A Brief History On October 15, 2017, people all across the world celebrate Global Handwashing Day, a day to encourage sanitary hand washing behavior in an effort to cut respiratory (notably pneumonia) and diarrheal diseases.  Getting people to wash their hands as prescribed can save an estimate half million lives of children per year, and of course, reducing the amount of people with diarrhea by 30+% is darn near worth the effort alone! Digging Deeper Global Handwashing Day was started in 2008 by a consortium of producers of soap products and medical associations.  The Public Private Partnership for Handwashing initiated…

A Brief History On October 14, 1938, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk made its first flight, leading to an eventual production run of 13,738 of the rugged fighters.  Although often referred to as “obsolete” at the beginning of World War II, and famously rejected by the British for combat in the Northern European theater, the plane flown by the Flying Tigers with its intimidating shark mouth paint job became one of the main Allied fighters of World War II.  (Previously, on November 6th we featured an article, The Hawker Hurricane: The Most Underrated Fighter Plane of World War II, and on…

A Brief History This article provides an incomplete list of hideouts, bases, and headquarters in comics and animation.  Such locations are a staple of the genre, and they are at times almost as iconic and well-recognized as the characters that own them. Digging Deeper Comics For a more comprehensive list, see List of locations of the DC Universe § Sites. DC Comics Apokolips – Planet ruled by the evil New God Darkseid. Arrowcave – Former base of operations of the Green Arrow and Speedy. It was subsequently abandoned following Green Arrow’s death. When Ollie went back to reclaim sentimental memorabilia, he found Solomon Grundy was living there. Batcave – Batman’s secret base of operations.…

A Brief History On October 13, 2013 (too many “13’s” in that date?), 115 Indians were killed and another 110 injured during the Hindu festival of Navratri at the Ratangahr Mata Temple in India when a stampede occurred on a bridge.  Today, we list 10 such unhappy times when a religious activity or celebration went terribly wrong.  (BTW, Today, October 13, 2017, is Friday the 13th!) Digging Deeper 1. Navratri Festival, 2013. A common Indian Hindu festival held each Autumn for 10 days and 9 nights, the method and reason for celebrating varies from region to region.  Dancing, recitals, plays, rituals…

A Brief History On October 12, 2017, the United States has only one more day to wait for the release of Jackie Chan’s latest and perhaps greatest film, The Foreigner.  A collaboration of Chinese and Western movie makers, this film is not a comedy, but a taut, spellbinding thriller with plenty of action. Digging Deeper Think of the movie along the lines of Taken, The Devil’s Own, Law Abiding Citizen, and The Limey.  Like the above films, The Foreigner is about a simple Chinese restaurant owner, a sort of everyman, that seeks justice in an unjust world.  In the title…