Browsing: July

A Brief History On July 29, 1973, British race car driver Roger Williamson met his death when his Formula 1race car crashed at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort Circuit in the Netherlands.  The 25 year old 2 time British Formula 3 champion was trapped under his flipped car, not seriously hurt from the crash, but was burned to death as the car was engulfed in flames. Race officials made no effort to help, although another driver heroically abandoned the race and tried to rescue Williamson, failing to flip the car over, then grabbing a fire extinguisher.  Many thousands of…

A Brief History On July 29, 1993, Ukrainian-American retired auto worker, John Demjanjuk, was finally acquitted by the Supreme Court of Israel and was a free man.  Or was he? Digging Deeper The long sad story began when Demjanjuk was born in the Ukraine in 1920.  Life was normal (which in the 1930’s Ukraine was starvation during Stalin’s famine) until World War II when he was drafted into the Red Army of the Soviet Union.  Captured by the Germans, he finished the war as a POW under horrible conditions.   This moment is where the story hit’s a snag.  According to…

A Brief History On July 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, starting World War I.  When a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Archduke (heir to the throne) of the Austrian empire to protest Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbian territory, he never could have seen the incredible consequences of the worst war in human history (until World War II).  Sometimes assassinations or attempted assassinations result in events unfolding differently than those anticipated by the assassin.  Here we list 10 such incidents, in no particular order.   Digging Deeper 10. Franz Ferdinand, 1914. As described above, all that was accomplished was the anger…

A Brief History On July 28, 1866, Vinnie (Lavinia) Ream, an 18 year old girl became the first woman in the United States to win a commission for a statue, that of the recently deceased President Lincoln.  This statue became her most famous work, and it resides in the Rotunda of the US Capitol. Digging Deeper In true American fashion, she was born in a log cabin in Wisconsin in 1847.  She attended Christian College in Missouri, now called Columbia College.  She began her groundbreaking career as one of the first female US government employees, working at the post office. …

A Brief History On July 27, 1890, painter Vincent van Gogh shot himself, dying 2 days later.  Commemorated in the Don McLean song, Vincent, van Gogh was a tormented person.  It seems that great painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, actors and other creative people are often beset by their own demons that leads them to self-destruction.  Here we list 10 of those sad cases, representing a variety of art forms.   Digging Deeper 10. Mary Kay Bergman, 1999. The voices of South Park’s Ms. Cartman (Cartman’s mom) and Wendy, she also was the official voice of Snow White for Disney.  Bergman was the voice of Timmy Turner in The Fairly Odd Parents…