A Brief History On August 19, 1991, leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under arrest while on vacation in Foros, Ukraine. This first step in the action called “The August Coup” was the first step that resulted in the dissolution of the largest country in the world. Digging Deeper The USSR was formed in 1922 from the Russian Empire that disintegrated during World War I and included much of the old empire plus new territory to create a giant communist country consisting of a federation of 15 national republics. The Western democracies had an uneasy relationship with the…
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A Brief History On August 15, 2015, North Korea changed its time to a self-appointed “Pyongyang Time,” moving clocks backward a half hour to flout international time, known as UTC. Digging Deeper Playing with time is not the only odd choice by North Korea, called “The Hermit Kingdom” for keeping its population out of contact with the rest of the world, in order to control information and thought. Since its establishment in 1948, North Korea has been a dictatorship by a single family, first by Kim Il Sung, then his son, Kim Jong Il, and currently the next son in…
A Brief History On August 13, 1961, the Soviet occupiers of East Berlin tired of unhappy citizens of the communist “workers’ paradise” defecting to the West via West Berlin and erected a barbed wire fence that would become infamous as “The Berlin Wall.” Digging Deeper The Soviets and East Germans cordoned off West Berlin and began erecting a concrete wall complete with guard towers and barbed wire to prevent their citizens from fleeing to the West. The Berlin Wall stood as an icon of the Cold War between the Democratic Western countries and the Communist bloc, and in a way…
A Brief History On August 10, 1961, the US began Operation Ranch Hand, a ten year program of using chemical herbicides against the flora of Vietnam and surrounding countries to both deprive the Viet Cong of food crops and of foliage for cover. Digging Deeper Chemical weapons are banned by international treaty, including the 1925 Geneva Protocol and The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. Not only are deadly chemicals prohibited, but irritants such as “tear gas” are also banned for use in war. Herbicides escaped mention in previous prohibitions against deadly chemicals used in war, but in 1978 the Environmental…
A Brief History On August 7, 1978, President Jimmy Carter recognized the toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently into a residential area canal as a federal emergency. Digging Deeper The Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York had been planned in 1890, but only reached a portion of its planned size. The eponymous canal in the neighborhood was used for industrial dumping of various chemical by-products by the Hooker Chemical Company as well as municipal waste products. By the 1950s, people took notice of the health problems experienced by people in the neighborhood, finally drawing the attention…