COTD: Evasiveness is not a valid form of defense.

BAD NEWS: The top kill method did not work to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico!

GOOD NEWS: Ford is selling well!

HUMOR: Of course you do, Bridget (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 31, 1279 BC: Ramses II "the Great" became Pharaoh of Egypt.

May 31, 1279 BC is an date estimated as the coronation date of Ramses II by most Egyptologists. More properly his name is spelled "Ramesses II" although his name is commonly transcribed as "Ramses II" for simplicity's sake. His estimated year of birth is 1303 BC and he ruled for an astonishing 66 years, dying of age-related health problems in 1213 BC around the age of 90 or 91 -- although some say he died at an age of 99. As such, he outlived his wives (his primary wife and thus the Egyptian Queen was Nefertari) and children -- the polygamy practiced by the various Pharaohs implicitly being to ensure enough of the quality of their generation would continue into the next generation.

Given that the mummy of Ramses II was found despite being moved to safety -- looting of the tombs outfitted for the luxury of the deceased for their journey into the afterlife and thus desecrating the dead was unfortunately quite common -- Ramses II was found to have been suffering from dental problems, arthritis, and hardening of the arteries that lead to him having poor circulation when he died. This is important since Ramses II is sometimes identified as the Pharaoh in the Biblical book of Exodus who is sometimes implied as having been drowned when pursuing the Jews whom were crossing the Red Sea to leave Egypt, although if the Biblical account of the Exodus from Egypt is true -- and most scholars agree it was written so long after the Jews reportedly left Egypt and the fact that other sources do not corroborate it make it appear to not be literally and thus historically true -- then the loophole is that it is not explicitly clear whether Ramses II was actually with his army or not. As well, since the Pharaoh in Exodus is only identified as "Pharaoh" there still exists debate over just which Pharaoh he was.

The long life of Ramses II meant that he was able to order many building projects and thus to leave many records about himself -- although he also usurped preexisting statues and buildings and such, as well as having the stone engraving methods changed to be done more deeply so that they could not be usurped by his successors or obliterated with time so easily -- most notably his Ramessum Memorial Temple Complex. He also had a new Egyptian capital built at Pi-Ramesses, the name meaning "Domain of Ramesses II, Great in Victory" and thus likely why it is identified within the Bible as where the Jews were enslaved as builders by the Egyptians. The point to make here is that although the account of the Exodus from Egypt might not be literally true, there appears to be some basis in truth within it. Here as well it should be noted that the city of Pi-Ramesses was once considered entirely mythological until being found again after 3,000 years and following twenty years of excavation, hence the morals of the religious stories should not be simply swept away due to the questionable historical truth of the book of Exodus.

30 years into his reign (1249 BC), Ramses II underwent the traditional Sed festival which ritually transformed him into a god, but by 25 years into his reign (1254 BC) he had begun delegating most of his ruling functions to subordinates. This is why one of his sons eventually named Amun-her-khepsef ("Amun Is with His Strong Arm," Amun being an ancient Egyptian god, and the "eventually" being because his name was changed a number of times) is mentioned as being effectively ruler in all but name by 25 years into the reign of Ramses II. There were also eleven Pharaohs who ultimately took the name Ramesses/Ramses, which translates as "Born of the sun-god Ra," and Ramses II was the grandson of Ramses I, and Ramses III does not appear to have been any direct relation. The long life, many building projects, ability to oversee maintaining of the Egyptian empire, and his ability to expand Egyptian influence during Egypt's strongest "New Kingdom" period is why he is commonly regarded as the greatest Egyptian Pharaoh and why he is so often referenced.

In more modern times, Ramses II was portrayed by the notable actor Yul Brynner (also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNjunlWUJJI) in the now classic 1956 film The Ten Commandments -- which makes alterations in addition to the questionable decision to have the Biblically unnamed pharaoh as Ramses II -- and likely the pharaoh family name of "Rapses" in the 1997 cartoon Mummies Alive was based upon the historical significance of Ramses II since the cartoon referenced familiar and popular elements of Egyptology so much. However, literature offers the strongest reference to Ramses II through the poem of Ozymandias written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1818, given that part of the more formal and thus descriptive "throne name" for Ramses II was "User-maat-re Setep-en-re," which Greek sources transliterated as "Ozymandius" in order to refer to Ramses II more easily in Greek. The point being that although Shelley's references within his poem do not match any statue of Ramses II/Ozymandius that are known to exist, as well as conjecturing aspects of the behavior of Ramses II -- the British quite enthused with ancient Greek culture at this time as well, thus why the Greek name for Ramses was used -- Shelley did accurately portray the decline of empires within his poem since despite how Ramses II oversaw the establishment of the greatest Egyptian empire there ever was, by the end of the rule of Ramses III in 1069 BC the prosperous New Kingdom era marked by the rule of Ramses II had begun a long, slow decline that would eventually end the 3150-31 BC period of "Ancient Egypt" with the Roman conquest of the former empire in 31 BC, and the formalization of Egypt as the Roman province of Aegptus in 30 BC.

Yes, the poem Ozymandius was also the inspiration for the "Ozy" (full name Ozymandius Llewellyn) character of the ended yet still popular Ozy and Millie webcomic drawn by D.C. Simpson, likely because of Simpson's liberal political views. Also, I cannot help but mention that I actually first became aware of the Yul Brynner who portrayed Ramses II in The Ten Commandments by managing to watch a little of the 1973 Westworld movie where he portrays a gunslinger robot in an adult amusement park gone wrong.

I have yet to see the entire 1956 version of The Ten Commandments where Brynner portrays Ramses II in a cold fashion befitting the Ozymandius of Shelley's poem, although Ramses II is a beloved character of those who follow Ancient Egypt, and some of Brynner's apperances as Ramses II within The Ten Commandments can be found on Youtube here (more off on a tangent, since the entire Westworld film with its Yul Brynner gunman was uploaded to Youtube I linked to the entirety of it in the Youtube Thread the First starting here).

COTD: If the whole world is fake, then I'm the only one who will act real.

BAD NEWS: 40+ people died from a tropical depression in Guatemala!

GOOD NEWS: It is "World No Tobacco" Day today!

HUMOR: Bullyism (Curtis, by Billingsley)!

HISTORY: June 1, 2001: Ten people were killed and five were injured in the Nepalese royal massacre.

Nepal was a monarchy from 1768 to 2008, although troubled attempts at democratic reforms began as early as 1990 -- Nepal officially becoming a federal democratic republic in 2008. Given some understandable reluctance to accuse any in a royal family of wrongdoing and thus to risk any charges of treason, there is still some controversy about what happened, but it simply seems that Crown Prince Dipendra did indeed get drunk at a party and thus ended up shooting and killing several members of his immediate family before committing suicide. This appears to have not just been due to unhappiness about how his father King Birenda, his cousin Prince Nirajan, and his brother Prince Paras then had him removed from the party so that he came back an hour later armed with the firearms of an MP5K and a M16 for revenge, but also because his parents previously would not consent to him marrying one Devyani Rana since Devyani's Rana clan had a historic animosity to the Shah clan and dynasty that Dipendra himself belonged to.

Those who criticize the above claim state that it seems to contradict the evidence and the facts, the biggest one of which of course is that such an esteemed character as royal prince would actually carry out a murder-suicide -- thus why conspiracy theorists conjecture that family members further from the throne engineered it in order to seize power. However the point to note here is that since Dipendra was under the uninhibiting influence of alcohol his behavior would have been more abnormal than usual. Although use of alcohol -- and even getting drunk -- is seen as an enabling means by which to relax and thus to be more sociable, it can only uninhibit feelings which are already there whether they are positive or negative feelings ... and thus how it enables the positive or negative behaviors which are prompted by those feelings. To cite some American statistics from 1998, for instance, alcohol is a factor in 35%-40% or in about three million annual violent crimes committed in the US, with more than two thirds of those violent crimes being committed by someone known by the victim(s) instead of by a stranger. That percentage is also higher if the perpetrator has a previous criminal record, and the percentage of automobile accidents prompted by alcohol -- although this is less related to the statistic of violent crimes -- accounts for about the same percentage.

Of course here too it should be noted that it is not as if every drunken individual retrieves guns and carries out a murder-suicide such as Prince Dipendra did. About two-thirds of the annual violent crimes committed under the influence of alcohol within the US are characterized as simple assaults (unlawful contact usually causing a legally defined minimal bodily harm even though no physical contact may be made, unlike in the case of battery where physical contact was made, although there appears to be overlap between the two). But even if the risk of murder-suicide is therefore more minimal, the risk of becoming guilty of simple assaults -- not to mention of drunken driving -- is still greater than that.

Although it may have been previously implied, the drunken murder-suicide of Crown Prince Dipendra was not why Nepal ended its monarchy and because a federal democratic republic, given efforts at democratic reform began around 1990 and that the monarchy was not entirely ended until 2008 -- with the massacre itself occurring in 2001. As of this writing the political situation in Nepal was reportedly still unstable as well due to the first governments being coalitions of various parties which thus have power-sharing problems amongst themselves. Finally, the ineffectiveness of King Gyandra (a brother of Dipendra) in finding means by which to remedy the 1996-2006 Nepalese Civil War prompted by theMaoist Communist Party of Nepal appears to have been the main factor in the end of the monarchy instead of the alcohol-prompted murder suicide of Prince Dipendra.

COTD: Sing us a song of the century.

BAD NEWS: Iran still will not let those American hikers go!

GOOD NEWS: A breast cancer vaccine is being tested!

HUMOR: Exaggeration (Get Fuzzy, by Conley)!

HISTORY: June 2, 1835: Phineas Taylor Barnum has his "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater" begin touring the United States.

P.T. Barnum is who the "Barnum" in what is now the "Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus" name refers to. He started out as a shopkeeper and was involved in the deceptive lottery business of his home state of Connecticut as well as in liberal politics, and then got into presenting freak shows (exhibiting people with an unusual appearance or who were able to present an unusual performance).

Often part of presenting a freak show is outright fraud: the Joice Heth, a blind and nearly paralyzed African-American slave was billed as the 160 year old wetnurse of George Washington but was likely only around 80 years old, Barnum's Fiji mermaid was created by combining the head of a monkey with the tail of a fish, and his General Tom Thumb was a dwarf who had his age exaggerated to make him look even smaller, for instance.

Barnum got out of doing straight freak shows (he also tried some real estate) following his "American Museum" being burned down by a fire again in 1868 following it being burned down in 1865, perhaps due to how he had begun incorporating strong Union elements into his shows in the wake of the US Civil War. They were still a side show of his business when he started a circus proper in 1871, a series of mergers eventually leading to the aforementioned "Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus." One of the reasons why his circus flourished so well was because he was the first circus owner to move his circus by train and the first to purchase his own train, which overcame the lack of paved highways in the US at that time. As well he was willing to learn from the advice of his various business partners, most of whom were young enough to be his sons since he had finally moved from presenting only freak shows to presenting a full circus when he was 61 years old.

The way Barnum justified the sensationalist hyperbole (exaggeration) of the fraud of his freak shows was that his customers were getting entertained their money's worth for it, which is likely why he was attributed the quote of "There's a sucker born every minute." In contrast, for instance, he was against those who presented fraud as straight truth -- the implication of a freak show was that it was at least partially fictional in some way, and sometimes Barnum would grudgingly admit how it was fake later -- such as the fraud of spiritualist mediums who claimed to receive messages from the dead for the living. This is also akin to what Erik "Harry Houdini" Weisz would do during his career as a magician and escape artist -- although some difficult trickery was involved in Houdini's work (circa 1890-1926) to make it look magical, he hated such things as seances where the ghosts of the dead supposedly communicated with the living since they were presented as straight truth by the mediums that presented them instead of with the implication of some trickery somewhere passing unseen. As such, this was why Houdini himself gained the reputation of being a "ghostbuster," one irony of which is that "Ghostbusters" was turned into a franchise in 1984 based upon the idea of keeping ghosts from overrunning the land of the living.

Barnum was also involved in liberal politics near the end of his life, most notably stating that "A human soul is not to be trifled with. It may inhabit the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hotentot -- it is still an immortal spirit!" during the debate about ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment to thus prohibit slavery throughout the United States. Born on July 5, 1810, he died on the date of April 7, 1891, but of course his name continues in connection with the circus business that his freak shows lead to him transitioning into late in his life.

COTD: I swallowed my pride and I choked on my faith.

BAD NEWS: BP's saw is stuck!

GOOD NEWS: A new Osteroposis drug has been approved!

HUMOR: Perhaps too blissful (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 3, 1973: Fourteen people were killed when a USSR Tupolev Tu-144 crashed at the Paris, France Air Show, thus discouraging worldwide interest in the Tupolev.

YOUTUBE FILE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_OujxCBJv0

The Paris Air Show is an annual and quite prestigious event used to demonstrate civilian and military aircraft to potential consumers. As is frequently noted, the close similarity in appearance between the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 and the British-French Concorde, so much so that sometimes the Tupolev is nicknamed the "Concordski" that there is still debate over whether the similarity is due to both types of aircraft being designed for supersonic (beyond the speed of sound) transport or whether the similarity of the Tupolev to the Concorde was due to Soviet spying -- although there are reportedly significant differences in the control, navigation and engine systems which thus make the Tupolev inferior in comparison to the Concorde.

The reason for SSTs (SuperSonic Transports) such as the Tupolev and the Concorde was the idea that the speed of the aircraft as opposed to the quantity of passengers it could carry -- such as the "jumbo jets" -- would prove to be a more valuable marketing tool. This was later proven to not be so, but the reason why the Soviets would want to preempt the British-French effort was not just for national pride but also for the Soviets to supposedly prove the worth of the Communist economic system they were using at that time. This also figures into one of the theories about why the Tupolev Tu-144 crashed during the June 3, 1973 Paris Air Show as the theory states some never before Tupolev-tried impromptu aggressive maneuvers to outcompete the impressive Concorde performance the day before were authorized (it has also been suggested that the ground engineering team made some changes to the auto-stabilization input controls to allow the Tupolev to outperform the Concorde, but that they also inadvertently connected some factory-test wiring which lead to the aircraft climbing too aggressively) thus leading to the aerodynamic stall from the Tupolev exceeding its design limits so that it broke up and crashed -- which actually seems the most plausible theory to me.

Alternative theories are that the spying by the Soviets was uncovered and thus was used to sabotage their effort at producing a viable SST through deliberately passing them flawed information, or that the flight crew aboard the Tupolev was startled into a too-aggressive maneuver to avoid a French chase plane which was engaged in industrial espionage through attempting to photograph the Tupolev's canards (the retractable little wings on the front used to increase lift at slow speeds, from the French "canard" for "duck" and so named because they were first likened to the tail of a duck) since those canards were advanced for their time. The sabotage theory seems plausible to me given the similar appearances of the aircraft, although I doubt that most of the flaws in the design would have passed undiscovered up to the point of having the aircraft completed, but avoiding the canard-photographing French chase plane theory seems more implausible because the Tupolev is overall far inferior to the Concorde.

Sometimes the poor visibility from the cockpit of a Tupolev is cited as a reason why the flight crew was "surprised" into making too aggressive a maneuver to avoid the French chase plane despite there being no real risk of collision. Whatever the case, the Tupolev was introduced into service about a year earlier than the Concorde on December 26, 1975 -- a Tupolev also made its first flight about a year earlier than the first Concorde on December 31, 1968, which also figures into the Tupolev Paris Air Show crash if one figures the Soviets were rushing development for precedent and to avoid the implication of having copied the Concorde -- but only saw very limited service of 55 passenger flights and a small number of other flights before being effectively retired. The fact of the matter was that development of the Tupolev was rushed so much due to competition with the superior Concorde that proper tuning and testing of the aircraft was never completed, thus why the Tupolev was such an inferior model. The Tupolev Tu-144S model which crashed at the Paris Air Show, for instance, an incomplete list notes that during 102 flights and 181 hours of freight and passenger time it suffered at least 226 failures, 80 of them in flight and 80 of the failures serious enough to delay or cancel the flight. The design of the Tupolev Tu-144 also lead to such a high degree of noise within the cabin from its engines and the cooling system to keep the aircraft's skin from overheating as a result of its supersonic speeds that even passengers sitting next to each other had to scream at or pass notes to communicate with each other, and there was little market for it left within the USSR itself following the small international SST market being successfully captured by the Concorde.

The Tupolev also actually began passenger service November 1, 1977 -- almost two years after the Concorde had begun passenger service -- hence also suffice to say that the Tupolev crash at the June 3, 1973 Paris Air Show serves as an analogy for the flaws of a planned/command economy under economic communism/socialism where economic decisions are made at the highest levels and thus how they tend to be too inflexible in readily adjusting to the natural forces of supply by producers and demand by consumers to produce overall quality, thus the reason why the Tupolev was able to be produced in about the same amount of time as Concorde was produced by the British-French effort. At the same time, one of the problems of allowing a completely laissez-faire economic system under unrestrained capitalism directed purely by supply and demand -- that is to say no economic oversight by the government to allow as flexible of an adjustment to supply and demand as possible -- is that a temptation of capitalists is to cheat profits out of it through false advertising and outright fraud through selling cheap inferior products as supposedly expensive superior ones.

The aforementioned potential negative about capitalism is why economic socialist Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906, attempting to highlight the abuses he saw inflicted upon the American underclass through the cheating of capitalists and managing to inspire the 1906 Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Acts which reduced some of those abuses in the food and drug industry, although his limited success prompted him to complain "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Still, however, the opposite of "the Jungle" is "the Tupolev" since both too little or too much oversight of the economy ultimately leads to quite visible failures such as the Tupolev Tu-144 which crashed upon this date back in 1973.

COTD: Do you know your enemy? Silence is the enemy.

BAD NEWS: Mass killing in Cumbria!

GOOD NEWS: Stocks are gaining again!

HUMOR: Not nervous (Luann, by Evans)!

HISTORY: June 4, 1913: British women's suffragette Emily Davison was collided with (and flipped end over end) by King George V's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby. She then died of her injuries June 8.

Youtube file here. Anmer is the third horse to the back, with a gap between him and the main group of horses. One can pinpoint Davison by following a straight line down from the 3 in the "Sufragette Emily Davison's Death 1913" title above the default view (the quality of the video is not so good).

Here I should first note that although I am a feminist (a supporter of women's rights), in order to avoid claims of duplicity instead of sympathy on my part I should note that in addition to Wikipedia's information matching this, I actually heard some of the background of this from a female professor of history as well.

The word "suffrage" appears to come from the Latin word "suffragium," meaning vote/political support/the right to vote. The term "suffragette" was first originally applied to more militant women's suffragists as a negative term but later became used by those more militant suffragists. Those who were less militant tended to use the term "suffragist" instead.

The reason for denying women suffrage is what we would term as sexism today: that a woman's natural role as the weaker sex was in the home as a homemaker and caretaker of children and thus she should be discouraged from anything that would prompt her to have too much of a focus outside of the home (even a very small number of women at the time agreed with this). This is also the reason why women were sometimes paid less than men for the same work, the important point to note here is that this is indeed what we would refer to as sexism today: as one young woman put it to me when I was struggling with my feminism (support for women's rights) and the fact that women are the only sex that can give birth and how important motherhood tends to be for those that have had children, reducing the only role of women to that of only having babies simply because they can have babies tend to be quite insulting, especially given that women can accomplish so much more than that.

Some actually favored giving women suffrage since the supposed weakness and thus sympathy and empathy of women as a means by which politics would become more civilized and by how the underprivileged underclass would finally gain some help, although such reasoning exhibits the type of duplicitous argument I worried about at the start -- a sexist reasoning for giving women the vote, in other words. Finally, aside from worries that giving women suffrage would inadvertently cancel out the votes of some men -- again, what today we would view as a form of sexism -- the strongest argument for granting women suffrage was that all adults were entitled to a vote since all adults were people and because all people need to be treated equally in order to avoid the irrational and inflexible bias of bigotry (as well, much of this argument is why suffrage was expanded from those who were "more responsible" through being wealthy or by owning property to those who were not as wealthy and whom owned less property over the years, as well as why suffrage was extended to other minority groups).

Suffice to say that granting women suffrage is therefore along the lines of granting universal suffrage, although restricting the vote from such types as convicted criminals or mentally ill persons is still seen as reasonable since it is highly unlikely they would vote honestly and thus in good faith. But as has been seen, since what is today viewed as the plain and sexist reasoning that women were a weaker sex who should be encouraged to be homemakers through not giving them the vote, what the more militant suffragettes did was to engage in more confrontational and violent acts to show they were not too weak to have suffrage. One act my previously mentioned female professor of history noted was women sneaking out onto golf courses at night to commit vandalism through pouring acid on it so that the message "VOTES FOR WOMEN" was found burned into it the next morning, for instance. As far as we know, suffragette Emily Davison did no acid-pouring, but she did mistakenly physically attack a man she thought was the politician David Lloyd George -- at the time Chancellor of the Exchequer -- and threw herself down a staircase in protest while imprisoned at Holloway Prison for her actions. As well, she even bombed David Lloyd George's home in 1913, causing significant damage but no injuries or deaths -- although whether this was due to prejudice on the part of George or else due to him founding much of a welfare system which Davison thought did not extend enough to women is still a matter of debate.

Davison engaged in less violent actions as well, and it is argued that her getting mortally wounded by King George V's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby on this date in 1913. She had purchased a return train ticket and a ticket to a suffragette dance for later the same day so this implies that making a martyr of herself through injury or death was not her intention, although just what she had planned is still in question since she did not survive the incident. Some say she stepped out onto the track to make the political statement of attaching a symbol of the WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union) organization she belonged to onto the king's horse Anmer, to make the political statement of stopping the king's horse since she had been seen practicing it upon other horses in the park near her home, or even to simply cut across the track for something else entirely. Given her previous actions I think it likely she wanted to make a political statement by interfering with the king's horse Anmer in some way such as through attaching a symbol to him and/or stopping him (it seems reasonable she would have a better chance of attaching a flag to Anmer if she stopped him first), but Anmer was going too fast and Davison was too close so that Anmer collided with and then stumbled over her so that he fell to the ground.

The end result of the collision was that Davison suffered a fractured skull and a number of internal injuries that lead to her death four days later without ever regaining consciousness. Anmer recovered from any injuries he may have suffered and returned to racing, but the jockey Herbert Jones who was riding Anmer was not so lucky: although he escaped the accident with a mild concussion, he suffered depression from the fact he had inadvertently run down and killed Davison and thus committed suicide in 1951.

Suffice to say that Davison did become a martyr for the WSPU (itself a group fragmented off of the NUWSS -- National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies) and for suffragettes after the incident, but sadly enough incidents such as these and history about efforts for women's suffrage are usually commonly overlooked. Perhaps the easiest casual reference to British women's suffrage is in the 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins -- based upon a book series about a perfect nanny that began in 1934, and not to be confused with the similar Nanny McPhee movies that began in 2005 -- where the wife and mother of the Banks family, Winifred Banks, is portrayed as a member of the suffragette movement to the degree she continually wears a sash reading "Votes for Women" and which gets mentioned on occasion. This is especially since much of the implicit conflict caused by the husband and father of the Banks family, George Banks, tends to be inflexibly conservative about the way he believes things should be (it is suggested he shows characteristics of obsessive compulsive order and a Type A personality) to the degree he neglects the wants and needs of his own wife and children -- such as what now seems her quite reasonable wish to be granted suffrage, an attitude that thankfully appears to have begun to change by the end of Disney's film.

As for the women's suffrage that suffragette Emily Davison died for on this date in 1913, it was finally granted in full via the Representation of the People Act in 1928. Despite such additional measures as the United Nations decreeing women should have suffrage via their 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, however, there are still some countries that deny women suffrage even today.

COTD: Hearts are washed in misery drenched in gasoline.

BAD NEWS: McDonalds had to recall its "Shrek" glasses!

GOOD NEWS: The Gulf of Mexico leaky oil well is finally capped!

HUMOR: Friend request (Non Sequitur, by Miller)!

HISTORY: June 5, 70: The Roman army under Titus Flavius Vespasianus breached the walls of Jerusalem during the Siege of Jerusalem.

There were a number of Jewish rebellions/revolts/wars against rule by the Roman Empire, the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-73 being prompted by Roman authorities not interceding to prevent religious conflicts between Greeks -- somewhat more favored by the Romans, who borrowed much of their culture from them -- and Jews, but the Jewish focus quickly turned from the Greeks to upon the Romans that both favored the Greeks and which imposed upon Jewish culture. The key to the Jewish rebels in the war -- there were actually a number of groups of them -- were the Zealots who were reportedly "zealous" in their worship of God. Despite early successes by the zealots due to their enthusiasm, they lacked the discipline to persevere and thus why they were ultimately defeated by the disciplined Roman army under Titus.

Jerusalem is the holy city of Israel and was at one point where all Jews had to make a pilgrimage to for proper worship in the temple there, thus why it was quickly captured by the Zealots in 66. Knowledge of this is why Titus allowed Jews in for the holiday of Passover and such, and thus why he also refused to let them back out to put more pressure upon the city's supplies. Most significant of the eventual ending of the Siege of Jerusalem following the breaching of the city's walls on this date in 70 is that the temple itself and thus much of the city was set on fire during the following attempts to seize it. It is thought that Titus probably did not want to destroy the temple since he planned to convert it to worship of the Roman Gods to encourage less resistance to Rome, particularly due to the earlier expansions made to the temple via the Biblical Herod the Great (the King Herod who reportedly tried to have the baby Jesus Christ killed), but when an unidentified Roman soldier threw a burning stick on the temple's walls the fire then spread out of control, then the Roman soldiers tore down much of the remains and thus ensured that the temple was destroyed by the end of August (mourned today on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av). The whole city itself was recaptured by the Romans by September 7, with Jewish historian Josephus claiming that 1,100,000 mostly Jews were killed during the siege (many of them crucified, the common Roman method of public execution at the time), with 97,000 were captured and enslaved, but some managing to flee via underground tunnels to elsewhere through the Mediterranean. Titus himself reportedly refused to accept a wreath of victory by stating there is "no merit in vanquishing people forsaken by their own God."

The temple that was destroyed after the Romans breached the walls on this date was the Second Temple, as the First Temple that had been built under the Biblical King Solomon was destroyed when the Babylonian Empire conquered Israel and thus began the Babylonian Captivity (the Captivity itself being ended when the Persian Empire conquered the Babylonians). Those familiar with the movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark may also be interested to note that the Ark of the Covenant was in the First Temple but was lost due to the conquest by the Babylonians. Of the Second Temple, as of this writing, the Western "Wailing" Wall still stands and thus has become an important holy site for Jews.

Titus himself would transition from his military career into a political one through becoming the Roman Emperor on June 24, 79, he dying of illness (according to rumor he was assassinated through being poisoned) on September 13, 81. Even amongst the Jews, however, he tends to be remembered positively since he did not become another Jewish-persecuting and Christian-persecuting Emperor such as Nero had been -- Nero using the Great Fire of Rome in 64 to begin the persecutions and thus earning him the "666" coded reference of as "the Beast" in the Biblical book of Revelation.

Final opinion about Titus still tends to be mixed, however, as he was the general of army which breached the walls of Jerusalem and thus started its destruction on this date in 70 despite not later becoming an Emperor like Nero who actively persecuted Jews and Christians -- and not persecuting other Romans like Nero did as well, in fact.

