Browsing: Society

A Brief History On October 22, 1910, a murderer named Hawley Crippen became the first person captured via the help of radio to be convicted of a crime.  A sort of quack doctor, Crippen worked in homeopathic medicine in the US but was not allowed to practice medicine in England when he moved to London. Digging Deeper Authorities in Canada were alerted via radio that the fugitive was on board an ocean liner and Crippen was arrested on arrival in Canada, the first known instance of an arrest facilitated by radio. Other notable crime fighting firsts include: The first use…

A Brief History On October 21, 1983, the standard metric unit of length, the meter, was redefined as “the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.”  The meter had been defined originally in 1791 by the French National Assembly as one 10 millionth the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. Digging Deeper This calculation means the circumference of the Earth via the polar route was exactly 40,000 kilometers.  Other units of length were based on a decimal system of the meter, such as “millimeter” or 1/1000 of a meter or a “kilometer,” or 1000…

A Brief History On October 20, 2022, British Prime Minister Liz Truss was obliged to step down after only 49 days as head of government, the shortest reign of any British Prime Minister.  Some other incredibly brief stints of being in charge include: Digging Deeper William Henry Harrison was President of the US for only 32 days, dying of some sort of cold or illness, possibly contracted from not wearing a coat or hat during his inauguration ceremony and two hour speech during cold and wet weather. Karl Dönitz got to be in charge of Germany in the final 24…

A Brief History On October 19, 1943, Allied aircraft sank the German ship, MS Sinfra, killing about 2,000 Italian soldiers that had surrendered to the Germans on Crete when Italy changed sides during World War II. Digging Deeper The Italians that had served alongside the Germans had the choice of continuing to fight alongside the Germans or to become POWs.  Many of the Italians on Crete chose to surrender.  An additional 250 surviving Italians were executed after being rescued, for “undisciplined behavior” during the sinking.  Many Italians were gunned down by Germans when the prisoners broke out of their holds…

A Brief History On October 18, 2019, a recent hike in subway fares served as the tipping point for disaffected citizens of Santiago, Chile, upset about a variety of social issues they had been protesting for the previous couple weeks turning into a full-scale set of riots and battles with authorities that claimed 36 lives, 11,564 injuries, and 28,000 people arrested. Digging Deeper We have previously discussed many riots over all sorts of seemingly minor causes, although few such social battles have matched the scale of the Chile Riots of 2019 to 2020.  The massive protests caused Chileans to vote…