A Brief History On May 14, 2018, we celebrate another one of those goofy pseudo-holidays, this time National Dance Like a Chicken Day, a day in which we acknowledge the superiority of that wedding reception standby (along with the Hokey Pokey), the Chicken Dance. Of course, we must also delve into what chickens are and how they are important to us. Digging Deeper Long before there was a Chicken Dance, people kept Chickens not for food, but for entertainment. About 5000 years ago in Asia people started keeping the Red Junglefowl (perhaps crossbred with the Grey Junglefowl), the bird that…
Browsing: May 14
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A Brief History On May 14, 1878, the town of Salem, Massachusetts, was fittingly (in a way) the scene of the last known trial for the crime of witchcraft in the United States. Had people gone mad? Was there some sort of time warp? Were there ghosts from 1692 at work here? Digging Deeper Goofy as it sounds to us today, there are still plenty of people who believe in witches and witchcraft, and even the former Republican Vice Presidential nominee and erstwhile Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin can be seen on video being cleansed and protected from witchcraft by…
A Brief History Last night on May 14, 2016 in Curitiba, Brazil, heavyweight mixed martial arts fighter Stipe Miocic stunned the Brazilian crowd by knocking out reigning UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) heavyweight champ Fabricio Werdum early in the first round. Digging Deeper Werdum was defending his title for the first time and seemed over confident at the start of the fight, charging at Miocic and running into a short right that put the muscular Brazilian on the canvas, ending the fight when the referee quickly saw that Werdum was defenseless. The ecstatic 33 year old Miocic, hailing from a lifelong…
A Brief History On May 14, 1973, the United States launched Skylab, America’s first space station. During the era of space exploration there have been significant milestones reached by the US, Russia, and other countries. We list 10 of those here, hopefully the most interesting ones if not the most important. So many milestones! The list to cover them all would be huge. Digging Deeper 10. First Dog in Space, First Animal to Orbit the Earth, Laika, 1957. If the Soviets were insensitive to killing millions of their own people, it is no surprise that they sent a dog into…
A Brief History On May 14, 1796, English scientist Edward Jenner used pus scraped from a cowpox pustule to inoculate his gardener’s son, the first ever vaccine used. Cowpox is a disease similar to smallpox, but much more mild, similar to chicken pox. Digging Deeper Jenner and others observed the fact that milkmaids frequently got cowpox, but never seemed to get smallpox, and smallpox was a deadly disease that killed about 20 percent of Europe’s population (with about 60 percent of that population getting the disease). Purposely infecting the boy with cowpox and after the boy recovered exposing him to…