1242 – During a battle on the ice of Lake Peipus, Russian forces, led by Alexander Nevsky, rebuff an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights. This is an epic and formative point in Russian history.

1621 – The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to Great Britain leaving behind some of the seeds of a new nation.

1722 – The Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovers Easter Island. Anyone want to venture a guess as to why it’s called ‘Easter’ Island?

1879 – Chile declares war on Bolivia and Peru, starting the War of the Pacific. It’s a big deal there. It wasn’t mentioned once in my public school education

1922 – The American Birth Control League, forerunner of Planned Parenthood, is incorporated. Guess which segment of the population they thought was reproducing too fast…

1923 – Firestone Tire and Rubber Company begins production of balloon tires, as opposed to solid rubber tires. I worked for Firestone for a year.

1933 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 6102 “forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates” by U.S. citizens. “You can’t have money unless WE say what ‘money’ is.”

1933 – Andorran Revolution: Shaking global governments to their foundations, The Young Andorrans occupy the Casa de la Vall and force the government to hold democratic elections with universal male suffrage.

1939 – Membership in Hitler Youth becomes obligatory.  WE get to say how ‘woke’ your kids are.

1942 – World War II: Adolf Hitler issues Fuhrer Directive No. 41 summarizing Case Blue, including the German Sixth Army’s planned assault on Stalingrad. This is a great example of biting off more than you can chew.

1943 – World War II: American bomber aircraft accidentally cause more than 900 civilian deaths, including 209 children, and 1,300 wounded among the civilian population of the Belgian town of Mortsel. Their target was the Erla factory one kilometer from the residential area hit. Missed the target by a thousand yards. Obviously, mistakes were made.

1955 – Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom amid indications of failing health. Brit leadership doesn’t have a pair until Margaret Thatcher takes over years later.

1969 – Vietnam War: Massive antiwar demonstrations occur in many U.S. cities. I was a student at the US Army’s Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky. I did not participate in the protests. Some of my buddies did, because everyone knew that hippie chicks were easy.

1992 – Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru, dissolves the Peruvian congress by military force.

2009 – North Korea launches its controversial Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket. The satellite passed over mainland Japan, which prompted an immediate reaction from the United Nations Security Council, as well as participating states of Six-party talks. A Sternly Worded Letter™ was sent.

1581 – Francis Drake is knighted by Elizabeth I for a circumnavigation of the world. Took him three years. It cost him five ships and a couple of hundred men, but the cargo he brought back was of greater value than the entire OTHER revenue of England that year.

1814 – Napoleon abdicates for the first time and names his son Napoleon II as Emperor of the French. What’s that?  Revolution? What revolution?

1818 – The United States Congress adopts the flag of the United States with 13 red and white stripes and one star for each state (then 20). Adding a stripe for each state didn’t work.

1859 – Bryant’s Minstrels debut “Dixie” in New York City in the finale of a blackface minstrel show.

It’s politically incorrect now. You may never hear it performed in public again.

1922 – WAAB (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) becomes first US radio station with “W” calls.

1925 – The ANTIFA Schutzstaffel (SS) is founded under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in Germany.

1933 – USS Akron (ZRS-4) wrecked off the New Jersey coast due to severe weather, precipitating the demise of combat Zeppelins. The things were so big that the winds at one end could be different than the winds at the other and the framework was too delicate to handle the stresses.

1944 – World War II: First bombardment of oil refineries in Bucharest by Anglo-American forces kills 3000 civilians. It’s tough enough working in a refinery WITHOUT somebody bombing the crap out of it while you’re there.

1945 – World War II: Soviet troops liberate Hungary from German occupation and occupy the country itself, replacing rule by one ruthless dictator with rule by another ruthless dictator. That was ‘liberation’. Real liberation was forty-five years into the future.

1949 – Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Today it exists only so that Europe can rattle their decorative sabers and call US for a real military. Except the French, who do quite well against African tribes and boats full of hairy hippies. And other French.

1958 – The CND peace symbol is displayed in public for the first time in London. In 1968 WE knew it as “the footprint of the American chicken.”

1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots break out in many cities. Half the rioters have no idea why they’re rioting, other than free stuff.

1972 – First electric power plant fueled by garbage begins operating. Tree-huggers swoon.

1973 – The World Trade Center in New York is officially dedicated.

1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen, both of them college dropouts.

1984 – President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons. One man’s ‘weapon’ is another man’s disinfectant or insecticide or cleaning agent. You can’t repeal chemistry.