COTD: Your confession will be crucified.

BAD NEWS: John Wooden died!

GOOD NEWS: The SpaceX Falcon 9 launch was a success!

HUMOR: Dropped a few words, if not brain cells (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: June 6, 1889: The central business district of Seattle, Washington (USA) was destroyed by the Great Seattle Fire.

The Great Seattle Fire tends to be overlooked due to earlier "Great Fires" such as the 1871 Fire of Chicago, Illinois (USA), the 1666 Fire of London, England (United Kingdom), or even the 64 Fire of Rome. One of the results of which was the eventual development of the position of Fire Marshal within the United States and Canada around 1873 (when the position was first developed for New York, New York, USA), a position within the Fire or Police Department but with the job of enforcing fire codes to thus diminish the chance of a fire (other countries have professionals in similar roles, and there is even also a Fire Police force). But even so, the problem with early cities was that much of them was already built before fire codes were in place, thus why they could suffer such tragic fires.

The name "Seattle" was derived from the name of the prominent Duwamish and Suquamish Native American Chief Si'ahl of the area. He was born circa 1780 and died in 1866, and co-opting words from Native Americans was indeed a common practice in early United States history. It was founded in 1851 and was incorporated in 1865, and given that it is on the shores of Elliott Bay plus the abundant rainfall of the area it was originally founded upon the timber industry (it has since switched to supplying gold rushers, building ships, and then finally the aircraft and computer software industry). The fact that wooden timber was so readily available meant that much of the early city was constructed of readily available but more easily flammable lumber derived from that timber -- even the water and sewer pipes tended to be hollowed-out logs. As well, much of the city was on land that was actually below sea level and thus like the water-surrounded New Orleans, Louisiana (USA) it suffered from periodic massive floods. The main way this was combated was by having buildings built up into the air upon wooden stilts, but the consequence of this was to provide so much available oxygen and fuel for the fuel-oxygen-heat fire triangle necessary for a fire that it would probably make modern-day Fire Marshals cringe.

On June 6, 1889, John E. Back was heating glue in Victor Clairmont's cabinet shop near Front Street and Madison Avenue in order to create what was essentially hot-melt adhesive. By 2:30 PM it got too hot and thus it boiled over and ignited, it then spreading by encountering flammable turpentine and wood chips (wood chips burn easily due to being so small and thus allowing so much oxygen to get to them) that were on the floor. Given that the heat of a fire is what is most easily perceived, putting cooling water on it to remove the heat since water can absorb so much heat is the instinctive response but the problem with a liquid-based fire like that caused by boiling glue is that the water only dilutes and spreads the liquid so that it gains more oxygen to burn by, thus spreading the fire. Obviously attempting to remove the burning fuel would only spread the fire as well, hence attacking the fire by removing its oxygen -- that is, by covering it with something which will not burn in order to smother it -- is the only safe way of putting out the fire (thus why in a few rare cases one might find sand made available to smother a fire with, instead of water to put the fire out with).

Yes, this is also why one should use baking soda (not sugar or flour, as this tends to explosively ignite) or putting a lid over a liquid-based grease fire in a kitchen to smother it instead of attempting to use water to put it out is recommended. As well, since some water flash-vaporizes into steam and thus expands to 1,700 times its original volume when used on a fire, how steam carries burning droplets of a burning liquid with it also emphasizes why water should not be used on a liquid-based fire. Unfortunately Back instinctively attempted to put out the fire with water and thus spread it further before the fire department arrived at 2:45 PM, thus giving the fire such a start that with the wood both in Victor Clairmont's cabinet shop and of essentially the entire city itself, plus insufficient water supplies and a competent but insufficient fire department, plus an unusually dry summer enabled the fire to burn 25 city blocks so that it consumed the entire business district, four of the city’s wharves, and all its railroad terminals. Remarkably only a boy named James Goin died in the fire (although an undisclosed number of fatalities occurred in the cleanup after the fire) and the loss was estimated at USD $20,000,000.

Like the 1666 Great Fire of London, the 1889 Great Fire of Seattle helped reduce much of the opportunistic rodent problem the city had (in the case of London's fire, it also helped reduce outbreaks of the Black Death plague since rodents were infected by and thus spread the plague as well) but more importantly it resulted in reforms such as the use of more fireproof brick and stone to rebuild the burned-out area, plus of course the water supply for fighting fires was improved and the fire department was shifted from a volunteer to a professional force. As well, the fire gave the opportunity for the entire lowest level of the city -- streets and all -- to be regraded (raised) one to two stories higher in order to avoid the previous flooding problem and thus creating what is now known as the tourist attraction known as the Seattle Underground (thus yet another irony in how fire emphasized and thus gave a chance to correct problems with water). The relief effort across the US west coast to the fire also resulted in 20,000 to 40,000 more inhabitants actually moving to the city and thus enabling it to grow so that it became the largest city in Washington state, which along with its location next to the Elliott Bay for shipping by sea thus prompted the Great Northern Railway to choose it as the western terminus of their transcontinental railroad.

In short the fire was a mixed blessing in that despite the tremendous losses, the rebuilding of the burned out downtown area elevated the city of Seattle into becoming a major economic, cultural, and educational center, a role which it has held ever since and which providing the foundation for the current day Seattle metropolitan area (an extension of that economic, cultural, and educational centering of the city of Seattle) as well. However the point to make here is that this rebirth was in the future following the fire of the present in 1889, hence it was actually quite lucky that the city of Seattle was once again able to rise out of the ashes it had burned to in its Great Fire.

COTD: She wears her overcoat for the coming of the nuclear winter.

BAD NEWS: 142 people were killed in Bangladesh over three days!

GOOD NEWS: Drosselmeyer overcame 13-0 odds to win the Bellmont Stakes!

HUMOR: So it seems (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: June 7, 1975: The Sony company introduced the Beta[max] VCR (VideoCassette Recorder) for sale.

The best way to introduce this is to point out the Youtube file at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SkWIPKFrxk, which is about "How to Beat Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back Video Game for the Atari 2600" from 1982, which prompted "brtshstel" to reply "good ol' VHS tapes and game magazines, back in the days before the internet, youtube walkthroughs, and GameFaqs, before online game and optical disc formats. what a time to be alive." The point being that I can remember when having video tapes, a rotary antenna to get less-fuzzy reception of the twelve channels our television could receive, and a video game system like the Atari 2600 was high entertainment value -- although now we have Blu-Ray DVDs, crystal-clarity reception of 40-400 channels on the television, and such advanced video game systems it makes the Atari 2600 look as simple as a wristwatch.

There is also a discrepancy about just when Beta videocassette recorder was released for sale, as the earliest date I have is May 10, 1975 as opposed to the June 7, 1975 date I cite here. If they were released on different dates this might be due to confusing Sony's "Betamax" with Sanyo's called "Betacord," especially since they both tended to be referred to as "Beta" and also if they were released on different dates.

Quite possibly it was actually Sanyo's "Betacord" that was actually released on this date instead of Sony's Betamax, but the Beta format is still worth looking into because it provides a microcosm by which to look at technological development. Prior to videotape technology the 8 mm Film (film eight millimeters wide, one notable variant being "Super 8" film) technology introduced in 1932 was the choice for amateur motion picture recording, but videotape proved to be more convenient since of course it could also piggyback directly onto a television for recording and playback.

For simplicity's sake, suffice to say that multiple formats of technology develop when it emerges since multiple formats work (here I should additionally note that some American English and British English terms for this technology differs as well, although either set of terms works), but standards develop over time due to broader consumer acceptance allowing piggybacking and innovation of technology as well. For instance, the acceptance of the VHS format over Beta then allowed an explosion of home releases of films on videotape and allowed the innovation of timer recording on VCRs to become widespread, thus freeing up enough company time to develop the superior technology of DVD (Digital Video/Versatile Disc) which then supplanted VHS. Acceptance thus increases demand from consumers for more of a product and thus encourages producers to increase supply thus driving down the cost of the product as well: videotape technology began in the 1950s and was with a cost of USD $50,000 per videocassette recorder -- thus how at first it was largely only used by television networks -- but when my old VCR wore out and I purchased a combination VCR-DVD player earlier this year of 2010 (new VCRs are now no longer sold individually due to becoming obsolete, reportedly as of 2007) it only cost me USD $80.

Supporters of Beta format maintain that its benefits over the Video Home System or VHS format maintain its smaller size, better quality picture, and less wear on its video tapes made it superior -- although I have heard the anecdote that Beta videotapes had a flaw of jamming -- but VHS was able to supplant it through miniaturizing camcorder camera technology enough that a whole VCR did not have to be carried around with the camcorder in order to record (I remember doing this with one of my grandfathers) and also through allowing easier review of what was recorded by checking it directly through the camcorder.

JVC -- the Victor Company of Japan -- was the company that developed VHS, and VHS succeeded over Beta due to what is known as "economy of scale." In short, by making more VHS systems available than Beta systems for the VCR market, their cost of production fell along with the cost of their VHS technology so that its sold better than Beta. As well, VHS technology was able to quickly increase the amount of time available on its tapes, thus why although Beta -- specifically Sony's Betamax Beta -- captured 100% of the home VCR market when introduced in 1975, by 1981 this had shrunk to 25%, although Beta itself did not completely cease until 2002 following the 1995 development of the aforementioned DVD technology in particular amongst the still-emerging eventually rendering all videotape essentially obsolete for amateur camera and home television program recording and playback -- DVD ironically enough followed up by another format war from 2008 to 2008, this one between disc-based as opposed to cartridge-based formats and thus being between HD DVD (High Definition DVD) and Blu-Ray (named from the color of the laser ray which reads the disk in the player, thus enabling more data to be read and thus to provide a better picture).

One of the points to make about Beta is that it had higher definition in its playback, thus why it did indeed persevere until being supplanted by the aforementioned disc-based technologies starting in 2002. Its lack of widespread acceptance due to the greater availability of VHS, however, is why as of this writing one can still find new combination VCR-DVD players to play their now outdated media upon -- although it is true that a Blu-Ray DVD player will play DVDs -- but nothing like a combination VCR-Beta player. Finally, the reason that Beta was called "Beta" was the way the tape looked when it was playing or recording was fancied to look like the Greek form of the letter B, which is pronounced "Beta."

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this above microcosm is that as a young boy I can indeed remember lugging around my grandfather's whole VCR strapped to my left hip along with the big heavy camcorder weighing down upon my right shoulder as I recorded amateur video on videotape for him, but around 2006 or so I was amazed to see my brother-in-law recording amateur video of some of my first niece's moments with a recorder small enough to fit into only his hands and which was recording onto a disc, although of course I was already aware there existed even easier technologies for recording off of television than VCRs or DVD-Rs (DVD systems that can record, hence the "R") such as the TiVo system which was introduced in 1999. The point being that although my grandfather's VCR and VHS system was cheaper than Beta's systems, likely my brother-in-law's disc-based system was even cheaper than my grandfather's VCR-VHS system. This is not just because of the shrinkage in price evidenced by the cost of VCR technology going from $50,000 to around $80 in just sixty years, either, but because of my experience keeping track of the cost of the Playstation 3 video game system over just the three years of 2006 to 2009: the best Playstation 3 model in 2006 marketed at around $700, yet by 2009 the cost of the best Playstation 3 model had been reduced to just $300. The point being that although it may be advantageous to invest in new technology sooner than later since that will allow someone to enjoy it flourishing for a very long time such as VHS did, one should also avoid lapsing into too much speculation on how beneficial it will be so that one ends up "betamaxed" (or in other words, by waiting about three years I was able to both see the Playstation 3 would endure as well as to save around $400).

COTD: The traces of blood always follow you home.

BAD NEWS: Israel killed four Palestinian divers!

GOOD NEWS: More oil is being collected from the Gulf of Mexico leak!

HUMOR: I'm not voting for her, then (Precocious, by Paulsen)!

HISTORY: June 8, 1949: A US FBI report reported that Helen Keller was a Communist Party member.

YOUTUBE: Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan (1930 Newsreel Footage).

The FBI -- the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- is a US federal criminal investigative body and gathering internal, domestic intelligence. As such it is one step up from more local efforts by police forces but one step below the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) which is more focused upon gathering external or international intelligence, although the functions of the FBI and CIA overlap somewhat since they are both concerned with gathering enough information to protect American national security.

Since the Cold War of 1947-1991 meant that the economic Communism of the USSR-dominated Eastern Bloc threatened the economic Capitalism of the US-dominated Western world, potential Communist influence in the US was closely monitored -- although here it can also be argued that worries about Communism influencing the Western world were evident in the paranoia of the first Red Scare (Red being symbolic of Communism) of 1917-1920.

The point to interject here is that although the failure of economic Communism as evidenced by the political 1989 Autumn of Nations shows it is generally not a wise economic plan to follow, one should avoid lapsing into unthinking paranoia about it. The evidence for which actually comes from the period of the second Red Scare of 1947-1957 which was marked in particular by the witch-hunting of McCarthyism. In fact, Keller was actually a member of the American Socialist Political Party as opposed to the American Communist Political Party, the key difference being that Socialists advocate legal methods to reach their economic and political goals whereas Communists advocate the extralegal method of outright revolution against the ruling class in order to achieve their economic and political goals.

Readers may already know something of Helen Keller already since at one year seven months of age (she was born June 27, 1880) she contracted some disease that left her both blind and deaf, but with the help of first Anne Sullivan (partially blind herself, completely blind about a year before her death), then much later the help of Polly Thompson and then Winnie Corbally was able to overcome much of her disabilities of being both blind and deaf. Most are therefore familiar with the first breakthrough that Thompson had with Keller by finger spelling the letters for "water" in one of Keller's hands while pumping water into the other sometime in April 1887 so that Keller had the moment of inspiration that enabled her to understand and thus to learn what she was sensing was water -- the end result of this showing that even someone both blind and deaf was not irreparably "dumb" or "mute" because they could never speak. Even before the arrival of Sullivan, Keller already had over 60 home signs -- essentially a homemade sign language, and the more developed forms of sign language are recognized as being as significant as spoken language -- and with the efforts of Sullivan and others Keller not only became able to speak clearly enough to be understood by Sullivan and her other companions (since she could not hear herself talking she had a limited ability to enunciate or pronounce her words quite clearly, thus why her spoken words had to be essentially translated by her companions) but also became the first both blind and deaf person to earn a college degree.

Her inspiring story up to this point is also why her admirer, the American writer Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers so that Keller had enough funding to pursue that education as well. However, the aforementioned and often justified concerns about Communism are why her political radicalism which lead her into such as Socialism are often omitted. In short, although praise is found for the radicalism which enabled her to overcome the faulty preconception that she could never be taught nor could she ever formally communicate due to being both blind and deaf, criticism is often found for her idea that radicalism could further overcome the problems she perceived in society. In addition to the Socialism she advocated to overcome the abuses of the working class she saw under economic Capitalism, she also took the then-controversial stance of being a suffragist through advocating giving women the right to vote so that they could have political power, of being a pacifist and thus against war -- this earning her much animosity due to the popularity of World War I from 1914 to 1918 -- and also of being a supporter of birth control to thus empower women from the burden of being overly-burdened with responsibilities for children despite the then-common criticism of birth control as being unnatural.

Although Keller's views were indeed quite new and thus radical for her time, and even though for instance many women have gained suffrage and now freely use birth control, of course the Socialism which caused her to be misidentified as a Communist by and large has not been accepted, perhaps due to knowing the irony that empowering a government overmuch to correct the abuses of society thus risks empowering a government so much that it ends up making those abuses itself. This has been argued as the reason why a number of governments using economic Communism collapsed in the aforementioned 1989 Autumn of Nations, for instance, but in trying to reconcile this extent of Keller's radicalism with the earlier inspiration of her overcoming her disabilities with it, newspaper columnists and such began making such suggestions that the mistaken extent of her radicalism had "sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development." In return Keller rebuked the writer of those words, the editor of the 1841-1955 version of the Brooklyn Eagle at the time they were written, by criticizing the editor's decision to essentially call her more prone to error due to being blind and deaf whereas it seemed that editor himself was blind and deaf of the problems she was campaigning against.

The point to make here, of course, is that some of what Keller campaigned for due to her radicalism (women's suffrage, birth control) actually did come about, hence as she was often correct she was not somehow more prone to error simply due to the limitations of her being both blind and deaf. Finally, although the second Red Scare of 1947-1957 which was marked by McCarthyism was indeed what got her unfairly labeled a Communist on this date in 1949, unlike others who had their lives and careers jeopardized or destroyed by it (see Hollywood blacklist, for instance) by then Keller was around 69 years of age and thus does not seem to have suffered as much from it than younger individuals who were labeled as Communists by the FBI and otherwise. She died June 1, 1968 and at an age of 87 years old.

An additional note to make in connection with Keller is that in addition to becoming enough of a celebrity to become friends with other celebrities such as the aforementioned Mark Twain, she also toured 39 countries during the later part of her radicalist career. She became a favorite of the Japanese as a result and thus became aware of the story of Hachiko, an Akita Inu breed dog that had in 1935. Keller's interest in the breed resulted in her ultimately being given two Akita dogs as gifts by the Japanese during 1937 and 1938 (sadly the first dog, Kamikaze-go, soon died of canine distemper and thus why Keller was then given Kamikaze-go's brother Kenzan-go), thus helping introduce the Akita breed to the United States.

Keller herself was quite inspired by the loyalty of Hachiko since Hachiko was owned by Professor Hidesaburo Ueno of the University of Tokyo, and was so loyal that he saw the professor to and from the nearby Shibuya Station that Ueno used to commute by train to the University of Tokyo starting from the time that Ueno moved there in 1924. When Ueno unexpectedly died of a cerebral hemorrhage at work in late May 1925, Hachiko was given away but kept returning to Ueno's old home, then finally recognizing Ueno never returned there actually took up permanent residence waiting at the Shibuya Station since he had last seen Ueno there, although he would sometimes make forays out to locations he remembered going to with Ueno in the hopes of finding him there. As such, he became a favorite of the commuters and the Shibuya Station and thus an icon of loyalty throughout Japan before he died on March 8, 1935 -- his loyalty also thus incidentally enough also helping to save the Akita Inu breed by making it popular once more.

YOUTUBE: Hachiko: A Dog's Tale of Loyalty in Tokyo.
Hachiko: A Dog's Story

COTD: So what ails you impales you.

BAD NEWS: People found responsible for the Bhopal disaster 25 years ago recieved light sentences!

GOOD NEWS: Helen Thomas has resigned!

HUMOR: That guy seems familiar (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 9, 1934: The Walt Disney character Donald Duck made his debut in the Silly Symphonies short The Wise Little Hen.

Donald Duck was actually reportedly mentioned in a 1931 Disney storybook, but first appeared on this date in 1934. Essentially the fairy tale of The Little Red Hen where a hen reaps the benefits of doing the work to make bread and denies sharing the bread with those that refused to help her make it. An early version of the Disney character Clara Cluck appears to have been the aforementioned hen, whereas the two characters that refuse to help her make her bread are of course Donald and also one Peter Pig -- Peter reportedly a cousin of the Three Little Pigs.

Likely part of the inspiration for Donald's first appearance was Walt Disney becoming aware of impressionist Clarence Nash and hearing him do his duck voice, which of course became the semi-intelligible way that Donald talks.

Part of the reason for Donald's popularity is that the character of Mickey Mouse had begun to be sweetened up considerably -- some of this transitioning can be seen in the 1929 Karnival Kid where Mickey says "It's a bumhole stance, keep your money in your pants" about a circus sideshow prior to romancing Minnie Mouse for most of the rest of the short -- hence while this made the increasingly flawless Mickey more popular, it made it harder to put Mickey into situations where character flaws would provide humor.

Character flaws providing humor are why Donald gained an anger management by the Orphan's Benefit cartoon of August 11, 1934 -- first resulting in a ridiculous burst of temper when he is heckled at a talent show -- in addition to his apparent speech impediment. As well, Donald's flaws as opposed to Mickey's flawlessness are why there was an explosion of duck characters related to Donald that were created by Disney (see Duck Family -- and it is uncertain whether the Warner Brothers character Daffy Duck, although similar to Donald and appearing three years later in 1937, was inspired by him).

The Disney character of Goofy (and the aforementioned Daffy Duck as well) also offers more insight into the evolution of a cartoon character. Despite a having the name of "Dippy Dawg" and having a slightly different appearance, the continuing joke of Goofy being such an eccentric audience member in the 1932 short Mickey's Revue caused the animators to take an interest in him and to develop his minor character into a main character -- essentially the same as what happened to the speech-impaired Donald.

World War II closing Europe to Disney features during 1939-1945 is why Donald appears in such features as The Three Caballeros which were made to appeal to South America as a new market for Disney and to counteract Latin American economic ties to Nazi Germany. The aforementioned Three Caballeros being important since it claims Donald's birthday is "Friday the Thirteenth" to explain his bad luck although the June 9, 1934 date of The Wise Little Hen is given as his official birthday.

Donald also appears in several American propaganda Disney shorts as part of the American effort during World War II, his middle name being given as "Fauntleroy" in the 1942 Donald Gets Drafted short -- Fauntleroy referring to Little Lord Fauntleroy about a very well-behaved noble little boy but which has since become a term sarcastically applied to those who misbehave in a spoiled, infantile fashion. Even so, Donald has become popular enough to be used as a brand name for Donald Duck Orange Juice and to be the basis of the original University of Oregon Ducks logo -- his anger management problem thus often being euphemized into enthusiasm instead.

One of the more humorous anecdotes about Donald is the false rumor he was once banned from all of Scandinavia due to the fact de does not wear pants. Suffice to say that as the overall uniform look of exposed skin is perceived as nudity, a number of anthropomorphic cartoon characters are partially clothed such as through the sailor shirt and cap that Donald commonly wears so that the overall uniform look of white feathers over much of his body is broken up and thus not implied as nudity. What actually happened was that Donald actually became quite popular in Finland (itself within Scandinavia) due to identifying with how he manages to escape from impossible situations with minimal resources (perhaps due to the proximity of the nearby Russia/former USSR -- see Finland), as well as due to cartoons of him frequently being run during holidays. When the city of Helsinki in Finland wanted to make some budget cuts in 1977 it stopped purchasing Donald Duck comics for its youth centers, but Donald's popularity was such that the outcry against this lead what happened becoming distorted through into the claim that Donald had been "banned" from all of Scandinavia not just due to concerns about the ambiguity of his marriage status (perhaps this distorted from the fact he has nephews around him as much as if they were his sons, plus a significant other by the name of Daisy Duck) but also because he was half-naked through not wearing pants.

Suffice to say that the claim Donald Duck is banned in all of Scandinavia for not wearing pants is not true. And while I am at it, I should also mention that the claim he uses profanity and a racial slur when arguing with Donald Duck in the "dueling pianos" segment of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit is also false, this falsehood caused by the simpler fact that Donald's semi-intelligible speech prompts audiences to falsely hear Donald's conventional cartoon "dadgum nitwit" complaint as profanity and a racial slur -- especially since that type of speech is completely inappropriate for a childhood Disney icon.

COTD: Did you stand too close to the fire?

BAD NEWS: Van der Sloot should have been arrested sooner!

GOOD NEWS: Wholesale inventories and sales are up!

HUMOR: Nice roller skates (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 10, 1864: At the Battle of Brice's Crossroads during the US Civil War, a 4,787-strong cavalry force lead by Southern Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest defeated a 8,100-strong Northern Union force led by Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis.

Suffice to say that the Confederates won due to better tactics, better mastery of the terrain, and aggressive offensive action that prompted fatigue from the opponent, thus causing the Union forces to panic and retreat due to the mistaken belief they were outnumbered.

Despite the victory of Forrest at Brice's Crossroads, it only delayed the Union from capturing the states of Alabama and Mississippi since even with better tactics by the Confederacy due to the military tradition of the southern United States, the devastating loss from Lee's attempt to use the by-then-outdated (yet still used through the 1914-1918 World War I) Napoleonic tactic of feu d'enfer (French for "hellfire") upon an entrenched Union position and then to follow up with a massive attack such asPickett's Charge to break the Union line in half -- thus defeating the Union army so it could not keep them from capturing the Union capital of Washington DC to force it to formally grant independence and thus an end to the war -- resulting in both physical and psychological losses that prevented the Southern Confederacy from successfully continuing to use better tactics to overcome the Northern Union's better numbers and supplies. Although here one should be careful not to use too much of these facts to justify the reasoning of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy argument since it tends to shift too much blame of "incompetence" onto Confederate subordinates (particularly General James Longstreet, the most significant subordinate to the main Confederate General Robert E. Lee who survived the war) as well as ignoring the abuses of slavery in the Confederacy -- as well as the odd fact that the Southern Confederacy supposedly seceded to protect local rights despite how slavery denies even the most basic rights to those that are enslaved. And to foreshadow a little, it should be noted that Forrest flourished at a business including slave-trading of African-Americans prior to the US Civil War.

The point is that although Nathan Bedford Forrest is often praised for his ability to quickly understand and utilize tactics, terrain, and offensive action such as he showed at the Battle of Brice's Crossroads, he is also a controversial character due to implications that he had allowed or ordered a massacre of African-American troops at the earlier Battle of Fort Pillow on April 12, 1864. As well, Forrest is also a controversial character due to his involvement with the hate group of the Ku Klux Klan. "Ku Klux" is derived from the Greek word of "kyklos," meaning "circle," and thus reflects the ultraconservative goal of "the Klan" (as it is often nicknamed) to essentially continue the US Civil War through terrorism, African-Americans often being targeted by that terrorism and as easy scapegoats since slavery within the United States had become racially-based by the time of the US Civil War and because of the role the issue of slavery had in that war. Forrest reportedly joined the Klan with the conclusion of the US Civil War in 1865, but because he denied the extent of his involvement there some small dispute whether he actually became its first Grand Wizard or overall leader of the Klan or not, plus also because he reportedly voiced a positive message of equality between blacks and whites when speaking to an African-American "Jubilee of Pole-Bearers" in 1875, about two years before his death. Consensus holds that he was indeed the Klan's first Grand Wizard, however.

Part of difficulty determining the truth of the Klan comes from the fact that despite its common consistent symbolism of members wearing white robes and pointed hats while burning crosses, it has varied over time and in fact Wikpedia groups it into a "First Klan" of 1865-1874, a "Second Klan" of 1915-1944, and a "Third Klan" of 1946 to the present. The Second Klan also reportedly used less terrorism and more propaganda as well as expanding their hate message into being anti-Catholic, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic as well, though it should be noted a common characteristic of the Klan is nighttime intimidations and assaults and murders -- at first also against anybody who supported the Republican party as well since of course Republicans had controlled the Union government and freed the slaves during and immediately after the US Civil War. The anti-Semitism of the "Second Klan" thus also explains why it targeted the Jewish businessman Leo Frank after he was essentially framed for the rape and murder of his employee Mary Phagan despite the African-American Jim Conley actually committing the rape and murder -- although Conley's actions did not become known until many years later.

Unfortunately the Klan -- specifically the Second Klan -- was glorified in the 1915 silent film Birth of a Nation as well, the film actually performing quite successfully since it pioneered innovative camera and narration techniques and presented a rationalization for the Klan's ultraconservative racism that was implicitly familiar to those who had grown up in the immediate post-Civil War south such as President Woodrow Wilson. As such, noted American film critic Roger Ebert has argued that it is a great film but also one that argues for evil. And yes, the non-racist fictional character Forrest Gump was also supposedly named after Nathan Bedford Forrest since Forrest Gump is a fictional descendant of Forrest.

