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 “Find A Grave Memorial ID 554” (Exhumed)
"John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747–July 18, 1792) was the United States' first well-known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He made many friends and enemies—who accused him of piracy—among America's political elites, and his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation which persists to this day. As such, he is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the American Navy" (a sobriquet he shares with John Barry and John Adams). Jones grew up in Scotland, became a sailor, and served as commander of several British merchant ships. After having killed one of his crew members with a sword, he fled to the Colony of Virginia and around 1775 joined the newly founded Continental Navy in their fight against Britain in the American Revolutionary War. He commanded U. S. Navy ships stationed in France and led several assaults on England and Ireland. Left without a command in 1787, he joined the Imperial Russian Navy and obtained the rank of rear admiral. John Paul (he added "Jones" in later life to hide from law enforcement) was born on the estate of Arbigland near Kirkbean in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright on the southwest coast of Scotland. His father John Paul, Sr. was a gardener at Arbigland, and his mother was Jean McDuff. His parents married on November 29, 1733 in New Abbey, Kirkcudbright. In May 1790 Jones arrived in Paris. He still possessed his position as Russian rear admiral with a corresponding pension, which allowed him to remain in retirement until his death two years later, although he made a number of attempts to re-enter the service in the Russian navy. By this time his memoirs had been published in Edinburgh. Inspired by them, James Fenimore Cooper and Alexandre Dumas later wrote their own adventure novels. John Paul Jones also appeared as a cameo in Herman Melville's book "Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile." In June 1792, Jones was appointed U. S. Consul to treat with the Dey of Algiers for the release of American captives. Before Jones was able to fulfill his appointment, he was found dead (aged 45) lying face-down on his bed in his third-floor Paris apartment, No. 19 Rue de Tournon, on July 18, 1792. The cause of death was interstitial nephritis. A small procession of servants, friends and loyal family walked his body the four miles for burial. He was buried in Paris at the Saint Louis Cemetery, which belonged to the French royal family. Four years later, France's revolutionary government sold the property and the cemetery was forgotten. The area was later used as a garden, a place to dispose of dead animals and where gamblers bet on animal fights. In 1905, Jones's remains were identified by U. S. Ambassador to France Gen. Horace Porter, who had searched for six years to track down the body using faulty copies of Jones's burial record. After Jones' death, Frenchman Pierrot Francois Simmoneau donated over 460 francs to mummify the body. It was preserved in alcohol and interred in a lead coffin "in the event that should the United States decide to claim his remains, they might more easily be identified." Porter knew what to look for in his search. With the aid of an old map of Paris, Porter's team, which included anthropologist Louis Capitan, identified the site of the former St. Louis Cemetery for Alien Protestants. Sounding probes were used to search for lead coffins and five coffins were ultimately exhumed. The third, unearthed on April 7, 1905, was later identified by a meticulous post-mortem examination by Doctors Capitan and Georges Papillault as being that of Jones. The autopsy confirmed the original listing of cause of death. The face was later compared to a bust by Jean-Antoine Houdon. Jones's body was brought to the United States aboard the USS Brooklyn, escorted by three other cruisers. On approaching the American coastline, seven U. S. Navy battleships joined the procession escorting Jones's body back to America. On April 24, 1906, Jones's coffin was installed in Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, following a ceremony in Dahlgren Hall, presided over by President Theodore Roosevelt who gave a speech paying tribute to John Paul Jones and holding him up as an example to the officers of the Navy. On January 26, 1913, the Captain's remains were finally re-interred in a magnificent bronze and marble sarcophagus at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis.
Source: Wikipedia.org | Sunday, July 8, 2018, 12:40PM |
"The Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola, and nicknamed the "Alcatraz of the South" and "The Farm") is a maximum security prison farm in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections. It is named Angola after the country the slaves of this former plantation originally came from. It is the largest maximum security prison in the United States with 6,300 offenders and 1,800 staff. It is located on an 18,000-acre property that was previously the Angola Plantations owned by Isaac Franklin in unincorporated West Feliciana Parish, directly adjacent to the Mississippi state line. The prison is located at the end of Louisiana Highway 66, around 22 miles northwest of St. Francisville. Angola is bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River. Since 1995, Burl Cain has been the warden. Death row for men and the state execution chamber for both sexes are located at the Angola facility. Before 1835, state inmates lived in a jail in New Orleans. The first Louisiana State Penitentiary, located at the intersection of 6th and Laurel streets in Baton Rouge, was modeled on a prison in Wethersfield, Connecticut. In 1844 the state leased the prison and its prisoners to McHatton Pratt and Company, a private company. Union soldiers occupied the prison during the Civil War. In 1869 Samuel Lawrence James, a former confederate major, received the lease to the prison. The land that has become Angola Penitentiary was purchased by Isaac Franklin from Francis Routh during the 1830s with the profits from his slave trading firm, Franklin and Armfield, of Alexandria, Virginia and Natchez, Mississippi as four contiguous plantations. These plantations, Panola, Belle View, Killarney and Angola, were joined during their sale by Franklin's widow, Adelicia Cheatham, to James in 1880. The plantation, named after the country in Africa where the former slaves came from, contained a building called the Old Slave Quarters. In 1961, female inmates were moved to the newly opened Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. In 1971 the American Bar Association criticized the state of Angola. Linda Ashton of the Associated Press said that the bar association described Angola's conditions as "medieval, squalid and horrifying." In 1972, Elayne Hunt, a reforming director of corrections, was appointed by Governor Edwin Edwards, and the U. S. courts in Gates v. Collier ordered Louisiana to clean up Angola once and for all, ending the Trustee-Officer and Trusty systems. In 1975 U. S. District Judge Frank Polozola of Baton Rouge, Louisiana declared conditions at Angola to be in a state of emergency. The state installed Ross Maggio as the warden; prisoners nicknamed Maggio "the gangster" because he strictly adhered to rules. Ashton said that by most accounts Maggio successfully improved conditions. Maggio retired in 1984. In 2009, the prison reduced its budget by $12 million by "double bunking" (installing bunk beds to increase the capacity of dormitories), reducing overtime, and replacing officers with security cameras. On March 11, 2014 Glenn Ford, a convicted murderer and Louisiana's longest-serving death row prisoner walked free after a court overturned his conviction a day earlier when petitioned by prosecutors. Ford had spent nearly three decades at the prison, 26 of them on death row. The state of Louisiana considers LSP to be a multi-security institution; 29% of the prison's beds are designated for maximum security inmates. The inmates live in several housing units scattered across the LSP grounds. By the 1990s air conditioning and heating units had been installed in the inmate housing units. Crops produced at LSP include cabbage, corn, cotton, strawberry, okra, onions, peppers, soybeans, squash, tomatoes, and wheat. Hundreds of cattle are kept on the Angola premises. As of 2010 the prison has 2,000 head of cattle. Each year, the prison produces four million pounds of vegetable crops. Coffins for deceased prisoners are manufactured by inmates on the LSP grounds. Previously, deceased prisoners were buried in cardboard boxes. After one body fell through the bottom of a box, Warden Burl Cain changed a policy, allowing for the manufacture of proper coffins for the deceased. Inmates on death row are confined to their cells for 23 hours per day. For one hour per day an inmate may take a shower and/or move up and down the halls under escort. Three times a week an inmate is permitted to use the exercise yard. Death row inmates are allowed to have several books at a time, and each inmate may have one five-minute personal telephone call per month. Death row inmates receive unlimited visitor access. When the State of Louisiana used electrocution as its method of capital punishment, it formally referred to the anonymous executioner as "The Electrician." When the State of Louisiana referred to the executioner by name, he or she was called "Sam Jones," after Sam H. Jones, the Governor of Louisiana in power when electrocution was introduced as the capital punishment."
Source: Wikipedia.org | February 17, 2016, 12:00PM |
"A mass shooting occurred in Nakhon Ratchasima in Thailand between 8 and 9 February 2020. A soldier of the Royal Thai Army shot dead 29 people and wounded 58 others near and in the city, which is also colloquially known as Korat. He was eventually shot dead by security forces. The rampage began when the perpetrator shot and killed his commanding officer and two others at Surathamphithak Military Camp, the base where he was stationed. The suspect then stole weapons and a military Humvee, then drove to the Terminal 21 Korat shopping mall, where he opened fire on shoppers. During the attack, the suspect posted updates and shared a live stream on his Facebook. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Thailand’s history. Sergeant Major 1st Class Jakrapanth Thomma (4 April 1988–9 February 2020), aged 31, was born in Chaiyaphum Province. Prior to the incident, he had been stationed at the Surathamphithak Military Base, where the first shooting took place. He previously received training as a non-commissioned officer and was an expert marksman. In multiple videos of himself at the shooting range, it showed that he also owned three handguns: a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Performance Center 629 Competitor, a 9mm Beretta 92FS & a .45-caliber FN FNP-45 Two-Tone. The shooting began at about 15:30 local time at the Surathamphithak army camp, when the perpetrator confronted his commander, identified as Colonel Anantharot Krasae, stole his weapon and shot him dead. He then shot and killed the commander's mother-in-law. Afterwards, Jakrapanth raided the camp, stealing from a guard post and the camp armories two Type 11 assault rifles (a variant of the HK33), an M60 machine gun and 776 rounds of ammunition, killing a soldier in the process. He then stole a Humvee and wounded the driver. Jakrapanth escaped and opened fire on two police officers and two civilians, wounding them. The officers sustained multiple gunshot wounds in their legs and backs. After the escape Jakrapanth started shooting in the street, including outside a Buddhist temple. He then arrived at the Terminal 21 Korat shopping mall in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, where he left the vehicle and began shooting indiscriminately at people before detonating a cooking gas cylinder, killing 26 civilians. He then took sixteen hostages inside the mall on the fourth floor. Jakrapanth live-streamed on Facebook Live during the siege and shared photos and memes on his profile page, although his account was eventually taken down by Facebook. Police officers and soldiers stormed the mall and demanded Jakrapanth's surrender, to which he responded by opening fire on them, killing three policemen and a soldier and wounding at least three others. Jakrapanth remained inside for several hours, during which his mother was brought by authorities to try to convince him to surrender. On 9 February, at 09:13 local time, police announced that they had shot and killed Jakrapanth.
Source: Wikipedia.org | Sunday, February 9, 2020, 2:50 PM CDT |
"George Gipp (February 18, 1895–December 14, 1920) was a college football player who played for the University of Notre Dame. Gipp was selected as Notre Dame's first Walter Camp All-American and is Notre Dame's second consensus All-American after Gus Dorais. Gipp played multiple positions, most notably halfback, quarterback, and punter. He is still considered today to be one of the most versatile athletes to play the game of football and is the subject of Knute Rockne's famous "Win just one for the Gipper" speech. Gipp died at the age of 25 of a streptococcal throat infection, days after leading Notre Dame to a win over Northwestern in his senior season. Born in Laurium, Michigan, he entered Notre Dame intending to play baseball for the Fighting Irish, but was recruited by Knute Rockne for the football team, despite having no experience in organized football. Gipp died December 14, 1920, two weeks after being elected Notre Dame's first All-American by Walter Camp and second consensus All-American overall. A frequently told but probably apocryphal story of Gipp's death begins when he returned to Notre Dame's campus after curfew from a night out. Unable to gain entrance to his residence, Gipp went to the rear door of Washington Hall, the campus' theatre building. He was a steward for the building and knew the rear door was often unlocked. He usually spent such nights in the hall. On that night, however, the door was locked, and Gipp was forced to sleep outside. By the morning, he had contracted pneumonia and eventually died from a related infection. It is more likely that Gipp contracted strep throat and pneumonia while giving punting lessons after his final game, November 20 against Northwestern University. Since antibiotics were not available in the 1920s, treatment options for such infections were limited and they could be fatal even to young, healthy individuals. Gipp's hometown, Laurium, built a memorial in his honor; he is buried in nearby Lake View Cemetery in Calumet, Michigan. The phrase "Win one for the Gipper" was later used as a political slogan by Ronald Reagan, who in 1940 portrayed Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American and was often referred to as "The Gipper." His most famous use of the phrase was at the 1988 Republican National Convention when he told Vice President George H. W. Bush, "George, go out there and win one for the Gipper." The term was also used by President George W. Bush at the 2004 Republican Convention when he honored the recently deceased President Reagan by stating, "this time we can truly win one for the Gipper." On October 4, 2007, George Gipp's body was exhumed for DNA testing to determine if he had fathered a child out of wedlock with an 18-year-old high school student. The right femur was removed and the rest of the remains were reburied the same day. A sports author who was present at the exhumation said it was requested by Rick Frueh, the grandson of one of Gipp's sisters. The tests showed that he was not the father of the child who was born within days of Gipp's death. Other Gipp relatives claim exhumation was conducted in a manner and under circumstances that are subject to legal action for damages."
Source: Wikipedia.org | April 22, 2016, 11:59PM |
"Angola, officially the Republic of Angola is a country in Southern Africa. It is the seventh-largest country in Africa, and is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north and east, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to west. The exclave province of Cabinda has borders with the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The capital and largest city of Angola is Luanda. Angola has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy is among the fastest growing in the world, especially since the end of the civil war. In spite of this, the standard of living remains low for the majority of the population, and life expectancy and infant mortality rates in Angola are among the worst in the world. Angola's economic growth is highly uneven, with the majority of the nation's wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small sector of the population. Angola is a member state of the United Nations, OPEC, African Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union and the Southern African Development Community. A highly multi ethnic country, Angola's 24.3 million people span various tribal groups, customs, and traditions. Angolan culture reflects centuries of Portuguese rule, namely in the predominance of the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism, combined with diverse indigenous influences. The name Angola comes from the Portuguese colonial name Reino de Angola (Kingdom of Angola), appearing as early as Dias de Novais's 1571 charter. The toponym was derived by the Portuguese from the title ngola held by the kings of Ndongo. Ndongo was a kingdom in the highlands, between the Kwanza and Lukala Rivers, nominally tributary to the king of Kongo but which was seeking greater independence during the 16th century. The region now known as Angola was reached by the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in 1484. The year before, the Portuguese had established relations with the Kingdom of Kongo, which stretched at the time from modern Gabon in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The Portuguese established their primary early trading post at Soyo, which is now the northernmost city in Angola apart from the Cabinda enclave. Paulo Dias de Novais founded São Paulo de Loanda in 1575 with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Benguela was fortified in 1587 and elevated to a township in 1617. The Portuguese established several other settlements, forts, and trading posts along the Angolan coast, principally trading in Angolan slaves for Brazilian plantations. Local slave dealers provided a large number of slaves for the Portuguese Empire, usually sold in exchange for manufactured goods from Europe. This part of the Atlantic slave trade continued until after Brazil's independence in the 1820s. At 481,321 sq miles Angola is the world's twenty-third largest country. It is twice the size of France or Texas. The U. S. Department of State estimates the Muslim population at 80,000–90,000, while the Islamic Community of Angola puts the figure closer to 500,000. Muslims consist largely of migrants from West Africa and the Middle East although some are local converts. The Angolan government does not legally recognize any Muslim organizations and often shuts down mosques or prevents their construction. José Eduardo dos Santos (born 28 August 1942) is an Angolan politician who has been President of Angola since 1979."
