Browsing: Science & Technology

A Brief History On August 29, 708 (AD), Japan minted copper coins for the first time in their history.  As you may guess from the date, these were certainly not the first coins minted and not by a long stretch the first coins ever minted. The distinction of minting the first known coins goes back to the 7th and 6th Century BC in Anatolia (modern Turkey) by King Alyattes of Lydia (sometimes given a date of 610 BC).  The earliest known coin is the Lydian Lion coin.  The practice of making coins quickly spread throughout the Persian and Greek empires,…

A Brief History On August 25, 1823, mountain man and fur trapper Hugh Glass was attacked by a Grizzly Bear while on a fur taking and exploring expedition in what is now South Dakota.  The terrible injuries Glass suffered and his fierce determination to live have been recalled for history by not 1, but 2 major motion pictures, Man in the Wilderness (1971) and The Revenant (2015).  We have previously discussed this famous incident in our article, “10 Incredible Tales of Survival.”  Today we will discuss 10 cases of animal attacks on human beings that are famous or infamous, either…

A Brief History On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal was opened for traffic, with the SS Ancon making the first transit of the great canal. Constructed from 1904 to 1914 by the United States, a previous French attempt at building the canal from 1881 to 1894 failed miserably, with thousands of workers killed by disease and venomous snakes, a rate of fatalities that reached 200 per month. Despite an asking price of $100 million dollars, the US was able to purchase the rights to the canal project for only $40 million. Completion of the canal became a great source…

A Brief History On August 14, 2003, an enormous electrical blackout struck the Northeast and upper Midwest of the United States and a large part of Western Ontario, Canada, leaving about (or “aboot” in the Great White North) 55 million people without electricity for a period lasting between 7 hours and 2 days. As is nearly always the case, the government response was a knee jerk reaction to lie to the public! While the 9/11 terrorist attacks were still fresh in the minds of North Americans, the US Government assured the public that the power outage was NOT a terror…

A Brief History On August 7, 1679, a small ship named Le Griffon (The Griffon) that had been built under the direction of famous explorer of the New World René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was towed to a point on the Niagara River from which it became the first European sailing vessel worthy of the designation “ship” to ever sail the Great Lakes.  As the Great Lakes Region Native Americans did not build sailing vessels, Le Griffon was by default the first ship of any origin to sail the Upper Great Lakes.  European explorers had brought sail technology to…