9.08.2006

It's not the Heat, It's the Humidity

The late summer months have a long history of producing uprisings and violence.

August 22, 1831
Osama bin Nat
OK, his real name wasn't Osama, but Nat Turner led 40 fellow slaves on a murderous spree through Southampton County, Virginia, killing nearly 60 whites in one day. Turner, also a preacher, conspired for months before taking advantage of the lax controls on slaves in rural Virginia to bring his plan to fruition. Had they not been caught, the Turner-led group may have been able to escape and take refuge in the Great Dismal Swamp, as was their plan.

Turner and his flock didn't just kill the whites, they massacred them. At their first stop, they hacked four white occupants of a farmhouse to death using axes, hatchets, and knives. After leaving the scene, someone remembered that they had forgotten the family's baby, and they promptly returned to the farmhouse and chopped it to bits.

September 8, 1781
Uh, Over Easy Please
America's most infamous traitor, Benedict Arnold, led British troops on a sack, loot, and burn mission in the town of New London, Conneticut.

August 24, 1970
Protesting War with Bombs
Four Vietnam protestors detonated a van filled with explosives (2,000 pounds of explosives, by the way) at the University of Wisconsin. Strange place for an anti-war protest? Maybe not. The Army Mathematics Research Center, located in the university's physics building, was rumored to have produced the technology to find and assassinate infamous Latin American rebel Che Guevara.

August 19, 1981
Top Guns
U.S. Navy fighter jets return fire and shoot down two Libyan fighter planes over the Gulf of Sidra. Libya was the axis of evil at that time, and claimed the entire Gulf as its territory, while the U.S. insisted the water and the airspace above it was international territory.

October 6, 1981
It's Only A Flesh Wound
Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, was assassination on this day in Cairo while attending a military parade. Religious fundamentalists (read: Islamic Terrorists) sprayed Sadat with machine-gun fire and lobbed hand grenades into the crowd. While the president was most likely killed instantly, initial reports coming out of Egypt said that he had survived with minor injuries. However, by noon, EST, it became clear that he was dead.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home