A Brief History On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI of France was convicted of treason and taken to the guillotine where he was promptly beheaded, just one of the many instances of famous beheadings in a long history of human violence, both intentional and accidental, both by the state as an execution or by criminal action, and even by our animal “friends.” Sometimes, people are even decapitated posthumously for some sort of extra emphasis. Today we list 10 of these cases of human decapitation, both famous and infamous. Execution by beheading has been a long historical means of capital…
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A Brief History On January 20, 2020, we take a meandering mid-winter look at some of those things you seldom if ever encounter anymore, things that were once commonplace and even in their time examples of cutting edge technology. We might even throw in a phrase or word that has become passé. We are not saying these things have totally disappeared, just so greatly diminished that seeing or hearing one is an oddity. (See our previous articles on this subject, including: “Things That Did Not Exist (Or Were Different) on July 1, 1957,” “May 16, 1960: 10 More Things That…
A Brief History On January 19, 2020, our cable news stations are abuzz with the latest news and speculation about the impeachment of President Donald Trump. At the heart of the impeachment, is a scandal in which Trump is accused of holding back hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government unless that same government announced an investigation into former US Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter. (All alleged, of course.) Between the ongoing war with Russia, which stole (they “annexed” or “reclaimed”) the region known as the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and…
A Brief History On January 15, 1947, Betty Bersinger was walking with her 3 year old daughter near Leimert Park in Los Angeles, California at about 10 in the morning when they came upon the naked, dead body of a young woman. The body had been cut in half and mutilated, and soon became famous as “The Black Dahlia.” Betty at first thought the object on the ground was a discarded mannequin, but quickly realized it was instead a human being! Betty did the right thing, which is to immediately run to the nearest house to use the telephone to…
A Brief History On January 14, 2020, while the world continues to digest the fallout of the US drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020 and the subsequent missile attack from Iran against an American base in Iraq, as well as the tragedy of the Iranian military accidentally shooting down a civilian airliner mistakenly thought to be an incoming American attack on Iran, we prefer to look at the more positive side of American-Iranian relations. Specifically, we want to introduce our readers to some of the notable Iranian Americans that help make the United…