⅏Did You Know: The 'Dog-Suicide' Bridge of Scotland

Did You Know...

In the past half-century, some 50 dogs have leapt to their deaths from the historic and picturesque Overtoun Bridge in Milton, near Dumbarton, Scotland?
During one six-month period in 2005, five dogs jumped to their deaths.

Overtoun Bridge, Scotland
 Pic by Duchess of Bathwick

Donna, one of the people who, on a family walk in 2005, lost a lively Border Collie named Ben. She and her husband were walking happily onto the bridge with their young son as the dog was exploring. Suddenly, without warning, Ben jumped onto the parapet wall and dropped out of sight.   He fell 50 ft. to his death below.

There have been numerous other stories similar to Donna's.  All of the deaths have occurred at virtually the same spot, between the final two parapets on the right-hand side of the bridge, and almost all have been on clear, sunny days.
Furthermore, the dogs which have perished have all-been long-nosed breeds: labradors, collies and retrievers.

Could It Be Dog Suicide?

The phenomenon had received international attention, and the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had sent representatives to investigate.

The bridge was 'tested' for any supernatural anomolies since in Celtic mythology, Overtoun is known as 'the thin place' - an area in which heaven and earth are reputed to be close.  But nothing out-of-the-ordinary was revealed.

So could it be suicide?  David Sands, an animal habitat expert stated it was impossible for a dog to premeditate its own death and that whilst many animals appear to be able to ‘sense’ that their death is imminent it is wrong to humanize a dog in terms of human behaviour - even though some infirm animals are known to seek out a quiet sheltered place to experience a final resting place in what we would call a dignified end to life. 

Kendal Shepherd, a veterinarian behavioural specialist, stated a similar conclusion: 'Human suicide is usually precipitated by a feeling that tomorrow will not be any better than today.

'But there is no evidence to suggest dogs have a sense of now and tomorrow.'

So if it wasn't supernatural or suicide then what was causing these dogs to jump to their deaths?
More recent research suggests that it may be the scent of minks, an animal known to live under the bridge.  David Sands discovered there to be mice and mink residing in the underbrush of the bridge. In a test, he distributed odor from all three species in a field and unleashed ten dogs - of the varieties which have died at the bridge - to see which one most interested them. Of the ten dogs tested, only two showed no interest in any of the scents while 70 per cent made straight for the mink.

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Resource(s):  wikipedia, Overtoun Bridge Mystery, dailymail.co.uk

⅏Did You Know: Louise Joy Brown - The First Test-Tube Baby

Did You Know...

On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) was born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown? The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces.
Before giving birth to Louise, Lesley Brown had suffered years of infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. In November 1977, she underwent the then-experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was removed from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with her husband’s sperm to form an embryo. The embryo then was implanted into her uterus a few days later. Her IVF doctors, British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards, had begun their pioneering collaboration a decade earlier. Once the media learned of the pregnancy, the Browns faced intense public scrutiny.  Louise’s birth made headlines around the world and raised various legal and ethical questions:
Was this baby was going to be healthy?   Had being outside the womb, even for just a couple of days, harmed the egg? If the baby has medical problems, did the parents and doctors have a right to play with nature and thus bring it into the world?

• When does life begin? If human life begins at conception, are doctors killing potential humans when they discard fertilized eggs? (Doctors may remove several eggs from the woman and may discard some that have been fertilized.) 

The process had been a success!  Though some wondered if the success had been more luck than science, continued success with the process proved that Dr. Steptoe and Dr. Edwards had accomplished the first of many "test-tube" babies.

The Browns had a second daughter, Natalie, several years later, also through IVF.

First Test-tube Mother!

In another medical first, Louise's younger sister, Natalie, 27, was the first test-tube baby to have a child of her own in May 1999. Her daughter Casey is now 12, and her son Christopher is ten. Casey made medical history by ending fears that girls born through IVF treatment would not be able to have healthy children.

In December 2006, Louise Brown, the original "test tube baby," gave birth to a boy, Cameron John Mullinder, who also was conceived naturally.

She admits they lead an unremarkable life, yet because of the remarkable nature of her conception Louise will always be a part of the public consciousness. The world has followed her through every milestone of her life, from her first birthday through to her 21st, from her marriage to the birth of her first child. Cameron Joe Mullinder was due on January 2 but was actually born at 12.23pm on December 20 it was a particularly poignant moment. Interestingly when Louise went into labor at the hospital, the nursing staff were unaware of the significance of this experience. But the surgeon who administered the Cesarean section noticed her. She explains that when she had Cameron the surgeon who turned out to be an IVF specialist acknowledged the momentous nature of this incident. He came in the morning of the operation and expressed his excitement to Louise saying, "I can't believe that I'm now helping you deliver your own baby."

