1284 – The legendary Pied Piper leads 130 children out of Hamelin, Germany. Michael Jackson says “Wow! I can use music to get me little kids?!?!”

1848 – End of the June Days Uprising in Paris. The government tries to shut down make-work welfare programs and rioting ensues. 10,000 are killed or injured, 4,000 deported to Algeria, guaranteeing that Algeria will be a mess for the next coupleof centuries, at least. Rioting over the end of welfare? Wait for it.

1917 – The first U.S. troops arrive in France to fight alongside Britain, France, Italy, and Russia against Germany, and Austria-Hungary in World War I. British and French generals start drooling over fresh meat. General Pershing says “no way! We see how you take care of your men…” After receiving a lesson on battlefield tactics by a British officer, one American officer thanked him, and then told his American troops, “We appreciate the gentleman’s information, but remember, THEY’VE been using these tactics for four years and it hasn’t done ‘em much good.”

1918 – World War I, Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeat Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince. Marines come off with the nickname “Devil Dogs” and my old Second Infantry Division gets a battle streamer.

1942 – The first flight of the Grumman F6F Hellcat. It is the platform that shot down the most enemy aircraft in the war.

1945 – The United Nations Charter is signed in San Francisco. Hmmmm! UN starts in San Francisco. That explains a lot…

1948 – The Western allies begin an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union blockades West Berlin.

1948 – William Shockley filed the original patent for the grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.

1960 – British Somaliland (now Somalia) gains independence from Britain. Once rid of the white European colonialist interlopers, the nation goes on to become a bastion of peace and plenty. It didn’t? Oh, come on!

1963 – John F. Kennedy speaks the famous words “Ich bin ein Berliner” on a visit to West Berlin. In vernacular German, this translates to “I am a doughnut.” Germans cheer wildly because they’re looking at the guy who’s boinking Marilyn Monroe.

1974 – The Universal Product Code (bar code) is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

1993 – The U.S. launches a missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for a thwarted assassination attempt against former President George H.W. Bush in April in Kuwait. This wasn’t part of Clinton’s “Missiles for Monica” program. That came later.

253 – Pope Cornelius is executed (beheaded) at Centumcellae. Today Muslims still recommend this method of proselytizing Christians among them.

1867 – First barbed wire patented by Lucien B. Smith of Ohio. It is oh, so useful! Fences. Concertina rolls. Double aprons. Tanglefoot.

1876 – Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

1938 – Federal minimum wage law guarantees workers 40 cents per hour

1948 – The Berlin Airlift begins. When America had the guts to stand and say “NO!” instead of “Can we talk?” while people die.

1949 – Long-Haired Hare is released in theaters starring Bugs Bunny. Warner Brothers is at the pinnacle of the cartoon game, dare I say, the ACME?!?!?

1950 – The Korean War begins with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. American troops are STILL there. We clearly need an exit strategy. Of course, each successive North Korean despot is wackier than the last…

1996 – The Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia kills 19 U.S. servicemen. The culprits are a mob of radical Norwegian Baptists. Wait! NO? Saudis, you say? Muslims? You’re kidding, right? That’s like, the Religion of Peace” and those are our, uh, ALLIES.

1374 – A sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. We had the same thing in the US in 2008 and 2012, except they called them Obama rallies.

1497 – John Cabot lands on North America in Newfoundland; the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings. He thought he found Asia.

1692 – Kingston, Jamaica is founded.

Q: What do they say in Jamaica when they run out of dope?
A: Mon, dis MUSIC SUCKS!

1793 – The first Republican constitution in France is adopted. Don’t let the word “Republican” fool you, folks! This is FRANCE we’re talking about, and they’re chopping off heads left and right under this document.

1812 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon’s Grande Armée crosses the Neman River beginning his invasion of Russia. In the precise language of military science, this is known as “biting off more than you can chew”. But don’t feel bad for France. Germany made the same mistake in 1941. And yeah, I know I did this yesterday too, but a monumental screw-up like this deserves two days…

1916 – World War I: The Battle of the Somme begins with a week long artillery bombardment on the German Line. By the time it ends in mid-November, 650,000 French and British and 450,000 Germans are dead, wounded or captured. It is during this battle that the tank makes its battlefield debut.

1939 – Pan Am’s first regularly scheduled US to England flight. Pan Am is no more, and before long, there wont be a reason or money enough to fly to England.

1945 – The Moscow Victory Parade takes place. Part of the display is the captured German Army’s standards:

1947 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. Is it just me, or did anyone else notice that UFO sightings have dropped off considerably with the advent of ubiquitous digital cameras and cellphones?

