Browsing: Society

A Brief History On September 4, 1882, the Pearl Street Station opened for business in New York City, the first commercial provider of electric power to customers.  Built and operated by the Edison Illuminating Company, a new era began of providing the public with mass quantities of electric power. Digging Deeper In the century plus since 1882, the US has seen an electrical grid fed by over 11,000 utility type electric plants.  Coal originally fired most electric plants, but today natural gas provides over 38% of our electricity.  Coal accounts for 22%, while nuclear energy provides almost 19% of our…

A Brief History On September 2, 1963, CBS Evening News made TV history by becoming the first major nightly news show to be 30 minutes long instead of only 15 minutes.  Prior to this event, the evening news was 15 minutes of local and 15 minutes of national news. Digging Deeper Other big changes to TV news include NBC switching its national news shows to color in 1966, quickly matched by rivals ABC and CBS.  Still, a majority of Americans watched the news in black and white until 1972 when color TVs finally became the majority. Cleveland’s Dorothy Fuldheim became…

A Brief History On September 1, 2004, terrorists seeking the independence of Chechnya from Russia invaded School Number One in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia, taking 1,100 hostages, of which well over 700 were school children.  The incident lasted three days and cost 333 innocent lives and the lives of 31 of the 32 terrorists. Digging Deeper The Riyad-us Saliheen attackers had pre-staged weapons and explosives in the school weeks before the attack.  A standoff followed demands that Chechnya be given independence, and after three days, Russian forces began an assault that triggered explosions and shooting by the terrorists and a…

A Brief History On August 31, 1535, King Henry VIII of England was kicked out of the Catholic Church by Pope Paul III, although a more official excommunication would come three years later.  Previously, Pope Clement VII had refused to grant Henry an annulment from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and threatened excommunication if the King persisted. Digging Deeper Other notable cases of ex-communication include: St. Joan of Arc, 1431, got the most extreme form of excommunication by being burned at the stake for blasphemy and heresy, although she was later acquitted. Martin Luther, 1521, excommunicated for defying the Catholic…

A Brief History On August 30, 1974, the third World Population Conference was held in Bucharest, Romania.  The first such conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland in 1927, the idea of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, under the aegis of the League of Nations.  Experts in health, food supply, fertility and other relevant subjects met to examine how many humans the Earth could sustainably host.  Subsequent conferences have been arranged by the United Nations starting in 1954. Digging Deeper The conference spawned the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, a subject fraught with religious, moral, and ethnic considerations. …