Columbus Ride Quotes

Historians estimate that the average annual income in Italy around the year 1300 was roughly $1,600. Some 600 years later – after Columbus, Galileo, Newton, the Scientific Revolution, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the invention of gunpowder, printing, and the steam engine – it was … still $1,600.3 Six hundred years of civilization, and the average Italian was pretty much where he’d always been. It was not until about 1880, right around the time Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Thomas Edison patented his lightbulb, Carl Benz was tinkering with his first car, and Josephine Cochrane was ruminating on what may just be the most brilliant idea ever – the dishwasher – that our Italian peasant got swept up in the march of progress. And what a wild ride it has been. The past two centuries have seen explosive growth in both population and prosperity worldwide. Per capita income is now ten times what it was in 1850. The average Italian is fifteen times as wealthy as in 1880. And the global economy? It is now 250 times what it was before the Industrial Revolution – when nearly everyone, everywhere was still poor, hungry, dirty, afraid, stupid, sick, and ugly.

Criminals keep terrible hours. They work nights. Weekends. Holidays. You name it and they’re out there, wreaking havoc. Shortly before I began my law enforcement career, I did a ride-along with a veteran officer in Columbus, and I’ll never forget what he told me. “If you want to see action, schedule your ride-along for the graveyard shift,” he’d said. “That’s when the zombies come out. That’s when you find out what really goes on after the sun goes down. That’s when you’ll know if you have what it takes.

The capital city of the Dominican Republic is Santo Domingo, founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher’s brother. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo served as President from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, continuing to rule for the rest of the time as an unelected strongman using figurehead presidents. He renamed the capital city of the Dominican Republic to Ciudad Trujillo after himself. His régime lasted for over thirty years, until his assassination on May 30, 1961, while riding in his car on the outskirts of the city. After he was gunned down, his riddled body was taken to France and interred in the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, bringing to an end “La Era de Trujillo.” Six years later Trujillo’s body was moved to the El Pardo Cemetery near Madrid, Spain, where it now rests.