A Brief History On March 7, 2021, the military of Equatorial Guinea experienced one of those “oops moments” leading to disaster when a military base near the port city of Bata suffered a series of massive explosions of stored munitions that devastated the city and left over 100 people dead. Digging Deeper Authorities blamed local farmers and their “slash and burn” farming techniques for starting fires that triggered the explosions, although outside organizations claimed such farming fires had not actually been set anywhere near the military camp. President Obiang did admit that the storage of munitions had been “negligent,” and…

A Brief History On March 6, 2018, founder and former boss of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, was named by Forbes as the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $112 billion.  Such wealth makes us wonder, what can you do with all that money? Digging Deeper Currently, the richest individual person is Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, worth $180 billion, while the family of Bernard Arnault of the LVMH commercial conglomerate is worth $211 billion, while the average American household has a net worth of $192,900. So, what can the super-rich buy with their wealth?  A new…

A Brief History On March 5, 1933, Germany’s Reichstag elections were won by Adolf Hitler and his band of “national socialists” with only 43.9% of the vote, enough to allow Hitler, already appointed Chancellor, to become virtual dictator of Germany and lead the world to a path of ruin. Digging Deeper Germany’s Weimar Republic is not the only place where winning the most votes does not guarantee victory, as the US has experienced several Presidential elections where the winner won less than 50% of the vote. In 2016, Donald Trump was out voted by Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes,…

A Brief History On March 4, 2020, Nik Wallenda of the famous acrobat and daredevil family, became the first person to walk on a wire above the crater of the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua.  Not to be outdone, his wife, Erendira, performed an aerial routine above the smoking crater! Digging Deeper The Wallenda family is famous for many of their death-defying firsts, with Nik personally holding 11 Guinness World Records, including being the first to walk across Niagara Falls on a high wire. Other daredevils have achieved epic firsts, including: Annie Edson Taylor, the first to survive going over Niagara…

A Brief History On March 3, 2018, the track and field world lost one of its greatest runners when Roger Bannister died, the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.  Prior to Bannister’s run in 1954, many people doubted that any man could break the “four-minute barrier.”  Obviously, those doubters were wrong! Digging Deeper Bannister was involved in another historic race, this time in the finals of the 1500-meter run at the 1952 Olympics, in which he finished 4th, the incredible part being that all eight runners in that race broke the Olympic record for the 1500!…