Forrest Gump is also implicitly savant, given he appears incompetent overall yet somehow manages tremendous success in various areas where others do not, which may have been inspired by the fact that Nathan Bedford Forrest lacked a formal military education yet had a such gift for strategy and tactics that not only was he able to win with strategy but he was even able to create and establish new doctrines for mobile forces. Still, admiration for Nathan Bedford Forrest's military genius such as at Brice's Crossroads should not prompt one to overlook the racism which lead him to join the Klan afterward.

COTD: Red alert is the color of panic.

BAD NEWS: Morphine is scare for sufferers of pain!

GOOD NEWS: The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup!

HUMOR: Uh-oh (Lio, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: June 11, 1920: During the U.S. Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois (USA) Republican Party leaders gathered in a "smoke-filled room" at the Blackstone Hotel while coming to a consensus on Ohio Senator Warren Harding as their candidate for US President.

A political convention is the means by which those that manage the major US political parties end up nominating their candidates for various political posts. The "smoke-filled room" aspect comes from the fact the aforementioned managers were comfortably smoking at the time (there was much less emphasis on the dangers of tobacco around this time), and the fact they were privately meeting in a room of the Blackstone Hotel thus implies they were secretly meeting away from the convention due to meeting as a quiet conspiracy by which to decide upon and thus maneuver through the nomination of a dark horse or unlikely candidate as a form of compromise ("dark horse" candidates are actually common to both the US Democratic and Republican parties) but thus disregarding the will of the public, thus why the public's consensus for General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank O. Lowden ended up being disregarded due to the twelve-way split of voting on a nominee by the convention preventing any one candidate from receiving enough nomination votes. Harding himself, for instance, was nominated on the tenth ballot after getting just 6.67% of the nominee votes on the first ballot.

It was the American news agency known as the Associated Press which used this term when reporting on the compromise and thus what coined the term. Showing there is still somewhat of a limit on the power of the party managers or political bosses is the fact that though Harding and the Republican Party managers recommended Wisconsin Senator Irvine Lenroot for Vice President the convention delegates actually voted Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge due to his popular resolution of the Boston Police Strike of 1919 instead, but the fact is that with Harding-Coolidge settled the faithful Republican voters and the swing voters (who could vote either way) thus united in supporting them and thus electing them in the Presidential Election of 1920 due to the negative situation following the aftermath of President Woodrow Wilson's health and his government collapsing following domestic and international problems (interestingly enough, future US President Franklin Roosevelt was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in the election that Harding and Coolidge won overwhelmingly). This although Harding is commonly ranked as one of the worst Presidents ever due to him being seemingly being picked purely because he had not offended anyone and due to the implicit idea he would only be a figurehead who would thus allow his subordinates such as the "Ohio Gang" to essentially run the government instead of the President and thus their superior himself -- the result being numerous scandals (like the infamous Teapot Dome scandal) during Harding's administration.

There is also the fact that while having members of the same political party helps prevent infighting within a government, the spoils system sometimes prompts politicians of the same party to support and thus to be rewarded for their support of another in such a way it has lead to both act of the aforementioned political corruption under Harding and also the cronyism that leads some politicians to nominate others based upon kindness and familiarity to each other as opposed to qualifications (as of this writing some cronyism has been noted as taking place during George W. Bush's Presidency, as is noted at the "cronyism" link). Finally, of course, there is the fact that Harding was nominated without any concern about his poor health, which is why despite his dark horse nomination to give the Republican party a viable alternative, he died while still in office on August 2, 1923.

COTD: I need to know what's worth the fight.

BAD NEWS: At least six people died in flash floods in Arkansas!

GOOD NEWS: Abby Sutherland is safe!

HUMOR: I like the cuddliness better (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 12, 1889: 78 people were killed and 260 injured when the Armagh Rail Disaster occurred at Armagh, Ireland (now Northern Ireland) within the United Kingdom.

The Armagh Sunday School had arranged for a leisure trip to the seaport of Warrenport 24 miles away upon this date, thus they employed a train in order to make the trip. Since the grade of the Armagh-Newry line between the two was filled with turns and was quite steep -- it was finally closed in 1933 -- and the locomotive provided for the train was smaller than authorized for the railroad car train of 820 passengers it was carrying, the engineer asked for an additional locomotive to serve as an assisting engine. He was talked out of it by the station master at Armagh, but an assisting engine should have been taken because the train stalled 200 yards before the summit of the highest point. In order to continue onward, the only solution was to divide the train by taking part of the train on to the Hamiltonsbrawn train station that was two miles further along, then coming back and getting the rest of the train.

In railroad terms, sidings are little routes off of the main line for various reasons such as going directly to various nearby businesses and such, although a more common form of siding appears to be "passing siding" (British English: passing loop) which thus allows trains going different directions but using the same track to safely pass each other. As well, grade separation or an interchange would mean having two parallel railways to each other, each designated for a train going one direction, so that passing siding does not have to be used. The point being that while siding is less expensive it also tends to be more limited than grade separation, thus why only the first five vehicles that made up the Sunday School train could be taken to Hamiltonsbrawn to park some of the railroad cars on the siding while the locomotive then went back and got the now-lighter remaining ten vehicles of the train, which due to being lighter they anticipated being able to pull over the summit to Hamiltonsbrawn where the train could be rejoined in order to continue to Warrenport.

Unfortunately the train only had one brake van/train guard (British English) or caboose (American English, probably borrowed from foreign nautical terms) to it. As the "brake van/train guard" names imply, one of the many functions it was used for in maintaining the train was through providing braking in order to keep the train under control over steep grades and through curves. This function and others has since become obsolete due to the technology of the "FRED" Flashing Rear End Device (also known as an EOTD "End of Train Device"), but suffice to say that the braking for the brake van/caboose was insufficient to hold the remainder of the train in addition to not being an automatic braking system that would engage automatically. As such, rocks were placed behind the wheels of the last two vehicles to keep the remaining-behind portion of the train in place plus a single stone behind a front wheel of the first vehicle of the remaining-behind portion.

This would have also kept the remaining-behind portion from rolling back in addition to keeping the remaining-behind portion in place so that it could be decoupled from the going-ahead portion, but after the decoupling the driver of the going-ahead portion allowed or was unable to keep it from rolling back far enough so that it bumped the remaining-behind portion. This pushed the first vehicle of the remaining-behind portion over the stone helping hold it in place (thus crushing the stone) so that a chain reaction ensued -- although the buffer devices between the vehicles kept them from colliding with each other, like falling dominoes the weight of each vehicle of the remaining-behind portion was shifted back as the buffers contracted due to the collision, thus pushing it over and thus overwhelming (and again crushing) the stones on the last two vehicles and the braking system on the brake van/caboose.

To their credit, the railroad crew tried to catch and recouple the train together to stop the runaway but were unable to. In addition to this, although the time interval blocking system of departure then in use at that time thus kept trains far enough apart to keep them from rear-ending each other (a stalled train on the tracks would be spotted by emergency lights and such that could be seen far enough away to slow the massive weight of the train down), suffice to say it was insufficient since it could not communicate an emergency such as half of a runaway train coming backwards from the other direction. As such, although the train coming after the Sunday School train was actually able to slow to five MPH, it could not avoid colliding with the now-runaway half of the Sunday School train that was now traveling at 40 MPH. Adding to the tragedy of the collision was that the doors of the Sunday School train were locked shut to prevent ticketless passengers from slipping aboard, thus contributing to the 260 deaths and 78 injuries that occurred.

The point to make here is that often great tragedies are often caused by a series of small mistakes instead of single large ones. Although the station master at Armagh was at most fault for denying assisting engine, the technological failures resulted in the implementation of what is commonly called "lock, block and brake" and which was emphasized by the British Regulation of Railways Act 1889: where all railway signals were interLOCKed to prevent conflicting signals, where absolute BLOCKing instead of interval blocking was used to keep trains from colliding with each other through explicit confirmation the previous train had left the next immediate area, and also that sufficient automatic brakes were now required upon all trains in order to BRAKE the train even if it was decoupled as in the case of what happened with the Sunday School train.

Finally, although various brake failures and runway trains have continued to occur even up to the present day -- see South Africa's 2010 Pretoria Runaway, for instance -- the British Regulation of Railways Act 1889 in response to the Armagh Rail Disaster on this date in the same year helped to begin an unprecedented era of modern railway safety, particularly after the ambitious United States of America then imitated the British by passing their Railroad Safety Appliance Act in 1893.

Still, the sharp drop in accidents prompted by the response to the Armagh Rail Disaster cannot undo the 78 deaths and 260 injuries that occurred mostly to children as a result of the disaster, however.

COTD: Love does what is needed for the sake of love.

BAD NEWS: Jodie Foster is in trouble for reportedly fighting with a teenager!

GOOD NEWS: The US dollar gained!

HUMOR: "Monica Lewinsky" was their first version (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: June 13, 1983: According to some, the US NASA Pioneer 10 probe (launched in 1972) became the first human-made object to leave our solar system on this date.

The reason why some say the Pioneer 10 has left our solar system is because there is enough variety in outer space to sometimes make precise definitions difficult. As of this writing, this is reflected in the 2006 clarification of what a planet was, as well as the creation of the dwarf planet term. For instance, conventionally our solar system was defined as everything from the sun out to the planet (now the dwarf planet) of Pluto, but more technically our solar system consists of every celestial or astronomical object bound to and thus orbiting the star known as our Sun due to gravity. As such this means that the dwarf planets beyond Pluto such as Ceres, Haumea, Makemake and Eris are also included in our solar system, but although the Pioneer 10 appears to be beyond these outlying dwarf planets it has not yet cleared where the heliopause or bubble of charged particles from our Sun is finally pushed back by the heliopauses of the other stars, nor has it passed the hypothetical Oort cloud of comets which might be at the spherical edges of our solar system.

There was also a Pioneer 11 probe (sometimes the two probes are referred to as Pioneer F and Pioneer G, respectively) which followed the Pioneer 10 probe about a year later to conduct the same type of research, which suffice to say was basic research given the remarkable variety of celestial or astronomical objects in our solar system, the findings of which can then result in applied research once the physical laws about the solar system are understood and thus can be utilized. As an analogy, basic research uncovered the technology of lasers, but it was then applied research that resulted in them becoming used as scanners for bar codes at points of purchase as well as the mechanism various machines use to play various discs (CDs, DVDs, and so forth) for playback superior to what preexisting technology was able to do.

Both Pioneer probes were actually fitted with a pictorial plaque in case they are ever discovered by extraterrestrial life (life that evolved not on Earth) and thus to facilitate first contact, this because it was known the route of the probes would take them out of our solar system and that the probes would likely fail around that time -- Pioneer 10 failed by 2003, and Pioneer 11 failed in 1995 -- and part of that pictorial imagery is actually the nude figures of a human male and a human female. At first I thought this was one and the same with one of the golden records of sounds and images accurately recorded as being aboard the US NASA 1977 Voyager probes in the 1984 Starman film, but quick online research showed me how I was getting the two confused due to their similar purposes. As well, it turns out that noted SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) researcher Carl Sagan had input into both the Pioneer plaques and the Voyager records, hence there is a connection there as well (the most recent adaptation of his vision was the 1997 movie Contact).

Although it is still likely it will take many millions or even billions of years before even the farthest-away Pioneer 10 might reach the extraterrestrial life -- assuming there are extraterrestrials near the star of Aldebaran that Pioneer 10 is heading in the direction of, it will have to cover a distance of 65 light years or about 60,000,000,000,000 miles (about 9,656,064,000,000 kilometers) to get there -- references to the first contact efforts included on these various probes has remained popular within science fiction. The aforementioned Starman movie has an extraterrestrial alien respond to Voyager 2's golden record (just seven years after it was launched, reportedly due to being found through the exploration of his fellow extraterrestrials) by coming to Earth yet getting shot down and thus resulting in a unique type of love story when the alien temporarily clones himself into the form of a woman's dead husband in order to survive long enough to be rescued by his fellow extraterrestrials at the Barringer Crater in the state of Arizona (USA). As for the plaques on the pioneer probes, in the 1989 movie Star Trek V: the Final Frontier one of the Pioneer probes is shown (identifiable due to the plaque upon it) being idly blown up by the extraterrestrials known as Klingons, although given how the universe of Star Trek is projected as only hundreds of years after ours, it is highly unlikely the Pioneer probe seen destroyed would have traveled far enough for that type of event to actually occur.

The remaining reference I know of these attempts at first contact actually comes from the 1979 movie Star Trek: the Motion Picture where the core of a gigantic alien probe named "V'ger" and en route to Earth is actually shown to be a "Voyager 6" probe that was part of a fictional continuation of the Voyager program (which was not continued after Voyager 1 and Voyager 2), as if the Star Trek: Voyager series and the Voyager ship within it was also named after the Voyager program has never been determined.

Amongst the references I know less about, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard apparently wrote the 1982 book Battlefield Earth (made into a movie in 2000) based on the idea that extraterrestrials known as Psychlos found one of the Voyager probes and thus followed up on the discovery by conquering Earth, but suffice to say these are not the only references made to these efforts at first contact -- and the curious fact about them is that the Voyager golden records have eclipsed the Pioneer plaques in the imagination of the public, despite how Pioneer 10 is most likely to be found first since it was launched in 1972 (Pioneer 11 was launched in 1973) and thus years before the 1977 Voyager probe launches.

Still, being very loose with facts for the sake of familiarity and to compress the scope of the time involved is quite common in science fiction (even beyond what I have listed here), particularly since so much of what it is based upon is so far away in both distance and time that it will likely never directly effect anyone upon present-day Earth. However, despite the worries of a "Battlefield Earth" type of response to the attempts at first contact, the distance involved makes it likely that will not become so, and I tend to believe Carl Sagan's idea that first contact such as through the Pioneer 10 would result in cooperation which would actually be beneficial.

Here I should make the final notation that the movie Star Trek V was badly received and that the movie version of Battlefield Earth was so badly received it is commonly referred to as one of the worst movies of all time, although other science fiction making some reference to efforts at the first contact which was actually pioneered by the Pioneer 10 probe has been better received -- the issue of the quality of this fiction thus remaining the only viable issue, due to the accuracy understandably sacrificed in order to refer to the secondary mission of first contact that was attached to the pioneering basic research probe known as the Pioneer 10.

COTD: I will let you have the last word, oh wait, no I won't.

BAD NEWS: Nine Somalis drowned off of Mozambique!

GOOD NEWS: Abby Sunderland has been rescued!

HUMOR: Childhood (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 14, 1864: Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and physician who identified Alzheimer's disease, was born.

Aloysius "Alois" Alzheimer actually termed the disease he identified as "presenile dementia," meaning problems with cognitive function -- thinking and remembering -- before one is old. "Senile" and "dementia" are derived from the Latin words for "old man" and "deprived of mind," and though presenile dementia is more precisely defined as taking place during the "middle age" period which precedes "old age," it has been defined as starting as early as age 35 and ending as late as age 65.

The patient suffering from presenile dementia that Alzheimer examined was one Auguste Deter between 1901 and when she died in 1906, her age in 1901 being recorded as 51 and thus explaining why Alzheimer defined her symptoms -- most notably her loss of memory -- as presenile dementia. Since Alzheimer did not write his findings down in book form and because his colleague Emil Kraepelin recorded presenile dementia as Alzheimer's disease in a book he wrote afterwards, by 1911 the term "Alzheimer's disease" had supplanted "presenile dementia."

Some loss of cognitive function is common as part of the natural aging process, hence dementia itself is defined as loss of cognitive function beyond what is typical and natural. Just what causes Alzheimer's is currently still under debate, but it causes its noticeable symptoms by reducing the number of neurons and synapses in the cerebral cortex and certain subcortical regions of the brain, effectively shrinking parts of it. Other symptoms occur such as protein-folding problems causing "senile plaques" to form in the brain as well, but suffice to say the end effects of all the technical causes of Alzheimer's is its characteristic impairment of cognitive function which leads to confusion, irritability, aggression, mood swings, language breakdown, long-term memory loss, and a loss of bodily functions which leads to death. Typically those suffering from Alzheimer's begin a general withdrawal from life due to the decline of their bodily senses as a result of the disease, and the general life expectancy after diagnosis is seven years.

Alzheimer's appears to usually be "sporadic" and thus not genetically inherited, and since it is currently still a terminal disease this means careful management of those suffering from it (palliative care) to reduce the severity of their symptoms and thus to improve the quality of the remainder of their life. Thus as can be expected, various intellectual activities (reading, playing board games, completing crossword puzzles, playing musical instruments, regular social interaction) appears to build up a cognitive or mental reserve which helps to reduce the severity of its symptoms as does certain diets and exercise, although just how the connection of diet and exercise to reduced symptoms is made is still not entirely clear.

In general Alzheimer's occurs in people over age 65, although an early-onset form of the disease such as that experienced by Alois Alzheimer's Auguste Deter can occur starting around age 50, which occurs in 5% to 10% of those who suffer from Alzheimer's. There are some forms that can occur as early as age sixteen and which are actually passed along by genetics, but these forms are the exception and are rarer, occurring in only around 4% to 5% of those suffering from Alzheimer's. Whatever the case, it can be confirmed with behavioral and cognitive tests which are specialized to check for its symptoms of confusion, irritability, aggression and such (one notable part of which is spelling the word "world" backwards) plus perhaps a brain scan for additional confirmation. Finally, the rate of Alzheimer's is one case in every 85 persons (1.2% of the population).

One aspect of Alzheimer's or of any form of dementia is that it tends to stress family members and primary caregivers of those afflicted with it, not just because of the counterproductive behaviors and forgetfulness it prompts but because it thus stresses caregivers of those suffering from it due to the great demands upon their time and resources it therefore entails. To be brief, I know this personally since one of my grandmothers is suffering from it and thus her husband (and thus one of my grandfathers) is stressed due to becoming her primary caregiver, but Discover magazine also had an enlightening reference to this type of stress in the "Vital Signs" section of its January/February 2010 issue (subtitled "The Changes of Aging"). In brief (the whole article is linked to within the link) a man named "Sam" was worried that his wife named "Ruth" (Vital Signs changes names and details for medical privacy) was starting to suffer from Alzheimer's due to her problems remembering things, where at the same time Ruth was worried that her husband Sam was suffering from Alzheimer's because the way he was stressed by her forgetfulness was prompting his behavior to become more irritated and aggressive -- behaviors common to those suffering from Alzheimer's.

As it turns out, Sam was actually right that Ruth was beginning to suffer from Alzheimer's, whereas Ruth was correct about Sam's behavior changing but was incorrect in perceiving that the actual cause of it was her own dementia due to her diminishing cognitive function. As the H. Lee Kagan who wrote the article noted, Ruth’s lack of insight about her self and certainty of others, thus her lack of self-awareness (and thus her lack of possible worry she was suffering from the dementia of Alzheimer's), is characteristic of true dementia. The end point being that the cost of Alzheimer's is not just to the person suffering from it who thus ends up being placed in the mental asylum like the one at which Aloysius Alzheimer studied Auguste Deter, but also upon that person's immediate friends and family and thus upon the whole of society. Thus although a cure has yet to be found, the world is still indebted to Alois Alzheimer for identifying the problem that a cure needed to be sought to in the first place.

COTD: Pills from Canadian Pharmacy!

BAD NEWS: Chevron had an oil leak!

GOOD NEWS: A woman safely gave birth during a flight!

HUMOR: Because they are there (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 15, 1920: The Duluth Lynchings took place when African-Americans Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie were murdered by a mob.

The background to this event is that of course the ancestors of many African-Americans were brought involuntarily to the United States for slavery. Although slavery in the United States was made illegal in 1865 via the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, it would not be until the success of the African-American Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1968 that discrimination against African-Americans became illegal, thus one of the areas that African-Americans suffered in was employment since Equal Opportunity Employment was commonly not extended to African-Americans at that time.

As a result of this sharecropping was used by many African-Americans, even up until the 1950s, to provide for themselves. Sharecropping trades part of a crop (typically 50% of it) for agricultural use of the land, hence since freed African-Americans had no resources many of them became involved in this type of system due to the knowledge and experience about agriculture they had acquired as slaves.

Also suffice to say freed African-Americans wished to have other employment opportunities as well, particularly since it was inefficient by dividing the efficiency of any cooperative sharecropper efforts into competitive ones due to the cropper that the sharecropper was accountable to usually exploiting that sharecropper to the degree of poverty. As such, when employment opportunities were opened by shortages of labor around the time of World War I from 1914-1918 -- this due to the US involvement in producing supplies for and then fighting in that war -- African-Americans took the opportunity to escape the sharecropping system by migrating out of the American South in search of new jobs. As part of this exodus, African-Americans Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie had found employment with the James Robinson Circus, which arrived in Duluth, Minnesota on June 14, 1920.

After the circus had performed that day, the three African-American men were helping break down the circus in order to take it elsewhere and thus ended up being watched by two local white teenagers, a young woman by the name of Irene Tusken and a young man by the name of James Sullivan. Exactly what happened is unknown, but it seems there was some sort of altercation which prompted Sullivan to lie that he and Tusken had been assaulted by five or six black circus workers in order to get back at the African-Americans working for the circus that he had an altercation with -- this of course because discrimination gave whites the benefit of the doubt over blacks. The claim of assault upon the young woman Irene Tusken was also soon inflated to the claim she had been gang-raped and that the pair had been held at gunpoint as well, with additional later rumors added that Tusken had died as a result of being assaulted and raped. I say that Sullivan probably lied because when Tusken -- who did not die -- was examined by her doctor he found no evidence of rape or assault, and the main cause of the following violence was the odious claim of a sex crime in addition to the then-objectionable idea of miscegenation or of cross-racial sexual mixing.

There were actually six black African-American men arrested and jailed in connection with what was probably a fraudulently-reported assault and rape, the result being that as news and rumors spread about it the next day a mob of 5,000 to 10,000 indignant people ended up breaking into the Duluth city jail in order to enact some vigilante justice. The police had been ordered not to use their guns in the case of violence and thus offered little resistance to the mob, which managed to seize African-Americans Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie out of the jail and then to execute them via hanging following a trial before their own fraudulent kangaroo court which found them guilty of the false rape. The remaining three men in the jail, as well as nine additional African-Americans who were now suspected of participation in the false crime, survived and thus were moved to the St. Louis County jail under heavy guard and following the Minnesota National Guard securing the area the next day.

Suffice to say that although this type of violence was more common in the South, the poor response to it was the same as seen in the South well, thus why in 2003 a memorial to Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie was erected -- no one was ever prosecuted for their murders. It would take until the brutal vigilante murder of the teenage African-American Emmett Till in 1955, however, before the United States came to recognize that racism was not just a problem of the American South but of the whole of America -- this because Till was from Chicago, Illinois, but was murdered in Money, Mississippi, thus essentially reversing what had been seen with the murders of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie.

To a larger extent the mob riot that lead to the murder of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie is the distressingly common occurrence of race riots which have occurred during American history (and elsewhere). While sometimes these riots are actually based upon religious or other differences such as the riots against Catholics during the 1844 Philadelphia Nativist Riots, distressingly often they are based upon racial differences such as those emphasized by the above cases of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, thus why they have gained the name of "race riots." Such riots are obviously not a proud moment of American history and thus while documented are not often mentioned due to shame, particularly since race riots and racism against African-Americans became extremely bad immediately following the 1865-1877 "Reconstruction" Era of failed recovery from the 1861-1865 US Civil War. So much so that the period of 1877 to the early 1900s -- arguably up to the 1919 Red Summer of multiple riots in the same year -- is commonly referred to as thenadir of American race relations, thus why race riots such as that which took the lives of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie are such a formative part of African-American history.

COTD: Just because hell has frozen over doesn't mean it will be cold there.

BAD NEWS: Something seemed to happen to David Petreaus!

GOOD NEWS: A heavily-armed man and woman were stopped from entering MacDill Air Force Base!

HUMOR: Ashley would do that (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 16, 1858: Abraham Lincoln, campaigning for the office of Senator of Illinois (USA), made his House Divided speech.

Abraham Lincoln was born into a farming family yet became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and a Senator for Illinois. Originally a member of the American Whig party he was one of the many Whigs who joined the American Republican party upon its formation in 1854, of course becoming the first Republican to serve as US President starting in 1861. The start of his anti-slavery stance actually comes from the fact that his father disapproved of slavery upon religious grounds -- thus part of the reason why the Lincolns moved to the state of Illinois in 1816 despite residing in the state of Kentucky during the late 1700s, since Kentucky allowed slavery -- and although largely self-educated he also had the natural talent of being a great orator.

Part of the talent of being a great orator is through referring to that which is implicitly familiar with one's audience. The reason Lincoln's speech on this date is remembered as the "House Divided" speech since in referring to the division between the free (slavery prohibited) states of the North and the slave (slavery permitted) states of the South he used the analogy of "a house divided against itself cannot stand" to refer to the condition of the United States at that time. This line is actually a Biblical reference to where Jesus is accused of having the chief of the demons Beelzebul within him (Matthew 12: 22-31, Mark 3: 20-28, Luke 11: 14-23) in order to do what he can do, to which Jesus notes his power is the power of God and that fragmentation will break up Satan's kingdom. The point being that this delineated Lincoln as a unifier and not as a divisive force despite how pro-slavery advocates (arguing that allowing slavery and all that was attached to it was extending all personal rights to citizens) would argue the opposite given Lincoln's noted anti-slavery views, although he had attempted to voice a more moderate view about slavery in order to avoid alienating too many voters.

In fact the "House Divided" line was actually a common one since Abigail Adams -- wife of the second US President John Adams -- had warned about a "house divided" in a letter to Mercy Otis Warren during the American War of 1812, but given Lincoln's anti-slavery views and how it was a later reference he probably recalled hearing the then-Senator of Texas Sam Houston warning that "A nation divided against itself cannot stand" during debates about the Compromise of 1850 which temporarily resolved whether to allow the expansion of slavery into the vast new territories (now the American Southwest) which had been acquired as a result of the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War. The point here being that it is easy to essentially repeat something which is familiar, but familiarity with what was previously said alone does not make one a great orator but it is rather understanding the significance of the past and therefore showing how it is connected to the present which makes one a great orator.

That much said, here I cannot help but note that a continuing joke about "the Great Communicator" Ronald Reagan, the central figurehead of the modern American conservative movement, is that he was only the Great Communicator due to the skills of appearance he had acquired as an actor before being steered into politics and as emphasized by his lack of political knowledge about events such as the political scandal of the Iran-Contra Affair. Reagan's analogy that waiting for help was like failing at the attempt to feed a crocodile to keep it from eating you was obviously inspired by British politician Winston Churchill's earlier analogy of appeasers feeding the crocodile of Nazi Germany to keep it from eating them last, for instance. However, emphasizing that Abraham Lincoln was a great orator was his Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863, which through its brevity instead of through lengthy elegance summarized with his own words (therefore not simply repeated ones) the Northern Union's purpose for fighting the Civil War: the equality of everyone -- thus implicitly even slaves -- through regaining unification of the country, the division of which he had warned against in his "House Divided" speech on this date about five years earlier.

COTD: Little things are big things when there are lots of things.

BAD NEWS: A fugitive was able to hide for 40 years in plain sight!

