A Brief History On November 19, 1911, the infamous “Doom Bar” located at the mouth of the River Camel in Cornwall, England where it empties into the Celtic Sea claimed another pair of ships, sinking both. The Island Maid and Angele both had run aground on the permanent sandbar, formerly known as the less poetic “Dunbar sands,” killing everyone aboard the Angele except, oddly enough, the captain. As can be expected by the demonstrative name, the Doom Bar is infamous for causing the sinking or grounding of many ships over the years. The River Camel estuary serves as access to…
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A Brief History On November 18, 2018, just after the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I, we look back over the past almost 62 years to take a look at things we find commonplace today that did not exist when I was born (January 1957). We also look at things that were common then or in the past that no longer exist. As you can guess from the title of this article, we have examined these items, new and passé, a few times before. (See “Things That Did Not Exist (Or Were Different) on July 1,…
A Brief History On November 17, 1858, Denver, Colorado, the town that bills itself as “The Mile High City” because of its elevation of 5280 feet above sea level, exactly one US mile, was founded. Denver became the capital of the State of Colorado when Colorado was admitted to the Union as the 38th State in 1876, and today the Denver metropolitan area has fully one half of all of Colorado’s population. A “Big League City” today, Denver boasts the Major League (National League) Rockies of baseball, the Broncos of the National Football League, the Nuggets of the National Basketball…
A Brief History On November 16, 1938, the psychedelic drug LSD was fist synthesized in Basel, Switzerland by scientist Albert Hofmann, a genius not to be confused with 1960’s American radical Abbie Hoffman. Hofmann was so smart he was declared the Greatest Living Genius by the Daily Telegraph Newspaper (tied for 1st place on the list of 100 geniuses with Tim Berners-Lee). Unfortunately, Hofmann’s invention of the manner to synthesize LSD gave the world a powerful drug with no particular good use, but plenty of potential for misuse. Sometimes things turn out that way, and today we examine 5 geniuses…
A Brief History On November 15, 2018, we bring to you good news and bad news about screening the latest Harry Potter universe major film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. The good news is the $200 million spent on producing the film was money well invested as the movie is first class in every way. Plus, fans of the Harry Potter magic universe will find a logical progression and development of characters and story line, undoubtedly enjoying every minute of this latest installment of the franchise. The bad news, if you could call it that, is people not familiar…