A Brief History On January 11, 532, the seeds of a riot broke out in the capital of the Byzantine Empire (spawn of the Eastern Roman Empire), Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) over competing support of chariot racing teams. Not your typical few hours of drunken revelry, the Nika Riots went on for a week and resulted in half the city being burned down! While we consider a modern sports related riot that results in a fatality to be a tragedy, the Nika Riots resulted in an estimated 30,000 rioters killed, making it the worst sports related riot in history. Today…
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A Brief History On January 10, 1927, Austrian/German filmmaking legend Fritz Lang released his movie based on a story by Thea von Harbou called Metropolis, a dystopian view of the future in which enormous differences exist between social classes. Despite lukewarm initial critical reaction, the film has gone on to achieve status as one of the greatest silent era films of all time and is considered a groundbreaking film in the genre of Science Fiction. Today we use the occasion of the release of Metropolis to list our “10 Greatest Films About the Future,” a subjective list we admit, and…
A Brief History On January 9, 1918, in Southern Arizona near the border with Mexico at a place called Bear Valley, one of the last battles of the American Indian Wars (1540-1924) was fought. A force of about 30 US Army cavalry soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment shot it out with a force of about 30 Yaqui warriors, making this battle one of the last battles of the American Indian Wars fought between the mainly European settlers of what is now the United States and the Native Americans that originally lived in North America. Only the Posey War in…
A Brief History On January 8, 2005, the United States Navy, normally pretty safe drivers of large grey boats, managed another one of those “Naval Oops Moments” we keep writing about when the nuclear powered submarine, USS San Francisco (SSN-711) (Los Angeles Class attack sub), managed to collide at full speed with an underwater mountain off the coast of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. Operating at a depth of 525 feet and sailing at flank speed (the maximum, but classified top speed), it is a true testament to the brilliance of the designers and builders of the sub that the boat…
A Brief History On January 7, 2015, a day celebrated by millions of Eastern Orthodox Christians (Greek Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Catholic, etc) as Christmas Day, France was stunned by a vicious terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper offices that left 12 people dead and another 11 wounded. The incident was a case of misguided Islamic extremism fueled by religious outrage over the politically incorrect newspaper’s penchant for poking fun at anyone and everyone, including the Prophet Muhammad. Outrage over the terrorist attack and murders vis-à-vis the assault on free speech spurred the phrase, “Je suis Charlie,” French…