A Brief History On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX issued his Apostolic constitution, Ineffabilis Deus, in which he established Catholic doctrine that the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, had been conceived without the ‘original sin’ that every other human is born with. This bit of dogma is not to be confused with the Doctrine of Incarnation, which is the Virgin Birth of Jesus. December 8th is thus celebrated each year as The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic “holy day of obligation,” and even a national holiday in some predominantly Catholic countries. Digging Deeper Mary, daughter of St.…
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A Brief History On December 7, 2005, former Cleveland Browns head coach Bud Carson, a lifetime heavy smoker, died of emphysema at the age of 75. In 1989, Carson had led the Browns, once the NFL’s premier franchise and today perhaps the worst team of all time, to the AFC Conference Championship Game, the third time in a 4 year period that the Browns would be one win from making it to the Super Bowl for the first time in their history. Digging Deeper The Browns started life in 1946 as a team in the All-America Football Conference, a rival…
A Brief History On December 6, 1969, the Rolling Stones used the motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels, as security for a concert. Doing so was a dumb decision, as chronicled in our previous article on December 6th What Were We Thinking? Dumb Decisions… and we have highlighted other bad choices in our articles of September 8th 10 Infamous Pardons, and April 23rd 10 Business Blunders. Today we list 10 more of those choices people have made that have proven (with 20/20 hindsight!) to be dumb decisions. (Note: No significance to the order listed.) Digging Deeper 1. Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor/Germany Declares…
A Brief History On December 5, 63 BC, Roman politician and famed orator Cicero delivered the 4th of his famous Catiline Orations to the Roman Senate, warning of a plot to overthrow the Roman government. Cicero is usually considered one of Rome’s greatest orators, and also one of the best speakers in History. Today we list 10 of those people that delivered inspirational messages via the spoken medium, whether we agree with their messages or not, and some of these people we admit we do not even like. (Note: There is no significance to the order listed.) Digging Deeper 1. Cicero,…
A Brief History On December 4, 1956, Sun Records Studio in Memphis, Tennessee was the location of an impromptu jam session by four of the rising stars of the Rock and Roll Era. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis got together and made music in an unplanned moment of musical serendipity, bringing together for the one and only time these future legends. Lucky for us, the recordings still exist! Digging Deeper At the time of the jam session, Elvis had already hit the big time and had moved from Sun Records to RCA, and had just…