Browsing: September 29

A Brief History On September 29, 1975, the first Black owned television station in the United States opened for business as WGPR of Detroit, Michigan. As we all know, various regions of the United States and sub-cultures speak their own brand of what we call the English Language, and by 1973 Robert Williams and Ernie Smith came up with the term “Ebonics” (Ebony + Phonics) to describe the form of English spoken by descendants of Black African slaves in the New World. By 1996 the use of Ebonics by the Oakland, California school board set off a tidal wave of…

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A Brief History On this date, September 29, 1825, American soldier, revolutionary, and farmer Daniel Shays (c.1747–1825) died at age 78 in Sparta, New York.  In those storied 78 years, Shays became most famous for being one of the leaders of Shays’ Rebellion, a populist uprising against controversial debt collection and tax policies in Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787.  The seeds of that rebellion were planted nearly a decade earlier amidst a revolution… Digging Deeper In a bitter struggle against the most powerful industrializing nation on earth, the thirteen colonies that would later be called the United States of America (U.S.)…

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A Brief History On September 29, 1982, the first of seven victims of intentionally-contaminated Tylenol died.  The deadly Tylenol capsules had had their normal acetaminophen switched and replaced with cyanide, meaning that anyone who took them would die a quick and unexpected death. Digging Deeper When the first victim died suddenly, his family and friends gathered to mourn his passing, and then the victim’s brother and widow took Tylenol from the same contaminated bottle and became fatalities numbers 2 and 3.  Another 4 bottles resulted in another 4 deaths, and the nationwide alarm was raised.  Only 3 more tampered-with bottles were found, but the…

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A Brief History On September 29, 522 B.C., following two years of bizarre and bloody political intrigue, King Darius I the Great of Persia killed a Magian (think of the magi or wise men of the Bible) usurper, thereby securing Darius’s hold as great king of the Persian Empire. Digging Deeper Most westerners know of Darius as one of the two Persian monarchs who attempted and failed to conquer Greece.  Darius’s forces were those who suffered the iconic defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.  Yet, this invasion happened over thirty years into Darius’s reign and just four…

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