Source: Wikipedia.org | May 30, 2016, 12:55AM CDT 
"Gordon, or Whipped Peter, was an enslaved African American who escaped from his Louisiana plantation in March 1863, gaining freedom when he reached the Union camp near Baton Rouge. He became known as the subject of photographs documenting the extensive scarring of his back from whippings received in slavery. Abolitionists distributed these carte de visite photographs of Gordon throughout the United States and internationally to show the abuses of slavery. In July 1863 these images appeared in an article about Gordon published in Harper's Weekly, the most widely read journal during the Civil War. The pictures of Gordon's scourged back provided Northerners with visual evidence of brutal treatment of slaves and inspired many free blacks to enlist in the Union Army. Gordon joined the United States Colored Troops soon after their founding, and served as a soldier in the war. Gordon escaped in March 1863 from the 3,000-acre plantation of John and Bridget Lyons, who owned him and nearly forty other slaves at the time of the 1860 census. The Lyons plantation was located along the west bank of the Atchafalaya River in St. Landry Parish, between present-day Melville and Krotz Springs, Louisiana. In order to mask his scent from the bloodhounds that were chasing him, Gordon took onions from his plantation, which he carried in his pockets. After crossing each creek or swamp, he rubbed his body with these onions in order to throw the dogs off his scent. He fled over 40 miles over the course of ten days before reaching Union soldiers of the XIX Corps who were stationed in Baton Rouge. Upon arrival at the Union camp, Gordon underwent a medical examination on April 2, 1863, which revealed severe keloid scars from several whippings. Itinerant photographers William D. McPherson and his partner Mr. Oliver, who were in camp at the time, produced carte de visite photos of Gordon showing his back. During the examination, Gordon is quoted as saying, "Ten days from [today] I left the plantation. Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the overseer." My master was not present. I don't remember the whipping. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping and my sense began to come–I was sort of crazy. I tried to shoot everybody. They said so, I did not know. I did not know that I had attempted to shoot everyone; they told me so. I burned up all my clothes; but I don't remember that. I never was this way (crazy) before. I don't know what make me come that way (crazy). My master come after I was whipped; saw me in bed; he discharged the overseer. They told me I attempted to shoot my wife the first one; I did not shoot anyone; I did not harm anyone. My master's Capt. John Lyon, cotton planter, on [Atchafalaya] near Washington, Louisiana. Whipped two months before Christmas."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Twitter.com | June 27, 2016, 12:22AM 
"On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, which consisted of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing. The perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in the city of Redlands, targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and holiday party, of about 80 employees, in a rented banquet room. Farook was an American-born U. S. citizen of Pakistani descent, who worked as a health department employee. Malik was a Pakistani-born lawful permanent resident of the United States. After the shooting, the couple fled in a rented sport utility vehicle (SUV). Four hours later, police pursued their vehicle and killed them in a shootout. On December 3, 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened a counter-terrorism investigation. On December 6, 2015, in a prime-time address delivered from the Oval Office, President Barack Obama defined the shooting as an act of terrorism. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in the U. S. since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and the deadliest terrorist attack to occur in the U. S. since the September 11 attacks, until the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting surpassed it in both categories on June 12th, 2016 (below). In the Inland Regional Center attack, 14 civilians were killed. They ranged in age from 26 to 60. Nine were residents of San Bernardino County; the others were from nearby Riverside, Los Angeles, and Orange counties. Farook and Malik left their six-month-old daughter with Farook's mother at their Redlands home the morning of the attack, saying they were going to a doctor's appointment. Farook, a health inspector for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, attended a departmental event at the banquet room of the Inland Regional Center. The event began as a semi-annual all-staff meeting and training event, and was in the process of transitioning into a department holiday party/luncheon when the shooting began. There was a total of 91 invited guests, with 75–80 people stated to have been in attendance. Farook arrived at the departmental event at about 8:30 am and left midway through it at around 10:30 am, leaving a backpack atop a table. Coworkers reported that Farook had been quiet for the duration of the event. He posed for photos with other coworkers. At 10:59 am PST, Farook and Malik, armed with semi-automatic pistols and rifles, opened fire on those in attendance. The entire shooting took less than four minutes. They fired between 65 and 75 bullets. The perpetrators departed the scene before police arrived. Twelve of the fourteen dead were county employees; ten were environmental health specialists. Those ten made up about 25 percent of the county's health inspectors. According to autopsy reports released on May 27, 2016, the 14 deceased all died from multiple gunshot wounds, and almost all of them were shot in the back."
Source: Wikipedia.org | December 7, 2015 | Updated Tuesday, June 14, 2016, 8:00AM 
"On the morning of 22 March 2016, three coordinated bombings occurred in Belgium: two at Brussels Airport in Zaventem and one at Maalbeek metro station in Brussels. In these attacks, 31 civilians and two suicide bombers were killed, and 250 other civilians were injured, resulting in three days of national mourning in Belgium. An assault rifle and a third bomb were found during a search of the airport. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks. It was the deadliest act of terrorism on Belgian soil. Before the bombings, several Islamist terrorist attacks had originated from Belgium, and a number of counter-terrorist operations had been carried out there. In May 2014, a gunman with ties to the war in Syria attacked the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four. In January 2015, anti-terrorist operations, conducted against a group thought to be planning a second Charlie Hebdo shooting, included actions in Brussels and Zaventem. The operation resulted in the deaths of two suspects. In August 2015, a suspected terrorist committed a shooting and stabbing attack aboard a Thalys train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris via Brussels, before he was subdued by passengers."
Source: Wikipedia.org | March 24, 2016 
"Pulse is a gay bar and nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the United States. It was the scene of a mass shooting in 2016. Pulse hosts themed performances each night and has a monthly program featuring educational events geared towards the LGBT community. According to Orlando Weekly, Pulse features "three glitzy, throbbing rooms of club boys, twinks and twinks at heart. Every night has something different in store, but Pulse is known to have some pretty impressive drag shows, and the bar's dancers are usually gorgeous." Pulse was founded in 2004 by Barbara Poma and Ron Legler. Poma's brother John died after a battle with HIV, and the club is "named for John's pulse to live on," according to a marketing staff member in February 2016. The venue has a focus on local talent. The club was the scene of a shooting in May 2013. The 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting was a domestic U. S. terrorist attack that occurred on June 12, 2016, at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. At least 49 people were killed and 53 others wounded. The shooter, Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a 29-year-old Muslim American of Afghani descent, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and ISIL immediately before the attack. The [attack was the] deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U. S. history, and the deadliest attack on civilians in the U. S. since September 11, 2001. At 2:02 a.m. EDT June 12, shots were heard and an Orlando Police Department officer stationed at the nightclub engaged the gunman and returned fire. Pulse posted on its Facebook page at 2:09 a.m. EDT, "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running." The gunman was armed with an assault rifle, a handgun, and a "device" that officials believed was another threat. After additional officers engaged the suspect, the gunman retreated into the nightclub and began to take patrons hostage."
Source: CBS Evening News w/ Scott Cameron Pelley | June 13, 2016, 5:30-6:00PM | Wikipedia.org 
"On July 3, 2016, two bomb attacks were carried out in Baghdad, resulting in mass civilian casualties. A few minutes after midnight local time, a suicide car bombing in the district of Karrada killed over a hundred people and injured hundreds more. The mainly Shia area was busy with shoppers late at night because it was Ramadan. A second roadside bomb hit the suburb of Sha'ab, killing at least five. The Islamic State issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, naming the Karrada bomber as Abu Maha al-Iraqi. According to the BBC, there were reports that the source of the blast was a refrigerator van packed with explosives. The explosion caused a huge fire on the main street. Several buildings, including the popular al-Hadi Centre, were badly damaged. The bomb hit a shopping area in Karrada, where many people were on the street during the evening in order to shop and to break their Ramadan fast with iftar at local cafes. A suicide bombing, the bomb was concealed within a refrigerator truck. It was the first major assault on Baghdad following the Iraqi government's recapture of Fallujah from Islamic State in June 2016. A second roadside explosion occurred in the largely Shia suburb of Sha'ab in northern Baghdad around midnight, killing at least five people. In the aftermath of the attack, Baghdad Operations Command claimed that it had arrested members of a militant cell who were connected to the bombing. Iraqi police revealed that at least 125 had been killed and over 150 injured. Reports from the scene indicated that many of those killed were children. After initial reports, the death toll continued to rise as further corpses were recovered from the rubble and injured victims died of their injuries. At the time it was carried out, it was the deadliest attack in Iraq in 2016. Abdel Ghani Saadon, the general manager of Rusafa Health Directorate, issued a statement noting that the "hospitals of al-Kandi, al-Sadr and Sheikh Zayed received 138 wounded and 70 dead bodies of al-Karrada bombing." He noted that fifty bodies were burned beyond recognition, and that samples from them had been sent for DNA testing to determine their identities. The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the scene of the attack on the following day and was met by angry crowds shouting, "thief" and "dog.""
Source: “ABC News' World News Tonight Sunday” w/ Cecilia M. Vega | Sunday, July 3, 2016, 5:09PM CDT | Wikipedia.org, July 3, 2016, 5:22PM 
"On the evening of 14 July 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian resident of France, deliberately drove a cargo truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, killing at least 84 people and injuring hundreds more. Bouhlel was shot and killed by police. The incident was described as the third major terrorist attack in France since January 2015, following the Île-de-France attacks on 7–9 January 2015 and Paris attacks on 13 November 2015. On the morning before the attack, French President François Hollande reaffirmed that the state of emergency put in place after the November 2015 Paris attacks would end after the Tour de France finished on 26 July 2016. France had just finished hosting the Euro 2016 football tournament, during which the country had extensive security measures in place and deployed many more soldiers. On the evening of 14 July 2016, thousands of people had gathered along the waterfront of Nice, France, to watch the Bastille Day firework display. The mood of the crowd was celebratory. At approximately 22:10 CEST, 30 minutes before the incident, a large white cargo truck was seen approaching the Promenade des Anglais. "He was speeding up, braking, speeding up again and braking again. We thought it was weird," said Laicia Baroi, an eyewitness. The truck then turned on to the Promenade and headed southwest. The fireworks were just finishing at approximately 22:40 CEST, when the truck breached the vehicle barriers opposite the Lenval children's hospital. A motorcyclist tried to overtake the truck and open the driver's side door but fell under the truck's wheels. Watching this, two nearby police officers opened fire on the truck. At this point, the driver sped up, drove northeast, and plunged into the crowds on the Promenade, swerving to hit pedestrians. Police tried to stop it with gunfire, and the driver shot back at them, as well as at people in the crowd. The driver continued for 1.2 mi, killing and injuring pedestrians. Police surrounded the truck near the Palais de la Méditerranée hotel. The vehicle was raked with gunfire and the driver inside killed. In total, there were at least 84 deaths from the attack and 52 critically injured victims who are receiving emergency treatment. Along with the many French people killed, several foreigners were also among the dead. There were reportedly many Muslims who were among the 84 people killed in the attack, according to an Iranian journalist who saw several people with scarves or speaking Arabic. Immediately after the attack, when it remained unclear whether the threat had ended, people used social media, particularly Twitter, to help others find shelter, using the hashtag #PortesOuvertesNice (open doors Nice) a variation of a hashtag used in other recent attacks in France. President François Hollande returned to Paris from Avignon to have an emergency Interior Ministry meeting regarding the attacks. Hollande addressed the French nation in a televised broadcast from Paris in the early morning of 15 July 2016 announcing future measures against terrorism, including a three-month extension of the state of emergency, previously due to end on 26 July. He also announced that more security personnel would be deployed."
Source: Wikipedia.org, 4:53PM | YahooNews Weekly Wrap-up by Katie Couric, July 15, 2016, 2:46PM 
"A mass shooting occurred at a nightclub in the Besiktas district of Istanbul,Turkey, on 1 January 2017. The attack occurred at about 01:15 FET (UTC+3) at the Reina nightclub in Ortaköy, where hundreds of people were celebrating the New Year. At least 39 people were killed and at least 70 were injured in the incident. The attack came during a period of heightened security measures in the city, with 17,000 police officers on duty, following several terrorist attacks over recent months. The incident followed an attack on the Istanbul Atatürk Airport on 28 June 2016 which killed 48 people, and a bombing at the Vodafone Arena on 10 December 2016 which killed 44. According to Reina's owner, security measures at the nightclub had been increased over the previous ten days after American intelligence officials warned about an attack over the holidays. The US embassy later denied that it had prior intelligence, dismissing such claims as "rumours on social media." According to Israeli TV, a day earlier, on Friday, the holy day-of-prayers in the Muslim world, in at least 80,000 mosques in Turkey, the worshippers were called to avoid the 'Sylvester' New Years Eve parties since they were a Christian custom. Days before the attack, a similar call for Turks to ban the New Years Eve celebrations as being non-Muslim was discussed on Turkish media. This call had been reiterated in other Muslim communities as far as Australia. A gunman opened fire in the nightclub at about 01:15. He reportedly carried an AK-47 rifle and, after killing a police officer and a bystander at the entrance, he entered it shooting. The attacker reportedly spoke Arabic as the attack was taking place, and shouted the Arabic phrase "Allahu akbar" during the attack. He reportedly fired more than 180 bullets during the seven minute attack before going to the kitchen, changing his clothes and escaping by blending in with the crowd. Although eyewitness testimonies reported by the Turkish media described up to three attackers, the police insist that they are only on the lookout for one. Police stormed the building, but Turkish authorities state that the attacker is still at large, with a manhunt underway. Authorities had earlier claimed that one gunman entered the nightclub and was later killed by the police. The attacker left the weapon at the scene. At the time of the attack, about 600 people were at the nightclub to celebrate the New Year. 39 people were killed, including up to 24 foreigners and one policeman on duty at the club entrance. At least 70 others were injured. A number of people jumped into the waters of the Bosphorus strait to escape the attack. In the aftermath, police set up a cordon around the nightclub. Istanbul's governor Vasip Sahin said the incident was a terrorist attack. The Turkish government ordered a temporary media blackout, citing concerns over security and public order. In response to the attack, the Turkish military carried out attacks against ISIL targets in the Syrian town of al-Bab. 22 people are claimed to have been killed in the raids. According to Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, a single gunman carried out the attack and is currently at large. Amaq News Agency, ISIL's unofficial media apparatus, released a statement claiming the attacker was a soldier of ISIL who had "struck one of the most famous nightclubs where the Christians celebrate their apostate holiday." ISIL also took the unusual step of claiming responsibility directly, saying in a statement that the attack was carried out "in continuation of the blessed operations that the Islamic State is conducting against Turkey, the protector of the cross," and accused Turkey of killing Muslims via "air strikes and mortar attacks" in Syria. The statement did not specify whether the attack was directly organized by ISIL, or whether the group had merely inspired the gunman. On 2 January, Turkish police arrested eight people in connection with the attack; the gunman was not among them. Police said they believed the attack was carried out by the same ISIL cell that targeted Atatürk Airport in June 2016. Many world leaders and officials condemned the attack, offering condolences. Condolences, condemnation or support were offered by the governments of the United States, Russia, North Korea, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Iran, Italy, Greece, Saudi Arabia, India, the United Kingdom and Pakistan."
