A Brief History On April 7, 1827, John Walker of Stockton-on-Tees, England (Dunham County), first sold the item he had invented the year before, the now taken for granted friction match.  Today, with smoking on the decline, and the need for starting fires greatly diminished by modern technology, it is hard to remember just how important the invention of the friction match was.  Just try lighting a stogie with flint and steel! Digging Deeper Walker was original apprenticed to a surgeon, but quickly realized he was not of the proper mind set for surgery, so he switched his studies to…

A Brief History On April 6, 2018, a bus carrying a junior hockey team, the Humboldt Broncos of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, crashed into a semi-tractor trailer near Armley, Saskatchewan, leaving 10 members of the team dead and also killing an additional 6 persons.  Another 13 people were injured, but the driver of the semi survived.  In spite of the horrific cost in lives, this particular tragedy was not among the absolute worst in the history of Canada.  Today we remember some of those terrible traffic accidents that rank among the worst in Canadian history.  Among the worst Canadian…

A Brief History On May 30, 727 or 728, we mourn the passing of one of the great characters in history, one of our favorite Saints, Saint Hubert, also known as Hubertus, the first bishop of Liège in what is now Belgium. While a number of Merovingian Kings and Queens actually became saints, such as Balthild, Clotilde and Dagobert II, some of the subjects of the Merovingian dynasty also became saints as well and arguably the most famous of such people is St. Hubert, the patron Saint of Hunting and so much more.  In fact, the true greatness of St.…

A Brief History On April 4, 1859, the familiar Southern anthem, “Dixie,” alternatively known as “Dixie Land,” “Dixie’s Land,” and “I Wish I Was in Dixie,” made its public debut performed by the blackface troupe Bryant’s Minstrels as the closing number of their show.  Not only was the song first publicly performed in New York, a decidedly NOT city in Dixie, it was written by a guy from Ohio, another place North of the Mason-Dixon Line. Digging Deeper The Mason-Dixon Line, the line symbolically separating the Northern from the Southern United States, dates back to a surveying job performed by…

A Brief History On April 3, 1981, the Osborne Computer Corporation unveiled its latest creation, the Osborne 1, the first portable computer to be commercially viable.  The grand daddy of all the laptops, tablets, pads and smartphones we have today started with this 24.5 pound chunk of electronics.  Despite the pioneering nature of the company, Osborne went out of business only 4 years later. Digging Deeper Costing a whopping $1795 (or equivalent to over $5000 today), the Osborne 1 had to be plugged in to a wall socket for power as it had no internal battery.  Although you could not…