A Brief History On April 21, 1802, a band of Wahhabis from Najd in central Saudi Arabia attacked the central Iraqi city of Karbala, with the purpose of punishing those Iraqi Muslims for failing to follow the ultra-conservative religious teachings of Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), a Sunni Muslim scholar who had taught a “renewal” of the Islamic faith apparently at odds with the brand of Islam practiced in Karbala, which was of the Shia variety. Karbala at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire. Digging Deeper The Wahhabi army numbered around 12,000 soldiers, and easily overwhelmed whatever defense Karbala put…
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A Brief History On April 10, 1944, 2 Jewish inmates of the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, in Poland, escaped to tell the world of the horrors they had witnessed. (The name of the camp is Oświęcim in Polish.) They soon reported the incredible conditions of the camp and the ongoing extermination of European Jews by the Nazi regime of Germany. Their report, known as the Vrba–Wetzler report, shocked the world and resulted in the government of Hungary, an ally of Germany during World War II, to stop deporting Hungarian Jews to Germany for extermination in the dreaded concentration camps.…
A Brief History On April 8, 2006, the bodies of 8 people murdered by gunshot wounds were found in a field a couple of miles (5 kilometers for the metric oriented) North of Shedden, Ontario, Canada, an event labeled as the “Shedden Massacre.” The bodies were found inside 4 cars by the local farmer. (If you were a fan of Sons of Anarchy on television, perhaps you have a bit of a clue as to the nature of motorcycle clubs.) Digging Deeper Canada, a particularly friendly nation (as this author can attest, having gone there probably close 100 times over…
A Brief History On March 29, 1911, the Colt M1911 .45 ACP caliber semi-automatic pistol became the standard pistol of the US Army. We used this historical event for our impetus to write an article in 2016 titled, “Top Ten Must have Calibers for the “Apocalypse.”” Little did we know back in 2016 that many places in the United States would be shutting down gun stores and ammunition sales because of the spreading coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While we may still be a long way from an “apocalypse” that may never happen, we are a lot closer to a catastrophic event…
A Brief History On March 23, 2018, the latest in a line of politicians forced from office across South America was Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the President of Peru. Not so original himself, Kuczynski was preceded in the presidency by Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez (president 2006-2011) who had also been forced to resign due to corruption, and then by President Ollanta Humala (president 2011-2016) who was also implicated in the same massive anti-corruption investigation, called Operation Carwash, or alternately by a sub-investigation called the Odebrecht Scandal. Operation Carwash, initiated in Brazil 2014, is far from over, but has already reached…