Source: 'ABC News World News Tonight' w/ Cecilia M. Vega | Monday, January 2, 2017, 5:30PM-6:00PM CDT | Wikipedia.org, January 2, 2017, 11:00PM CDT 
"The 2017 Resorts World Manila attack occurred on 2 June 2017, when dozens of people at the Resorts World Manila entertainment complex in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines, were killed or injured when a gunman caused a stampede and set fire to casino tables and slot machine chairs around midnight. The gunman moved to a storage area to steal casino chips from the venue, but later committed suicide after sustaining injuries from the police. All of the attack's deaths and injuries resulted from the initial stampede and smoke inhalation from the fire. While initial suspicions strongly pointed towards a terrorist attack, Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa said a few hours after the assault that the motive was likely robbery. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant through the Amaq News Agency, claimed responsibility for the attack, which the Filipino police have rejected. Emerging evidence eventually confirmed that the attack was financially motivated and committed by Jessie Javier Carlos, a debt-riddled former civil servant. A few minutes after midnight of 2 June 2017, a gunman smuggled petroleum fuel and an M4 rifle into the Resorts World Manila casino's second floor for high rollers. The gunman reportedly wore a mask, and did not utter any words or battle cries before beginning the assault. The gunfire caused mass panic, and in the evacuation some guests were injured by a stampede. People hearing the initial shots immediately fled from the first and second floors of the building, but some retreated deeper into the building for cover. Reports of an active shooter in the restaurant below the second floor casino soon followed the initial gunfire. In the evacuated gambling floor of the casino the gunman doused the felt linings of poker tables and cushioned slot machine chairs with a flammable liquid, igniting them with a hand-held lighter. At 12:18 am, the gunman proceeded to break into a safe room by shooting out the locks of secured doors with his rifle, taking 113 million pesos (US$2.3 million) worth of gambling chip. Dela Rosa stated that the gunman did not aim his assault rifle at anyone. Despite no one being directly targeted by the suspect's gunfire, the burning casino furniture produced toxic smoke that caused at least 36 reported deaths from smoke inhalation as fumes overcame the crowd, including Elizabeth Panlilio Gonzales, wife of Pampanga Rep. Aurelio D. Gonzales, Jr., and one South Korean man dying due to an apparent heart attack. Southern Police District Director Superintendent Tomas Apolinario stated that all of the bodies were found within the casino area, most of which were women located within the building's bathroom. A total of 54 were earlier reported injured, including a security guard who accidentally shot himself in panic. It was later reported that 70 were injured. By 1:30 am, a Philippine SWAT team had responded in a raid of the mall and casino premises. The gunman was shot and injured by the security staff and fled upwards during the confusion to one of the complex's hotels. At 1:46 am, the wounded gunman shot open the door of Room 510 of the hotel, set fire to the corridor and committed suicide by setting himself on fire in Room 510. The gunman's bag containing the stolen chips was recovered in a toilet. United States President Donald Trump expressed sadness over the incident, which he labeled as a terrorist attack, and added that U. S. officials "were closely monitoring the situation. "U. S. First Lady Melania Trump tweeted, "My thoughts & prayers go out to the people in Manila, Philippines.""
Source: Wikipedia.org | Monday, June 5, 2017, 12:00AM 
"On 3 June 2017, starting at 22:08 BST, three people conducted a terrorist attack in two locations in central London. The attack began when a white van rammed multiple pedestrians on London Bridge. The van drove on and came to a halt south of the bridge. Three men left the van and ran to Borough Market where stabbing attacks took place in multiple restaurants. Witnesses reported that the attackers shouted "This is for Allah" and stabbed patrons with knives. Seven people were killed and 48 injured in the attack. Three suspects were shot dead by police. The Metropolitan Police declared the London Bridge and Borough Market attacks to be "terrorist incidents." Multiple explosions subsequently heard near Borough Market were confirmed to be controlled explosions. The attack was the third to have taken place in Great Britain since the beginning of 2017. In March 2017, a man killed five people in a combined vehicle and knife attack at Westminster, and 22 people were killed in the Manchester Arena in a May 2017 suicide bombing. Following the latter incident, the UK Threat Level for terrorism in the country was raised to "critical," meaning an attack was "expected imminently," but was reduced back to "severe," meaning an attack was "highly likely," after five days. It stood at "severe" at the time of the June attacks. At around 22:08 BST, a white van traveling north to south across London Bridge mounted the pavement and hit pedestrians. Police began evacuating all buildings within the vicinity of the bridge. London Bridge station was also closed at the request of the police. Waterloo East, Charing Cross and Cannon Street stations were also closed. Police at the cordon confirmed that there had been fatalities. The Metropolitan Police dispatched boats onto the River Thames, with assistance from the RNLI, to contribute to the evacuation of the area. A witness reported the attackers shouted "This is for Allah." The Metropolitan Police asked the public to remain calm and vigilant. A stabbing incident took place in Vauxhall at 23:45 BST, causing both Bank and Vauxhall stations to be briefly closed. The stabbing was later confirmed to be unrelated to the terrorist attack. In the morning of 4 June, police made 12 arrests following raids in flats in the Barking area of east London, where one of the attackers lived. Four are currently being held. Seven members of the public and the three attackers were killed. Another 48 people were injured in the attack including one New Zealander, two Australians and four French citizens. An officer from the British Transport Police responding to the attack was stabbed and suffered serious injuries to his head, face and neck. The three attackers were shot and killed by armed police. Their identities have not yet been released. Police are currently carrying out further investigations to whether anyone else was involved in the attack plot. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said on 4 June, "we are confident about the fact that they were radical Islamist terrorists, the way they were inspired, and we need to find out more about where this radicalization came from."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Sunday, June 4, 2017, 7:00AM 
"On October 31, 2017, a man drove a flatbed pickup truck in a vehicle-ramming attack on cyclists and runners along 1 mile of a bike path alongside West Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, killing eight people and injuring at least 11 others. Upon exiting the vehicle, he shouted allahu akhbar while wielding a paintball gun and a pellet gun, and was shot in the abdomen by police, and then arrested. At around 3:05 p.m. EDT on October 31, 2017, a man drove south along West Street in Lower Manhattan in a flatbed pickup truck that he had rented at a New Jersey Home Depot. At Houston Street, he swerved onto Hudson River Greenway, Hudson River Park's protected bike lane, parallel to West Street, and entered the bike lane. He ran over multiple people in the bikeway, mainly bicyclists, killing eight people and injuring at least 11 others along a one-mile stretch. The driver then collided his truck with a school bus that transports students with special needs, injuring four people on the bus, and came to a stop near the corner of Chambers Street and West Street, adjacent to Stuyvesant High School. He left the truck brandishing guns, which turned out to be a paintball gun and a pellet gun. Law enforcement officers said that he shouted "Allahu Akbar!" as he stepped out of the vehicle. The suspect was shot in the abdomen by a New York City Police Department officer, taken into custody, and transported to a hospital for medical care. The attack scene is just several blocks north of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum site. Eight people were killed and at least 11 were injured in the attack, which New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio described as a "particularly cowardly act of terror." Two children were among the injured. Six of those killed were foreign nationals: five from Argentina and one from Belgium The five Argentine victims had been part of a group of ten former classmates at San Martín Polytechnic, in the city of Rosario, celebrating their 30th graduation anniversary. They were fulfilling a promise made to each other when they graduated. The victims, according to the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were Diego Angelini, Ariel Erlij, Hernán Ferruchi, Hernán Mendoza, and Alejandro Pagnucco. A sixth member of the group, Martín Marro, was hospitalized at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital. Police identified the suspect as 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov, born in Uzbekistan who entered the United States on a Diversity Immigrant Visa in 2010, and is a permanent "green card" resident in the U. S. The Guardian has reported that Saipov was identified by "officials who weren’t authorised to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity." He resided in Stow, Ohio, before moving to Tampa, Florida, and then Paterson, New Jersey. The suspect had worked for the taxi service company Uber as a driver in New Jersey for six months. Stuyvesant High School and I. S. 289 were placed on lockdown after reports that shots were heard nearby. Several nearby streets were closed off, including West, Chambers, and Murray Streets, causing traffic jams throughout lower Manhattan. President Donald Trump called for the termination of the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program" in favor of a merit-based immigration system. He blamed U. S. Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democratic Party senator representing New York, for allowing the assailant to gain entry to the U. S. because Schumer had sponsored the Diversity Immigrant Visa program. Trump vowed to reinstate his travel ban. The President ordered Homeland Security to step up the already Extreme Vetting Program."
Source: ABC World News, Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 5:30PM | Good Morning America Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 8:09AM | Wikipedia.org 
"The 2018 Intercontinental Hotel Kabul attack took place on 20 January 2018, when a group of four or five gunmen attacked the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, sparking a 12-hour battle. The attack left at least 42 people dead and more than 14 others injured, with reports that the death toll might rise to 43. Kabul is held by the NATO-supported Afghan government, though both the Taliban and Islamic State were able to launch destructive attacks on the capital in the preceding months, including a deadly suicide bombing less than a month prior to the Intercontinental raid. On 20 January 2018, around 21:00 local time gunmen armed with light weapons and rocket-propelled grenades had stormed the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, opening fire and taking hostages. It is believed the gunmen targeted foreigners. Some hotel guests tried to escape the gunmen by tying bed sheets together and climbing down from the upper floors of the building, which was partially set on fire. Afghan special forces were lowered by helicopters onto the hotel's roof in an attempt to neutralize the attackers. Later soldiers from the Afghan National Army with the assistance of Norwegian special forces from the Marinejegerkommandoen responded to the attack and exchanged gunfire with gunmen in the hotel. This is the second attack on this hotel, the other being the attack in 2011. Afghan officials said the attack was over by the morning hours of 21 January, with 4 attackers and at least 18 others killed, including 14 foreigners. More than 160 people had been rescued from the hotel, while a number of others remained missing. These included 16 employees of Afghan airline Kam Air, which announced that 11 out of the 42 people working for the company who had been present were killed during the attack, while 15 others survived. “The attack was carried out by Pakistan based Haqqani network,” the Afghan government said, but stopped short of providing evidence. At least two senior Afghan officials said the country’s intelligence agency had reports that the Haqqani Network, an arm of the Taliban, had planned the violence yet has not publicly released that information. The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, warning Afghan civilians to avoid locations frequented by foreigners. Weeks prior to the attack, U. S. President Donald Trump suspended military aid to Pakistan accusing it of providing a safe haven for terrorist groups who attack in Afghanistan. On January 22, Trump pressured Pakistan to expel the Taliban and Haqqani leaders. The Afghan interior ministry said a private firm had assumed responsibility for securing the Intercontinental Hotel around three weeks before. The ministry said it was investigating how the attackers had managed to enter the building. 34 provincial officials were gathered at the hotel to participate in a conference organized by the Telecommunication Ministry. An official at that ministry said that more than 100 IT managers and engineers were on site when the attack took place. Members of the Afghan parliament criticized the fact that the hotel's security was in the hands of a private company. Parliament plans to hold a special session regarding this issue."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Sunday, January 28, 2018, 6:00PM 
"On 21 April 2019, Easter Sunday, three Christian churches across Sri Lanka and three luxury hotels in the commercial capital Colombo were targeted in a series of coordinated terrorist suicide bombings. Later that day, there were smaller explosions at a housing complex in Dematagoda and a guest house in Dehiwala. Approximately 253 people were killed, including at least 42 foreign nationals and three police officers, and at least 500 were injured. The church bombings were carried out during Easter services in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo; the hotels that were bombed were the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury and Tropical Inn. The Kingsbury hotel management resumed their operations on 24 April 2019; the other two luxury hotels, the Cinnamon Grand and Shangri-La, are closed temporarily until further notice. A minor explosion of a motorbike was also recorded in Savoy Cinema, Colombo during the raids conducted by police officers on 24 April 2019. On 25 April 2019, another minor controlled explosion of a motorbike was reported at a bus stand in Moratuwa during the police raids. On 26 April 2019, three explosions and a shootout occurred during a raid in Sainthamaruthu. At least 15 people were killed, including 6 children and a curfew was imposed in the area. According to Sri Lankan government officials, all seven of the suicide bombers in the attacks were Sri Lankan citizens associated with National Thowheeth Jama'ath, a local militant Islamist group with suspected foreign ties, previously known for attacks against Buddhists. State Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene said in parliament on 23 April that the government believed the attack was in retaliation for the attack against Muslims in Christchurch on 15 March 2019. The direct linkage between the two attacks was questioned by some experts such as Rita Katz who pointed up the fact the Sri Lanka attack was likely planned long before the Christchurch attack. On 23 April 2019, Amaq News Agency, a propaganda outlet for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant stated that the perpetrators of the attack targeting the citizens of coalition countries and Christians in Sri Lanka were Islamic State fighters. Sri Lanka was not part of the anti-ISIL coalition, and the overwhelming majority of those killed were Sri Lankan citizens. There is a long history of terrorism in Sri Lanka. Most of the attacks were by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which was defeated in 2009 in its effort to violently seize control of the country from the Sinhalese ethnic majority to create an independent Tamil state, and the Marxist-Leninist, communist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which was involved in armed uprisings in 1971 and 1987-89. While there were thirteen non-state terrorist incidents in Sri Lanka in the 2000s, since the defeat of the LTTE, the 2019 attack is the first major attack of the 2010s. The main religions in Sri Lanka are Buddhism (70.2%), Hinduism (12.6%), Islam (9.7%) and Christianity (6.1%), with 82% of the Christians being Roman Catholics. The remaining Christians are evenly split between the Anglican Church of Ceylon and other Protestant denominations. During the 2010s, a low but persisting number of attacks and threats were made against Christian congregations and individuals, as well as other religious minorities. Anglican Bishop of Colombo Dhiloraj Canagasabey called for constitutional rights on religion to be protected. In 2018, the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka reported a large increase in the number of attacks against Christians in the country that year. This coincided with a Supreme Court ruling against a Catholic organization in August, which deemed that proselytism was not protected by the constitution (though individual freedom of religion remained protected). Easter Sunday is one of Christianity's holiest days and church attendance in Sri Lanka is very high on this day. This was the first time since 2009, the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, that the country had experienced a major terrorist attack. The last time such terrorist attack took place with deaths in triple digits was the 2006 Digampathana bombing. Local police arrested eight people residing in the Colombo suburb of Dematagoda on the day of the attacks. Five more suspected attackers and accomplices were arrested at a house during the night. Police confirmed on the day after the bombings that 24 people were arrested. However, by 23 April the number of people arrested was 40. Three police officers and two civilians were killed by bombs that exploded during the captures. By 24 April 60 people had been arrested with possible links to the attacks with 32 in custody. On 26 April the Sri Lankan Police had more than 70 suspects held on charges of suspicion of terrorism, aiding and abetting terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism. Four high-level suspects are being held by Terrorism Investigation Department and 33 are being held by Criminal Investigation Department. All are Muslims and Sri Lankan citizens, including four females. Most of them are friends and family of the suspected suicide bombers. Nine suicide bombers, including one woman, were involved in the attacks. Wijewardene announced that most of the suicide bombers were "well-educated and come from middle or upper-middle class," and that they were "financially quite independent." He stated one of the bombers studied in the United Kingdom before going to Australia to complete a postgraduate degree. Sri Lankan police have identified eight of the nine suicide bombers.
