A Brief History On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew, former Governor of Maryland and current Vice President of the United States, resigned his office following criminal charges.  Agnew’s crimes and subsequent resignation constituted one of the worst political scandals in U.S. history, as he was only the second U.S. vice president to resign and the only one to resign because of crimes.  Just like other people, politicians sometimes do the wrong thing, however when they do, and it becomes public knowledge, a scandal often ensues.  Here 9 such scandals are listed.  For similar stories, please also read the History and Headlines articles: “10 U.S. Politicians Who…

A Brief History On October 9, 2012, Malala Yousafzai boarded her school bus in northwest Pakistan.  A gunman asked for Malala by name, then pointed a Colt 45 at her and fired three shots.  One bullet hit the left side of Malala’s forehead, traveled under her skin the length of her face and then penetrated her shoulder.  In the days immediately following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in England for intensive rehabilitation.  She went on to win Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for 2013. Digging…

A Brief History On October 9, 1992, an unidentified flying object (UFO) crashed in a driveway in Peekskill, New York, crushing the trunk of the 1980 Chevy Malibu that was parked there. Digging Deeper The UFO did not remain unidentified for long;  it turned out to be a 26-pound meteorite that had fallen in the area, an event caught on video by at least 16 people and witnessed by thousands more in several US states as a “huge, greenish fireball.”  Since it was a Friday night, plenty of camcorders were already filming high school football games when the meteorite passed. It was a foot in diameter…

A Brief History On October 8, 2014, the latest iteration of American Horror Story debuts with series regular Jessica Lange portraying a character based on a real-life actress of early twentieth-century cinema! Digging Deeper According to E Online and Entertainment Weekly, the persona of Lange’s character was molded after Marlene Dietrich who ranked fourth on History and Headlines’s list of German-speaking actresses of the early years.  American Horror Story: Freak Show (AHS: FS) is set in Florida in the early 1950s, around the time when Dietrich starred in such American and British films as Stage Fright (1950), No Highway in the Sky (1951) and Rancho Notorious (1952). Other aspects of the show also drew inspiration from reality.  First,…

A Brief History On October 8, 1806, British forces fighting the French at Boulogne employed Congreve rockets, the same type of rockets mentioned in the National Anthem of the United States (“…and the rockets red glare…”). Here 9 people or things named “Rocket” are listed.   Digging Deeper 9. Congreve Rockets. These weapons of war were actually developed to replicate the Mysorean rockets which had been used in India against the British in the late 18th century.  The Mysorean Rockets were the first iron-cased rockets to have been successfully utilized in combat.  The British rocket program began in 1801, and the Congreve rocket was the…