A Brief History On August 9, 2012, Shannon Eastin became the first woman to referee an NFL football game. Like many professional football officials, she started out as a referee in high school and then college football games. Digging Deeper Eastin got her big break when the NFL and the referee union had contract troubles and the regular refs were locked out in 2012. Some sports writers and the NFL Referees Association objected to her employment by the NFL, especially since she had participated in the World Series of Poker, and pro sports are highly sensitive to anyone with ties…
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A Brief History On August 7, 1978, President Jimmy Carter recognized the toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently into a residential area canal as a federal emergency. Digging Deeper The Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York had been planned in 1890, but only reached a portion of its planned size. The eponymous canal in the neighborhood was used for industrial dumping of various chemical by-products by the Hooker Chemical Company as well as municipal waste products. By the 1950s, people took notice of the health problems experienced by people in the neighborhood, finally drawing the attention…
A Brief History On August 4, 1987, the Federal Communications Commission officially removed any obligation of television and radio media to present controversial issues in an even and “fair” manner when they rescinded the Fairness Doctrine. Digging Deeper Much has been made of the blatant cheerleading by mass media for one side or the other in recent years, making so called news programs more partisan than just information. Calling the media “biased” and “fake news” has become an allegation by all sides of every issue anytime the media does not agree with a point of view. The Fairness Doctrine originated…
A Brief History On August 2, 1870, the Tower Subway opened for passenger traffic in London, England, the first ever underground tube type railway commonly called a “subway” in the US and “the tube” in the UK. Digging Deeper Not to be confused with a fast food store, a subway is a rail train for carrying passengers in underground tunnels. Using coal or wood powered steam engines, or even gasoline or diesel engines to power the train would be problematic underground. The Tower Subway was propelled by a cable system with no onboard propulsive power. Most subways today are electric…
A Brief History On July 30 and 31, 2012, Northern and Eastern India suffered massive electrical blackouts leaving 400 million people without electricity on July 30th and an even more incredible 620 million people without juice, but luckily only for about a day. Digging Deeper The previous blackout record, as measured by number of people denied use of electricity, had been 230 million people, again in India, in 2001. While the scope of the outage in these cases is immense, the length of time people are denied electric power most affects them. In the summer of 2022, part of Ohio…