Today, IVF is considered a mainstream medical treatment for infertility. Hundreds of thousands of children around the world have been conceived through the procedure, in some cases with donor eggs and sperm.

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July 25, 1917, Mata Hari was Sentenced to Death.  On this day, in Paris, France, the exotic dancer Mata Hari was sentenced to death by a French court for spying on Germany's behalf during World War I. 

Since 1903, Margueretha Gertruida Zelle, (07/08/1876 - 15/10/1917), born in a small town in northern Holland, Netherlands and formerly married to a captain in the Dutch army, had performed in Paris as a dancer.  Her exotic dances soon earned her fans all over Europe, where she packed dance halls from Moscow to Berlin to Madrid, largely because of her willingness to dance almost entirely naked in public.

Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, she captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905. She became the long-time mistress of the millionaire Lyon industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet, who had founded the Musée. She posed as a Java princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood. She was photographed numerous times during this period, nude or nearly so.



Mata Hari in 1906, wearing only a bra and jewelry

She brought this carefree provocative style to the stage in her act, which garnered wide acclaim. The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments upon her arms and head. She was seldom seen without a bra as she was self-conscious about being small-breasted. Pictures taken during her performances suggest she may have worn a bodystocking for her shows, as navel and genitals are not seen even in poses where they should be visible on a nude person.

Mata Hari was also a successful courtesan, though she was known more for her sensuality and eroticism rather than for striking classical beauty. She had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries, including Frederick William Victor Augustus Ernest, the German crown prince, who paid for her luxurious lifestyle.
Her relationships and liaisons with powerful men frequently took her across international borders. Prior to World War I, she was generally viewed as an artist and a free-spirited bohemian, but as war approached, she began to be seen by some as a wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress.

Double Agent
During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. As a Dutch subject, Margaretha Zelle was thus able to cross national borders freely. To avoid the battlefields, she travelled between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain, and her movements inevitably attracted attention. In 1916 she was travelling by steamer from Spain when her ship called at the English port of Falmouth. There she was arrested and brought to London where she was interrogated at length by Sir Basil Thomson, Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard in charge of counter-espionage. He gave an account of this in his 1922 book Queer People, saying that she eventually admitted to working for French Intelligence.

It is unclear if she lied on this occasion, believing the story made her sound more intriguing, or if French authorities were using her in such a way, but would not acknowledge her due to the embarrassment and international backlash it could cause.
In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, identified H-21 as Mata Hari. Unusually, the messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, leaving some historians to suspect that the messages were contrived.

On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. She was put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. Although the French and British intelligence suspected her of spying for Germany, neither could produce definite evidence against her. Secret ink was found in her room, which was incriminating evidence in that period. She contended that it was part of her make-up. She wrote several letters to the Dutch Consul in Paris, claiming her innocence. "My international connections are due of my work as a dancer, nothing else [...]. Because I really did not spy, it is terrible that I cannot defend myself." She was found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.

July 31, 1917, Third Battle of Ypres Began in Flanders.  On July 31, 1917, the Allies launch a renewed assault on German lines in the Flanders region of Belgium, in the much-contested region near Ypres, during World War I. The attack begins more than three months of brutal fighting, known as the Third Battle of Ypres.

July 24, 1915, The Steamer Eastland Overturned in the Chicago River, drowning between 800 and 850 of its passengers who were heading to a picnic. The disaster was caused by serious problems with the boat's design, which were known but never remedied.On July 24, employees of Western Electric Company were heading to an annual picnic. Much of the crowd—perhaps even more than the 2,500 people allowed—boarded the Eastland.
Some reports indicate that the crowd may also have all gathered on one side of the boat to pose for a photographer, thus creating an imbalance on the boat. In any case, engineer Joseph Erikson opened one of the ballast tanks, which holds water within the boat and stabilizes the ship, and the Eastland began tipping precariously.

The Eastland capsized right next to the dock, trapping hundreds of people on or underneath the large ship. Rescuers quickly attempted to cut through the hull with torches, allowing them to pull out 40 people alive. More than 800 others perished.
Most of the corpses were taken to the Second Regiment Armory, which is now home to Harpo Studios and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Some of the show's employees have claimed that the studio is haunted by ghosts of the Eastland disaster

July 31, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa Vanished.  Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa's fate remains a mystery, although many believe that he was murdered by organized crime figures.