Source: Wikipedia.org | Thursday, April 25, 2019 |
 “Find A Grave Memorial ID 1023”
"Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784-July 9, 1850) Taylor was the 12th President of the United States, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850. Before his presidency, Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general. Taylor's status as a national hero as a result of his victories in the Mexican-American War won him election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died seventeen months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, which had been inflaming tensions in Congress. Taylor was born into a prominent family of planters who migrated westward from Virginia to Kentucky in his youth. He was commissioned as an officer in the U. S. Army in 1808 and made a name for himself as a captain in the War of 1812. He climbed the ranks establishing military forts along the Mississippi River and entered the Black Hawk War as a colonel in 1832. His success in the Second Seminole War attracted national attention and earned him the nickname "Old Rough and Ready." In 1845, as the annexation of Texas was underway, President James K. Polk dispatched Taylor to the Rio Grande area in anticipation of a potential battle with Mexico over the disputed Texas–Mexico border. The Mexican–American War broke out in May 1846, and Taylor led American troops to victory in a series of battles culminating in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Monterrey. He became a national hero, and political clubs sprang up to draw him into the upcoming 1848 presidential election. Despite being a Southerner and a slaveholder himself, Taylor did not push for the expansion of slavery. Taylor was born on November 24, 1784, on a plantation in Orange County, Virginia, to a prominent family of planters of English ancestry. He is inconclusively believed to have been born at the home of his maternal grandfather, Hare Forest Farm. He was the third of five surviving sons in his family (a sixth died in infancy) and had three younger sisters. His mother was Sarah Dabney (Strother) Taylor. His father, Richard Taylor, had served as a lieutenant colonel in the American Revolution. Taylor was a descendant of Elder William Brewster, the Pilgrim colonist leader of the Plymouth Colony, a Mayflower immigrant, and one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact; and Isaac Allerton Jr., a colonial merchant and colonel who was the son of Mayflower Pilgrim Isaac Allerton and Fear Brewster. Taylor's second cousin through that line was James Madison, the fourth president. In June 1810, Taylor married Margaret Mackall Smith, whom he had met the previous autumn in Louisville. "Peggy" Smith came from a prominent family of Maryland planters; she was the daughter of Major Walter Smith, who had served in the Revolutionary War. The couple had six children. Taylor was the last President to own slaves while in office. He was the third of four Whig presidents, the last being Fillmore, his successor. Taylor was also the second president to die in office, preceded by William Henry Harrison who died while serving as President nine years earlier, as well as the only President elected from Louisiana. On July 4, 1850, Taylor reportedly consumed raw fruit and iced milk while attending holiday celebrations and a fund-raising event at the Washington Monument, which was then under construction. Over the course of several days, he became severely ill with an unknown digestive ailment. His doctor "diagnosed the illness as cholera morbus, a flexible mid-nineteenth-century term for intestinal ailments as diverse as diarrhea and dysentery but not related to Asiatic cholera," the latter being a widespread epidemic at the time of Taylor's death. The identity and source of Taylor's illness are the subject of historical speculation although it is known that several of his cabinet members had come down with a similar illness. Despite treatment, Taylor died at 10:35 p.m. on July 9, 1850. He was 65 years old. Almost immediately after his death, rumors began to circulate that Taylor was poisoned by pro-slavery Southerners, and similar theories persisted into the 20th century. In 1978, Hamilton Smith based his assassination theory on the timing of drugs, the lack of confirmed cholera outbreaks, and other material. In the late 1980s, Clara Rising, a former professor at University of Florida, persuaded Taylor's closest living relative to agree to an exhumation so that his remains could be tested. The remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner on June 17, 1991. Samples of hair, fingernail, and other tissues were removed, and radiological studies were conducted. The remains were returned to the cemetery and reinterred, with appropriate honors, in the mausoleum."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Saturday, June 4, 2016, 3:20PM 
"One World Trade Center (also known as 1 World Trade Center, One WTC and 1 WTC; the current building was dubbed the "Freedom Tower" during initial basework) refers to the main building of the new World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, and the fourth-tallest in the world. The 104-story supertall structure shares a numeric name with the North Tower of the original World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The new skyscraper stands on the northwest corner of the 16-acre World Trade Center site, on the site of the original 6 World Trade Center. The building is bordered by West Street to the west, Vesey Street to the north, Fulton Street to the south, and Washington Street to the east. One World Trade Center became the tallest structure in New York City on April 30, 2012, when it surpassed the height of the Empire State Building. The tower's steel structure was topped out on August 30, 2012. On May 10, 2013, the final component of the skyscraper's spire was installed, making the building, including its spire, reach a total height of 1,776 feet. Its height in feet is a deliberate reference to the year when the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. The building opened on November 3, 2014. The new World Trade Center complex will initially include three other high-rise office buildings, which will be built along Greenwich Street, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, located just south of One World Trade Center, where the original Twin Towers stood. The construction of the new building is part of an effort to memorialize and rebuild following the destruction of the original World Trade Center complex. On November 1, 2014, moving trucks started moving items for the tower's first tenant, magazine publisher Condé Nast, from its old headquarters in Times Square to One World Trade Center. The New York Times noted that the area around the World Trade Center had transitioned from a financial area to one with technology firms, residences, and luxury shops, coincident with the building of the new tower. The building opened on November 3, 2014, and Condé Nast employees moved into spaces spread among 24 floors. Although Condé Nast occupies floors 20 to 44, its move to the new tower will not be complete until early 2015. It is expected that the company will attract new tenants to occupy the remaining 40% of unleased space in the tower, as Condé Nast had revitalized Times Square after moving there in 1999. Only about 170 of 3,400 total employees moved into the new tower on the first day. Future tenants will include Kids Creative, Legends Hospitality, the BMB Group, Servcorp, and GQ."
"Whitney Plantation is a museum devoted to slavery in the U. S. South that is preserved in Whitney Plantation Historic District near Wallace, Louisiana, in St. John the Baptist Parish. The museum opened on the plantation property in December 2014. It was founded by John Cummings, a trial attorney from New Orleans. The grounds contain imaginative exhibits and original art works, such as life-size sculptures of children to symbolize the thousands of children who died while in slavery. The French Creole raised-style main house built in 1803 is the most important architectural example in the state. In addition, the plantation has numerous extant outbuildings or dependencies: a pigeonnier, a plantation store, the only surviving French Creole barn in Louisiana, and slave quarters. The complex includes three archaeological sites which have had varying degrees of exploration. The 1884 Mialaret House, with its associated buildings and property, were added by later purchase; they help to reflect the long working history of the plantation. Some of the land is still planted in sugarcane. The historic district was listed on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places in 1992. Whitney Plantation is also one of 26 sites featured on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Sunday, June 19, 2016, 8:30AM 
"On 28 June 2016, gunmen armed with automatic weapons and explosive belts staged a simultaneous attack at Terminal 2 of Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Forty-two people were killed in the attack and 238 people were injured in addition to the attackers, six critically. The gunfire occurred at the airport's parking lot, while the explosions occurred at the entrance to the international arrivals terminal and appear to have been caused by suicide bombers. Some reports stated that the explosions occurred in different parts of the airport. There were three perpetrators who detonated their explosives in or near the terminal. However, there were reports and witness stating that there were four armed men running away from the blasts; this has not yet been confirmed by police personnel. A US intelligence source told CBS News that the coordinated attacks took only about 90 seconds. Istanbul had already been subjected to three terrorist attacks in the first half of 2016, including suicide attacks in January and in March that were both linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and a car bombing in early June claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, a "radical offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party." Shortly before 22:00 Istanbul time, two assailants approached the x-ray scanner at a security checkpoint, and opened fire. Police officers then returned fire. The assailants then detonated bombs on their persons. A closed-circuit video of the incident showed an armed assailant walking and firing at people within the terminal. The gunman was then shot by a security officer and fell to the ground, with the security officer approaching to investigate. The officer then ran away, presumably having noticed the gunman's explosive belt. The suicide belt then detonated. During and immediately after the attacks, hundreds of passengers and people inside the airport hid anywhere they could in shops, bathrooms and under benches. Two of the attackers detonated explosive devices, killing themselves; one was killed, presumably by security forces. Four armed men were also reported to have been seen running away from the scene after the explosions. Many travelers described what they saw during the attack to reporters. One man stated, "We came right to international departures and saw the man randomly shooting. He was just firing at anyone coming in front of him. He was wearing all black. His face was not masked. I was 50 meters away from him." He continued, "We ducked behind a ticket counter but I stood up and watched him. Two explosions went off shortly after one another. By that time he had stopped shooting." Lastly, he said, "He turned around and started coming towards us. He was holding his gun inside his jacket. He looked around anxiously to see if anyone was going to stop him and then went down the escalator. We heard some more gunfire and then another explosion, and then it was over." Other people who had arrived outside the terminal said that multiple taxicab drivers were screaming, "Don't enter! A bomb exploded!" from their windows to incoming traffic."
Source: ABC World News Tonight w/ George Robert Stephanopoulos | June 29, 2016, 5:30PM-5:45PM | Wikipedia.org 
"On the night of 1 July 2016, at 21:21 local time, seven militants opened fire on the Holey Artisan Bakery in the Gulshan neighborhood and diplomatic area of Dhaka, Bangladesh. They also threw bombs, took several dozen hostages, and killed two police officers in shootouts with police. They reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is greatest") during the attack. Twenty-eight people were killed, including 17 foreigners, two police officers, and six gunmen. One of the gunmen was captured and 13 hostages were freed by Bangladesh Armed Forces, Police, RAB, BGB and joint forces. According to Bangladesh's Inspector General of Police, all seven of the attackers were Bangladeshi citizens. Bangladesh, having a population of 171 million, is a developing country with a GDP per capita income of $1,284 per year. The militant Islamic organization Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen was founded in 1998 and outlawed in 2005 when it committed a series of bombings, but later took up activities again. Since 2013, the country has experienced an increase in Islamist attacks on religious minorities, secularist and atheist writers and bloggers and LGBT rights activists. Since September 2015, there have been over 30 such attacks. [The] Islamic State of Iraq and [ISIL] has claimed responsibility for 21 of them. Gulshan is a wealthy neighborhood of Dhaka and is home to many foreign embassies. The attack started at about 21:20 local time. Seven attackers entered the restaurant armed with bombs and guns, and one attacker also had a sword. They opened fire and detonated several of the bombs before taking many hostages, almost all foreigners. They engaged in shootouts with police, injuring several policemen, two of whom later died. Police cordoned off the area around the restaurant and planned a rescue raid. Twenty civilians, six gunmen, and two police officers were confirmed killed, while 50 others, mostly police personnel, were injured. The two dead police officers included an Assistant Commissioner of Detective Branch of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, and the officer-in-charge of the nearby Banani police station. Japanese and Italian citizens were among the victims. The Bangladesh Army initially announced that all 20 hostages killed in the attack were foreigners, and that they were "killed brutally with sharp weapons" by the perpetrators. Those who could recite a verse from the Quran from memory were spared in an effort to only kill non-Muslims. Among the victims were seven Japanese citizens–five men and two women–who were associated with the Japan International Cooperation Agency. A 19-year-old female of Indian nationality was also killed. An initial report from Amaq News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and [ISIL] said the group claimed it had killed 24 people and wounded 40 others. A second report, issued directly by ISIS a few hours later, said the group had killed "22 crusaders" and was accompanied by photos of the attackers, standing in front of ISIS banners. However, the home minister of Bangladesh, Asaduzzaman Khan has stated that the perpetrators belonged to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and were not affiliated with ISIS. They were well-educated and mostly from rich families."
Source: “ABC News' World News Tonight Saturday” w/ Cecilia M. Vega | Saturday, July 2, 2016, 5:30PM-5:45PM | Wikipedia.org, July 3, 2016, 11:15AM 
"A mass shooting occurred on the evening of January 29, 2017 at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighborhood of Quebec City, Canada. Six people were killed and seventeen others injured when a lone gunman opened fire just before 8:00 pm, shortly after the end of evening prayers. Fifty-three people were reported present at the time of the shooting. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Philippe Couillard called the shooting a terrorist attack, despite the fact the suspect was not charged with terrorism. The province of Quebec prioritizes immigrants who speak fluent French, and therefore has many Muslim immigrants from former French colonies like Senegal, as well as Syria, Lebanon, and the North African countries of the Maghreb. In addition a number of Muslim French citizens with family origins in the former French colonies have immigrated to Quebec from France. As a result Arab residents of the province make up a larger share of its population than in any other Canadian province, although like most immigrants to Quebec, they are concentrated in Montreal, Quebec's largest city. The Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City in the city's west-end Sainte-Foy neighborhood, also known as the Grande Mosquée de Québec, is one of several mosques in Quebec City. The mosque is close to the Université Laval, which has many international students from French-speaking, Muslim-majority African countries. In June 2016, during Ramadan, it was the target of an Islamophobic hate crime when a pig's head was left outside the mosque. After that incident the mosque installed CCTV security cameras. Quebec City has a low crime rate; in 2015, there were only two homicides in the city. It has an active far-right community, compared to other Canadian cities. A local chapter of Soldiers of Odin said it wanted to "patrol" neighborhoods where Muslims live. According to witnesses at the scene, the gunman entered the mosque shortly after the scheduled 7:30 pm prayers began, wearing either a hood or a ski mask. At about 7:55 pm EST, when the first calls to the police were made, he began shooting at worshippers lingering in the mosque after the prayer. A witness said the attacker walked into the mosque after the evening prayer and started shooting anything that moved. According to the same witness, the man left after emptying his weapon. Six people were killed and nineteen were injured in the attack, including two who are still in critical condition. The dead included the owner of a local halal grocery store, a professor at Université Laval, three civil servants, and a pharmacy worker. According to the Islamic Cultural Centre, all six victims were dual citizens of Canada and their respective home countries. The government of Guinea said that two of its citizens were among the dead. Two persons of interest were arrested after the shooting. One was later released and is now considered a witness by police. The lone suspect, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, a student at Université Laval, called police from the area near the bridge to the Ile d'Orléans near the mosque, and told them he was involved and wanted to surrender. He was subsequently charged with six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder. Université Laval announced that Bissonnette would not be allowed on campus while judicial proceedings were underway. Bissonnette grew up in Cap-Rouge. Neighbours said his father and mother were both present in his life and were "model" parents, adding that they had never had a problem with either him or his twin brother. Former acquaintances say he was "introverted" and sometimes bullied at school. Police said he was not on their radar, and he had no court records other than traffic violations. Before the shooting he had been living in an apartment near the mosque along with his twin brother. People who knew him said he had expressed support for Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump, and had far-right, white nationalist and anti-Muslim views. The manager of a refugee-support Facebook page said Bissonnette frequently denigrated refugees and feminists online. A member of the mosque stated that he had met with him outside the mosque on 26 January and talked with him, believing he was interested in Islam however he started veering away from the subject."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Wednesday, February 1, 2017, 8:45PM 
"On 22 May 2017, a suicide bombing was carried out at Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, after a concert by American singer Ariana Grande. The attacker was identified by police as Salman Ramadan Abedi, a 22-year-old British citizen of Libyan descent who detonated an improvised explosive device as concertgoers were leaving the arena. The explosion killed 23 people, including Abedi (attacker), and injured at least 120 others. On 22 May 2017, at around 22:30 BST, a suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device packed with nuts and bolts in the foyer area of the Manchester Arena. The attack took place after an Ariana Grande concert that was part of her 2017 Dangerous Woman Tour. The concert was sold out, and up to 21,000 people may have attended. Many of the people were exiting through the foyer at the time of the explosion and were gathered there to buy concert merchandise. Greater Manchester Police declared the incident a terrorist attack, identifying it as a suicide bombing. It was the deadliest attack in the United Kingdom since the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the first in Manchester since the 1996 bombing by the Provisional IRA. Police stated that 23 people, including the suicide bomber, were killed in the blast and at least 120 others were injured, of whom 59 were hospitalised. North West Ambulance Service reported that 60 of its ambulances attended the scene, escorting 59 people to local hospitals and treating a number of walking wounded on site. Of the hospitalised, 12 were reported to be children under the age of 16. The suicide bomber was a 22-year-old British man, Salman Ramadan Abedi, who was known to British security services. He was born in Manchester on 31 December 1994 to a family of refugees from Libya who had settled in south Manchester. He grew up in the Whalley Range area and lived in Fallowfield, a suburb of Manchester. It was reported that Salman and his brother worshipped at Didsbury Mosque. A senior person at the mosque said that Abedi looked at him "with hate" after he preached against ISIS. Abedi's parents, both born in Tripoli, returned to Libya in 2011 following Muammar Gaddafi’s death, while Abedi stayed in the United Kingdom. In 2014, Abedi became a student at the University of Salford, where he studied business management before dropping out. Abedi had worked at a bakery, and his friends remembered him to be a skilled footballer. He had reportedly been involved with gangs and later Islamist extremism before the bombing, and French interior ministerGérard Collomb said that "he had links with Islamic State and had probably visited Syria as well." According to an acquaintance of his, Abedi's parents had become worried of his radicalisation during their stay in Libya. They seized his British passport, but later returned it after Abedi deceived them by claiming that he was going to visit the Islamic holy city of Mecca. A Muslim community worker is reported to have said two people who knew Abedi had called a hotline in the past to warn police about his views. Prime Minister Theresa May and Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn condemned the bombing, while the Queen expressed her sympathy to the families of the victims. Campaigning for the general election was suspended by all political parties for two days after the attack. The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, called the attack "evil” and announced a vigil to be held in Albert Square the following evening. Burnham, Corbyn, Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow and Home Secretary Amber Rudd were in attendance. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, condemned the attack with a written letter he posted on his social media accounts. Condolences were expressed by the leaders and governments of dozens of countries, United Nations Secretary-GeneralAntónio Guterres, Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, Pope Francis, Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Yousef Al-Othaimeen. Ariana Grande posted on her official Twitter account: "broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words." She suspended her tour and returned home to Florida."
