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…
Browsing: September
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A Brief History On September 5, 1970, German race car driver Karl Jochen Rindt was killed in a practice lap accident for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix event at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy. Despite succumbing to his injuries, he became the first driver to be posthumously awarded the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship after piling up enough wins to secure the championship. Digging Deeper Despite being born in Germany, Rindt competed as an Austrian. The 1970 win was his only Formula One World Drivers’ Championship season, though he also won the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans in…
A Brief History On September 4, 1781, what is now the City of Los Angeles, California, was founded by four Spanish soldiers and 44 settlers, who called their new settlement El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles or perhaps El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles. Digging Deeper The founders of one of the great cities not only of the United States, but of the world, hailed from “New Spain,” what Mexico was called at the time. The province in which Los Angeles was founded was Las Californias, which today would be the State of California…
A Brief History On September 3, 1967, Sweden corrected a long-standing mistake by switching from driving on the left, as they do in Britain, Australia, Japan, India, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal, Bhutan, Suriname, Mozambique, and some other confused places. Digging Deeper All European countries except the islands listed above drive on the right, like the US, Canada, Mexico and the rest of the civilized world. Just to keep things confusing, some countries such as China and even the US have places where driving is on the left whereas the rest of the country drives on the right! While…
A Brief History On September 2, 2023, the nation celebrated another National Hummingbird Day, a day to recognize the beautiful and colorful little nectar sippers in our gardens and at our Hummingbird feeders. Digging Deeper Flapping their little wings over 50 times per second, our smallest birds are also our most maneuverable, able to hover, fly up and down and backward and forward. While we think of them as drinkers of nectar, the fact is that Hummingbirds drink nectar only to supply the huge amount of energy needed to fly the way they do. They draw most of their nutrition…