1994 – Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark found Netscape Communications Corporation under the name “Mosaic Communications Corporation”. Somehow they’ve morphed into Mozilla.

2009 – France returns to being a member of NATO because a fish really NEEDS a bicycle. Says General Patton: I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.

1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins. Mail takes eleven days from Saint Louis to San Francisco. Less than a year and a half later telegraph from coast to coast makes the Pony Express obsolete. How dusty is your fax machine?

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design, making the automobile practical.

1917 – Vladimir Lenin arrives in Russia from exile, marking the beginning of Bolshevik leadership in the Russian Revolution.

1922 – Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. People who argue with this turn up dead, if they turn up at all.

1941 – Churchill warns Stalin of German invasion. Didn’t make a difference. Stalin had secretly signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, and he’d murdered most of his experienced military leadership because of politics.

1942 – World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula. The American and Filipino survivors are savaged by their Japanese captors. 5,000-10,000 Filipino and 600-650 American prisoners of war died in what came to be known as the “Bataan Death March”. In 1946 Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.

1948 – President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries, including former enemies. $5 billion? That won’t hardly buy off a dimmocrat crony today…

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.

1973 – The first portable cell phone call is made in New York City, United States (driving 20MPH under the speed limit in the fast lane with traffic piling up behind…)

1974 – The Super Outbreak occurs, the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history. The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured. This is the bunch that ravaged Xenia, Ohio and Brandenburg, Kentucky. I was at Fort Knox, close to Brandenburg. We treated victims and sheltered survivors.

1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. 64kB RAM (1/25000th of my MacBook Pro’s 16 GB). It used 360kB 5.25 floppies. My Macbook Pro has 1 TB solid state drive – 28,000 times the storage. The Osborne displayed a 5? monochrome monitor that could show 24 lines of 52 characters each, and I have to say “Retina” and the Osbourne cost $1,795 in 1981 dollars or $6,300 today. Man, those were the good old days!

1982 – The United Kingdom sends a naval task force to the south Atlantic to reclaim the disputed Falkland Islands from Argentina on orders from “Iron Meg”, Margaret Thatcher. Back when Brit leaders had principles.

1986 – US national debt hits $2 trillion. That WAS the WHOLE debt. Under our new overlords, that’s not even the whole budget deficit for Obama’s first two years.

1996 – A United States Air Force airplane carrying United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 on board. He was a friend of Bill ‘n’ Hillary Clinton, perhaps not the safest thing to be… NO idea what he knew that they didn’t want him to tell…

2010 – Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer. I have the big iPad Pro. Call me a fan.
Said Steve Jobs in 1983:

“Strategy is really simple. What we want to do at Apple, is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes … And we really want to do it with a radio link in it so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers.”

300,000 were sold on the first day of its availability, fifteen MILLION by the time Apple introduced the iPad 2.

2017 – A bomb explodes in the St Petersburg metro system, killing 14 and injuring several more people. Andddd… It’s a Muslim.

1826 – Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine. Polar bears start drowning in large numbers.

1873 – The British steamer SS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547. She belongs to White Star Lines. Yep. the “Titanic” folks…

1924 – Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch”. However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Dreams of My Father Mein Kampf.

1933 – The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organize a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic acts. Today they’d be negotiating with Congressional dimmocrats who’d be selling them gas canisters.

1945 – World War II: Operation Iceberg – United States troops land on Okinawa in the last campaign of the war. Eighty-two days later, 12,000 Americans are dead and 38,000 are wounded. On the Japanese side, somewhere between 77,000 and 110,000 Japanese combatants are killed, along with 40,000-150,000 Okinawan civilians.

1948 – Cold War: Berlin Airlift – Military forces, under direction of the Russian-controlled government in East Germany, set up a land blockade of West Berlin. Biden* would’ve sent Kneepads Harris to negotiate and Berlin would’ve been handed over to the Soviets.

1957 – The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti-tree hoax on its current affairs programme Panorama. Spaghetti-tree husbandry is a core subject in many progressive college curricula today.

1960 – The TIROS-1 satellite transmits the first television picture from space. Now it’s difficult to find a part of modern life that DOESN’T go through a satellite.

1969 – The Hawker Siddeley Harrier enters service with the Royal Air Force. The RAF retired its Harriers in March 2011. The marines will keep ours at least into 2025.

