Category: History

There are a lot of us in the world who couldn’t learn math even if we had the best and brightest minds teaching us for several hours per day. Then, there are those that can simply open up a math book and figure out equations without any formal education. It seems unfair, but when this happens, that person is an autodidact. This is the art of teaching yourself a particular topic, and math can be the hardest to learn.

Throughout the course of history, there have been many notable math autodidacts. Many of them have gone on to change the way we think about and study mathematics to this day. Let’s take a look at five of those self-taught mathematicians who blitzed the academic world, leaving it better off.

George Green

Nottingham, England native George Green was born toward the end of the 18th century and only had one year of schooling as a child. Green taught himself pretty much everything that he knew when it came to academics. When he attended school for that year, teachers said they taught him all they could. He spent much of the 1820s working as a miller with his father while working in math on his own.

In 1828, he published “An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism”. The following year, his father passed away and left Green a hefty sum of money. This allowed Green to focus all of his time on mathematics and he attended college at nearly 40 years old. He continued to churn out publishings and by the time of his death in 1841, Green had become quite accomplished.

Susan Fowler

We now go from someone born in the 1790s to someone born in the 1990s. Susan Fowler is an Arizona native who was homeschooled while her father worked as a preacher. Wanting to get away from the homeschool structure that was based around religion, Fowler spent much of her free time in the public library teaching herself mathematics.

Because of this, Fowler was able to learn enough to ace her college entrance exams and attended Arizona State University before transferring to the Ivy League school Penn where she finished her degree before it was rescinded. Fowler used her mathematics skills to become an engineer for Plaid, PubNubu, and Uber, helping to put all three companies on the map.

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Our next genius is Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian native who had just about zero training in math but still went on to become one of the greatest in the field during the past couple of centuries. Though he lived to be just 32 years old, Ramanujan accomplished more than just about anyone else had at that time.

Ramanujan would put himself in isolation to study math and what he came up with was so revolutionary that even experts couldn’t comprehend what they were seeing. There were a lot of new pieces of math which were named after Ramanujan, including the Ramanujan sum and Ramanujam prime. At just 30 years old, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Out of the hairdos on the list, it would be hard to top Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Leipzig. It wasn’t just mathematics that Leibniz excelled in, but also philosophy. As for the former category, Leibniz developed the base of integral and differential calculus, even forming a more widely-accepted theory than that of Isaac Newton.

Leibniz was born in 1646 and lived a long life at that time, making it to 70 years old. Leibniz received very little formal training but was able to develop parts of a curve including the abscissa and tangent. What truly made him memorable was that Leibniz invented one of the first mechanical calculators, saving mankind countless hours working on mathematical problems both simple and complex.

Mary Everest Boole

Born in Wickwar, England in 1832, Mary Everest Boole was the niece of George Everest. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Mt. Everest was named after him. As for Boole, she had a private tutor during her early years, but after the age of 10, she began teaching herself mathematics and eventually worked with her future husband George Boole.

Following his death, Mary was just 32 years old and took on a job as a librarian while continuing her mathematical studies. She lived to be 84 years old, and throughout her adult life, she taught many people how to do math. She even created curve stitching (or string geometry) as a teaching tool. Without Boole, the modern education system would look much different today.

The San Francisco Bay is one of the most well-known hubs of the United States, serving host to a massive metro area that includes the cities of San Francisco and Oakland. Though most people from out of the state simply know the Bay Area as the place that has the Golden Gate Bridge and various sports teams, there’s a lot more to the region than just that.

Those that have lived in the Bay Area for a couple of decades know first-hand just how much it has changed over the years. Some changes have been very obvious, while others have been extremely subtle. Let’s take a look at some of the surprising ways that the Bay Area has changed over the past 30 years and what the outlook is like for the next 30.

The Population Swell

Back in 1960, the population of the entire Bay Area was only around 3.6 million people. Even at the time, the area was already feeling a little bit crowded, but it has only gotten more crowded over the years. By the time 1980 rolled along, the population had swelled to almost 5.2 million and then saw a continuous climb into the mid-1990s when the population reached 6.3 million people.

Things would level off a bit during the early 2000s, but the later part of the decade and the 2010s saw a massive spike in population. Now, there are nearly 8 million people living in the Bay Area, and that number figures to only keep climbing. As a result, traffic has gotten more backed up and housing is harder to come by, which leads to our next change in the Bay Area.

Housing Prices

It’s no secret that housing prices have gone up drastically across the United States, but no region has seen prices go up quite as they have in the Bay Area. There’s only one other metro area that has more expensive housing, and that’s New York City. The Bay Area has an average rent of over $3,800 per month, which is nearly double that price that you would find in cities like Baltimore, Maryland, or Phoenix, Arizona.

There was a time when living in the Bay Area wasn’t so expensive, though. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that housing really started to skyrocket, and those prices have climbed faster than any other region despite the 1989 earthquake, the dot-com bubble burst, and the recession of the late 2000s.

Oakland Sports

Over the past 30 years, the San Francisco 49ers and San Francisco Giants have gotten shiny new stadiums and have had a lot of success in their new homes. As for Oakland, two of their teams have left the city while one seems to have one foot out the door. The NBA’s Warriors moved from Oracle Arena in Oakland to the Chase Center in San Francisco after experiencing a ton of success.

The Raiders couldn’t get funding for a new stadium in Oakland, so they left the Coliseum and headed for Las Vegas to play at the new Allegiant Stadium on the Strip. As for the Athletics, they are somewhat stuck at the Coliseum and may end up following the Raiders to Sin City. 30 years ago, Oakland had three sports teams with a lot of success, and they may soon have zero teams altogether.

No More Room

Those that grew up in the Bay Area during the 1970s or 1980s were able to spot a lot of open areas that included trees that extended for long stretches. Those days are gone, though, as Bay Area real estate has become so lucrative that almost all of it is taken up. Residents these days note that there’s just no open space, and that’s a product of the population boom.

Sure, there are still some parks around the Bay Area, but nothing like the wide-open orchards that used to be a staple of the Bay Area. A lot of tech companies moved into the region, and space was becoming a premium with these massive buildings opening up.

Crime Came and Went

There are people that say the Bay Area is more violent now than it has ever been. Those people are actually incredibly wrong. Crime was low during the early 1960s in the Bay Area, then peaked around 1980 in terms of property crime and in the early 1990s for violent crime.

Since then, the Bay Area has seen a massive drop in both property and violent crimes, with numbers lower now than they have been since the start of the 1960s. When you see the news, though, you might think that the Bay Area has become a warzone.

Mastodon is free and open-source software (FOOS) that anyone can use. Mastodon is a system of federated (linked) microblogging websites. Eugen Rochko wrote the software. He was born in Russia and now lives in Germany.

Here is the historical timeline.

Early 2016

Eugen Rochko started working on Mastodon as a side project while in school studying for his computer science degree from a German University.

Late 2016

A few months after graduating, 24-year-old Rochko released his first version, 0.1.0 of Mastodon, on Oct. 6, 2016. The first instance of the software runs on the server at the website Mastodon.social. It began with 45 users. (Note: The original server maxed out at 200,000 users, but new Mastodon users can join any of the many other interlinked servers).

2017

Mastodon starts to get media attention and is described by some as a “Twitter Killer.”

In April 2017, the administrator, nullkal, created the first Japanese server, mstdn.jp, in his apartment. The news went viral, and the server had tens of thousands of new accounts within a few days.

2018

In May 2018, after new laws were passed in the US, Assembly Four founded switter.at, a Mastodon server for sex workers. It grew quickly to over 400,000 accounts. (Note: The site shut down on Mar. 14, 2022, due to legal pressures.)

Sept. 5, 2018, Mastodon version 2.5 was released. It is the 100^th version of the software.

On Oct. 6, 2018, Mastodon celebrated its second anniversary. The network had grown to 1,627,557 registered users, with Mastodon instances running on 3,460 independently-administrated servers.

