Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On August 26, 1444, the Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs was fought between an army of mercenaries representing France against a much smaller force of pikemen from the Old Swiss Confederacy.  The battle was part of the Old Zürich War, fought between 1440 and 1446. Digging Deeper The Old Zurich War was one of the many wars fought in Europe regarding the rights to succession when a ruling member of the nobility died, in this case Count Friedrich VII of Toggenburg, who died in 1436.  The Toggenburg lands, which include Zurich, were contested along with…

A Brief History On August 24, 1950, Edith Spurlock Sampson, an attorney of African American heritage, became the first African American of either gender to become a United States delegate to the United Nations.  At this point in American History, the lot of Black Americans had definitely improved since the pre-World War II era, but still retained a daunting level of discrimination against African Americans in many different ways, making the appointment of Sampson to the American United Nations delegation a major milestone in African American History.  (See our other many articles about African American achievement.) Digging Deeper Edith had…

A Brief History On August 17, 2017, the great Catalonian city of Barcelona, Spain was the scene of a mass murder perpetrated by Islamic extremist terrorists, and firearms were not the primary weapon that killed 16 innocent victims.  The primary weapon used in the terror attacks was the motor vehicle as driven into pedestrians, a deadly weapon in the wrong hands. Digging Deeper This outrage was committed by a terrorist group of 8 Islamic extremists and conducted in Barcelona, a major city of 1.6 million people, with a metropolitan area population of over 5 million.  (Note: The author has been…

A Brief History On August 14, 1480, during the protracted Battle of Otranto in Southern Italy, a siege of the city between the Ottoman Turks and the Italian defenders of their homeland, the Ottomans, who of course were of the Islamic faith, took 800 Christian Italians hostage and gave them a choice, convert to Islam or be executed.  The Italian Christians chose not to renounce their faith, and in turn beheaded by the Ottomans.  Sadly, this terrible incident is but one of many in which one side or the other has attempted to use force upon other people to cause…

A Brief History On August 12, 1676, John Alderman, known as a “Praying Indian” because he was a Native American converted to Christianity, shot and killed Chief Metacomet of the Wampanoag people, thus ending the conflict known as King Phillip’s War. Digging Deeper King Phillip’s War, known also by a bewildering array of other names, including Metacom’s War, The First Indian War, Metacomet’s War, Pometacomet’s Rebellion, and Metacom’s Rebellion, was a conflict that lasted from June 20, 1675 until the death of Metacomet in 1676, although some fighting continued in the Northern areas of British colonies until April of 1678. …