A Brief History On June 14, 2017, in Alexandria, Virginia, a man belonging to a Facebook group called “Terminate the Republican Party” opened fire on several Republican members of Congress and their staffers, who were practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, scheduled for the next day.  Amidst this appalling act of violence, several heroes acted to prevent a bad situation from being potentially far worse.  This article honors those heroes! Digging Deeper The practice game had been underway for about half an hour when the assailant, identified as former Bernie Sanders-campaigner James Thomas Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois,…

A Brief History On June 16, 2010, Bhutan, a landlocked country in Asia and the smallest state located entirely within the Himalaya mountain range, became the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco. Digging Deeper Long before the enactment of the Tobacco Control Act of 2010, Bhutan’s government struggled against tobacco use.  In 1916, the first King of Bhutan Ugyen Wangchuck (r. 1907–1926) promulgated a ban on the “most filthy and noxious herb, called tobacco.” Just shy of a century later, 2010’s The Tobacco Control Act of Bhutan regulates tobacco and tobacco products, banning the cultivation, harvesting, production,…

A Brief History Today, June 15, 2017, we raise a mug and wish all of our British readers a happy Beer Day Britain, Britain’s National Beer Day. Digging Deeper The date of this relatively new holiday has been celebrated annually on 15 June since only 2015.  The founders of the holiday chose the date because 15 June is also the date that the Magna Carta, one of Britain’s most important legal documents in the island’s entire history, was sealed in 1215.  If you are wondering what the heck does the Magna Carta, a peace treaty between an unpopular king and his…

A Brief History On June 14, 1986, The Mindbender, the world’s largest indoor triple-loop roller coaster, derailed and killed three riders at Galaxyland inside West Edmonton Mall, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Digging Deeper The accident occurred just a few months after the ride’s opening on March 16, 1986.  On a Saturday evening in June of that same year, the roller coaster’s yellow train (train No. 1) completed the ride’s second inverted loop before encountering one of three areas of uplift before the third and final loop.  Unfortunately, missing bolts on the left inside wheel assembly of the last car of the…

A Brief History On March 15, 2016, EA Sports UFC 2 was released in North America.  Below is the complete roster for the hit video game EA Sports UFC 2 as the roster originally appeared on Wikipedia prior to its removal by electronic book burners.  It is reproduced here per the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. Digging Deeper Heavyweight Fabricio Werdum Cain Velasquez Junior dos Santos Stipe Miocic Mike Tyson[LHW] DLC Bas Rutten[LHW] DLC Alistair Overeem Andrei Arlovski Travis Browne Ben Rothwell Josh Barnett Mark Hunt Roy Nelson Mirko Cro Cop Mark Coleman Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira Antonio Silva Derrick Lewis Frank Mir Stefan Struve…