July 24, 1998, South Korea's Government Opened the Bidding for the Kia Motors Corporation, the country's third-largest car company, which went bankrupt during an economic crisis that gripped much of Asia.

Founded on the outskirts of Seoul in 1944, Kia began as a small manufacturer of steel tubing and bicycle parts. The name of the company was derived from the Chinese characters "ki" (meaning "to arise" or "to come out of") and "a" (which stood for Asia). By the late 1950s, Kia had branched out from bicycles to motor scooters, and in the early 1970s the company launched into automobile production. Kia's Sohari plant, completed by 1973, was Korea's first fully integrated automobile production facility; it rolled out the Brisa, the country's first passenger car, in 1974.

July 25, 2000,  Concorde Jet Crashed.   An Air France Concorde jet crashed upon takeoff in Paris on this day in 2000, killing everyone onboard (105 people -  nine crew members and 96 German tourists) as well as four people on the ground. The Concorde, the world's fastest commercial jet, had enjoyed an exemplary safety record up to that point, with no crashes in the plane's 31-year history.

July 24, 2005, Lance Armstrong Won Seventh Tour de France.  Legendary American cyclist Lance Armstrong won a record-setting seventh consecutive Tour de France and retired from the sport. After surviving testicular cancer, his rise to cycling greatness inspired cancer patients and fans around the world and significantly boosted his sport’s popularity in his native United States.

Resource(s):
history.com, about.com, ambassadors.net, wikipedia,

⅏Did You Know: William Sidis - Considered to be The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived

Did You Know...
Some considered William James Sidis (April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944), to be the smartest man who ever lived?   He was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic abilities. He became famous first for his precocity, and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from the public eye. He avoided mathematics entirely in later life, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonyms.

William James Sidis was born to Jewish Ukrainian immigrants on April 1, 1898, in New York City. His father Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D., had emigrated in 1887 to escape political persecution. His mother Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D., and her family had fled the pogroms in 1889. Sarah attended Boston University and graduated from its School of Medicine in 1897. William was named after his godfather, Boris's friend and colleague, the American philosopher William James. Boris earned his degrees at Harvard University, and taught psychology there. He was a psychiatrist, and published numerous books and articles, performing pioneering work in abnormal psychology. Boris was a polyglot and his son William would become one at a young age.

Sidis's parents believed in nurturing a precocious and fearless love of knowledge, for which they were criticized. Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months, had reportedly taught himself eight languages by age eight, and invented another, which he called Vendergood.

Young Sidis was truly an intellectual phenomenon. He was later estimated to have an IQ in the 250-300 range, and while that's been open to discussion or argument, there's little doubt that he was a very smart guy. His childhood achievements ranked with those of John Stuart Mill, Thomas Macaulay, and Johann Goethe. By the time William Sidis was two he could read English and, at four he was typing original work in French. At the age of five he had devised a formula whereby he could name the day of the week for any given historical date. At eight he projected a new logarithms table based on the number twelve. He entered Harvard at the age of twelve and graduated cum laude before he was sixteen. Mathematics was not his only forte. he could speak and read fluently French, German, Russian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Armenian and Turkish. During his first year at Harvard University the boy astounded students and scientists with his theories on "Fourth Dimensional Bodies."

After a group of Harvard students threatened Sidis physically, he dropped out before completing his degree and his parents secured him a job at the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas as a mathematics teaching assistant. He arrived at Rice in December 1915 at the age of 17. After a short time there, he eventually stopped teaching after being harassed by the students who were older than he was.   When a friend later asked him why he had left, he replied, "I never knew why they gave me the job in the first place—I'm not much of a teacher. I didn't leave—I was asked to go." Sidis abandoned his pursuit of a graduate degree in mathematics and enrolled at the Harvard Law School in September 1916, but withdrew in good standing in his final year in March 1919.

He flirted with leftist causes and was briefly in the news in 1919 after being arrested for his involvement in a socialist rally that turned into a riot.

Around 1921, Sidis was determined to live an independent and private life.  He once told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living in seclusion. He granted an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald which reported Sidis's vows to remain celibate and never to marry, as he said women did not appeal to him.  He only took work running adding machines or other fairly menial tasks. He worked in New York City and became estranged from his parents.

Sidis died in 1944 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 46. His father had died of the same malady in 1923 at age 56.

From writings on cosmology, (In 1925 he published a remarkable book on cosmology in which he predicted black holes --14 years before Chandrasekhar did), to American Indian history, to a comprehensive and definitive taxonomy of vehicle transfers, an equally comprehensive study of civil engineering and vehicles, and several well-substantiated lost texts on anthropology, philology, and transportation systems, Sidis covered a broad range of subjects. Some of his ideas concerned cosmological reversibility, "social continuity," and individual rights in the United States.

In 1930, Sidis was awarded a patent for a rotary perpetual calendar that took into account leap years. In his adult years, it was estimated that he could speak more than forty languages!

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• 1969, July 6,  Brian Jones and Jim Morrison Died, Two Years Apart to the Day.  Rolling Stones original leader and guitarist Brian Jones is found dead of an apparent accidental drowning on this day in 1969. Two years later to the day, in 1971, Jim Morrison, the charismatic frontman of the iconic 1960s group The Doors, died of heart failure in a Paris bathtub.
• 1970, July 3, Charter Jet Crashed Mysteriously.   On this day in 1970, a British Dan-Air charter, flying a Comet 4 turbojet, crashed into the sea near Barcelona, Spain, killing 112 people.

The charter was commissioned by a tourist group who were headed for a summer vacation on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The passengers boarded in the afternoon of July 3, the plane took off without incident and, as early evening approached, they neared their destination of Barcelona. The pilot called the air-traffic controller and indicated that they were 12 miles away and at 6,000 feet altitude.

This was the last anyone heard from the jet. No further contact was made to the air-traffic controllers. Witnesses in Mataro, Spain, spotted the plane going down. There were no survivors and the remains of the wreckage provided no clues as to the cause of the sudden crash. It remains a mystery.

• 1970, July 5, Pilot Error Caused Crash In Toronto.  An Air Canada DC-8 crashes while landing in Toronto, killing 108 people on this day in 1970. The crash was caused by poor landing procedures and inadvertent pilot error. The terrible accident came less than two days after another jet crash had killed more than 100 people in Spain.  The roots of this accident can be found in the working relationship of pilot Peter Hamilton and his co-pilot Donald Rowland.

On this day, Rowland accidentally deployed the spoilers–rather than merely arming them–as the plane was approaching Toronto's airport. The premature deployment immediately caused the right wing to plunge to the ground. One engine on the right side fell off and the loss of weight sent the plane back into the air. Hamilton tried to regain control and attempt another landing; as he did, another engine, and then the whole right wing, detached from the plane.
The DC-8 broke into pieces in mid-air near the airport. All 108 people onboard were killed

1985, July 03, "Back to the Future" Released, Featuring the 1981 DeLorean DMC-12. 
On this day in 1985, the blockbuster action-comedy "Back to the Future"--in which John DeLorean's iconic concept car is memorably transformed into a time-travel device--is released in theaters across the United States.
"Back to the Future," directed by Robert Zemeckis, starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, a teenager who travels back 30 years using a time machine built by the zany scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). Doc's mind-blowing creation consists of a DeLorean DMC-12 sports car outfitted with a nuclear reactor. Once the car reaches a speed of 88 miles per hour, the plutonium-powered reactor achieves the "1.21 gigawatts" of power necessary to travel through time. Marty arrives in 1955 only to stumble in the way of his own parents (Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson) and keep them from meeting for the first time, thus putting his own life in jeopardy.

• 1988, July 3, U.S. Warship Downed Iranian Passenger Jet.  In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship--the aircraft was hit, and all 290 people aboard were killed. The attack came near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. vessels were in the gulf defending Kuwaiti oil tankers. Minutes before Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down, the Vincennes had engaged Iranian gunboats that shot at its helicopter.Iran called the downing of the aircraft a "barbaric massacre," but U.S. officials defended the action, claiming that the aircraft was outside the commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,800 feet, and was on a descent toward the Vincennes. However, one month later, U.S. authorities acknowledged that the airbus was in the commercial flight corridor, flying at 12,000 feet, and not descending. The U.S. Navy report blamed crew error caused by psychological stress on men who were in combat for the first time. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay $62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians killed in the attack.
• 1996, July 5, First Successful Cloning of a Mammal.  On this day in 1996, Dolly the sheep--the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell--is born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland.  Over the course of her short life, Dolly was mated to a male sheep named David and eventually gave birth to four lambs. In January 2002 she was found to have arthritis in her hind legs, a diagnosis that raised questions about genetic abnormalities that may have been caused in the cloning process. After suffering from a progressive lung disease, Dolly was put down on February 14, 2003, at the age of six. Her early death raised more questions about the safety of cloning, both animal and human. Though Ian Wilmut, the lead scientist on the team that produced Dolly, has spoken out publicly against human cloning, its supporters are unlikely to be dissuaded. As for Dolly, the historic sheep was stuffed and is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Resource:
wikipedia, straightdope.com, uh.edu/engines, history.com

⅏Did You Know: Sandra Smith - The Last Woman to be Hanged in South Africa (along with boyfriend Yassiem Harris)

Did You Know...

