Why We Can’t All Get Along? Rodney King Riots

The 1992 Los Angeles Riots, also known as the Rodney King Riots, South Central Riots, 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest[1][2][3], were sparked on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted three white and one Hispanic Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict.[4]




Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred, and property damages topped roughly $1 billion. In all, 54[5] people died during the riots and thousands more were injured.[6]

Earl Warren

Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American jurist and politician who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States and the 30th Governor of California.

He is known for the sweeping decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring "one-man-one vote" rules of apportionment. He made the Court a power center on a more even base with Congress and the presidency especially through four landmark decisions: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Reynolds v. Sims (1964), and Miranda v. Arizona (1966).

Warren is one of only two people to be elected Governor of California three times, the other being Jerry Brown. Before holding these positions, he was a district attorney for Alameda County, California, and Attorney General of California.

Warren was also the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1948, and chaired the Warren Commission, which was formed to investigate the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the "street photography" or "real life reportage" style that has influenced generations of photographers who followed.

The Hemlock Society/Compassion & Choices

The Hemlock Society USA was a national right-to-die organization founded in Santa Monica, CA by Derek Humphry in 1980. Its primary missions included providing information to dying persons and supporting legislation permitting physician-assisted suicide. In 1992, following the publication of Derek Humphry's book 'Final Exit', he left the leadership of Hemlock Society USA. In 2003 the national organization renamed itself, and a year later merged itself out of existence, and into a newly formed national organization. Compassion & Choices is a contemporary successor to the Hemlock Society. A number of unaffiliated local organizations continue to operate under a variant of the 'Hemlock Society' name.

The Tuskegee Airmen

The Tuskegee Airmen  is the popular name of a group of African American pilots who fought in World War II. Formally, they were the 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military aviators in the United States armed forces. During World War II, African Americans in many U.S. states still were subject to Jim Crow laws. The American military was racially segregated, as was much of the federal government. The Tuskegee Airmen were subject to racial discrimination, both within and outside the army. Despite these adversities, they flew with distinction. They were particularly successful in their missions as bomber escorts in Europe.

William Tell

William Tell  is a folk hero of Switzerland. His legend is recorded in a late 15th century Swiss chronicle.


It is set in the period of the original foundation of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the early 14th century. According to the legend, Tell was an expert marksman with the crossbow who assassinated Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of Habsburg Austria positioned in Altdorf, Uri.

Along with Arnold Winkelried, Tell is a central figure in Swiss patriotism as it was constructed during the Restoration of the Confederacy after the Napoleonic era

The Legend

William Tell, who originally came from Bürglen, was known as an expert shot with the crossbow. In his time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking to dominate Uri. Albrecht (or Hermann) Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village's central square, hung his hat on top of it, demanding that all the townsfolk bow before the hat. When Tell passed by the hat without bowing to it, he was arrested. As punishment, he was forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, Walter. Otherwise, both would be executed. Tell was promised freedom if he successfully made the shot.

On 18 November 1307, Tell split the apple with a bolt from his crossbow. When Gessler queried him about the purpose of a second bolt in his quiver, Tell answered that if he had killed his son, he would have turned the crossbow on Gessler himself. Gessler was angered, and had Tell bound. He was brought to Gessler's ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht. A storm broke on Lake Lucerne, and Tell managed to escape. He went by land to Küssnacht, and when Gessler arrived, Tell shot him.

Tell's defiance sparked a rebellion, in which he played a leading part. The struggle eventually led to the formation of the Swiss Confederation. He fought again against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten.

William Tell died in 1354 while trying to save a child from drowning in the Schächenbach river in Uri.[1] A fresco in a chapel in Bürglen, which dates to 1582, depicts this scene.

Moai

Moai, or mo‘ai (pronounced /ˈmoʊ.аɪ/), are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Polynesian island of Easter Island, Chile between the years 1250 and 1500.[citation needed] Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads three-fifths the size of their bodies. The moai are chiefly the living faces (aringa ora) of deified ancestors (aringa ora ata tepuna). The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island, but most would be cast down during later conflicts between clans.


The statues' production and transportation is considered a remarkable intellectual, creative, and physical feat.The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 75 tonnes; the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons