A Brief History On August 23, 1305, William Wallace, a military leader of the Scots against English rule was executed in the English style of execution for traitors, being drawn and quartered! Digging Deeper Far from seeking a humane way to execute people, the English of 1305 were looking for a way for execution to have a chilling and preventative effect on any would-be traitors. In the 1995 movie, Braveheart, Wallace is depicted as courageously defying his executioners and screaming, “Freedom!”  The reality was far worse than depicted in the film.  Wallace was hanged until almost dead.   He was then…

A Brief History On August 22, 1864, the first of 4 treaties governing the conduct of war was signed in Geneva, Switzerland, a pact called “The First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.” Digging Deeper The lengthy title tells you what the pact concerned, and the 12 European countries or kingdoms that signed it agreed to humanitarian treatment of the war wounded. Later, 5 more countries signed, including the United States. The civilized world met 3 more times over the next century, establishing far reaching accords on the conduct of…

A Brief History On August 21, 1897, Ransom Eli Olds founded the car company that bore his name, Oldsmobile.  Oldsmobile was in business for 107 years, making powerful, comfortable and smooth riding cars, but alas they have gone extinct, like many other car companies.  Today we ask you, “What car company do you miss the most?” Digging Deeper We list a few for you to choose from, or name your own nominee: American Motors, Checker, DeLorean, Geo, Mercury, Oldsmobile, Packard, Plymouth, Pontiac, Rambler, Saturn, Studebaker, Triumph Motor Company, and Yugo. Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Which of these…

A Brief History On August 20, 1858, naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, the change of organisms over time through mutation and natural selection, in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Digging Deeper While we generally think of Darwin as the man that came up with the idea of “evolution,” there were other scientists at the time that also came to a similar conclusion, including fellow British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, whose work was published at the same time and in the same publication as Darwin’s. While most serious scientists today accept Darwin’s…

A Brief History On August 19, 1839, the government of France announced that the “Daguerreotype process,” an invention of Louis Daguerre as an early form of photography, would be available for free to the entire world. Digging Deeper The Daguerreotype style of photographic process would soon be superseded by more advanced methods that cost less and produced better photographs, such as the ambrotype, but nonetheless, the gesture of goodwill by Daguerre and his country of France was a boon to civilization, a gesture only sometimes repeated by other inventors. Another example of such inventive largesse was the work of Philo…