1775 – King George III goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.

1776 – Benjamin Franklin departed from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution. The French DID help. This was before their own revolution and was pretty much the last decent act they performed as a nation.

1861 – The Pony Express officially ceased operations, put out of business by the modern technology. Today they’d lobby a few congressmen and get a stimulus package for the Pony Express and have them put a federal tax on each mile of telegraph lines, a per-message tax on each message, and EPA would be filing a restraining order preventing telegraph operation until a study was completed on the effects of the telegraph line’s magnetic field on the western short-snouted warble toad.

1881 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona. 30 shots in thirty seconds? You can see worse than that in just about any major city on a given Saturday night nowadays. That wouldn’t make a decent drive-by.

1917 – World War I: Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The young unknown Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel captures Mount Matajur with only 100 Germans against a force of over 7000 Italians.

1936 – The first electric generator at Hoover Dam went into full operation. The first run of major electrical equipment is one FINE feeling. I have the privilege of having been in on several.

1940 – The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight. It goes on to become arguably the finest piston-engine fighter ever. Of course, making that statement in the presence of aviation enthusiasts will start fistfights.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends, and with it, the Japanese navy as a viable force. They’ll still be worrisome, but never again will they be a real fleet.

1949 – President Truman signs a bill increasing minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour. When I went to work in 1966, it was a buck and a quarter.

1958 – Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.

1992 – The London Ambulance Service is thrown into chaos after the implementation of a new CAD, or Computer Aided Dispatch, system which failed. The Obama regime is achieving similar success with the ObamaCare rollout software.

1415 – The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt. English longbowmen play a pivotal role. Subsequent urban legends about “Pluck yew” and the significance of the extended middle finger are not correct. Fun, yes. Correct? No.

1854 – The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War, immortalized forever in The Charge of the Light Brigade. “Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred”.

1906 – US inventor Lee de Forest patents “Audion,” a triode amplification vacuum tube. Electronics just got a big boost (as did signals). We had diodes, triodes, tetrodes, pentodes, and my particular favorite, the ‘unode’. What’s an unode? Light bulb. I used unodes as fixed resistance elements in certain troubleshooting techniques where they both limit current and provide visual indication of status.

1917 – Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. Russia descends into eighty years of darkness, slaughters more of her own people than Hitler ever hoped to do himself…

1932 – Mussolini promises to remain dictator for 30 years. His countrymen have his carcass swinging upside down from a lamppost in thirteen, with Italy in ruins.

1962 – Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba. In today’s UN, that would have gotten him a resounding “So what!?!”

1983 – Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters were executed in a coup d’état. The United Nations condemned the invasion as “a flagrant violation of international law”. The people of Grenada were happy and now call it “Thanksgiving Day”.

1260 – The spectacular Cathedral of Chartres is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In twenty years, it will become a mosque.

1861 – The First Transcontinental Telegraph line across the United States is completed, spelling the end for the 18-month-old Pony Express. Message transit time from one coast to the other goes from ten days to instantaneous. Ah, technology! Think about it! I can carry an iPod in my pocket that holds more music than I could’ve loaded in my back seat when I was a kid.

1911 – Orville Wright remained in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina setting a new world record that stood for 10 years. This was pushed to over 21 hours in 1931 in Hawaii. Think cliffs and trade winds.

1929 – “Black Thursday” stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange. Ultimately, a big screwup in financial markets opens the door for massive expansion of socialism. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

1940 – 40 hour work week goes into effect (Fair Labor Standards of 1938)

1944 – World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest battle in naval history.

1946 – A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space. It’s launched in New Mexico. In twenty-three years, we’d be putting footprints on the Moon. And now we’re hitching rides with the Russians…

1971 – Texas Stadium opens – Cowboys beat Patriots 44-21. Stadium has a big hole in the roof because even G-d wants to watch the Cowboys play.

1973 – Yom Kippur War officially ends with Israel 65 miles from Cairo, 26 from Damascus.

2002 – Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC. B-but serial killers are SUPPOSED to be WHITE!

2003 – Concorde makes its last commercial flight.

425 AD – Valentinian III is elevated as Roman Emperor, at the age of 6. Still does a better job than Obama.

1824 – First steam locomotive is introduced.

1861 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases. The war is used as a vehicle for massive expansion of federal powers.

1906 – Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France. By the way, Santos-Dumont is Brazilian.

1917 – Lenin calls for the October Revolution, leading to decades of peace and plenty as freedom flourishes under the enlightenment of the New Soviet Man. Right?!?! That’s how the Left acts like it worked.

1917 – 1st Infantry Division “Big Red One” shoots first US shot in WW I. One big battle was to keep American troops under AMERICAN CONTROL. The French and the British wanted to use them as cannon fodder after their tender ministrations had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their own soldiers. General Pershing knew better.

1929 – The first North American transcontinental air service begins between New York City and Los Angeles, California. Baggage ends up in Atlanta.

1941 – World War II: Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov takes command of Red Army operations designed to prevent the further advance into Russia of German forces and to prevent the German armies from capturing Moscow. Part of Hitler’s initial success against the Russians was that they’d killed off much of their own military hierarchy in political purges.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf begins – The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines.

1944 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary. 1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convenes for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City. The Red Army’s gone from Hungary. We’re STILL suffering from the UN…

1973 – A United Nations sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Syria. Oh, sure…. Syria and Egypt are all about peace and cease fires and stuff after Israel roundly kicked their butts off the battlefield. Israelis are within artillery shot of Damascus and roaming pretty much freely on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal and an entire Egyptian field army is surrounded by Israelis and in danger of dying of thirst. So… Can we talk?

1983 – Lebanon Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. Marines. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.

1998 – Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a “land for peace” agreement. And it worked SOOOOO well! Sure! We can talk with these people!

2001 – Apple releases the iPod, a truly ground-breaking bit of entertainment technology.

2011 – The Libyan National Transition Council deems the Libyan civil war over. They SAID it was over. At this point, what difference does it make?

1836 – Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1861 – First telegraph line linking West & East coasts completed. Pretty much shuts down that whole “Pony Express” idea…

1946 – Soviet Operation Osoaviakhim takes place, recruiting of thousands of military-related technical specialists from the Soviet occupation zone of post-World-War-II Germany for employment in the Soviet Union. “Recruited”. Yeah. Right.

1954 – West Germany joins North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I watched German tankers at work. One could see how they’d be awesome adversaries. They certainly had the heritage.

1957 – Vietnam War: First United States casualties in Vietnam. It’s gonna be a long one, made longer by the anti-war bunch and a complicit media.

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval “quarantine” of the Communist nation.

1972 – Vietnam War: In Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris. Three years later, showing the typical result of using words to fight Communists, Saigon is OWNED by North Viet Nam, and in 1976, is renamed Ho Chi Minh City. But we ‘gave peace a chance’, right, you hippie *^(*%%$#’s?

1976 – Red Dye No. 4 is banned by the panty-wetting food nazis at the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs. The dye is still used in Canada where it provides extra jobs for the crews hauling away the bodies of people who died from eating the dye.

1999 – Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, is jailed for crimes against humanity (such as selling out French Jews). He was ‘just going along to get along’, much as many ‘Republicans’ do in Congress.

2005 – Tropical Storm Alpha forms in the Atlantic Basin, making the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record with 22 named storms. Bad year. I lost a house. But does anyone besides me remember how the ‘global warming’ bunch said that this was the beginning of year after year of horrendous storms?