The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting comprised of two
separate incidents about two hours apart on April 16, 2007, on the
campus of Virginia Tech. The shooter killed thirty-two people and
wounded twenty-three others before committing suicide, making it the
deadliest shooting in U.S. history. The perpetrator had been court
ordered to seek treatment at the university's Cook Counseling Center
seventeen months earlier, but the order was neither obeyed nor
enforced. Additionally, the university's administration had failed to
heed warnings from the shooter's professors on numerous occasions. The
incident sparked intense debate in the U.S. and globally about gun
violence, gun laws, gaps in the U.S. system for treating mental health
issues, the perpetrator's state of mind, the responsibility of college
administrators, privacy laws, journalism ethics, and other issues. The
incident prompted immediate changes in Virginia law that had allowed
the shooter, an individual adjudicated as mentally unsound, to
purchase handguns. It also led to passage of the first major federal
gun control measure in more than thirteen years, a law that
strengthened the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1853:
Indian Railways, the state-owned railway company of India, launched
its first passenger service between Bombay and Thane.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways)
1912:
Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English
Channel.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Quimby)
1925:
A group of Bulgarian Communist Party members assaulted the St
Nedelya Church in Sofia, Bulgaria during the funeral service of
General Konstantin Georgiev, killing 150 people and injuring about 500
others.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nedelya_Church_assault)
1943:
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of
the semisynthetic drug LSD.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann)
1947:
American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch first
described the post-World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and
the United States as a "cold war".
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cold_war)
2003:
The Treaty of Accession was signed in Athens, admitting ten new
member states into the European Union.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Accession_2003)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
hurdy-gurdy: A medieval stringed instrument which has a droning sound.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hurdy-gurdy)
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Wikiquote of the day:
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what
we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life
before we can enter another.
-- Anatole France
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France)