On December 16, 1497, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama became the first European to sail along Africa’s East Coast. He named it Natal.
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The Romanian Revolution began on December 16th, 1989. No less than 1,066 civilians died in the successful attempt to overthrow the dictatorial President Nicolae Ceaușescu.
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December 16th, 1928, was the birthday of Philip K. Dick, who died March 2, 1982. He penned a remarkable number of sci-fi novels and novellas that have been adapted into movies, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers, Impostor, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Next, and The Adjustment Bureau. Though he had a troubled personal life (with drug use and several failed marriages), his captivating books certainly had a knack for envisioning potential futures.
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The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773. The Census Bureau’s History webpage shared this interesting tea tidbit:
“Although tea was a popular beverage in the United States, Americans began drinking more coffee than tea as a direct result of the Tea Act of 1773, the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution … Boston-area merchants like John Hancock were so enraged by the 3-cents-per-pound tax on tea arriving in colonial ports that he declared that anyone who drank the ‘baneful weed’ and paid the tea tax was an ‘Enemy of America’.”
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Today’s feature article is a review written by our own Tom Christianson.
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We need some more entries for Round 116 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. More than $935,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic. Round 116 ends on January 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.