Mastodon servers are part of the federated network and connect to other servers using ActivityPub, a decentralized social media networking protocol.

Media coverage includes:

• Autostraddle
• Esquire
• Forbes
• Motherboard
• NPR
• The New York Times
• The Outline
• The Verge
• The Washington Post
• Wired

2019

Apr. 10, 2019, Mastodon 2.8 released.

2021

Rochko formed Mastodon gGmbH as a German nonprofit organization. The first annual report for Mastondon says he was still living with his parents, working 14 hours per day, and earning about 2,400 Euros per month from Patreon supporters.

Mar. 29, 2021, Mastodon for Android beta version released.

Nov. 3, 2021, Mastodon iOS, iPad beta version released.

2022

Patreon support increased to around $33,000 per month from over 9,000 Patreon supporters. The support pays for six software developers.

Mar. 30, 2022, Mastodon 3.5 released.

Apr. 21, 2022, official iOS and Android apps were released.

The latest stable Mastodon 4.0.2 release was in November 2022.

In October 2022, when Elon Musk took over Twitter, some users went to Mastodon. There were 230,000 new Mastodon users in the first week of November and one million more by mid-December.

On Dec. 20, 2022, Twitter suspended the join Mastodon account and blocked anyone on Twitter from sharing Mastodon links. Musk said he wanted to promote free speech by buying Twitter.

Rochko said, “This is a stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say. The future of social media doesn’t have to belong to a billionaire; it can be in the hands of its users.”

Conclusion

Mastodon has approximately 2.5 million users compared to 300 million on Twitter. Mastodon is an interesting new way to develop a social media platform. The Mastodon interface is not as user-friendly as it could be. The posts are only organized by a timeline, so there is no way to gain much viral traction. It can be quite good for chatting with a close-knit group of friends and family if you set up a server.

There is a long way to go for Mastodon to be anywhere close to a Twitter Killer. Maybe some of the 3,600+ fired Twitter employees can now join the Mastodon open-source software programming effort.

The basic economic law of supply and demand applies as much to national currencies as it does to rare natural resources and popular market products. As governments mint more coins and print more banknotes, this legal tender tends to have less and less worth.

Expanding the supply of money may be quite necessary, particularly in emergency situations. However, financial leaders must be aware that flooding the economy with currency is likely to have a pronounced negative effect on its relative value.

When a currency devalues too dramatically or too quickly, it can often spell economic disaster. In an effort to learn from history lest we repeat it, let’s briefly examine the five biggest currency collapses in history.

1. The Zimbabwean Dollar

After achieving independence in 1980, the African country of Zimbabwe established a strong dollar with a value that exceeded the US dollar by roughly 25 percent. But over the next several years, political corruption, economic mismanagement, race-based land seizures, and foreign sanctions led to an overproduction of the Zimbabwean dollar and rampant inflation nationwide. By 2004, this hyperinflation reached a record high of 624 percent. The Zimbabwe government effectively abandoned the dollar as its official currency in 2009. Since that time, Zimbabwe has recognized a range of foreign currencies as well as the new Zimbabwean dollar (also known as the (Real Time Gross Settlement) RTGS dollar.

2. The Peruvian Sol

To court foreign investment in the early 1980s, Peru embraced economic policies that stressed trade liberalization and increased public spending. As part of these policies, the Peruvian government began printing large amounts of the national currency: the sol. Unfortunately, government officials failed to adequately plan for the resulting inflation and debt. When overseas investors began to flee, the government decided to replace the sol with a new currency called the inti at the exchange rate of 1,000 to 1. However, inflation continued to rise under the inti, reaching a rate of 400 by 1990. In 1991, Peru abandoned the inti, returning to the sol (now the new or “neuvo” sol) at the staggering exchange rate of 1,000,000,000 to 1.

