1500 – Pedro Cabral lands & annexes Brazil (Terra da Vera Cruz). A year later he returns to Lisbon. Based on this ‘discovery’ the Pope sees fit to divide the entire Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. Britain, France and others held didn’t get the letter.

1516 – Bayerische Reinheitsgebot signed in Ingolstadt. In the original text, the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley and hops. (Yeast hadn’t been discovered yet. It was just THERE) I see absolutely nothing wrong with this approach. I feel the same way about beans and tomatoes in chili and tomatoes in gumbo.

1635 – The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston. and today instead of teaching foreign languages in high school, we teach remedial English in college.

1910 – Theodore Roosevelt made his The Man in the Arena speech.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

1920 – The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) is founded in Ankara, Turkey. It denounces the government of Sultan Mehmed VI and announces the preparation of a temporary constitution. And a hundred years later, Turkey is on the verge of becoming a religion-based dictatorship once more.

1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler’s designated successor, Hermann Göring, sends him a telegram asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich. Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels advise Hitler that the telegram is treasonous. That’s less angst that what happened when Her Fithiness was denied her rightful place as Our President. And just wait until Biden* gets slid aside by Kneepads Harris.

1948 – 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Haifa, the major port of Israel, is captured from Arab forces. How could there even be a war? The UN issued a resolution making Israel a nation.

1953 – Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. A British knighthood USED to mean something. Now it’s given to faggots and footballers.

1961 – The 17th century Swedish ship Vasa is salvaged. Makes the Titanic look like a blazing success. Like the Titanic, she sank on her maiden voyage, however, Vasa didn’t make two miles.

1985 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than 3 months. (No, it’s not. It had cane sugar when it went out and when it came back, it was high fructose corn syrup. There’s a difference.)

1993 – Sri Lankan politician Lalith Athulathmudali is assassinated while addressing a gathering, approximately four weeks ahead of the Provincial Council elections for the Western Province. Poor ol’ Joe needs to watch out.

1529 – Treaty of Saragossa divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas. England, the Netherlands and France are left out.

1836 – Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto forces under Texas General Sam Houston capture Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Texans being somewhat more civilized than their enemy, they did NOT leave his bleeding carcass inverted and draining from a tree. Should have, after the tender mercies he showed the Texans at Goliad and the Alamo.

1864 – The U.S. Congress passes the Coinage Act which mandates that the inscription “In God We Trust” be placed on all coins minted as United States currency.

1912 – Pravda, the “voice” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It has since been replaced as the premier publication of the Left by the New York Times.

1915 – The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres. Having been “chlorinated” myself, I can vouch for the ability of even an non-lethal dose to seriously re-align one’s priorities.

1930 – The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding. It short-changes Japan. Reeling under the insult, they go on to build a hugely powerful navy, which we sink in WW II.

1951 – Korean War: The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army begin assaulting positions defended by the Royal Australian Regiment and the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry at the Battle of Kapyong. This took place in and over the territory where I was stationed in 1969-70.

1969 – British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.

1970 – First Earth Day celebrated. Participants are watermelons: “Green” on the outside, red on the inside.

1993 – Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser is released. From this code sprang Internet Explorer, and from the people who wrote it, we get Netscape, then FireFox.

2000 – In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami, Florida. The dimmocrats were all over repatriating of illegal immigrants back then. /snark

2008 – United States Air Force retired the remaining F-117 Nighthawk aircraft in service. Nobody had anything like it.

2016 – The Paris Agreement is signed, an agreement to help fight global warming. Must’ve worked. Winter keeps going on and on.

1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).

1861 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.

1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.

1926 – Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.

1945 – World War II: U.S. troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union. Well, they were free of murderous dictators for a little while.

1990 – Pete Rose pleads guilty to hiding $300,000 in income.

1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School located in Jefferson County, Colorado. Actually, this could have never really happened, because the school was a ‘gun-free zone’. Everybody was obeying the law except the criminals.

2010 – Deepwater Horizon oil well explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last five months.

2015 – Ten people are killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland. An African’s greatest enemy is another African.

1587 – Francis Drake sinks the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbor. Captured six ships and sunk 31. England had some gutsy and very capable admirals over the centuries. Unfortunately, as a people, they seem to have lost their way today.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Lexington and Concord which began the American Revolutionary War. The government (Britain) was coming to get the guns. All you little Tide-pod munching bastards ought to consider that.

1810 – Venezuela achieves home rule: Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a Junta is installed. Today they’ve achieved “Whacko Rule” as a deeply disturbed successor to a deeply disturbed tinpot dictator squanders his country’s wealth on socialist schemes while begging leftovers from other failed socialist nations.

1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom and guaranteeing its neutrality. “Belgium” derives from an old German word meaning “Gateway to France“.

1903 – The Kishinev pogrom in Kishinev (Bessarabia) begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge in Palestine and the Western world. What?!? You thought that the Germans and muslims had this to themselves?

1919 – Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute.

1943 – World War II: In Poland, German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Sometimes you have to fight. Even though you’re going to lose, you have to fight.

1955 – The German automaker Volkswagen, after six years of selling cars in the United States, founds Volkswagen of America in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey to standardize its dealer and service network. The VW Beetle and Microbus become icons. I’ve owned several of both.

1985 – Two hundred ATF and FBI agents lay siege to the compound of the white supremacist survivalist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas; the CSA surrenders two days later.

1987 – The Simpsons premieres as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show.

1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die. “We had to burn children alive in order to save them.” Plus, the ATF needed to renew the publicity boost they’d gotten in 1985, above.

1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168, or as ISIS used to say, ‘a slow day’.

2013 – Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar is later captured hiding in a boat inside a backyard in the suburb of Watertown. Both are members of a radical Episcopalian movement.

1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements. Now if we want to watch the enemy trying to dismantle our country, we can watch NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc.

1783 – Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day since it began.

1861 – Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down promotion offer to command Union armies.

1906 – Due to Global Warming, San Francisco rocked by earthquake. 3000 die. FEMA slow to respond. Bush widely blamed.

1912 – The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City. Today, they’d have been met by bus-loads of trial lawyers who chartered flights in to be present for their arrival. “We’ll fight to get you the money YOU deserve. (and keep 40% ourselves…)”

1942 – World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya bombed, a story of incredible bravery and sacrifice. On the same day, Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France as France moves from “surrender” to “collaborate”.

1943 – World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island. “I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success.”

1945 – World War II: Beloved war correspondent Ernie Pyle killed by Japanese sniper while with American troops on Ie Shima. Ernie’s writings brought home the war from the viewpoint of the life of the regular GI. I’ve read several of his books.

1954 – Gamal Abdal Nasser seizes power in Egypt, leads Egypt through TWO notable butt-kickings by Israel in 1956 and 1967.

1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana (a clear candidate for The Name Game) as the country’s first President and Robert Mugabe as (more powerful) Prime Minister. Freed of the shackles imposed by the white European interlopers, Zimbabwe soars to new heights of prosperity. The Zimbabwe dollar is the new national currency, went through FOUR revaluings. Now they have no national currency of their own.