1517 – Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther posts his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. This move would result in the deaths of thousands on both sides of the discussion.

1846 – Donner party, unable to cross the Donner Pass, construct a winter camp. “What’s for lunch?”

1917 – World War I: Battle of Beersheba – “last successful cavalry charge in history” done by the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade. Or maybe not. See “1942? below.

1923 – The first of 160 consecutive days of 100 degrees at Marble Bar, Australia. Curse that Global Warming!

1941 – World War II: The destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors. It is the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII.

1942 – Colonel Alessandro Bettoni (led) three mounted squadrons of Italians forward at a gallop into the Soviet lines… In the victorious charge the Italians lost 40 cavalrymen (including the commander of the 4th Squadron, Captain Abba) with another 79 wounded and almost 100 precious horses but they inflicted over 150 casualties on the Soviets and captured some 900 unfortunate Siberians along with a collection of sixty mortars, artillery pieces and machine guns.

1944 – Dr. jur. Erich Göstl, a member of the Waffen SS, is awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, to recognise extreme battlefield bravery, after losing his face and eyes during the Battle of Normandy. Bravery has no borders.

1956 – Suez Crisis: The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal. You know you’re waaaaay down the food chain when you get bombed by France…

1968 – Vietnam War October surprise: Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of “all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam” effective November 1. There’s nothing quite like a dimmocrat president “managing” a war. LBJ’s perception of “progress” was as finely developed as his morals, and the war went on until the mid-70’s, and tens of thousands more American soldiers died while the war was “managed” instead of won by Johnson and Nixon.

758 AD – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates. They were at it back then, too…

1503 – Queen Isabella of Spain bans violence against Indians. This royal edict is totally ignored as conquistadores run through the New World.

1534 – English Parliament passes Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the English church – a role formerly held by the Pope.

1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States. Today it’d cause pants-shi**ing hysteria and we’d have to call out the National Guard. Lawyers would profit greatly.

1960 – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. On the day before, a guy woke up in a cheap hotel sitting in a bathtub of ice with a huge incision in his side…

1961 – Because of “violations of Lenin’s precepts”, it is decreed that Joseph Stalin’s body be removed from its place of honor inside Lenin’s tomb and buried near the Kremlin wall with a plain granite marker instead. The soviets aren’t the only ones who will rewrite history to fit an agenda. On the same day, Tsar Bomba, the largest man-made explosion ever made, equivalent to 58 MILLION tons of TNT, was conducted by the USSR.

1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule (and a royal ass-kicking by Britain over the Falkland Islands) are held.

1988 – Philip Morris buys Kraft Foods for U.S. $13.1 billion. Now one of their product lines consists of questionable products known to cause cancer, sold under heavy advertising. The rest is cigarettes.

1995 – Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote was 50.6% to 49.4%).

1787 – Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague. You need this overture.

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of ‘29 or “Black Tuesday,” ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression. Leads to the election of a dimmocrat president and the massive expansion of the federal government. Seconds, anyone?

1944 – The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division. If only they’d had Charles de Gaulle, they could’ve singlehandedly liberated Paris.

1945 – The first commercially-made ballpoint pens went on sale — at Gimbels Department Store in New York City. The pens sold for $12.50 and racked up a tidy profit of $500,000 in the first month!

1966 – The National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed. An alternative name, the “National Association of Gals” (NAG) doesn’t make the cut. It gives homely women a way to appear meaningful in mainstream society.

1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. Al Gore curiously absent.

1998 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. Senator Glenn is an excellent example of heroism in younger years NOT translating to wisdom in later years.

2012 – Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States, killing 148 directly and 138 indirectly, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages, finally replacing Hurricane Katrina as the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT hurricane in history because it, like hit NEW YORK where Really Important People live.

1664 – The Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot, later to be known as the Royal Marines, is established.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston. That recent bombing and the police orders in the aftermath show that Boston is a lot more amenable to government control than it was in 1775. Leave the city? How about ‘Don’t leave your HOUSE.” And they obeyed. Sad.

1886 – In New York Harbor, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty. Like many things French, it’s magnificent. And hollow.

1919 – The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January. And we all know how well that little bit of government tampering turned out. Works equally well for drugs, huh?

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba. The world steps back from the brink of nuclear war. Today Obama would call him up and say “Forget that! I hate America too!”

2006 – The funeral service takes place for those executed at Bykivnia forest, outside Kiev, Ukraine. 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s – early 1940s are reburied. Just remember that these deaths were the result of a centralized, powerful government who KNEW how best to run the country.

312 AD – Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross. This moves him to declare the entire Roman Empire to be Christian. Nothing like a politician using religion to further his goals.

1806 – The French Army enters in Berlin. This pi**es off the Germans. The Germans say “Oh, that’s how you wanna play” and they return the favor several times in the next century and a half. Like in 1870, when Marshal François Achille Bazaine surrenders to Prussian forces at Metz along with 140,000 French soldiers in one of the biggest French defeats of the Franco-Prussian War.

1810 – United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida. It ends up as part of three states, Alabama, Mississippi and the “Florida Parishes” of Louisiana.

1964 – Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as “A Time for Choosing”.

1971 – Democratic Republic of the Congo is renamed Zaire. “Yeah, we’re a basket case of corruption but if we change the name it’ll confuse people for a while and we can get MORE money…”