42 BC – The Roman Senate posthumously deifies Julius Caesar. The Left uses this practice today: JFK, MLK, Nelson Mandela, and of course the Living God Among Us, Barack Obama. When you add to that whichever thug-du-jour comes out of the black criminal underclass – Brianna Taylor, Michael Brown, Saint George Floyd of Fentanyl…
45 BC – The Julian calendar takes effect as the civil calendar of the Roman Empire, establishing January 1 as the new date of the new year.
1772 – The first traveler’s cheques, which could be used in 90 European cities, are issued by the London Credit Exchange Company. I used to use them to move my money when I was changing posts in the army. Banking was a lot less portable fifty years ago.
1773 – The hymn that became known as “Amazing Grace“, then titled “1 Chronicles 17:16–17″ is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, England.
1804 – French rule ends in Haiti. Haiti becomes the first black republic and second independent country in North America after the United States. Right now they’re so ‘independent’ that if outside aid stopped, they’d descend into disease, death and anarchy in a matter of months. Oh, wait! They’re getting outside aid and they STILL have disease, death and anarchy… Sort of like New Orleans…
1880 – Ferdinand de Lesseps begins French construction of the Panama Canal. And like so many things in the next hundred years, something the French start, the Americans come behind and finish.
1908 – For the first time, a ball is dropped in New York, New York’s Times Square to signify the start of the New Year at midnight. Of course with Joe Biden in the White House, ball-dropping is elevated to an art form.
1914 – The SPT Airboat Line becomes the world’s first scheduled airline to use a winged aircraft. It takes people between Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida, a 23-minute flight replacing a two-hour boat ride, twenty hour drive, or a four to twelve-hour train ride. A one-way ticket was five bucks.
1934 – Nazi Germany passes the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring“. This paragraph didn’t make it into ObamaCare because it would deprive the Left of a major source of dimmocrat votes.
1942 – The Declaration by United Nations is signed by twenty-six nations. At the time, it was twenty-six nations against the tyranny of Germany and Japan, the tyranny of the USSR being of the kinder, gentler sort that only killed millions of politically inconvenient people. It’s time to end this travesty.
1949 – United Nations cease-fire takes effect in Kashmir from one minute before midnight. War between India and Pakistan stops accordingly. Now, both of those countries are nuclear powers. A real war could be rather energetic.
1959 – Fulgencio Batista, dictator of Cuba, is overthrown by Fidel Castro’s forces during the Cuban Revolution. Cuba, freed of the oppression of Batista, goes on to become a beacon of fairness and opportunity in the Western Hemisphere. Now they’re having a shortage of sugar. It’s $25/lb in a nation that used to export the stuff.
1982 – Peruvian Javier Pérez de Cuéllar becomes the first Latin American to hold the title of Secretary-General of the United Nations. Latin America is often regarded as a fount of good governance.
1983 – The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet, Al Gore curiously absent.
1994 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect. What’s that big sucking sound?
1997 – Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan is appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations. Because, Ghana, as everybody knows, is a beacon of freedom and enlightenment and the UN is just exactly the way to share it.
1999 – The Euro € currency is introduced in 11 countries – members of the European Union (with the exception of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece and Sweden). Now they’re up to twenty. I wonder how much longer it will be before it’s replaced by the dinar.
2010 – A suicide car bomber detonates at a volleyball tournament in Lakki Marwat, Pakistan, killing 105 and injuring 100 more. Just a political debate between pro- and anti-Taliban groups. The pro bunch pulled the trigger.
2011 – A bomb explodes as Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, leave a new year service, killing 23 people. Obama doesn’t acknowledge this bombing since only Christians died.
2017 – Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres was officially elected Secretary-General of the United Nations, because if any place says ‘world leaders come from here’, it’s Portugal.
