A Brief History On November 1, 1911, the first known dropping of a bomb from an airplane in combat took place, ushering in one more way for human beings to kill each other.  This first incident was merely an Italian pilot dropping 2 hand grenades from his rudimentary airplane on a Turkish position in Libya, but soon airplanes made specifically for bombing and dropping bombs specifically made for use by airplanes would darken the skies above battlefields and cities alike. Digging Deeper The first bomber airplane was adapted for bombing not by one of the world’s great powers, but by…

A Brief History On October 31, 1864, the people of the United States got a big  treat in their Halloween basket, the newly minted State of Nevada, the 36th state of the Union, appropriately known as “The Silver State.”  Right in the middle of the bloodiest war in US history, for good measure. Digging Deeper At the time of admission as a state, Nevada only had about 14,000 people.  Only 4 years earlier the number was a paltry 6857 souls.  For such a large area (the 7th largest state by area) Nevada has for most of its existence been quite…

A Brief History On October 30, 1995, the people of the Canadian province of Quebec voted by the narrow margin of 50.58% to 49.42% to remain a Canadian province.  Quebec, the largest province of Canada by size, was the heart of New France until the British won the Seven Years War in 1763, and with it sovereignty over Quebec. Digging Deeper The Quebecois as the people call themselves maintain their French heritage, and the French language is spoken by the majority of people in the province.  A reminder of this French heritage can be found on their automobile license plates,…

A Brief History On October 29, 1918, a disheartened and disgusted German Navy had enough of the slaughter, mismanagement, and bungling of World War I and mutinied when ordered to sail out for one last ‘glorious’ mission that amounted to a suicide mission when the war was already lost. Digging Deeper The German High Seas Fleet had basically been bottled up in port after the enormous naval Battle of Jutland, in which an outnumbered Imperial German fleet acquitted itself quite well.  Despite many pleas by the Navy for other chances to contribute to the war effort, German leadership kept them…

A Brief History On October 28, 1948, Swiss chemist Paul Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for his work in 1939 demonstrating the effectiveness of DDT as an insecticide. Digging Deeper As you can tell by the date of the research, World War II interfered with normal international scientific intercourse, resulting in the delay in recognition for Muller.  The DDT itself did not wait for the end of the war to make itself useful, and was put to widespread use, mainly by the United States, to greatly reduce the incidence of insect borne diseases in war…