A Bloody Week in History

2013 April 15: Boston Marathon bombings: Two bombs detonated within seconds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Another suspected device was intentionally exploded in Copley Square. 3 dead and 183 injured.

Normally I would write a post in http://madnessstop.blogspot.com/ April 15, 2013 was Tax Day in the United States. I was trying to decide - file or ask for an extension? Breaking News.....Boston Marathon!

While drinking coffee and half listening to the news, I heard this was Devil Week. So exactly what happened in United States history?  Well it was bloody!

The week in history - April 15 – 21 saw the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, April 19, 1775 and the death of Abraham Lincoln, April 15, 1865.  On April 19, 1861, the first blood of the American Civil War is shed when a secessionist mob in Baltimore attacks Massachusetts troops bound for Washington, D.C. Four soldiers and 12 rioters were killed.

Deadly:

• April 18, 1983, suicide bomber destroyed U.S. Embassy in Lebanon. A suicide bomber carried out an attack in Beirut with a car-bomb that left 63 people dead, including 17 Americans. April 19, 1995 truck bomb exploded in Oklahoma City in a domestic terrorist attack. A truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., leaving 168 dead, including the 19 children who had been in the building's day-care center.  
• Two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. 
• On April 16th in 2007, in one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history, 32 students and teachers die after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
• April 12, 1988 - Yū Kikumura, a member of the Japanese Red Army, is arrested with three pipe bombs on the New Jersey Turnpike. According to prosecutors, Kikumura planned to bomb a military recruitment office in the Veteran's Administration building in lower Manhattan on April 14, the anniversary of the U.S. raid on Libya.

Lack of Concern for Human Life:

April 20, 1914 - Militia slaughters strikers at Ludlow, Colorado, ending a bitter coal-miners' strike, Colorado militiamen attack a tent colony of strikers, killing dozens of men, women, and children.

April 21, 1930 a fire at an Ohio prison kills 320 inmates, some of whom burn to death when they are not unlocked from their cells. It is one of the worst prison disasters in American history. The prison, built to hold 1,500 people, was almost always overcrowded and notorious for its poor conditions. At the time of the 1930 fire, there were 4,300 prisoners living in the jail.

The Ohio State Penitentiary was built in Columbus in 1834. Throughout its history, it had a poor reputation. A cholera epidemic swept through the facility in 1849, killing 121 convicts. In 1893, a prison superintendent wrote that Ten thousand pages of history of the Ohio Penitentiary would [not] give one idea of the inward wretchedness of its 1,900 inmates. 

Ironic I watched the movie Prometheus last night. In Greek mythology, Prometheus (Greek) is a Titan, culture hero, and con artist figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay. Using the theme of the creation of man - seeking the origins of humanity, Prometheus a 2012 science fiction film is a story is set in the late 21st century. It centers on the crew of the spaceship Prometheus as they follow a star invitation discovered among the artifacts of several ancient Earth cultures. The crew arrives on a distant planet, and discovers a threat that could cause the extinction of the human race. 

The film deals with humanity's relationship with their creators and the consequence of defying them. Engineer(s) was sent to Earth to stop humanity's increasing aggression.  It was implied that some natural disasters were not all nature.  Were groups of population eliminated in an effort to control humans?  Is that why some cultures just seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth?  

Unlike friction where plots can be written with positive or negative endings, humans are deadly in their aggression as we can see in just one week in history........

.....But there is always at least one hero with positive virtues 

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images

Carlos Arredondo displays a blood-soaked flag. He had been handing them out when explosions ripped through areas near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday