Browsing: May 12

A Brief History On May 12, 1982, a bayonet wielding assassin was wrestled into custody by the bodyguards of Pope John Paul II at Fatima, Portugal only a year after John Paul II had been shot and seriously wounded in another assassination attempt!  The would be assassin was a defrocked Catholic priest, a journalist and lawyer, a veritable living cliché!  At least one other attempt was to be made on John Paul’s life, this time foiled when the assassins suffered a fire while building the bomb intended for the murder. Digging Deeper Many world leaders have survived assassination attempts, including…

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A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on May 12th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On May 12, 1593, History shows us a good example of the problems that develop when Church and State are not separate. On May 12, 1864, as part of the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse (Virginia) Union and Confederate forces fought in the “Bloody Angle” resulting in thousands of casualties on both sides, just part of what was by far the bloodiest and…

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A Brief History On May 12, 1965, the Soviet space craft, Luna 5, an unmanned spaceship designed to become the first ever Earth launched craft to make a controlled landing on the surface of the Moon, instead crashed when its retro-rockets failed to ignite. Digging Deeper Soviet space agency attempts to land a spacecraft on the Moon had previously failed, both at launch and at landing.  After US President John F. Kennedy had boldly claimed the US would land a man on the Moon and safely return him to Earth before the decade was over, the US and the USSR…

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A Brief History On May 12, 1942, the German Kriegsmarine submarine, U-507, a Type IXC boat, sank an American tanker, the SS Virginia, with one of its deadly torpedoes while the tanker was in the mouth of the Mississippi River, an affront to the United States bringing deadly danger to shipping right to America’s doorstep.  During World War II the submarine fleets of each navy of the major powers played an outsized role in effective naval warfare, and also put the crews of those submarines in more peril than any other naval duty.  We have dealt with the subject of…

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A Brief History On May 12, 2006, an Iranian magazine ran a cartoon of a cockroach sitting across a table from and having a conversation with an Iranian boy.  Incredibly (to us), this cartoon led to massive riots across Iran, a country that experienced a profound revolution in 1979, when it transformed from a monarchy to a theocracy, becoming an Islamic state.  We have often told you about goofy riots, riots that have either idiotic origins or at least have goofy names.  History is full of such unfortunate events, and today, we add yet another such unfortunate riot to this…

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