A Brief History On August 14, 1948, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game began Beaver Drop, dropping Beavers by parachute into the central Idaho Chamberlain Basin. Digging Deeper Beavers were trapped live from Northwestern Idaho, the plan being to repopulate an area that once naturally held a Beaver population depleted by fur trapping.  Also, Idaho residents in the Northwestern region had been complaining about Beavers wrecking their property and cropland. Merely reducing the population of Beavers in Northwest Idaho was dismissed as environmentally unsound, as well as the tremendous value of the Beavers in other Idaho habitats.  In all,…

A Brief History On August 13, 1889, the coin operated pay phone was patented by William Gray of Connecticut. “It’s your dime” was a common phrase meaning “you make the call, you paid for it” and our greatest superhero, Superman, needed phone booths to change into his Superman suit. Not anymore! Digging Deeper Pay phones and phone booths used to be part of the American scene, as recently as the 1980s or the 1990s, but cell phones made them obsolete.  Like the Marlboro Man, other bits of Americana largely disappeared, including: Coin operated kids’ rides outside the front of stores. …

A Brief History On August 12, 1990, American fossil collector Sue Hendrickson made the discovery of a lifetime when she found the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossilized skeleton yet found while hunting fossils in South Dakota. Digging Deeper The aptly named T-Rex fossil, Sue, is about 90% complete, and has found a home in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.  Sue is estimated to have been 28 years old at death, and had suffered numerous injuries in her life.  She is estimated to be just over 40 feet long, about 13 feet tall, and weighed between 9 and 15 tons.…

A Brief History On August 11, 2000, Southwest Airlines Flight 1763 from Nevada to Utah experienced one of those horrible moments when the lives of all on board were at stake. Digging Deeper An emotionally upset 19 year old man, possibly fueled by drugs in his system, engaged in an ongoing tirade in the airliner, culminating in his kicking in the cockpit door and attempting to enter the cockpit.  The flight crew pushed the angry young man out of the flight deck and concerned passengers swarmed the out-of-control passenger and subdued him. Unfortunately, the 19-year-old died while other passengers restrained…

A Brief History On August 9, 1854, Henry David Thoreau published his book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, a book about his life with nature and self-reliance, a reflective story of his own philosophy of Transcendentalism. Digging Deeper A leading proponent of Transcendentalism was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who along with Thoreau and other Americans decried the then current state of society in what they saw as senseless conformity and instead urged people to find their own individual way in the universe.  The Transcendentalists also developed an aversion to the institution of slavery. Emerson praised Plato, Moses, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus,…