GOOD NEWS: The United Kingdom apologized for Bloody Sunday!

HUMOR: It doesn't (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: June 17, 1462: Voivode (Governor) of Wallachia Vlad III Tepes attempted to kill Ottoman Sultan (Sovereign authority) Mehmed II with the famous Night Attack, but failed.

Looking into the history behind this attack would essentially drop a person down a rabbit hole, to use a metaphor, hence let me instead connect it to the popular culture reference that most would be familiar with.

Southeastern Europe has been a contested area of the world, first given that it is at a crossroads between Europe and Asia, but second because the geography of the area lends itself to breaking up the area into several small countries. This is also reflected in the name of the Balkans which is commonly applied to the area as the Balkans are a rugged chain of mountains that run through the center of the area.

With that in mind, one of the fairly correct predictions that the first German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck bluntly and rather profanely warned the German Kaiser about was that "One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans," this due to the dispute between Serbia and Austria-Hungary leading to the 1914-1918 World War I although Bismarck had thought such a war would come as early as 1888. In any case, Wallachia is now part of Romania, and many of the rulers of this area were members of the Order of the Dragon to fight for Christianity and thus against Ottoman Islam in the area.

The father of Vlad III was known as "Vlad Dracul" with the "Dracul" referring to the Order of the Dragon he was a member of. His son Vlad was therefore known as Vlad Dracula to indicate that he was the "son of the Dragon" by referring to Vlad Dracul. Also suffice to say that Vlad III Tepes had quickly developed hatred for the Ottomans as well as developing or adopting brutal tactics given how violent the politics and warfare of the area was. That Transylvania is today also part of Romania therefore indicates the aforementioned popular culture reference: that Vlad III Tepes/Vlad Dracula appears to be part of the inspiration for the modern-day vampire "Dracula" who was developed by Bram Stoker. Tales of vampires and other gothic stories such as those about werewolves were popular amongst southern Slavic peoples of Europe and thus finally spread through Europe during the 1700s, hence why Bram Stoker was able to draw upon those stories and to merge them together with the types of brutality he had learned that Vlad III Tepes had employed in order to write his gothic horror story of Dracula. The point to note here being that Stoker seems to have learned more about Vlad III Tepes by not entirely accurate anecdotes as opposed to accurate historical research -- for instance, Vlad III Tepes was a Vlach person from Wallacia and not a Szekely person from Transylvania like the vampire Dracula. As well, a more proper definition of voivode is indeed "governor" (of a province) instead of the "count" (companion/delegate to the Emperor/Empress) made popular by Bram Stoker and thus often incorrectly applied to Vlad III (although perhaps this is understandable since understanding the quite hierarchical and varied ranks of nobles and royals can be even more confusing than separating Vlad III from the vampire Dracula).

The Night Attack on this date was not the only attack the Vlad III Tepes made upon the Ottomans, but it was the most famous since Vlad and some of his soldiers disguised themselves as Ottomans, entered the main Ottoman Turk camp and ended up killing as many as 15,000 of the enemy although the targeted Mehmed II managed to escape. The reason why Mehmed II was in Wallachia was because Vlad III Tepes had refused to pay a tribute to Mehmed II for peace -- or else he honestly could not pay it due to being bankrupted due to constant warfare -- and then had not only invaded Ottoman Bulgaria but also had over 23,000 Ottoman Turks and Bulgarians he found there executed by impalement. It was true that Mehmed II had tried to have Vlad III Tepes assassinated prior to this to keep him from aligning with Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus against him, but the Bulgarian invasion and impaling of victims that Vlad III had done thus prompted Mehmed II to switch from assassination to invasion tactics himself.

Vlad III did eventually die fighting for Wallachia in 1476, and some of the recollections about him are actually mixed since while he was cruel force he was also a Christian force against an Ottoman one (the vampire Dracula thus notably being anti-Christian). As well, Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus sometimes exaggerated the cruelty of Vlad III in order to remain the preeminent European power within the Balkans, but aside from a number of atrocities that Vlad III is indeed guilty of, execution by impalement was indeed a form of atrocity that Vlad III did indeed prefer -- thus why he was given the additional name of "Tepes" which means "impaler" after his death. This impalement is not the impalement by stake through the heart often portrayed as a way of killing a vampire but was by having a horse attached to each of the victim's legs in order to gradually force a sharpened stake into the body from the rectum upward, which could result in a slow and agonizing death that lasted for hours or days depending on how bad the injuries sustained during the impalement. The corpses were often then left decaying for months as an example -- like the public execution method of crucifixion popularized by the Romans -- with stakes of different heights used to show the rank of those who had been killed.

One popular anecdote is that Vlad III was feasting in a forest of impaled victims within what is now known as the Forest of the Impaled outside Brasov in what is now Romania, also entertained by a executioner cutting apart yet more victims, when he saw a servant was holding his nose. Vlad III reportedly asked the servant why he did so, at which the servant replied he could not stand the smell -- thus Vlad III then immediately had him impaled on the highest stake so that he would not be bothered by the smell anymore. The brutality of Vlad III was such that he did truthfully have those who were impaled arranged in geometric patterns for psychological warfare as well -- it reportedly sickened Sultan Mehmed II so much after the failure of the Night Attack on this date, despite how the Ottomans used their own brutal methods, that Mehmed II turned the campaign over to his subordinates and returned to the Ottoman Empire. This because after reaching the Wallachian capital of Targoviste after the Night Attack of Vlad III he reportedly found it abandoned but a number of victims impaled upon the road starting from there and over the next 60 miles (at least according to a pro-Wallacian account).

Other reported atrocities overseen by Vlad III include torture, burning, skinning, roasting, boiling, feeding people the flesh of their friends or relatives, cutting off limbs, drowning, skinning the feet of thieves and then putting salt on them to prompt goats to lick off the salt, although since the anecdotes about Vlad III contributed to the creation of Dracula (the vampire Dracula thus helping codify many elaborate and varied characteristics about vampires in general, as can be seen here) there is still the question of whether these claims are accurate. And no, although a film titled Dark Prince: the True Story of Dracula was released in 2000, while it is slightly more historically accurate it still takes enough creative liberties with the history of Vlad III and blends Vlad III together so much with the vampire Dracula that the "True" part of its title should indeed be omitted.

After the Night Attack and the continuing success of the Ottoman advance the younger brother of Vlad III, the pro-Ottoman Radu cel Frumos, persuaded the Wallachian people to accept him as Voivode and to pay the tribute for peace and thus Vlad III was stripped of power and then was imprisoned for treason by the scapegoat-seeking Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus after appealing to him for help -- Corvinus having a letter forged so that he could pose interference by Vlad III by claiming Vlad was attempting to align with the Ottoman Empire against him, thus giving him an excuse for the reason why Hungary could not fight against the Ottomans and given that the actual reason was territorial conflict with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III. Vlad III would finally be released twelve years later in 1474, however, thus how he ended up dying in battle but in such a way his remains were reportedly never found ... this undoubtedly fueling more confusion between the historical character of Vlad III and of the fictional vampire of Dracula.

COTD: How important is it to head off into the wilderness?

BAD NEWS: Kyron Horman is still absent!

GOOD NEWS: The Euro gained!

HUMOR: Being free (Luann, by Evans)!

HISTORY: June 18, 1178: The crater of Giordano Bruno was possibly formed upon the Moon, as five Canterbury (England) monks reported seeing "two horns of light" on the shaded part of the Moon just after sunset to their abbey's chronicler Gervase.

The reason for the "possibly" is because circumstantial evidence of the newness of the "ray system" of material ejected from the crater and the Taurid meteor shower which occurs in late June prompted geologist Jack B. Hartung to propose the aforementioned monks actually saw material being ejected from a Taurid meteorite impact which formed the crater on this date in 1178. The actual size of the crater, however, is such that debris ejected from the impact would have presumably caused quite notable meteor storms upon Earth yet there are no historical records of such occurring around this time in history, thus it is possible the monks saw something else. Complicating the fact the monks were looking at the event over a great distance is the fact that although the crater is estimated as being a young one, that means it is estimated as having occurred within the past 350 million years.

From the Christian viewpoint at that time, however, whatever happened upon the Moon was shocking since permanence of the Moon was something believed in through study of the Bible. Specifically, Christian-themed learning would entail searching the Bible for truths that were faithfully believed to be infallible because overall they recorded the overall implied divine plan of God, thus since Psalm 89:37 uses the analogy that the Jewish Kingdom of David will have the permanence of the Moon, the Moon was supposed to be permanent and thus unchangeable. The "two horns of light" appearing upon the Moon therefore indicated that something had changed and raised questions about the accuracy of the Bible and thus also about the record of or even if there was some sort of divine plan of God, therefore.

Perhaps the best way of explaining this actually lies in the fact that the crater was ultimately named after the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno. Although erring in a number of scientific areas, his worth was that he challenged the idea of science only proving what was already asserted by religion -- such as by following the more correct Heliocentric (Sun-centered) view of the universe advocated by Copernicus instead of following the Geocentric (Earth-centered) view of the universe as implied by the Bible, although this is true only of our solar system instead of the universe. He did develop some religious beliefs that got him officially burned at the stake for heresy in 1600 (according to some this circumventing how the Christian church is supposed to be against the shedding of blood) but some assert his unwillingness to prove the implicit truths of the Bible also had a role in prompting him to be convicted and thus executed upon the excuse of heresy, thus making him a martyr of science and thus akin to what happened to Galileo Galilei starting around 1610 (Galileo Galilei also notably getting into trouble when his telescopes revealed features upon the Moon in contrast with the reported permanence of it) although Galileo Galilei was only imprisoned and not executed for his beliefs.

Or in other words, that the Bible is a means by faith of seeing the truth beyond what one cannot see, and not a means by which to actually constrain seeing the truth when science finally enables one to see beyond what one was able to see before. This does not mean that one should discard religion and thus its morals and ethics due to it only being a type of blindness that keeps one from seeing the physical truth once science expands enough to enable one to see it, however -- and perhaps the strongest argument that this is so rests in the fact that religion still exists today as a moral compass for spiritual truth despite the shock the monks at Canterbury received upon seeing "two horns of light" upon the Moon on this date in 1178.

There is value in both religion and science, therefore, just as long as they do not interfere with each other.

(Yes, there is 10,000 views, thank you all.)

COTD: You could have done better than to shove me around.

BAD NEWS: An eight year old boy died trying to save his seventeen month old brother from a fire!

GOOD NEWS: The Harry Potter theme park opened!

HUMOR: Lucky guess or good guess (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: June 19, 1269: King Louis IX of France decreed that all Jews must wear the yellow badge to identify themselves as Jews in public, otherwise they will be fined ten livres of silver.

Although it is true that some Jews maintain a separate ethnic and religious identity, thus prompting anti-Semites to see them as a parasitic collective, the start of anti-Semitism began with religious differences even prior to Christ -- such as between Greeks and Jews and particularly between Romans and Jews, the latter emphasized by the number of Jewish-Roman Wars or Jewish Revolts against Rome that occurred. The popularity of Christianity, however, helped increase anti-Semitism first through attempts to differentiate it from Judaism despite shared Judeo-Christian roots, and second because the early hostility between Christianity and Judaism due to religious differences has lead to interpretations of the Bible that lend themselves to anti-Semitism.

The above sometimes happened in the Muslim world too, the result in both the Christian and the Muslim world being conflict with the supposedly parasitic collective of Jews based upon both religious and secular differences -- the secular differences emphasized in particular by the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945 since racially instead of religiously-defined Jews were its main target (other supposedly inferior races were targeted as well) to be killed off via mass murder en route to remaking a German-dominated Europe. As such, slanderous and libelous claims have been made against the Jews which are not worth repeating here, but part of the way early Christian and Muslim societies responded to the supposedly hostile and parasitic collective of Jews was by having them wear particular clothing or clothing with some type of identifying mark sewn upon their clothing such as the aforementioned "yellow badge."

Even the "yellow badge" varied in shape and color depending upon the area. This was true even during the 1933 to 1945 Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany since although the most common form of the yellow badge was indeed some type of yellow patch in the form of a JewishStar of David with the word "Jew" on it (spelled in the dominant language of the area, hence the German "Jude," the French "Juif," and the Dutch "Jood"), a notable variant of the yellow badge during this time was a white armband with a blue Jewish Star of David labeled "Jew" upon it. That variant is actually briefly seen around the time of a Christian church scene within the movie version of Schindler's List, for instance, but the ease of and thus more common use of sewing a yellow Star of David upon the clothing thus solidified the overall symbolization of this anti-Semitic symbol as "the yellow badge" in no matter what shape, color, or form it appeared in (thus how it also includes different dressing requirements) throughout history.

A blue Star of David on a white flag (but with no "Jew" label within the star) is indeed the symbolization used by the modern Jewish nation of Israel, but the point here is that this use of the Star of David is identification for national pride instead of for persecution. As well, although use of the yellow badge began possibly as early as 717, use of a form of the yellow badge was actually reported as late as 2001 in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan but to identify the minority of Hindus for the majority of Muslims due to religious grounds -- and yes, it is true that the use of the yellow badge to label other supposedly hostile and parasitic groups from time to time. The aforementioned case of Louis IX of France's requiring Jews to wear the yellow badge was also based upon religious grounds -- unlike the secular and thus supposedly genetic grounds used by Nazi Germany -- due to him taking very seriously the idea that God had granted him the authority to rule (which in itself is also why the reported Catholic Christian representative of God upon Earth, the Pope, would often crown kings). In addition to other religious activities that gained him canonization as a Catholic Christian saint in 1297 and thus the prevalence of "Saint Louis" as a name for various locations, and also in addition to his requiring Jews to start wearing the yellow badge upon this date in 1269, he also had Jews expelled who were practicing usury and their property confiscated in order to finance his first crusade in addition to having 12,000 copies of Jewish holy books like the Talmud burned in 1243.

"Usury" also deserves a brief mention in that this was what gaining any interest upon loans was originally called, and it was originally viewed as unnatural and thus sinful based upon religious grounds. Today usury is legally defined as making excessive interest upon a loan, but since followers of Christianity became reluctant to risk the use of usury/interest for a time -- not without good reason, since moneylenders were most often untrustworthy and even ruthless private individuals who were not held accountable by law prior to the development of banks and of laws to govern those banks -- the necessity of loans for Christian business ventures was thus shifted upon the Jewish community who was more willing to engage in the loaning of money at that time (for instance, this is reflected through William Shakespeare's Jewish moneylender character Shylock in hisMerchant of Venice play around 1600, although Shakespeare also stoops to anti-Semitism through his use of Shylock). The cruel irony being that as Jews became prosperous through lending of money becoming their family business as a result of it being one of the few businesses allowed to them by the Christian majority, the stereotype of a greedy Jew then became added to the imagery of Jews as a parasitic collective that supposedly needed to be identified as "other" through the yellow badge in order to avoid being harmed by them, such as Louis IX decreed on this date in 1269.

In other words, the problem with such prejudice is that it becomes an erroneous self-fulfilling prophecy and an erroneous begging of the question which thus only lends itself to more prejudice, thus why the absurdity of anti-Semitism was so often symbolized and thus made so much worse by the yellow badge Jews were forced to wear.

COTD: Does anyone have any acid for my eyeballs?

BAD NEWS: More violence in Kyrgyzstan!

GOOD NEWS: Toy Story 3 got some very good reviews!

HUMOR: Many of them, anyway (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 20, 1944: The USSR demanded an unconditional surrender from Finland during the Continuation War theater of World War II, which is refused by Finland.

Coming out of prehistory, Finland was influenced by Sweden in the west (and for a time would be part of Sweden) and Russia in the east, and also a little by Denmark in the south (particularly during the Kalmar Union period of 1389-1521). By 1809 this meant that Finland had become part of Russia (which had fought wars against Sweden, thus removing Sweden from being a world power) as the Great Duchy of Finland. Russia then made a number of unsuccessful efforts to Russify Finland to thus bind it to Russia (a covert protest against this was made by composer Jean Sibelius via his Finlandia, which would be performed under covert titles and which is still popular today), but as a result of the October Revolution which began the 1917-1922 Russian Civil War that was won by the Bolshevik Communists, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed to allow Russia, which would become the USSR from 1922 to 1991, to focus on its Civil War instead of upon World War I -- one result of which was the independence of Finland due to the ultimate defeat of the Central Powers which had gained effective control over these new nations as a result of Russia's withdrawal from World War I.

Of course Russia followed a general policy of regaining the territory it lost, thus why the nations of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Ukraine which had gained independence as a result of Brest-Litovsk and the end of World War I were retaken by Russia (although they would then regain their independence with the end of the USSR in the 1990s), but Russia had less success retaking Finland, hence prior to World War II most of the conflicts that took place between Finland and Russia were over Finland's border with Russia. The effective start of World War II changed this since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia placed Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia within the Russian "sphere of influence" (Ukraine had been reconquered by Russia in 1922), the ultimate result being that Finland ended up fighting and losing the 1939-1940 Winter War undertaken by Russia for territorial and economic gains. The purges of possible rivals from the armed forces by Russian dictator Joseph Stalin actually weakened the Russian armies and thus helped lead to a 1940-1941 period known as the Interim Peace period where both sides essentially reset and better prepared themselves for a continuation of warfare, thus why the 1941-1944 warfare between Finland and Russia was known as the "Continuation War." An odd fact of which is that since Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers other than the USSR had decided to betray and invade the USSR in 1941, Finland ended up aligning with Nazi Germany against the USSR. This was the reason why Finland ended up having to pay an indemnity and face other consequences after the conclusion of World War II but Finland's fight against Russia was how it managed to avoid participation in the Holocaust (although 4,000 Russians would die in Finnish concentration camps, and though eight Jewish refugee children were delivered to Nazi Germany), while also explaining how Finland managed to keep a majority of the country free of conquest.

The reason why Russia demanded an unconditional surrender from Finland on this date in 1944 and during the Continuation War was because their Fourth Strategic Offensive against Finland which had started on June 9/June 10 had stalled, again surprising the numerically superior Russian forces. Finland was still in trouble due to the offensive, however, hence Finnish President Risto Ryti ended up pulling a clever double cross: the guaranteed Nazi Germany Finland would not negotiate a peace with Russia as long as he was President in exchange for Nazi German weapons via the Ryti-Ribbentrop Agreement, then after receiving the weapons resigned the Presidency so that peace could be and thus was negotiated without breaking the technical terms of the agreement. This lead to peace between Finland and Russia via the Moscow Armistice on September 19 since Russia had become more concerned with defeating Nazi Germany due to the Nazi-German lead invasion of the USSR and also due to the fact that Stalin's aforementioned purges of leaders of the armed forces he feared were rivals as well as the fact that superior tactics employed by the Finns was inflicting heavy losses upon Russian troops attacking Finland. The betrayal by Finland, therefore, prompted the 1944-1945 Lapland War when Finland attempted to expel Nazi German troops in the country, this war fought mostly in Finland's northernmost province of Lapland and thus pushing those German troops back into Nazi German-occupied Norway.

Finland ending up aligning with Nazi Germany in order to oppose Russia was also partially a result of a blunder by the United Kingdom. Although Finland had appealed to the United Kingdom for help as a result of the 1939-1940 Winter War, with the United Kingdom's participation in World War II ongoing it did not respond with that much interest, particularly during the Interim Peace period. As well, since Finland actually invaded the USSR during the opening stages of the 1941-1944 Continuation War to not only regain territory it lost in the earlier Winter War but also with the idea of gaining new territory for a Greater Finland -- this in coordination with the Operation Barbarossa invasion of the USSR lead by Nazi Germany -- this actually lead the United Kingdom to declare war upon Finland in 1941 (also one of the rare cases of a democracy declaring war upon another democracy) and was also why Finland was the strongest ally of Germany after Italy switched to the Allied side in 1943.

The way Finland therefore ended up being defined was as a co-belligerent since like Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary they ended up assisting Nazi Germany for their own means -- Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary for economic ends and due to how Nazi Germany's openness to trade during the Great Depression and while rebuilding Germany thus made Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary indebted to them for helping their own economies to recover -- yet were never a member of a formal alliance such as the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan. Early Allied propaganda therefore sometimes even targeted Finland in addition to its usual targets of Germany, Italy, and Japan due to Finland's uneasy balancing act between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the Finns managing to play both sides against each other and thus why they ended up fighting both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, thus of course the reason for why Russia demanded unconditional surrender from Finland during the Winter War on this date in 1944.

The United Kingdom's war against Finland appears to be quite limited, given the initial Nazi German success in Western Europe thus threatening the United Kingdom more directly, plus of course because Finland willingly turned to the Allied side (instead of as a result of conquest, such as what happened with fascist Italy) in 1944 following the September 19, 1944 Moscow Armistice. One lasting consequence of all this history, however, is that Finland actually had some ties with both the Capitalist West and the Communist East during the 1947-1991 Cold War and even today has declined to join an organization such as NATO after the end of the Cold War, for instance.

COTD: Why did you throw my little blue tricycle on the roof?

BAD NEWS: 27 people were killed by suicide blasts in Iraq!

GOOD NEWS: Kevin Costner's machines are cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil leak!

HUMOR: Compromise (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 21, 1582: The Incident at Honno-ji (Honno-ji no Hen) took place in Japan, leading to the death of one of the three great unifiers of Japan, Oda Nobunaga.

YOUTUBE FILE: Dynasty Warriors 2 (Video Game): Incident at Honno-ji.

Again, the roots of this Japanese history lay in the fact that although Japan was unified under the imperial family using the idea they were descended from the Shinto goddess Amaterasu, although the imperial family ultimately delegated too much power to the Shogun or head of Japan's armed forces so that the Shogun became the effective leader of Japan himself. Disputes over the successor to the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa had lead to the Onin War from 1467-1477 which thus lead to Japan's Warring States period (Sengoku jidai, Sengoku period) which lasted until 1600 and which saw the local feudal lords or daimyo become both politically and military empowered due to the lack of centralized power.

A lasting popular cultural reference of the Warring States period of Japanese history is in how it is commonly used for historically-based Japanese fiction such as in books, films, anime, and video games, thus the reason for the Youtube segment above. In any case, Oda Nobunaga (family name of Oda listed first as this is the convention in Asian culture) was one of the more successful daimyo during the Warring States period and thus ended up conquering much of central Japan -- Japan's island of Honshu, in other words. He also intended to continue his conquests, thus why he ordered General Toyotomi Hideyoshi (also known as Hashiba Hideyoshi, as he underwent some name changes) to attack the Mori clan, General Niwa Nagahide to prepare to invade the Japanese island of Shikoku, General Takigawa Kazumasu to monitor the Hojo clan, and General Shibata Katsuie to invade Echigo.

General Hashiba Hideyoshi then requested reinforcements from Oda Nobunaga for the 1582 Siege of Takamatsu in order to destroy the Mori clan, which Oda Nobunaga thus did by sending troops under General Akechi Mitsuhide. Oda Nobunaga had also been celebrating with his ally Tokugawa Ieyasu (who would become the second great unifier of Japan) the defeat of the Takeda clan, but parted with him at this point in order to allow him to continue to tour the newly-conquered Kansai region (in southern-central Honshu) while preparing to head to the Siege of Takamatsu to oversee the destruction of the Mori clan.

The end result of this was that Oda Nobunaga was therefore left in a position where he was only lightly defended, but since he was in the midst of his own conquered territories then some sort of treachery was the only danger he might incur. Unfortunately he got that treachery in the form of Akechi Mitsuhide, who decided to bring his troops back and to stage a coup by which to remove Oda Nobunaga. The reasons why he did so have been speculated upon endlessly since they were never made clear but probably were the result of a combination of factors bound together by the opportunism of Oda Nobunaga being put into a situation where he was only lightly defended. The "Honno-ji" name comes from the fact that the Honno-ji Shinto temple near the city of Kyoto (Kyoto for a time being the capital of Japan) was where Oda Nobunaga typically rested while in the area, thus this was where Akechi Matsuhide caught Oda Nobunaga.

Overwhelmed by superior numbers, Oda Nobunaga then committed suicide via seppuku in order to follow the bushido honor code of the samurai (noble warriors) in order to die with honor instead of allowing incurring the dishonor of being captured by a rival (bushido was also why the Japanese were so willing to fight to the death and were so cruel to captured prisoners such as was noted during the 1939-1945 period of World War II). Oda Nobunaga committed suicide within the temple of Honno-ji itself and his teenage wakashu Mori Ranmaru -- also in the temple with him -- then set the temple on fire and committed seppuku himself in order to die with Oda Nobunaga in what turned out to be a successful effort to keep Akechi Matsuhide from recovering any of Oda Nobunaga's remains as a trophy.

The term Japanese term "wakashu" can also be rendered as "shudo" and as "nanshoku" and actually referred in part to a homosexual relationship -- this because Mori Ranmaru was also Oda Nobunaga's page -- between members of the same sex at the time, usually between younger (teenage) men and older men and which was actually common across many cultures in history but which tends to be downplayed today due to fears of homophobia and such due to the strong emphasis upon heterosexuality there is today. The devotion that Mori Ranmaru therefore showed was thus praised during the 1603-1868 Edo period when the "shudo" and "nanshoku" terms were finalized, the important additional note to make here being that Oda Nobunaga had children of his own such as his eldest son Oda Nobutada and thus such shudo or nanshoku male-male sexual relationships were not just a cover for those with a homosexual sexual orientation.

Oda Nobutada also ended up committing seppuku when the treacherous Akechi Matsuhide began to consolidate his power with the death of Nobutada's father Nobunaga, but Akechi Matsuhide's control of power ended up lasting only eleven days with his defeat and presumed death from the Battle of Yamazaki/Mt. Tenno on July 1, in which the loyal General Toyotomi Hideyoshi who had been conducting the Siege of Takamatsu to destroy the Mori clan and who should have been reinforced by Akechi Matsuhide after appealing to Oda Nobunaga for help thus defeated the forces of Akechi Matsuhide (he quickly negotiated a peace treaty with the Mori to end the siege and in order to do this) to thereby avenge what happened, leaving Toyotomi Hideyoshi himself in control and making him the second great unifier of Japan behind Oda Nobunaga during the Warring States period (Sengoku jidai). The third and final great unifier of Japan during the Warring States period was the daimyo Tokugawa Ieyasu, his connection to the aforementioned Oda Nobunaga which had begun when had decided to support Oda Nobunaga's second and surviving son Oda Nobukatsu as his heir in 1584 and thus which ended up culminating with him winning effective control of Japan via the Battle of Sekigahara on October 21, 1600 -- Nobunaga's ally Tokugawa Ieyasu having died and Iyeasu's heir being too young to maintain effective control -- thus completing the reunification of Japan that Oda Nobunaga had begun yet which he had been cut off from doing more with due to the treachery leading to the Incident at Honno-ji upon this date in 1582.

The Japanese actually have a simple saying to summarize the unification of Japan out of the Warring States period mentioned above: that "Nobunaga pounds the national rice cake, Hideyoshi kneads it, and in the end Ieyasu sits down and eats it." As well, in reference to some of the shrewd political moves that enabled Tokugawa Ieyasu to rise from daimyo to unifier of Japan to Shogun in his own right (the Japanese emperor officially granted him the title of Shogun in 1603) is alluded to in the Japanese proverb "Ieyasu won the Empire by retreating," although this is indeed far beyond the immediate scope of Akechi Matsuhide's betrayal leading to the Incident at Honno-ji.

