A Brief History On June 11, 980, Vladimir the Great was proclaimed the ruler of all Kievan Rus’, having consolidated an empire consisting of the lands from what is now Ukraine in the East to the Baltic Sea in the West, the White Sea in the North, and to the Black Sea in the South. Digging Deeper Called the Kievan Realm, the people comprising this vast country included what are now Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Nordic, and Finnic people along with other Slavic people. As the name implies, the capital of these people was located in Kyiv. Vladimir, bearing the titles…
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A Brief History On June 8, 1959, the US Navy teamed up with the United States Post Office Department to attempt to resurrect the concept of sending mail via rocket or missile. Digging Deeper The submarine, USS Barbero, was employed to launch a Regulus cruise missile, normally armed with a nuclear warhead but this time carrying Post Office containers, from the Atlantic Ocean to Naval Station Mayport in Florida. The 22-minute flight of the missile accurately delivered the commemorative “mail” enclosed, each piece addressed to President Eisenhower and other government officials. While the test was technically successful, no such program…
A Brief History On June 7, 1938, the government of Nationalist China, at war with the Japanese invaders in the Second Sino-Japanese War, destroyed the embankments of the Yellow River, creating a massive flood in order to halt the advance of the Japanese Army. Digging Deeper The event called “The 1938 Yellow River Flood” was part of a war strategy of “scorched earth” policy, leaving little or nothing for the invaders to use in their conquest. Described as the “largest act of environmental warfare in history,” the resulting flood killed between 500,000 and 900,000 Chinese civilians and created about 3…
A Brief History On June 5, 1893, the murder trial of Lizzie Borden began. Borden was accused of killing her father and stepmother with an axe. Despite the popular assumption of her guilt, she was acquitted in one of the most famous trials in US history. Digging Deeper Some of the other candidates as the most famous American trial include the following: In The Sacco and Vanzetti Trial of 1921 for robbery and murder, the men were believed by many to be railroaded because they were immigrants and anarchists in a case that saw worldwide attention. The Scopes Monkey Trial…
A Brief History On June 2, 1780, a week of violent rioting began in London, England, the worst in the city’s history, by protestors against recent legislation to reduce official discrimination against Catholics. Digging Deeper Known as The Gordon Riots due to Lord George Gordon being a primary anti-Catholic leader, a staggering 300 to 700 people were killed and many more injured, while property was damaged including the embassies of Catholic countries. Also damaged was the reputation and prestige of England in the eyes of the rest of Europe, especially those nations with large Catholic populations. The cause of complaint…