History

Vomit for Science

September 27, 2010

Just when I’d lost all hope for science, along came this: (Click on image for a larger and much better copy.) Now you’re thinking, “Har, har, what an immature comic. Nothing so stupid as that ever happened.” But there you’d be wrong, my friend. First, it actually did happen. Second, it was brilliant science of [...]

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How do You Say Oops in Spanish?

May 20, 2010

There are, perhaps, few more ignoble ways for a battleship to go down: In the Second World War, Bahia was once again used as a convoy escort, sailing over 100,000 nautical miles (190,000 km; 120,000 mi) in the span of about a year. On 4 July 1945 she was acting as a plane guard for [...]

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Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

February 7, 2010

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the name of a town in Wales. It is true, in spite of it sounding like some kind of joke children might make up. The long form of the name is the longest officially recognized place name in the United Kingdom and one of the longest in the world. The name means “St [...]

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Bucer on Bigamy

December 23, 2009

Consider this another entry in my erratic, informal, exploration of lesser known aspects and events within the history of Christianity. Did you know early Protestant leaders defended bigamy on theological grounds? To put it that way makes it sound worse than it is–and yet not. The attempt to justify bigamy was not a concerted act [...]

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The Brokenness of William Cowper

December 6, 2009

Have you ever heard of William Cowper? Probably not. But it is much more likely that you know some of what William Cowper has written. Know the phrase, “Variety is the spice of life”? That was William Cowper– Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour. (Book II, The Timepiece, l. [...]

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Apocalpyse Past

June 8, 2009

If you read enough history, you come across all sorts of fascinating stories. Some things are just plan educational–you didn’t know that had happened before. And some historical occurrences put things in perspective that life could be a lot worse. The following two stories have a superficial similarity, but their outcomes are radically different. The [...]

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Deportation and Death

April 7, 2009

Armenians On Deportation March (source) This is what loosing everything you had looks like. This is what facing starvation, and death looks like. Between 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the Armenian genocide. Is this a bit of history you aren’t familiar with? Read more about it(1). _____ (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

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Forty Minute War

December 18, 2008

Elsewhere, I wrote about the three hundred and thirty-five year war(1). To fill in the opposite end of the spectrum, I now present to you the “Forty Minute War” otherwise known as the Anglo-Zanzibar War(2). It began something like this: The Anglo-Zanzibar War was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar on 27 August 1896. [...]

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The Bhopal Disaster

December 17, 2008

China has been in the news a lot recently for its poor health record. It is a sad fact that they are not the only country with this problem, and that this is not a new problem. Let me take you back to Bhopal, India in December 1984. According to the Wikipedia article(1): The Bhopal [...]

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World’s Largest Conventional Explosion

December 16, 2008

Thirteen miles away (source) A bit of grim history for you. The world’s largest conventional explosion (that status a bit disputed) occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with [...]

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