A Brief History On October 22, 1910, a murderer named Hawley Crippen became the first person captured via the help of radio to be convicted of a crime. A sort of quack doctor, Crippen worked in homeopathic medicine in the US but was not allowed to practice medicine in England when he moved to London. Digging Deeper Authorities in Canada were alerted via radio that the fugitive was on board an ocean liner and Crippen was arrested on arrival in Canada, the first known instance of an arrest facilitated by radio. Other notable crime fighting firsts include: The first use…
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A Brief History On September 6, 1997, two to two and a half billion people worldwide were glued to their TV sets watching the funeral of Princess Diana, a similar number of TV viewers that watched the 2009 funeral of pop rocker Michael Jackson. Digging Deeper Did you realize funerals were much bigger television events than Super Bowls? In fact, the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II of the UK ranks Number 1 on the list of most watched TV events with a staggering 5.1 billion viewers worldwide! The opening ceremonies of the 1996 and 2008 Summer Olympics drew 3.6 and…
A Brief History On July 31, 1715, one of those events that leads to dreams occurred, when a storm off the coast of Florida sank all 11 Spanish treasure ships heading to Spain from Cuba. Digging Deeper Carrying a load of mostly silver, the fleet has been dubbed, “The 1715 Plate Fleet,” using the Spanish word for silver, “plata.” About 1,500 sailors drowned in the catastrophe, although a few survived to tell the tale. Treasure wrecks spawn mighty efforts to find and recover the lost treasure, and the occasional washing up of some of the 1715 Fleet’s treasure on beaches…
A Brief History On July 10, 2007, Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç, almost 46 years old at the time, set off on what may be the greatest feat of human endurance and physical performance in history, the solo, only human powered circumnavigation of the Earth. As if this feat was not daunting enough, he threw in making it a point to climb the tallest mountain on each continent as part of his trip! For financial reasons, he ended up journeying on a route that did not include all of the tallest mountains on each continent. Digging Deeper Eruç accomplished this feat…
A Brief History On July 2, 1816, a French sailing ship, the Méduse, struck bottom off the coast of Mauritania, dooming the vessel. Digging Deeper A frigate repurposed as a transport, Méduse was abandoned, with about 250 people loading into the ship’s launches and 146 men and a single woman forced to climb aboard a makeshift raft, to be towed by the launches. The crowded and starving people on the raft were cut loose to fend for themselves, resulting in 13 days of terror, with some survivors murdered, others washed or thrown overboard, and some eaten by their raft mates! …
