Browsing: Society

A Brief History On June 18, 1900, the Dowager Empress Cixi of China proclaimed war against the colonizing powers in China, including diplomats and their families.  This order was made during the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), a popular uprising of Chinese against foreign Imperialists who had been imposing their will upon China.  For 55 days, foreigners and Christian Chinese were held under siege at a legation/embassy in Peking, now modern-day Beijing. Digging Deeper A major motion picture, 55 Days at Peking (1963), starring Charlton Heston, David Niven and Ava Gardner is loosely based on this event; it flopped at the box office,…

A Brief History On June 11, 2015, President Obama was in the strange position of having a trade agreement he and many congressional Republicans supported shot down in a vote by members of his own party. Digging Deeper The “Pacific Rim” trade treaty endorsed by the President would involve Canada and 11 other countries in freer trade with the US.  Wary of another NAFTA trade fiasco where such a treaty cost American jobs, many Democrats opposed the agreement, as did enough Republicans to deal the President a defeat.  The President must now go back to negotiating a revised deal if…

A Brief History On June 8, 1966, while test flying the monstrously expensive XB-70 Valkyrie, the U.S. Air Force managed to knock the Mach 3 bomber from the sky when an F-104 “chase” plane got a little too close and bumped into it, resulting in the crash of both aircraft and the death of two pilots and severe injury to another.  The XB-70 had cost about $750 million to develop and build, quite a fortune in those days.  Military history is rife with such blunders, miscalculations and general screw ups.  Here we list 10 such incidents in no particular order.…

A Brief History On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, an African-American, was arrested for refusing to vacate his seat in a “Whites Only” railroad car.  His case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, where a 7-1 majority ruled against Plessy, and upheld segregation laws in states that had them, as long as the “separate but equal” rule was followed. (Ferguson was the lower court judge that ruled against Plessy.) Digging Deeper This concept of separate but equal was thus the law of the land until the 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education, and much…

A Brief History  In 1965, Maulana Karenga (born Ronald Everett), currently Professor of African Studies at the University of California in Long Beach, created a new holiday he named Kwanzaa during which time African Americans could honor their African heritage.  Digging Deeper As a university student, Karenga had been active in the radical African-American movement known as Black Power and even created an organization he called “US” meaning black people.  This group became a rival to other Black nationalist groups such as the Black Panthers. Karenga’s US (sarcastically called United Slaves by the Black Panthers) clashed with the Panthers to the point of…