A Brief History On October 22, 1910, a murderer named Hawley Crippen became the first person captured via the help of radio to be convicted of a crime. A sort of quack doctor, Crippen worked in homeopathic medicine in the US but was not allowed to practice medicine in England when he moved to London. Digging Deeper Authorities in Canada were alerted via radio that the fugitive was on board an ocean liner and Crippen was arrested on arrival in Canada, the first known instance of an arrest facilitated by radio. Other notable crime fighting firsts include: The first use…
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A Brief History On September 7, 1876, the infamous James-Younger gang attempted to pull off a bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, but an alert and irate group of citizens quickly armed themselves and foiled the robbery, killing three of the robbers and wounding others. Digging Deeper Frank and Jesse James eluded capture, but two Younger brothers were caught and sent to prison. The gang had previously served the Confederate States during the American Civil War as “bushwhackers,” basically land based pirates attacking and robbing Union forces and anyone believed to be Union sympathizers. Infamous bank robber Willie Sutton explained why…
A Brief History On June 30, 1882, the assassin of President Garfield, Charles J. Guiteau, was executed by hanging in Washington, D.C. Guiteau had surrendered at the scene of the crime. Today, we look at what happened to the assassins that killed four US Presidents. Digging Deeper John Wilkes Booth, Confederate sympathizer and assassin of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was hunted down 12 days later and killed by a US Army soldier when Booth refused to surrender. Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist opposed to William Mckinley’s interventionist policies, shot McKinley in 1901. Czolgosz was swarmed and beaten by bystanders after the…
A Brief History On June 21, 1734, a 29 year old African woman was executed for setting her slave master’s house on fire which spread through Montreal in New France, what is now Canada. Digging Deeper Born a slave in Madeira around 1705 and named Marie-Joseph Angélique by a Flemish man that bought her and sold her to a Frenchman in Montreal around 1725, Marie was not submissive and tried to escape with a White indentured servant she had taken as a lover in 1733. The White servant was jailed, and Marie was returned to domestic duties, although her sale…
A Brief History On June 13, 2018, Volkswagen was fined a whopping billion Euros by the EU in conjunction with an emissions tricking scheme hatched by VW to beat clean air requirements in Europe and the US. Digging Deeper The VW scandal, using special computer programs to falsify emissions testing of their turbocharged direct injection (TDI) diesel engines, is not unique among car companies’ efforts to bamboozle governments and consumers. Further investigation showed that other car companies had also cheated on diesel engine emissions, including Jeep, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Renault, and Fiat. Another extreme scandal, this time of a deadly…
