Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On August 14, 2003, an enormous electrical blackout struck the Northeast and upper Midwest of the United States and a large part of Western Ontario, Canada, leaving about (or “aboot” in the Great White North) 55 million people without electricity for a period lasting between 7 hours and 2 days. As is nearly always the case, the government response was a knee jerk reaction to lie to the public! While the 9/11 terrorist attacks were still fresh in the minds of North Americans, the US Government assured the public that the power outage was NOT a terror…

A Brief History On August 9, 1969, members of the Manson Family, followers of cult leader Charles Manson, murdered actress Sharon Tate, her unborn baby, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and 3 other people.  Although definitely nutty people with bizarre, cult ideas about sparking a race war through senseless murder, none of these people successfully played the insanity card.  Charles Manson died in prison in November of 2017 one seriously deranged dude that seemed to be a shoo in for the loony bin.  We previously discussed “9 Blatantly Nutty People Not Found Insane” and today we nominate another 3 goofy people…

A Brief History On August 6, 1945, the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing about 70,000 people right away and perhaps a few tens of thousands later from wounds, burns, and radiation. Ever since this first use of a nuclear weapon against living, human targets the specter of possible nuclear war has hung over the world, casting a pall on humanity. Created by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board in 1947, the Doomsday Clock (https://thebulletin.org/2018-doomsday-clock-statement/) was invented as a way to chart the ongoing threat…

A Brief History On July 27, 1189, Friedrich Barbarossa (also known as Frederick), the Holy Roman Emperor, arrived at the capital of the Serbian King Stefan Nemanja, a city called Nis. King of Germany, King of Italy, and King of Burgundy, Barbarossa was a medieval force to be reckoned with, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1155. His undoing was his ill-considered foray into the Third Crusade, a venture that cost the Holy Roman Emperor his life. Digging Deeper Perhaps you are familiar with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, a plan the Germans called “Operation Barbarossa” in…

A Brief History On July 26, 1953, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and Arizona National Guard conducted a raid on an enclave of fundamentalist Mormons at Short Creek, Arizona, an enormous law enforcement effort that netted about 400 people taken into custody, including men, women, and children. Their alleged crime? Polygamy, also known as “plural marriage,” which had ended as a part of mainstream Mormonism as manifested by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the LDS and comprise more than 95% of all “Mormons.” Digging Deeper On July 26, 1953, the Arizona Department…