Browsing: Lifestyle

A Brief History On June 12, 1817, Karl Drais of Germany invented a contraption he called the “Laufmaschine,” German for “running machine” as the two wheeled single rider vehicle was powered by the rider scooting his feet along the ground. Also known as a “draisine” (German) or “draisienne” (French), this earliest form of bicycle later became known broadly as a “velocipede,” a term covering all types of bicycles and other people powered ground vehicles. Drais patented his invention in France in 1818, and the name continued to evolve to become known as “The Dandy Horse.” Digging Deeper The evolution of…

A Brief History On June 11, 1919, Sir Barton, a chestnut Thoroughbred race horse, won the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel in America’s horse racing Triple Crown, the “Big Three” horse races held in the United States each year. Sir Barton’s victory made it a sweep, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes, making Sir Barton and his jockey, Johnny Loftus, the first man/horse team to win the fabled Triple Crown of horse racing. In the 99 years since then, there have been 12 more horses to win the coveted Triple Crown Trophy, the most recent being Justify…

A Brief History On June 7, 1982, the widow of the late King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Aron Presley, Priscilla Ann (Beaulieu) Presley, opened the estate of the late singer for public tours. The bathroom in which Elvis died of a heart attack in 1977 was kept off limits. The estate, named “Graceland” by its original owner after his daughter, Grace, is one of the most famous homes in the United States, and is second only to the White House in number of annual visitors with 650,000 Elvis fans visiting each year. Located in Memphis, Tennessee on 13.8 acres,…

A Brief History On June 3, 1861, in the first organized land battle (barely a battle in reality) of the American Civil War, the Union Army with 3,000 men routed an untrained force of 800 Confederate volunteers in what it now West Virginia at Philippi, a small town that today has only about 3,000 residents. Touted as a huge victory for the Union, the “battle” would be fairly inconsequential except for the wounding of 2 Confederate soldiers that both required battlefield amputations, one of which fashioned his own homemade artificial leg that proved so successful the wounded soldier founded a…

A Brief History On May 26, 1908, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East was made when the Masjed Soleyman strike was made in Southwest Persia, the country now known as Iran. The fact that the Middle East is so rich in petroleum oil resources has been an overwhelming factor in the history of the 20th and 21st Centuries and will continue to be of monumental importance until such time as human civilization drastically reduces its dependence on fossil fuels. Today we look at 10 of the dates in the 20th Century when events of great importance…