A Brief History On November 3, 1783, highwayman John Austin became the last person to be publicly hanged at London’s Tyburn gallows. Digging Deeper For centuries Tyburn, formerly a village, but now within the city of London, had the infamous distinction of being the principal place of execution in England’s capital for criminals, traitors, and even religious martyrs. Executions and sometimes public torture occurred in Tyburn from at least 1196 until 1783. The executed included noblemen and commoners alike of both sexes. Even the dead could be “executed” there, as was the case of notorious rebel Oliver Cromwell whose corpse…
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A Brief History On October 31, 1944, Dr. jur. Erich Göstl, a member of the Waffen SS, was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, to recognize extreme battlefield bravery for losing his face and eyes during the Battle of Normandy during World War II and continuing to fight while blind. Digging Deeper It is easy to dismiss Nazi Germany for its evil war crimes and the popular culture stereotypes of Germans during that dark moment in human history. Indeed, even this article is not intended to offer any praise to that ultimately failed state, but rather to remember…
A Brief History On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the North of Russia; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise by humankind! Digging Deeper Roughly a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to plunge the world into a nuclear world war in which both sides possessed large arsenals of weapons of annihilation, the Soviets showed off their nuclear potential by testing the “Tsar Bomb”. The bomb weighed 27,000 kilograms (60,000 lb) and was 8…
A Brief History On October 29, 1886, the first recorded use of ticker-tape was noted during the parade for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. Digging Deeper As a native of Northeast Ohio for my entire life (24 years and counting), to my knowledge the closest thing to a major celebration that the city has had in the past ten years was probably when the Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals in 2007. Reams of flashy confetti rained down upon screaming fans in Quicken Loans Arena as the Cleveland Cavaliers were crowned champions…
A Brief History Greece celebrates October 28 as a national holiday commemorating the entry of Greece into World War II (WW2). The Greco-Italian war of 1940 was a military conflict between Greece and Italy lasting from October 28, 1940 until April 23, 1941 that became the Axis powers’ first defeat. Digging Deeper This war was the result of the expansionist policy of the fascist regime that Benito Mussolini had established in Italy. In 1940, Mussolini, fascinated and jealous of the conquests and accomplishments of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi control of most parts of Europe, wanted to prove to his idol…
