A Brief History On November 19, 1911, the infamous “Doom Bar” located at the mouth of the River Camel in Cornwall, England where it empties into the Celtic Sea claimed another pair of ships, sinking both. The Island Maid and Angele both had run aground on the permanent sandbar, formerly known as the less poetic “Dunbar sands,” killing everyone aboard the Angele except, oddly enough, the captain. As can be expected by the demonstrative name, the Doom Bar is infamous for causing the sinking or grounding of many ships over the years. The River Camel estuary serves as access to…
Browsing: November 19
A Brief History On November 19, 1998, the United States House of Representatives began hearings on the Monica Lewinsky-President Bill Clinton sex scandal that would result in Clinton being impeached for lying about the affair. With Clinton out of office since January of 2001, it would seem the incident would be long forgotten, except for the 2016 Presidential campaign in which the Bill Clinton’s alleged history of sexual harassment/predation was brought up in retaliation for the revelations about Donald Trump’s alleged record of sexual harassment. Combined with recent events in the past couple years, the incidents that have been alleged…
A Brief History On November 19, 1703, one of History’s most celebrated prisoners died while still in prison, an unidentified man known to us as “The Man in the Iron Mask.” Ironically (even the word “ironically” is ironic in this case!), the mask kept over the prisoner’s face was black velvet, not iron. The iron part of the story came from a work by Voltaire in 1771 when he claimed the mask was an iron one. Voltaire also claimed the man was an illegitimate brother of the French King, Louis XIV. Novelist Alexandre Dumas (he of The Three Musketeers fame)…
A Brief History On November 19, 2004, the National Basketball Association reached perhaps its lowest point in its history when players and fans engaged in a rumble at The Palace of Auburn Hills outside Detroit, Michigan. Digging Deeper The Detroit Pistons, long known as “the bad boys” of the NBA had a history of being a rough and tumble team, with physical play and intimidating behavior. These Pistons could obviously play basketball well, too, as evidenced by being reigning NBA champions. The Pistons had beaten the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals the previous season, and the Pacers were…
A Brief History On November 19, 1990, the pop “singing” duo Milli Vanilli was stripped of the Grammy music award they had been given for “Best New Artist.” After Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, who made up the duo, had met with success in Germany two years earlier, they managed to be successful internationally and in the U.S. as well with their debut album Girl You Know It’s True in 1990. Digging Deeper Their fame soon turned to notoriety when Chuck Phillips of the Los Angeles Times revealed that the vocals on the album were not actually sung by the duo. As…
