Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On April 18, 1518, Bona Sforza d’Aragona, Duchess of Bari and Rossano, became Queen consort of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania when she became the second wife of Sigismund the Old, the reigning King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Digging Deeper In the way of convoluted European monarchies, history is replete with international marriages that put foreigners on the throne of any given country, and sometimes lack of a suitable heir to a throne caused a search for foreign candidates to rule. Not only do we see the English throne occupied by Danes, Normans,…

A Brief History On April 17, 1912, Russian Imperial soldiers fired on a crowd of protesting goldfield workers in Siberia that were upset about the arrest of their strike committee.  Perhaps 270 striking workers were killed and a similar number wounded.  Such brutal treatment ultimately led to the Russian Revolution and the formation of the USSR, a self-described “workers’ paradise.” Digging Deeper Soviet authorities, especially the Cheka secret police, killed protesting and striking workers on a grand scale, both by gunning down workers and by executing arrested workers.  Killings of disgruntled workers and soldiers included drowning as well as shooting!…

A Brief History On April 7, 1141, the daughter of King Henry I of England, Matilda, became the first female to rule England when she had already been known as “Empress Matilda.”  Why the title “Empress?”  Because she was the “Holy Roman Empress, Queen consort of the Romans.” Digging Deeper Born in England around 1102, she was sent to Germany to become the child bride of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V.  Widowed at the age of 23, her father married her to Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, known as “The Handsome.” The “Game of Thrones” that was the English monarchy…

A Brief History On April 4, 2023, Finland became the 31st member of the NATO alliance, a pact originally meant to counter the threat from the USSR, consisting of 12 European and North American nations. NATO continued to grow after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, and several more nations are awaiting acceptance into the alliance, including Ukraine, with more nations considering applying for membership. Digging Deeper Back when the Cold War was still a thing, the communist bloc countered NATO with the Warsaw Pact, an alliance of the USSR and seven other communist states.  The Warsaw Pact dissolved…

A Brief History On April 2, 2021, a 25 year old African American “Black Nationalist,” Noah Green, murdered a US Capitol police officer and injured another when Green drove his car into the officer and a vehicle barricade at the US Capitol. Digging Deeper Green then attacked the police with a knife before being fatally shot by the police. This murderer’s aggression toward law enforcement officers was and is in no way unusual, as the police face such violence every day.  In fact, there are many more ways police face danger than from violent attackers. In 2023, 123 US police…