A Brief History On December 2, 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte shocked the world as he crowned himself Emperor of the French by taking the crown from the Pope and plopping it on his own head.  48 years later on this same date, his nephew and namesake, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, was also crowned Emperor and given the title Napoleon III. Digging Deeper Over 9,500 people in the U.S. have Napoleon for a first name, a name that means “from Naples,” as in Naples, Italy.  More has been written about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other person in history after Jesus Christ. Just as Napoleon I’s attempts to…

A Brief History December 2nd is a key date in French history.  On this day in 1804, at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of the French, the first French Emperor in about a thousand years.  The next year, on December 2, 1805, French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte defeated a joint Russo-Austrian force at the Battle of Austerlitz during the Napoleonic Wars.  Less than fifty years later, on December 2, 1851, French President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte overthrew the Second Republic.  Then, on December 2, 1852, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became Emperor of the French as Napoleon III.  The article…

A Brief History On December 1, 1960, Paul McCartney and Pete Best of The Beatles were arrested in Hamburg, Germany for the arson of the grubby room they had been staying in at a theater.  For this crime, they were deported back to England. Digging Deeper Apparently Best, the drummer who was later replaced by Ringo Starr, and McCartney were dissatisfied with the room and had left a burning condom nailed on a concrete wall as a token of their contempt for the lack of amenities.  Though they did not intend to burn anything down and though nothing actually burned…

A Brief History On November 30, 1864, Confederate Lieutenant General John Bell Hood set what has to be a record for an American general for getting his subordinate generals killed and wounded after ordering an epic fail charge against Union forces led by Major General John M. Schofield at the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee during the American Civil War. Digging Deeper The opposing forces started out virtually dead even, with 27,000 troops on each side.  Hood planned to attack the Union forces with a frontal assault even though his cavalry commander, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, counseled instead for an envelopment of the…

A Brief History On December 21, 1898, the chemical element radium (Ra) was discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie who had isolated it from uranium. Digging Deeper When radium decays, it produces ionizing radiation that causes radioluminescence, in other words, it glows in the dark.  This characteristic led to the use of radium-laced paint for measuring devices such as watches, clocks, aircraft switches and instrument dials, so that they could be used at night.  Due to their smaller hands being able to do extra fine craftsmanship, women were employed by factories to apply the self-luminous paint to the aforementioned products.  The women would routinely…