A Brief History On October 27, 939, King Æthelstan of England died, the throne then going to his half-brother, Edmund I. Digging Deeper This year, 2022, King Charles III has ascended the throne of the United Kingdom, the first royal succession in Britain since Queen Elizabeth II became monarch in 1952. Long before either of these esteemed individuals, Æthelstan was the first English monarch to become King of ALL of England, though various subsections of England had had kings for centuries. Prior to attaining the title, King of the English in 927, Æthelstan had been King of the Anglo Saxons…
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A Brief History On September 29, 2011, a special court convened in India convicted a staggering 269 police and government officials of complicity in an atrocity called the “Vachathi case,” including 17 of those convictions for rape. Digging Deeper On June 20, 1992, almost 2 decades before the eventual convictions a large group of officials, including 108 police officera, 155 forestry agents and 6 revenue agents conducted a raid on Vachathi village, a community suspected of smuggling sandalwood. The so called “search team” ransacked private property, looted what they could, destroyed property and livestock, and assaulted scores of villagers, including…
A Brief History On September 28, 2008, the history of space exploration reached a new milestone when SpaceX, a private company, launched their Falcon 1 unmanned spacecraft, the first private spacecraft launched into orbit. Digging Deeper SpaceX and the business of private space launches is the project of Elon Musk, an entrepreneur worth a staggering $254 billion, making him the richest man in the world. Musk’s SpaceX is so far the premier private space launch company, sending various communication satellites into orbit, giving NASA astronauts a ride into space, and even going to and docking with the International Space Station.…
A Brief History On September 25, 1992, NASA launched a probe known as the Mars Observer, alternately known as Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter, an unmanned spacecraft sent to study the surface, atmosphere, climate, and magnetic field on Mars. Unfortunately, in August of 1993 communication with Mars Observer was lost permanently, a costly failure. Today, we list several egregious space exploration failures and invite you to tell us which one you think was the worst. Digging Deeper Soyuz 1, reentry parachute failure, 1967, 1 cosmonaut died Apollo 1 Fire on Ground, 1967, 3 astronauts died Apollo 13, multiple failures caused Moon landing…
A Brief History On September 20, 1911, the RMS Olympic, the first of three enormous British luxury liners of the Olympic-class, collided with the British cruiser HMS Hawke. Digging Deeper Olympic, commissioned in 1911 as the largest ship in the world at that point, was later followed by the slightly larger RMS Titanic. Of course, the Titanic sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage in one of the most famous incidents of a ship sinking, and the third sister ship of the class, the HMHS Britannic, was sunk when she hit a mine in 1916 during World War I. The Olympic…
