A Brief History On February 11, 2001, the “Anna Kournikova Virus” was set loose by a Dutch computer troll, infecting the email of millions of users with a joke image of the eponymous tennis player along with a not so funny virus infecting their computers. Digging Deeper Anna, of course, had nothing to do with the computer plague that bears her name, and today we look at a few other unfortunately named items. Firstly, any disease or bad medical condition. Examples would be Parkinson’s, Graves’, Alzheimer’s, Hodgkin’s, Crohn’s, or Down Syndrome. Sadism and Masochism are also both named after people!…
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A Brief History On February 10, 2013, yet another tragic disaster related to a religious event took place when 42 faithful Hindus were killed and another 45 injured at the train station taking people to the 2013 Prayag Kumbh Mela Festival in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. Digging Deeper Accounts of the cause of the deadly stampede vary, with one version saying the stampede started when a rail broke on a footbridge, and others claiming the police precipitated the event by using batons to control the unruly crowd of faithful people. Apparently, the Kumbh Mela Festival is no stranger to deadly…
A Brief History On February 9, 1964, Beatlemania hit the US when the Fab Four made their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, snagging 73 million American viewers. The Ed Sullivan Show, at a time when most Americans had a choice of only three channels, was the big time for performers, a rite of passage. Digging Deeper The Ed Sullivan Show ran from 1948 to 1971 for over 1,000 episodes, making it one of the building blocks of TV history. Some of the other iconic appearances on the “shew…” included: Elvis Presley in 1956, although Ed had vowed to never…
A Brief History On February 8, 1960, Queen Elizabeth II of the UK proclaimed that henceforth the House of Windsor and the surname Mountbatten-Windsor would apply to all her descendants. Digging Deeper The convoluted family ties in European royal houses are due to monarchs over the centuries coming from countries other than the country reigned over. Back in 1701, Sophia of Hanover, a German, became the heiress presumptive of the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, and her son became King George I, the first of the Hanoverian monarchs of Britain. In 1901, the Germanic House of Hanover was superseded…
A Brief History On February 7, 2014, scientists in England verified that footprints found in an uncovered sediment layer in Happisburgh, Norfolk were of human, or “hominid” origin and dated back about 900,000 years. The footprints, called “The Happisburgh footprints” thus became the oldest known human footprints ever found outside of Africa. Digging Deeper The prints were found under an ancient forest bed the previous year and were meticulously photographed and documented before a rising tide covered and destroyed the impressions. Prior to this epic discovery, the previously known oldest hominid footprints found outside of Africa were found in Italy,…