180AD – Twelve inhabitants of Scillium (near Kasserine, modern-day Tunisia) in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world. Muslims are still carrying on this fine old tradition and the Left is taking notes. See ”1794″ below.

1717 – King George I of Great Britain sails down the Thames River with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Friederic Handel’s Water Music is premiered. A bit more difficult than clicking a track on your iPhone, but you DO have to admire his tastes in music.

1771 – Bloody Falls massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit. Of course this is unpossible because the First Peoples lived in peace and harmony.

1794 – The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne are executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. You know you’re doing your revolution wrong when you get around to guillotining nuns. This is the logical conclusion to ‘separation of church and state’ as promulgated by the Left. It starts when you’re forced to bake cakes…

1902 – Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York. This should be a national holiday.

1917 – King George V of the United Kingdom issues a proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British royal family will bear the surname Windsor, mainly because the real name, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, sounds just a wee bit too German in the middle of World War I.

1918 – On the orders of the Bolshevik Party carried out by Cheka, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his immediate family and retainers are murdered at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia. You’re doing your revolution wrong when you shoot little kids just because their daddy is the Czar. On the same day in 1998, their recovered remains are officially interred in Russia, eighty years after their murder and the bloody failure of the commie regime that killed them.

1938 – Douglas Corrigan takes off to fly the “wrong way” to Ireland and becomes known as “Wrong Way” Corrigan. The Feds said his plane was unsafe and denied him permission for the flight, so he took off, ostensibly for home in Los Angeles, and ended up in Ireland, claiming he’d gotten lost. He lost his license for fourteen days and became a legend. Recently a young American pulled a similar stunt to land in Antarctica.

1944 – World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near St. Lô, France.

1944 – World War II: At Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery. In Normandy Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was strafed by allied aircraft while returning to his headquarters. The Allies didn’t kill him. Hitler did. (Ordered him to commit suicide or see his family suffer)

1945 – World War II: The main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany. Our dimmocrat president gives away half of Germany and ALL of eastern Europe to a man who makes Adolf Hitler look like an irate Sunday School teacher. We should’ve turned the Wehrmacht around and together pushed the Russkis back to Moscow…

1955 – Disneyland televises its grand opening in Anaheim, California. Can you say “centrifugal bumblepuppy”? (Extra points if you can tell me where ‘centrifugal bumblepuppy’ comes from.)

1962 – Nuclear weapons testing: The “Small Boy” test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site. This W54 warhead weighs just 51 pounds and is equivalent to twenty TONS of TNT. Fifty-one pounds. Like carry-on luggage… This particular shot was from a jeep carrying a Davy Crockett missile launcher. Wouldn’t THAT be a hoot at a range weekend? “I’ll see your ‘five pounds of tannerite’ and raise you twenty tons of TNT and a mushroom cloud.”

1981 – A structural failure leads to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200. A screw-up in construction, departing from the original design ‘because this is easier’.

1989 – First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.

1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board. Many theories of the cause are in conflict with the official findings.

1998 – A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Considering the reliability of those who get to name those violations, we’re NOT part of the treaty.

1661 – The first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco. The power to print money is easy. Backing it to give it value is not so easy. I have one from Zimbabwe for $100 TRILLION, and it’s worthless – too slick for toilet paper.

1790 – Mos Eisley The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act. “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

1861 – The largest field army yet assembled on the North American continent departs Washington, DC on the way to Manassas to put a whuppin’ on those uppity rebels. The result in a few days was known in the South as the First Battle of Manassas, and in the North as the First Battle of Bull Run. With an emphasis on “RUN”.

1918 – Czar Nicholas II, his family, the family doctor, their servants and their pet dog are shot by the Bolsheviks, who had held them captive for 2 months in the basement of a house in Ekaterinberg, Russia. Just breaking a few eggs to make that omelet, right?

1935 – The world’s first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

1942 – Holocaust: Rafle du Vel’d’Hiv: the Vichy France government orders French police officers to round up 13,152 Jews and imprison them in the Winter Velodrome as France actively demonstrates having moved its wartime status from “Surrender” to “Collaborate”.

1945 – Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. “Oh, lookee! New toy!” On the same day the USS Indianapolis departs San Francisco with “Little Boy”, the bomb intended for Hiroshima. They’re two totally different weapons. Little Boy is a uranium-based ‘gun’ design, so simple that the scientists didn’t think they needed to run a test shot. Hiroshima proved them right.

1957 – United States Marine Major John Glenn flies a F8U Crusader supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds setting a new transcontinental speed record.

1960 – USS George Washington a modified Skipjack class submarine successfully test fires the first ballistic missile while submerged. Kremlin’s laundry bill takes an unexpected spike.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first manned space mission to land on the moon is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1979 – Iraqi President Hasan al-Bakr “resigns” and is replaced by Saddam Hussein. Guess what it took to un-elect Saddam Hussein.