On June 2nd, 1989,
Sandra Smith was the last woman to be hanged in South Africa (along with her boyfriend Yassiem Harris). 
Sandra Smith was a 22 year old coloured woman (official South African designation during the apartheid era) who was married to a trawler man called Philip and had two small children. Philip spent long periods at sea and sent money back for Sandra and the children. She began having an affair with Yassiem Harris, who was three years her junior:

One day in September or October 1983, Harris received a note and some money from Smith. The note said that she wanted to meet him in a park. At the subsequent meeting she told him how much she 'admired' him. “She also asked if I wanted to sleep over because her husband had left with the ship,” Harris said. “The first night I got into bed with her and that's how the relationship started.” Yassiem Harris was almost 17-years-old when he met Sandra Smith. He smoked dagga (a type of cannabis, relatively nontoxic South African herb smoked like tobacco), took mandrax (a sedative-hypnotic drug that is similar in effect to barbiturates), and had been a juvenile delinquent since the age of 13. He had left school at fifteen while in Standard 6 (Grade 8), in order to get a job to supplement the family income. His first job was working alongside his father at a car-sound specialist in Claremont, Cape Town, but he was dismissed after six months when it was discovered that he had stolen R 10 000 (almost US$1,500) in cash, and cheques totalling R26,000 (almost US$4,000). He was convicted and received six cuts with the cane. The hiding, his father claimed, 'made no impression on him'.

After they had been seeing each other for about six months, their relationship faced its first crisis when Phillip Smith, Sandra's husband, returned from sea and learnt of his wife's affair from some neighbours. He responded by getting help from three of his friends to beat Harris up, but no sooner had he gone back to sea than Harris and his wife were together again. Even though the two of them were virtually living as man and wife, this did not prevent Harris from pursuing other women. Some mornings he used to loiter outside local high schools before school started, chatting to the school girls and making dates for the afternoon. This was how he got to know Jermaine Abrahams and learnt where she lived.

The affair between Harris and Smith continued for over two-and-a-half years. When Sandra's husband was ashore, they would stop seeing each other and then resume the relationship when he left for sea again. In 1985, Smith became pregnant for a third time and was uncertain whether the father was her husband's or Harris's.

In March 1986 when Phillip Smith returned home to find his wife and Harris together again. Harris fled to avoid being beaten and Sandra followed him - abandoning her children in the process. As far as Phillip Smith was concerned, the marriage was over and so was the free supply of money he had been providing.

For a time after the break-up of her marriage, Sandra stayed with friends in Grassy Park then, with Harris' help, she found lodgings in Mitchell's Plain. But within a few months all her money had gone and things were becoming desperate.

To make ends meet, they tried renting video recorders from shops and then selling them but this didn't net them any real money. Harris, who was unemployed, also spent time hanging about outside a girl's school and got to know some of the girls, including Jermaine Abrahams as previously mentioned. He soon found out where she lived and from his conversations with Jermaine, he concluded that her family were quite wealthy.

They hatched a plan to break into the Abrahams’ family home and steal her mother's jewellery and anything else of value. Harris had also found out that her parents left for work at 7.00 a.m. in the morning and she left for school about 7.40 a.m.

The Crime

Smith and Harris arrived at the house about 7.30 a.m. on September the 1st, 1986, and Harris was let in by Jermaine on the pretext of him wanting to use the telephone. They tied Jermaine up but were disturbed by someone knocking at the door. She started to shout for help and struggle so they then tried to strangle her with a dish cloth. Harris now fetched a knife from the kitchen and repeatedly stabbed Jermaine in the neck. Amazingly, she didn't die from her injuries and managed to get to her feet and stagger a few paces before collapsing. Harris carried Jermaine to her parents bedroom and made her show him where the jewellery and valuables were kept. He wrapped the poor girl in a duvet and then cut her throat, leaving her to bleed to death. He and Smith collected up what they wanted and then left the house.
Two weeks later, while Smith was being questioned by the police regarding the video scam, she surprised the interviewing officer by confessing to the killing of Jermaine. "I wouldn’t have been able to live with it," she said. In her statement she told the police, "He pulled the scarf tight across her mouth and then cut her throat."