Source: ABC World News Tonight, Wednesday, May 24, 2017, 5:30PM-5:37PM with David Jason Muir | Wikipedia.org, May 24, 2017, 5:38PM CDT 
"On the night of October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a large crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 58 people and injuring 489. Between 10:05 and 10:15 p.m. PDT, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada, fired hundreds of rifle rounds from his suite on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel. About an hour after firing ceased, he was found dead in his hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive remains unknown. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the United States. The crime reignited the debate about gun laws in the U. S., with attention focused on bump firing, a technique Paddock used to allow his semi-automatic rifles to fire at a rate similar to that of a fully-automatic weapon. Since 2014, the Route 91 Harvest country music festival has been held annually at Las Vegas Village, a 15-acre lot used for outdoor performances. The venue is 490 yards from the Mandalay Bay hotel in Paradise, Nevada, diagonally across the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Mandalay Bay Road. Country music singer Jason Aldean was giving the closing performance on the third and final day of the festival, which was attended by approximately 22,000 people. Paddock occupied a hotel suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. During Aldean's performance, Paddock broke two of his suite's windows with a hammer and fired hundreds of rifle rounds into the festival audience. The attack began at about 10:05 p.m. PDT. Many people in the crowd initially mistook the gunfire for fireworks. The gunfire continued, with some momentary pauses, over the span of ten minutes and ended by 10:15 p.m. Two of the bullets fired by Paddock traveled 2,000 feet to hit a large aviation fuel tank at the McCarran International Airport. One of the bullets penetrated the tank and the other lodged in the tank's outer shell, but the fuel did not ignite or explode, and was unlikely to have done so. The firing at the crowd ended when hotel security guard Jesus Campos arrived at the door of Paddock's suite while he was responding to an alarm that was triggered by a nearby open door (police called that alarm coincidental). Paddock fired approximately 200 bullets through the locked door into the hallway; one of the bullets wounded Campos in the leg. Campos radioed the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department that the gunman was in room 32135, then began evacuating people from the 32nd floor. President Trump subsequently praised Campos for his actions. At 10:17 p.m., the first two officers arrived at the shooter's floor and placed it on lockdown. Between 10:26 and 10:30 p.m., another eight police reached the floor. Since they could no longer hear gunfire, they moved systematically down the hallway, searching and clearing each room. By 11:20 p.m., police breached Paddock's room with explosives. The perpetrator was found dead, having shot himself in the head before the police entered. At 11:27 p.m., officers announced over the police radio that one suspect was down. Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval called the shooting "a tragic and heinous act of violence that has shaken the Nevada family." At a press conference, President Donald Trump described the shooter as "a very very sick individual," and "a demented man, [with a] lot of problems." He added "the police department has done such an incredible job, and we'll be talking about gun laws as time goes by." A White House official talking points memo, distributed to Trump allies, opposed tightening gun control since "new laws won't stop a mad man," but "will curtail the freedoms of law abiding citizens." On October 4, Trump went to Las Vegas. He visited a command center and the University Medical Center and gave a speech praising the actions of hospital personnel, police, paramedics, and the shooting victims themselves. Stock prices of firearms manufacturers rose the day after the mass shooting, as has happened after similar incidents. Investors expect gun sales will increase over concerns that a such an event could lead to more stringent gun-control legislation as well as a rush of customers wishing to defend themselves against future attacks. Police believe that Paddock acted alone and have not yet determined his motive. He has not been identified as a terrorist. They said they had no investigative information or criminal history showing he was dangerous. His only recorded interaction with law enforcement was a minor traffic citation years before the shooting, which he settled in court. The week before the massacre, Paddock wired US$100,000 to an account in the Philippines, the country where his live-in girlfriend had traveled. Police, relatives, and neighbors described him as a high-stakes gambler, and police said he had made casino transactions in the tens of thousands of dollars prior to the shooting, but did not specify whether these transactions were losses or wins. Court records show he married and divorced twice. He had no children. His younger brother and others who were in close contact with him described him as an ordinary man with no apparent religious or political affiliation. Paddock's father, Benjamin Paddock, was a bank robber who was placed on the FBI's most-wanted list in 1969 after he escaped from federal prison; he was taken off the list in 1977. The FBI wanted poster said he was "diagnosed as psychopathic" and had "reportedly suicidal tendencies." The children and their mother had no contact with him after the youngest of the children was born."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Sunday, October 8, 2017, 12:00AM 
"On November 5, 2017, a mass shooting took place at the First Baptist Church in the unincorporated community of Sutherland Springs, Texas, about 35 miles east of the city of San Antonio. Twenty-six people were killed and a further twenty were injured. It is the deadliest shooting in an American place of worship, surpassing the Charleston church shooting of 2015. At approximately 11:20 a. m. CST, a man wearing black tactical gear and wielding a semi-automatic rifle disembarked from a vehicle at a gas station across the street from the church and began firing in the direction of the church immediately. After crossing the street, he approached the building from the right while firing, and continued to fire as he entered the church. He used a Ruger AR-15-type rifle according to federal law enforcement. The "semi-automatic gunfire" was heard by a witness. As the gunman left the church, a local resident armed with a rifle shot at him, and may have injured him. The gunman dropped his rifle and fled in his car. The resident flagged down a car driving by, and the driver and resident pursued him at high speed for about five to seven minutes. The gunman lost control of his car and drove off the road in the neighboring Guadalupe County, near the city of New Berlin. He was observed to be motionless by the two men in pursuit. According to one of them, police took over the scene when they arrived later. The gunman was found dead by police in his car from a gunshot wound. It is unclear who inflicted it. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents from nearby San Antonio, along with agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, did not immediately reveal a motive. Twenty-six people were killed and twenty others were injured. Twenty-three died inside the church, two outside, and one in a hospital. The ages of the victims ranged from five to 72. The Sunday service is usually attended by approximately 50 people. Several children, one of them the 14-year-old daughter of church pastor Frank Pomeroy, were killed, as was a pregnant woman. The victims were taken to Connally Memorial Medical Center in Floresville, a teaching hospital in San Antonio and Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston. The perpetrator was identified as 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, described as a "young, white male" by police. Kelley was a U. S. Air Force member who served in logistics readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2009 until 2014. In 2012, he was court-martialed for two counts of Article 128 UCMJ, for assaulting his spouse and her child. He was sentenced to 12 months of confinement. In 2014 he was dismissed with a bad conduct discharge and a reduction to the service grade of E-1. Kelley had a residence in New Braunfels, Texas, which is about a 35 miles drive from Sutherland Springs. He was married in April 2011, and divorced in October 2012. His former mother-in-law had a Sutherland Springs mailing address. On October 29, several days prior to the shooting, he posted a photo of an assault rifle on his Facebook profile. United States President Donald Trump, who was in Japan at the time of the attack, tweeted, "May God be with the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene. I am monitoring the situation from Japan."
Source: Wikipedia.org, Monday, November 6, 2017, 4:10AM 
"The 2018 Kabul ambulance bombing occurred on 27 January 2018 near the Sidarat Square in Kabul, Afghanistan. At least 103 people have been killed and 235 others wounded in the attack. The Taliban is said to be behind the attack. On 27 January 2018, attackers blew up an explosives-packed ambulance near an interior ministry building on a busy and heavily-guarded street in Kabul during rush hour. The Jamhuriat Hospital, government offices, businesses and a school are close to the site of the blast. It is the third major attack in the past seven days following the 2018 Save The Children Jalalabad attack and 2018 Intercontinental Hotel Kabul attack. A bomb was hidden in an ambulance and detonated at a second police checkpoint, according to officials. Its blast also destroyed vehicles, shops, and buildings nearby. The attack occurred on a street, locally known as Chicken Street, near a building run by the Interior Ministry. Various government agencies have offices there and the road had security checkpoints in place. The coordinator for the Italian aid group Emergency that operates a trauma center described the event as a "massacre." According to reports, the vehicle was stopped at a second security checkpoint after passing the primary one claiming they had a patient. When police attempted to stop the vehicle from going further, the driver detonated the bomb. Relatives were reported to be queuing at the city morgue. The scene of the attack was described as one of carnage with shattered bodies, many unidentifiable, lying all over. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The Afghan government described it as a crime against humanity, and blamed Pakistan for providing support to the attackers. Pakistan denies supporting militants carrying out attacks in Afghanistan."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Monday, January 29, 2018, 9:00AM 
"The Christchurch mosque shootings were two consecutive terrorist attacks at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday Prayer on 15 March 2019. The attacks began at the Al Noor Mosque in the suburb of Riccarton at 1:40 pm and continued at the Linwood Islamic Centre at about 1:55 pm. The gunman live-streamed the first attack on Facebook Live. The attacks killed 50 people and injured 50 others. A 28-year-old Australian man, described in media reports as a white supremacist and part of the alt-right, was arrested and charged with murder. The attacks have been linked to an increase in white supremacism and alt-right extremism globally observed since the mid-2010s. Politicians and world leaders condemned the attacks, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described it as "one of New Zealand's darkest days." The government has established a royal commission of inquiry into its security agencies in the wake of the attacks, which are the deadliest mass shootings in modern New Zealand history. New Zealand has often been considered a safe country, and has a relatively low level of homicide. These attacks were the first mass shooting in the country since the Raurimu massacre in 1997. Prior to that, the deadliest public mass shooting was the 1990 Aramoana massacre, in which 13 people died. Experts have suggested that far-right extremism has been growing in New Zealand in recent years; the country has rarely been associated with the extreme right. The sociologist Paul Spoonley has called Christchurch a hotbed for white supremacists and the extreme nationalist movement, a suggestion rejected by Christchurch MP Gerry Brownlee. Australia, where the alleged gunman was from, has also seen a recent increase in xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia. Islam is practiced by over 46,000 New Zealanders (1.2 percent of the population), 3,000 of them in Christchurch and the wider Canterbury region. The Al Noor Mosque opened in 1985; it was the first mosque in the South Island. The Linwood Islamic Centre opened in early 2018. The gunman began shooting worshippers at the Al Noor Mosque, Riccarton, at around 1:40 pm. Police received the first emergency call at 1:41 pm. Between three hundred and five hundred people may have been inside the mosque attending Friday Prayer at the time of the shooting. A neighbour of the mosque told reporters he saw the gunman flee and drop what appeared to be a firearm in the driveway. The gunman live-streamed the first 17 minutes of this attack on Facebook Live, starting with the drive to the mosque and ending with the drive away. Moments before the shooting, he played several songs including "The British Grenadiers," a traditional British military marching song, and "Serbia Strong," a Serb nationalist song celebrating Radovan Karadžic, who was found guilty of genocide against Bosnian Muslims. One witness said the gunman continued to play "military music" from a portable speaker inside the mosque. As he approached the front entrance to the mosque, the gunman appeared to be greeted by one of the worshippers, who said "Hello, brother" and was the first victim to be killed in the attacks. The gunman spent several minutes inside the mosque, shooting attendees indiscriminately. He killed three people near the entrance and dozens more inside a prayer hall. A strobe-light attached to one of his weapons was used to disorient victims. During the attack, a worshipper, Naeem Rashid, charged at him and was shot; he later died from his injuries. The gunman fired indiscriminately at worshippers in the prayer hall from medium range. He soon left the mosque and fired at people outside. He then retrieved another weapon from his vehicle before returning to the mosque to kill more victims, many of whom were already wounded and unable to escape. He then exited the mosque again and killed a woman near the footpath as she pleaded for help. He left the scene shortly thereafter, in his car, to the music of "Fire" by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, where the singer proclaims: "I am the god of hellfire!" He had spent about six minutes at the Al Noor Mosque. He shot other civilians in the area and drove away at high speed, heading in the direction of the Linwood Islamic Centre. Fifty people (46 of them male, and 4 female) were killed in the attacks: 42 at the Al Noor Mosque; 7 at the Linwood Islamic Centre, and one who died later in Christchurch Hospital. They were between 3 and 77 years old. The hospital's Chief of Surgery said on 16 March that four had died in ambulances en route to the hospital. On 17 March, Commissioner Bush said 50 other people had been injured in the attacks, 36 of whom were being treated for gunshot wounds in hospital. Two were in a serious condition, and a 4-year-old girl was transferred to Starship Hospital in Auckland in a critical condition. Police charged Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian man, with murder in relation to the attacks. At the time of his arrest, he had been living for a few years in Andersons Bay in Dunedin. He was a member of a South Otago gun club and practised shooting at its range. He grew up in Grafton, New South Wales, attended Grafton High School, and worked as a personal trainer in his hometown from 2009 to 2011. Around 2012, he started visiting a number of countries in Asia and Europe. Police in Bulgaria and Turkey are investigating his visits to their nations. He became obsessed with terrorist attacks committed by Islamic extremists in 2016 and 2017, started planning an attack about two years prior to the shootings, and chose his targets three months in advance."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Friday, April 19, 2019, 7:00 PM CDT |
"On April 22, 2018, a mass shooting occurred at an American Waffle House restaurant in the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. Four victims were killed and two suffered gunshot wounds. Two others were injured by broken glass. The shooter, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, was rushed by an unarmed customer who took the weapon away, interrupting the shooting spree. The suspect was captured on April 23, ending a 34-hour manhunt. The gunman was partially naked when the shooting occurred, wearing only a green jacket. After sitting in a pickup truck in the parking lot for approximately four minutes, he came out holding an AR-15-style rifle and fatally shot two people outside the Waffle House. He then went inside the restaurant and continued to fire, killing a third person and fatally injuring a fourth, who died at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, with four others being treated for related injuries. One customer who suffered a bullet graze wound, 29-year-old James Shaw Jr., hid near the restaurant's bathrooms, rushed the shooter, and wrestled the rifle away. The gunman then fled on foot, leaving behind his rifle and ammunition. Police arrested Travis Jeffrey Reinking (born February 1, 1989) the day after the shooting. Reinking was from Morton, Illinois. He had a history of erratic conduct and delusions. In May 2016, sheriff's deputies in Tazewell County responded to a call from Reinking's parents in the parking lot of a drugstore, where a paramedic said Reinking had delusions that Taylor Swift was personally stalking him and hacking his phone. The report noted: "Travis is hostile toward police and does not recognize police authority. Travis also possesses several firearms." In 2017, he lived in an apartment above his father's crane rental business in Tremont, Illinois. In June 2017, an employee of the business called police, saying Reinking had come downstairs carrying a rifle, wearing a pink dress, and using an expletive before tossing the rifle in his trunk and leaving the building. On another occasion around the same time, a public pool director called police to report Reinking had come to the pool in a "pink women's housecoat" and then exposed himself to lifeguards. In July 2017, the U. S. Secret Service arrested Reinking near the White House after he crossed a barrier and refused to leave. The Secret Service said Reinking had said he "wanted to set up a meeting with the president." The report notes he made reference to being a "sovereign citizen." Reinking was charged with unlawful entry (a misdemeanor) and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in July 2017, in which Reinking performed 32 hours of community service and was ordered to stay away from the White House. In November 2017, the court dismissed the case after Reinking successfully completed the program. Following Reinking's arrest, Illinois authorities revoked his state firearms authorization and seized four of his weapons (including the AR-15 used in the Nashville shooting, two other rifles, and a handgun). According to the sheriff of Tazewell County, Illinois, Reinking's father, who held a valid state authorization card, asked sheriff's deputies whether he could keep the guns, and they allowed him to do so after he assured them "he would keep them secure and away from" his son. Both the Nashville police chief and the Tazewell County sheriff believe that Reinking's father returned the guns to his son sometime before the shooting. According to a spokesman for the Nashville police, Reinking moved to the Nashville area in the autumn of 2017 and was employed as a crane and construction worker from January 2018 until April 2018. He was fired on April 3, 2018 for claiming that people, including other employees, were "after him." According to police, four days before the Waffle House shooting, Reinking stole a BMW X6 from a Brentwood, Tennessee, dealership; police used GPS to track the car to Reinking's apartment complex and located the key fob in his apartment. The suspect left no notes behind. A manhunt for Reinking ensued, with police warning the public that he was potentially armed with two other weapons. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation added him to its "most wanted" list and offered a reward for information leading to his arrest. Reinking was captured the next day, about 34 hours after the shooting, after a construction worker reported him entering a wooded area close to the Waffle House. Police said Reinking was carrying a backpack with a semiautomatic firearm and ammunition. Shortly after the shooting, Nashville Mayor David Briley said, "It’s a tragic day for our city anytime people lose their lives at the hands of a gunman." Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam said he was "deeply saddened by the tragic incident in Antioch early this morning, and we mourn the lives taken in this senseless act of violence." Congressman Jim Cooper called for restricting "widespread civilian access to military-grade assault weapons."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Monday, April 30, 2018, 10:00AM |
"The Toronto van attack occurred on April 23, 2018, when a man later identified as Alek Minassian allegedly drove a rented van at speed along stretches of sidewalk on the western side of Yonge Street in the North York City Centre business district of Toronto striking numerous pedestrians and resulting in the deaths of 10 pedestrians with a further 16 injured, some critically. The 25-year-old suspected driver was arrested at 1:32 p.m., seven minutes after the first 9-1-1 call reporting the incident was made, just south of the crime scene. The attack is the deadliest vehicle-ramming attack in Canadian history. The first 9-1-1 call reporting pedestrians being hit was received at 1:25 p.m.EDT. A white Chevrolet Express van, rented from Ryder, was driven southbound on the sidewalk on the western side of Yonge Street from Finch Avenue towards Sheppard Avenue occasionally returning to the southbound lanes of the roadway. At Finch Avenue, the vehicle ran a red light, travelled along the west-side sidewalk, striking multiple pedestrians leaving a crime scene over a dozen city blocks. Security camera video from a local business shows the van reaching Tolman Street, which is one block south of Finch Avenue, at 1:24 p.m. A witness said the driver looked the victims directly in the eye during the attack and acted as if he was "playing a video game, trying to kill as many people as possible." The deaths of pedestrians occurred along a 0.9 mi stretch of Yonge Street from Finch Avenue to Mel Lastman Square, a civic plaza on the west side of Yonge Street. Paramedics were dispatched immediately to the site and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre was activated as an emergency centre. Nine people died at the scene and 15 were injured. At 8:15 p.m. the Toronto Police Service announced that a tenth person had died. Sunnybrook treated ten victims. The hospital reported that two persons arrived without vital signs and were pronounced dead on arrival, five were in critical condition, two serious and one in fair condition. A single police officer in traffic control capacity, Toronto Police Service constable Ken Lam, intercepted the damaged van, which was stopped on the north sidewalk on Poyntz Avenue, just west of Yonge Street and two blocks south of Sheppard Avenue, about 2.3 kilometres (1.4 mi) south of where the attack began. The officer stopped his cruiser near the van and confronted the suspected driver, later identified as Alek Minassian, standing near the opened driver-side door. During the confrontation, Minassian repeatedly drew his hand from his back pocket and pointed a dark-coloured object toward the police officer as if it were a pistol. Lam ordered Minassian to drop to the ground, while Minassian tried repeatedly to provoke the officer to kill him, saying "shoot me in the head!" when the officer warned him he may be shot. Lam then went to his cruiser and turned off its siren. As Minassian and Lam advanced towards each other, the officer recognized that the object in Minassian's hand was not a gun, holstered his pistol, and took out his baton. Minassian then dropped the object from his hand, went to the ground and surrendered to Lam. He was arrested at 1:32 p.m. Police identified the suspect as 25-year-old Alek Minassian, who had no prior criminal history. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was a student at Seneca College in North York from 2011 to 2018 and lives in Richmond Hill, a suburb north of Toronto. He was a software and mobile app developer. His former classmates at Thornlea Secondary School described him as "not overly social" and "harmless." In late 2017, Minassian enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces for two months, before requesting voluntary release after 16 days of recruit training. A senior military official said that Minassian "wasn't adapting to military life, including in matters of dress, deportment and group interactions in a military setting" and "there were no red flags and nothing that would point to anything like this." Following the attack, a Facebook post attributed to Minassian circulated online which indicated he may have identified himself as an incel ("involuntary celibate"). The incel subculture consists of online communities, primarily made up of men, whose members define themselves by not being able to get sex. On April 24, Minassian appeared without a lawyer before the Ontario Court of Justice in a Toronto courthouse, shackled and wearing a white prison jumpsuit. He was charged with 10 counts of first degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murderand ordered not to contact any of the alleged attempted murder victims. His father attended the hearing and cried, although the two did not speak to each other. He is scheduled to return to court on May 10 for a bail hearing. Police later announced that three additional charges of attempted murder would be laid at his next court appearance. Many domestic and international leaders expressed their support and condolences, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, United States Ambassador to Canada Kelly Knight Craft, and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Toronto Mayor John Tory added that the city would support the police investigation. U. S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron expressed their sympathies when addressing the press at the White House the next day."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Tuesday, May 1, 2018, 12:00AM |
"An animation showing when United States territories and states forbade or allowed slavery, 1789–1861."
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Whites to poor Blacks in 1789?
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Whites to poor Blacks in 1989?
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If only Blacks smell a rat, how did our noses get so flat?
 "Find A Grave Memorial ID 145138946"
"Laquan J. McDonald (25 Sep 1997-20 Oct 2014)." "The shooting of Laquan McDonald occurred October 20, 2014, in Chicago, Illinois when McDonald, a 17-year-old black male armed with a knife having a 3-inch blade, was shot 16 times in 14–15 seconds by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. Video of the shooting, captured on one police cruiser's dashboard camera, was released to the public on November 24, 2015, over 13 months after the shooting. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder within hours after the video's release. After turning himself in to authorities, he was initially ordered held without bail at Cook County Jail, and released on November 30 after posting a $150,000 cashier’s check as bond on bail set at $1.5 million. Numerous protests denouncing Laquan McDonald's death continue to draw support. Jason D. Van Dyke, 37, was born in 1978 in Hinsdale, Illinois and graduated from Hinsdale South High School in 1996. He earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from St. Xavier University in Chicago. A 14-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department with a salary of $78,012, Van Dyke is married and has two children. At least 20 citizen complaints have been filed against Officer Van Dyke since 2001, but none resulted in disciplinary action. Ten of the complaints allege he used excessive force, and two involve the use of a firearm. A jury awarded a Chicago man $350,000 after determining Van Dyke employed excessive force during a traffic stop. One complaint involved verbal abuse. Laquan McDonald, 17, was from the 37th Ward of Chicago. Since the age of three, McDonald lived in different relatives' homes and foster care, because the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services determined that his mother did not provide him with proper supervision. At the time of his death, he was a student at Sullivan House High School. Shortly before 10:00 p.m., police were called to investigate McDonald at 4100 South Pulaski Road due to reports he was carrying a knife and breaking into vehicles in a trucking yard at 41st Street and Kildare Avenue. When officers confronted McDonald, he used a knife to slice the tire on a patrol vehicle and damage its windshield. McDonald walked away from police after numerous verbal instructions from officers to drop the knife. He was shot 16 times in 14-15 seconds, expending the maximum capacity of Van Dyke's 9mm semi-automatic firearm. After McDonald fell to the ground, Van Dyke stopped firing for a moment, then opened fire again when McDonald moved, knife still in hand. Van Dyke was on the scene for less than 30 seconds before opening fire and began shooting approximately six seconds after exiting his car. The first responding officer stated that he did not see the need to use force and none of the at least eight other officers on the scene fired their weapons. Laquan McDonald was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m. According to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, an autopsy determined that McDonald was shot in his neck, chest, back, both arms, right leg and a graze wound to his left scalp. Toxicology reports indicated that McDonald had a negligible amount of PCP in his blood. His death was ruled a homicide due to multiple gunshot wounds. On Friday, November 27, a major day for shopping in the U. S., a group of protesters chanted "sixteen shots" and other slogans while marching on Michigan Avenue, the city's central shopping district. This caused some businesses to shut their doors and the police had to close Michigan Avenue, a six-lane street. On Sunday, November 29, 2015, Jabari Dean, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, threatened to kill 16 unspecified white males—one for every shot fired at McDonald—at the University of Chicago, as well as any white police officers who intervened. The University of Chicago announced that classes would be cancelled the next day. The same day, the FBI arrested Dean, who was charged with "transmitting in interstate commerce communications containing a threat to injure the person of another." Federal prosecutors stated they did not believe Dean had the means to carry out the attack he had threatened. The FBI opened an investigation into McDonald's death, and the city of Chicago approved a five-million dollar settlement in April 2015, although no lawsuit was filed. The police had originally claimed that McDonald had lunged at an officer. However, video footage contradicts that claim; McDonald made no lunges. When the existence of the dash-cam video became known after the shooting, the city of Chicago denied at least 15 requests for its release. Brandon Smith, a freelance journalist, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act on May 26. When his request was denied, he filed a lawsuit in August against the city. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sent a letter to the Police Department the day before a court hearing stating they cannot withhold the video and their claims that releasing it would interfere with an ongoing investigation or jeopardize a fair trial were unsubstantiated. On November 19, Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama denies the city's request for a stay and ordered that the video be released to the public no later than November 25. The city did not appeal the judge's decision and on November 24 after a press conference, the video showing [a] police killing McDonald was released. On November 24, 2015, Cook County State Attorney Anita Alvarez announced that Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder, and Van Dyke turned himself in to authorities. He was initially held without bail at Cook County Jail for six days. If convicted of first-degree murder, Van Dyke faces a prison sentence of 20 years to life imprisonment. A GoFundMe page that was set up to raise funds for his legal defense was shut down shortly after raising just over $10,000. On November 30, [2015] Van Dyke was granted bail, set at $1,500,000. He posted $150,000, ten percent of the bail, and was released from jail. Jason D. Van Dyke (born c. 1978) was born in Hinsdale, Illinois and graduated from Hinsdale South High School in 1996. He earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from St. Xavier University in Chicago. A 14-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department with a salary of $78,012, Van Dyke is married and has two children. At least 20 citizen complaints have been filed against Officer Van Dyke since 2001, but none resulted in disciplinary action. Ten of the complaints allege he used excessive force, and two involve the use of a firearm. A jury awarded a Chicago man $350,000 after determining Van Dyke employed excessive force during a traffic stop. One complaint involved verbal abuse with use of a racial slur. Van Dyke may have also been involved in the cover-up of a separate shooting in 2005. According to CNN, "the Chicago Police Department has about 12,000 officers. Like Van Dyke, 402 officers have 20 or more complaints on file in the database. The most complaints against any officer, according to the database, is 68. The database shows that of the 20 complaints against Van Dyke none resulted in discipline. Five complaints in the database were "not sustained," five were unfounded, four resulted in exoneration, five had unknown outcomes and one resulted in no action taken. On October 5, 2018, Van Dyke was finally found guilty of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery, but was found not guilty of official misconduct. On June 27, 2017 three current or former Chicago police officers were charged with conspiracy, official misconduct and obstruction of justice connected with a cover-up of the shooting. Those charged were David March, the lead detective in this case, Joseph Walsh, Van Dyke's partner on the night of the shooting, and Thomas Gaffney. Their bench trial began on November 27, 2018, and a verdict is expected on January 15, 2019. On January 17, 2019, they were acquitted of the cover-up charges. On January 18, 2019, Jason D. Van Dyke was sentenced to 6.75 years in prison."
[SPECIAL NOTE: To view a YouTube video of the scene of this horrific event just click here since the video contains graphic material perhaps not suitable for all ages. Sources: Wikipedia.org Tuesday, December 1, 2015, 7:00 PM CDT | Sunday, January 27, 2019, 9:00 AM CDT | Saturday, January 30, 2021, 5:00 PM CDT | FindAGrave.com Sunday, January 31, 2021, 11:37 AM CDT | Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 5:45 PM CDT |
If only Blacks smell a rat, why do our noses yet look like that?
"Africa, is the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At 11.7 million sq mi including adjacent islands, it covers six percent of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4 percent of the total land area. With 1.1 billion people as of 2013, it accounts for about 15% of the world's human population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and the Red Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It has 54 fully recognized sovereign states ("countries") nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africa's population is the youngest among all the continents; 50% of Africans are 19 years old or younger. Algeria is Africa's largest country by area, and Nigeria is the largest by population. Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country in Africa and a founding member of the East African Community. Its capital and largest city is Nairobi. Kenya is located on the equator with the Indian Ocean lying to the south-east and is bordered by Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east. Kenya covers 224,445 sq mi, and had a population of approximately 45 million people in July 2014."