1983 – Sikorsky S-61 disaster: a helicopter crashes off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities. Riding helicopters to offshore facilities is a regular part of my job. Dozens of helicopters fly out over the Gulf every day. Odds being what they are, sooner or later one of ’em’s gonna crash. Interestingly, here in Louisiana a lot of those chopper pilots gained their wings with Uncle Sam during the Vietnam War. Like me, they’ve aged themselves out of the business. The present batch are necessarily younger, and none I’ve met recently have a military background.

1999 – John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn, and sister-in-law Lauren are killed in a plane crash on the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The Piper Saratoga aircraft was piloted by Kennedy. Being a Kennedy and all that means a whole lot of laws don’t apply to you. Sadly the laws of physics aren’t among them.

2004 – Millennium Park, considered Chicago’s first and most ambitious early 21st-century architectural project, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley. Today it’s a common venue for impromptu wealth redistribution by the vibrantly diverse youth of the city.

2015 – Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee. the killer is driven by the doctrines of a radical vegan sect, right? No?!? Muslim, you say… Let me show you my ‘shocked’ face.

70 – First Jewish–Roman War: Titus and his armies breach the walls of Jerusalem. (17th of Tammuz in the Hebrew calendar).

1918 – World War I: The Second Battle of the Marne begins near the River Marne with a German attack. When it ends on August 6, a quarter million will be dead or wounded.

1954 – First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series. It’s our first commercial jetliner. On August 6, 1955 the Dash 80 was scheduled to perform a simple flyover, but Boeing test pilot Alvin “Tex” Johnston instead performed two barrel rolls to show off the jet airliner.

1955 – Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirty-four others. Try stuffing the toothpaste back in THAT tube.

1959 – The steel strike of 1959 begins, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history. In the precise language of economics, this is known as “Sh*tting in your own nest”.

1971 – The United Red Army is founded in Japan. Some army! Twenty-nine members at its peak, fourteen of which were killed by the more ‘advanced thinkers’ of the group in an effort to produce fanatical true believers.

1979 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives his famous “malaise” speech, where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as “this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” In 1980, the electorate showed what they thought of Jimmy “I never met a dictator I didn’t like” Carter and where his malaise could fit. Then Obama comes along and bumps poor ol’ Jimmuh out of his seat as the worst American president in the last hundred years ever… And then Joe “Feeler” Biden matched Carter’s inflation rates…

2002 – “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony. He should have died the same day, hanging or a firing squad.

1789 – French Revolution: Citizens of Paris storm the Bastille and free seven prisoners. France descends into a bloodbath over the next few years as “Reason” supplants the old monarchy. Some people of Cajun ancestry mistakenly celebrate Bastille Day. We were gone from France a hundred and fifty years before and we’re less “French” than George Washington was “English”. Furthermore, it was money and goods bought by the old French government that kept New Orleans afloat. After the French Revolution, they sold Louisiana off to Spain.

1790 – Inaugural Fête de la Fédération is held to celebrate the unity of the French people and the national reconciliation which is reconciling folks with the guillotine by the dozens.

1798 – The Sedition Act becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government. Modern changes change ‘government’ to ‘Democrat Party’.

1874 – The Chicago Fire of 1874 burns down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20, and resulting in the fire insurance industry demanding municipal reforms from Chicago’s city council.

1914 – First patent for a liquid-fueled rocket design granted to Robert Goddard. Fifty-five years later there are American footprints on the moon.

1933 – Gleichschaltung: In Germany, all political parties are outlawed except the Nazi Party. There’s ANOTHER law the Left would like to have.

1933 – The Nazi eugenics begins with the proclamation of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring that calls for the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who suffers from alleged genetic disorders. Why sterilize them when they can produce generations of dimmocrat voters.

1948 – Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party, is shot near to the Italian Parliament, ALMOST elevating him to the status of “good communist”.

1960 – Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.

1969 – Football War: After Honduras loses a soccer match against El Salvador, riots break out in Honduras against Salvadoran migrant workers. It’s less of a big deal than the ‘festivities’ in any American city in celebration of an NFL or NBA championship.

2016 – A terrorist vehicular attack by a member of a splinter Episcopalian sect Muslim in Nice, France kills 86 civilians and injures over 400 others.  Ain’t diversity wonderful?

1793 – Journalist AND French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat is assassinated in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, a member of the opposing political faction. This is a suitable demise for activist “journalists”.

1854 – In the Battle of Guaymas, Mexico, General Jose Maria Yanez stops the French invasion led by Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon. Getting beat by Mexico…

1863 – Battle of Bayou La Fourche, Louisiana. Memorable because Bayou Lafourche (pronounced La-foosh) is an area I visit upon the odd occasion.

1863 – New York City draft riots: In New York City, opponents of conscription begin three days of rioting which will be later regarded as the worst in United States history. It’s about race and privilege. During the riot, those oh so tolerant Northerners lynched eleven black men.

