Browsing: February

A Brief History On February 4, 1999, New York City police officers shot an unarmed African immigrant 19 times (out of 41 shots fired), a horrible mistake we wrote about previously on our site. (Cops Shoot Amadou Bailo Dialo 19 Times!) Police took a big public relations hit over that incident, but how about the incident in Cleveland in January of 2018? Digging Deeper On January 14, 2018, Clevelander Ronald Newberry, age 22, was pulling out of his own driveway when he was subjected to a hail of gunfire. Hit by 16 of the bullets fired at him, he somehow…

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 2,000 “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…

A Brief History On February 14, 2015, Kanye West collaborated with Adidas to create the first pair of Yeezys, eventually leading to his own clothing line which would transform the lifestyle and streetwear industry. Digging Deeper Every sector most especially those ones concerned with commercialization and monetization of products and services require something novel on a regular basis to remain relevant in the hearts of its customers. Innovation is thus the introduction of something novel and new just to bring about one change or the other.  The infinite demand for change is one of the chief reasons why fashion has…

A Brief History On February 2, 1935, Leonarde “Nard” Keeler testified about polygraph evidence in a Wisconsin courtroom at a trial of 2 men for assault, the first use of the polygraph, often simply called “the lie detector,” in court. Then, as now, debate about the efficacy of the polygraph was fiercely defended on both sides. Digging Deeper Keeler was the co-inventor of the polygraph, a machine that measures bodily functions in response to questions being asked the subject of the test, the reaction of those functions supposedly indicating whether the subject is telling the truth or a lie. Bodily…

A Brief History On February 1, 1796, the British government changed the capital of Upper Canada from Newark to York. Oddly named to the casual observer, the province of Upper Canada is actually the furthest South of all parts of Canada, and no, it does not have a high elevation, either. Digging Deeper Occupying the central area of British Canada (Canada became independent in 1867, and the French claimed a large portion called New France until after the Seven Years War), Upper Canada was a province that today is the southern part of Ontario, from the 1000 Islands region North…