Source: Wikipedia.org June 25, 2015, 2:25AM 
"ChoicePoint was a data aggregation company based in Alpharetta, near Atlanta, Georgia, United States, that acted as a private intelligence service to government and industry. ChoicePoint was a spinoff of Equifax's Insurance Services Group, and it was purchased in February 2008 by Reed Elsevier (parent corporation of LexisNexis) in a cash deal for $4.1 billion USD. The company was rebranded as LexisNexis Risk Solutions. ChoicePoint combined personal data sourced from multiple public and private databases for sale to the government and the private sector. The firm maintained more than 17 billion records of individuals and businesses, which it sold to an estimated 100,000 clients, including 7,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies (30 March 2005 estimates). However, this data had not been secured sufficiently to prevent theft of data on at least one occasion. The company had also been the subject of lawsuits for maintaining inaccurate data, inquiries whether it allowed political bias to influence its performance of government contracts and accused of illegally selling the data of overseas citizens to the U. S. government. ChoicePoint was used to perform consumer and criminal background checks on prospective employees of the Obama administration. ChoicePoint generated revenue of around US$1 billion in 2006, and employed around 5,500 people at nearly 60 locations in the US and UK. ChoicePoint's database of personal information contained names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports, and other sensitive data. In 2005, this database contained 250 terabytes of data on 220 million people. ChoicePoint also operated the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE), a database used by insurance companies to share histories of claims or damage reports on property. The CLUE database includes identification information on properties such as homes and automobiles, policy records (name, date of birth, policy number), and records of claims (date and type of loss, amounts paid). As of 2006, history is kept for five years. It contains records of damage reports regardless of whether the damage resulted in a claim. Several lawsuits and consumer complaints have accused ChoicePoint of providing inaccurate and out-of-date information in its criminal background reports, resulting in unfair job losses for applicants. Problems also arose concerning the accuracy of individual's financial standing, the difficulty of correcting errors, and individuals being refused loans and housing support. It is claimed that the company has not met US federal laws requiring consumer reporting agencies (third parties who conduct background checks for employers) to verify the data they give employers or notify job applicants when they provide adverse information to an employer."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Friday, June 10, 2016, 11:59PM "List of killings by law enforcement officers in the U. S."
"Listed below are lists of people killed by law enforcement in the United States, whether in the line of duty or not, and regardless of reason or method. Inclusion in the lists implies neither wrongdoing nor justification on the part of the person killed or the officer involved. The listing merely documents the occurrence of a death. These lists are incomplete. Although Congress instructed the Attorney General in 1994 to compile and publish annual statistics on police use of excessive force, this was never carried out, and the FBI does not collect [this] data either. Projects on police killings in the United States by The Washington Post and The Guardian were finalists for the 2016 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Stats as of January 15, 2017, 12:00PM |
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"The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11) were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks consisted of suicide attacks used to target symbolic U. S. landmarks. Four passenger airliners which all departed from airports on the U. S. East Coast bound for California were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists to be flown into buildings. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed, with debris and the resulting fires causing partial or complete collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower, as well as significant damage to ten other large surrounding structures. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, leading to a partial collapse in the Pentagon's western side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, initially was steered toward Washington, D. C., but crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. In total, the attacks claimed the lives of 2,996 people (including the 19 hijackers) and caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and $3 trillion in total costs. It was the deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in the history of the United States, with 343 and 72 killed respectively."
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"The Sixteenth United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.3 percent over the 1930 population of 123,202,624 persons. The census date of record was April 1, 1940. A number of new questions were asked including where people were 5 years before, highest educational grade achieved, and information about wages. This census introduced sampling techniques; one in 20 people were asked additional questions on the census form. Other innovations included a field test of the census in 1939. As required by Title 13 of the U. S. Code, access to personally identifiable information from census records was restricted for 72 years. On April 2, 2012—72 years after the census was taken—microfilmed images of the 1940 census enumeration sheets were released to the public by the National Archives and Records Administration."
Source: Wikipedia.org January 13, 2017, 12:00AM |
"The United States Census of 1790 was the first census of the whole United States. It recorded the population of the United States as of Census Day, August 2, 1790, as mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution and applicable laws. In the first census, the population of the United States was enumerated to be 3,929,214. Congress assigned responsibility for the 1790 census to the marshals of United States judicial districts under an act which, with minor modifications and extensions, governed census taking through 1840. "The law required that every household be visited, that completed census schedules be posted in 'two of the most public places within [each jurisdiction] there to remain for the inspection of all concerned...' and that 'the aggregate amount of each description of persons' for every district be transmitted to the president."
Source: Wikipedia.org February 26, 2016, 11:48PM |
 "Find A Grave Memorial ID 92976568"
"Andy Samuel Griffith (June 1, 1926–July 3, 2012) was an American actor, television producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern gospel singer, and writer. He was a Tony Award nominee for two roles, and gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's film A Face in the Crowd before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead character in the 1960–1968 situation comedy The Andy Griffith Show and in the 1986–1995 legal drama Matlock. Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the only child of Carl Lee Griffith, and his wife, Geneva Nunn. By coincidence, Griffith was born the same day as motion picture icon Marilyn Monroe. As a baby, Griffith lived with relatives until his parents could afford to buy a home. With neither a crib nor a bed, he slept in dresser drawers for several months. In 1929, when Griffith was three, his father began working as a carpenter and purchased a home in Mount Airy's "blue-collar" south side. Griffith grew up listening to music. By the time he entered school, he was well aware that he was from what many considered the "wrong side of the tracks." He was a shy student, but once he found a way to make his peers laugh, he began to come out of his shell and come into his own. Griffith's friendship with Don Knotts began in 1955, when they co-starred in the Broadway play No Time for Sergeants. Several years later, Knotts had a regular role on The Andy Griffith Show for five seasons. Knotts left the series in 1965, but periodically returned for guest appearances. He appeared in the pilot for Griffith's subsequent short-lived series, The New Andy Griffith Show and he had a recurring role on Matlock, from 1988 to 1992. They kept in contact until Knotts' death in early 2006. Griffith traveled from his Manteo, North Carolina, home to Los Angeles, to visit the terminally ill Knotts at Cedars-Sinai just before Knotts died of lung cancer In 1945, while a student at the University of North Carolina, Griffith was initiated as a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a national social music fraternity for men. Griffith and Barbara Bray Edwards were married on August 22, 1949, and they adopted two children: a son, Andy Samuel Griffith, Jr. and a daughter, Dixie Nann Griffith. They were divorced in 1972. Sam, a real-estate developer, died in 1996 after years of alcoholism. His second wife was Solica Cassuto, a Greek actress. They were married from 1973 to 1981. He and Cindi Knight were married on April 12, 1983; they had met when he was filming Murder in Coweta County. Griffith's first serious health problem was in April 1983, when he was diagnosed with Guillain–Barré syndrome and could not walk for seven months because of paralysis from the knees down. On May 9, 2000, he underwent quadruple heart-bypass surgery at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. After a fall, Griffith underwent hip surgery on September 5, 2007, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In October 2008, Griffith appeared with Ron Howard in a Funny or Die video endorsement for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. In addition to his online video with Howard in 2008, in politics Griffith favored Democrats and recorded television commercials endorsing North Carolina Governors Mike Easley and Bev Perdue. He spoke at the inauguration ceremonies of both. In 1989, he declined an offer by Democratic party officials to run against Jesse Helms, a Republican U. S. Senator from North Carolina. In July 2010, he also starred in advertisements about Medicare. At approximately 7 a.m. on July 3, 2012, Andy Griffith died from a heart attack at age 86 at his coastal home in Manteo, Roanoke Island in Dare County, North Carolina. He was buried in the Griffith family cemetery on the island within five hours of his death."
"Ghosts of Mississippi is a 1996 American drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg and James Woods. The plot is based on the true story of the 1994 trial of Byron De La Beckwith, the white supremacist accused of the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. James Woods was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Byron De La Beckwith. The original music score was composed by Marc Shaiman and the cinematography is by John Seale. In 2008, AFI nominated Ghosts of Mississippi for the Courtroom Drama segment of its AFI's 10 Top 10 special but the movie did not make the final countdown. Medgar Evers was a black civil rights activist in Mississippi who was murdered by an assassin on June 12, 1963. It was suspected that Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist, was the murderer. He had been tried twice and both trials ended in hung juries. In 1989, Evers' widow Myrlie, who had been trying to bring De La Beckwith to justice for over 25 years, believed she had what it takes to bring him to trial again. Although most of the evidence from the old trial had disappeared, Bobby DeLaughter, an assistant District Attorney, decided to help her despite being warned that it might hurt his political aspirations and despite the strain that it caused in his marriage. DeLaughter becomes primarily involved with bringing De La Beckwith to trial for the third time 30 years later. In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, giving justice to the family of Medgar Evers."
Source: Wikipedia.org | June 23, 2016, 4:45PM  Find A Grave Memorial ID unavailable
"Nat Turner [and/or] Nathaniel Turner (October 2, 1800–November 11, 1831) was an enslaved African American who led a rebellion of slaves and free blacks in Southampton County, Virginia on August 21, 1831, that resulted in the deaths of 55 to 65 white people. In retaliation, enraged white militias and mobs killed more than 200 black people in the course of putting down the rebellion. Turner led a group of slaves carrying farm implements in a rebellion against slavery. As they went from plantation to plantation they gathered horses and guns, freed other slaves along the way, and recruited other blacks that wanted to join their revolt. During the rebellion, Virginia legislators targeted free blacks with a colonization bill, which allocated new funding to remove them, and a police bill that denied free blacks trials by jury and made any free blacks convicted of a crime subject to sale and relocation. Whites organized militias and called out regular troops to suppress the uprising. In addition, white militias and mobs attacked blacks in the area, killing an estimated 200, many of whom were not involved in the revolt. In the aftermath, the state quickly arrested and executed 57 blacks accused of being part of Turner's slave rebellion. Born into slavery on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, the African American boy was recorded as "Nat" by Benjamin Turner, the man who held his mother and him. When Benjamin Turner died in 1810, Nat became the property of Benjamin's brother Samuel Turner. By the Civil War era, sources referred to him as Nathaniel Turner, referring to him by the name of his master, as was the white slaveholder custom of the time. Historians also adopted that convention. Turner knew little about the background of his father, who was believed to have escaped from slavery when Turner was a young boy. Turner spent his entire life in Southampton County, Virginia, a plantation area where slaves comprised the majority of the population. He was identified as having "natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, surpassed by few." He learned to read and write at a young age. Deeply religious, Nat was often seen fasting, praying, or immersed in reading the stories of the Bible. The rebellion was suppressed within two days, but Turner eluded capture by hiding in the woods until October 30, when he was discovered by farmer Benjamin Phipps. Turner was hiding in a hole covered with fence rails. While awaiting trial, Turner confessed his knowledge of the rebellion to attorney Thomas Ruffin Gray, who compiled what he claimed was Turner's confession. On November 5, 1831, Turner was tried for "conspiring to rebel and making insurrection," convicted and sentenced to death. Turner was hanged on November 11 in Jerusalem, Virginia. His body was flayed, beheaded and quartered, as an example to frighten other would-be rebels. Turner received no formal burial; his headless remains were either buried unmarked or kept for scientific use. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Nat Turner as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans. In 2009, in Newark, New Jersey, the largest city-owned park to be built was named Nat Turner Park, in honor of his struggle for freedom. The facility cost $12 million in construction."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Tuesday, August 23, 2016, 10:18AM 
"Five people were killed in a mass shooting at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, on September 23, 2016. The suspected perpetrator is Arcan Cetin, a 20-year-old permanent US resident who immigrated from Turkey as a child with his family. He was arrested the following day in Oak Harbor, Washington. Shortly before 7:00 p.m. PDT on September 23, 2016, at least one individual, suspected by state police to be a lone gunman, walked into the Macy's store at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, with a rifle and opened fire, killing four women and one man. All of the victims were shot at a Macy's store inside the mall, near the cosmetics counter. The male victim died the next day at a Seattle hospital. Five people were killed during the Cascade Mall shooting. They were Sarai Lara, a sophomore at Mount Vernon High School and cancer survivor; Chuck Eagan, a Boeing maintenance worker from Lake Stevens; Belinda Galde, a probation officer with the Snohomish County District Court; Beatrice Dotson, Galde's mother; Shayla Martin, a make-up artist at Macy's. The suspect has been identified as 20-year-old Arcan Cetin. Born on August 20, 1996, in Adana, Turkey, Cetin immigrated to the United States as a child with his family and holds permanent United States residency, but is not an American citizen. He graduated from Oak Harbor High School in 2015. He worked as a bagger at the Commissary in Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. Cetin was arrested without incident on the evening of September 24 while he was walking down Oak Harbor Road at Northeast Seventh Avenue in Oak Harbor, Washington. Online records show that Cetin had prior arrests; he was a defendant in seven cases in Island County District Court from 2013 to 2015 and was arrested in July 2015 on charges of assault in the fourth degree. Police have not yet officially released a motive for the shooting. Before the arrest of the suspect authorities stated they had no reason to believe the incident was related to terrorism. On September 25, 2016, it was reported that the identified suspect may have been motivated by the break-up of a relationship with a worker from the Macy's store he targeted, but the ex-girlfriend had not worked there in months and currently lives in another county. Cetin was described by authorities as having called out women's names as he allegedly killed them during the shooting."
Source: CBS Evening News w/ Scott C. Pelley | September 26, 2016, 5:45PM | Wikipedia.org 5:51PM |
 “Find A Grave Memorial ID 6488322”
"Ray Elgin Teal (January 12, 1902–April 2, 1976) was an American actor who appeared in more than 250 movies and some 90 television programs in his 37-year career. His longest-running role was as Sheriff Roy Coffee on NBC's western series Bonanza (1960–1972). He also played a sheriff in the film Ace in the Hole (1951). He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A saxophone player, Teal worked his way through [the] University of California, Los Angeles, located in Los Angeles, California, as a bandleader before becoming an actor. He had a recurring role as a police officer in the 1953–1955 ABC sitcom with a variety show theme, ["Where's Raymond?"] renamed The Ray Bolger Show. Ray Bolger played Raymond Wallace, a song-and-dance man who was repeatedly barely on time for his performances. Teal appeared in three episodes of the 1955–1957 anthology series, Crossroads, a study of clergymen from different denominations. He died of natural causes at age seventy-four in Santa Monica, California."
Source: Find A Grave | Wikipedia.org | June 22, 2016, 11:15PM 
"List of fatal alligator attacks in the United States"On or about June 5, 2016, Mr. "Richard Zachary Taylor," a 72 year old male, perished. Police recovered Taylor's body after a report of an alligator with a body in its mouth near Lake Hunter in Lakeland, Florida. A trapper responded a short time later and eventually caught the gator. Detectives don't know if Taylor drowned or was killed by the reptile. Taylor's body was decomposed, indicating he had been in the water a couple of days or longer. Remains found inside the alligator during a necropsy were a match to Taylor.
Source: Wikipedia.org | Monday, June 20, 2016, 9:11AM On or about June 14, 2016, Mr. "Lane Graves," a 2 year old male, perished. An alligator snatched the 2-year-old boy and dragged him underwater in the Seven Seas Lagoon on the evening of June 14, 2016, between 9 and 9:15 p.m. at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Bay Lake, Florida, as his father desperately tried to rescue him. The Orange County Sheriff's office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission conducted a search and recovery effort to locate the boy's body, which was recovered on June 15, 2016, at approximately 1:45 p.m. His body, which was intact, was found about 10-15 yards away from the location of the attack. It is believed that he was drowned by the alligator, which was 4-7 feet long. It took authorities about 17 hours to find and recover the body.
