1507 – Geographer Martin Waldseemuller first used name “America”.

1792 – La Marseillaise is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. You might notice that it’s BEFORE the French Bloodbath Revolution. It’s kind of like the French national anthem except when they’re singing backup to “Deutschland Uber Alles”. The German anthem’s music was penned by Haydn:

1847 – The last survivors of the Donner Party are out of the wilderness with new recipes.

1901 – New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates. “It’s moving! Tax it!”

1915 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli begins — The invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula by Australian, British, French and New Zealand troops begins with landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles. It was a bloody blunder, rife with individual heroism overwritten by strategic stupidity.

1933 – Nazi Germany issues the Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities limiting the number of Jewish students able to attend public schools and universities. That could NEVER happen here, right? RIGHT?!?

1945 – Liberation Day (Italy): The Nazi occupation army surrenders and leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement; the puppet fascist regime dissolves and Benito Mussolini is captured after trying to escape. This day was set as a public holiday to celebrate the Liberation of Italy. They didn’t have an Italian equivalent of French fop Charles de Gaulle to march through the capital like he rescued the country all by himself.

1945 – United Nations Conference on International Organization: Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco. I know! Let’s get a consortium of Third-World bureaucrats to run the planet!

1951 – Korean War: Assaulting Chinese forces are forced to withdraw after heavy fighting with UN forces, primarily made up of Australian and Canadian troops, at the Battle of Kapyong. Memorable for many reasons, one being the incredible bravery of badly outnumbered Commonwealth forces halting a Chinese advance, another being that it took place over grounds I’d travel in 1969-70 on MY trip to Korea.

1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories copying research papers stolen from the laboratories of Wakanda.

1960 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. They did have to poke the conning tower out long enough to off-load a sailor with appendicitis, but the sub never fully surfaced.

1961 – Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit.

1972 – Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive: The North Vietnamese 320th Division forces 5,000 South Vietnamese troops to retreat and traps about 2,500 others northwest of Kontum. We’re getting ready to ‘Imagine’ and ‘Give Peace a Chance’.

1975 – As North Vietnamese forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam. We’re getting ready to give peace a chance.

1990 – The Hubble Telescope is deployed into orbit from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

2004 – The March for Women’s Lives brings between 500,000 and 800,000 protesters, mostly pro-choice, to Washington D.C. to protest the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, and other restrictions on abortion. Protesting is now a viable career choice for many. I mean, what else do you with a degree in womyn’s studies?