A Brief History On November 26, 1977, the people of southern Britain were astonished to find their afternoon televisions hijacked by an entity claiming to be “Vrillon.” (Some television viewers reported the entity’s name to be Gillon or Asteron.) Digging Deeper Hijacking a television signal, even for only 6 minutes (5:10 pm to 5:16 pm) is highly unusual to say the least. That the hijacker claimed to represent the “Ashtar Galactic Command” is even more bizarre. The hijacked signal came from the Hannington transmitter, a type of transmitter that does not receive its signal via cable but rather one that rebroadcasts…
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A Brief History On November 25, 2013, Claire Suddah asked, “Why Are Women So ‘Bitchy’ to Each Other?” In her article on this subject, she discusses academic efforts to study the way women interact with each other, especially with regard to speaking. In fact, studies show women speak about 20,000 words a day compared to a man’s 7,000. According to a University of Maryland study, this is perhaps due to women having more of a “language protein” in their brains. (Note: Some studies show women to be only slightly more verbose than men.) Anyway, how much is “too much?” Well,…
A Brief History On November 24, 1863, Union forces under the command of future President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant captured Lookout Mountain as part of the campaign to relieve the siege of Chattanooga, Tennessee by Confederate General Braxton Bragg. Grant is known as the most successful Union general of the Civil War, and as the man most responsible for winning that war. This much is true, but many of the other things we think we “know” about Grant are not so true. Digging Deeper For starters, Grant was not a drunkard. As a young officer, he had a…
A Brief History On November 23, 1992, society took another giant step forward with the introduction of the IBM Simon Personal Communicator, the world’s first “smart phone.” In 1994 and 1995, IBM sold 50,000 of these handheld mobile devices that combined a touchscreen cellular phone with a personal digital assistant (PDA). Digging Deeper Are you too young to remember a time without cell phones? If you are, then this will not seem like such a big deal, but in reality, the first smart phone was an enormous leap toward what is so common today that it is taken for granted. Like many so-called…
A Brief History On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. In the aftermath, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed officer J.D. Tippet, a 39-year-old, 11-year veteran of the police department. Digging Deeper Oswald was actually initially arrested for the murder of Tippet, not for the assassination of Kennedy, but law enforcement quickly determined that Oswald was the main suspect in the Kennedy shooting as well. J.D. Tippet was making a lousy $490 a month as a Dallas police officer at the time of his murder, equaling about $3.00 an hour. That was pretty bad pay even…