 

The Trial

The trial of Sandra Smith and Yassiem Harris began at the Cape Town Supreme Court on 1 December 1986. Both were accused of murdering and robbing Jermaine Abrahams. During the trial, both Smith and Harris attempted to shift the onus of blame on to the other. Smith maintained that Harris had done the actual killing and Harris claimed to have been dominated by Smith. Neither denied being party to the murder. However, when the exact nature of their relationship was examined, it was found that neither Harris nor Smith dominated the other. In other words, they were both equally responsible for their actions. During the trial, some love letters, which the accused had written to each other were read out in court - a fact which seemed to embarrass Mrs Smith more than the accusation of murder laid against her. In one letter in particular, she had referred to their sexually-satisfying relationship and said: 'I will never sleep with another man, not even with my own husband because during five years he could not please me. That is why I felt so sad this morning when you said you were pleased no one was waiting for you. What about me? Where do I really stand with you? I love you and I don't want to lose you. Yassiem, please tell me I must wait for you. I want you to believe that we will be together because I do. The way our sex has been, I don't believe I will ever again get a man who can please me so. That is why I am going to wait till you come out.'

Harris said in a letter: 'I want to tell you to forget me because I don't no [sic] if it will be the same when I come out one day. I love you very much Sandra you no it, but I don't no what's qoinq to happen in such a long time.'

On 11 December 1986, both Smith and Harris were convicted of murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances. During his two-hour summing-up the Judge-President, Mr Justice Munnik, described Harris, who had tried to put the blame on Smith by saying he had acted on her instructions, as 'an appalling witness'. It was clear, the Judge maintained, that Harris had wielded the knife throughout and his parrot like repetition of 'I don't know' when repeatedly asked why he killed the girl was merely a ploy. It was equally obvious that Harris had killed the girl to prevent her identifying them. Furthermore, his claim to have been dominated by Smith was refuted by the psychiatrist. Smith was demanding but not dominant, and there was no evidence to indicate that she pressurized Harris into committing any crimes that he would not normally commit. Indeed, the judge concluded, both Smith and Harris helped each other throughout and were equally responsible for what followed.

The Execution

On 22 December, Smith and Harris were sentenced to hang because they had jointly planned and ruthlessly executed the murder of Jermaine Abrahams. (Harris was also sentenced to 10 years in prison for robbery with aggravating circumstances. Smith was sentenced to 7 years.) When the death sentence was handed down, Smith became hysterical and had to be taken struggling and wailing to the cells.

At 6.50 a.m. on that morning, Smith was taken to meet Harris for the first time in over two and a half years. Together with two other men who had been convicted of murder, they were led the 52 steps to the pre-execution room next to the gallows. The death warrants were read to them and they were given the opportunity to say their last words. Their hands were handcuffed behind them and white hoods placed over their heads, these having a flap at the front which was left up until the last moment.

A look from below the trap 
doors. The chain hoist is used
 for raising and closing
the trap doors.

They were now led forward by warders into the large and brightly lit execution room. It was some 40 feet long with white painted walls. They would have seen the gallows beam running the length of the room and the seven large metal eyes from which the four nooses dangled. (Seven prisoners could and often were hanged at once on this gallows.) The picture shows very much what Smith and Harris would have seen as they were led to the gallows. The chain hoist on the middle metal eye is used for raising the trapdoors after an execution.

They were positioned side by side, on painted footprints over the divide of the trap and held by warders while the hangman placed the nooses around their necks. He then turned down the hood flaps and when all was ready, pulled the lever plummeting them through the huge trapdoors.

They were left to hang for 15 minutes before being stripped and examined by a doctor in the room below. Once death had been certified, the bodies were washed off with a hose and the water allowed to drain into a large gully in the floor. A warder put a rope around each of their bodies and with a pulley lifted them to allow the rope to be taken off. They were then lowered onto a stretcher and placed directly into their coffins before taken to a public cemetery for burial.

Although executions in South Africa were held in private, the procedure was described in detail by the then hangman, Chris Barnard, in an interview before he died. He officiated at over 1,500 hangings there.

Sandra Smith and Yassiem Harris were executed on June 2nd, 1989, at the Pretoria Central Prison.

Did You Know?..

