A Brief History In having his marriage Anne of Cleves annulled and immediately marrying Catherine Howard, Henry VIII committed his biggest marital blunder following his divorce from Catherine of Aragon.  By leaving Anne of Cleves, he left perhaps his most suitable wife after Catherine for the least suitable one of them all! Digging Deeper Nowadays Catherine Howard would be considered little more than a school girl, but she did not even have that going for her as reading and writing provided her great difficulty, her education having been sorely neglected.  In fact, despite being the granddaughter of a duke, not only was so little attention…

A Brief History On January 27, 1939, one of the great American fighter planes of World War II, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, made its first flight.  Appropriately named, the Lightning was the fastest fighter in the world at that time, being the first to exceed 400 mph in level flight. Digging Deeper The Lightning was designed by the master aircraft architect Clarence Kelly Johnson who also designed the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady and the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Conceived as a high-speed, high-altitude (44,000 feet!) interceptor, at its introduction, the twin-engine Lightning…

A Brief History To our North American readers, please be safe this week as we our currently being slammed by an historic winter storm. Digging Deeper In Ashland, Ohio, where I live, I woke to about half a foot of snow on my driveway and spent an hour or so working the snow blower as my father drove the tractor with the snow plow blade on trying to clear our country driveway.  My morning class at Kent State University at Stark was also cancelled.  In fact, some 165 closings and delays occurred in Northeast Ohio alone this morning due to Winter Storm Juno, part…

A Brief History One week ago, on January 19, 2015, we featured 10 sets of famous siblings who had achieved greatness.  Today, we list 10 more sets of famous siblings with whom you may or may not be familiar, but who at one point in time had been prominent. This time we are including fictional siblings as well as real relatives.   Digging Deeper 10. The Thompson Twins (fictional). Not really twins or even siblings, this rock group, who played from 1977 to 1993, hit the charts with “Hold Me Now” and “Doctor Doctor” among other hits.  Honorable mention to Twisted Sister, a…

A Brief History One year ago today, on January 25, 2014, an unknown thief or thieves stole a reliquary from an Italian mountainside chapel containing a piece of the bloodied robe Pope John Paul II had been wearing when he had gotten shot during the failed 1981 assassination attempt on his life.  Obviously, if a person or persons were true believers in the Catholic faith, they would not steal such a holy relic because whatever magical properties it might have had would certainly be cancelled by the wrath of God, or at least so you would think. Digging Deeper Italian police believed the theft was…