Browsing: Lil’ History Chips

A Brief History On March 26, 1999, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, alias “Dr. Death,” was convicted of second-degree murder in Michigan for giving a terminally ill man a lethal injection at the man’s request.  The 52-year-old man was succumbing to Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), a particularly dreadful way to die. Digging Deeper Kevorkian had previously championed the right of dying people to end their own suffering with medical assistance and had devised machines that allowed the patient to kill themselves by either adding a lethal drip to an IV or by inhaling lethal gas through a mask they put on themselves.  He had already been tried…

A Brief History On March 23, 1994, one of the worst excuses for an airliner crash happened when an Aeroflot pilot allowed his 12 and 16-year-old children to play with the controls of the Airbus A310-300 that he was flying, resulting in a crash that killed all 75 people aboard! Digging Deeper Most of the 63 passengers on Aeroflot Flight 593 were businessmen from China and Taiwan who were returning from Russia.  The flight had left Sheremetyevo Airport and was headed to Hong Kong.  One pilot violated both airline rules and the common sense rules of any responsible pilot when…

A Brief History On March 3, 1951, music history was made when the first song deemed to be “rock and roll” was recorded.  Called “Rocket 88,”  the lively song was recorded by Chess Records at Sam Phillip’s studio in Memphis and is credited to Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats who were actually Ike Turners’s band, the Kings of Rhythm.  In fact, the song was written by Brenston and Turner, though Turner was not originally credited.  Digging Deeper Based on the 1947 hit “Cadillac Boogie” and influenced by the instrumental hits “Rocket 88 Boogie” parts 1 and 2,” “Rocket 88” was also about the popular Oldsmobile model,  the…

A Brief History On February 25, 1336, the 4,000 defenders of the medieval Lithuanian fortress of Pilénai thought they had no other choice but to make the horrible decision to kill themselves and their families after torching and destroying everything they had of value to deny their Teutonic besiegers the spoils of victory and the opportunity to kill or enslave them. Digging Deeper The number of women and children sacrificed is unknown, but even just the number of defenders, recorded at 4,000, is more than enough to rank as history’s largest mass suicide, eclipsing the 900+ dead at Masada in 37-31 B.C. and the 900+…

A Brief History On February 24, 1942, less than 3 months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the city of Los Angeles seemed to be under attack from a mysterious flying object.  Digging Deeper Later claimed by the government to have been a false alarm, something had to have caused numerous air raid alerts to go off and give anti-aircraft gunners something to shoot at.  Shoot they did, and a furious firefight ensued with .50 caliber machine guns and 3-inch artillery shells, about 1,400 rounds of which exploded over the city,  showering it with metal fragments. General Marshall later speculated that unknown persons…