A Brief History On January 15, 1559, Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey, London, England. In honor of that momentous event, this article presents a list of movies related to the history of England. This list also contains movies and TV series about her relationship with other countries because, as Rudyard Kipling asserts, “what do they know of England who only England know?”.1 Digging Deeper 5th Century King Arthur 12th Century The Lion in Winter Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Robin Hood The Pillars of the Earth (miniseries) 13th Century Ironclad Braveheart 15th Century Henry V (1989 film) Henry…
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A Brief History On January 15, 2001, the online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia went operational, giving Internet users a marvelous resource for casually looking things up. Digging Deeper Owned and operated by the non-profit Wikipedia Foundation, Wikipedia is the largest single reference site on the Internet and is of course the largest online encyclopedia. Created by Jimmy Wales (MA University of Alabama) and Larry Sanger (MA and PhD from The Ohio State University), and at first only offered in an English language version, Wikipedia is now available in 250 languages and has an incredible 40 million articles! With over 18…
A Brief History On January 14, 1950, the MiG-17 Soviet jet fighter made its first flight, a plane that would go on to become the 3rd most produced jet fighter in aviation history. (With 11,060 built, only the MiG-15 and MiG-21 outnumbered it.) Digging Deeper A single engine high subsonic fighter, the MiG-17 was known by its NATO designation Fresco. It was basically an upgraded MiG-15, simple, rugged, reliable, and packing a punch of 2 X 23 mm cannons and 1 X 37 mm cannon, heavier armament than the 6 X .50 caliber machine guns typically found on early US…
A Brief History On January 13, 1942, automobile pioneer and magnate Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company patented the plastic automobile. This innovative car was built mostly of soybean derived plastics around a tubular metal frame, and for good measure ran on ethanol instead of gasoline! Digging Deeper Ford’s futuristic car was not built for production, but later cars would be made of fiberglass and plastic bodies (notably Corvette, Saturn, Lotus and Studebaker Avanti), and today we are seeing increased use of carbon fiber in auto construction. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, but his innovations and aggressive…
A Brief History On January 12, 2006, during the ceremony associated with the final day of the Hajj (annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca), 362 Muslim pilgrims were stampeded to death in a sudden movement of the vast crowd. The Stoning of the Devil takes place in Mina, outside of Mecca. Digging Deeper The annual Hajj gets enormous crowds of Muslims from around the world to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, with as many as 500,000 people crossing one small bridge in only an hour! This sort of crowd density is highly dangerous and even minor crowd movement often results in large…