1868 – Oscar J. Dunn, former slave, installed as lieutenant governor of Louisiana back when the federal government could decide who should fill state offices…

1919 – The British airship R-34 lands in Norfolk, England, completing the first airship return journey across the Atlantic in 182 hours of flight.

1936 – 112 degrees F recorded in Mio, Michigan and 114 F in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, state records, as global warming seizes the state due to the proliferation of gas-guzzling SUV’s.

1943 – Greatest tank battle in history ends with Russia’s defeat of Germany at Kursk, over 6,000 tanks take part, 900 were lost by Germany, 1600 by the USSR. This is Germany’s last strategic offensive on the Eastern Front. The Soviets can afford to throw armies into battle without regard to losses. The Germans can’t.

1973 – Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the “Nixon tapes” to the special Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in. I’ve read the transcripts. they didn’t have nearly the indication of wrongdoing that Hunter Biden’s emails did, but then, Nixon was a Republican…

1977 – New York City: Amidst a period of financial and social turmoil the city experiences an electrical blackout lasting nearly 24 hours that leads to widespread fires and looting. This is a harbinger – every large city is only one disaster away from anarchy.

1985 – The Live Aid benefit concert takes place in London and Philadelphia, as well as other venues such as Sydney and Moscow as a lot of self-important assholes cavort on stage like they really make a difference. Is this the beginning of the “slacktivist” movement?

2011 – Mumbai is rocked by three bomb blasts during the evening rush hour, killing 26 and injuring 130. Just the Religion of Peace™ doing a bit of proselytizing.

2024 – President of the United States Donald Trump is injured in an assassination attempt while speaking at an election campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.

70 AD– The armies of Titus attack the walls of Jerusalem after a six-month siege. Three days later they breach the walls, which enables the army to destroy the Second Temple.

1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr at Hampton Court Palace.

1789 – In response to the dismissal of the French finance minister Jacques Necker, the radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gives a speech which results in the storming of the Bastille two days later. Our journalists are equally active impartial.

1790 – The Civil Constitution of the Clergy is passed in France by the National Constituent Assembly. Religious persons were required to swear that French government was superior to religion.

1812 – War of 1812: the United States invade Canada at Windsor, Ontario. Since Canada is still, well, Canadian, you can guess how this turns out…

1862 – The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress.   2015 – Hillary gets one for dodging sniper fire in Bosnia and Obama gets one for a particularly risky golf shot. Biden gets one for successfully climbing a set of stairs and Kamala gets one for knee calluses.

1878 – Yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans begins, it will kill 4,500 before it’s over. New Orleans was a fetid, fever-infested swamp then. So what’s changed?

1943 – World War II: Battle of Prokhorovka – part of the greater Battle of Kursk – German and Soviet forces engage in largest tank engagement of all time. The Soviet losses were in the order of six to one (or more). There was no clear victor, but the Russians were drawing from an essentially bottomless reserve of men and equipment and Germany, having just committed its last reserves, had everything at their disposal already on the field.

1948 – First jets to fly across Atlantic (6 RAF de Havilland Vampires)

1960 – USSR’s Sputnik 5 launched with 2 dogs. There was no provision for their live return.

1967 – The Newark riots began in Newark, New Jersey. In five days, twenty-six die, or as they say in Chicago, a typical long weekend.

1971 – In yet another instance of cultural appropriation, the Australian Aboriginal Flag is flown for the first time by a people who had neither synthetic dyes or woven fabrics, or for that matter, flags.

2012 – A tank truck explosion kills more than 100 people in Okobie, Nigeria, most of whom were there trying to get some free gasoline that had spilled.

1789 – Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille when the enlightened French show us the proper management of a revolution.

1796 – The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty. Hey! Ya’ll want it back? Actually, after decades of dimmocrat governance it’d probably fit in better with Zimbabwe.

1798 – The United States Marine Corps is re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.

1889 – Tijuana, Mexico, is founded. New employment opportunities are made available for donkeys.

1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt announces that he will run for a fourth term as President of the United States.

1947 – The Exodus 1947 heads to the Promised Land from France with 4500 Jewish survivors of Hitler’s death camps. Without the proper paperwork, the British administrators of Palestine turn them back.

1955 – The phrase In God We Trust is added to all U.S. currency. To liberals this is the equivalent of printing Arab money with a picture of a pig.

1960 – Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga breaks away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Crap like this happens so often now that it doesn’t make the front page. Africa wins again. ME? I’m still waiting for that ‘Wakanda’ thing to happen somewhere over there.

1962 – First transatlantic satellite television transmission, done via the just-launched Telstar I satellite. This was a Big Deal back then. Today, it’s a yawner. Back then AT&T was so proud of the achievement that they sent representatives around giving lectures about the Telstar satellite. I saw one when I was in the seventh grade.

1962 – Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announces Lunar Orbit Rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth. Now we have private companies doing what NASA can’t won’t do anymore.

1991 – Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 crashes in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia killing all 261 passengers and crew on board. It’s hauling people for the annual Worship a Rock celebration.