1611 – King James Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker. To many in the English-speaking world, it is still THE Bible. Our language is rife with phrases from it.

1670 – King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America. The Hudson’s Bay company de facto OWNED all of Canada except the little bit the French ended up surrendering to Britain a hundred years later.

1776 – France & Spain agreed to give weapons to American rebels. That’s how all those Charleville muskets ended up in the hands of the Revolution. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

1863 – American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson is wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering for the Battle of Chancellorsville. He succumbs to pneumonia eight days later. We would regret this loss of talent at Gettysburg.

1952 – The world’s first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1 makes its maiden scheduled commercial flight, from London to Johannesburg. Two years later they started finding fatigue failures when the planes started dropping out of the sky.

1982 – Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sinks the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano, formerly the USS Phoenix. 323 Argentine deaths, folks who’d just as soon dodged the distinction of being on the only ship ever to have been intentionally sunk by a nuclear-powered submarine and only the second sunk by any type of submarine since World War II. Except, maybe, a South Korean naval craft and the Deepwater Horizon oil platform.

1989 – Hungary starts to dismantle the Iron Curtain: it’s the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the German Reunification. I was flabbergasted. Our mortal enemies outside the border just caved in. Unfortunately the enemies inside our border were consolidating their positions. I would hope this battle ends as peacefully, but it won’t end with MY surrender.