This Day in History

1. Re: This Day in History

   #81

   18 August. In 1987 an 11-year-old girl from the Sabirabad region of the Caspian Sea Republic of Azerbaijan, identified by her first name as Matanet, fell asleep in a field after picking tomatoes in the sun and woke up choking. She was rushed to a children's clinic in Baku and made to drink 3.5 pints of salt solution. She vomited up a semi-poisonous 25.6in Caucasian rat-snake. An hour later, she left the clinic with her parents and went home feeling fine, according to several sources; one said, however, that she was being treated for a swelling in her stomach caused by the snake's bite.

2. Re: This Day in History

   #82

   1 September. St Fiacres' Day. Can be looked forward to by all those suffering from haemmorrhoids, for which he intercedes. His emblem is a spade, not a cure for piles but a symbol of his other job, being patron saint of gardeners. It is also the Feast Day of St Giles, the apocryphal patron saint of cripples. His story - he was wounded and lamed by an arrow whilst protecting his pet deer - bears a strong resemblance to that of Oisin, a druidic deity, and various Dianic cults - all the priests of the goddess Diana were lame.

3. Re: This Day in History

   #83

   18 September - First Aviation Fatality.  On this day in 1908 U.S. newspapers carried stories about the first person to die in an airplane crash the day before. The occasion was a demonstration of a Wright brothers aircraft at Fort Myer in Virginia. With Orville Wright at the controls, Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge went up as a passenger, to test the possible military use of the airplane. Four minutes into the flight the plane crashed, killing Selfridge and seriously injuring Orville Wright.

4. Re: This Day in History

   #84

   7 November. In 1990 it was reported that Trappist monks had fought off armed raiders in a nocturnal gun battle after thieves broke into their abbey in the Ardeche mountains. The 30 monks were woken by the alarm in the shop which sold their wine. The abbey had been robbed twice in the previous two months, and the monks were in defiant mood. Three with hunting rifles used a car to block the robbers' escape, and fired in the air. The robbers opened fire with sawn off shotguns and got away. The main problem for the monks was breaking their vows of silence to talk to the police.
   
   (morale of the story? DONT mess with monks!)

5. Re: This Day in History

   #85

   24 December. Sebi Breci was a disc jockey on the Armed Forces Radio Service in Fairbanks, Alaska. On Christmas Eve 1951, he was phoned in the studio by a woman who said that her car had stalled 30 miles from Fairbanks and she couldn't get it started. She had two children with her and pleaded for a tow truck before they froze to death. She hung up before he could ask her why she hadn't called a garage direct. Breci arranged the rescue and later the garage man called up: he had reached the car just in time. There was no phone for miles. Breci was still puzzled when he told the story 27 years later.

6. Re: This Day in History

   #86

   7 February. The birthday of Roy Cleveland Sullivan in 1912. He became a ranger in Shenandoah National Park in the USA, and was struck by lightning seven times: in 1942 he lost a big toenail to lightning; in 1969 his eyebrows were blown off; his shoulder was seared in 1970; his hair set on fire in 1972; the 1973 bolt hit him on the head through his hat, set fire to his hair again, knocked him ten feet out of his car, went through both legs and knocked his left shoe off; there were two further strikes in 1977 and 1978. He committed suicide in 1983.

7. Re: This Day in History

   #87

   Yeah, its back. :)
   
   I like these little factoids.

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