Browsing: February 3

A Brief History On February 3, 2014, Altria Group, Inc. acquired popular electronic cigarette brand Green Smoke for $110 million.  Electronic cigarettes, or vaporizers, have become a familiar site nowadays, and these devices have been in production for approximately 16 years now. Here is a brief history of electronic cigarettes. Digging Deeper 1927- Introduction of e-cigarettes As recorded, Joseph Robinson was the first person to come up with the idea of a vaporizer. It was in 1927 when he first gave his description of what a vaporizer would be; however, production of this device did not start at this time.…

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A Brief History On February 3, 1959, a Beechcraft Bonanza airplane crashed in Clear Lake, Iowa, a crash that would become one of the most famous plane crashes in aviation and music history.  When the light plane hit the ground in wintry weather, the lives of 3 early Rock and Roll stars were lost, an incident often referred to as “The Day the Music Died.”  On that fateful day, music fans lost Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper (aka J.P. Richardson), and the young Ritchie Valens. Digging Deeper The airplane involved in the tragedy was a 1947 model of the Beechcraft…

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A Brief History On February 3, 1953, one of the worst atrocities of the second half of the 20th Century in a tiny nation occurred when the Portuguese colonial administration and the planters on the island of São Tomé in the tiny island nation of São Tomé and Principe massacred 2000 “creole” peasants (known as forros) when the peasants hesitated to agree to work the sugar cane, coffee, and cacao fields. Digging Deeper Portugal had colonized the small islands off the Equatorial Atlantic coast of Africa in 1493, and as was the fashion of the time, enslaved the native African…

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A Brief History On February 3, 1995, Space Shuttle mission STS-63 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral Florida for space with a woman pilot for the first time. Digging Deeper Eileen Collins, born in Elmira, New York in 1956, graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics and economics from Syracuse University in 1979 and went on to earn a Master of Science degree in operations research from Stanford University in 1986 and a Master of Arts degree in space systems management from Webster University in 1989. A career in the Air Force was in this…

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A Brief History On February 3, 2014, one year ago today, Fox Broadcasting announced that the previous day’s Super Bowl XLVIII (no. 48) had been the most watched television event in U.S. history with 111 million people watching the Seattle Seahawks beat the daylights out of the Denver Broncos 43-8 in the Meadowlands of New Jersey. Digging Deeper This game was also significant as it was the first Super Bowl played in cold weather in an open-air stadium. Although both teams entered the game with a regular season record of 13-3, the game lost much of its competitiveness as the…

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