3. The Argentinian Peso

The economy of Argentina was enjoying record growth before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) created worldwide financial turmoil with its mid-1970s oil embargo. While coping with civil and political unrest, the Argentinian government faced severe budgetary and trade deficits. To avoid a devastating recession, it began printing money, thereby spiking inflation and destroying the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Between 1983 and 1992, Argentina would replace its national currency three times, exchanging 10,000 original pesos for one peso Argentino, then 10,000 peso Argentinos for one austral, and then, finally, 10,000 australs for one new peso.

4. The Chilian Escudo

When Marxist Salvador Allende became president of Chile in 1970, he began printing legal tender to make good on his promises of increased social spending and wealth redistribution to poor populations. Unfortunately, this practice had contributed to rampant hyperinflation that reached 600 percent by 1972 and 1200 percent by 1973. After the overthrow of the Allende government later that year, the Chilean escudo partially recovered but continued to experience fluctuations for more than a decade. It was ultimately replaced by the new Chilean peso in 1985 at a rate of 1,000 to 1.

5. The German Papiermark

Described by Forbes as “the original poster child for failed currencies,” the fall of the German papiermark occurred at the end of World War I. As a condition of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to pay war reparations to the allied nations. Among other pressing economic issues, this pressured Germany to print more and more papiermarks, triggering hyperinflation to the point that the currency was essentially worthless. In fact, when Germany replaced the papiermark with the reichsmark in 1924, the annal inflation rate was roughly 325,000,000 percent and the exchange rate was an astounding trillion to one.

Southeast Asia is a region located in the eastern part of Asia. It includes several countries; Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (also known as Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The region is known for its diverse cultures, tropical climate, and beautiful beaches. It is also home to several important economic and political centers, including Singapore, one of the world’s major financial hubs.

There have been many influential politicians in Southeast Asia throughout history. Here are the five most notable.

1. Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi is a pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Myanmar. Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest by the military government for more than 15 years, beginning in 1989, due to her efforts to promote democracy and human rights in the country. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her efforts to bring democracy to Myanmar.

In 2015, the NLD won a landslide victory in the country’s general election, and Suu Kyi became the country’s de facto leader. However, she has faced criticism in recent years for her handling of the Rohingya crisis, in which thousands of members of the Rohingya minority group were displaced or killed by the military.

2. Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh was born in Vietnam in 1890. He got his education in France, where he became involved in Marxist and nationalist politics. He played a key role in Vietnam’s struggle for independence from France and, later, the United States.

In 1941, he founded the Viet Minh, a communist-led independence movement that defeated the French and established a communist government in Vietnam in 1954. Ho Chi Minh served as the country’s first prime minister and later as its President. He died in 1969, but his legacy lives on in Vietnam, where he is still widely revered.

3. Sukarno

Sukarno was the first President of Indonesia, serving from 1945 to 1967. He was a key figure in the independence movement that led to Indonesia’s independence from Dutch colonial rule in 1949. Sukarno was known for his charismatic and controversial leadership style, and he played a major role in shaping Indonesia’s political landscape during his time as President.

Sukarno was a prominent figure in the non-aligned movement and was instrumental in establishing Indonesia as a major player on the international stage. However, he received criticism for his authoritarian rule, involvement in corruption, and other abuses of power.

4. Mahathir Mohamad

Mahathir Mohamad is a Malaysian politician who served as the Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister in Malaysian history. He is also the oldest serving Prime Minister in the world, who returned to office in 2018 at the age of 92. He served until age 97, when he was defeated in November 2022 for the first time in 53 years.

During his time as Prime Minister, he implemented several economic and social reforms that helped modernize Malaysia and turn it into a major economic power in Southeast Asia. However, he faced criticism for his authoritarian governance style and his suppression of political opposition.

5. Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew was the first Prime Minister of Singapore, serving from 1959 to 1990. He gets credit for transforming Singapore from a small, poor, and largely agricultural country into a modern, prosperous, industrialized city-state.

Under Lee’s leadership, Singapore implemented several economic and social policies that helped stimulate economic growth, improve living standards, and attract foreign investment. Lee was known for his strong and authoritarian leadership style. He was a controversial figure. Lee passed away in 2015 at the age of 91.

