Browsing: Society

A Brief History On March 19, 1945, the Essex class aircraft carrier USS Franklin while on station off the coast of Japan, was struck by a Japanese dive bomber flying a virtually suicidal mission through intense defenses, causing massive damage, but not sinking the ship.  Still, an incredibly high fatality count had been inflicted upon the crew of the stricken ship, with at least 740 men killed and perhaps more. Is the Franklin the ship that suffered the highest death toll in a single battle that did not sink of damage inflicted in that battle?  While we could not find…

A Brief History On March 18, 1915, the Allied naval operation at the Dardanelles, the straits that provide entry to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean, ended in one of the worst defeats of the British Royal Navy when 3 battleships were lost and another 4 capital ships were seriously damaged.  A cruiser was also damaged. Digging Deeper Worse than just the loss of the ships, the British and French suffered 700 men killed on ships alone, along with several dozen killed on shore raids.  The Turks suffered only 40 dead and 78 wounded. The stunning part about the failed…

A Brief History On March 17, 2020, the United States of America and Ireland both have cancelled virtually all St. Patrick’s Day festivities, absolutely destroying one of the jolliest holidays in either country.  For this disappointment, we have to thank the coronavirus, or more correctly COVID-19, the mysterious flu like illness believed to have originated in Wuhan, China only a few months earlier. Digging Deeper While the world has experienced many pandemics throughout history, the last several decades have been marred by only a few breakouts of illness that garnered a lot of attention, including the AIDS/HIV pandemic, the Swine…

A Brief History On March 16, 2001, Jin Ruchao, a Chinese citizen of Hubei Province in China proved once again that a deranged person does not need guns to kill a LOT of people, when he set off a series of bombs in the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang that killed 108 people and injured 38 more.  His reason for his wanton murder?  He hated his ex-wife and her mother! Digging Deeper As is often the case with people that go off on murderous rampages, Jin had previously threatened to blow up the buildings his ex-wife and her mother lived in. …

A Brief History On March 15, 493, Ravenna, Italy was a scene right out of the HBO cable television series Game of Thrones when King Theodoric the Great of the Ostrogoths invited his defeated enemy, King Odoacer of Italy to a great banquet marking the “end” of hostilities.  Odoacer, the first barbarian King of Italy, whose reign marked the end of the Western Roman Empire, was walking into a trap! Digging Deeper Theodoric used the banquet as a lure to draw in Odoacer so that the erstwhile King of Italy could be killed.  In the manner typical of both fictional…