A Brief History On November 2, 1900, Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman (1854-1942), President of the First Philippine Commission, stated, “Should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the commission believe that the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy, which would excuse, if it did not necessitate, the intervention of other powers and the eventual division of the islands among them. Only through American occupation, therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, and united Philippine commonwealth at all conceivable. And the indispensable need from the Filipino point of view of maintaining American sovereignty over the archipelago is…
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A Brief History On October 31, 1864, the people of the United States got a big treat in their Halloween basket, the newly minted State of Nevada, the 36th state of the Union, appropriately known as “The Silver State.” Right in the middle of the bloodiest war in US history, for good measure. Digging Deeper At the time of admission as a state, Nevada only had about 14,000 people. Only 4 years earlier the number was a paltry 6857 souls. For such a large area (the 7th largest state by area) Nevada has for most of its existence been quite…
A Brief History On October 30, 1995, the people of the Canadian province of Quebec voted by the narrow margin of 50.58% to 49.42% to remain a Canadian province. Quebec, the largest province of Canada by size, was the heart of New France until the British won the Seven Years War in 1763, and with it sovereignty over Quebec. Digging Deeper The Quebecois as the people call themselves maintain their French heritage, and the French language is spoken by the majority of people in the province. A reminder of this French heritage can be found on their automobile license plates,…
A Brief History On October 27, 1914, the virtually brand new British Super-Dreadnaught battleship, HMS Audacious, hit a mine off the North coast of Ireland and sunk without ever being used in combat. Of course, the British government did not tell the truth to the British people, a disturbing trend followed by governments all over the world throughout history. Digging Deeper Audacious was commissioned in August of 1913, a state of the art King George V class battleship, 598 feet long and displacing 23,400 metric (long) tons. Armed with a main battery of 10 X 13.5 inch guns in 5…
A Brief History On April 26, 1859, Daniel Sickles, Congressman, Army general, and diplomat, became the first person to successfully use the “temporary insanity” defense to beat a murder rap. Digging Deeper While serving as a U.S. Representative from the state of New York, Sickles shot Phillip Barton Key II, District Attorney for Washington, D.C., who also happened to be the son of Francis Scott Key, the author of the lyrics in the American National Anthem. Sickles killed the man for having an affair with his wife. This provocation was considered sufficient by the jury to justify not punishing Sickles for his crime of passion, which of course…