Issued by the Banque Centrale de Syrie, the official Syrian currency has demanded international attention in recent years for its precipitous loss of value. But where did the Syrian pound come from, and how long has it been around? Read on for an extremely short history of this currency and the tumultuous social and political circumstances that have impacted it.

Before the Syrian Pound

Before the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Syria’s official currency was the Turkish lira. In fact, it used its neighboring Ottoman country’s currency for roughly 400 years.

Under foreign occupation after WWI, Syria complied with French and British mandates to adopt the Egyptian pound as its official currency. However, the French government soon took both Syria and Lebanon under a new mandate to give Syria its own currency. France ultimately granted a commercial bank, the authority to issue the new Syrian pound.

Syria Adopts the Pound

Under the French government’s direction, the Banque de Syrie (a French affiliate of the Ottoman Bank), sought introduced the Syrian pound in 1919. However, the currency was pegged to the French franc and bore the French name “livre.” The Banque de Syrie introduced notes for 1 and 5 livres as well as lower currency notes for 5, 25, and 50 qirsha. At the time, the Syrian livre has an exchange value of 20 French francs.

In 1920, the Banque de Syrie began releasing 1-qirsh notes as well as notes for and 10, 25, 50, and 100 livres. Between 1920 and 1939, the issuing body of the Syrian livre changed twice: first to the Banque de Syrie et du Grand-Liban and then to the Banque de Syrie et du Liban.

The Syrian Pound’s Evolution

During the height of World War II in 1941, the Syrian livre officially became the Syrian pound. A change in name alone, the currency remained essentially the same.

In fact, the name change was a result of a new occupation of Syria by British military forces, who replaced Syrian currency’s peg to the French franc with a peg to the British pound. At the time, a single British pound was worth just under nine Syrian pounds based on the pre-WWII conversion rate between French and British currency.

The Syrian pound would return to French valuation again before it became pegged to the US dollar in 1947 at a value of roughly 2.2 Syrian pounds to one US dollar. Compared to the rocky road it would face in later decades, the Syrian pound remained remarkably stable from 1947 to 1961, maintaining the same US dollar exchange rate.

The Banque Centrale de Syrie began issuing the Syrian pound in 1957. In 1958, it replaced the French language on all Syrian banknotes with English. It also issued a progressively higher series of bill denominations that culminated with the printing of 1000-pound notes in 1998.

Modern Times Bring Modern Problems for the Syrian Pound

Since the start of Syrian civil war in 2011, international exchange rates for the Syrian pound have deteriorated significantly. One US dollar was worth approximately 47 Syrian pounds in March of 2011. By July of 2017, that exchange rate had fallen to 1 to 515.

Catastrophic sociopolitical events such as the violent Lebanese protests of 2019 have only made matters worse for the Syrian pound. The November Lebanese protests precipitated a 30% drop in currency value, and by January of 2020, the black-market value of the Syrian pound dropped as low as 1,000 to a single US dollar.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit Syria and the rest of the world, dropping the Syrian pound into a veritable freefall. By March of 2021, the currency hit a record low on the black market, bringing just one US dollar for 4,000 Syrian pounds.

When it comes to airplane crashes, a large chunk of them is the result of pilot error or severe weather. Around 20 to 25 percent of the time, though, there’s a mechanical error due to a fault on an airplane. While these crashes aren’t always deadly, they can be catastrophic in the rare event that it does happen. Here are five incidents where airplane faults led to tragic crashes.

Death of Roberto Clemente

On New Year’s Eve 1972, baseball legend Roberto Clemente and four more people were onboard a Douglas DC-7CF en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Managua, Nicaragua after an earthquake had devastated the city. Clemente had been spending time in Managua due to coaching the Puerto Rico baseball team and was making a personal effort to provide aid to those affected.

