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History Shorts Part Two |
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by Tony Sakalauskas Copyright ©2002 |
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Dionysius the first was a tyrant who ruled Sicily about 400 B.C. In a prison near Syracuse were a large number of Greek and Carthiginians captives. In order to be able to eavesdrop on their whispered conversations, he constructed a remarkable acoustic opening in the prison's wall. Shaped like an ear, it was 75 feet above ground. The human voice was magnified about fifty times and words were often repeated. Dionysius sat by this unique loudspeaker as as the words of his slaves would reach his ears, he would mark the whisperer for death. The Empire State Building. In 1932, the Polish Olympic ski team wanted to be the first to climb the 102 story building via the stairway. They made it, but so did the Czech ski team who greeted them. Unknown to anyone, the Czechs had climbed another stairwell a half hour earlier. In early America a fierce rivalry developed among the different fire brigades in the cities. Volunteer fire departments competed to see who would be the first to arrive on the scene of a fire. As they raced to the flames, fire engines, that were pulled by men, knocked over and injured pedestrians along the way. Men were sent ahead to hide the fire hydrant under a barrel until their own brigade arrived. Fights broke out between firemen and sometimes a building would burn down. During the mid 1980's, the British shipped off six Harrier jets to Syria. The planes were parked in an airfield in Cyprus for a night before going on. Two Greek Cypriot soldiers were put on duty to guard them. One private decided to impress his comrade by doing pullups on the radar sticking out of the nose cone of one plane. The radar bent down at a ninety degree angle and couldn't be straighten out again. The soldier panicked and then went on to bend the radar on the other five planes. He hoped that no one would notice the mistake. Someone noticed. He got courtmartialed. Prentice Olive was a cattle rancher who lived in Nebraska in the 1870's. He didn't like trespassers or squatters on his property. Being a vigilantie, he and his cowhands would shoot or hang these undesirables, many of whom were innocent. Then one day Olive came up with a unique way of executing them. Men that Olive had marked for death were wrapped up in the hides of freshly killed cows or bulls. The hot summer sun would shrink the animal hides and crush the victims. When the corpses were found their eyes were bulging out of their sockets and their black and swollen tongues were sticking out of their mouths. Olive was finally brought to trial in April of 1879. Although he threatened to cut out the tongues of any jurors who went againsts him, he was still found guilty. For first degree murder he got only a year and a half in state prison. Years ago rodeos and fairs sometimes staged a horse race in which the last to finish was the winner. In this race the jockeys do not ride their own horses. Even though they ride on an opponent's horse they still go as fast as they can. During the Chinese Lunar New Year it is customary for friends to exchange presents. But the presents Wong Kwong-Yuan got from his pals were not customary. Wong, a carpenter, was pleased when three of his friends showed up at his boat house in Hong Kong harbour with two packages for him wrapped in red paper. Although they were very eager to leave, Wong was able to talk them into staying for a cup of tea. When Wong was boiling the water in the boat's galley, one of the packages exploded, killing one friend and seriously injuring another. Wong was unharmed. He later found out from police that the packages contained dynamite. ( Feb 15, 1950) Before world war two a manufacturer in Hamburg, Germany, produced artificial shrunken heads. These excellent imitations were made out of pigskin and Chinese hair and sold to Indians in South America. These natives would resell the shrivelled items to unsuspecting travellers as the real thing; as genuine human heads shrunken by headhunting tribes of the Amazon jungles. They also claimed to have used a secret process known only to them.
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