Browsing: Crime

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…

A Brief History On June 4, 1989, an estimated tens of thousands Chinese military troops opened fire on perhaps a million Chinese protestors at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the capital of China.  While numbers of troops, protestors, and casualties are only estimates, because historically, governments cannot be counted on to provide accurate accounts of embarrassing events, as many as 10,000 or more of the peaceful protestors may have died in the massacre. Digging Deeper Not only were hundreds or thousands of people shot, but many others were also trampled in the rush to avoid the gunfire or crushed under the…

A Brief History On May 30, 1972, a British far left terrorist group went on trial for conducting 25 bombings over the previous two years.  The soi-disant “Angry Brigade” saw eight of their members tried for the bombings, but only four of them were convicted.  In any case, the trial was the end of the cleverly named group. Digging Deeper Targets of the Angry Brigade included banks, embassies, conservative politicians, and even a beauty contest.  Luckily, no one was killed in the bombings, although one person was injured.  At least two people were the subject of assassination attempts by the…