NEWS
May 23, 2012 | Kevin Riordan
The world finally got to see Dharun Ravi cry, and if his tears didn't demonstrate the remorse he has so famously failed to express publicly, they at least looked genuine. The seemingly unflappable Ultimate Frisbee ace barely batted an eyelash Monday when others in the Middlesex County courtroom described his actions as "evil" and so lacking in humanity as to verge on monstrous. But when his mother, Sabitha Pazhani, began sobbing just a seat away, Ravi's enormous brown eyes filled up, then spilled.
NEWS
May 7, 2012 | By Edward Colimore, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
At first, the landing of the giant airship seemed routine. Robert Buchanan and other rain-soaked members of the ground crew waited to grab landing lines to help dock the dirigible at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Ocean County. In the portside dining room of the 800-foot-long behemoth, little Werner Doehner and his family sat around a table, at the end of a transatlantic flight that had just taken them over Manhattan and the Jersey Shore. Then came the horrifying moments, 75 years ago Sunday, that are etched in the minds of Doehner and Buchanan, and captured on historic newsreel films along with the now-famous words of a radio broadcaster: "Oh, the humanity!"
NEWS
April 22, 2012 | By Tracie Cone, Associated Press
CORCORAN, Calif. - On Aug. 9, 1969, two naive 17-year-old girls were launched on a path that led to the unlikeliest of friendships. That infamous night, four young people under the sway of a charismatic career criminal slipped into a neighborhood of Hollywood glitterati, then bludgeoned and stabbed rising young actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and two others. Across town the next night, the band killed again. The name Charles Manson quickly became a synonym for unimaginable evil, which nobody knows better than Debra Tate, Sharon's little sister, and Barbara Hoyt, the Manson family member whose testimony helped put the killers in prison.
NEWS
April 20, 2012 | By Victoria Donohoe, For The Inquirer
Keen intelligence in exploring the 20th century's greatest maritime disaster is the hallmark of "R.M.S. Titanic" at Widener University, which features many, many hundreds of fascinating objects, images, artifacts, reproductions, and facsimiles commemorating the hundreth anniversary of the tragedy. The exhibition's location is appropriate, as Widener bears the name of a prominent Philadelphia family hard hit by losses in that maritime disaster. Furthermore, everything on view was collected during nearly three decades of intensive searching by one man - the present owner of the entire collection, J. Joseph Edgette, a popular Widener professor and folklorist emeritus.
NEWS
April 15, 2012 | By Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Staff Writer
John B. Thayer III's adult life was framed and scarred by two of the 20th century's great tragedies. He lost his father on the Titanic, his son in World War II. Finally, on Sept. 20, 1945, a rainy night whose gloom mirrored his despair, Thayer parked his car near a Philadelphia Transit Co. trolley-turnaround at 48th and Parkside in West Philadelphia and slashed his wrists and throat. Although the suicide came long after the supposedly unsinkable Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, exactly 100 years ago Sunday, Thayer was no less a victim than the 1,517 fellow passengers and crew who perished that night in the icy North Atlantic.
NEWS
April 9, 2012 | BY DANA DiFILIPPO, Daily News Staff Writer
JERMAINE Alexander learned to ride a dirt bike before he could write or tie his shoes. "Maine" was 5, and he would ride his bicycle only if he smashed tin cans in the wheels to mimic the dirt-bike growl. So his uncle took him to the park to teach him to ride the real thing. When he was a teenager and would hear one roar by on the streets outside, he'd stampede to the window to see who was riding what. He became so adept at fixing them that he could transform scraps of junkers into bikes that, though not beautiful, still flew fast as fireworks.
NEWS
March 9, 2012 | By Toby Zinman, For The Inquirer
Lantern Theater Company's Romeo and Juliet begins before it begins: fights on the street, stealthy comings and goings, women are grabbed, rich, highborn men are drunk and belligerent. Everyone is armed to the teeth - swords and knives - and then somebody says "peace. " Yeah, right. What a place Verona is: Feuds, duels, and havoc will, as they say, ensue. The young star-crossed lovers will, through their suicides, teach their parents the need for reconciliation. This old, sad story is about two teenagers from warring families who have a moment of joy only to have things go terribly wrong through an agony of mistiming, mistakes, parental commands, and just plain bad luck.
NEWS
March 6, 2012 | By Wendy Rosenfield, For The Inquirer
Quintessence Theatre Group's mission is to tangle with the classics, and this time, they tackle Jean Anouilh's wartime adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone . A response to Nazi occupation of France, the tragedy, as reimagined for a 20th-century audience, trades the wrath of the gods for existential dilemma, allowing man and woman to blunder about on their own, making terrible decisions for terrible reasons. Antigone, you may recall, is the daughter of Oedipus and daughter/granddaughter of Jocasta, both dead.
NEWS
March 3, 2012
Reflect on tragedy In light of the recent shooting in Chadron, Ohio, I think we all need to take time to reflect ("No community immune to school tragedies," Thursday). This kind of tragedy can strike in the most innocent places, and anyone who believes his town or his child's school is not at risk is kidding himself. Every parent needs to talk with his child on a regular basis about how to handle the emotions and challenges they face in high school. A few minutes of conversation with your children is all it takes to convince them that they are loved, and that could be the difference between a troubled youth and a killer.
NEWS
March 1, 2012
Another fatal school shooting, this one in Ohio, again has parents across America wondering if their children's schools are safe. Details slowly emerging depict the alleged shooter as another troubled youth whose aberrant behavior wasn't predicted, but perhaps should have been. T.J. Lane, 17, allegedly walked into the high school cafeteria with a knife and a .22-caliber handgun and randomly opened fire. Three students died after the rampage Monday at Chardon High School near Cleveland.