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…

A Brief History On January 24, 2003, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began its operations.  This new agency was born from the ashes of the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.  It had been painfully obvious that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and military intelligence agencies had not been effectively communicating with each other and that unless something was done to institutionalize such coordination, the U.S. would be vulnerable to more such attacks. Digging Deeper Given the mission of protecting the United States and its territories from both manmade and natural disasters, as…

This Just In! While cleaning King Tut’s famous mask, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo got a little carried away and accidentally broke off the beard!  These “restoration experts” must not have been too professional because they then used epoxy, a type of adhesive suitable for metal or stone but not for the materials in the mask, to glue it back on.  Now there is a noticeable gap between the beard and the chin comprised of transparent yellow resin!  And that is not all.  Apparently drops of glue fell on the mask and were allowed to dry before being scraped off, leaving…

A Brief History On January 23, 971, troops of the Chinese Song Dynasty managed to defeat the War Elephant Corps of the Southern Han Kingdom by the use of deadly crossbows.  In those days, elephants were the equivalent of today’s tanks and were a fearsome and seemingly unstoppable force on the battlefield.  There was nothing else like warrior pachyderms until tanks were introduced in World War I. Digging Deeper The crossbow, consisting of a horizontal bow crossed by a straight stock held by the bowman, had been invented in China perhaps as early as the 4th century B.C. or even earlier.  The string would be held back…

A Brief History On January 22, 1987, Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer called a news conference to read a statement in front of the gathered journalists and television cameras. Digging Deeper Dwyer had been convicted of accepting bribes in connection with giving a contract to an accounting firm hired to determine what refunds were owed to Pennsylvania government workers who had been overtaxed.  Throughout the entire process, Dwyer adamantly insisted upon his complete innocence and said he was being framed. Scheduled to be sentenced the next day by a judge who was known for stiff sentences and who had gloated over the guilty verdict, after Dwyer…