On this day, 26 February 2012, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black child, was shot and killed by a neighbourhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida.
Martin was born in Florida on February 5, 1995, and later attended Dr Michael M Krop high school where he played sports, and mathematics was said to be his favourite subject. He had a keen interest in aviation and considered becoming a pilot.
Initially, Sanford police filed no charges against the killer. But marches and protests had begun breaking out across the United States, and the Black Lives Matter movement was born. As public pressure grew, charges of second-degree murder were eventually filed, but the killer was acquitted. The killer also later sold the gun he used to an anonymous buyer for $250,000, and in 2019 he sued the Martin family and others for $100 million. The case was eventually thrown out of court in February 2022.
Pic of a protest against the killing in Austin, Texas in 2014 by Ann Harkness, CC 2.0 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2219261924925612/?type=3
Shock Waves (1977)
“Shortly before the start of World War II, the German High Command began a secret investigation into the powers of the supernatural. Ancient legend told of a race of warriors who used neither weapons, nor shields, and whose superhuman power came from within the earth itself. As Germany prepared for war, the SS secretly enlisted a group of scientists to create an invincible soldier. It is known that the bodies of soldiers killed in battle were returned to a secret laboratory near Koblenz where they were used in a variety of scientific experiments. It was rumored that toward the end of the war, Allied forces met German squads that fought without weapons, killing only with their bare hands. No one knows who they were or what became of them. But one thing is certain, of all the SS units, there was one that the Allies never captured a single member of.”
