, each of whom previously had been arrested and convicted at least once. In an instant after initial contact, five shots rang out in rapid succession and all four young men were shot. This famous incident of vigilante “justice” became a cause célèbre in the United States which has a staggering private gun ownership of well over one gun for every…
A Brief History On December 21, 2018, at 5:23 pm (EST), the Northern half of the world will experience its annual Winter Solstice, so Happy Solstice Everybody!!! This astronomical event marks the time each year when the Sun is at its lowest “excursion,” meaning the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun puts the direct rays of sunlight at the Tropic of Cancer, a line of latitude a little more than 23 degrees South of the Equator. In the Southern Hemisphere, this event is their Summer Solstice. Digging Deeper The Winter Solstice marks the first day of Winter…
A Brief History On December 20, 2018, we take a look back at the 30 some movies we saw at the theaters, almost all of which were reviewed on this site. (Avengers: Infinity War was not reviewed, but was discussed in our article “May 6, 2018: Marvel’s Infinity War; What if Thanos’s Plan Came to Pass?”) Rather than list every movie we reviewed, we will list our 5 favorites of the bunch in the order of preference. We will limit ourselves to only 5 movies, because in all honesty, that is hard enough! Please feel free to comment on our…