A Brief History On September 17, 1983, Syracuse University student Vanessa Williams was crowned Miss America, the first African American woman to win the coveted title. In a bizarre nod to the future, her birth announcement included the line, “Here she is: Miss America”! Digging Deeper Sadly, less than a year later, a scandal involving Penthouse Magazine announcing they were going to publish nude photos of Vanessa led to her resigning her “office.” In another twist of fate, her successor, the “First Runner Up” in the 1983 contest to name “Miss America 1984” was Suzette Charles, also of African descent.…
Browsing: September 17
A Brief History On September 17, 2020, the National Football League (NFL) celebrated its 100th birthday! Digging Deeper Ivy League Roots The NFL has not so humble beginnings as the first official football game as we know it took place in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers. The rules were forged as a hybrid of soccer and rugby but it was not until a tremendous rugby player from Yale, Walter Camp, came along in the 1880s who crafted the early rules that we recognize today as American football. The first paid player came in the form of William “Pudge” Heffelfinger of…
A Brief History On September 17, 1683, Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek presented a paper to the Royal Society (The President, Council and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge) containing a description of the first scientific recognition of microbes/protozoa, a living thing he referred to as “animalcules” (single celled organisms). Although van Leeuwenhoek had designed his microscope himself and is known as “The Father of Microbiology,” he was definitely not the inventor of the microscope. In fact, exactly who is the inventor of this highly important contribution to science is not agreed upon by historians.…
A Brief History On September 17, 1978, Battlestar Galactica, an American science fiction television series, created by Glen A. Larson, that began the Battlestar Galactica franchise debuted on television. The Battlestar Galactica, the namesake of the series, is an example of a large, fictional, capital military spacecraft. Frequently called space battleships and space cruisers, these spacefaring warships most often found in science fiction play similar roles to contemporary warships, although real spacecraft are used for military purposes.1 They may fight slow-paced battles across vast distances with long range guided weapons, never attaining visual contact,2 or fast-paced, relatively close range combat with unguided weapons and combat maneuvering.3 Smaller “space fighters” are fictional spacecraft analogous to fighter aircraft. Space fighters…
A Brief History On September 17, 1939, only a couple weeks after World War II in Europe began, the German U-boat, U-29, sunk the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous with 2 of the 3 torpedoes fired striking the unlucky carrier. Courageous sank with 519 of her crew going down, becoming the first aircraft carrier ever sunk by a submarine. Here we list all the aircraft carriers ever sunk in combat by submarines, a dangerous prey as carriers are inevitably well protected by escorting ships. Note that no aircraft carrier has been sunk in combat from any source since the end…
