A Brief History On November 24, 1863, Union forces under the command of future President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant captured Lookout Mountain as part of the campaign to relieve the siege of Chattanooga, Tennessee by Confederate General Braxton Bragg.  Grant is known as the most successful Union general of the Civil War, and as the man most responsible for winning that war.  This much is true, but many of the other things we think we “know” about Grant are not so true. Digging Deeper For starters, Grant was not a drunkard.  As a young officer, he had a…

A Brief History On November 23, 1992, society took another giant step forward with the introduction of the IBM Simon Personal Communicator, the world’s first “smart phone.”   In 1994 and 1995, IBM sold 50,000 of these handheld mobile devices that combined a touchscreen cellular phone with a personal digital assistant (PDA). Digging Deeper Are you too young to remember a time without cell phones?  If you are, then this will not seem like such a big deal, but in reality, the first smart phone was an enormous leap toward what is so common today that it is taken for granted.  Like many so-called…

A Brief History On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  In the aftermath, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed officer J.D. Tippet, a 39-year-old, 11-year veteran of the police department. Digging Deeper Oswald was actually initially arrested for the murder of Tippet, not for the assassination of Kennedy, but law enforcement quickly determined that Oswald was the main suspect in the Kennedy shooting as well. J.D. Tippet was making a lousy $490 a month as a Dallas police officer at the time of his murder, equaling about $3.00 an hour.  That was pretty bad pay even…

A Brief History On November 21, 1959, music DJ and rock and roll legend Alan Freed was fired by WABC in New York for refusing to sign a statement that he had never taken “payola,” bribes from record companies to play and promote certain records. Digging Deeper Freed is credited with being the man who popularized the term “rock and roll” while he worked as a DJ and song promoter in Cleveland.  In the 1950s, he appeared in movies that brought rock to the big screen, and he even had his own television show similar to what American Bandstand later became.  Sadly, his television show was cancelled after only…

A Brief History On November 20, 1980, Texaco, the petroleum and gasoline company with the red star logo, accidentally penetrated a salt mine as it drilled an oil well beneath a Louisiana lake, causing the water to drain.  As the lake refilled, the sportsmen’s lake became a saltwater lake, no longer hospitable to wildlife or suitable for fishing. Digging Deeper With over 1,100 acres of surface area and at about 10 feet deep, Lake Peigneur was no small pond.  As the lake water rushed into the salt mine, it created tremendous suction and a whirlpool effect resembling a giant bathtub mid drain.  The…