COTD: If we don't read, we won't write, and we can't think.

BAD NEWS: 20 people were killed and 25 were injured in Somali fighting!

GOOD NEWS: Larry King is having a telethon to help victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak!

HUMOR: I know what gave her that idea (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 22, 1971: Kurt Warner, professional American football (gridiron) quarterback, was born.

Warner's football achievements are readily noted, hence instead I wish to focus more upon his personal life since like his football career his personal life is a "Cinderella Story" in itself. I say "Cinderella Story" because throughout so much of his life it looked like Warner had no chance at much success yet succeeded beyond all expectations -- most likely because Warner is a devout evangelical Christian who was able to persevere not just due to being humble through believing that he was indebted for every triumph to God, but who also through his faith was able to persevere when it seemed what he had been given was taken away again. This because at times his professional football career was in question due to injuries and age and thus why he was moved back to being a backup player and such after being a starter.

Kurt Warner's parents divorced when he was six years old. His wife, Brenda -- also an evangelical Christian -- actually lost both of her parents when their home was destroyed by a tornado in 1996 and at the time the two married in 1997 (after first meeting in 1992) was a divorcee with two children named Zachary and Jesse, Zachary himself being developmentally disabled due to being accidentally dropped on his head so that he suffered brain damage as an infant.

Here it should also be noted that a more exaggerated account of Warner's past has been circulated as is noted at Snopes.com: Kurt Reply, although the less exaggerated account of Warner's history is still a Cinderella story. His attempts at becoming a professional football player for the National Football League were unsuccessful enough at first that in 1994 he ended up finding employment stocking groceries during the night shift at a Hy-Vee grocery store for USD $5.50 per hour, though during the day he continued to train and worked as an assistant coach for the University of Northern Iowa. To get more experience playing American football at a professional level he played for the Arena Football League Iowa Barnstormers from 1995 to 1997 -- he having a chance to become part of the National Football League's Chicago Bears in 1997 but losing out on the chance due to receiving a painful spider bite on the elbow of his throwing arm while on his honeymoon with his new wife Brenda, of all things. In 1998 he was signed to a contract by the St. Louis Rams and was allocated to the NFL Europe developmental league for the National Football League where he played for the Amsterdam Admirals. By 1999 roster changes and injuries then gave Warner the chance to become the starter for the National Football League's St. Louis Rams, where he excelled so well despite being so unnoticed before -- the St. Louis Rams won the championship game of the Super Bowl that season -- that the October 1999 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine featured him on the cover along with the question "Who is this guy?"

As mentioned before, however, Warner being around 30 years of age when he found tremendous success and thus set many records in professional football -- this when many of the players are around 20 years of age -- plus problems with injuries is why his career came into question, as well as why in 2009 he completed it as the starting quarterback of the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals and after the team had made its first Super Bowl appearance (although they lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers). He and his wife Brenda have five children in addition to the two Brenda had from her previous marriage, whom Warner adopted as his own, and Warner voiced his desire to spend more time with his family as the central reason behind his reasoning for retiring from professional football on January 29, 2010. He has also appeared in advertisements for Civitan International which is a volunteer organization for the developmentally disabled, as well as founding the First Things First organization for assisting children's hospitals and the developmentally disabled in particular.

Finally, of course, Kurt Warner has often been named as a positive role model, which I would say is both due to his faith in the face of adversity as well as his charitable work. I do have some mixed feelings about issue of his evangelical Christian faith in that the term "evangelical Christian" is used in this sense to denote conservative Protestant Christianity, the conservative elements of which I sometimes find myself at odds with -- for instance, Warner appeared in an advertisement opposing embryonic stem cell research despite my own thinking such opposition is being too obstinate and inflexible about research which is prevented from doing great good through exaggerating the bad which might come about from it. Yet still, Warner's religious nature -- such as publicly thanking Jesus Christ for the Super Bowl appearances of the teams he was the quarterback of -- personally resounds for me given how I know that too many people with connections to the National Football League were not only not as humble but seemed to think that they were entitled to special and even illegal rights through projecting their faults onto and imposing their wills upon others instead of being humble and unassuming ("Who is this guy?") like Kurt Warner is and thus to avoid doing so.

Some of the names of these not-so-humble National Football League players who are the opposite of Warner some might recognize: Plaxico Burress, Ryan Leaf, Byron "Bam" Morris, Steve McNair, Nate Newton, Lawrence Phillips, Ben Roethlisberger, O.J. Simpson, and Michael Vick. The serious legal charges upon this group have included felonies (not the lesser charges of misdemeanors) such as counts of burglary, drug trafficking and illegal drug use, illegal weapons possession, various driving violations, sexual assault, and even murder. Hence although I might be at odds with Kurt Warner over stem cell research, I have to emphasize it is far better to be a pious evangelical Christian as opposed to being a criminal.

COTD: You must read in order to analyze, synthesize, interpret, and evaluate instead of having somebody else do it for you.

BAD NEWS: Brazil is suffering from some terrible flooding!

GOOD NEWS: Some missing children were found safe!

HUMOR: I do not think his kids had him (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 23, 1917: Boston Red Sox pitcher George Herman "Babe" Ruth was ejected for throwing a punch at the umpire during a US Major League Baseball game against the Washington Senators.

Babe Ruth is a sports hero but who had another side to him, too, one often overlooked due to the time in which he played. He began playing at a professional level during the 1910-1920 transition from the "dead-ball" era to the "live-ball" era where rule changes were made to increase the scoring and thus the excitement of the game, this most often symbolized by how the construction of the baseball itself was changed to give a batter the ability to hit it further and therefore to increase the scoring in a game. As such, this is why Babe Ruth actually started out his professional baseball career more as a pitcher instead of as a batter.

In the case of the June 23, 1917 incident, Babe Ruth had begun to be paid quite well for his professional baseball game and was pitching when he got upset about umpire Clarence "Brick" Owens calling some of his pitches as balls instead of as strikes, thus he started arguing with Owens about it. When Owens had enough of Ruth's arguing he told him to go back to pitching or that he would be ejected from the game, to which Ruth threatened to punch him in the nose if he did. Unintimidated, Owens therefore ejected Ruth for the threat and Ruth retaliated by punching him in the nose. Ruth was suspended indefinitely for punching Owens, although this was later amended to a USD $100 fine after ten days of the indefinite suspension.

Going back to the start of Ruth's life, however, the start of what lead to Ruth's attitude problems was the fact that health and economic problems lead to Ruth being neglected to the degree he became accustomed to getting his own way (no matter what the rules or laws) as a child. He liked and had a considerable talent for baseball, however, thus how he was trained to play it and how he became quite proficient in it. Just how he became enamored of being a pitcher is disputed, but at times he also played other positions. The few times he was allowed to bat he hit the ball quite well, however, thus why he slowly started getting shifted from a pitching position to elsewhere thus where he could save more of his arm strength for batting.

Ruth's ability resulted in his Red Sox salary and thus his ego being increased over time, thus by 1919 and after a not-so-good Red Sox season, he made the demand that his salary be doubled to USD $20,000. Red Sox economic problems and the attitude problems -- such as reflected in the June 23 punching incident -- of the admittedly talented Babe Ruth were thus what prompted Red Sox owner Harry Frazee to essentially sell Ruth to the New York Yankees, where of course his being allowed to hit more was how he ended up becoming one of the first to hit many home runs due to the shift into the aforementioned "live-ball" era of professional baseball, helping to make the sport more famous (as well, many of the first well-known professional baseball players come from around the same period of time).

His fame overshadowed many of his antics that were foreshadowed by his 1917 punching of the umpire Owens, however. Struggling at first to play an outfield position and even striking out several times after first starting with the Yankees, he actually once climbed into the stands to go after a fan who was heckling him during his first season with the Yankees in 1920. The fact that the fan pulled a knife to keep Ruth away and that somebody intervened helped keep anyone from getting hurt. He also would reportedly be so eager to seek entertainment that he would jump off the team's train when it arrived in a city for a game, and even had to be carried back to his hotel room on occasion. He also reportedly was involved in a number of automobile accidents due to his ability to quickly buy a new car even after totaling the one he had at the time due to speeding and otherwise ignoring traffic rules. He lost a considerable amount of money gambling on racing horses, and given he had been raised in poverty he often made bad financial decisions since he had little idea how to manage his money. Needing money was also why he broke the rules by going on a barnstorming tour in the off-season time between the 1921 and 1922 seasons, which was why he ended up being suspended for the first six weeks of the 1922 season (the rule was dropped afterwards, allowing Ruth to do it legally and thus why he continued to do it annually and in his off season). He also was ejected for throwing dirt into the fact of umpire George Hildebrand over being called out and then ended up being suspended when he charged into the stands after a Yankees fan (who successfully ran away) heckled him for being ejected by Hildebrand -- the Yankees fans even being willing to taunt Babe Ruth when he was struggling.

Ruth actually got ejected and suspended a number of times, and suffered also from a number of injuries and illnesses that compromised his playing. In addition to this, he tended to gorge on hot dogs and soft drinks which made it harder for him to stay in shape, and which may have contributed to his problem with what was termed an "intestinal abscess" that kept him from playing for much of 1925 and what was rumored to actually be everything from a sexually transmitted disease to alcohol poisoning from bootlegged and thus improperly-prepared alcohol -- this because Prohibition of alcohol within the US was in effect from 1920 to 1933 and because Babe Ruth had reportedly liked to drink alcohol. He also reportedly had problems with adultery, so much so that his adopted daughter Dorothy Ruth later claimed Babe Ruth had fathered her through one of his mistresses. Ruth's infidelity is also why his 1914 marriage to his first wife Helen Woodford ended in 1926, he then marrying his second wife Claire Merritt Hodgson in 1929. He also reportedly had conflicts with his teammate Lou Gehrig as a result of anger over how Gehrig's mother had once indicated that Dorothy Ruth was not as well dressed as Claire's natural daughter, Julia Hodgson, whom Ruth had adopted as his own.

Ruth's so-called called shot from the 1932 World Series championship (which itself has become a popular part of sports lore) also reflects how Ruth's ability as a batter often overshadowed his attitude problems since his ability to hit the ball was so beneficial in making professional baseball famous. From the sports hero perspective he pointed to center field to indicate where he then successfully hit a 440 to 490 foot home run despite how rare this type of hit was, whereas from the attitude problem perspective he was mocking being taunted by the opposing Chicago Cubs by either pointing at the Chicago Cubs bench or by pointing at Chicago Cubs pitcher Charlie Root. The fact that Ruth made a number of mocking gestures as he then ran around the bases following the home run makes me tend to think that he confrontationally pointed at the Cubs Bench to mock their taunting, but just where he was pointing is still ambiguous enough to be debated even today -- and of course Ruth, who quite enjoyed the attention he received from theatrics, was not about to deny that he had indeed pointed to center field and at the very spot where he had then hit a home run.

By 1934 Ruth's physical condition had deteriorated further -- he was now considerably overweight -- but his ego from his attitude problem had increased to the point he then wanted to take over managing the New York Yankees. Yankee manager Joe McCarthy had not got along with Ruth due to his attitude problems and of course did not want to lose his managerial position, thus Ruth essentially ended up getting sold to the Boston Braves as a quick fix for -- ironically enough -- debt problems being incurred by Braves owner Emil Fuchs. The quick fix did not work since although Ruth could still hit he could do little fielding, and the token managerial, vice presidential, and ownership powers he had been offered turned out to be empty promises (Fuchs ultimately lost control of the Braves due to his debt problems). On May 27, 1935 he finally was able to retire after being talked into staying a little while longer by Fuchs after asking for the chance to retire on May 12 -- this effectively ending his professional baseball career besides a few more token appearances.

Ruth also made some motion picture and radio appearances due to his fame, which still overshadows his attitude problems such as chasing after fans, wrecking cars, committing adultery, drinking, overeating, and of course his punching umpire Owens upon this date in 1917. He died of pneumonia prompted by cancer on August 16, 1948, although not before being able to attend "Babe Ruth Day" at the 1923 to 2008 Yankees Stadium on April 27, 1947, and also not before attending the 25th anniversary celebration of the opening of the 1923 to 2008 Yankee Stadium on June 13, 1948 -- Ruth being so weak during the June 13 appearance he had to use a bat as a cane. This because although Ruth indeed had attitude problems that thus prompted both the Red Sox and even ultimately the Yankees themselves to rid themselves of him, the most productive years of his batting due were indeed spent with the New York Yankees, making them the foremost amongst the newly-famed "live-ball" era of professional baseball.

COTD: His waffles have eggs on them, so they're pretty cracked.

BAD NEWS: The United Kingdom is facing the worst budget crisis since World War II!

GOOD NEWS: The earliest pictures of the Christian apostles were found!

HUMOR: Mac (Get Fuzzy, by Conely)!

HISTORY: June 24, 1982: The Jakarta Incident took place as British Airways Flight 9 flew through a cloud of volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress." (Captain Eric Moody)

This incident offers some explanation for the more recent (2010) disruption of air travel with the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland, for instance. One good aspect of the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull being that it finally prompted aircraft engine manufacturers to start specifying just how much volcanic ash their engines could tolerate instead of following the aircraft regulator precedent of simply closing an airspace if the amount of volcanic ash in it rose above zero. This because the economic disruption from people being unable to fly due to Eyjafjallajokull was so bad -- hence now the upward limit of safe flight is when volcanic ash is at 4 milligrams per cubic meter.

Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia, with the Mount Galunggung that erupted the ash cloud about 110 miles away from the capital. British Airways Flight 9 was flying near there since it had a stop at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with an ultimate starting point of London, England, and an ultimate destination point of Melbourne, Australia. The reason the ash was not detected was because the weather radar at the time was designed to detect clouds via the moisture in those clouds, but the ash itself was dry. This ash then got into the engines and melted in their combustion chambers, clogging them so that they would not work.

Fortunately fixed-wing aircraft still have some ability to glide (this due to the way the aerodynamics of the wings work by providing lift with forward motion) hence when the aircraft descended out of the ash cloud it had flown into and the engines cooled due to not being run, enough of the melted ash solidified and broke off to let enough air into the engines so that the flight crew could get them restarted -- although one then re-failed soon after restart. All 263 people aboard the aircraft where therefore able to survive.

Loss of fuel for various reasons or something in the engines that should not be there -- ice crystals clogging the Fuel-Oil Heat Exchanger of British Airways Flight 38 on January 17, 2008 due to a Boeing 777 design flaw or birds being ingested into the engines of US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15, 2009 which exceeded the engines' birdstrike design limits -- are usually what causes an engine to inadvertently shut down while in flight. The aircraft involved in the incident set the longest glide in a non-purpose-built aircraft (meaning it was not for unpowered gliding) until Air Transat Flight 236 managed to glide an astounding 65 nautical miles (about 75 miles or 120 kilometers) to an emergency landing on August 24, 2001.

The aircraft involved in the British Airways Flight 9 incident was a Boeing 747-238B, whereas the aircraft involved in the Air Transat Flight 236 incident was an Airbus A330-243. But suffice to say that since none of these aircraft mentioned are designed to glide for an extended distance while unpowered, it becomes more evident that Captain Moody's announcement about all four engines failing is quite the understatement.

COTD: Thinking occurs behind the eyes, hence why lines of text provide something to think about.

BAD NEWS: Twelve people were killed by a train in Spain!

GOOD NEWS: The Isner-Mahut match at Wimbleton is setting records!

HUMOR: Gift horse (Non Sequitur, by Miller)!

HISTORY: June 25, 1949: The Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny cartoon Long-Haired Hare was released as a theatrical short.

Until television became an efficient and thus widely-used and more-selective method of audio-visual (sound and moving picture) means of entertainment easily-accessible within private homes in the 1950s and 1960s, cinema via public movie theaters was how most people accessed audio-visual entertainment. In addition to the movies of cinema which have managed to last to the current day (hence why another name for a cinema is "movie theater"), there would also be newsreels and short subjects/short films as well as theatrical cartoons ranging up to about ten minutes long. Cartoon shorts done by Warner Brothers such as "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes" were the best of these cartoons and thus gained even more fame as a result of being repackaged for television starting in 1950, but because they were designed for a diverse public audience instead of just children this explains why even a childish cartoon like Long-Haired Hare actually has some more serious references.

These more serious references actually have nothing to do with much of the preexisting classical music used in Long-Haired Hare since much classical music has passed into the public domain -- completely free for use by anyone -- due to becoming so old that the copyright on it has expired, but rather with the fact that Bugs Bunny impersonates the 1882-1977 British-American conductor Leopold Stokowski during a significant portion of Long-Haired Hare. Children would of course have no idea who Stokowski was, but likely some adults in the diverse public audience of a cinema would recognize that allusions made to by Bugs Bunny's hairpiece, his rejection of a conducting baton (Bugs Bunny even snaps it in half), and the fact that he acts the role of a conductor at the amphitheater of the Hollywood Bowl where Stokowski himself conducted many performances was therefore indicating that Bugs Bunny was impersonating Leopold Stokowski.

The biggest giveaway in the Long-Haired Hare that Bugs Bunny is impersonating Leopold Stokowski is the fact that members of the orchestra are heard whispering "Leopold" to each other when he appears. Stokowski was an obvious choice as he was famous at that time due to his theatrics while conducting: eventually rejecting using a conducting baton (although he never snapped one in half, as far as we know), discarding his score of music by throwing it on the floor to show he did not need to conduct from it, and also altering the lighting for and the seating arrangement of the orchestras he conducted. As well, he sometimes made significant and thus controversial alterations of the music he was conducting, which is condensed within the Long-Haired Hare cartoon by Bugs-Stokowski stressing singer "Giovanni Jones" up to and perhaps even beyond his singing endurance with just a few gestures and in order to avenge how Jones had treated him earlier (Jones angrily responding to getting distracted from his practice by the music Bugs Bunny was entertaining himself with).

Incidentally enough, in 1940 Stokowski had conducted (and at times made alterations for) the soundtrack of Fantasia by Warner Brothers competitor Walt Disney, which also did theatrical cartoons as well. However, also reflecting the diverse public audience found at a cinema is the fact that some of these formerly theatrical cartoons exist in edited forms in order to remove objectionable material, some of them have been declared so objectionable they have been banned from ever being shown again, and some of them carry a warning they contain objectionable material unfortunately common for the period of time they were released on the grounds that pretending such errors of judgment did not exist is as bad as condoning such errors of judgment in the first place.

The use of the blackface gag in particular illustrates just how unfortunately easily it can be for objectionable material to appear in a cartoon, since while darkening a face and altering facial features makes a character look strange and thus foolish, this imagery then became generalized onto blacks such as African-Americans and thus furthered flagrantly incorrect and negative stereotypes of those same blacks as well. Its acceptance until the 1955-1968 African-American Civil Rights Movement means it was widely used in animation to emphasize foolishness despite how it became connected to racism. In contrast to this, a character such as Speedy Gonzales and his associates such as Slowpoke Rodriguez actually prompts the same type of concerns because while Speedy tends to be portrayed as a positive protagonist, many of his protagonists appear to be unable to speak Spanish in a rational manner (only using basic Spanish words that English-speaking audiences would know, thus how they rarely speak them fluently) as well as appearing to be lazy and even often drunk -- particularly Slowpoke Rodriguez, who is also implied as being violent due to it noting he carries a gun in the cartoon Mexicali Schmoes. In fact, the US Cartoon Network banned showing any Speedy Gonzales cartoons from 1999 to 2002 due to concerns about people forming negative stereotypes (the same way the foolishness of a blackface character was extended to blacks) or even positive stereotypes from them, but given how Speedy tends to be portrayed as a positive protagonist -- thus saving Slowpoke Rodriguez by association -- most Hispanic/Latino characters appear to not be offended by and to actually enjoy the Speedy Gonzales cartoons.

The point to make about the "positive stereotype" concern is that even though it might be positive, since it tends to emphasize looking at general groups only in specific ways which tends to limit what one believes they are capable of (viewing Asians as good at math can limit one into thinking they can only be scientists, thinking Italians are great at cooking can limit one into thinking they can only be cooks, and so forth). With this in mind the reason for obscuring what appears to be a positive reference to Leopold Stokowski in Long-Haired Hare thus becomes more obvious -- Warner Brothers did not want to run the risk of any inadvertent offense.

Since more people look at the Foxsnake Thread, I figured to mention that I finished posting links to the upload of the Beast Wars episode "Code of Hero" here. This because the "Code of Hero" that Dinobot follows is obviously derived from the same Code of Bushido that I alluded to again in the case of the June 21, 1582 Incident at Honno-ji. Particularly in how -- as is pointed out online -- the reason for his odd behavior with his sword at the start of the episode is because he is considering committing seppuku such as the aforementioned Oda Nobutada did.

There is also a poetic element to Bushido, but this was modified in the case of Dinobot so that he tends to make Shakespearian-inspired quotes (as is noted online) which are more familiar to Western audiences instead. As well, the Saijin Komamura I favor (avatar and Youtube segment in signature) also alludes to Bushido in that his Bankai attack is essentially a giant samurai, who were of course the main followers of Bushido.

Of course here I should also note that the above does tend to overlook the negatives of Bushido -- that an opponent who surrenders is completely contemptable and anything can be done with him such as what are today considered war crimes, for instance -- but the Code of Bushido was followed so closely in this episode that he did indeed die a brave and manly death.

COTD: In times of great crisis, there are always some people who say stupid things.

BAD NEWS: Eleven beheaded Afghanis were found!

GOOD NEWS: Scientists successfully transplanted lung tissue into rats!

HUMOR: That's not imporant (Calamities of Nature, by Piro)!

HISTORY: June 26, 1284: Calculated date upon which the Pied Piper was supposed to have lead 130 children out of Hamelin, then in the central Holy Roman Empire (now Germany).

How this date was calculated seems to be because Hamelin town records appear to have started with this event, along with a 1384 record which notes "It is 100 years since our children left." Although of course the common fairy tale version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin portrays the Piper kidnapping Hamelin's children in response to not being paid for ridding the town of its rats -- this through the magically enchanting music of his pipe. Theories about just what the metaphor of the story is referring to -- arranged from least likely to most likely -- are that the Piper was murderous pedophile, that the children were illegitimate children sold off into slavery and thus to the Piper, that the children were part of the disastrous Children's Crusade lead by a charismatic Piper-type character, that the children died due to an outbreak of the black death/black plague or some other epidemic illness so that the Piper represents death, or that they were part of the Ostsidelung German colonization of Eastern Europe and so that the Piper was their recruiting agent.

The rats in the story could possibly allude to the plague since rodents were often noted as carriers of the plague -- this due to their blood being fed upon by fleas infected with the bacterium Yersinia pestis -- but the first connection of rats to the story begins in accounts of it written down in 1559. The reason the Ostsidelung colonization is most likely is because Germanic names traced to Hamelin have been found in Polish sources and of course because Poland is in Eastern Europe, and although a combination of factors is possible -- say fleeing the plague by colonizing Eastern Europe with its lesser outbreaks of plague due to being further away from Western European trading routes (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death, noting the green "minor outbreaks" color-coding over modern Poland) -- stating that the children "left" is unusual if they died instead of colonized Eastern Europe. Of course it is also unusual that children would colonize a new land, but if the colonization theory is correct then likely the colonizers were actually ambitious young adults but as parents continue to refer to even their adult descendants as their children then this is likely where the "children" referred to came from.

The way that the Pied Piper of Hamelin has developed, however, is characteristic offairy tales. For entertainment value they tend to be filled with fantastic and thus magical elements such as the Piper ridding Hamelin of its rats through leading them out with a magically musical pipe, although at the same time they allude to the harsh realities which would have been common to that era to prompt suspension of disbelief and thus interest in the story. More commonly, the conventional "wicked stepmother" character of fairy tales comes from the temptation to treat stepchildren and biological children differently due to the vested genetic interests of the parent who biologically ends up having so much invested in her children due to the precedent of pregnancy and such -- although certainly the wicked stepfather makes some appearances as well -- thus why stepchildren are abandoned in Hansel and Gretel and why one is reduced to the role of a servant in Cinderella. The fantastic elements in fairy tales has resulted in them becoming more popular with the arguably more naive and trusting audience of children over time, however, thus some of the more adult elements were removed over time. This is noticed in the many editions of fairy tales collected by the German Jacob and Wilhelm "Brothers Grimm" during the 1800s and within the story of Rapunzel in particular, since in their first edition Rapunzel's obvious pregnancy as a result of having sex with the prince gives away what has been happening while in later editions Rapunzel inadvertently gives away the prince's secret visits by noting it is easier to pull the prince instead of the witch up into the captive Rapunzel's tower with her trademark long hair.

This type of editing probably had a role in how the Pied Piper evolved over time and from whatever historical roots it had as well, although sometimes one still encounters a reference to the original more adult origins of fairy tales through more modern references. The 1997 film version ofThe Sweet Hereafter compares and contrasts the fairy tale of the Pied Piper to the deaths of many children in a school bus accident and the resulting dysfunction resulting from that accident (the movie version was critically well-received but not popularly well-received), for instance. As well, the announced 2011 movie version of Red Riding Hood is supposed to have a more mature Riding Hood in love with a woodcutter at the same time their village is terrified by a werewolf and thus presumably making it less cartoony and more accurate to the gratuitous violence of its original version (reflecting the terror of how inflexible nature is and thus which is embodied by the wolf), and therefore less appropriate for children as well. However, I tend to believe the children of the historical Hamelin were not literally killed but instead were coxed into colonizing Eastern Europe by some sort of Pied Piper agent who lead them there, although admittedly the significant distance between Hamelin and Eastern Europe (such as Poland) for that time may be why they became figuratively dead -- this because after the young adults who had been the children of Hamelin left, their parents became unable to see or hear from them ever again.

COTD: I should tell you that the last guy who said anger did not bother him then threatened to kill me.

BAD NEWS: Weather may complicate the Gulf Oil spill cleanup!

GOOD NEWS: Edwin Jackson pitched a no-hitter!

HUMOR: Lost (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 27, 1942: The last of eight Nazi German saboteurs was captured by the US FBI.

Wikipedia itself also notes that a separate Duquesne Spy Ring of 33 agents was "closed in on" starting June 29, 1942. The saboteurs and the Duquesne Spy Ring are two separate efforts by Nazi Germany but were both undertaken to undermine the US war effort during World War II, however, given the great distance which exists between the US and Europe (and thus also Germany).

One subtle but fictional reference made to this distance is made in the movie version of the Rocketeer where a captured propaganda film poses that creation of a Nazi rocket pack would allow Nazi Germany to readily attack and conquer the US en route to conquering the world -- Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert of the Siskel and Ebert movie review show liking the movie but Siskel questioning whether a Nazi German who literally flew across the Atlantic Ocean entirely by rocket pack as portrayed by the propaganda film would be in any condition to fight. The massive assault needed for the Normandy Landings ("D-Day") and the great distance US troops needed to travel over in order to take part that also gives one an idea of the difficulty involved with such a distance, although the US remained connected to Europe despite the distance due to US-British ties (see special relationship). Thus given that a rocket pack for a more direct attack was more science fiction than fact for the overextended Nazis, use of more subtle means such as sabotage and spying were employed.