Proper maintenance wasn’t performed on the aircraft, though, and the number two engine failed upon takeoff. The pilot attempted to return to Puerto Rico, and when the plane began descending too quickly tried to take it down into the ocean. Unfortunately, the landing would end up fatal and all five people onboard lost their lives. The pilot was made unaware that earlier in the month, improper maintenance had caused a minor crash for the plane.

American Airlines Flight 1

In what is now John F. Kennedy International Airport, American Airlines Flight 1 took off en route to Los Angeles International Airport on March 1, 1962. The aircraft was one of the newest on the American Airlines lines of Boeing 707s, and it seemed that everything passed the preflight check. After taking off, though, the pilot attempted to make a turn to begin heading west before the plane banked and inverted, initiating a nosedive into the Pumpkin Patch Channel of Jamaica Bay.

It wasn’t the pilot’s fault that the plane was unable to make the turn, however. An investigation into the crash showed that the autopilot system was faulty and it resulted in the rudder system being unable to function properly. All 95 people onboard lost their lives as a result of the improper maintenance, including Olympic gold medalist Emelyn Whiton and a pair of multi-millionaires.

Aeroflot Flight 8641

With more than 120 passengers onboard, Aeroflot Flight 8641 was scheduled to leave Leningrad, Russia, and arrive in Kyiv, Ukraine on June 28, 1982. There were no issues with the flight’s precheck as it only departed one minute late (due to a passenger coming on board late) and the flight was a smooth one to Kyiv. As it began its landing, though, that’s when the trouble started.

The autopilot system began making the descent angle too sharp and ultimately shut off after the plane started going into a sharp drop. The pilots attempted to pull up, but it was too late as the aircraft crashed at nearly 500 miles per hour, resulting in the death of all 132 onboard. The investigation determined the cause of the crash was the jackscrew mechanism not functioning because of improper maintenance that led to metal fatigue.

Finnish Air Force DC-3

Carrying many businesspeople and politicians on their way to a meeting formed by the Finnish Defence Forces, The Finnish Air Force took a DC-3 out of Utti Airport on October 3, 1978. It successfully made it to its stopover at Kuopio Airport, but trouble began when it was headed for its ultimate destination of Helsinki. Just seconds after taking off, one of the engines lost power.

The pilot attempted to make a quick return to the airport, but without the engine, couldn’t make the turn. Winds also played a factor as the aircraft quickly lost altitude and crashed, claiming the lives of all 15 onboard. The report found that the exhaust valve had cracked due to fatigue, resulting in the total engine failure that played a factor into the crash.

USAir Flight 427

On September 8, 1994, USAir Flight 427 was scheduled to take off from O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, and make a stopover in Pittsburgh before then heading to Palm Beach, Florida. There were 132 people aboard the Boeing 737-3B7 that day, many of whom were hoping to take a nice vacation in Florida.

Things seemed fine until the flight was arriving in Pittsburgh and started experiencing turbulence. The pilot, Captain Peter Germano, attempted to go against the wind but the rudder malfunctioned and went in the opposite direction. This caused the airplane to stall and the pilots could not recover. There were no survivors as the craft crashed hard at 300 miles per hour.

There are certain things that we as humans can’t look away from, and one of the most attention-drawing is a police chase. We often wonder to ourselves who is in the getaway vehicle, why they’re fleeing police, and how it will end. In most cases, it’s someone that’s simply afraid of being caught and is driving a typical vehicle at high speeds.

Then, there are cases where the vehicle is something far more outrageous, or the person in the car is someone that everybody knows. There have been some insane police chases, but these five take the case as the craziest to have actually happened, with people tuning into the news to see what happened next.

OJ Simpson 

Perhaps the most notorious police chase to this day, O.J. Simpson’s failed getaway in his friend’s white Ford Bronco is ingrained in modern history. After Simpson was due to turn himself into the police that morning for the murders of his wife Nicole Simpson, and their friend Ron Goldman. However, OJ didn’t show and was found to have been attempting a grand escape. 

