Browsing: October 8

A Brief History On October 8, 1871, the shores of Lake Michigan were the scene of four major fires, including the Great Chicago Fire, perhaps the most famous fire in American History. (Other fires took place in Manistee, Michigan and Holland, Michigan.) Unfortunately, on that same day, the Peshtigo Fire in the woods around Peshtigo, Wisconsin also occurred, killing between 1500 and 2500 people! This death total, even the lower estimate, makes this the deadliest wildfire in history, and the deadliest fire of any type in American history. In addition to these 4 fires, there was other unrelated fires the…

A Brief History On October 8, 2013, a 66-year-old Denver, Colorado man and his 35-year-old female partner were accused of felonious child abuse in a sickening case of neglect and mistreatment.  The four boys, ages two to six, were malnourished, did not speak or have any sort of education and were kept in filthy conditions, with cat feces and urine throughout the insect-infested house.  Only able to communicate through grunts to the horrified child authorities, the filthy children could not even describe their mistreatment.  Unfortunately, police have to confront terrible crimes like this on a regular basis, a depressing and…

A Brief History On October 8, 2014, the latest iteration of American Horror Story debuts with series regular Jessica Lange portraying a character based on a real-life actress of early twentieth-century cinema! Digging Deeper According to E Online and Entertainment Weekly, the persona of Lange’s character was molded after Marlene Dietrich who ranked fourth on History and Headlines’s list of German-speaking actresses of the early years.  American Horror Story: Freak Show (AHS: FS) is set in Florida in the early 1950s, around the time when Dietrich starred in such American and British films as Stage Fright (1950), No Highway in the Sky (1951) and Rancho Notorious (1952). Other aspects of the show also drew inspiration from reality.  First,…

A Brief History On October 8, 1806, British forces fighting the French at Boulogne employed Congreve rockets, the same type of rockets mentioned in the National Anthem of the United States (“…and the rockets red glare…”). Here nine people or things named “Rocket” are listed.   Digging Deeper 9. Congreve Rockets. These weapons of war were actually developed to replicate the Mysorean rockets which had been used in India against the British in the late 18th century.  The Mysorean Rockets were the first iron-cased rockets to have been successfully utilized in combat.  The British rocket program began in 1801, and the Congreve rocket was the…

A Brief History On October 8, 1918, United States Corporal Alvin C. York killed 28 German soldiers and captured 132 in France’s Argonne Forest during World War I making York one of America’s most decorated soldiers of the war. Digging Deeper Alvin York was born in a log cabin in December 1887.  As a young Christian man, he hoped to avoid serving in World War I as a conscientious objector.  Nevertheless, the U.S. draft did not allow such exemptions at that time.  Early on in his service, York had a crisis of conscience between being a pacifist and a soldier…