United States
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A German Texas- Mainzer Adelsverein
When most people think of Texas they think of wide open spaces, cowboys and oil rigs. They do not think of oompah bands. However, that is what you will find in the German Belt of Texas. This is an area of towns founded by the The Mainzer Adelsverein at Beibrich am Rhein or Adelsverein for short. This was a society set up to fund the immigration of Germans to Texas to start a New Germany. Wait, Germans in Texas? How does this work? Germany in the 19th century was divided into more than thirty independent kingdoms, principalities, and free cities. Adding to this chaos was the birth of the industrial…
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Skull and Bones
This mysterious secret society was founded in 1832 after a dispute among Yale debating societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and the Calliopean Society over that season’s Phi Beta Kappa awards. William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft co-founded “the Order of the Scull and Bones”. The Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones co-founder manages their assets. Their members go by the nickname “Bonesmen”. Many famous and powerful people have been known to be in the society. Skull and Bones selects new members among students every spring as part of Yale University’s “Tap Day”, and has done so since 1879. Since the society’s inclusion of women in…
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Osage Reign of Terror
The early 1920’s looked like a good time for the Osage tribe. They were in the midst of an oil boom as large deposits of oil were found on tribal land in north central Oklahoma. Many members of the Osage tribe were becoming wealthy. Unlike other Native Americans, the Osage had deeds to their land, unlike other tribes forced onto a reservation. Under the 1906 Osage Allotment Act all subsurface minerals were tribally owned and held in trust by the United States government. Revenues from the mineral leases paid the tribe over 30 million dollars. Each member of the tribe received one share, called a headright, which could be passed…
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Memorial Day
This day is designated as a day of remembrance for all those who died in the service of the United States of America. Originally called Decoration Day, this holiday has been observed by many Americans since the Civil War. It did not become a federal holiday until 1971, and is observed by many as the unofficial beginning of summer. The American Civil War touched nearly every family in the nation and claimed more lives than any conflict in US history. Because of all these fallen soldiers, there was a great need for national cemeteries, especially for those who did not have land where there were family plots. By the late…
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The first death by Robot
Robert Williams was 25 and worked as an American engineer for the Ford Motor Company factory in Flat Rock, Michigan. He was killed by an industrial robot arm on January 25, 1979 when he was struck in the head and killed by the arm of a 1-ton production-line robot as he was gathering parts in a storage facility. The robot was part of a parts-retrieval system that moved material from one part of the factory to another; when the robot began running slowly, Williams reportedly climbed into the storage rack to retrieve parts manually when he was struck in the head and killed instantly. His family sued the manufacturers of…