Japanese expansion in the Pacific Ocean was actually closer to the American homeland as Japan ended up attacking Hawaii (Pearl Harbor, in a failed but still quite damaging attempt to destroy the US Navy before it could stop Japanese expansion) and even temporarily occupying some of the Aleutian islands to further their expansionist agenda during World War II (although it should be noted that Japan attacked everywhere on that date, as US President Franklin Roosevelt noted in his Day of Infamy speech). Since Imperial Japan was aligned with Nazi Germany and also Fascist Italy via the Tripartite Pact, however, Nazi German dictator declared war on the US after Japan attacked the US and probably to attempt to divide American abilities through a two-front war -- although this was counterproductive since the US was able to hold against the overextended Japanese and thus to assist its European allies in recovering Europe (and northern Africa, and eastern Asia) so that then all efforts of the US and its allies could be focused on defeating the Japanese.

In the case of the eight saboteurs landed in the US in an effort to stretch the overextended Nazi German war effort further, in the earliest hours of June 13, 1942, four of the saboteurs were landed on a beach at Amagansett, Long Island, New York from a German submarine, and on June 17, 1942, another group of four men was landed at Jacksonville, Florida, by another German submarine. They carried with them enough explosives material for what was estimated to be two years of bombing attacks to terrorize US citizens away from the war, plus USD $175,200 in order to finance their activities. Although given extensive training before ever being landed in the US, one George John Dasch amongst the saboteurs lost his nerve when a Coast Guardsman immediately spotted his New York group after they had landed. They bribed the suspicious yet solitary and unarmed Coast Guardsman $260 to forget about him and were able to vacate the area before the Coast Guardsman could summon reinforcements by reporting the incident -- the Guardsman had only pretended to accept the bribe to avoid too much confrontation with the four men -- but Dasch decided his best chance at protecting himself after being so easily discovered was by turning informant for the US FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation, essentially the national police of the US). The end result was that by June 27, 1942, all of the saboteurs were arrested without having accomplished any of what Nazi Germany had intended them to do. Found guilty by a Military Commission, they were all sentenced to death and six were quickly executed, although US President Roosevelt commuted Dasch's sentence to 30 years imprisonment and another saboteur named Ernst Peter Burger's sentence to life imprisonment -- Roosevelt's commuting of the sentences of Dasch and Burger due to them cooperating.

Nazi Germany was so shaken by its overly-optimistic sabotage plans being so readily stopped, as well as the quick stopping of the aforementioned concurrent Duquesne Spy Ring soon after -- the Duquesne Spy Ring undone by double agent William Sebold -- that they only with a great deal of reluctance did they try (and fail) at sabotage or espionage (spying) against the US again. Dasch's becoming an informant almost did not work since he was initially sentenced to death, of course, but thankfully Roosevelt's successor Harry Truman commuted the imprisonment sentences of both Dasch and Burger to permanent deportation from the US to Germany, where they both later died of natural causes.

In the case of the related Duquesne Spy Ring, the 33 spies of it were given prison sentences that amounted to cumulative total of 300 years. This and the eight Nazi German saboteurs tends to be overlooked due to it being minor in comparison with other related activities of World War II, but also helps to show how relative US insulation from Europe, Asia, and Africa due to having a European focus but being separated from Europe by the distance of the world's oceans has kept the US relatively safe from attack over time -- although of course the most spectacular failure of that safety was the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Likewise, the distance over the ocean involved often meant that although other efforts were indeed made at somehow attacking or spying upon the US during World War II, their failure at reaching their objectives means they often are overlooked -- although of course the September 11, 2001 attacks illustrate how such attacks should not be entirely discounted because of how ingenuity can cross the distance and thus lead to tragedy. Aside from Japanese submarines sometimes attacking the US west coast and causing minimal damage, plus German submarines attacking the US east coast and also the eastern Canadian coast and succeeding in sinking a considerable number of US and Canadian allied ships, plus some relatively unsuccessful attempts at infiltrating the US through Canada, the Japanese quite ingeniously used fire balloons/balloon bombs (fusen bakudan, Fu-Gos) into the newly-discovered jet stream so that they would be carried over the Pacific Ocean to explode and ignite the hydrogen within them, causing damage and fires in the US. Like the Nazi German expectations, the Japanese expectations were overly-optimistic in that they predicted deaths up around 10,000, but of the 9,000 that were launched only 1,000 survived the trip across to various locations as far north as Alaska and as far south as Mexico, plus as far east as the state of Texas. Dampness was the key reason why most of the balloon bombs usually failed to detonate, with only one causing six deaths when it was disturbed at Bly, Oregon, although others exploded elsewhere and caused quite minimal damage.

Actively covering up news of these balloon bombs as opposed to their lack of success such as what happened in the German efforts also played a role, however, as it was known that this would encourage Japanese morale by seeming to lend truth to their propaganda (which cited the 10,000 deaths figure). Many of these balloon bombs may still exist as unexploded ordinance, however, thus if one finds one of them such as the one found at Bly, Oregon, one should certainly leave it alone. As well, there was also a Japanese Lookout Air Raid aircraft bombing of Wheeler Ridge in Oregon in an attempt to start a forest fire, but as this effort failed it is even less a novelty than the balloon bombs, as well as being further away from the Nazi German saboteurs who were captured on this date on June 27, 1942.

COTD: Of course you have to bleed. That's how egotistical they are.

BAD NEWS: There is much violence at the G20 summit!

GOOD NEWS: A blood test may be able to predict menopause!

HUMOR: Nice pickup line, but she's not interested!

HISTORY: June 28, 1880: Australian bushranger (and also outlaw) Edward "Ned" Kelly was captured at Glenrowan, Australia.

Given that Kelly is apparently an iconic figure for Australia, at first I thought he was the inspiration for the "Crocodile Dundee" movies, but that was apparently one Rodney Ansell. Ansell apparently became stranded in a very remote area of Australia's Northern Territory (when his boat was likely sunk by a crocodile) but managed to survive traveling for two months on foot through the rural and thus undeveloped Bush country of Australia -- the "Outback" of Australia being even more remote -- before being rescued by a cattle droving party.

Unfortunately Ansell ended up being shot to death by police in 1999 after opening fire upon them and after fleeing being taken into custody for a domestic dispute. Also suffice to say that although Australian actor and comedian Paul Hogan gained some international fame for portraying "Mick Dundee" in the Crocodile Dundee movies -- as well as of course how Steve Irwin gained some international fame due to his eccentric nature and focus upon wildlife even in the Bush and the Outback of Australia -- Ned Kelly is only tangentially connected to them at best.

To understand this first, suffice to say that the British Empire used the thirteen American colonies (the foundation of the later United States) and also Australia in part as locations for penal transportation -- that is essentially deportation from Great Britain and Ireland to these colonies for varying periods of time and which was seen as a more humane means of punishment than the execution that would otherwise probably be the convict's sentence, thus which was used from around 1610 to 1868.

Since this transportation is part of the background of the United States and of Australia, this explains why distrust of authority is sometimes noted as a common feature amongst citizens of each of these two countries. As well, this is why Botany Bay is referred to in the Star Trek: the Original Series episode "Space Seed" and the movie Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan -- the Botany Bay ship that the antagonist Khan Noonien Singh and his followers were discovered upon was named after the well-known penal colony of Botany Bay in Australia, thus foreshadowing the later conflict with Khan and his followers. Where Ned Kelly comes into this is because his father John "Red" Kelly was Irish and ended up being transported to Australia, and after his seven years of penal servitude ended up doing what part of the hope of using penal transportation was for -- he stayed in Australia instead of returning to Ireland, marrying there and thus producing Ned Kelly.

Suffice to say that either Kelly's family was unfairly targeted or else that his father Red Kelly's distrust of and thus disregard of the law thus had a formative effect upon his son Ned Kelly. Unfortunately, like the aforementioned Rodney Ansell (the inspiration for "Crocodile Dundee") this bullying by and/or his conflicts with the law eventually escalated into gunfights with the law and even bank robberies and murders undertaken by Ned Kelly and a gang he formed. That Kelly was resisting the bullying officials of the law that people had a distrust of as well as how he and his gang were often quite shrewd at evading capture ended up making him an Australian folk hero.

Perhaps Kelly's most famous effort was at derailing a police train at Glenrowan. On June 27, 1880 they took 70 hostages at the Glenrowan Inn and forced them to pull up train tracks so that the expected police train would derail, they then planning to then attack the survivors of the derailed train, but the hostage Thomas Curnow persuaded Kelly to let him go and thus was able to warn the police -- who thus stopped the train and laid siege to the aforementioned Glenrowan Inn. Making this more famous was the fact that Kelly and his gang were wearing homemade armor for their planned attack which was probably made from plough mouldboards to deflect bullets (discounted enough by the police at first that they were shocked into drawing comparisons to Australian mythology upon seeing the armored bushrangers), but as was the case in the similar February 28, 1997 North Hollywood Shootout in the United States, the problem with such armor is that it is not foolproof due to its heaviness limiting mobility and often vulnerability needing to be traded for mobility -- for instance, in both shootouts the homemade-armored outlaws were disabled through shots to their hands, legs, and feet. Of course both sides in the shootout that lead to the capture of Kelly on June 28, 1880 -- and to the deaths of the rest of his gang, plus two of the hostages -- claimed the other side started shooting first, but given the testy exchanges between Kelly and the judge Redmond Barry during Kelly's later murder trial for the earlier killing of the police officer Constable Lonigan (Barry: "May God have mercy on your soul." Kelly: "I will go a little further than that, and say I will see you there when I go") perhaps the most significant part of the shootout for Australian history is how Kelly was taken alive.

Here it is important to note that some changes were made to the nature of policing after Kelly was hanged for the death of Constable Lonigan on November 11, 1880 due to the Victorian Police Commission of 1881-1883 finding there was police bullying going on, although of course the Commission could not excuse the robberies and murders of Ned Kelly's gang. The reason that Ned Kelly was called a "bushranger" (on the Australian island of Tasmania the term "bolter" was used) was because he was amongst a number of criminals who obtained enough survival skills to survive in (like the aforementioned Rodney Ansell who inspired "Crocodile Dundee") the Bush country and thus by doing so were better able to evade the law. This of course has also prompted the inevitable romanticizing of Ned Kelly into a Robin Hood-like character hiding within a Sherwood Forest-like location -- Robin Hood of course being an English folk hero. The important point to emphasize about this, however, is that while the romanticizing Ned Kelly has made him famous it actually makes him look much better than he was -- much like how the Rodney Ansell I got him confused with was romanticized into "Crocodile Dundee," for instance.

YOUTUBE: Australia Still Divided Over Ned Kelly.

COTD: To not read is to deny yourself full participation in the world through work, politics, society, and culture.

BAD NEWS: Some California addicts were trying to sell their baby!

GOOD NEWS: Iran says it is ready to resume nuclear talks!

HUMOR: LOL (Precocious, by Paulsen)!

HISTORY: June 29, 1995: 502 people were killed and 937 were injured by the south wing of the Sampoong Department Store collapsing in Seoul, South Korea.

YOUTUBE: South Korean Movie Recreation of Collapse. The movie is Traces of Love, the central plot device being where a man's significant other is killed in the collapse but that he is finally given her journal years afterwards.

The Sampoong Department Store collapse is a prime example of ambitions ignoring reality (the "Sampoong" name comes from the fact that overseeing the building was done by the Sampoong group). First there was the fact that the building in question was built upon land that had previously been a landfill -- a place where garbage is dumped and buried -- and thus upon what was unstable ground. Originally designed as a four story office building, after construction started in 1987 it was redesigned by the building's future chairman Lee Joon (the family name comes first in Asian culture, hence the family name is Lee) from the office building it had been planned to be to instead be a department store. This meant that several of the supporting columns had to be cut away to install escalators, thus the initial contractors refused to do so due to safety concerns. Lee Joon responded to this by firing the contractors and hiring his own building company to make the changes he wished.

After the building was opened in 1990 a fifth floor was added in response to regulations that the whole building could not be used as a department store. When the contractors Lee Joon hired to add the fifth floor protested the structure would not support a fifth floor he fired them and had another contractor add the floor. As well, he again changed plans during construction, this time by doing away with the skating rink planned for the fifth floor and having eight traditional restaurants put upon the fifth floor instead. Noting that there were restaurants on the eighth floor is important since patrons of traditional Korean restaurants sit upon the floor and thus this is why concrete slabs with pipes carrying heated water to heat the floor for the comfort of the patrons were installed, thus increasing the load upon the building.

In addition to this the three large air conditioning systems for the building were installed upon the roof, and were moved via rollers on the roof instead of by having them properly lifted and moved by crane due to noise complaints by neighbors in 1993. With the heavy weight of the air conditioners crushing across the roof it formed cracks from the roof downwards and forced the diminished numbers of support columns downward under the weight. Column 5e suffered significant damage that was noticed by it cracking at where it was connected to the restaurants on the fifth floor (this may be what I heard an anecdote about hearing a brief news story about this many years ago), and an overall effect of the cracking what that whenever the three large air conditioning systems came on, their vibration would therefore radiate downward through the cracks formed by moving the air conditioning units and thus would vibrate the already-diminished support columns, stressing them further and increasing any damage upon them such as in the aforementioned now-already-cracked Column 5e.

From the little I know about engineering, designing something to be several times stronger then it has to be in order to compensate if anything goes wrong during construction is the convention. The aforementioned Brooklyn Bridge (May 30, 1883 rumor it was about to collapse) is an example of this in that one of the supporting towers of the bridge actually rests upon sand instead of bedrock due to problems with decompression sickness and that some poorer quality steel wire was substituted for the bridge -- thus it is estimated as being only four times instead of six times strong enough to stand. This is also reflected in the Sampoong Department Store in that one of the changes to the design of the building was installing the safety device of fire shields around the escalators to prevent spread of any fire from floor to floor, but this meant having to cut into and to thus reduce the diameter of the support columns further. As well as this it appears that the temptation to take construction shortcuts was given into since poorer quality cement and reinforced concrete was substituted for the ceilings and walls. Finally, the flat slab construction used to construct the building was done with columns which were already too narrow and thus which could penetrate the floors they rested against in addition to the reinforcing metal bars within the support columns being insufficient in number and improperly placed so that their ability to hold up the building was considerably weakened.

Starting in April 1995, cracks prompted by the improper moving of and operation of the massive air conditioning units began to appear in the ceiling of the fifth floor in the building's south wing. Rather than lose any of the revenue from the 40,000 people per day who were coming to the building, rather than closing the building the building's future chairman Lee Joon started relocating merchandise and stores on the top floors to the basement. By June 29, 1995 the cracks in the ceiling started to increase dramatically enough that banging could be heard as the cracks kept opening up, thus the fifth floor was entirely closed and the air conditioning was shut off so that the vibrations of the air conditioning units could not make the cracking worse, but the building was not closed for the sake of safety nor was it evacuated save by the management team of the department store. By about 5:00 PM the ceiling of the fourth floor in the south wing began sinking under the increased load resulting from the increasing failure of the fifth floor, but the only thing workers in the store did was to start blocking access to the fourth floor as a result. By around 5:50 PM the building began making cracking sounds again despite the air conditioning being turned off so that employees began sounding alarms and trying to have everyone evacuate the building but by then there was not enough time to get everyone out.

It was about five hours from when the banging sounds of the weakened building cracking from the air conditioner vibrations were heard to when the building collapsed at 5:57 PM. Column 5e -- significantly cracked due to the improper moving of the air conditioning units -- was the Achilles' heel of the collapse as its serious cracking caused it to collapse first. Without Column 5e to support the load on roof anymore, it gave way under the weight of the air conditioning units which therefore crashed down through the roof and into the fifth floor. Given the columns of the building were already too weak due to being reduced and overloaded for design changes this meant that the columns began collapsing due to the additional weight now coming from above and thus somewhat like what was seen with the US World Trade Center Collapse from the September 11, 2001 attacks, the building essentially "pancake collapsed" from the top down into the basement levels as support columns failed and each floor above ended up crashing into the floor below.

The whole grim process took twenty seconds, trapping 1,500 people in the building, killing 502 people, and injuring 937. Some type of gas explosion from leaking gas was first suspected since two gas explosions had occurred elsewhere during that same year, but the only fires in the rubble were determined to be from vehicles crushed in the underground garage. There was also fears it was some sort of terrorist attack -- in this case like the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing since the September 11, 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center had not happened yet -- but later investigation revealed the combination of Lee Joon's ambitions and the shortcuts used in building and maintaining the store (such as moving the air conditioning units with rollers instead of lifting them free of the roof) had lead to the collapse. As a result, Lee Joon was convicted of criminal negligence and was ultimately sentenced to seven years imprisonment. He died shortly after being released on October 4, 2003 due to heart failure, high blood pressure, and diabetes. His son Lee Han-Sang was found guilty of accidental homicide and corruption in connection with the collapse and thus was also sentenced to seven years imprisonment. A number of bribes of officials to keep the illegal changes secret was uncovered and thus resulted in a number of jail sentences for other officials as well, plus a 375,800,000,000 South Korean Won ($350,000,000 USD) settlement was made out of the 3,293 legal cases that resulted.

Foreshadowing the above corruption was that rescue crews were soon called off on the grounds that the remains of the store were unstable and could endanger the rescuers, but this triggered massive protests that prompted the authorities to continue focusing upon seeking survivors for a week, although two days into this week the authorities stated that anyone trapped inside must have died and that they were shifting efforts towards recovering bodies instead of trying to find anyone who might still be alive. That this was false is illustrated by the fact that teenager Park Seung Hyun was found almost unscathed in the rubble seventeen days after it collapsed and while apparently managing to survive through drinking rainwater to avoid dehydration (terribly enough, given that dehydration appears to be the main cause of death from being buried alive and as long as one can still get fresh air, she said she had heard the sounds of others being drowned by water the fire department was putting on the rubble).

In addition to this, of course, is the fact that survivors of the 7.0 magnitude 2010 Haiti Earthquake survived for longer than two days after being trapped in the rubble, plus according to one account one survivor miraculously survived 27 days buried alive. The end good that came out of the tragedy was that there were more protests due to concerns about use of building shortcuts, bribes, and corruption that might have taken place during South Korea's economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s -- the economic boom resulting from the transition from a authoritarian and military government of the country to a more democratic government and under the "Fifth Republic" (the authoritarian and military rule coming out of the Japanese occupation of Korea which had begun around 1900 and which only ended around 1945).

The point to make here being that although the aforementioned economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s might not have been possible without enough ambition to start it, ambition should never be so great that it ignores reality -- such as that the Sampoong Department Store was woefully under-designed and under-built for the ambitions that Lee Joon eventually had for it.

COTD: He's the only person who sank his boat on land.

BAD NEWS: The FAA has been slow to correct cockpit fires from windshield defrosters!

GOOD NEWS: Taiwan and China signed a trade deal!

HUMOR: This should look familiar (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: June 30, 1953: The first US Chevrolet Corvette was manufactured.

The Corvette US automobile is a sports car -- "open, low built, and fast" -- that was developed to compete with European sports cars. Although it is sometimes nicknamed "America's Sports Car" the "Corvette" name derives from a small and maneuverable type of French Warship -- the term "Corvette" being derived from the French term of Corsair/Corsaire for French privateers. Since these were legally-sanctioned pirates preying upon the naval shipping of other nations they received a Lettre de Course (Letter of Course) from the French King that was their commission. The "course" they were supposed to run was running down the shipping of other nations, and over time these privateers became referred to as "Corsairs/Corsaires" in reference to the course they were running. This appears to have been corrupted into "Corvair" over time, and then the term "Corvair" altered into the aforementioned "Corvette" term.

The nautical origins of the term "Corvette" also explains why "Corellian Corvettes" appear quite often in the Star Wars franchise since that franchise follows the convention of co-opting established nautical terms as a framework for their science fiction ones. Also, given the many models of automobile that exist and thus the many names that are needed for them, it is not uncommon to find nautical terms such as Corsair, Corvair, and Corvette co-opted into use as automotive terms for various models of vehicles.

In addition to this, the tailfins seen upon many vehicles from 1948 even up until the early 1990s (although use of them had become largely discontinued in the 1960s) which were inspired by the World War II era aircraft of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and later aircraft with tailfins for stability that came after it -- tailfins proving to be even more of a vanity item over time than nautical names for various automobiles and thus why their use was discontinued.

Unlike tailfin styling, various models of Corvette have remained popular enough to remain in production from the first model that was built on this date in 1953 up through the current day, although of course the design of the Corvette has changed over time as can be seen in comparing the 1958 Corvette pictured here and the 2012 Corvette pictured here -- although at this point I should make the interesting note that I actually like the styling design of the "C1" 1953-1962 Corvettes despite the undoubted overall improved designs of the later Corvette generations (C2 1962-1967, C3 1967-1976, C4 1983-1996, C5 1996-2004, and C6 2004 to 2012) -- for although the "Mako Shark" design which premiered with the C3 1967-1976 generation proved to be one of the enduring and thus appealing features of a Corvette after the experiment with the flatter profiling through the "Sting Ray/Stingray" C2 1962-1967 Corvette, I still like the more modest styling of the C1 1953-1962 better.

Incidentally enough, the earliest Corvettes also had a modest version of the aforementioned tailfins but these were removed from their design by 1958. Although the Corvette is a sports car which is "open, low built, and fast," it appears that early on the Chevrolet company came to understand how it generally did not get going so fast that it needed to have tailfins like an aircraft and in order to maintain stability in a turn.

COTD: No evil is quite as evil is that evil which is fostered by people themselves.

BAD NEWS: Randall Cunningham's son died!

GOOD NEWS: A ballistic missile was successfully intercepted!

HUMOR: A comic strip (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 1, 1867: The 1867 British North American Act/Constitution Act formed the Confederation of Canada (Dominion Day/Independence Day).

The start of Canadian independence ("Canada" coming from the Iroquois word "kanata" for a village or a settlement of some sort) actually begins with the United States of America's independence. Depending upon whether one consults American sources or British sources about that conflict, the usual justification is that the other side was being unreasonable about the debts it owed, but the precedent set by the 1775-1783 US Revolutionary War that followed was American interest in what is now Canada. First the Americans sent some offers to the various colonies of Canada to join with them against the British and then later there was even some limited raiding and invasions of Canada undertaken by the Americans.

The reason for this was the American idea of "Manifest Destiny" (supposedly apparent and unstoppable expansion) which was used as justification for the aggressive expansion of the United States (often personified by the female Columbia before the development of the male Uncle Sam) -- a development from which is the American hegemony often alluded to by terming the United States a "Superpower."

Perhaps the strongest statement justifying Canadian concern about American expansionism was the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War which resulted in Mexico losing more than half its territory to the United States -- a war which even General and later President Ulysses S. Grant stated that was "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation" because "It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory," he then also noting that the expansion of the southern US had lead to the question of expanding slavery and thus had helped lead to the US Civil War.

The origins of what is today Canada consisted of a number of separate colonies at first, but with the concerns about American expansionism and internal political, economic, and nationalist problems from the growth of these colonies as well as the British wish to begin withdrawing colonial troops due to the increasing costs of imperialism and colonialism thus prompted the formation of the Canadian Confederation through the union of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with the province of Canada -- which was then split into the provinces of Ontario and Quebec -- upon this date in 1867 and in order to better share resources by which to counter the aforementioned problems that the now-former independent colonies had faced.

It should also be noted here that although termed a "confederation" or a union of still-independent states, Canada is actually a federation in which there is a central government which is paramount over the others, although it is true that the Canadian federation is one of the most decentralized federations and thus one that favors more local governments more that exists and thus perhaps where the "confederation" term came from (this also explaining why the American south termed itself the "Confederate States of America" during the 1860-1865 conflict that lead to the 1861-1865 US Civil War).

The other provinces of Canada joined Canada afterwards for various reasons, of course, but here too it should be noted that although Canada regards July 1 as its Independence Day, the British actually kept a limited diminishing amount of control over Canada all the way until the 1982 Constitution Act and Canada Act which reduced the British role to a token Monarchy of Canada -- this whole process actually being somewhat like what happened in Australia and thus why there is a token British Monarchy of Australia as well. Canada (and also Australia) are thus referred to as British Dominions, thus also why the holiday to celebrate the formation of the nation of Canada was termed "Dominion Day" when it was established in 1879. With the aforementioned acts of 1982 being passed, however, the official name of the holiday was officially changed to its unofficial name of "Canada Day" and the day usually commemorated as an independence day although it was but the start of a 115 year process by the British North American Act started gaining Canada effective independence.

COTD: Failing more quickly is not the same as succeeding.

BAD NEWS: Microsoft's Kin Phones have failed!

GOOD NEWS: A Taliban Chief was arrested!

HUMOR: Max could not deserve that more (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 2, 1961: American writer Ernest Hemingway committed suicide.

Regarding the suicide aspect, the best article to read about that is definitely here. As for Hemingway himself, the writing he is most known for is the 1952 The Old Man and the Sea, a short work in part because it illustrates his writing style of economy of words (using as few words as possible) and of understatement, a technique which usually simplifies whatever he writes to the degree that almost anyone can understand it -- this which seems to have come from his six months as a Kansas City Star cub reporter since that paper's style guide advised "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."

Getting into the habit of writing prompted Hemingway to write short stories based upon his experiences, which included much time abroad and even some involvement in the various wars between World War I and World War II. Various injuries including brain injuries, certain narcistic personality traits, a borderline (unstable) personality disorder, age-related ailments, depression, and his tendency towards alcoholism (he reportedly had a number of affairs as well) are likely what started his final decline towards committing suicide with a shotgun blast to the head, but it has also been suggested that since he suffered iron overload due to hereditary hemochromatosis this also contributed to his behavior since he began acting paranoid like his father did before his father's suicide -- and as well, since iron overload ultimately causes physical and mental deterioration this iron overload by hereditary hemochromatosis may also be a contributing factor to why his sister and brother also committed suicide.

Hemingway's 1952 Old Man and the Sea is considered to be the greatest work of fiction he produced during his lifetime, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and which he was noted as writing when he was awarded a Nobel Prize. The setting of it seems inspired by Hemingway's time in Cuba as it revolves around an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago (a common Spanish and Portuguese name derived from the Christian name for Saint James) who after suffering a long lack of success and thus actually ending up having his dedicated apprentice Manolin ordered not to learn fishing from his guided experience anymore, changes tactics and thus ends up catching a huge marlin. The struggle between the two lasts for three days and thus gains Santiago great admiration for the strength displayed by the marlin, although Santiago's own dire straights -- his age and limited employment prospects given his lifetime as a fisherman -- requires him to overcome the marlin in order for he himself to survive.

Although Santiago manages to catch the marlin, he is unable to keep it from being eaten by opportunistic sharks -- the marlin being so big and heavy that Santiago has to lash it to the side of his boat rather than bringing it aboard -- although he valiantly fights off and kills a number of them. When the other fishermen see the skeleton of the huge marlin they recognize just what Santiago achieved although those less familiar with the situation -- tourists -- inadvertently diminish what Santiago achieved by mistaking the marlin's skeleton for that of a shark. The result from which is thus that Santiago's reputation is reinstated to the degree that his apprentice Manolin starts fishing with and thus learning from his guided experience once more.

