Browsing: Society

A Brief History On August 15, 2015, North Korea changed its time to a self-appointed “Pyongyang Time,” moving clocks backward a half hour to flout international time, known as UTC. Digging Deeper Playing with time is not the only odd choice by North Korea, called “The Hermit Kingdom” for keeping its population out of contact with the rest of the world, in order to control information and thought. Since its establishment in 1948, North Korea has been a dictatorship by a single family, first by Kim Il Sung, then his son, Kim Jong Il, and currently the next son in…

A Brief History On August 14, 1851, John Henry Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia.  He would grow up to become a legend of the Wild West as “Doc” Holliday, a dentist turned gambler, gunman, and friend of Wyatt Earp. Digging Deeper A participant in the most famous Western gunfight, Holliday was the son of a veteran of the Mexican American War and the US Civil War.  His mother and brother both died of tuberculosis, a disease that would eventually take his life. Doc got his nickname when he graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and became a…

A Brief History On August 13, 1961, the Soviet occupiers of East Berlin tired of unhappy citizens of the communist “workers’ paradise” defecting to the West via West Berlin and erected a barbed wire fence that would become infamous as “The Berlin Wall.” Digging Deeper The Soviets and East Germans cordoned off West Berlin and began erecting a concrete wall complete with guard towers and barbed wire to prevent their citizens from fleeing to the West. The Berlin Wall stood as an icon of the Cold War between the Democratic Western countries and the Communist bloc, and in a way…

A Brief History On August 12, 2000, during the first major Russian naval exercise since the break-up of the USSR, the Russian Oscar II class cruise missile sub, the Kursk, blew up and sank in the Barents Sea, taking all 118 men aboard to their deaths. Digging Deeper Another of the incidents we call “Naval Oops Moments” in which naval vessels are accidentally damaged or destroyed, the investigation into the sinking found that a torpedo defect caused the initial explosion and subsequent fire that caused a second, much larger explosion that sank the sub.  The second explosion seems to have…

A Brief History On August 11, 1492, Rodrigo de Borgia was elected Pope of the Catholic Church, taking the name Alexander VI.  Serving until his death in 1503, Alexander’s reign was one of corruption and depravity, so much so that a Showtime cable TV show was produced about him and his family from 2011 to 2013, called The Borgias. Digging Deeper Although fictional, the show is based on many of the allegations against the Borgia family, including the Pope himself fathering several children via his many mistresses, reaping massive wealth while in office as a Cardinal and then as Pope,…