1948 – Start of the Berlin Blockade. The Soviet Union makes overland travel between West Germany (actually the British, French and American sectors. West Germany wasn’t a country yet.) and West Berlin impossible.

1982 – British Airways Flight 9, sometimes referred to as the Jakarta incident, flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.”

The subsequent landing with a scarred windshield and partially inoperative ground navigation equipment was in the words of Captain Moody, “a bit like negotiating one’s way up a badger’s arse”. I’m thinking that having a beer with Captain Moody would be quite an experience.

1713 – The former French residents of Acadia are given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada. Since I’m sitting here in southwest Louisiana, you might figure how well that worked out for the hard-headed ones.

1812 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon I of France invades Russia. In the precise verbiage of military studies, this is known as “letting your alligator mouth overload your mosquito ass.”

1848 – Beginning of the June Days Uprising in Paris, France. Why? Because the government was going to shut down a make-work welfare program. Don’t laugh too hard. We’re just about there, folks!

1865 – American Civil War: at Fort Towson in the Oklahoma Territory, Confederate, Brigadier General Stand Watie surrenders the last significant rebel army. He’s full-blooded Cherokee, by the way. You know how racist those Confederates are!

1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes receives a patent for Type-Writer.

1926 – The College Board administers the first SAT exam.

1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France.

1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declares Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world. The Pill is loose. Let the sexual revolution begin!

1985 – A terrorist bomb aboard Air India flight 182 brings the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard. In a rare and odd twist, the event is perpetrated by Sikh separatists, not the customary Muslims.

1993 – Lorena Gallo Bobbitt and her husband John Wayne Bobbitt have a little marital problem that brings a new verb into use: “To bobbit”.

1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe. It’s not like he was contradicting global warming, because they’d have burned him at the stake for that…

1898 – Spanish–American War: United States Marines land in Cuba. We STILL have Marines in Cuba.

1940 – France is forced to sign the Second Compiègne Armistice with Germany. Hitler makes them sign the papers in the very same railway car where German signed armistice papers in 1918. In the measured language of diplomacy this is called “rubbing their nose in it.”

1941 – Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. In the precise terminology of military studies, this is called “biting off more than you can chew.”

1969 – The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio catches fire, which triggers a crack-down on pollution in the river. Yep! That’d be one of the signs… Actually, this was only one of thirteen reported fires on the Cuyahoga since 1868.

1990 – Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin. The Wall was down.

2009 – Eastman Kodak Company announces that it will discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Color Film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon. It is still a Paul Simon song, though, and a great one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wZpaNJqF4po

1919 – In the last defiant act of the war, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of World War I.

1940 – In a move described in diplomatic circles as “rubbing their nose in it”, France signs an armistice with Germany at Compiègne, in the same location and same railroad car as Germany had signed the surrender in 1918. France raises its alert status from “Surrender” to “Collaborate”.

1942 – World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by the Japanese against the United States mainland.

1945 – World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ends. Presaging the upcoming invasion of the Japanese main islands, 12,513 Americans were killed, along with 110,000 Japanese military and somewhere between 42,000 and 150,000 Japanese civilians. Planners for the invasion of Japan added a zero to each of those figures for the next invasion. Operation Olympic, scheduled for November 1945. Dad would have been coxswain on a landing craft for Olympic.

1948 – Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. This technology was replaced by technologies in the eighties and nineties that didn’t present as much of a hurdle to shoplifters. Now you can steal music from the comfort of your own home through the miracle of the internet.

1631 – The sack of Baltimore: the Irish village of Baltimore is attacked by Algerian pirates. If you don’t kill the vermin in their nests, they’ll show up at your picnic.

1782 – National Disappoint a Walrus Day: The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States.

1819 – The U.S. vessel SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, United Kingdom. She is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey was made under sail.

1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne. She’s eighteen, and actually almost entirely German. She keeps the job until her death in 1901.

1840 – Samuel Morse patents his telegraph. Nerds get careers wearing green visors and making letters appear out of incomprehensible clicks coming over wires. Just this week, India announced it is ending the last official telegraph service, effective July 14, 2013.

1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installs the world’s first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The bill that comes next month is incomprehensible.

1944 – Continuation war: the Soviet Union demands an unconditional surrender from Finland during the beginning of partially successful Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive. The gutsy Finnish government refuses, and the fact that there’s till a Finland speaks of the success of that choice…

1972 – Watergate scandal: An 18½-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex. When reporters sought the truth instead of covering the lies…

1991 – The German parliament decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin since that wall isn’t a problem any more, as in “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down THIS wall.”