A Brief History On at least four separate occasions electronic book burners known as “deletionists” tried to rid Wikipedia of its coverage of the internet phenomenon known as “creepypastas”.  Deletionists are a group of bullies who focus their efforts on trying to remove anything and everything they merely do not like from Wikipedia.  They typically, out of ignorance, refer to articles concerning topics they are unfamiliar with as “not notable”. Digging Deeper: A Timeline 26 March 2008: Allen3 nominated the article titled “Creepypasta” for deletion from Wikipedia.  After a brief discussion in which only five random user accounts voted to delete the article,…

A Brief History The Rake is a fictional cryptid resembling a humanoid creature that infrequently stalks people, sometimes appearing at the foot of the victim’s bed, and has been alleged to mutilate and abduct children.  According to Paul Tamburro, The Rake originated as a creepypasta created by an anonymous poster on 4chan’s/b/ imageboard in late 2005.  The creature is depicted as a crouching humanoid that is around 6 feet tall, with pale, grey-colored skin.  Its eyes are slightly larger than a human’s eyes, and they glow, which is the sign of a tissue in its eyes known as ”tapetum lucidum”.…

A Brief History On October 16, 1991, 35 year old loser George Hennard crashed his truck into the front of a Luby’s Cafeteria in Kileen, Texas, hopped out of the pick-up, and began shooting, eventually killing 24 people (including himself) and wounding another 27. Up to this point, the Luby’s Cafeteria shooting was the deadliest non-school shooting in US history. (Note: This tragedy was greatly eclipsed by the horrific mass shooting at Las Vegas, Nevada on October 1, 2017, in which a single gunman shot and killed 58 people, with another 413 reporting wounds or injuries.) Digging Deeper Although this…

A Brief History On May 13, 1862, a black African-American slave, Robert Smalls, serving as a ship’s pilot on the CSS Planter, a Confederate armed steamship, managed to steal the ship and turn it over to US Navy forces outside Charleston, South Carolina.  It seems the 3 white officers had decided to take shore leave overnight, leaving Smalls and several other slaves on the ship. Digging Deeper Smalls masterminded the escape of the ship with himself in disguise wearing the Captain’s uniform and straw hat.  Not only did Smalls successfully present the ship to the Union Navy, but he also…

A Brief History On June 24, 1779, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War began at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea at the British Fortress of Gibraltar.  Spanish and French forces greatly outnumbered the British forces, in men, guns, and ships, and yet after almost 4 years of siege the British had held firm and Gibraltar is known as a metaphor for an impenetrable fortress.  Spain and France had attempted to take advantage of British preoccupation with its war in America to gang up on their old foe, and had gone to war in a back handed support…