A Brief History On September 28, 551 BC, Chinese philosopher Confucius was born, a life started that would have a major influence on billions of people for centuries to come.  Considered by some (Daoists or Taoists) to be a deity, Confucius was a teacher, editor, and politician as well as a philosopher. Digging Deeper First off, the Confucius is a Latinized/Anglicized version of his Chinese name, Kong Fuzi.  He was born near what is now Qufu, China, and his father died while Kong was still a child.  Kong’s mother also died fairly young, and Kong was married at the age…

A Brief History On September 27, 2001, the chilling reality that a mass shooting could happen anywhere, at any time, became apparent when a deranged Swiss citizen walked into the Zug Canton Parliament building and started shooting Swiss legislators.  By the time the massacre was over, 15 were dead (including the gunman) and 18 were injured. Digging Deeper Switzerland is a relatively peaceful country that has been neutral on the world stage since the Reformation, jealously guarding their neutrality and independence by armed vigilance.  The last major conflicts in Switzerland were the invasion by Napoleon’s French Army and the Civil War…

A Brief History On September 26, 2017, we look back on the past week and marvel at just how much a jerk a human being can be.  Today, we will briefly discuss a few of those people.  Who would you nominate? Digging Deeper The biggest jerk of the week is Emanuel Kidega Samson, a 25 year old body builder from the Sudan, who went to his former church, Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tennessee and shot the place up, killing one person and injuring another seven people.  A brave usher, Robert Engle age 22, confronted the gunman and…

A Brief History On September 25, 1911, the French battleship, Liberté, joined the long, sad list of ships that managed to sink themselves without the benefit of an enemy to blame when she blew up while moored at Toulon harbor in the South of France. Digging Deeper Liberté was a pre-Dreadnaught type battleship, built in 1902 to 1908, already obsolete at her 1908 commissioning because of the revolutionary appearance of the British battleship HMS Dreadnaught in 1906.  Still, the Liberté  was an impressive ship with a displacement of nearly 15,000 tons and a length of 439 feet.  Capable of 19…

A Brief History On September 24, 2017, numerous NFL football players took a knee rather than stand for the playing of the National Anthem at this week’s football games.  A practice started last year by quarterback (now unemployed) Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49’rs that spread intermittently throughout the league, had largely died down, with players expressing their displeasure with the state of affairs in the United States by the less threatening action of joining arm in arm while the National Anthem is played and or sung before games. Digging Deeper Today, not only did 21 Cleveland Browns players…