A Brief History On August 1, 1911, Harriet Quimby of Michigan became the first woman in the United States to be awarded an Aviator’s Certificate by the Aero Club of America (ACA).  She had become interested in aviation and first started flying in 1910 after working as a New York theater critic and screenwriter for 7 Hollywood silent movies, all directed by the famous D.W. Griffith. Digging Deeper Quimby became the first woman in history to fly across the English Channel in 1912, with her great accomplishment overlooked by a public engrossed in the news story of the sinking of…

A Brief History Captain Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan (September 9, 1976 – June 8, 2004) was a Pakistani American Muslim soldier of the United States Army who was killed in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Khan’s parents later appeared at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, where his father, Khizr Khan, spoke of his dead son and controversially rebuked the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump.  Our hearts of course go out to the father of a soldier who died for our country, but there clearly seems to be some kind of double-standard at play in this latest controversy concerning the 2016 U.S.…

A Brief History On July 31, 1948, the battleship USS Nevada BB-36 was sunk by a torpedo from a Navy bomber, ending the career of possibly the most battered ship in history.  Not only did the Nevada survive the Pearl Harbor attack in which she was hit by a torpedo and as many as 10 bombs (minimum 6), but she was also hit by a Japanese Kamikaze suicide plane off Okinawa as well as by shore battery fire, but easily survived those hits.  (Please see our other article about the USS Nevada, “USS Nevada, America’s First Super-Dreadnaught”) Digging Deeper After World…

A Brief History During the recent Republican National Convention supporter of Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, pointed out that Hillary Clinton has as a mentor and admired person, Saul Alinsky, a counter culture radical from the 1960’s.  Clinton wrote about Alinsky in her college Thesis, invited him to speak at Wellesley, and was offered a job working for the rascal.  It seems Alinsky has made references to Lucifer (the devil himself) and preferring to go to Hell instead of Heaven, which in Republican eyes makes Hillary Clinton logically a supporter of Lucifer.  (Note: Barack Obama was also denigrated for ties…

A Brief History On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing the Medicare and Medicaid programs the American people have come to take for granted. Digging Deeper Medicare was and is a program to provide health coverage to people over 65 years old and older, many of which were retired and no longer getting health insurance through their employer.  Medicaid was and is a program to provide health insurance to those people too poor to afford it.  The final bill passed the House of Representatives by a 307 to 116…