Browsing: Society

A Brief History On August 22, 1864, the first of 4 treaties governing the conduct of war was signed in Geneva, Switzerland, a pact called “The First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.” Digging Deeper The lengthy title tells you what the pact concerned, and the 12 European countries or kingdoms that signed it agreed to humanitarian treatment of the war wounded. Later, 5 more countries signed, including the United States. The civilized world met 3 more times over the next century, establishing far reaching accords on the conduct of…

A Brief History On August 20, 1858, naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, the change of organisms over time through mutation and natural selection, in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Digging Deeper While we generally think of Darwin as the man that came up with the idea of “evolution,” there were other scientists at the time that also came to a similar conclusion, including fellow British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, whose work was published at the same time and in the same publication as Darwin’s. While most serious scientists today accept Darwin’s…

A Brief History On August 17, 1914, the World War I Battle of Stallupönen was fought between the Imperial German army and the Imperial Russian army near Nesterov, Russia.  The Germans were armed with the Mauser M98 chambered in 7.92 mm Mauser (sometimes called “8 mm Mauser”) and the Russians with the M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle chambered in 7.62×54mmR.  both rifles were 5 shot bolt action repeating rifles firing smokeless powder cartridges topped by copper jacketed pointy nosed bullets that were accurate and highly effective. Digging Deeper Bullets were originally merely lead round balls, and then were blunt tip hollow based…

A Brief History On August 17, 1998, US President Bill Clinton admitted in a taped deposition that he had am “improper physical relationship” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, a lie that led to his impeachment. American Presidents have been involved in many scandals over the years, and here we list some of those, inviting our viewers to chime in and rank those executive misdeeds from bad to the worst. (See our many other articles about political scandals.) Digging Deeper Andrew Jackson was married to an already married woman and was a veteran of 100 duels, including killing a man…

A Brief History On August 16, 1940, Flight Lieutenant Nicolson of the British Royal Air Force flew his Hawker Hurricane fighter into history during combat over England against the German Luftwaffe when he continued to fight an aerial battle despite his plane being on fire from 4 cannon shells and multiple machine gun bullets striking it from an enemy Me-110.  Only after shooting down the enemy fighter despite being wounded and suffering severe burns, did Nicolson bail out, and was later awarded the Victoria Cross. Digging Deeper Air to air combat is a demanding and tricky business, and one of…