Source: Wikipedia.org | Monday, June 20, 2016, 9:11AM  "Find A Grave Memorial ID 3148"
"George Francis Barnes Jr. (July 18, 1895–July 18, 1954) better known as "Machine Gun Kelly," was an American gangster from Memphis, Tennessee, during the prohibition era. Machine Gun Kelley was a notorious, depression-era gangster, bank robber and kidnapper. He attended Central High School in Memphis. His nickname came from his favorite weapon, a Thompson submachine gun. His most infamous crime was the kidnapping of oil tycoon and businessman Charles F. Urschel in July 1933 for which he, and his gang, collected a $200,000 ransom. Their victim had collected and left considerable evidence that assisted the subsequent FBI investigation that eventually led to Kelly's arrest in Memphis, Tennessee, on September 26, 1933. His crimes also included bootlegging and armed robbery. During the Prohibition era of the 1920s and 1930s Kelly worked as a bootlegger for himself as well as a colleague. After a short time, and several run-ins with the local Memphis police, he decided to leave town and head west with his girlfriend. To protect his family and escape law enforcement officers, he changed his name to George R. Kelly. He continued to commit smaller crimes and bootlegging. He was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for smuggling liquor onto an Indian Reservation in 1928 and sentenced to three years at Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas, beginning February 11, 1928. He was reportedly a model inmate and was released early. Shortly thereafter, Kelly married Kathryn Thorne, who purchased Kelly's first machine gun and went to great lengths to familiarize his name within underground crime circles. The kidnapping of Urschel and the two trials that resulted were historic in several ways. They were, (1) the first federal criminal trials in the United States in which film cameras were allowed (2) the first kidnapping trials after the passage of the so-called Lindbergh Law, which made kidnapping a federal crime (3) the first major case solved by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and (4) the first prosecution in which defendants were transported by airplane. Machine Gun Kelly spent his remaining 21 years in prison. During his time at Alcatraz he got the nickname "Pop Gun Kelly." This was in reference, according to a former prisoner, to the fact that Kelly was a model prisoner and was nowhere near the tough, brutal gangster his wife made him out to be. He spent 17 years on Alcatraz as inmate number 117, working in the prison industries boasting of and exaggerating his past escapades to other inmates and, was quietly transferred back to Leavenworth in 1951. He died of a heart attack at Leavenworth on July 18, 1954, his 59th birthday."
Source: Wikipedia.org | Wednesday, June 22, 2016, 3:44PM 
"Robert "Bobby" DeLaughter" (born February 28, 1954) is an American Mississippi state prosecutor, judge and author. He is notable for prosecuting and securing the conviction in 1994 of Byron De La Beckwith, charged with the murder of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two earlier trials in Mississippi in 1964 had resulted in hung juries. Bobby Burt DeLaughter was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on February 28, 1954. He was the first son of Barney Roy DeLaughter and Billie Newman DeLaughter, who later had another son Mike. Bobby's father was a commercial artist for a newspaper. The family moved to Jackson when Bobby was very young, and DeLaughter grew up being part of the city's white middle class. He was nine on June 12, 1963, when Medgar Evers was killed. DeLaughter first saw the law in action when his ninth-grade civics teacher took the class to watch a trial at the Hinds County courthouse. That day convinced DeLaughter he wanted to practice law. He graduated from Wingfield High School in Jackson. DeLaughter attended undergraduate college and law school at the University of Mississippi. He became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. During the summer of 1973, DeLaughter met Dixie Claire Townsend. They married on November 16, 1973, and their first child, Bobby Burt, was born on December 5, 1978. They also had a daughter Claire and a second son Drew together. Due to their opposing views and his commitment on the Evers case, which Bobby started investigating in 1989 for a new trial, his and Dixie's marriage was strained. They divorced on April 15, 1991, and DeLaughter gained custody of their three children. Later DeLaughter met Peggy Lloyd, a nurse, whom he married. Also divorced, she had three sons from her first marriage: Jared, Joel, and JJ. DeLaughter is best known for leading the state's successful prosecution of Byron De La Beckwith for the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1994, more than 30 years after the crime. Two previous trials in 1964 following the event had resulted in hung juries; at the time, all the jury members were white because blacks had been prevented from voting in Mississippi and thus could not serve on juries. The state retried the case in 1994 based on new evidence. In 1999, Governor Kirk Fordice appointed DeLaughter to a position as Hinds County Court Judge, after the incumbent judge died of a heart attack. In 2002, DeLaughter was appointed a Circuit Court Judge for Hinds County. On March 28, 2008, DeLaughter was suspended from the bench indefinitely by the Mississippi Supreme Court due to allegations of bribery and judicial misconduct. DeLaughter pleaded not guilty on February 12, 2009 to a five-count federal indictment; these charges were linked to the criminal investigation of disgraced tort attorney Richard Scruggs. He later pleaded guilty on July 30, 2009 to one obstruction of justice charge. DeLaughter was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison on November 13, 2009 for the obstruction of justice charge he pleaded guilty to on July 30, 2009. The sentence was imposed by Judge Glen Davidson. In keeping with the recommendation of his plea agreement, Judge Davidson did not impose a financial penalty on DeLaughter due to his negative net worth. He was incarcerated in the federal prison at McCreary and was released on April 13, 2011. In 1996, the events surrounding the De La Beckwith trial were memorialized in the Rob Reiner film Ghosts of Mississippi. Alec Baldwin portrayed DeLaughter in the film. In 2001, DeLaughter published his book about the Evers prosecution, entitled Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Trial."
Source: Wikipedia.org, February 27, 2016, 2:16PM |
"The former police chief of Sorrento is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in federal court on a charge of lying to the FBI. Earl Theriot took a plea deal that forced him to resign as chief. He admitted to a judge that as police chief, he took a drunk woman to his office and forced her to perform sexual acts. He then admitted to lying about that to federal investigators. Theriot faces up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release following imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000. He will not be allowed to appeal his conviction or his sentence, as terms of the plea deal. During a hearing on Feb. 10, 2014, the US attorney said Theriot admitted that on Nov. 1, 2013, while serving as the Sorrento police chief, he responded to a 911 call about an unresponsive individual at a gas station. Theriot admitted that he put her in the front seat of his police unit and instead of taking her home, he took her to his office at the Sorrento Police Department, where he engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with her. According to the US Attorney's Office, Theriot also admitted to later making numerous false statements to an FBI special agent and a deputy with the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office, who were investigating whether Theriot violated federal civil rights laws, among other things. On Feb. 7, 2014, Theriot resigned as chief of police as required by the plea agreement with the US Attorney's Office. On Feb. 6, 2014, Theriot sent a letter to the mayor of Sorrento and councilmen announcing his retirement and that it would begin the next day."
Source: WAFB TV/Twitter.com Posted: Sep 18, 2014 6:39 AM CST Updated: Sep 18, 2014 6:40 AM CST |
"Sorrento is a town in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 1,227 at the 2000 census. By the 2010 census it had grown 14.2%, to 1,401 inhabitants. It is part of the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 3.1 square miles (8.1 km²), all land. As of the census of 2000, there were 1,227 people, 446 households, and 337 families residing in the town. The population density was 392.5 people per square mile (151.4/km²). There were 494 housing units at an average density of 158.0 per square mile (60.9/km²). The racial makeup of the town was 83.70% White, 14.83% African American, 0.41% Native American, 0.08% Asian, 0.41% from other races, and 0.57% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.39% of the population. There were 446 households out of which 37.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.6% were married couples living together, 10.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 24.4% were non-families. 19.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.75 and the average family size was 3.20. In the town the population was spread out with 28.3% under the age of 18, 9.5% from 18 to 24, 31.1% from 25 to 44, 20.6% from 45 to 64, and 10.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 103.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.8 males. The median income for a household in the town was $35,234, and the median income for a family was $40,208. Males had a median income of $35,662 versus $20,625 for females. The per capita income for the town was $14,803. About 14.2% of families and 16.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.8% of those under age 18 and 20.3% of those age 65 or over."
"The Louisiana Attorney General's Office confirms that Former Sorrento Mayor Wilson Longanecker, Jr. was arrested Thursday morning and charged with 40 counts of possession of child pornography. Around 7 a.m. detectives with the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office, the Office of Homeland Security and the Louisiana State Police went to Longanecker's house to execute a search warrant. Items from the home were reportedly removed by two officers on the scene. Along with the 40 counts of possession of child pornography, Longanecker was also charged with obstruction of justice." On or about January 19, 2016, Longanecker entered a deal and was allegedly sentenced to "40 years" in prison; according to a local news feed by WAFB-TV9.
"Updated: Oct 23, 2014 11:58 AM CST," August 16, 2015, 12:32PM, January 20, 2016, 2:00PM |
"William Howard Taft"
“Find A Grave Memorial ID 1014”
"Thomas Woodrow Wilson"
“Find A Grave Memorial ID 1115”
"Warren Gamaliel Harding"
"Find A Grave Memorial ID 445"
"Franklin Delano Roosevelt"
"Find A Grave Memorial ID 897"
"Dwight David Eisenhower"
"Find A Grave Memorial ID 315"
 "Find A Grave Memorial ID 12300"
"In October 1955, the Jackson Daily News reported facts about Till's father that had been suppressed by the U. S. military. While serving in Italy, Louis Till raped two women and killed a third. He was court-martialed and hanged by the Army near Pisa in July 1945. Mamie Till Bradley and her family knew none of this, having only been told that Louis had been killed for "willful misconduct." Mississippi senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis probed Army records to uncover Louis Till's crimes. Although Emmett Till's murder trial was over, news about his father remained on the front pages of Mississippi newspapers for weeks in October and November 1955, further engaging debate about Emmett Till's actions and Carolyn Bryant's integrity. Stephen Whitfield writes that the lack of attention paid to identifying or finding Till is "strange" compared to the amount of published discourse about his father. Emmett Till's urges, to white Mississippians, were genetic instincts violently apparent in Louis Till. According to historians Davis Houck and Matthew Grindy, Louis Till became a most important rhetorical pawn in the high-stakes game of north versus south, black versus white, NAACP versus White Citizen's Councils. Protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam struck a deal with Look magazine in 1956 to tell their story to William Bradford Huie for between $3,600 and $4,000. The interview took place in the law firm of the attorneys who had defended Bryant and Milam. Huie did not ask the questions; Bryant and Milam's own attorneys did. They had never heard the story before either. According to Huie, the older Milam was more articulate and sure of himself than Bryant. Milam admitted to shooting Till and neither of them thought of themselves as guilty or that they had done anything wrong. Following their interview, however, their support base eroded in Mississippi. Blacks refused to shop at their stores, they went bankrupt, and were unable to secure loans from banks to plant crops. Reaction to Huie's interview with Bryant and Milam was explosive. Their brazen admission that they had slain Till caused prominent civil rights leaders to push the federal government harder to investigate the case. Till's murder was one of several reasons the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed; it allowed the U. S. Department of Justice to intervene in local law enforcement issues when civil rights were being compromised. Huie's interview, in which he said that Milam and Bryant had acted alone, overshadowed inconsistencies in earlier versions of the stories. Details about Collins and Loggins and anyone else who had possibly been involved in Till's abduction, murder, or the clean-up of it, were, according to historians David and Linda Beito, forgotten."
Source: Wikipedia.org August 10, 2015 |
Our own version of the classic hangman game. Your goal is to save the hangman from the gallows by identifying the hidden word before you run out of guesses.
Hangman
Hangman
provided by TheFreeDictionary.com
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 "Find A Grave Memorial ID 7134297"
"Hugh Lawson White (August 19, 1881–September 20, 1965) was an American politician from Mississippi and a member of the Democratic Party. He served two non-consecutive terms as Governor of Mississipp (1936–1940, 1952–1956). White was born near McComb and attended the University of Mississippi where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall. White was a wealthy industrialist and had been mayor of Columbia when he was first elected to the governorship. In 1936 he established the Balance Agriculture With Industry (BAWI) program that sought to develop an industrial base that matched the state's agricultural base. Under BAWI, advertising and incentives were deployed in hopes of enticing industries to locate to the state. Local governments could issue bonds to construct factories that could be leased to companies (who were also offered tax breaks). After leaving office due to term limits, White was a delegate representing Mississippi at the 1948 Democratic National Convention. In 1951, White won a second term, during which the issue of school segregation was a main issue. During the 1940s and early 1950s, federal courts made a series of decisions that indicated that the notion of "separate but equal" schools would soon be declared unconstitutional. Governor White and the state legislature prepared for that possibility by creating plans that sought to improve black schools. Among the proposals were increasing black teacher salaries to match white teachers' and building black schools on par with white schools. White called one hundred of the state's black leaders to a meeting at the capital to ask for their support of the plan. Much to his surprise, they overwhelmingly rejected his "voluntary" segregation plan and instead stated that they wanted only an integrated school system. In 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court made the famous Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared the practice of "separate but equal" to be unconstitutional. On August 28, 1955, towards the end of White's term as governor, the infamous murder of Emmett Till took place. Three months earlier, an African American minister, George W. Lee, had been shot and killed by a group of white racists who drove by in an automobile. The vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and an NAACP worker, Lee had been urging African-Americans in the Mississippi Delta to register and vote. The killer was never identified, partly because White refused to order an official investigation."
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"Emmett Louis Till"
"The store that Emmett Till walked into in Money, Mississippi, where he interacted with a woman related to Till's murderers." "Find A Grave Memorial ID 12300."
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 "Find A Grave Memorial ID 5772642"
"Robert Floyd Kennon, Sr. (August 21, 1902-January 11, 1988) was the 48th Governor of Louisiana, serving from 1952 to 1956. ["May 13, 1952 thru May 8, 1956"] From 1954 to 1955, he was chairman of the National Governor's Association. In 1955, he was also the chairman of the Council of State Governments. Kennon failed to win a second non-consecutive term in the 1963 Democratic primary election, having lost a runoff berth, with the position going to John McKeithen. The conservative Kennon grew disillusioned with his national party and endorsed Republican presidential nominees Dwight D. Eisenhower, Barry M. Goldwater, Gerald R. Ford, Jr., and Ronald W. Reagan. Kennon was born in rural Dubberly, south of Minden, the seat of government of Webster Parish. He was the fifth child of Floyd Kennon (1871–1966) who was born the year that Webster Parish was established, and the former Annie Laura Bopp. The Kennons operated an Independent Grocers Alliance store in Minden. After Floyd Kennon's retirement, the store was managed by two sons, Francis Edward Kennon, Sr., and Webb Kennon. Young Bob Kennon was an avid Boy Scout [See Scouting in Louisiana] who attained the rank of Eagle Scout. He graduated in 1919 from Minden High School, then a comparatively new institution. Thereafter, he attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he procured numerous honors. At the end of his freshman year, he received an award for the best academic record in his class. He was captain of his company in Reserve Officers Training Corps and the vice president of the Interfraternity Council. He was on the debate team and wrote for the campus newspaper, The Daily Reveille. He earned his first letter playing center for the LSU Tigers football team. He helped to organize the university tennis team and was one of the first two people to letter in tennis at LSU, from which he graduated in June 1923. Kennon graduated from the Louisiana State University Law Center in May 1925. A month later at the age of twenty-two, he passed the bar exam. At LSU, he was an honor student, colonel of the cadet corps, and a varsity football player. As a young lawyer, he was successful in his practice of law, which led him into politics [and] he became mayor of Minden, a district attorney, a District Court of Appeals judge, and a Supreme Court judge."
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"Raymond Johnson"
The permanent Prairieville, LA home of Mr. Raymond Johnson. Mr. R. Johnson was "Murdered." All of the evidence to date, seem to indicate, that his was a cold, brutal & calculated murder. Johnson's murder occurred approximately 35 days prior to the horror in Money, Mississippi shown above. "Find A Grave Memorial ID 59289410."
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