A Brief History On April 4, 1991, US Senator from Pennsylvania John Heinz along with six other people died when a helicopter suffered a mid-air collision with the small airplane carrying Heinz over Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania. Sadly, two of the seven fatalities were children on the ground. Digging Deeper Heinz is only one of many politicians that met an early demise in aircraft crashes, such as the following examples. In 1928, Congressman Thaddeus Sweet of New York became the first US politician to die in an air wreck. In 1947 and again in 1962, State Governors died in air…
Browsing: Politics
Read More
A Brief History On February 23, 1778, the Baron von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge to assist George Washington with training the Continental Army. Washington was waging a war of independence against Britain, to forever remove what would become the United States from the tyranny of living under a King. Today, we find there are many “kings” in the USA and we list some of these from the 20th and 21st Centuries. Digging Deeper First, we have “The King of all media,” Howard Stern, shock jock of radio, television, literature, and the internet. Several musical “kings” have reigned, including Elvis…
A Brief History On February 22, 1974, President Richard Nixon was the target of a failed assassination attempt. Failed attempts at presidential assassinations are numerous, including the first, in 1835, when President Andrew Jackson beat the would be assassin senseless with his cane, after the assassin’s pistol misfired. Digging Deeper An assassination attempt on Teddy Roosevelt after he left the White House left the macho ex-president with a bullet in his chest for life, but that did not stop him from delivering his scheduled speech moments later. In fact, the folded-up speech in TR’s pocket may have saved his life,…
A Brief History On February 15, 1972, in what is surely one of the most frustrating political events in history, the President of Ecuador, José María Velasco Ibarra, was ousted by a military coup, incredibly, the fourth time such a coup took place out of the five times Ibarra was president! Digging Deeper A lawyer born in 1893, Ibarra became involved in politics in the 1930s, eventually rising to the presidency of Ecuador in 1934, a post he regained in 1944, 1952, 1960, and 1968. His unceremonious oustings occurred in 1935, 1947, 1961, and 1972. In 1956, Ibarra left power…
A Brief History On February 9, 1996, the synthetic element, Copernicium, was discovered by a research team at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, named after the famous Polish astronomer and polymath, Nicolaus Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernik in Polish), 10 days after the discovery, on the 537th anniversary of Copernicus’s birth. Digging Deeper Some of the other elements named after people include Curium, Fermium, Mendelevium, Nobelium, Einsteinium, Bohrium, Roentgenium, Lawrencium, and others. Perhaps you recognize some or most of these names as major historical scientists. You might not appreciate a disease or disorder being named after you,…