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…
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A Brief History On December 24, 1800, The “Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise,” also known as the “Machine Infernale Plot,” failed to kill Napoleon Bonaparte, then the First Consul of France, the de facto dictator of the French Republic. Not the first attempt to kill Bonaparte, on October 10, 1800, another assassination plot against Napoleon called “Conspiration des Poignards” had also failed, nor would it be the last. A man of great personal will and great charisma, Napoleon nonetheless evinced great animosity on the part of those that had previously held much of the power in France, including the Catholic…
A Brief History On December 22, 1984, the tables got turned on criminals when their victim shot them! Bernhard Goetz, a 37-year-old man, riding a New York subway believed himself threatened when approached by four men ages 18 and 19, each of whom previously had been arrested and convicted at least once. In an instant after initial contact, five shots rang out in rapid succession and all four young men were shot. This famous incident of vigilante “justice” became a cause célèbre in the United States which has a staggering private gun ownership of well over one gun for every…
A Brief History On December 18, 1982, Germany’s greatest pilot of World War II died of a stroke. Hans-Ulrich Rudel was not one of Germany’s great fighter pilots, such as Baron von Richtofen or Erich Hartmann, the 2 highest scoring fighter aces of World War I and World War II respectively, but the ace pilot of a plane deemed by many to have been obsolete during the vast majority of World War II, the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber. Today we discuss the Stuka and other military aircraft deemed obsolete that have filled a combat role with distinction past the…
A Brief History On December 15, 1890, legendary Hunkpapa Lakota (aka, Teton Sioux) leader and holy man, Sitting Bull, was killed by Indian Agency Police at Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the Grand River area of South Dakota. Indian Agents feared Sitting Bull would be leaving the reservation in order to supervise a “Ghost Dance” ritual that agents feared could result in unrest and rebellion among the Native American tribes already on reservations. An early morning arrest had been ordered to surprise Sitting Bull and his followers, and a total of 39 Indian Agency Police officers and 4 additional volunteers…