A Brief History On July 24, 1915, the SS Eastland, a passenger ship only 265 feet long and 38 feet wide, rolled over while tied up at dock, killing 848 people, the greatest loss of life in any Great Lakes maritime disaster. Digging Deeper The Eastland had been in service since 1903, carrying passengers from Chicago to South Haven and back for 3 years, and then back and forth from Cleveland and Cedar Point for the next 8 years.  In 1914 she changed hands again and worked the Chicago to St. Joseph, Michigan route. After the Titanic disaster, maritime safety laws…

A Brief History On July 23, 1903, the Ford Motor Company sold its first car.  For some reason many Americans are under the impression that Henry Ford invented the automobile and that Ford was the first brand of cars.  Although Ford got into the business early in the industry’s infancy, he was far from the first.  These sort of misunderstandings, myths, and mistakes fill our minds and our history books.  We are listing 10 such erroneous “facts” to help set things straight.   Digging Deeper 10. Thomas Jefferson Freed His Slaves When He Died. Hardly.  Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves and…

A Brief History On July 23, 1943, an English lad of 19 had enough of his disabled dad’s abuse and blew up the 47 year old in his bath chair.  The incident, famous in Britain as the Rayleigh Bath Chair Murder, has to be one of the first and perhaps only incident where someone killed their dad with an anti-tank bomb, thereby arguably meriting a ranking on our list of unusual deaths! Digging Deeper Archibald Brown lost the use of his legs at age 24 due to a motorcycle wreck and was confined to a wheeled “bath chair.”  Although he was…

A Brief History On July 22, 2011, a deranged Norwegian right-wing Islamophobic paranoid schizophrenic conducted a bombing and a mass shooting, Norway’s worst attacks since World War II.  A total of 77 people were killed, and over 300 wounded. Digging Deeper Anders Breivik, a 32 year old extremist had been plotting a terrorist event for years, and was a regular visitor on right wing extreme websites, notably some emanating from the US.  He had gone to Prague to buy guns, even though he already owned a shot gun and a rifle, but failed to purchase any there.  He returned to…

A Brief History On July 22, 2014, Franka Potente celebrated her 40th birthday. This German actress, probably unknown to most American movie viewers, has appeared in a few relatively significant English-speaking roles. Digging Deeper The following article will also name other relative unknowns as well as great movie stars in a concise reference list. The glue that binds them together is the fact that they were all born German-speaking in either Germany, Austria or Switzerland and later starred in English or American movies. For the purposes of this article, neither American actresses born to German parents, such as Kirsten Dunst…