Browsing: Society

A Brief History On December 16, 1863, after bungling the defense of Chattanooga, Confederate Army General Braxton Bragg was replaced as Commander of the Army of Tennessee by General Johnston.  Nevertheless, a major US Army base was named after Bragg. Digging Deeper Many other American places have been named after people infamous for their failures, including: Fort Polk, Louisiana, named after Confederate General Leonidas Polk, a political appointee with no significant military experience and poor performance during the Civil War.  Fort Polk is now Fort Johnson. Custer, South Dakota and Custer City, Oklahoma, named after US Army Lt. Col. George…

A Brief History On December 14, 2017, the Walt Disney Company continued a trend of corporate mergers and acquisitions that are killing competition in many markets when they announced the deal to acquire the 20th Century Fox movie studio for over $52 billion. Digging Deeper Way back in 1890, Congress realized the problem with only a few companies owning too much of a market, and passed the Sherman Act, the first major anti-trust law in the US.  President Teddy Roosevelt built on a reputation as a “trust buster” to protect competitive commerce, but his successor, President William Taft, proved to…

A Brief History On December 10, 1968, a fake motorcycle cop stopped employees at the Nippon Trust Bank and stole 294 million yen, about $1 million in US dollars.  Known as the “300 Million Yen Robbery,” the dramatic heist is not only the largest robbery in Japanese history, it is still unsolved to this day! Digging Deeper To sell the fiction of being a police officer, the faux cop told the bank employees there was a bomb threat on their delivery car, and he even crawled under the car to “confirm” the presence of the bomb.  The robber also lit…

A Brief History On December 9, 1935, muckraking journalist, Walter Liggett, was gunned down in front of his wife and children by a Minneapolis, Minnesota mobster with a Tommy Gun. Digging Deeper Liggett was a native Minnesotan that had a left leaning political bent, writing against political corruption at all levels and even siding with Charles Lindbergh, Sr. to oppose US involvement in World War I. Liggett became disillusioned with Governor Floyd Olson of the Farmer-Labor Party and began a protracted journalistic campaign against corruption in that party after he had returned to Minnesota from a period of writing in…

A Brief History On December 8, 1991, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed a treaty called the Belovezha Accords, an agreement that dissolved the USSR and put in its place the Commonwealth of Independent States.  A key part of this treaty was each newly independent state guaranteeing the integrity of the territory of the other signatory states. Digging Deeper As if this sacred agreement was not enough, in 1994, Russia, along with the US and other countries as part of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons further guaranteed the respect of the territory of Ukraine and other involved nations…