Quite popularly received by many, the simplicity of The Old Man and the Sea raises questions over whether it involves symbolism, particularly when Hemingway alludes to crucifixion in describing Santiago's response to spotting the first sharks coming to eat the marlin he has finally caught. Incidentally enough, just whether there is symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea is often raised by his critics who claim that the old man Santiago his a metaphor for the old man Hemingway and thus that the sharks attacking the marlin Santiago had worked so hard to catch were metaphors for the critics who had given his previous work Across the River and Into the Trees overwhelmingly negative reviews (also Manolin comes from Mano = shark, Lin = bright, as "Manolin" is derived from a name for the Great White Shark, thus how Manolin is perhaps supposed to be a sympathetic critic) -- this although the modern consensus is that Across the River and Into the Trees is actually better than its initial negative reviews, and although The Old Man and the Sea prompted a re-evaluation of and thus a rehabilitation of Hemingway's earlier works. This although Hemingway was indeed emotionally wounded by the bad reception of Across the River and Into the Trees to the degree it might have contributed to the depression that then contributed to his suicide on this date in 1961 ... although like his Santiago protagonist, he did indeed keep fighting for a while longer and thus why he managed the "big catch" of writing The Old Man and the Sea.

MORE: Sparknotes on The Old Man and the Sea.

COTD: It's time to grow up. Some role model you have become.

BAD NEWS: 40 people were killed by Afghanistan bombings!

GOOD NEWS: Jaycee Dugard was awarded USD $20 million!

HUMOR: Irony (Casey)!

HISTORY: July 3, 1969: A USSR lunar N1 Rocket exploded with the force of a small nuclear bomb.

YOUTUBE: Brief film showing the destruction of the rocket.

With the Space Race between the USSR and US resulting from the October 4, 1957 USSR launch of the satellite Sputnik 1, with the goal of putting humans on Earth's Moon -- and thus potentially installing lunar bases there in order to better assure control over near-Earth space and due to the idea of it being popularized by German-American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. This was particularly true after the USSR managed to put Yuri Gagarin into Earth orbit as the first human in outer space on April 12, 1961, since reaching the Moon would be the next step in expanding into outer space and of course since if the US could reach it first they could defeat the USSR in the space race (as well for the US, missions to the Moon were politically astute since they benefited US states that President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson would need to favor for votes).

The successful efforts of the US to reach the Moon are generally more well known, with the ultimate failure of USSR efforts prompting great secrecy about the USSR lunar program until USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbechev introduced the policy of glasnost which resulted in greater transparency (information revealed and thus accountability) and thus which prompted more revelations about the USSR lunar program starting around 1990. Also suffice to say that the USSR lunar program was more successful than the US lunar program at first since the unmanned USSR Luna 2 probe reached the surface of the Moon on September 13, 1959, although problems from lack of funding (which is inherent to the flawed economic philosophy of Communism due to attempting to centralize the economics of it too much) meant that by around 1966 the US was able to develop the Apollo Program which enabled it to take the lead in the space race -- and of course to win the space race by reaching the Moon via the Apollo Program on July 16, 1969, which put the first humans upon the Moon.

The USSR was never idle in their efforts to reach the Moon, however, and in fact although the USSR had a smaller number of rockets they tended to be superior due to being designed to lift heavier payloads due to USSR nuclear warheads being generally heavier than their US counterparts (this although "missile gap" was a US political campaign issue in the 1960s). It took until the US Gemini Program of 1965-1966 enabled the US to achieve a significant presence in Earth orbit during 1965-1966 and thus en route to the aforementioned Apollo Program, however, to prompt the USSR to finalize its lunar efforts and thus to develop its aforementioned N1 rockets in order to reach the Moon. However, although the design of the N1 enables it to deliver more thrust it had more technological problems than its US Saturn V counterpart -- thus in a way, comparing the two is akin to my previous comparison between the USSRTupolev Tu-144 and the British-French Concorde (June 3, 1973 Paris Air Show crash). The lack of funding and the technical failures of the N1 are why the N1 program was finally canceled by 1976, and with it the best chance of the USSR making its own manned landing upon the Moon (a "Moon shot").

The July 3, 1969 N1 explosion was not the only explosion of an N1, but it was perhaps the most memorable. At liftoff a loose bolt was sucked into a fuel pump which caused it to fail, after which the automatic engine control shut off 29 of the rocket's 30 engines, which thus then caused the rocket to stall and then to explode 23 seconds later. Since it had 2,600 tons of fuel aboard it had the power of a small nuclear bomb and thus destroyed the its launch site so badly it was easily photographed by US satellites to thus penetrate the secrecy around the USSR lunar program. The previous February 21, 1969 failure and explosion of an N1 rocket due to unexpected oscillations causing breakage and a fire appears to have gone undetected by the US, and there were failures of the N1 on June 26, 1971 and November 23, 1972 as well -- due to an uncontrolled roll beyond the ability of the rocket's stabilization system to correct and the explosion of an oxygen pump when some engines were shut down to prevent over-stressing, respectively.

There is also some confusion over whether the N1 rocket was called the N1 or not, as sometimes it was referred to as "N1/L3" or "N1-L3." The L3 apparently refers to the lunar vehicle on the top of the rocket which was intended to put humans on the Moon -- the L referring to "lunar" and thus the Moon, which makes sense given that various USSR Moon-based projects were designated L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5. The "N1" rocket itself had the "N" designation because this abbreviated the Russian word "nositel," which means "carrier" and thus which is a sensible name for a rocket intended to carry various payloads into orbit.

COTD: Support for success!

BAD NEWS: 230 people were killed and 190 injured by a Congo tanker explosion!

GOOD NEWS: The unemployment rate is dropping!

HUMOR: Too true (Calamities of Nature, by Piro)!

HISTORY: July 4, 1969: The "Zodiac Killer" shot Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau multiple times. Ferrin died, although Mageau survived.

The reason for the fascination with the "Zodiac Killer" of the San Francisco, California (USA) is that he was essentially a modern day Jack the Ripper type of character with motives that were never entirely understood, who was a serial killer who appears to have managed to escape justice, and who was so brazen he sent taunting or somewhat explanatory letters to police and others -- a number of letters from the aforementioned "Jack the Ripper" may have been prank letters for attention -- which contained coded cryptograms and his signature symbol of a slightly-crooked crosshairs. He was called the Zodiac Killer because he referred to himself as the Zodiac, with zodiac being a term derived from both astronomy and astrology.

Unfortunately and due to the grim fascination with such an antisocial and mysterious character such as the Zodiac Killer, the same way that there is a fascination with Jack the Ripper, this has inspired some copycat antisocial and mysterious Zodiac killers. The one I know best about is the New York, New York (USA) Heriberto Seda given I have watched many episodes of Forensic Files via the TruTV channel and since the show had a "Signs of the Zodiac" episode about Seda. He also managed to target many of victims in an astrological order corresponding to the twelve murders he claimed he had set out to do in a letter police received from him on November 17, 1989 -- the police ignoring his letters at first since pranks of implying criminal connections and such as been known since the time of Jack the Ripper -- but which according to the "Signs of the Zodiac" episode appears to have been coincidental.

Also, unlike the "San Francisco Zodiac," the "New York Zodiac" of Heriberto Seda -- who had claimed to be the same Zodiac when he started his attacks -- ended up getting caught. What gave him away was that his style of writing was found to be similar to that of his previous Zodiac letters which of course imitated the San Francisco Zodiac, in particular how he made his own little Zodiac symbol that he signed in his confession to the police (he unsuccessfully tried to explain it away by saying it was a symbol for God) -- he shooting his half-sister in the buttocks thus why they arrested him for what at first seemed to be an unrelated incident since Seda was actually quite abusive towards his half sister.

Typically any research upon any serial killer -- whether that killer be Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer, Heriberto Seda, or anyone else -- tends to be unpleasant since in general serial killers appear to adapt a type of necrophilic or death-loving thinking by which killing becomes a solution to every problem, thus resulting in some horrendous "the end justifies the means" consequentalist thinking that such serial killers often end up justifying with various communications to whoever they think might listen. And yes, this is the reason why I am so interested with the Death Note franchise within which the Light Yagami justifies becoming a serial killer (and thus why he engages in activities such as justifying his killings like real life serial killers do) through the consequentalist thinking that killing off criminals en masse is justified through creating a "New World" which is so much better than the old ... yet the problem he continually cannot perceive is that extralegal (outside the law) killing of anybody is still murder itself, thus why like the Zodiac killers he ends up having delusions that he is God despite the obviously demonic nature of the shinigami/death god he received his supernatural Death Note to kill people with from. As the detective "Near" rebukes him after he is finally caught, however, he is not a God -- just merely another crazy serial killer.

COTD: Why am I back?

BAD NEWS: Twelve people were killed in a South Korean bus crash!

GOOD NEWS: Dontae Morris turned himself in!

HUMOR: Count Chocula (My Cage, but DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 5, 1973: Eleven people were killed when a BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) occurred in Kingman, Arizona (USA), when propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank.

YOUTUBE: BLEVE Demo.

Firefighters have nicknamed the BLEVE "Big Explosion Very Exciting" as well as "Blast Leveling Everything Effectively." The eleven deaths in this incident were also firefighters fighting some type of fire that had begun.

Atmospheric pressure effects the boiling point (the point at which something will boil) by essentially weighing down the molecules of a liquid so that it is harder for them to move rapidly as they do while boiling -- scientifically boiling is due to the excitement of electrons on the atoms of a fluid, hence the harder those electrons to become excited, the less boiling that occurs. This is also why, given that a common radiator is a pressurized vessel, that coolant will rapidly vaporize (start boiling and turning to steam) and will come boiling out if a radiator cap is taken off of a hot radiator too quickly, as well as why coolant will be lost too rapidly if the integrity of the radiator is somehow compromised so that the pressure in it is too low -- such as (as I recently found out) if the radiator cap does not fit correctly.

The case of BLEVE is essentially the same as the hot radiator uncapped too quickly example but the tendency is to use it in referring to flammables such as the aforementioned propane instead of to substances such as radiator coolant which itself will not catch fire (but which will get hot enough to cause injury through scalding a person). Propane is usually a gas (it is derived from natural gas) but is liquefied through being subjected to great pressure since this makes it safer to transport. In the case that something lowers the pressure of a pressurized vessel too quickly -- either through the vessel being punctured, being opened too quickly, heated to such a degree that the vessel begins to melt, or subjected to so much pressure inside that the vessel begins to deform -- this allows the substance within to rapidly "overpressure" through the sudden drop of the air pressure which was keeping it stable by keeping it from boiling, thus in the case of flammables resulting in an explosion as the substance within vents into the lower air pressure without.

Under usual circumstances a BLEVE can be prevented via a now-standard pressure relief valve which vents excessive pressure so that the vessel does not deform. In the case of a fire like the eleven firefighters were fighting, however, when a pressure release valve vents boiling steam to lower the pressure it opens up more room for the remaining fluid within the container to boil. Fluids are better at absorbing heat than already-hot steam, hence with less fluid and more steam in a vessel it simply gets hotter to thus weaken the container further -- and suffice to say that with the open flame of a fire outside the container such as what the eleven firefighters were fighting, a flammable "overpressure" such as propane will ignite into a fireball as well as exploding outward if a vessel it is contained within fails.

When a BLEVE ignites it is called a "fuel-air" or "vapor cloud explosion" since the fuel has become boiled into vapor and is now being ignited in midair, but the reason for the seemingly redundant terminology is that a BLEVE can occur without flammables and thus without being ignited in midair, thus for instance how opening a hot radiator too quickly results in a BLEVE but no fuel-air or vapor cloud explosion since the coolant in a radiator is so water-based (water being extremely good at absorbing heat) it will not ignite. However, since a BLEVE is essentially an un-ignited explosion (it has to be ignited by flame or such to thus become a fuel-air or vapor cloud explosion), even without some type of ignition source a BLEVE is still quite dangerous.

COTD: Nothing makes people jump to conclusions more than the fact that they do not like the truth.

BAD NEWS: A man accidently blew off his own arm!

GOOD NEWS: A great white shark warning was actually mistaken!

HUMOR: Love is blind (My Cage, but DeJesus and Power)!

PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: George W. Bush: July 6, 1946 (Most Recent Historian Rank: 39/43)

HISTORY: July 6, 1946: George W. Bush, US President (2001-2009), was born.

The father of George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, is a World War II veteran who used his military career to begin a military career and thus to precede his son as President of the United States from 1989-1993 (Bill Clinton served as US President during 1993-2001). As such, military service and politics has essentially become the Bush family business.

George W. Bush (hereafter "Bush") reportedly had problems with alcohol (there are some rumors he engaged in recreational illegal drug use, although he has publicly refused to answer questions about it) until he reportedly had a religious conversion during his 40s (1986-1996) and following his waking up with a hangover from his 40th birthday celebration. The first one was in 1966 when he was still a minor (age 20) when he and his friends drank beer and then stole a Christmas wreath from a hotel, resulting in him being arrested for disorderly conduct although the charges against him were later dropped.

During December 1972 and shortly after the death of his grandfather he took his sixteen year old brother Marvin out drinking despite how Marvin was still a minor -- the end result being that the inebriated Bush ran over a waste container but continued home despite the container wedged under the car. When his father berated him for the entire incident, Bush challenged him by saying "I hear you're looking for me. You wanna go mano-a-mano right here?" After which Bush's other brother Jeb managed to distract their father by noting that Bush had been accepted to Harvard Business School.

More significantly Bush had a DUI (Driving Under the Influence of alcohol) conviction resulting from a September 4, 1976 incident which resulted in him being fined USD $150 and having his driving license suspended for two years, although it was later falsely stated by White House officials that his license was only suspended for 30 days. The January 13, 2002 incident where he lost consciousness (fainted) reportedly due to a combination of not feeling well and choking on a pretzel he did not chew enough also reportedly lead to alcohol being detected in his system from a blood sample that was taken, plus he appeared to be drinking the alcoholic beverage of a Pisco Sour on November 23, 2008 APEC summit -- these latter two incidents happening during a period of time where Bush claimed to have quit drinking entirely (although they can be argued to be from drinking smaller amounts of alcohol).

Like the controversy with alcohol, the controversy of Bush's military career with the Texas Air National Guard during 1968-1974 appears to come from exaggeration. For some reason he wanted his physical in 1972 to be performed by his private doctor despite regulations requiring a physical by an Air Force doctor and thus his refusal to take a physical was why he was suspended from flying as a pilot after 1972. There is also controversy about him missing and being irregular with his required attendance as he ended up serving five years, four months, and five days towards his required six year obligation despite him being honorably discharged in 1974 -- his critics saying he was favored due to his father's previous military service -- to become a full time student at the aforementioned Harvard Business School.

Bush's first career was through founding the Arbusto Energy company in 1979, thus getting him involved with the oil industry. His actions in purchasing part of the shares of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers in part through selling some of his stock in the Harken Energy oil company at that time -- against the advice of his counsel, due to exactly the type of thing that followed -- raised questions of whether or not Bush was involved in insider training since Harken then almost immediately suffered severe financial losses while Bush ultimately turned a profit from his investment in the Texas Rangers. While President he refused to allow the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) to release its full report on the incident, although his public role in helping the Texas Rangers generated enough public goodwill that it helped him become Governor of Texas in 1994 -- he trying and being defeated while attempting to become a member of the House of Representatives for Texas in 1978.

Bush's performance as Governor of Texas gained him approval for tax cuts, education to prevent drug and alcohol abuse, programs to reduce domestic abuse, programs to improve education, and supporting faith-based organizations. Critics maintained that his tax cuts depleted the state's surplus and that he allowed too many environmental abuses through lack of regulation of businesses, but his popularity from being Governor of Texas during 1995-2000 was what enabled him to then become President of the US, ultimately serving during 2001-2009.

As President, Bush -- terming himself a "compassionate conservative," meaning a conservative intent upon improving things instead of maintaining the status quo -- essentially repeated the same types of things he had done for Texas. The first main blow to his Presidency was that the economic situation under his policies slowed, then by 2007 actually declined into an economic recession often termed as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The second main blow to his Presidency was the poor federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The third blow was his overall antagonistic foreign policy through withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, through rejecting the worldwide Kyoto Protocol, plus of course the lack of success in the 2001 Afghanistan War plus the debatable validity of the 2003 Iraq War -- although this was not readily accepted by a majority of people until 2005 and thus into his second and final term as US President. These and other issues are why over time his approval rating generally went down over the course of his Presidency -- although with spikes of regained popularity at times -- from the 90% approval rating he gained due to his response to the September 11, 2001 attacks to a record 69% disapproval rating near the end of his Presidency, making him second in unpopularity to former President Richard Nixon according to overall consensus and fifth worst President according to historians (Andrew Johnson 43/43, James Buchanan 42/43, Warren Harding 41/43, Franklin Pierce 40/43, George W. Bush 39/43. See Historical Rankings of Presidents of the United States).

It should also be noted that although John "Doctor Zebra" Santos has a Health and Medical History of George W. Bush page which makes it sound as if Zebra/Santos does not like Bush, even he cautions against "zebra hunting" (hearing hoofbeats and expecting to see an uncommon zebra instead of a much more usual horse that is causing them) through reading too much into Bush, specifically in a stereotyped jaw movement that Bush apparently exhibited while stressed which actually matches the common observation that a person's body language and movements are altered by the simple fact of being under stress. Yet the fact is that Bush's Presidency is commonly rated as a failure by both historians and other citizens, no matter whatever popularity he once had nor whatever "zebra hunting" one might feel tempted to engage in when looking at his reputation.

COTD: Don't drink from the mysterious brown medicine bottle.

BAD NEWS: George Michael is in trouble for his driving with the law again!

GOOD NEWS: HRM Queen Elizabeth II is visiting the US!

HUMOR: He's not always that childish (My Cage, but DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 7, 1928: Pre-sliced bread was first sold by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri (USA).

Pre-sliced bread is notable not just because it took some ingenuity for American inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder to develop a machine that could properly cut a loaf of bread into nearly-equal slices, but because of its exponential effects. Although loaves of bread that are pre-sliced have thinner (and more uniform) slices, the new ease of obtaining a slice of bread and thus the now-faster speed of eating it lead to people eating more of it and thus lead to demand for bread to increase, improving profits for the bread industry. But since people also put condiments upon bread and made sandwiches out of bread, it also thus increased the demand for condiments to put upon bread and for ingredients to make sandwiches with in addition to bread, thus also increasing the profits for those associated industries. In short, a simple small change as opposed to a complex elaborate one -- workers manually pre-slicing bread with knives instead of using a machine to do it -- thus had an exponential benefit for all. This is not where the expression "the greatest thing since sliced bread" came from, however, as that phrase came from advertising for pre-sliced bread which more narrowly claimed that pre-sliced bread was "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped" and thus which overlooked the greater benefits it caused -- the bread industry of course not interested in advertising other industries too directly.

Pre-sliced bread was actually banned in the US during World War II from January 18-March 8, 1943 due to concerns that its tendency to dry out faster if not wrapped more thickly would drain resources from the US war effort -- this because more surface area was exposed with the bread cut up into slices -- the ban being reversed when the ban's benefits were found insufficient to continuing it.

Also oddly enough, I can only time I can really recall hearing the expression "the greatest thing since sliced bread" once in an old Garfield comic where Garfield the cat is on a leash and is tied to a parking meter by his owner Jon Arbuckle while he runs an errand. Arbuckle then makes the comment that leashes are the greatest thing since sliced bread, after which Garfield in his usual blunt manner proves him wrong by tearing loose the parking meter via his leash in order to walk over to Arbuckle and thus to remind him (through thinking, since Garfield of course does not speak aloud) not to forget a particular item while he is shopping.

COTD: If possible, keep on the concrete ramp!

BAD NEWS: A man fell 30 feet during a MLB Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers game!

GOOD NEWS: Alisa Maier was found safe!

HUMOR: Cynical (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: July 8, 1947: The US RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field) from Walker Air Force Base issued a press release that a weather balloon downed by a severe thunderstorm was a "flying saucer," thus starting the Roswell UFO Incident.

First things first. As Kenneth Feder notes in his bookFrauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Psuedoscience in Archeology, one should avoid jumping to the conclusion that someone one does not entirely understand must be something remarkable. Appropriately enough he notes that if one spots a UFO one has only spotted an Unidentified Flying Object and thus not one that can be identified as an extraterrestrial alien spacecraft. That logic follows the rule of Occam's razor which is essentially that the simplest conclusion is usually the correct one, hence Occam's razor is a general guide for science.

Fortunately for those who like science fiction, for some reason the RAAF stated what had crashed was a "flying disc" thus prompting sensational headlines such as "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region" in the Roswell Daily Record newspaper. A press conference was called afterwards during which the mistake was corrected by noting a radar-tracking weather balloon had crashed -- and in a vague way, a weather balloon with a radar deflector can deform and/or deflate to look like a flying disc -- but with the initial report of the balloon being a disc which was then sensationalized into a saucer, the roots for a flying saucer crash story were set.

The crash of the object was 75 miles away from Roswell, New Mexico, and was actually closer to the city of Corona, New Mexico. The name "Roswell" was the first name of the father of its founder Van C. Smith, and the crash's greater proximity to Corona is why sometimes the city of Corona is associated with it. The crash of the object is supposed to have occurred sometime in June as this was when William Brazel first spotted it while working on the Foster Ranch, he finally reporting it to a Sheriff Wilcox on July 7, the follow-up to which resulted in the RAAF press release and then the press conference. Central to Brazel's account, however, is that he reported to Sheriff Wilcox that he thought he may have found a "flying disc" after hearing other accounts of them and thus feeling mandated to report to Sheriff Wilcox what he found -- this then setting the incorrect precedent that what he found was a flying disc and therefore a crashed "flying saucer" extraterrestrial spacecraft due to his genuine concern but lack of information, thus inadvertently contributing to the roots of the flying saucer crash story.

It is important to note here that it was not until the case was significantly revisited again over 30 years later in 1978 that questionable recounts of what happened at Roswell -- or more properly, at Walker Air Force Base where the debris was supposed to have been relocated -- that the incident began to be more and more often portrayed as the crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft which included recovering bodies of the victims and the performing of autopsies upon said victims. This appears to be more due to confusion resulting from "time compression" where many events from many periods can be remembered all at once as well as confusion resulting from the uncovering of Operation High Dive due to dummies dropped at high altitudes to test parachuting from huge heights (which was proven to be infeasible, given they went into fatal spins when their parachutes deployed too high due to too much resistance from the air) going off course so that they were found by civilians in the 1950s. As well, there was some covering up in the case of the Roswell crash since the radar-tracking weather balloon that crashed was part of the secret 1947-1949 program known as Project Mogul, where the balloons were placed at high altitudes to listen (via microphones) for sound waves generated by nuclear testing by the USSR -- this of course because the US and USSR were in the ideological "Cold War" at the time and of course because by the US keeping its activities secret it could keep the USSR from finding out about and thus more easily countering them.

In addition to this, some outright hoaxes have been manufactured to "prove" the Roswell crash was the crash of an extraterrestrial UFO. One notable hoax in particular is the "Alien autopsy" film which reportedly showed autopsies being done upon the victims of the supposed extraterrestrial spacecraft crash. At this point of course I should note that there was some covering up of the full extent of what was going on -- that the crashed radar-tracking weather balloon was part of the larger Project Mogul was not disclosed, for instance -- but what was covered up was certainly not as grandiose as an extraterrestrial spacecraft crash which of course in itself is unusual enough that it simply sounds too implausible to be true. "Area 51" also figures into the Roswell crash in that although it is in Nevada and about 83 miles from the city of Las Vegas, since it is an Air Force based used for secret testing of aircraft and weapons systems -- again, since keeping one's activities secret makes it harder for one's opponents to counter them -- it has often been asserted that the material recovered at Roswell was ultimately relocated here in order to be studied along with any other materials from extraterrestrial material from crashes upon Earth that are found.

Of course in the case of the proposed extraterrestrials, the reason for secrecy is more to prevent counterproductive public paranoia given that extraterrestrials able to reach Earth would be far more advanced than humans would be, given how humans have not actually contacted any extraterrestrials yet. That such advanced extraterrestrials might be hostile is also a staple of science fiction -- perhaps the best example of the this is therefore the 1996 film Independence Day where an overwhelming alien attack and invasion is miraculously countered through years of secret research upon the extraterrestrial spacecraft that crashed at (or rather near) Roswell which was relocated to Area 51 for study. But suffice to say that due to the linkage of the Roswell crash to fear -- the additional linkage to Area 51 or not -- and as the endless speculation aided by incorrect accounts has prompted much creativity for science fiction, using Occam's razor reveals the actual truth of the matter: that a weather balloon being used for the more mundane Project Mogul was crashed by a severe thunderstorm, although the secrecy about Project Mogul plus Foster Ranch worker William Brazel's incorrect worry that he might have found one of the flying discs being talked about has thus lead to much more science fiction than fact.

COTD: When they complain about not being able to break the laws, you know you've lost them.

BAD NEWS: About 30 people were killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq!

GOOD NEWS: US cancer rates are dropping!

HUMOR: Salt on the rim (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)! Also see http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_slugs_shrivel_up_when_people_pour_salt_on_them and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarita.

HISTORY: July 9, 1850: Zachary Taylor, US President, died. This is seen as some as evidence supporting the Curse of Tippecanoe. (Most Recent Historian Rank: 33/43)

The origins of the "Curse of Tippecanoe" lie within Tecumseh's War, fought between Tecumseh's Confederacy of tribes against the aggressive expansion of the United States into their lands. William Henry Harrison was the key US general in the defeat of Tecumseh's Confederacy, hence Tecumseh's brother Tenskawatawa, who was seen as a prophet since he had visions of well-being returning to Native Americans if they rejected all ways of the United States and remained true to their own culture, then supposedly set a curse upon Harrison declaring that if he ever became US President not only would he die, but that every President elected or re-elected in a year ending with the same number that Harrison was elected in would also die.

There is no documented proof that Tenskawatata actually made such a curse, but at first the circumstantial evidence appears to support the claim of the curse. William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia and in office after being elected in 1840, the aforementioned Zachary Taylor died of gastroenteritis while in office in 1850, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated after being elected in 1860 (and after being re-elected in 1864), James A. Garfield was assassinated after being elected in 1880, William McKinley was assassinated after being re-elected in 1900, Warren Harding died of natural causes while still in office and after being elected in 1920, Franklin Roosevelt died of natural causes while still in office after being re-elected in 1940, and John F. Kennedy was assassinated after being elected in 1960.

Looks can be deceiving, however, particularly in the case of Taylor. Although he died in 1850 from gastroenteritis after consuming some contaminated milk and cherries, he was actually elected in 1848 and thus should have been exempt from the supposed Curse of Tippecanoe -- Tippecanoe being where Harrison scored a decisive victory over Tecumseh at the Tippecanoe River. As well as that, one would expect presidents elected in years ending with zero to die quickly from nearly the same cause each time such as through assassinations, yet Harrison and Harding and Franklin Roosevelt died of natural causes instead of assassinations, and such as in the case of Lincoln it sometimes took years beyond the election for the death in office to occur -- and here too the precedent which was set by Harrison should have presumably been natural causes instead of assassinations.

