A Brief History On September 2, 1984, Sydney, Australia was the scene of a major shoot-out between rival motorcycle gangs Bandidos and Comancheros. Contrary to the popular opinion that mass shootings only occur in the US, a total of 7 people were killed and 12 were wounded in the incident known as the “Milperra massacre.” Digging Deeper Apparently the answer to our question is that, “Yes, other countries do have motorcycle gangs.” Our previous article, Mass Shooting…in Canada??? tells the story of another such motorcycle gang related mass shooting, this time in Canada. In fact, Wikipedia has an article about…
Browsing: Science & Technology
Read More
A Brief History On August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191, a connecting flight from Lexington, Kentucky to Atlanta, Georgia, crashed, killing all aboard the aircraft except a single survivor. Not only is the “sole survivor” fact amazing, but it was the man that was piloting the plane during the crash! (See some of our many articles about aviation and aircraft by clicking this link.) Digging Deeper The Bombardier CRJ-100 twin jet airliner that can carry 50 passengers plus an aircrew, crashed when it was attempting take off from the wrong runway, flying from runway #26 when the tower had assigned…
A Brief History On August 21, 1897, Ransom Eli Olds founded the car company that bore his name, Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile was in business for 107 years, making powerful, comfortable and smooth riding cars, but alas they have gone extinct, like many other car companies. Today we ask you, “What car company do you miss the most?” Digging Deeper We list a few for you to choose from, or name your own nominee: American Motors, Checker, DeLorean, Geo, Mercury, Oldsmobile, Packard, Plymouth, Pontiac, Rambler, Saturn, Studebaker, Triumph Motor Company, and Yugo. Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Which of these…
A Brief History On August 20, 1858, naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, the change of organisms over time through mutation and natural selection, in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Digging Deeper While we generally think of Darwin as the man that came up with the idea of “evolution,” there were other scientists at the time that also came to a similar conclusion, including fellow British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, whose work was published at the same time and in the same publication as Darwin’s. While most serious scientists today accept Darwin’s…
A Brief History On August 19, 1839, the government of France announced that the “Daguerreotype process,” an invention of Louis Daguerre as an early form of photography, would be available for free to the entire world. Digging Deeper The Daguerreotype style of photographic process would soon be superseded by more advanced methods that cost less and produced better photographs, such as the ambrotype, but nonetheless, the gesture of goodwill by Daguerre and his country of France was a boon to civilization, a gesture only sometimes repeated by other inventors. Another example of such inventive largesse was the work of Philo…