Tag Archive for: History

Prehistoric Skull Helps Complete the Human Story

Interesting article about a prehistoric skull found in North Israel may finally prove that Neanderthals and modern humans lived together.

“It is the first direct fossil evidence that modern humans and Neanderthals inhabited the same area at the same time,” said paleontologist Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

“The co-existence of these two populations in a confined geographic region at the same time that genetic models predict interbreeding promotes the notion that interbreeding may have occurred in the Levant region,” Tel Aviv University anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz said.

I love discoveries like this. It makes me wonder if we’ll ever really know the full story of how we came to be.

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Happy National Good Day Day

good day

Today is National Good Day Day. What is National Good Day Day, you may ask. Well, my dear friend, it is a day we celebrate every year in honor of the most perfect South Central day ever observed, on January 20th, 1992.

Murk Avenue breaks down the clues of Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” to pinpoint the exact day the song took place..

CLUE 1:
“went to short dogs house, they was watching Yo MTV RAPS”
Yo MTV RAPS first aired:
Aug 6th 1988

CLUE 2:
Ice Cubes single “today was a good day” released on:
Feb 23 1993
Read more

How White Flight Ravaged the Mississippi Delta

This article is absolutely fascinating and depressing at the same time. St. Louis has experienced its own form of White Flight with folks moving from the city to county,[footnote]Or even further West with St. Charles, Lincoln, and Warren counties experiencing explosive growth over the past few decades[/footnote] which, to this day, still keeps the area pretty segregated, a point that was seen quite vividly with the Michael Brown case.

After emancipation, plantation owners relied upon sharecroppers to grow and harvest their crops. To keep the system in place, white leaders studiously kept out industries that might lure their laborers away from agriculture, as historian James Cobb reported in his seminal book about the Delta, The Most Southern Place on Earth.

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Rick Rubin Returns to His NYU Dorm Room for Def Jam’s 30th Anniversary

Def Jam is 30 years old this year. Yes, 30. Rolling Stone sat down with co-founder Rick Rubin, returning to the very dorm room in which he started the label 30 years ago, to discuss how Def Jam began.

For more on the historic record label, check out Russell Simmons’ (co-founder with Rubin) book Life and Def or The Men Behind Def Jam by Alex Ogg. Both are great reads.

Jack the Ripper Unmasked

The British tabloid The Daily Mail is reporting that they have discovered the identity of famed serial killer Jack the Ripper.

But now, thanks to modern forensic science, The Mail on Sunday can exclusively reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer responsible for at least five grisly murders in Whitechapel in East London during the autumn of 1888.

DNA evidence has now shown beyond reasonable doubt which one of six key suspects commonly cited in connection with the Ripper’s reign of terror was the actual killer – and we reveal his identity…

Jack the Ripper has been identified as Polish-born Aaron Kosminski, one of the 6 original key suspects of the murders.

If this turns out to be true, this is very interesting. Unfortunately, this means he didn’t die in St. Louis.