The chase was slow, yet intense. The chase lasted two long hours and ended with Simpson being apprehended and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The story made headlines worldwide and the subsequent trial became a topic of discussion for years.

School Bus Blues

In October of 2020, a year that was already a colossal disaster, an unassuming eleven-year-old boy from Louisiana stole a school bus and led police on an intense chase. It’s not apparent how he gained access to the vehicle without an adult present, but the devious boy ran with it and ended up leading police on a 45-minute chase. 

During the chase, the boy crashed into three different vehicles, resulting in one person suffering a minor injury, and then ended with the tot crashing the bus into a tree, all the while shouting obscenities and flipping off the officers. He was apprehended and charged with theft and aggravated assault. 

Longest Police Chase

In November of 2022, a man from Moreno Valley California led police on a six-hour chase throughout Orange County and Los Angeles in the longest chase in LA history. The culprit, Johnny Anchondo, was on parole for attempted carjacking when he decided to commit his most recent criminal act. 

He carjacked two separate vehicles, breaking into a family’s home and threatening them with a weapon before stealing their car keys. He crashed into multiple police vehicles along the way, finally coming to an end when the car Anchondo was in began to malfunction after officers set out spike strips. 

Junior Driver

Another case of troubled children at play, five teenage children led police on a wild chase in New Mexico. In 2021 police attempted to pull over the occupants of a stolen SUV, later surprised to find out that the driver was a 12-year-old boy. 

The boy refused to stop, weaved in and out of traffic, blew right through stop signs, and almost lost control of the vehicle multiple times. At one point, the boy stopped the SUV to let out the other four teenage passengers. He continued the chase that brutally ended when he crashed head-on into a family of five on the highway. The boy was then taken into custody and charged. 

Tank Chase

In 1995 Shawn Nelson made history in San Diego when he stole an entire tank from the California Army National Guard armory. He was a sick individual with a large degree of turmoil in his personal life. Nelson sought destruction and wanted a way out. 

After a few weeks of spiraling further, the former military man took it upon himself to take a trip to the armory with the intent to cause chaos. He led police on a slow, but destructive chase, causing over $100,000 in damages. Fortunately, nobody was harmed during his rampage. He wasn’t so lucky. Officers eventually gained access to the tank and shot the uncooperative man, who later died at a nearby hospital. 

In the United States alone, there are nearly 100,000 missing person cases each year. While many of them are solved rather quickly, there is plenty that goes unsolved for years. Along the way, there have been some cases of very notable (and some infamous) people that have gone missing without a trace.

Throughout American history, there have been certain missing person cases that have captivated the entire country, with massive search parties launched. Out of all of those cases, these five stand out as the most talked about, dominating headlines around the nation for weeks, months, and even years.

Amelia Earheart

Amelia Earheart’s disappearance is one we’ve all learned about in school, or heard about in one way or another. She was famously the first woman to complete a solo, nonstop transatlantic flight. She carried many accolades and was and is an inspiration to women everywhere. She and navigator Fred Noonan went missing when they attempted to make a trek around the globe in 1937. They were last seen in New Guinea where they had stopped before continuing the remainder of their travels. There are many theories as to what happened to the two, but it’s most likely the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and took the two brave souls with it. 

D.B. Cooper

In November of 1971, a man who called himself Dan Cooper was aboard a flight from Oregon to Washington. During the flight, he hijacked the plane with claims he was carrying a bomb on board. He demanded $200,000 in cash and parachutes. He then managed to instruct the pilots to land and let the passengers loose, ensuring workers refueled the aircraft, as well as obtaining the money and items he previously demanded. When over Washington, Cooper fled with his ransom by jumping out of the plane with a parachute.  No trace of him was ever found and nobody truly knows the identity of this mystery man. 

Jimmy Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa is a name you’re surely familiar with. Hoffa was a man caught up in a slew of messes. Once the International Brotherhood of Teamsters leader, he was involved in organized crime which may have been how he met his assumed demise. 

