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The Death Row Baseball Team and Other Odd Episodes in History

Khalid Elhassan May 18, 2020 34 min

Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder - State Penitentiary — Alston's All Stars. Daily Mail

15. A Harebrained Plan With Literal Hares

Feral rabbits in the Australian Outback. Rabbit Free Australia

Hindsight is, of course, 20-20. Still, in hindsight, few ideas have been as harebrained as that of the British introducing hares and rabbits to Australia, and deliberately releasing them into the wild to breed like, well… rabbits and hares.

Looking back at it today, knowing what we know now about the harmful effects of messing with local environments and ecologies, it seems incredible that the British deliberately released breeding rabbits into the Australian Outback. Equally or even more incredible is the train of logic that got them there: as a food source, which was shortsighted but understandable, and as prey to hunt for fun, which was nuts.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.