On December 16, 1497, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama [1] became the first European to sail along Africa’s East Coast. He named it Natal.
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The Romanian Revolution [2] 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 [3]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 [4]. 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 [5]. 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 [6] 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.