On this day in 1888, London's self-pronounced Jack the Ripper claims his first victim, prostitute Mary Ann Nichols. Her mutilated corpse is discovered in the Whitechapel section of London's rough-and-tumble East End, and before too long, four more victims fall prey to his surgeon's scalpels. Five dead prostitutes. That's a pretty paltry haul, when you stop and think about our modern-day serial killers. Hell, the Green River Killer probably scored ten times that many! And yer old pal Jerky hears tell there are a couple of inbred Canadian pig farmers who could go through five hookers during the average three-day weekend. We've come a long way, baby! If, however, the new theory that Jack was really American psychopath H.H. Holmes turns out to be true, he might well have been one of the most prolific murderers in the history of mayhem, after all.
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On this day in 1895, German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his Navigable Balloon.
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On this day in the year 1955, the first-ever solar-powered automobile is demonstrated at a car show in Chicago. It was such a resounding technological and aesthetic success that soon EVERYONE was driving a solar-powered car. Today, it's hard to imagine a world without solar-powered automobiles.
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