1304 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle: King Edward I of England takes the stronghold using the War Wolf, a huge trebuchet. When the Scots saw it under construction, they tried to surrender, but Edward refused to accept it. After all, he’d gone though all the trouble to have it built and he wanted to see it work.

1712 – The Riot Act takes effect in Great Britain. An official could read specific parts of the act to assemblies of twelve or more people, requiring them to disperse, hence our expression, “reading the Riot Act”.

1933 – Germany: Two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg and paraded through the streets. And the world said, “well, if this is the WORST they do…” It wasn’t.

1940 – Denmark leaves the League of Nations. The League has become an assembly of pompous bureaucrats enamored of their own self-importance, just like the UN today.

1941 – Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidates the Commissariats of Home Affairs and National Security to form the Department of Homeland Security NKVD and names Lavrenti Beria its chief. At least Stalin didn’t call him the “Security Czar”.

1944 – World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt (known as the July 20 plot) led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.

1960 – The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time. Trousers in the Kremlin change colors.

1960 – Belgium defends its intervention in the Congo to the United Nations Security Council while the government of the Congo appeals to the Soviet Union to send troops to push back the Belgians. The governments of the United States and France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warn the Soviets to stay out of the dispute. Oh, hell! Let’s just everybody leave and let them settle it themselves. They’ll achieve paradise on earth, right? I mean, Wakanda. “We wuz kangs ‘n’ shit”, right?!?

1968 – Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-gadda-da-vida” becomes 1st heavy metal song to hit charts, it comes in at #117. I had the LP. The name comes from a drunk or doped (or both) band member trying to say “In the Garden of Eden”.

1969 – Apollo Program: Apollo 11 successfully lands the first man on the Moon. The only human footprints off this planet belong to an American.

1984 – Officials of the Miss America pageant ask Vanessa Lynn Williams to quit after Penthouse published nude photos of her. Ah, yes! The famous “Lesbian Duck Call” pose.

1994 – OJ Simpson offers $500,000 reward for evidence of ex-wife’s killer, looks in a mirror and writes himself a check.

1997 – The fully restored USS Constitution (a.k.a. Old Ironsides) celebrates its 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years. I think it’s the only ship on the Navy’s rolls that has sunk another ship in combat.

1999 – The Chinese Communist Party begins a persecution campaign against Falun Gong, arresting thousands nationwide. You will believe what we TELL you you can believe.

AD 64 – The Great Fire of Rome causes widespread devastation and rages on for six days, destroying half of the city.Nero blames Christians.

1843 – Brunel’s steamship the SS Great Britain is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.

1848 – Women’s rights: A two-day Women’s Rights Convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York. Today men can’t was dishes since President Trump declared men can’t participate in women’s sports.

1870 – Franco-Prussian War: In a strategic move known as “biting off more than you can chew”, France declares war on Prussia. Rumor has it that France was prodded into the move by lobbyists from the Parisian Restaurant Association, who thought that Germans were better tippers.

1903 – Maurice Garin wins the first Tour de France

1916 – World War I: Battle of Fromelles: British and Australian troops attack German trenches as part of the Battle of the Somme. They attacked a defensive position when they were outnumbered two to one, suffered four times the casualties as the defenders.

1942 – World War II: The Second Happy Time of Hitler’s submarines comes to an end, as the increasingly effective American convoy system compels them to return to the central Atlantic. We lost 609 ships against the loss of 22 U-Boats.

1963 – Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 metres (347,800 feet – 65.8 miles) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention. The US Air Force said fifty miles was high enough to be an “astronaut” and Joe and a couple of others had already done more than fifty miles.

1966 – 50 year old Frank Sinatra marries 21 year old Mia Farrow in Las Vegas. Way to go, Frank! At least he didn’t do her and then leave her to drown in a canal.

