Longer Life Expectancies on This Day in History

 
Julian Simon on Progress

This Day in History: Edgar Allan Poe died on this day in 1849 at age 40. Novelist Anne Brontë also died in 1849 at age 29, and Frédéric Chopin also died in 1849 at age 39. These early deaths were not uncommon for the time. The average lifespan for most of history was between 25-30, much of that attributed to high infant mortality. Half of all children died by the age of 8. After that age you had to contend with diseases (parasites, typhoid, rheumatic fever, scarlet fever etc) constant wars and poor healthcare (doctors only began regularly washing their hands before surgery in the mid-1800s). By 1900 the average life expectancy rose to 48. By 1950 it climbed to 67. Today it is about 78. Over the last 200 years people became more wealthy, and wealth promotes health, and extra wealth funds health research. The poorest countries in the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, have the lowest lifespans.

The First US Train Robbery on This Day in History

 

Watch Reno Bros Documentary

This Day in History: The Reno brothers carried out the first train robbery in U.S. history on this day in 1866. With the economy in the West booming, trains often carried large amounts of cash and precious minerals. The wide-open spaces of the Western frontier also provided train robbers with plenty of isolated areas ideal for stopping trains, as well as plenty of areas where they could hide from the law. Some criminal gangs, like Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, found that robbing trains was so easy and lucrative that railroad owners had to make changes. One of those changes was adding massive safes protected by heavily armed guards. Special boxcars designed to carry guards and their horses were eventually added (the horses were there in case of pursuit). By the late 1800s train robbery was becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous.

The last major train robbery in the US occurred in 1937 by Henry Loftus and Harry Donaldson on the Southern Pacific Railroad's Apache Limited. The two young men were so inept that 20 passengers ganged up on them "punching and kicking them in a frenzy".

See also: Buffalo Bill & the American Wild West, 200 Books on DVDrom
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2015/09/buffalo-bill-american-wild-west-200.html

AC/DC Singer Brian Johnson on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: Singer Brian Johnson was born on this day in 1947. BJ became the lead singer of AC/DC in 1980 after the death of Bon Scott. His first album with AC/DC, Back in Black, became the second best-selling album of all time according to most estimates. The Guardian ranked the successful transition to Johnson at No. 36 on their list of 50 key events in rock music history.

Did you know that researchers use AC/DC music to help combat cancer?

"Researchers at the University of South Australia have found that playing ‘Thunderstruck’ during chemotherapy treatment is effective at improving the efficiency of the drug. They chose this AC/DC track because it hits all the right notes. Vibrations from the song cause silicon micro particles carrying the chemo drug inside a vacuum to bounce. This results in a polymer coating that prevents the drug from escaping while being administered, improving delivery to cancer cells."

https://www.gold1043.com.au/entertainment/8-weird-facts-about-acdc/

And of course, no one does AC/DC like Pat Boone.

Brian Johnson's Lifestyle

The Coverdale Bible on This Day in History

Old English Bibles to Download, (AV1611, Tyndale, Matthews, Coverdale etc)

This Day in History: The Coverdale Bible was printed on this day in 1535. It was compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete Modern English translation of the Bible (not just the Old Testament or New Testament), and the first complete printed translation into English. Before the King James Bible in 1611 the English speaking world had other Bibles as well, such as the Matthews Bible, the Taverner's Bible (more correctly called "The Most Sacred Bible whiche is the holy scripture, conteyning the old and new testament, translated into English, and newly recognized with great diligence after most faythful exemplars" by Rychard Taverner), the Great Bible (named for its size), the Bishops’ Bible and the Catholic Douay/Rheims Bible. The Bible that was first brought to America on the Mayflower was the Geneva Bible. All English translations of the Bible printed in the sixteenth century included a section or appendix for Apocryphal books (which the Catholics call the Deuterocanonical books) which usually include Baruch, the Prayer of Manasseh, the books of the Maccabees, 1 Esdras & 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach) the 151st Psalm etc. 

Coverdale Bible Video

These older Bibles were based on late manuscripts of the Greek, and some Bible translators simply translated from the Latin or the German. In the 1800's there were Bible translations that sought to correct that by using older newly found manuscripts, and these included official revisions of the King James (Authorized) Bible, such as the English Revised Version (1881) and the American Standard Version (1901). The public never really embraced these Bibles, still preferring the old King James version.  

See also: The History of the English Bible, 125 PDF Books on DVDrom

This Kindle book is now available on Amazon by clicking here...and it is only 99 cents

The Unification of Germany on This Day in History

 

Buy my book: The Folly of Socialism (40 Chapters) for 99 cents on Amazon

This Day in History: The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was abolished and became part of the Federal Republic of Germany on this day in 1990. This was preceded by the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall the previous year...a turning point in history. While walls are usually built to keep outsiders at bay, this wall was built to keep people in. They were so deperate to keep people in that the wall did not just have concrete and barbed wire, the 96.3-mile wall came with 302 observation towers, 259 dog runs, 20 bunkers manned by more than 11,000 soldiers, and more than 79 miles of electrified fencing.

Yet, people still tried to leave: "The wall did not stop human flight. Instead, it forced people to be more creative. East Germans climbed over, tunneled under, and flew over. They jumped from windows of buildings along the border—which later were demolished. GDR residents used balloons, built submarines, and created secret compartments in cars. An estimated 100,000 people tried to escape, and some 5,000 made it. Many of those who failed in their lunge for freedom paid a high price. Tens of thousands of East Germans were imprisoned for Republikflucht. Around 200 were killed—no one knows how many for sure—challenging the Berlin Wall. Include those murdered while attempting to cross the border elsewhere, and the death toll probably exceeded 1,000." ~Doug Bandow

There are two great lessons here about Socialism. The leaders know that this system will be unfavorable to the citizens, and the citizens will risk life and limb to escape it.

See also Over 300 PDF/Acrobat Books on 

Socialism, Communism and Economics

See also: 300 Books on DVDrom for Libertarians, Objectivists and Voluntaryists

Singer Don McLean on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: Don McLean was born on this day in 1945. McLean is best known for his 1971 hit song "American Pie", an 8.5-minute folk rock cultural touchstone about the loss of innocence of the early rock and roll generation. This masterpiece McLean's is an homage inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) in a plane crash in 1959, and developments in American youth culture in the subsequent decade. The song popularized the expression "The Day the Music Died" in reference to the crash.

At 8.5 minutes, it also ranks as one of the longest singles of the rock era (second to Guns ‘N Roses “November Rain”). It has since been covered by everyone from Weird Al Yankovic to Madonna.

The song made references to Bob Dylan (the Jester), the Beatles (Sergeants), the Stones, the Byrds, Marx, the Manson Family (Helter Skelter in a summer swelter) and the 1968 Chicago Democratic Party National Convention.

Weird Al

The Japanese Shinkansen ("bullet trains") on This Day in History

 

Today in History: Japanese Shinkansen ("bullet trains") began their high-speed rail service from Tokyo to Osaka on this day in 1964. The maximum operating speed is 320 km/h (200 mph) (on a 387.5 km section of the Tohoku Shinkansen). Test runs have reached 443 km/h (275 mph) for conventional rail in 1996, and up to a world record 603 km/h (375 mph) for SCMaglev trains in April 2015.

Over the Shinkansen's 50-plus-year history, carrying over 10 billion passengers, there has been not a single passenger fatality or injury due to train accidents, despite frequent earthquakes and typhoons. 

The word Shinkansen in Japanese means 'new trunk line' or 'new main line', but this word is used to describe both the railway lines the trains run on and the trains themselves. Japan was the first country to build dedicated railway lines for high-speed travel.