A Brief History On June 24, 1779, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War began at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea at the British Fortress of Gibraltar. Spanish and French forces greatly outnumbered the British forces, in men, guns, and ships, and yet after almost 4 years of siege the British had held firm and Gibraltar is known as a metaphor for an impenetrable fortress. Spain and France had attempted to take advantage of British preoccupation with its war in America to gang up on their old foe, and had gone to war in a back handed support…
Browsing: June
Read More
A Brief History On June 17, 2014, EA Sports released the video game EA Sports UFC for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Below is the complete roster for the hit video game EA Sports UFC as the roster originally appeared on Wikipedia prior to its removal by electronic book burners. It is reproduced here per the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. Digging Deeper Heavyweight Fabrício WerdumCC Cain Velasquez Junior dos Santos Travis Browne Stipe MiocicDLC Mark Hunt Andrei ArlovskiDLC Antonio Silva Roy Nelson Alistair Overeem Frank Mir Pat Barry Mark ColemanDLC Brock LesnarDLC Minotauro Nogueira Light heavyweight Daniel CormierCC [HW] Anthony JohnsonDLC Alexander…
A Brief History On June 24, 1398, the Hongwu Emperor of China died. Soon after this emperor’s death, one of his sons, Zhu Di (1360-1424), began an ultimately successful rebellion to seize the throne from the Hongwu Emperor’s teenage successor, a nephew of Zhu Di. By 1402, Zhu Di’s nephew was dead and Zhu Di, now known as the Yongle Emperor, began a reign that has gone down in history as one of the most famous and significant in all of Chinese history. During his reign of over twenty years, the Yongle Emperor’s famed eunuch admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) conducted…
A Brief History On July 4th, Americans celebrate their Independence Day, a holiday that signifies their freedom. During the month of June 2015, Americans experienced a host of developments in the expansion of this freedom. In any case, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, the times sure were a-changin’ in June 2015! Digging Deeper June 2015 included events, incidents and policy changes that the older generation among us probably did not expect to see take place in their lifetime. To begin, early in the month, Olympic medalist Bruce Jenner, a father of six, changed his name to “Caitlyn” and began referring to himself with feminine pronouns. While he cross…
A Brief History On June 29, 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States stunned the nation by ruling in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty violated the 8th and 14th Amendments. This decision basically outlawed capital punishment until each state that wanted to reinstate it reworked their laws and procedures to meet Supreme Court guidelines. Digging Deeper It seems that over 200 years of previous experience had not perfected the procedure. The court found judicial practices so arbitrary and inconsistent that a grossly uneven administration of capital punishment was the result. So much so, that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In wake…