After his time in prison for charges like fraud and jury tampering, Hoffa attempted to regain control of the organization. His attempts were unsuccessful and he went missing in 1975, presumably murdered by the mafia. Although, nobody knows what really happened to him. 

Natalee Holloway

Natalee Holloway’s disappearance is one of the most well-known cases in modern history. In 2005 Natalee joined her classmates from Mountain Brook High School on a graduation trip to Aruba. She was a beautiful girl who had so much to offer the world, but she would never get to it after she went missing before her flight home on May 30th, 2005. She was last seen getting into a car with prime suspect Joran van der Sloot and two of his friends. 

They denied involvement, but their stories changed over time. Natalee has never been found and has been presumed dead. Sloot wound up being convicted of the murder of a woman in Peru years later, making it very possible he is also responsible for what happened to Natalee. 

Madeleine McCann

The gut-wrenching case of a child gone missing in the night. Madeleine McCann was only three years old when she went missing in the middle of the night.  Her parents, two younger twin siblings, and family friends had taken a vacation to Portugal in May of 2007. 

One night, while the adults dined at a restaurant only 180 feet from Madeleine’s bedroom, her mother went to check on her and found she was missing and the window in the room was wide open. She has never been found, although as of 2022, police in the German city of Braunschweig believe they may have a new suspect in the disappearance of the sweet young girl. 

For a lot of people, knowledge of the Morse code begins and ends at S.O.S. However, Morse code has been tremendously important for international communication. Though the way of Morse code started to die off with the start of the new millennium, almost everyone at least knows of Morse code.

But how did it all begin, and how did it become such a standard for telecommunication? Let’s take a look at the ins and outs in this short history of the Morse code.

Before Morse

In the early 1800s, many countries across Europe were trying to figure out a way to communicate electronically. These early devices used electromagnetic technology that would send messages telegraphically through a single-needle system. Multiple codes were used during this time to see which one would be the most convenient, but it was hard to find the right method.

Enter Samuel Morse

Born in 1791, Samuel Morse spent much of his life as a painter. However, it wouldn’t be his art that he’d become known for well after his death in 1872. Morse teamed up with scientist Joseph Henry and professor Leonard Gale to come up with a new method of telegraphic communication. Even with his background in art, Morse had a good handle on the engineering aspects of how this new system would work. “Science and art are not opposed,” Morse said.

“If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity,” Morse said of the design. 

Morse had introduced new circuits and frequent intervals that extended the reach of the messages he was sending. At first, it was only a couple hundred yards but quickly became several miles that the messages could travel. Morse fought hard for a patent and government support to fund the expansion of his telegraphic system, and within a few years, it was a standard across the northeastern part of the United States.

“It would not be long ere the whole surface of this country would be channeled for those nerves which are to diffuse, with the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring throughout the land, making, in fact, one neighborhood of the whole country,” Morse exclaimed.

How The Code Works

You may have seen a chart of Morse code before, which shows a series of dots and dashes that represents each letter of the English alphabet. Each of these series is transmitted in the form of electronic pulses and originally would move a stylus to make an indentation. These indentations could then be read as letters, forming words and sentences. More commonly used letters were given the easiest series of dots and dashes to transmit. For instance, the letter ‘A’ is just a dot and a dash, while ‘J’ is a dash, dot, dash, dot.

Use of Morse Code

Before the use of voice transmitters, Morse code became the standardized system of telecommunication. As aviation was starting to become more common, the communication needed to increase and Morse code exploded in popularity. Then, as World War I came around, Morse code was adopted into other languages. Afterward, Morse code would also be used in maritime, including lighthouses flashing in Morse code.

Do We Still Use Morse Code Today?

Morse code isn’t used these days nearly as much as it was at the turn of the 20th century. Each year, voice communication becomes more reliable, making Morse code a bit of a relic. It was all the way up until the 2000s that Morse code was still commonly used, and it does still have some uses, though many of which are a novelty. Still used in aviation and radio historians, Morse code will live on forever. Even the military still flashes lamps and bulbs in Morse code to send signals when voice communications aren’t an option.