A Brief History On February 12, 2004, toy producer Mattel announced that the iconic American doll Barbie had called it quits with her longtime boyfriend Ken! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find a country (or world) of ‘tween and teenaged girls shocked to find Barbara Millicent Roberts (Barbie) ending her 42-year relationship with Ken Carson in order to pursue Blaine, an Australian surfer. (She thought he was a real doll!) The Barbie craze started just about immediately in 1959 when she was introduced as an 11 ½-inch blond or brunette bombshell of a doll. One main attraction of the Barbie doll…
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A Brief History On February 11, 1968, African-American garbage collection and sewer workers in Memphis, Tennessee went on strike, prompted by the horrible death of two garbage men crushed in the back of a garbage truck. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find a racially divided city during an era of civil rights protests, riots, laws being changed and important court decisions. The status quo was under assault! The two garbage men crushed in the garbage-compacting truck had taken shelter there from the rain when the compactor was activated, the operator not knowing the men were back there. Incredibly, city rules allowed garbage…
A Brief History On February 10, 1933, Primo Carnera, a heavyweight boxer called “The Monster” by Time magazine, dealt Ernie Schaaf fatal blows during a boxing match in New York City. The hapless Schaaf died 4 days after the match. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find Carnera as the heaviest heavyweight boxing champion of his day (a record held until 2005) and at 6’7″ (an exaggeration by an inch and a half), also listed as the tallest (again until 2005 when Nikolay Valuev won a title). Also known as the “Ambling Alp,” Carnera was an Italian fighter who was dogged his…
A Brief History February 9, 1959 opened a new and scary chapter in the atomic age when the U.S.S.R. fielded the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) armed with a nuclear warhead, the R-7 Semyorka. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the United States (and allies) and the U.S.S.R. (and its allies) engaged in a scary Cold War from the end of World War II until 1991 when the U.S.S.R. finally disintegrated. The reason for the scariness can be summed up in one word: Nukes! The prospect of total nuclear war was sobering, since mutual nuclear destruction could actually have ended…
A Brief History On February 8, 1993, General Motors Corporation announced a lawsuit against NBC’s Dateline “news” show for falsely portraying Chevrolet pickup trucks as fire hazards! Digging Deepr Digging deeper, we find the announcement accompanied by a 2+ hour rebuttal to the November 1992 show where Dateline showed Chevrolet trucks exploding from side impacts. It turns out, however, that Dateline could not get the trucks to burst into flame by broadsiding them with another vehicle, so they used explosives to make their “news” happen! The show generated much disgust and hatred toward General Motors and encouraged lawsuits against them, although…
