A Brief History On January 7, 2015, a day celebrated by millions of Eastern Orthodox Christians (Greek Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Catholic, etc) as Christmas Day, France was stunned by a vicious terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper offices that left 12 people dead and another 11 wounded. The incident was a case of misguided Islamic extremism fueled by religious outrage over the politically incorrect newspaper’s penchant for poking fun at anyone and everyone, including the Prophet Muhammad. Outrage over the terrorist attack and murders vis-à-vis the assault on free speech spurred the phrase, “Je suis Charlie,” French…
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A Brief History On January 6, 2017, an American citizen and veteran of the War in Iraq opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport in Broward County, Southern Florida with a legally purchased and owned pistol, killing 5 people and injuring another 6 before surrendering to police. While it is not unusual for mass shooters to either be assessed as mentally ill or to at least seem (to the general public) to be mentally ill, the convoluted path through mental illness to a tragic mass murder in this case is particularly disturbing. While we describe the course of this…
A Brief History On January 3, 2009, the Genesis block, the first of the blockchains, of the crypto-currency known as Bitcoin was first established online by creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, an alias for an unknown person or persons. The form of “currency” invented by Nakamoto (or whatever) does not entail any tangible coins or paper money and is purely theoretical online tradable currency. A decentralized payment system, Bitcoin allows financial transactions of many types to be conducted without the oversight or vagaries of governments or a central bank. Digging Deeper A crypto-currency is a system that uses digital data as a…
A Brief History On December 28, 1943, the Soviet secret police, NKVD, under the direction of its commander Lavrentiy Beria, began a three day operation called Operation Ulusy to forcibly remove 93,139 people of the Kalmyk nationality to forced labor camps in the remote areas of Siberia. The Soviets had accused the Kalmyks of being pro-German and anti-Soviet, even though 23,540 Kalmyks were serving in the Red Army against the Germans and only 5000 Kalmyks had sided with the Germans, forming the Kalmykian Cavalry Corps. Soviet officials, ever paranoid and seeing sedition under every rock, overreacted to the Kalmyk nationalist…
A Brief History On December 25, 1951, Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and Harriette V. S. Moore were killed by a bomb explosion at their home in Sanford, Florida. Unfortunately, for many people, Christmas has not always been a time of happiness and celebration, but a time of death and destruction. Today we examine several of the unhappy incidents that have happened on this otherwise jolly holiday. Feel free to nominate other incidents that could be included on such a list, or to take exception with anything we have listed. (The list is in no particular order and we…