A Brief history On June 13, 1525, former Roman Catholic friar Martin Luther broke church rules and married Katharina von Bora, a nun. Obviously, this marriage was a great scandal and was part of the schism that resulted in the formation of the Protestant portion of the Christian religious groups. Weddings can sometimes be scandalous, notorious, infamous, or just downright weird, and the marriage that comes after the wedding can be just as goofy. Here we list 10 of those. (On April 9 we have a list of “10 Unpopular and Weird Weddings.” Please see that list to check if…
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A Brief History On October 18, 1945, the Soviet nuclear program received American atomic bomb (plutonium implosion type) plans from scientist, Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee from the Third Reich. Fuchs had been passing nuclear secrets to the USSR in Britain prior to his involvement in the US-British-Canadian Manhattan Project. Digging Deeper Born in Germany the son of a Lutheran minister, the Fuchs family had communist leanings and opposed the rise of the Nazi state. Fuchs went to Britain in 1933 to study physics, and was awarded a PhD and a DSc (doctor of science) degree. In 1939 at the…
A Brief History On May 12, 1864, as part of the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse (Virginia) Union and Confederate forces fought in the “Bloody Angle” resulting in thousands of casualties on both sides, just part of what was by far the bloodiest and most horrific war in American history. ( Note: Numbers vary with sources.) Digging Deeper Part of the Overland Campaign, Spotsylvania (spelled Spottsylvania at the time) the battle pitted the Union Army of the Ohio (IX Corps of the Army of the Potomac) against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. About 100,000 Union troops faced about 52,000…
A Brief History On October 16, 1991, 35 year old loser George Hennard crashed his truck into the front of a Luby’s Cafeteria in Kileen, Texas, hopped out of the pick-up, and began shooting, eventually killing 24 people (including himself) and wounding another 27. Up to this point, the Luby’s Cafeteria shooting was the deadliest non-school shooting in US history. (Note: This tragedy was greatly eclipsed by the horrific mass shooting at Las Vegas, Nevada on October 1, 2017, in which a single gunman shot and killed 58 people, with another 413 reporting wounds or injuries.) Digging Deeper Although this…
A Brief History On May 13, 1862, a black African-American slave, Robert Smalls, serving as a ship’s pilot on the CSS Planter, a Confederate armed steamship, managed to steal the ship and turn it over to US Navy forces outside Charleston, South Carolina. It seems the 3 white officers had decided to take shore leave overnight, leaving Smalls and several other slaves on the ship. Digging Deeper Smalls masterminded the escape of the ship with himself in disguise wearing the Captain’s uniform and straw hat. Not only did Smalls successfully present the ship to the Union Navy, but he also…