A Brief History On December 11, 1941, dictators Adolf Hitler of Germany and Benito Mussolini of Italy made an enormous blunder, perhaps one that cost them the World War II, when they declared war on the United States. Digging Deeper (Summary  and translation of the above video: Hitler speaks to the Reichstag and, in the presence of the Italian and Japanese ambassadors, declares war on the U.S., calling American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) a war agitator and a hypocrite.) The declaration came just 3 days after the U.S. had declared war on Japan the day after having been attacked at Pearl Harbor. (Of…

A Brief History On December 10, 2013, Mary Barra became the first woman appointed head of an automobile company when she became CEO of General Motors Corporation.  GM is a giant company with a convoluted bureaucracy that has taken it from being the biggest, most important company in the world to being a blundering corporate joke that needed a government bailout to survive. Digging Deeper From 1931 to 2007, GM led the world in auto sales.  In the meantime, Toyota of Japan has dethroned GM as the biggest producer of motor vehicles.  GM is still right near the top though, but its market…

A Brief History On December 9, 1979, history was made when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the smallpox virus in nature had been made extinct.  Only samples in labs for scientific purposes remained. Digging Deeper Smallpox is the first and so far only (major) human disease to be totally eradicated by the efforts of human science and medicine.   A terrible disease, smallpox may have first shown up in humans anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 years ago and regularly killed millions of people each year.  Many historical figures died of the disease, and the mummy of the Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt even…

A Brief History On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed on the streets of New York City by a crazed fan.  Lennon, a former Beatle, was also a well-known advocate for world peace and had been vocal about his anti-war stance.  Many musicians, be they rock n’ roll musicians or even folk singers, use their music as a means of protest and to communicate their feelings about hot and controversial topics such as politics, war, racism, sexism, etc.  Here 10 protest songs are listed.  These were not all necessarily big hits or particularly effective, but they were all spectacular on…

A Brief History On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy conducted a devastating surprise attack on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base and the Hickam Field Airbase on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.  Digging Deeper American Naval and Army forces were caught by surprise that fateful sunny Sunday morning and paid a terrible price for their lack of vigilance.  All the American battleships were either sunk or disabled.  Of the 390 American warplanes, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged.  Over 2,400 Americans died.  The Japanese were met with some token anti-aircraft fire and air-to-air interception, but the results were scant.  One…