Browsing: December

A Brief History On December 1, 1824, it was determined that the vote for the presidential election of 1824 did not have a winner!  Andrew Jackson of Tennessee had the most popular votes (151,271) and had won the most electoral votes (99), but a candidate needed to win 131 of the 261 available electoral votes in order to be elected president. Digging Deeper The main competition for Jackson, a war hero as well as former governor and senator, known as a man of the people (or a backwoods ruffian, depending on point of view) was a Northern elite, John Quincy…

A Brief History On at least four separate occasions electronic book burners known as “deletionists” tried to rid Wikipedia of its coverage of the internet phenomenon known as “creepypastas”.  Deletionists are a group of bullies who focus their efforts on trying to remove anything and everything they merely do not like from Wikipedia.  They typically, out of ignorance, refer to articles concerning topics they are unfamiliar with as “not notable”. Digging Deeper: A Timeline 26 March 2008: Allen3 nominated the article titled “Creepypasta” for deletion from Wikipedia.  After a brief discussion in which only five random user accounts voted to delete the article,…

A Brief History On December 22, 1965, one more bit of personal freedom went the way of the passenger pigeon when a 70 mph speed limit was set on all British rural roads.  Prior to this law, there had been no speed limit in Great Britain, a country that had the most cars per mile of road than any other country in the world. Digging Deeper Before Anglophiles get all upset, this article is not a slam on the island of Great Britain or the country known as the United Kingdom.  It is merely a lamentation of some past glory that seems lost forever. A while…

A Brief History  In 1965, Maulana Karenga (born Ronald Everett), currently Professor of African Studies at the University of California in Long Beach, created a new holiday he named Kwanzaa during which time African Americans could honor their African heritage.  Digging Deeper As a university student, Karenga had been active in the radical African-American movement known as Black Power and even created an organization he called “US” meaning black people.  This group became a rival to other Black nationalist groups such as the Black Panthers. Karenga’s US (sarcastically called United Slaves by the Black Panthers) clashed with the Panthers to the point of…

History: January 7, 1959: The U.S. Recognizes Fidel Castro’s Government of Cuba On January 7, 1959, the United States officially recognized the new government of Cuba that was headed by Fidel Castro who, together with his revolutionaries, had overthrown the corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had originally seized power in a coup after having lost a presidential election in 1952, so the U.S., expecting a return to democracy, actually welcomed Castro and his revolution.  Alas, it was not to be as Castro declared himself a communist in 1961, and it quickly became evident that he was just another dictator. Worse yet for the U.S., this…