Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶, June 15, 1763 – January 5, 1828) was a Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū sect known for his haiku poems and journals. He is better known as simply Issa (一茶), a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea (lit. "one [cup of] tea"). He is regarded as one of the four haiku masters in Japan, along with Bashō, Buson and Shiki — "the Great Four."Reflecting the popularity and interest in Issa as man and poet, Japanese books on Issa outnumber those on Buson and almost equal in number those on Bashō. == Biography == Issa was born and registered as Kobayashi Nobuyuki (小林 信之...

The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by American terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing happened at 9:02 am and killed at least 168 people, including many children, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed more than one third of the building, which had to be demolished. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars, causing an estimated...

Richard Allensworth Jewell (born Richard White; December 17, 1962 – August 29, 2007) was an American security guard and police officer who was falsely suspected as the perpetrator of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The media circus surrounding the investigation, which was leaked to the press, has been widely cited as an example of law enforcement and media excesses.While working as a security guard at the Olympics Park, he discovered a backpack containing three pipe bombs on the park grounds. Jewell alerted police and helped evacuate the area...

Richard Jewell is a 2019 American biographical drama film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood and written by Billy Ray. It is based on the 1997 Vanity Fair article "American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell" by Marie Brenner and the 2019 book The Suspect: An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen. The film depicts the July 27 Centennial Olympic Park bombing and its aftermath, as security guard Richard Jewell finds a bomb during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, and alerts authorities to evacuate...

During the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, two homemade pressure cooker bombs detonated 14 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the race, killing 3 people and injuring several hundred others, including 17 who lost limbs.Three days later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of two suspects, who were later identified as Chechen Kyrgyzstani-American brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. They killed an MIT policeman, kidnapped a man in his car, and had a shootout with the police in nearby Watertown, during which two officers...

The Halifax Explosion was a disaster that occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the morning of 6 December 1917. SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship laden with high explosives, collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour to Bedford Basin. A fire on board the French ship ignited her cargo, causing a massive explosion that devastated the Richmond district of Halifax. Approximately 2,000 people were killed by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. The blast was the largest man-made...

The Baikal–Amur Mainline (Russian: Байкало-Амурская магистраль, БАМ, Baikalo-Amurskaya magistral', BAM) is a 1,520 mm (4 ft 11 27⁄32 in) broad gauge railway line in Russia. Traversing Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, the 4,324 km (2,687 mi) long BAM runs about 610 to 770 km (380 to 480 miles) north of and parallel to the Trans-Siberian Railway. The BAM was built as a strategic alternative route to the Trans-Siberian Railway, especially along the vulnerable sections close to the border with China. The BAM's costs were estimated at $14 billion, and it was built with special, durable tracks...

Байка́ло-Аму́рская магистра́ль (БАМ), с 1985 года — Байкало-Амурская железная дорога имени Ленинского комсомола — железная дорога в Восточной Сибири и на Дальнем Востоке, одна из крупнейших железнодорожных магистралей в мире. Проект тихоокеанской железной дороги обсуждался ещё в конце XIX века, однако топографическая разведка местности началась в 1926 году. В 1932 году на строительство БАМа были брошены силы заключённых ГУЛАГа: построен Бамлаг, который позже был переформирован в шесть исправительно-трудовых лагерей. После начала ВОВ часть уже уложенных путей участка Бам — Тында в связи с нехваткой...

The August 2004 Moscow metro bombing took place in the morning on August 31, 2004, when a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside Rizhskaya metro station, killing at least 10 people and wounding 50.The official investigation concluded that it was organized by the same group as the February 2004 Moscow metro bombing, as well as two previous terrorist attacks on bus stops in Voronezh, southern Russia, in 2004. The deaths included the bomber and her accomplice, Nikolay Kipkeev (Kipkeyev), the head of an Islamic militant group Karachay Jamaat from the republic of Karachay–Cherkessia, as the bomb...

The Beslan school siege (also referred to as the Beslan school hostage crisis or Beslan massacre) started on 1 September 2004, lasted three days, involved the illegal imprisonment of over 1,100 people as hostages (including 777 children), and ended with the deaths of 333 people. The crisis began when a group of armed Islamic militants, mostly Ingush and Chechen, occupied School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia (an autonomous republic in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation) on 1 September 2004. The hostage-takers were the Riyad-us Saliheen, sent by the Chechen...

Cosmonauts Alley (Russian: аллея Космонавтов) is a wide avenue in northern Moscow leading to the Russian Museum of Cosmonautics and the Monument to the Conquerors of Space . The pedestrian-only avenue connects the museum and monument to the VDNKh subway station.The park-like avenue is punctuated by large stone memorials of important figures in the Soviet space program. At its terminus below the monument, a larger-than-life statue of Soviet rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) sits facing back down the path. In 2008, Cosmonauts Alley was under a reconstruction, adding: A model of the...

The Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on April 16, 1947, in the Port of Texas City, Texas, at Galveston Bay. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history, and one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions. A mid-morning fire started on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp (docked in the port), and detonated her cargo of about 2,200 tons (about 1,996 metric tons) of ammonium nitrate. This started a chain reaction of fires and explosions in other ships and nearby oil-storage facilities, ultimately killing at least 581 people, including all but one...

Bang snaps (also known as Devil Bangers, Lil' Splodeys, Throwdowns, snap-its, poppers, whack-pops, poppies, pop-its, snappers, Snap Dragons, whip'n pops, Pop Pop Snappers, whipper snappers, fun snaps, party snaps, pop pops, whiz-bangers, cherry poppers, pop rocks, snap'n pops or bangers) are a type of small novelty firework sold as a trick noisemaker. == Composition == Bang snaps consist of a small amount of gravel or coarse sand impregnated with a minute quantity (~0.2 milligrams) of silver fulminate high explosive and twisted in a cigarette paper to produce a shape resembling a cherry....