Browsing: Lifestyle

A Brief History On September 27, 1937, the smallest of all sub-species of tiger, the Bali Tiger, native only to the Indonesian island of Bali, went extinct.  Approximately 40 years later, it was joined by fellow Indonesian tiger, the Java Tiger.  Currently, the only Indonesian tiger still among the living is the highly endangered Sumatran Tiger.  Unfortunately, no film was ever made of a Bali tiger, and none were ever displayed in zoos.  The last one was an adult female that was shot. Digging Deeper The various tiger subspecies that have gone extinct or are endangered today are pretty much all victims of habitat…

A Brief History On September 16, 1920, years before the great stock market crashes of 1929 and 2008, some unknown, disaffected malcontents showed the fat cats of Wall Street some serious financial terrorism of their own by setting off a bomb in a horse-drawn wagon in front of J.P. Morgan Bank in New York’s financial district. Digging Deeper The perpetrators were never caught, and anarchists to members of various revolutionary and anti-capitalist groups were suspected of committing the crime.  Investigation showed that the bomb consisted of 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of metal sash weights meant to act as projectiles.  The bomb was…

A Brief History On September 13, 1848, a Vermont railroad worker suffered a bizarre injury when a 3-foot metal rod went right through his head and proceeded to land 80 feet away.  Digging Deeper Phineas Gage was 25-years old at the time and had been using 13-pound iron rod to tamp explosives into holes that had been bored in rock in order to blast a path for a railway.  An unexpected explosion occurred, and the rod penetrated the left side of his face and exited out the top of his head, passing behind his left eye.  Although much of Gage’s frontal brain lobe was damaged…

A Brief History On September 9, 1850, in the middle of the California Gold Rush, California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state of the United States.  The second largest state at the time until the admission of Alaska, when it fell to third, California is currently the most populous U.S. state and has claim to many other reasons why it might be the greatest state. Digging Deeper The state that gave us Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, the politicians Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Nixon, California also gives us world class wines and Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat.  California is…

A Brief History On September 1st, 1914, Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, was found dead in her cage by her keepers at the Cincinnati Zoo. Digging Deeper Now extinct, passenger pigeons were once the most abundant bird in the entire world.  Native to North America, it is estimated that there were 3-5 billion of them when Europeans first arrived.  Today their closest living relative is the smaller mourning dove. Their demise was caused by deforestation and the commercialization of their meat.  Losing more and more of their natural habitat, they were easy game for hunters. Their numbers already dwindling…