Browsing: March 23

A Brief History On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry delivered a speech that may well have led to the successful formation of the United States.  Known as the “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death” speech, Henry was addressing the Virginia Convention of the Virginia legislature known as the House of Burgesses.  Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were there, and the mesmerizing effects of Henry’s stirring speech were enough to sway the delegates to vote for pledging the Virginia militia to the revolutionary army. Many times in history great speeches have tipped the balance and caused history to…

A Brief History On March 23, 1801, some of the Russian nobility and military officers that had been fired expressed their discontent in the time honored tradition of killing the monarch! Digging Deeper Future Czar (or Tsar) Paul I grew up as the son of Catherine, Grand Duchess, and Peter, Grand Duke (and heir to the Russian throne). Well, not really!  Paul’s real father was likely one of Catherine’s lovers, a Sergei Saltykov.  It seems there was something wrong with Peter (the future Czar Peter III) and advisers told Catherine (later Czarina Catherine the Great) to produce an heir from…

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 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan proposed the development and deployment of what he called The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which would become known as “Star Wars” and would cost around one trillion dollars!  Unfortunately, the commendable idea of making the US invulnerable to attack by Soviet ballistic missiles had 2 major problems, besides the economy ruining cost.  The first problem was that if it could work, the so called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) theory that kept either side from nuking the other because such an exchange would result in everybody gets blasted, a no-win scenario…