A Brief History On December 2, 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot (through the ears!) and officially killed in Medellín by Colombian National Police, although his brothers claim the death was a suicide. Digging Deeper In 1993, the second of December was a bloody day of victory for international law enforcement. That day marked the end of Pablo Escobar (aka: Pablo Emillio Escobar Gaviria), the head of the Medellin drug cartel and the second worst (best) money launderer in human history. Born December 1, 1949, Escobar started a long criminal career by stealing grave stones, running a variety…
Browsing: Cracked History
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A Brief History Apparently there is something about the first day of December that makes it significant to the history of civil rights concerning persons of African ancestry. Digging Deeper Digging deeper we find, first, that in 1768 the former slave ship Fredensborg sank from unknown causes (maybe cosmic karma?) of the coast of Tromoy, Norway. Although not carrying slaves at that time, it had previously been involved in the “triangular trade” of slaves and goods in the Caribbean. Second, in 1834 in accordance with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, slavery was abolished in the Cape Colony (now South…
A Brief History On November 30, 2001, a depraved serial killer, known as The Green River Killer, was finally arrested. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find Gary Ridgway, aged 51 of Renton, Washington finally arrested after leaving work, but only after he killed at least 48 women and girls! Conducting a one man serial rampage, Ridgway was convicted of 48 counts of murder, but actually confessed to killing at least double that amount! He usually strangled his victims, sometimes with a rope or other object, but sometimes with his bare hands and arms. If the senseless waste of female life was not…
A Brief History On November 30, 1939, Soviet forces crossed the Finnish border in several places and bombed Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the Winter War. (NOTE: For the sequel to this article, please click here.) Digging Deeper In the aftermath of Poland’s collapse in September, 1939—a collapse that the Soviet Union had a major role in contributing to—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin quickly turned his ambitions towards gobbling up even more of eastern Europe. Turning his attention toward the Scandinavian country of Finland—a nation which had the audacity to secede from Russia during its Communist revolution twenty years…
A Brief History On this date, November 28, 1942, in the middle of World War II, the United States suffered mass carnage on the home front! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find that November 28, 1942 was the date of the infamous Cocoanut Grove fire, a blaze that took 492 lives. This horrible fire remains the second deadliest single building fire in U.S. history, second only to a theater fire in 1903 Chicago that killed 602 people. Of course, the human toll did not end with those deaths, but also included many more (hundreds?) burned or otherwise injured non-fatally. Since…