Could You Pass The Literacy Test Given To Black Voters In The 1960s?
The test was to be taken in 10 minutes flat, and a single wrong answer meant a failing grade.
History
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The last time a major political figure was assassinated in Japan was back in 1960 when a 17-year-old by the name of Otoya Yamaguchi used a wakizashi (traditional short sword) to kill Inejirō Asanuma who was leader of the Socialist Party at the time.
The assassination occurred while Asanuma was participating in a nationally televised debate in Tokyo. Yamaguchi was detained before he could turn the sword on himself.
While awaiting his trial, Yamaguchi used toothpaste and water to write on his prison wall: “Long live the Emperor” and “Would that I had seven lives to give for my country.”
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Dust Bowl Farm. Coldwater District north of Dalhart, Texas. This house is occupied; most of the houses here have been abandoned. 1938
The Dust Bowl was both a manmade and natural disaster. Beginning with World War I, American wheat harvests flowed like gold as demand boomed. Lured by record wheat prices and promises by land developers that “rain follows the plow,” farmers powered by new gasoline tractors over-plowed and over-grazed the southern Plains. Between 1925 and 1930 more than 5 million acres (2 million hectares) of previously un-farmed land was plowed.
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Marine Lance Corporal Ernest Delgado at Khe Sahn, Vietnam, 1968. Note his blood type and Tour of Duty countdown calendar on his cover, with “California”across front
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The Code of Hammurabi, written nearly 4000 years ago, had progressive laws such as minimum wage, the right to be born a free man, the need to work off your debt, and no incest. This was written 2000 years before the Bible.
(photo: Mbzt)
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During the Battle of Loos in 1915, German machine gunners stopped firing out of sheer disgust for the amount of casualties they were inflicting on the British
The Battle of Loos was fought September 25-October 14, 1915, during World War I. Seeking to end trench warfare and resume a war of movement, British and French forces planned joint offensives in Artois and Champagne for late 1915.
Forming into ten assault columns, the 21st and 24th surprised the Germans when they began advancing without artillery cover on the afternoon of the 26th.
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A Japanese balloon bomb drifted 6,000 miles to deliver a deadly blow to a party of Sunday school picnickers in Bly, Oregon.
In 1945, In Bly, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it.
They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II.
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Before alarm clocks existed, people used nails fixed onto candles to wake up. they knew hoe to calculate the burning time and put the nail at right position. As the candle melted, nail fell, made a noise and woke its owner
There were much more sophisticated variants. In some monasteries they used metal balls stuck inside the candle, which rolled on the ground.
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Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia, in c. 1910s.
Rasputin was originally sent for when the Empress, desperate to have her son Alexei healed from his illness, allowed the starets (mystical man of God) to treat her son.
Overjoyed by Rasputin’s apparent healing of the tsarverich, the weak little boy on whom the dynasty relied upon, Alexandra showered him with gifts. He began wearing a silk blouse, had a personal secretary, and was given a car. He also began making policy suggestions to Alexandra, who was filling in for Nicholas while he was away at the front, like some kind of ancient tsar-warrior leading his troops. In real life he could do little – he had only ever obtained the rank of colonel in the army.
On This Day In History – April 11, 1976
April 11, 1976 – The Apple Computer 1 is released by the Apple Computer Company
On March 5, 1975, Steve Wozniak attended the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in Gordon French’s garage. He was so inspired that he immediately set to work on what would eventually become the Apple I computer.
After building it for himself and showing it at the club, he and Steve Jobs gave out schematics (technical designs) for the computer to interested club members and even helped some of them build and test out copies.
