A Brief History The 22nd of November is indelibly etched in the public’s mind with the death of a revered hero! (And John F. Kennedy also died on November 22nd.) Yes, pirate aficionados everywhere mourn the 1718 loss of one of the most colorful pirates of all time, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find him born in England around 1680, and at some unknown point, becoming a sailor and finding himself in the West Indies. Back in the bad old pirate days, pirates often took on an alias to avoid prosecution (the penalty of…
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A Brief History On November 21, 1916, the new and improved version of the Titanic became the largest ship sunk during World War I! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the third of the Olympic class ocean liners having been built after the Olympic and Titanic and actually being a bit bigger, incorporating new design features to prevent a disaster like the 1912 loss of Titanic. Entering service in December of 1915, she was almost 900 feet long and displacing 53,000 tons, the Britannic was fitted as a hospital ship for wartime service and was carrying 1066 souls on the…
A Brief History On November 19, 1941, HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran sank each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen. The battle was Australia’s all time largest loss of life in its entire naval history and the largest Allied warship lost with all hands in World War II. For conspiracy theorists, what really happened has remained a controversy for over sixty years! Digging Deeper When we think of World War II’s naval battles, we tend to envision German submarines in the Atlantic or the epic battles pitting Japanese…
A Brief History Contrary to Pat Robertson’s beliefs, on November 18, 1803, Haitians won their independence, not with the Devil’s assistance, but with their victory at The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution. The victory lead to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Digging Deeper After the Haitian Earthquake of 2010 took over 100,000 Haitian lives, Pat Robertson (Chancellor of Regent University and Chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network), proclaimed on television that Haiti, while under the heel of Napoleon III, had made a pact with…
A Brief History On November 17, 1810, Sweden declared war on its ally the United Kingdom to begin the Anglo-Swedish War, although no fighting ever took place and there were no casualties! Digging Deeper Prior to 1810, Britain and Sweden were allies against Napoleonic France. In 1810, however, the situation changed. France and Sweden concluded The Treaty of Paris on January 6, 1810, forcing Sweden to join the Continental System, a trade embargo against Great Britain. Next, after The Swedish Crown Prince Charles August died on May 28, 1810, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, a Marshal of France and husband of Napoleon’s former…
