Browsing: March

A Brief History On March 16, 2001, Jin Ruchao, a Chinese citizen of Hubei Province in China proved once again that a deranged person does not need guns to kill a LOT of people, when he set off a series of bombs in the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang that killed 108 people and injured 38 more.  His reason for his wanton murder?  He hated his ex-wife and her mother! Digging Deeper As is often the case with people that go off on murderous rampages, Jin had previously threatened to blow up the buildings his ex-wife and her mother lived in. …

A Brief History On March 15, 493, Ravenna, Italy was a scene right out of the HBO cable television series Game of Thrones when King Theodoric the Great of the Ostrogoths invited his defeated enemy, King Odoacer of Italy to a great banquet marking the “end” of hostilities.  Odoacer, the first barbarian King of Italy, whose reign marked the end of the Western Roman Empire, was walking into a trap! Digging Deeper Theodoric used the banquet as a lure to draw in Odoacer so that the erstwhile King of Italy could be killed.  In the manner typical of both fictional…

A Brief History On March 14, 1982, an 11 kilogram bomb went off at the office of the African National Congress in London, England.  The explosion that occurred at 9 am local time, did not kill anyone, but the considerable blast smashed windows as far as 400 meters away.  Obviously, the human damage could have been much worse.  ANC voluntary worker, Vernet Mbatha, a caretaker, was the only person injured.  He had been sleeping in an apartment above the offices. Digging Deeper The ANC is currently the governing political party of the Republic of South Africa, a country that was…

A Brief History On March 13, 2012, the parents of 46 children riding on a Swiss coach (long distance bus, similar to our Greyhound and Trailways or Charter types in the US) found out the hard way that kids are not always safe when riding on a bus.  Near the town of Sierre, Switzerland, a coach carrying 46 school children and 4 of their teachers (and 2 crew members) swerved while driving in the Sierre Tunnel, hitting a curb and then veering head on into a concrete wall.  Among those killed were 22 of the students and all 4 teachers. …

A Brief History On March 12, 2020, people all over the globe are wondering about the true origins and the true implications of the “coronavirus” that (as we are told) originated in Wuhan, China.  Drastic measures being taken, including shutting down schools and colleges, draconian quarantines of cruise ships, cancellation public presidential campaign events, ending spectators at school athletic contests and the use of the National Guard to enforce a quarantine of New Rochelle, New York are all the types of measures we would expect in some sort of apocalyptic scenario, such as the Black Plague or the fictional “Captain…