1607 – English colonists of the Jamestown settlement make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia for the first British colony in North America.
1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Régime and to eventually consolidate his own rule. Revolution? What revolution?
1805 – That “shores of Tripoli” thing: United States Marines captured Derne, Tripoli under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon. A freakin’ FIRST LIEUTENANT! Back then, a lieutenant of Marines just goes ahead and takes the city. Today we’d have to let the State Department petition the UN to get permission for us to even THINK about using harsh words. And we call this “progress”.
1933 – The Department of Homeland Security Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established.
1956 – SS Ideal X, the world’s first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas. She held 58 standard 33-foot containers. Now, 95% of the world’s non-bulk cargo goes in containers, and modern ships may carry 18,000 or more 20-foot containers.
1963 – In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allows for female participation in elections. You can bet that after Barack and Hillary’s ‘Arab Spring’, the groups running the country now could give a damn about women voting. Or voting in general.
1966 – A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye. Nobody cares but him and his cronies as they open off-shore bank accounts to stash foreign aid and bribes.
1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force. The Red Chinese and Soviets ignore it.
1986 – A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Comparing the Chernobyl reactors to the American version is like comparing apples to oranges, but every time you talk about nuclear power, the bunny-hugging left wants to bring up Three-Mile Island (where the safeties worked) and Chernobyl, which didn’t have that same level of safety.
1994 – South Africa begins its first multiracial election, which is won by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. The ‘majority’ puts Africa’s most prosperous nation into a downward spiral, much as is happening in most large American cities and blue states.