On April 11, 2024 the BBC was treated to an exclusive look at a recent discovery in the ancient city of Pompeii, buried in volcanic ash by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, and spectacularly preserved. Stunning frescoes had been revealed on the walls and entranceway to a banquet hall known as the Black Room, painted that color to disguise the effects of soot from smoking lamps and candles.
On 7 January 2023, another traffic stop gone horribly wrong claimed the life of Tyre Nichols, when Memphis police pulled over the 29-year-old for “reckless driving.” After an initial confrontation involving pepper spray and a taser, Nichols broke free and fled on foot. When apprehended by five officers, he was beaten so badly that he died three days later. Body cam footage release by Memphis PD after the officers themselves had been arrested on January 26th and charged with second degree murder, among other offenses, reveals a shocking level of brutality and escalation of a situation that had never placed any officer in danger.
The first weekend of February 2019 wreaked havoc in the executive branch of the Commonwealth of Virginia. On Friday the 1st, the Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s moral authority to govern was blown to smithereens by the release of a Medical School yearbook photo purporting to depict him in blackface, standing next to a hooded KKK clansman figure. At first, Northam admitted his fault, later retracting this admission, but copping to a “lesser charge” of having worn blackface during the same time period, when impersonating Michael Jackson in a dance competition. He was only dissuaded from demonstrating his version of Jackson’s trademark “Moonwalk” at a press conference by his considerably more level-headed wife, who whispered to him that these were “inappropriate circumstances” for such a performance.
So what’s behind all the drama about the crowd size for Trump’s inauguration? With the newly-minted president claiming it to be the largest ever, estimating it at “a million, a million and a half” (which in itself is a pretty broad range for an estimate), but the Parks Service suggesting it was closer to 250,000, a tempest in a teapot exploded over the new administration’s first weekend.