1976 – Apple Computer is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, without government aid. Today they’d get millions as long as a significant percentage was rolled over into the dimmocrat campaign treasury.

1976 – Conrail takes over operations from six bankrupt railroads in the northeastern U.S.

1979 – Iran becomes an Islamic republic by a 99% vote, officially overthrowing the Shah. That vote is as accurate as the one that “elected” Biden.

1991 – Warsaw Pact officially dissolves. I spent three years in Germany waiting for those boogers to come charging through the Fulda Gap. Apparently the strain was too much for them. Now, with America defanged and NATO run by a committee of bean-counting socialist bureaucrats, Europe lies there for the taking. And this time Islam is doing it unless Putin does it first.

1999 – Nunavut is established as a Canadian territory carved out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories. “So what makes sense in all this?” “Nunavut.”

627 AD – Battle of the Trench: Muhammad undergoes a 14-day siege at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan. After his opposition breaks apart, Muhammad chases down the losers, gathers all the men, 700-900 of them, and beheads them, just like today. Women and children are taken into slavery, just like today.

1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act. That whole “Tea Party” thing really upset them. The original Tea Party folks didn’t dump their own tea in the harbor… We’re just not mad enough YET! Boil, froggy, boil!

1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. Nothing like armed naval vessels showing up on your doorstep with superior firepower to get the ol’ diplomacy going. Of course, those fops in the State Department haven’t learned that lesson.

1889 – The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated. Built to commemorate the French national bloodbath Revolution, it is very French in that it is eminently elegant and does absolutely nothing except give the Germans something photogenic to march under…

1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association – NCAA) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States. Yeah. They’re amateurs like I’m Prince Consort to the Tsarina Katherine of All the Russias.

1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time, equivalent to making a blanket longer by cutting off a piece at the foot and sewing it to the head end.

1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment. Federal dollars paid men to work. Families got money. The country got completed work. It wouldn’t work today because back then, people actually wanted to work. Today it’d just upset the dimmocrats’ biggest voting bloc. It’s easier to just pay ‘em to stay home to wait on election day.

1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer. The buyer is the United States Census Bureau. Let’s see – 5,200 vacuum tubes, 14.5 tons, 125 kW power consumption, $159,000 dollars, which in today’s dollars is $1,450,024.96. My iPhone beats it in so many ways it’s unbelievable.

1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon. Go ahead, Boris! Who put FOOTPRINTS on the moon?

1991 – The Warsaw Pact formally disbands. I (and a few million others) spent a significant amount of time waiting for those bastards to come streaming into Western Europe.

1992 – An era ends as the USS Missouri (BB-63), the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

1814 – Britain & allies march into Paris after defeating Napoleon. this event marks the beginning of Parisian status as the five dollar whore of Europe. How many foreign armies have paraded through Paris? The ONLY way that fop de Gaulle was able to march ‘victoriously’ into Paris in 1944 was that the path was paved in the blood of America and the British Commonwealth.

1842 – Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Dr. Crawford Long. He uses ether. “Ether this or it’s gonna hurt like hell.”

1858 – Hyman Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser.

1867 – Alaska is purchased for $7.2 million, about 2 cents/acre ($4.19/km²), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward. The news media call this Seward’s Folly. The news media is always right, you know…

1870 – Texas becomes last Confederate state readmitted to Union. Lately they’re asking about a do-over on that. If they do, I’m gonna get me a big hat and haul my Cajun butt over there.

1932 – Amelia Earhart is first woman to fly solo cross the Atlantic, spends first half of trip with left blinker on, applying mascara.

1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau. 5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 29,000 pounds (13 metric tons), consumed 125 kW in electricity.

1964 – Jeopardy!, hosted by Art Fleming debuts. It’s kind of like Wheel of Fortune for smart people.

1981 – President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr., who is trying to impress Jodie Foster. Contrary to rumor, I did NOT send Hinckley a letter telling him that Biden* was banging Jodie Foster like a screen door in a tornado.  Also shot are some others, including James Brady, who is then exhibited by his wife at various fundraisers as the Left’s Favorite Vegetable, a title he held until bumped out of the slot by Christopher Reed.

1991 – William Kennedy Smith allegedly rapes a woman (Or as the Kennedy men call it – ‘foreplay’), in keeping with his family’s high tradition. Also in keeping with his family’s high tradition, he’s found “not guilty”

2017 – SpaceX conducts the world’s first reflight of an orbital class rocket while NASA prioritizes Muslim outreach and personal pronoun rules.