Browsing: November

A Brief History On November 17, 1871, The National Rifle Association (NRA) was first chartered in the state of New York by William Church, the editor of the Army and Navy Journal and General George Wood Wingate.  The first president of the NRA was Union General Ambrose Burnside who had also worked as a gunsmith in Rhode Island. (Hey! this author has been to Rhode Island, have you?) Digging Deeper It is believed that during the Civil War, the Union Army fired about 1,000 rifle shots for every Confederate soldier hit.  Burnside was well aware of the sorry state of marksmanship among his…

A Brief History On November 16, 1938, the psychedelic drug Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) that has since become known as “acid” was first synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofman (not to be confused with Abbie Hoffman, the social radical).  You probably did not have any idea when, where and by whom LSD was invented, and to be honest, neither did the author. In fact, sometimes who exactly invented something is a matter of dispute.  Here 9 more such inventors whose names are generally not common knowledge to the masses are listed.   Digging Deeper 9. C.R. Alder Wright, Heroin, 1874. Englishman Wright…

A Brief History On November 15, 1942, the Heinkel He 219, often called the “Uhu,” which is German for eagle-owl, made its first flight.  A year later, the first editions became operational.  Designed from the ground up as a night fighter to combat the British night-bombing raids, the He 219 had an innovative design which incorporated air-to-air radar and the first ejection seats installed in an operational aircraft.  It was also the only German plane of World War II with tricycle-type landing gear. Digging Deeper The He 219 suffered what most German aircraft developed during World War II suffered from, that being bureaucratic infighting between various…

A Brief History On November 14, 2013, Canadian law enforcement struck a major blow against child exploitation when the outcome of Project Spade, a three-year operation which resulted in the international arrests of 348 criminals and the rescue of 383 exploited children and child sex slaves, was officially made public.  Digging Deeper The operation began when the Toronto police got wind of a purveyor of child pornography and grew to involve the law enforcement agencies of 50 countries.  Of the children rescued, 330 came from the United States.  Oftentimes the children were filmed running and playing naked rather than engaging in…

A Brief History On November 13, 2013, a painting painted by Francis Bacon in 1969 called Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for an incredible $142.4 million, the most ever paid for a painting.  Bacon was an Irish-born British painter who lived from 1909 to 1992.  The painting depicts three poses of his friend and artistic rival Lucian Freud.  Digging Deeper On the same day, an orange, marble-sized, 14.82-carat diamond known simply as “The Orange” was auctioned off by Christie’s in Geneva for $35.5 million, a world record for a diamond of its color, and just a day later, a pink 59.60-carat diamond known as…