A Brief History
Is December 26th the Most Wacked Date in History? So many disasters occurred we can not even include them all!
Digging Deeper
Digging deeper, we find our cracked odyssey starting in 1846 in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where the Donner Party, close to death from starvation and freezing, resorts to cannibalism to survive! At least they apparently waited for their food to die on its own and did not murder each other.
In 1862, the U.S. conducted its largest mass hanging ever, when 38 Native Americans are hanged from a single scaffold! Incredibly, it could have been worse! Initially 303 Native Americans (Sioux) were convicted of murder in “trials” that frequently lasted only 5 minutes, and without defense lawyers. President Lincoln himself gave clemency to 265 other “defendants.”
Science scored a milestone in 1898 when Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium, a radioactive substance. Less than 50 years later mankind would be dropping nuclear bombs and living under a threat of annihilation.
In 1900, 3 lighthouse keepers in the Flannan Isles of Scotland disappeared without a trace and to this day nobody has proven what happened.
In 1919, the greatest baseball player of all time, “Babe” Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees by the Boston Red Sox, the worst (or best?) deal in sports history.
“Beatlemania” became international when “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were loosed on American teens in 1963, the “British Invasion” had begun! Parents and old people saw it as the disintegration of society. (Right or Wrong?)
The first celebration of Kwanzaa by African Americans took place in 1966, and although it is not a disaster, it is not everyday a holiday is invented!
The Viet Nam War in 1972 saw the U.S.A.F. Strategic Air Command mount its largest bombing raid ever by sending 120 giant B-52’s to bomb Hanoi, North Viet Nam.
The second most powerful country in history dissolved in 1991 when the Supreme Soviet officially disbanded the U.S.S.R. Like every empire before it, forever is a fantasy.
Penultimately, in 2004 a giant 9.3 magnitude earthquake created a tsunami in the Indo-Pacific region that killed a whopping quarter million people in Indonesia, India and other coastal areas.
Finally, former President Gerald Ford of the United States of America passed away in 2006 of arteriosclerotic cerebrovascular disease and diffuse arteriosclerosis. What makes his death particularly notable is that given his age at the time of his death(93 years and 165 days), Ford achieved the record for the longest-lived U.S. President.
With this many significant cracked events in history we could not limit ourselves to one event. Pick your favorites and read up!
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What is the most interesting event that occurred on December 26th?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Brady, General Patrick Henry and Meghan Brady Smith. Dead Men Flying: Victory in Viet Nam The Legend of Dust off: America’s Battlefield Angels. WND Books, 2012.
Cannon, James and Scott Cannon. Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life. University of Michigan Press, 2013.
Holub, Joan, Who HQ, et al. Who Was Babe Ruth? Penguin Workshop, 2012.
Houghton, Eliza Poor Donner. The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate. 2012.
Karan, Pradyumna P. and Shanmugam P. Subbiah. The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster. University Press of Kentucky, 2010.
Katz, Karen. My First Kwanzaa (My First Holiday). Square Fish, 2014.
Millard, André. Beatlemania: Technology, Business, and Teen Culture in Cold War America (Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Technology). Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.
Redniss, Lauren. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. Dey Street Books, 2015.
Satter, David. Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union. Knopf, 1996.
