When you begin to look into the number of Olympic controversies it’s a little surprising how many exist considering the purpose of the Olympic Games happens to be goodwill, peace and reconciliation. One of the most recent controversies caught my eye a few days ago….a controversy involving one of the most tragic events that have ever occurred during the Olympics…..the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the Munich Games in 1972 . Since that time the families of the slain athletes have tried in vain to get the International Olympic Committee to recognize the athletes who were killed during the opening ceremonies. This year….the London Games……were no different. This article from Sports Illustrated gives a little background and discusses the fight the families continue to lay at the feet of the International Olympic Committee. Since the Sydney Games in 2000, Israel has organized a commemorative event , but the families think the International...
The song I’ve posted below isn’t as popular as Marvin Gaye’s hit “What’s Going On?”, but it is from the same album….the first of its kind for Motown…a concept album. Gaye wrote the songs during a time of great depression when he isolated himself from the outside world. This site explains.... Through television news broadcasts, Gaye saw the racial, political, and social problems that were plaguing the world, manifestations from the explosion of political and social activism that took place during the late ‘60s. As he wallowed in his seclusion, Gaye read letters from his brother Frankie serving in the Vietnam War. They described the confusion and frustration he and other soldiers felt fighting in a war that had no just cause. Many black soldiers at the time felt doubly conflicted, drafted to fight and die for a country that refused to accept them because of the color of their skin. These observations, along with the loss of Tammi Terrell, motivated Gaye to question his role in the w...
Sometimes historians can group together a series of events and tag them with an overall identifying name that connects all of the events together such as the Civil War or the American Revolution, but certain events just stand out and beg to be treated special because they serve as pivot points such as the firing on Ft. Sumter or the Battle of Saratoga. Then there are certain events that might not be pivotal but shouldn’t be ignored in the classroom simply because they touch upon so many different instructional moments such as the Mussel Slough Tragedy. Westward expansion, growth of the railroad including the impact on settlement, muckrakers and their role in the Progressive Era, perspective and accuracy regarding the historical record and even a bit of vocabulary instruction regarding geographic landforms can be handled by examining this little known event in California history. First of all….what the heck is a slough? On the west coast of North America a slough is def...
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