A Brief History On April 17, 2014, the Kepler space telescope operated by NASA confirmed the existence of Kepler-186f, the first discovery of a planet of equivalent size to Earth within the “habitable zone” of another solar system. The newly discovered planet is in the solar system of a red dwarf star called Kepler-186, only about 582 light years away! (A light year is roughly 6 trillion miles.) Digging Deeper We know that at some point the Earth will become uninhabitable for human civilization. This eventuality may take hundreds of millions of years, or even billions of years, when our…
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A Brief History On April 15, 2016, we ran an article acknowledging April 15th as the day your income tax return must be filed by each year in the United States, and used that fact to list five days people really look forward to and five other days many people may dread. Today, we do it all again, with an updated list for both columns that takes into account the changing nature of our society, or as you may have guessed already, coronavirus. As always, we welcome your input on days we could have added to the list or should…
A Brief History As I write this article, the world is currently experiencing a global pandemic unlike anything I can ever recall happening in my lifetime and as such, I first want to say that I hope that my students and subscribers are all doing as well as they can be given the current circumstances many are facing around the world. As an educator, I also think it is important for all of us to be informed about the history of events and issues that still affect us today. Thus, this article presents some playlists hosted on this site’s YouTube…
A Brief History On April 8, 2006, the bodies of 8 people murdered by gunshot wounds were found in a field a couple of miles (5 kilometers for the metric oriented) North of Shedden, Ontario, Canada, an event labeled as the “Shedden Massacre.” The bodies were found inside 4 cars by the local farmer. (If you were a fan of Sons of Anarchy on television, perhaps you have a bit of a clue as to the nature of motorcycle clubs.) Digging Deeper Canada, a particularly friendly nation (as this author can attest, having gone there probably close 100 times over…
A Brief History On April 6, 2018, a bus carrying a junior hockey team, the Humboldt Broncos of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, crashed into a semi-tractor trailer near Armley, Saskatchewan, leaving 10 members of the team dead and also killing an additional 6 persons. Another 13 people were injured, but the driver of the semi survived. In spite of the horrific cost in lives, this particular tragedy was not among the absolute worst in the history of Canada. Today we remember some of those terrible traffic accidents that rank among the worst in Canadian history. Among the worst Canadian…