A Brief History On August 29, 1728, the city of Nuuk, Greenland, was founded. Kind of an odd name, Nuuk is only one of many cities or places with odd or downright goofy names. Today, we ask you, what is the goofiest name you know of for any city, town, or village? Digging Deeper Here we list some of the contenders, but feel free to nominate your own choice: Hot Coffee, Mississippi Bugtussle, Kentucky Santa Claus, Indiana Two Egg, Florida No Name, Colorado Why, Arizona Whynot, North Carolina Screamer, Alabama Worms, Germany Intercourse, Pennsylvania Truth or Consequences, New Mexico Placentia,…
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A Brief History On August 28, 1921, the Red Army disbanded the Ukrainian Makhnovshchina, an anarchist free Ukrainian territory in the Ukraine. The Russians, during the Russian Civil War, 1917 to 1923, sought to keep the Russian Empire together while the formation of the USSR took place. Digging Deeper Russia has long sought to control Ukraine and Ukrainians, and Ukrainians have long sought their own independence. Not only was the Soviet era, 1922 to 1991, brutal for Ukrainians, but the breakup of the USSR in 1991 left Ukraine an impoverished country with worthless Russian guarantees of their borders and national…
A Brief History On August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191, a connecting flight from Lexington, Kentucky to Atlanta, Georgia, crashed, killing all aboard the aircraft except a single survivor. Not only is the “sole survivor” fact amazing, but it was the man that was piloting the plane during the crash! (See some of our many articles about aviation and aircraft by clicking this link.) Digging Deeper The Bombardier CRJ-100 twin jet airliner that can carry 50 passengers plus an aircrew, crashed when it was attempting take off from the wrong runway, flying from runway #26 when the tower had assigned…
A Brief History On August 18, 2019, about 100 environmentally concerned citizens, including government officials and activists, held a funeral for the Okjökull glacier in Iceland. Digging Deeper The glacier, a large landbound ice formation, once covered about 6 square miles, but had completely melted away, presumably due to global climate change. Located northeast of Reykjavík, the end of the glacier often called “the Ok glacier” actually came in 2014, so the 2019 funeral was perhaps a bit late. The gone but not forgotten glacier is memorialized on a metal plaque placed in its honor that bears the inscription (in…
A Brief History On August 16, 2008, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, Illinois, topped out, and immediately became the tallest residence above ground level of any building in the world. Digging Deeper Towering, an appropriate adverb, 1,389 feet high, the skyscraper bearing the name of the future President of the United States cost about $847 million dollars in those-days dollars and would not open until January 30, 2009. When completed with its spire in 2009, Trump International became the 7th tallest building in the world, and boasted 98 floors with 2.6 million square feet of floor space.…