South Africa hanged 1,123 people at Pretoria Central prison between 1980 and 1989, Solomon Ngobeni being the last on November 14th, 1989. Surprisingly perhaps, almost all of these were for "ordinary" murders rather than politically motivated crimes and most attracted very little publicity.
According to the South African Department of Correctional Services, two other coloured women were hanged for murder in the years 1969 to 1989, Gertie Fourie, on the 20th of May 1969 and Roos de Vos, on the 12th of December 1986. A total of 14 women were executed between 1959 & 1989, out of a total of 2,949 hangings.
President De Klerk ordered a moratorium on executions in 1990 and capital punishment was abolished altogether by the incoming black government of Nelson Mandela on the 7th of June 1995  which was greeted with cheering in Pretoria Central Prison. Some 453 people were still on Death Row. Their sentences were commuted to life.
 

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• 0632, June 08, Founder of Islam Died.  In Medina, located in present-day Saudi Arabia, Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aishah, his third and favorite wife.  Born in Mecca of humble origins, Muhammad married a wealthy widow at 25 years old and lived the next 15 years as an unremarkable merchant. In 610, in a cave in Mount Hira north of Mecca, he had a vision in which he heard God, speaking through the angel Gabriel, command him to become the Arab prophet of the "true religion." Thus began a lifetime of religious revelations, which he and others collected as the Qur'an.
• 1692, Jun 07, Earthquake Destroyed Jamaican Pirate Haven.  On this day in 1692, a massive earthquake devastates the infamous town of Port Royal in Jamaica, killing thousands. The strong tremors, soil liquefaction and a tsunami brought on by the earthquake combined to destroy the entire town. In the 17th century, Port Royal was known throughout the New World as a headquarters for piracy, smuggling and debauchery. It was described as "most wicked and sinful city in the world" and "one of the lewdest in the Christian world." 
  

In the morning on June 7, three powerful quakes struck Jamaica. A large tsunami hit soon after, putting half of Port Royal under 40 feet of water. The HMS Swan was carried from the harbor and deposited on top of a building on the island. It turned out to be a refuge for survivors.

Residents also soon discovered that the island of Port Royal was not made of bedrock. The relatively loosely packed soil turned almost to liquid during the quake. Many buildings literally sank into the ground.  Corpses from the cemetery floated in the harbor alongside recent victims of the disaster.

On the main island, Spanish Town was also demolished. Even the north side of the island experienced great tragedy. Fifty people were killed in a landslide. In all, about 3,000 people lost their lives on June 7. There was little respite in the aftermath--widespread looting began that evening and thousands more died in the following weeks due to sickness and injury. Aftershocks discouraged the survivors from rebuilding Port Royal. Instead, the city of Kingston was built and remains to this day the largest city in Jamaica.

• 1692, June 10, First Salem Witch Hanging.  In Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Bridget Bishop, the first colonist to be tried in the Salem witch trials, is hanged after being found guilty of the practice of witchcraft.  Thirteen more women and five men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows, and one man, Giles Corey, was executed by crushing.

• 1870, Jun 05, Constantinople Burned.  A huge section of the city of Constantinople, Turkey, is set ablaze on this day in 1870. When the smoke finally cleared, 3,000 homes were destroyed and 900 people were dead. 
• 1913, Jun 08, Forensic Evidence Captured a Murderous Father.  Two farmers walking near a quarry outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, find two small, dead bodies floating in the water, tied together. Although the bodies were so waterlogged that authorities could barely confirm that they were human, Sydney Smith, the century's first "Quincy," was able to use forensics to help solve the crime.  The first thing he noticed about the body was the presence of adipocere, a white and hard type of fat. The level of adipocere in the bodies, which takes months to form inside the human body when exposed to water, led Smith to believe that they had been in the quarry somewhere between 18 to 24 months.The adipocere had preserved the stomachs of the bodies and Smith saw that the children had eaten peas, barley, potatoes, and leeks approximately an hour before they died.  Given the seasonal nature of the vegetables, Smith figured that the kids had died at the end of 1911. Most importantly, Smith found an indication that one of the children's shirts had come from the Dysart poorhouse.
  With this information, law enforcement officials quickly found the killer. Patrick Higgins, a widower and drunk who was arrested and eventually hanged on October 2, 1913. 
• 1933, Jun 06, First Drive-in Movie Theater Opened.  On this day in 1933, eager motorists park their automobiles on the grounds of Park-In Theaters, the first-ever drive-in movie theater, located on Crescent Boulevard in Camden, New Jersey. 

Did You Know?  Richard Milton Hollingshead, Jr. (February 25, 1900 - May 13, 1975) was the inventor of the drive-in theater.