1969 – Chappaquiddick incident: U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy crashes his car into a tidal pond at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, abandoning his ‘passenger’ Mary Jo Kopechne to let her slowly drown in the dark. And he’s a dimmocrat icon.

1977 – The world’s first Global Positioning System (GPS) signal was transmitted from Navigation Technology Satellite 2 (NTS-2) and received at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 12:41 a.m. Eastern time (ET). GPS is now as common as mud.

1979 – The Sandinista rebels overthrow the government of the Somoza family in Nicaragua. One of my Firestone co-workers fled the enlightened government of the Sandinistas. He was not a fan.

1989 – United Airlines Flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa killing 111. 185 survived due to some fantastic airmanship on the part of the flight crew, among other factors.

Air traffic control (ATC) was contacted and an emergency landing at nearby Sioux Gateway Airport was organized. Haynes kept his sense of humor during the emergency, as recorded on the plane’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR):

Fitch: “I’ll tell you what, we’ll have a beer when this is all done.”
Haynes: “Well I don’t drink, but I’ll sure as shit have one.”

and later:

Sioux City Approach: “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind’s currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You’re cleared to land on any runway.”
Haynes: “[laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?

1991 – Mike Tyson, a championship boxer rapes a Miss Black America contestant (Desiree Washington). If only he could sing and moon-walk and do little boys, he’d have gotten off free.

64 AD – Great Fire of Rome: a fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control. Nero didn’t fiddle. The violin wasn’t invented yet. Christians were blamed. The Left is studying the story for possible future implementation. The file is in the same cabinet as notes of the Reichstag Fire.

1870 – The First Vatican Council decrees the dogma of papal infallibility. Yeah. Uh-huh!

1914 – The U.S. Congress forms the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, giving definite status to aircraft within the U.S. Army for the first time.

1925 – Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Dreams of My Father Mein Kampf, pretty much telling anybody who pays attention exactly how he means to do business. Then when he actually does it, people run around saying “We didn’t know he’d do THAT.” As an autobiographer, Hitler was slacker compared to Barack HUSSEIN Obama, who published (You will note that I didn’t say “wrote”) TWO autobiographies before he was selected ‘elected’ president.

1942 – World War II: the Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jet engines for the first time. It’s the most advanced fighter of its time and stays in that status through the end of the war.

1968 – Intel is founded in Santa Clara, California, a feat accomplished WITHOUT a government grant.

1969 – After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a bridge and his passenger, ‘campaign specialist’ Mary Jo Kopechne, dies. Ted, being a Kennedy in Massachusetts, skates free. Dimmocrats overlook this little faux pas ever since. The fact that anybody in the country even spoke to this scumbag after this is a clear sign of the moral decline of the nation and the US Senate as a body.

1984 – Beverly Lynn Burns becomes first female Boeing 747 airline captain, performs her first take-off roll while applying mascara.

1992 – A picture of Les Horribles Cernettes, a female parody rock band was taken, which became the first ever photo posted to the World Wide Web. In the next forty years, what HASN’T been posted on the Internet?

1994 – The bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentine Jewish Community Center) in Buenos Aires kills 85 people (mostly Jewish) and injures 300. The perpetrators are determined to be a group of rabid Mormons, right?

1994 – Rwandan genocide: The Rwandan Patriotic Front (Not to be confused with The Patriotic Front of Rwanda) takes control of Gisenyi and north western Rwanda, forcing the interim government into Zaire and ending the genocide. 500,000 dead, 500,000 raped. Africa being Africa.

2012 – At least seven people are killed and 32 others are injured after a bomb explodes on an Israeli tour bus at Burgas Airport, Bulgaria. The passengers are mostly Israeli youth tourists. The perpetrators are linked to Hezbollah, a notorious radical Anglican youth movement.

2013 – The Government of Detroit, with up to $20 billion in debt, files for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The party lasts until you run out of other people’s money…

2014 – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant requires Christians to either accept dhimmi status, emigrate from ISIL lands, or be killed.

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?