1598 – Henry IV of France issues the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots. (Edict repealed in 1685.) this is a fine example of “what the government giveth, the government taketh away.” Our founding Fathers knew this. That’s why the Declaration of Independence states “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” They don’t come from government, they come from G-d. And if you believe that government is the ultimate authority (the Founding Fathers didn’t. Neither do I.) then you’re in trouble.

1742 – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah makes its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland. Anybody topping it today? Go ahead! I’m waiting…

1796 – The first elephant ever seen in the United States arrives from India.

1902 – James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1926 – Bicyclists without bicycle-tax-stamp rounded up in Amsterdam, Dimmocrats say “Hey! we can tax bicycles!”

1941 – Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed. Uh, yeah… Our ally, Uncle Joe Stalin played us like a fiddle. He had a secret pact with Hitler to divide Poland at the beginning of the war, held off on hostilities with Japan for the entire war, jumping in at the very end to take a chunk of Japan and a chunk of Manchuria for himself.

1943 – World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners of war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn Forest Massacre is announced, alienating the Western Allies, the Polish government in exile in London, from the Soviet Union. But that was part of the deal between Stalin and Hitler: Split Poland, you kill who you want and we kill who we want. Irony? The Katyn Massacre was discovered by Germans. Their countrymen were busy filling other mass graves at the time.

1948 – The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem. Arabs are trying to take up where Hitler left off. They still are, except now we have an American “President” who appears to just stand back and watch it happen…

1970 – Apollo 13 announces “Houston, we’ve got a problem!” as a Beech-built oxygen tank explodes en route to Moon.

1974 – Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft) launches the U.S.’s first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.

1976 – The United States Treasury Department reintroduces the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson’s 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration. I’m expecting a three-dollar bill with obama’s picture on it.