Pic by Mary Bellis

In the early 1930s, he was working as a sales manager in his father's auto parts company, Whiz Auto Products. According to one story, his mother was a large woman who was uncomfortable sitting in a regular movie theater. So he began experimenting at his home in Camden, New Jersey, using his car, a 1928 Kodak movie projector, and two sheets nailed between two trees for a screen. Eventually, he came up with a ramp in each parking space, so that patrons could elevate the front of their cars to see the screen without being blocked by other vehicles. He applied for a patent on August 6, 1932 and was granted number 1,909,537 on May 16, 1933.
The first movie shown was Wives Beware, starring Adolphe Menjou. The charge was $0.25 per person and $0.25 per automobile, with a maximum cost of $1. Hollingshead sold the theatre in 1935 and opened another one.

• 1948, Jun 8, First Porsche Completed.   On this day in 1948, a hand-built aluminum prototype labeled "No. 1" becomes the first vehicle to bear the name of one of the world's leading luxury car manufacturers:  Porsche.  The Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche debuted his first design at the World's Fair in Paris in 1900. The electric vehicle set several Austrian land-speed records, reaching more than 35 mph and earning international acclaim for the young engineer. 
• 1962, Jun 11, Alcatraz Proved Escapable for Three Men.  John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Lee Morris attempt to escape from Alcatraz federal prison. The three men were never seen again, and although some believe that theirs was the only successful getaway from what was known as "The Rock," it is far more likely that they drowned in the chilly water. Four days after their escape, a bag containing photos, which belonged to Clarence Anglin, was found in San Francisco Bay. Escape From Alcatraz, both a J. Campbell Bruce book and a Clint Eastwood movie, later dramatized the incident.
• 1968, Jun 05, Bobby Kennedy was Assassinated.  At 12:50 a.m. PDT, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, is shot three times in a hail of gunfire in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Five others were wounded. The senator had just completed a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary. The shooter, Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, had a smoking .22 revolver wrestled from his grip and was promptly arrested. Kennedy, critically wounded, was rushed to the hospital, where he fought for his life for the next 24 hours. On the morning of June 6, he died. He was 42 years old. On June 8, Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, also the final resting place of his assassinated older brother, President John F. Kennedy.
• 1991, Jun 10, Evacuations Saved Lives in the Philippines.  On this day in 1991 at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, 14,500 personnel are evacuated in anticipation of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Over the next several days, the eruptions killed hundreds of people and sent tons of ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. 

  

  The eruption column of
  Mount Pinatubo
   on June 12, 1991, three days
   before the climactic eruption.
  Pic by wiki user Hike 395

  Evacuation of the surrounding area began on June 7. On the morning of June 12, the first major explosion occurred, blasting ash 62,000 feet in the air and destroying part of the mountain's dome. The eruption continued on and off for the next day and then, on the afternoon of June 14, another big blast spread gas and ash miles away. The final eruption took place the following morning, spewing 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the air. Approximately 350 people were killed by the toxic emissions. The early warning and preparations saved thousands of lives.
  The mountain lost nearly 1,000 feet in the eruptions—it now stands at just 4,800 feet high.
• 2002, Jun 10, Doughnut Truck Thief Arrested.  On this day in 2002, Clint Messina, 21, of Lacombe, Louisiana, is arrested and charged in the attempted murder of a police officer after driving into a patrol car while attempting to flee from sheriff’s deputies. Soon after, police discovered that he was already a wanted man.  On March 27, Messina and an associate, Rose Houk, 31, stole a Krispy Kreme doughnuts delivery truck in Slidell, Louisiana. The Krispy Kreme deliveryman had left the engine of the truck running and its rear doors open while he went into a convenience store to make a delivery. Upon returning to find the truck and the hundreds of doughnuts inside missing, the deliveryman called police, who pursued and caught up to the vehicle.  Messina and Houk then led police on a 15-mile chase, leaving a trail of doughnuts behind them as they fled. The incident was the subject of nationwide media attention and, as it involved cops and doughnuts, kept late-night comedians busy for several days.
  Eventually, Messina and Houk abandoned the vehicle and attempted to get away on foot. Houk didn’t make it and was arrested, but Messina, who was driving, managed to escape.
• 2004, Jun 05, Ronald Reagan Died. On this day in 2004, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, dies, after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Reagan, who was also a well-known actor and served as governor of California, was a popular president known for restoring American confidence after the problems of the 1970s and helping to defeat communism.

Resources: 
wikipedia, executedtoday.com, capitalpunishmentuk.org, africacrime-mystery.com, history.com, daylife.com, various magazines, onthisday.com, skcentral.com