Browsing: October

A Brief History On October 5, 2018, as we do each October 5th, we celebrate World Teacher’s Day, alternately referred to as International Teachers Day, a day established in 1994 in celebration of the 1966 UNESCO/ILO setting of standards and status for teachers around the world.  Originally designed to further the improvement of teachers and teaching, the day is also celebrated to honor those people who have entered the profession of education. Digging Deeper With a goal of “appreciating, assessing and improving the educators of the world” and to provide an opportunity to consider issues related to teachers and teaching,”…

A Brief History On October 4, 2018, we are still recovering from the eye-candy comic book film fest that is Venom, the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  We went to review the film with reservations based on rumbles of previous reviewers having expressed less than glowing tales of the film.  We heard that 30 minutes or more had been cut from the final print, leaving a choppy and disjointed movie.  NOT TRUE!  Venom flows logically and seamlessly and features Tom Hardy, one of our favorite actors of today.  Plenty of eye candy comic book like special effects and…

A Brief History On October 3, 1919, Adolfo Luque, born in Cuba in 1890, became the first Latin American major league baseball player to play in a World Series.  Dolf, as he was called, pitched for the Cincinnati Reds, had a long major league career, playing from 1914 to 1935.  Although “non-white” players were excluded from the major leagues at the time (until 1947), Dolf and other Hispanic players with particularly light skin and especially blue eyes passed the criteria for being “white” and were allowed to play.  Luque posted a good major league pitching record of 194 wins against…

A Brief History On October 2, 2006, a mentally disturbed 32 year old man went to an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (often described as the “Capital” of Amish Country) and proceeded to shoot 11 people, of which six died, including himself.  His apparent reason for the massacre?  The man was upset about having sexually molested a couple of young children (3 and 5 years old) 20 years prior to the shooting and was having thoughts that he might again start molesting children.  How exactly murdering innocent people that had nothing to do with the man’s past is unclear.…

A Brief History On October 1, 1946, Dr. Lancelot Ware and Roland Berrill established an organization in Caythorpe (Lincolnshire), England called Mensa International.  Intended as a non-profit social club for people among the highest 2% intellect in the human population, the founders expected a sort of aristocratic gathering of intelligentsia and were somewhat disappointed to find members meeting the membership criteria were mostly from humble origins.  Mensa International is the umbrella organization for national chapters found in 100 countries covering 51 national groups.  With about 134,000 members world-wide, the United States has the most members at 57,000, nearly triple runner-up…