November 28, 2018

On Nov. 22, 1718, 300 years ago last week, the notorious English pirate  Blackbeard was killed off the coast of what is now the state of North Carolina. Blackbeard was one of the most famous villains in the history of the sea. He received his name from his distinctive long, black beard, which he often braided and tied with ribbons. Few pirates have looked and acted as fierce as Blackbeard.

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies. Credit: © Photo Researchers/Alamy Images

Blackbeard carried three braces (pairs) of pistols. He made himself look devilish in the thick of fighting by sticking long, lighted matches under his hat, framing his face in fire and smoke. If action was slow, Blackbeard stirred things up by lighting pots of sulfur in his own ship, or shooting pistols beneath the table while entertaining friends in his darkened cabin. His journal states that confusion and plotting developed if his men were sober, but all went well when they had enough rum.

Blackbeard terrorized the Carolina and Virginia coasts during 1717 and 1718 in his ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. In 1717, he blockaded Charleston, South Carolina. He captured ships in the harbor and seized citizens for ransom. Blackbeard left after he received a chest of medicine as ransom. After this raid, he ran his ship aground near Cape Fear, North Carolina. Blackbeard then received a general pardon from Governor Charles Eden of North Carolina, whom he probably bribed. Life on land was not for Blackbeard, and he quickly returned to sea aboard his new ship, Adventure.

Blackbeard took such a toll on shipping and created so much terror along the American coast that Virginia and Carolina planters organized against him. The Virginia governor dispatched the British warship HMS Pearl to take him alive or dead. Blackbeard was caught on Nov. 21, 1718, near Ocracoke Inlet, off the North Carolina coast. On November 22, after fighting desperately with sword and pistol, the pirate fell dead with 25 wounds in his body. His head was taken back to Virginia and displayed on a pole.

Blackbeard was born Edward Teach, either in Bristol, England, or in Jamaica. He is said to have had 14 wives. In 1996, researchers found the remains of Blackbeard’s ship Queen Anne’s Revenge near the coast of North Carolina. Blackbeard’s villainous life and legend have inspired numerous books, motion pictures, and television shows.

Jan 20, 2012

Congressional leaders have indefinitely postponed a vote on anti-piracy legislation just two days after major Internet companies staged an online protest against passage of the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House.

Thousands of Internet sites “went dark,” that is, took themselves offline, on January 18 to protest the Internet anti-piracy legislation then being debated by Congress. The websites displayed only a critical summary of the two bills, instead of their usual content, and urged website visitors to contact their congressional representatives. The bills would have imposed harsh measures on websites that were found to distribute or link to copyrighted material. Faster broadband networks combined with fast, powerful computers have made it easier to download and stream music, movies, and television shows. The bills were strongly supported by the Motion Picture Association of America and other media companies, which have poured millions of dollars into lobbying for them. Such companies claim that online piracy–that is, the illegal sharing or distributing of copyrighted material–is rampant on the Internet and harms content producers’ ability to make profits.

The bills provoked a major backlash. Critics, including the administration of President Barack Obama and powerful Internet companies, charged that the bills would grant overly broad power to media companies and could enable censorship. Critics took particular issue with the bills’ DNS (Domain Name System) filtering provisions, which could remove offending websites from the Internet’s directory. They also claimed that the legislation would have hampered growth, innovation, and investment and curtail the First Amendment right of free speech.

Additional World Book articles:

• Intellectual property
• Internet, Copyright, and You (A Special Report)
• Back in Time 2000 (Popular music)
• Back in Time 2007 (Popular music)