A Brief History On December 11, 2017, New York City once again became the target of an Islamic radical terrorist, this time an immigrant from Bangladesh. Luckily, the pipe bomb used in the attack did not explode properly, leaving the suspect with minor injuries (burns) and 3 innocent people with “headaches and ringing in the ears.” It could have been so much worse! President Trump acknowledged the incident as justification for his anti-immigration platform, saying, “There have now been two terrorist attacks in New York City in recent weeks carried out by foreign nationals here on green cards. The first…
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A Brief History On December 10, 1541, Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were executed by King Henry VIII of England for having sexual affairs with the Queen, Catherine Howard, wife of Henry VIII, a really, really stupid decision on the part of the two guys that somehow thought having an affair with the young queen was a good idea. We wrote about this incident and 9 others in a previous article, “December 10, 1541: 10 Dumb Decisions (Romance, Marriage, and Sexual Idiocy Edition)” and today we expand on the subject to include 10 more poor choices when it came to…
A Brief History On December 5, 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO, the largest confederation of trade and labor unions in the world. By 1979 the AFL-CIO claimed to represent 20 million union workers, but today has only 12 million members. Are union jobs going the way of the dinosaurs and Dodo birds? Today we take a brief look at the history of labor unions in the United States and the trends that have developed regarding working people. Workers represented by unions almost always have better pay and benefits…
A Brief History On December 2, 2015, an American married couple of Pakistani descent (one a citizen, the other a legal resident) named Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik ruined the Christmas party being held by employees of the Inland Regional Center (a not-for-profit organization that assists 33,000 people with developmental disabilities as well as the families of those persons) in San Bernardino, California by crashing the party with guns blazing, killing 14 people and wounding another 22 victims. The couple were killed later in a shootout with police, in which 2 officers were wounded. The couple were considered by…
A Brief History On November 30, 1786, Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo I of The Grand Duchy of Tuscany initiated the first ban on capital punishment of any modern state. Contrary to other European leaders, and for that matter, virtually all World leaders, apparently Leopold (later Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire) must have thought the death penalty was not essential for those in power to remain in power. A proponent of “Enlightened Absolutism” (alternately called “Enlightened Despotism”), Leopold believed in the power of a monarchy to be used for the benefit of the people, but in a benevolent…