Also, a problem with looking for support of "the Curse of Tippecanoe" is that it tends to ignore the fact that there have been a number of Presidential assassination attempts -- both with and without guns, since it is true that people kill people but guns certainly help since they make it much easier -- as well as a number of medical problems that were suffered by various US Presidents over the years, both while in office and once out of office. The point being that if one assumes that the eight US Presidents died in office due to the Curse of Tippecanoe -- this by (incorrectly) counting Taylor in addition to the other Presidents who died of natural causes and together with the four Presidents who were assassinated -- one tends to overlook the number of unsuccessful attempts against Presidents which are more than double in number to the eight Presidents who died in office and which are more than four times greater than the Presidents who were killed instead of who died of natural causes. Perhaps the best known example of which is the attempt made upon Theodore Roosevelt due to his fame as US President. After succeeding McKinley due to being McKinley's Vice President after McKinley's assassination in 1901 -- yes, McKinley's assassination following him being re-elected President in 1900 and thus arguably subjecting him to the Curse of Tippecanoe -- Theodore Roosevelt served until 1909 and then did not run for re-election due to the then-customary and now legal precedent of the President not serving more than two terms in office. Unhappy with the political situation by 1912 he ran for President again and survived an assassination attempt while campaigning, his health finally failing in 1918 and he dying in 1919 before he could have any chance of becoming President again through the 1920 elections. The point being that what happened with the failed assassination attempt of Theodore Roosevelt and then he dying before he could be elected is quite atypical to the Curse of Tippecanoe, thus perhaps why people typically do not try to link him to the supposed Curse as they do Zachary Taylor -- this even though Theodore Roosevelt was elected Vice President in 1900.

Another clue lies within the simple fact that elections for the US President and Vice President are held every four years, with the first US President and Vice President George Washington and John Adams beginning to serve in 1789. With elections being held in the last year of the current President and Vice President's terms this means that every twenty years there have been Presidential and Vice Presidential elections in a year that ends with zero such as 1820, 1840, 1860, and so forth since four years times five terms equals a round twenty years (the 1800 elections were an exception since they were twelve years from 1788, but had there been elections on this schedule previous to that then elections would have preceded 1788 by being held in 1780 and 1784, thus holding true to the twenty years formula). Pure mathematics is therefore why only one fifth of US Presidential and Vice Presidential elections are held on years ending with a zero and thus despite the natural mathematics of this fact it has prompted some to propose the supernatural curse explanation for it by extending it back to Harrison's election in 1840 and by sometimes including Zachary Taylor since Taylor died (but was not elected in) 1850.

The point being that since a number of assassination attempts and health problems were suffered by various Presidents at various times, it was inevitable that some of these would lead to the death of the President in a year that ended with zero and by coincidence, particularly since political motivations for assassins are necessarily greater while a President is actually in office. As Theodore Roosevelt before him, Ronald Reagan actually provides an exception to the supposed Curse of Tippecanoe rule since he was elected in 1980 yet survived an assassination attempt in 1981 as well as a number of age-related health problems (as of this writing, he was the oldest person to ever serve as US President) including cancers while serving until 1989, he then dying about fifteen years later and while no longer President in 2004. Although the aforementioned connection caused by circumstantial connection of mathematics, politics, and also basic health issues therefore shows this was more due to coincidence than some occult curse -- which in one case I heard was "broken" by Reagan's survival of his assassination attempt due to some occult astrological fortuitousness. With the supposed breaking of the curse this is therefore supposedly why when George W. Bush was elected due to the "elections in a zero year due to a four year term times five" formula in the year 2000 he was neither assassinated nor died while still in office, although taking a closer look at the record reveals that he actually did survive some assassination attempts, most significantly a hand grenade thrown at him in 2005 (for some reason it did not go off) as well as going through some health problems, hence again the fact that the supposed Curse is more due to coincidence than some type of fate, hence it sometimes ends up failing since it is actually fake.

As for Zachary Taylor -- his partial linkage to the supposed Curse of Tippecanoe coming due to his death in 1850 despite not being elected in that year (1840 and 1860 being the election years on zero which are around that year, with the next zero election year being 2020 as of the time of this writing) -- he was a career soldier who used his fame from the then-popular Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 to being a career in politics as the US President while a member of the American Whig Party. The fact he had health problems from his career in the military as well as the fact that Washington DC is located near swampy ground generally unhealthy for humans, plus how development of enclosed tunnel and thussanitary sewers instead of open ditch sewers (literally ditches allowing sewage to flow through them) only began during the 1800s due to increasing population density in cities from the Industrial Revolution and thus increasing health problems explains how his health could have been compromised so that the milk and cherries he consumed at a July 4 Independence Day celebration were contaminated so that he developed the gastroenteritis or inflammation of his digestive track which lead to his death on July 9.

It is also worth mentioning that writer Orson Scott Card'sTales of Alvin Maker series presents alternate American history versions of those directly surrounding the supposed Curse of Tippecanoe, thus how there are alternate versions of William Henry Harrison and Tecumseh ("Ta Kumsaw") and Tenskawatata (first "Lolla-Wossiky" given his previous name was Lalawethika, then "Tenskwa Tawa") and how the Curse instead causes Harrison and those who followed him in the story's equivalent of the Battle of Tippecanoe to bleed copiously (though not fatally) from the palms of their hands as well as having to continually confess about their massacre of Native Americans in the battle. A used set of part of the series was actually given to me by a Mormon coworker and friend after he became aware of my avid liking of Card's similar Homecoming Saga series which is set in a futuristic Slavic (the language of Russian is explicitly mentioned as being the founding language of the planet Harmony in the Earthborn book of the series) and science fiction setting -- the point being that as Card is a conservative Mormon, he patterned both series in part from his Mormonism yet diverged them by developing them different ways (alternate American history versus projected Russian science fiction). Unfortunately, given my great knowledge of history I disliked the Tales of Alvin Maker series given Card's alternative history seems too simplistic and generalized in comparison with actual history -- this in contrast with how I liked his Homecoming Saga given the greater complexity of his science fiction and how there is apparently enough shared between Christianity and Mormonism (also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, although it should be noted that most Christian and even Mormon churches view their differences as enough to separate the two) that my apparently science fiction-enjoying and liberal and religiously Christian self quite enjoyed it.

Perhaps also there was the fact that most of the characters in the Tales of Alvin Maker series had various "knacks" which were essentially forms of magic but which seemed too occult or hidden from common sight -- unlike the increases in technology which have become the root of science fiction -- to seem all that plausible to me. Or, in other words, such knacks to me seemed to be like the supposed Curse of Tippecanoe by Tenskawatata that was put supposedly placed upon all future Presidents through future President William Henry Harrison -- questionable to begin with, but also to more and more disprove and disbelieve it the more one looked at it since what seemed to be something which was somehow supernatural was actually more due to something much more mundane, like imagination in combination with coincidence. So much so, in fact, that sometimes Zachary Taylor's death on this date in 1850 is linked with the supposed Curse of Tippecanoe, although it does not actually fit the right formula for it.

By now you have noticed I have started making reference to "Most Recent Historian Rank" for the US Presidents. It is my intention to refer to these on their birthdates (with the exception of Barack Obama, since his final rating is still pending) since I because curious about them as a result of George W. Bush's birthday being on July 6.

I get the "Most Recent Historian Rank" from Wikipedia, and Ronald Reagan actually offers the best argument for seeking out the opinion of historians as opposed to popular consensus. Prior to getting into politics Reagan learned to be quite personable through his previous career as an actor, hence once he was steered into politics just before the 1989-1991 end of the Cold War, that is what most of popular consensus would remember about him. Historians, however, would remember that despite his charisma and the success of his foreign policy that this was to prevent people from noticing that domestic issues such as the exploding national debt suffered due to his lack of enough oversight for it (much of that debt was not paid off until ten years later) and of course due to the notable Iran-Contra scandal of illegally selling arms to trade for hostages that occurred under his administration -- if not because of the implication he was involved, then because of the implication that he should have known what was going on within his own government, yet he somehow did not.

In short the benefit of a consensus of historians is that it tends to avoid identifying with or weighing the appearances or idealogies of a President so strongly that one outright overlooks and thus does not consider whatever flaws a President had yet which are more visible through more objective historical research. Admittedly Reagan's predecessor Jimmy Carter had his flaws yet many people stereotype the odd "killer rabbit" incident as explanation for his supposed overall incompetence. Never mind his often-overlooked successes such as reducing unemployment and the national deficit, overseeing the Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, his efforts leading to a reduction of the arms race via SALT II, plus his efforts to make government competant and compassionate following the scandal of Watergate under President Richard Nixon. Never mind his successes, the fact he was attacked by a rabbit was viewed as a metaphor for the perception of US weakness regarding any foreign issues under his Presidency, although here I should also note that Carter still did not rank too well with the greater objectivity of the Most Recent Historian Rank, either -- not as well as Reagan, I must stress -- although still not as low as he has been ranked by various others at various times.

COTD: Be sure to follow the eye behind the eyes.

BAD NEWS: 62 people were killed and 111 injured by a suicide bomber in Pakistan!

GOOD NEWS: Norway arrested some people linked to al-Qaeda!

HUMOR: She has done this before (Luann, by Evans)!

HISTORY: July 10, 1856: Nikola Tesla, Croatian-American scientist who developed alternating current (AC), was born.

The first note to make about Tesla is that sometimes his birthdate may be given as "June 28" instead of as July 10 due to using the more-inaccurate Julian calendar that the Gregorian calendar currently in use replaced. As a scientist he did significant work on or expansion of electromagnetism, electromechanical engineering, robotics, remote control, radar, and computer science, ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics. However, he was also rather eccentric from what is now thought to have been a case of OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), although this may have been part of the reason he could concentrate so well upon an idea and thus to develop the actual science that he did.

In addition to the OCD Tesla had, he may have also had photographic memory which enabled him to recall sounds and images with extreme accuracy as well as some type of synesthesia where one's senses become intermingled with each other -- in Tesla's case he experienced flashes of light and visions in his mind simply from reading or encountering a word, although the most common form of synesthesia is color synesthesia where each letter or number or other written/typed character appears as a distinctive color (no matter what color it was originally depicted in).

Trying to recount Edison's ideas is a little like trying to recount Albert Einstein's ideas -- they are so complex that only simplistic metaphors would be able to relate them to the common reader. As such it is the more easily understood problems prompted by his OCD and such, plus his conflicts with others, which are most often focused upon. The first significant one of his conflicts with others with the American inventor Thomas Edison who had developed direct current (as well as the first practical light bulb). Tesla worked for Edison for a time and was able to redesign Edison's motors and generators for direct current so that they worked better, for which Tesla (who later developed his own light bulbs to be run by alternating current at the 1893 World's Fair) later stated that Edison had promised him what was then USD $50,000. Edison claimed that he had been joking when he made that statement ("Tesla, you don't understand our American humor") that then lead to Tesla quitting and founding his own Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing Company.

Tesla kept poor track of his finances and thus why he died impoverished in 1943, and his poor keeping track of finances is also part of the reason why his independent scientific career suffered. The other part was struggling against the aforementioned Edison but also with inventor Guglielmo Marconi over the invention of radio. His struggles with Edison are most well-known, however, since first he had been a former Edison employee and second because the alternating current he developed for transporting electricity (the current periodically changes direction and thus forms an electromagnetic field that keeps the current stronger over longer distances) proved to actually be superior to Edison's direct current. The result was a "War of the Currents" which was largely a smear campaign against Tesla's alternating current (being promoted by the Westinghouse company) conducted by Edison such as by portraying alternating current as more likely to cause fatal electrocutions -- the electric chair means of supposedly more instantaneous and therefore supposedly more humane means of execution starting about 1890 being seized upon by Edison as a means of showing how Tesla's alternating current was more lethal, for instance.

Edison later had to admit he regretted not investing more in researching Tesla's alternating current, which proved itself to be superior enough that it is still in use as of this writing. Unfortunately for Tesla, although there seemed to be promise in much of what he produced, he seemed to often overstate what he discovered. Upon detecting unusual radio signals, he thought he was detecting radio communications from extraterrestrials on Venus or Mars when he heard groupings of up to four clicks together and which sounded like nothing upon Earth, it is now thought he was hearing the more mundane and non-extraterrestrial alien radio signal which was the natural radio signal resulting from the plasma torus around Jupiter (caused by the action of the Sun's solar wind upon Jupiter's magnetic field). Another idea of his, that of wireless energy transmission, showed some promise but even up to the current day has proven to be too inconsistent and infeasible to apply on a large-scale basis.

Starting around 1914 is when Tesla is thought to have started showing serious signs of OCD. The most common part of his OCD was an obsession with the number three: he would walk around buildings three times before entering them, he would require a three-folded stack of napkins for each meal, and when he was impoverished the last ten years of his life to the degree he was living at the Hotel New Yorker he made sure to get a room on the 33rd floor which was number 3327 and thus divisible by three (3327 divided by three equals 1109). He also had mysophobia -- a fear of germs -- and became a vegetarian near the end of his life, amongst other things.

The latter aspect of Tesla's mental illness in the form of OCD -- which in itself produces anxiety unless one engages in repetitive behaviors to relieve that anxiety -- is actually part of what therefore links Tesla with the American aviator and entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Likely his success was in part due to the extreme concentration that OCD prompted in him, although it also prompted him to become a recluse due to his own mysophobia and because it prompted obsessive behaviors notably in excess of Tesla's obsession with the number three. For instance, in December 1947 Hughes starting watching movies in a screening room at a film studio near his home, and he ended up staying there until spring of 1948. Not only that, but he only consumed chocolate bars and milk, relieved himself in empty bottles and containers, and kept himself surrounded by Kleenex boxes which he kept stacking and rearranging about himself -- he keeping himself naked and only communicating by written messages. Suffice to say his hygiene was terrible when he finally came out.

Tesla's death, however, appears to have been somewhat more natural than that of Hughes as Tesla died of heart failure in his room at the Hotel New Yorker on January 7, 1943 and at the age of 86. Hughes himself died of kidney failure on April 5, 1976 at around 70 years of age but his kidney failure was worsened by the poor physical condition he was in from malnutrition and from drug use he had begun as a result of chronic pain from periodic aircraft test flight crashes. Like Hughes, however, Tesla remains a popular reference because despite the fact he appears to have suffered from eccentricities prompted by the mental illness of OCD, in other respects such as developing alternating current he was actually quite brilliant.

COTD: Those who think they are accessible to all are often only accessible to themselves.

BAD NEWS: Freedom is declining in Tunisia!

GOOD NEWS: Some human antibodies might neutralize AIDS!

HUMOR: He does not understand association football (Get Fuzzy, by Conley)!

US PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: John Quincy Adams: July 11, 1767 (Most Recent Historian Rank: 19/43)

HISTORY: July 11, 1953: Leon Spinks, American professional boxer, was born.

The name "Leon Spinks" stood out to me since I remembered that the famed boxer Mike Tyson fought somebody by the name of Spinks and knocked him out in 91 seconds, but that was actually Leon Spinks's brother Michael Spinks.

The career of Leon Spinks -- unlike that of his brother Michael and actually rather like the aforementioned Mike Tyson -- appears to be like that of many professional athletes where they earn tremendous amounts of money yet end up not managing their finances well enough so that although they are wealthy before retiring, they face hard financial times afterwards. This is reflected in the fact that Leon Spinks reportedly went from being the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World by managing to defeat Muhammad Ali in 1978 to homeless a little over a decade later, although specifics of his decline are not detailed and although he has reportedly financially recovered enough to live comfortably.

Muhammad Ali defeated Spinks later in 1978 to reclaim most of the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship -- I say "most" since there are apparently four boxing organizations recognized as sponsoring world championship boxing matches, and since Spinks refused to defend the World Heavyweight Boxing championship against Ken Norton, the World Boxing Council stripped him of their share of his World Heavyweight Championship and thus why the World Heavyweight Championship remained essentially disputed until Mike Tyson unified three of the four World Heavyweight Boxing organizations' Championships with his own matches.

Admittedly Spinks is more a footnote to other boxers since his brother Michael was defeated by Mike Tyson, since he fought Muhammad Ali, and since his refusal to fight against Ken Norton further disputed the World Heavyweight Championship until Mike Tyson unified much of it again, but as a footnote he therefore makes some interesting connections with others. In addition to the three mentioned above, for instance, the now-celebrity figure Mr. T was once one of his bodyguards, and those who have watched American football (gridiron) may have had Ken Norton's son Ken Norton, Jr. pointed out to them since despite playing American football, Norton Junior would take a boxing stance and throw a punching combination at the pad around the goalpost to celebrate when he scored a defensive touchdown -- something that was seen in some of the American football Madden NFL video games as well.

Leon's brother Michael appears to have fared better economically and despite his only notable loss resulting from his fight with Mike Tyson. The aforementioned Tyson might be a better example of a downfallen boxer than Leon Spinks since he has had criminal convictions in addition to his economic problems since retiring from boxing, but also of course the aforementioned Mr. T portrayed the boxer "Clubber Lang" in the 1982 film Rocky III (he also appeared as "B.A. Baracus" in the 1983-1986 A-Team television series). In addition to this, much of the famous Rocky series of boxing movies is actually borrowed from anecdotes about the real world of professional boxing that Leon Spinks was a memorable footnote to (the "Rockys" who have appeared in professional wrestling appear to be derived from sources outside of the Rocky films despite how professional wrestling borrows from professional boxing, however).

COTD: Kill the troll twice!

BAD NEWS: There may be up to 27,000 abandoned oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico!

GOOD NEWS: It should now be easier to get PSD treatement in the US!

HUMOR: Do not celebrate the World Cup too much (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 12, 1895: R[ichard] Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller, American inventor, was born.

Fuller preferred to give his name as "R. Buckminster Fuller" and went by the nickname "Bucky." Like many figures he had tragedy in his life -- some of which due to his own actions such as being expelled from college, and some of it not, such as the death of one of his children from polio and spinal meningitis -- and went through a period of drunkenly contemplating suicide before coming to own 28 patents as well as leaving quite an influence behind him. The most significant of which is the geodesic dome, which he did not originate but which he developed enough to get a patent for.

Some quite public examples of Bucky's geodesic domes are the Tacoma Dome, the Superior Dome, the Spaceship Earth dome of Epcot at Walt Disney World in Florida (USA), the Montreal Biosphere dome of Montreal, Quebec (Canada). The benefit of the geodesic dome is that it is very strong since the numerous small triangular sections of which it consists -- although the overall appearance of a geodesic dome is that of a sphere -- distribute the weight of the dome evenly over the entire structure, thus how a geodesic dome can cover a quite large volume of space. The weaknesses of a geodesic dome are that the many triangular sections thus leave many edges which are harder to keep from leaking, that square shapes are easier to work with and thus how it is hard to avoid wasted space when putting things within a round geodesic dome, that preexisting construction techniques for sewage and wiring and such is already set for the precedent of squares instead of domes and thus requires expensive modification for domes, that sounds, smells, and lights tend to be too-easily detectable within a dome, and also that movement of air and moisture within a dome tends to be unusual enough that interior paneling such as that made out of wood tends to degrade more quickly.

However the benefit of the geodesic dome is that it is indeed quite strong, thus why a number of "fullerene" structures occur on the molecular level. The standard association football (football/soccer) ball also happens to be designed like a Buckminsterfullerine or carbon (60 atoms of it) fullerine, which was the first fullerine ever discovered -- and sometimes such Buckminsterfullerine fullerines are nicknamed "buckyballs."

The name "Bucky" was also used for the character Bucky O'Hare who was created sometime between 1978 and 1979 but who was best known for a short-lived cartoon show between 1991 and 1992, although the fact O'Hare is an hare-furry and thus is bucktoothed (has the characteristic two large and projected-forward teeth of hares, and rabbits, and rodents, and so forth) is likely where his "Bucky" was derived from, although the now-forgettable Bucky O'Hare Fanfiction site sometimes links O'Hare with Fuller by expanding his name into "Buckminster Fuller O'Hare." Also, the fact that Bucky O'Hare was obvious inspired by Star Wars comes from the fact that the flashlight that the human character Willy DuWitt ends up carrying into the parallel "aniverse" universe ("animal universe") where Bucky O'Hare takes place is explicitly mistaken to be a lightsaber at first -- although more seriously, an irony of the Bucky O'Hare animated show from 1991 and 1992 is that it was aired during the time when the first Buckminsterfullerine buckyball which was named after Richard Buckminster Fuller was discovered.

COTD: I would rather have people trying to kill me than to die.

BAD NEWS: 74 people were killed by bombs in Uganda!

GOOD NEWS: Colton Harris-Moore has been arrested!

HUMOR: Bird-brained (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: July 13, 1878: The Treaty of Berlin was passed by the Congress of Berlin, setting the boundaries of Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania.

Ever since the "Great French War" of 1792-1815 where France had become quite powerful -- also known as the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1799) and the Napoleonic Wars (circa 1799-1815) -- the various countries of Europe had become more interested in there being a balance of power between them and their allies versus their opponents and the allies of their opponents. This was the primary reasoning behind the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna which redrew boundaries -- particularly in regard to France -- in order to achieve that balance. Congresses of Europe met in later years in what became known as the "Congress System" or more informally the "Concert of Europe" system given that all its members were working together to ensure harmony, thus why there were Congresses of Europe also at Aix-la-Chappelle in 1818, at Carlsbad in 1819, at Verona in 1822, in London during 1830, 1832, and 1838-1839, and also the aforementioned 1878 Congress of Berlin.

Explaining the location of some of these Congresses is the fact that the main diplomats who were a part of it were from the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia (later a key part of the German Empire, which succeeded it), and later on France. The overall idea was to use diplomacy instead of warfare to solve disputes given the destructiveness of over twenty years of warfare from the Great French War, thus why with the aftermath of the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War which was fought in the aftermath of the opportunistic 1853-1856 Crimean War over gaining control of territories of the overextended and thus weakening Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), the nations of Montenegro and Serbia and Romania gained independence from the Ottoman Empire as a compromise to avoid upsetting Russia of Eastern Europe too much while maintaining the power of the various Western European nations in the area.

Yes, as the Russo-Turkish and Crimean Wars show, with Europe now about 60 years removed from the Great French War there was less reluctance to use armed conflict instead of diplomacy in order to resolve disputes. At least part of what Russia was fighting for were the various Slavic peoples found in both southeastern Europe as they are also found in Russia and thus why Russia also got a promise for the independence of Bulgaria although the Western European powers reneged upon it. The key here being that although the members of the Congress had started envisioning themselves as essentially cooperating in concert with each other in order to ensure European harmony, it became a contest of each nation attempting to extend its sphere of influence across the world to a greater degree than any of its competitors -- the key conflict at the time of the Congress of Berlin being the sphere of influence of the United Kingdom with its powerful navy throughout the Mediterranean Sea versus the land-based sphere of influence of the strengthening Russian Empire attempting to push the Ottoman Empire's weakening sphere of influence out of the Mediterranean for warm water seaports (that would not freeze in winter, thus helping naval trade) and other such benefits.

Although not officially part of the Congress System, the 1884 Berlin Conference or "Scramble for Africa" was essentially part of it since it formalized the colonization of Africa which had begun with the various European nations starting to expand their spheres of influence again without wanting to go to war with each other and thus to risk another Great French War type of war over it (it can be argued this had been their overall goal prior to the 1815 Congress of Vienna and had resumed as their goal following the start of the 1853 Crimean War nearly 40 years later). Likewise, although the Congress System of Europe is seen as dissolving with its failure to avert the 1914-1918 World War I, it did provide the foundation of the 1919-1946 League of Nations which essentially attempted to expand the diplomacy of the Congress System via making membership within it worldwide, although the failure of the League of Nations to avert the 1939-1945 World War II is why the League of Nations was succeeded by the United Nations in 1945-1946.

"If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans." (Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia and of the German Empire)

Bismarck's above quote was actually spoken in reflecting upon the aforementioned British-Russian conflict over the Balkans of southeastern Europe. This was actually why Prussia and later Germany stopped siding with Russia and started shifting alliances in an attempt to prevent war. The irony of the resulting alliance system, however, was that after Bismarck it was simplified enough to ensure whole scale warfare once antagonism occurred. Bismarck and others thought for certain that Russia's attempts to extend its sphere of influence into the Balkans of Southeastern Europe but which was blocked by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin which was passed by the Congress of Berlin would ultimately prompt the war, and it was indeed Russian mobilization in response to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire's aggression towards Serbia after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in retaliation for Austria-Hungary annexing the Slavic territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus threatening to further its own sphere of influence in southeastern Europe that prompted Germany to mobilize and to declare war on Russia -- which had notably lost the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War and thus which looked large yet weak since Japan had managed to expand her own sphere of influence at the cost of Russia -- that old animosities which had remained unresolved under the Congress System and as was apparent from the animosities within the 1878 Congress of Berlin even as it passed the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, animosities that later prompted the massive European mobilizations which lead to World War I.

Here too it should be noted that there were actually a number of wars involving the Balkans of Southeastern Europe even after the 1878 Congress of Berlin and prior to World War I -- the 1885Serbo-Bulgarian War, the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War (Montenegro was involved in it to a limited degree), the 1906-1909 Pig War, the 1912-1913 First Balkan War, and the 1913 Second Balkan War -- but they were not expansive like World War I since they never prompted a wider mobilization across Europe such as what was seen in World War I and what was delayed by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin passed by the Congress of Berlin on this date. Thus to modify Bismarck's comment, I would state that if there is ever another world war, it will inevitably come out of Europe due to how European nations have spread their spheres of influence over so much of the world. Either that or out of the United States of America -- itself with significant European roots -- given the United States has quite a sphere of influence resulting from the hegemony it enjoys over the world as a result of becoming the world's superpower (via the results of the 1939-1945 World War II and from the results of the 1947-1991 Cold War).

COTD: A generation will not survive if it is full of people who are not sure.

BAD NEWS: 55 officers were injured by rioting in Northern Ireland!

GOOD NEWS: The fire alarm on an American Airlines flight was a false alarm!

HUMOR: Deceptive, but sweet (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: Gerald Ford: July 14, 1913 (Most Recent Historian Rank: 28/43)

HISTORY: July 14, 1933: During the "Gleichschaltung" in Nazi Germany, the formation of new political parties was banned.

The word "gleich" in German means "alike, equal, or the same" and the word "schaltung" essentially means "switching." In this sense it means "forcible-coordination," thus explaining how the Nazi party came to political power in Germany.

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." (Edmund Burke)

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Adolf Hitler learned from his attempted Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 that attempts at a rapid and extralegal (outside of the law) change will often fail, even if people are sympathetic to it (thus why Hitler received a light sentence for leading the Beer Hall Putsch), thus why he and his Nazi party then carefully and quietly built political support that came to fruition with the economic crisis of the Great Depression reaching Germany around 1930 motivated Germans to make a political change in an attempt to correct their economic woes. This meant that although President and German war hero Paul von Hindenberg was the head of the German government and opposed Hitler and the Nazis, he was able to be manipulated due to his poor health and in such a way it enabled Hitler and the Nazi party to take control of Germany more or less legally, quite notably in how Hitler was appointed Chancellor and the second most powerful member of the government behind Hindenberg on January 30, 1933 (despite considerable animosity which existed between Hindenberg and Hitler). I say "more or less legally" because Hitler and the Nazis were not above taking borderline and extralegal measures when they were strong enough to get away with it, but more often they used legal measures at first in order to undermine any political or popular checks and balances upon their power so that whenever they began taking extralegal measures the opposition to it was too weak to avoid them simply imposing their will.

As such, an outline of this Gleichschaltung which part by part nibbled away at liberty (freedom) in Germany and in a more or less legal manner is as follows:

February 27, 1933: Article 48 of Germany's Weimar Constitution invoked by President Hindenberg due to fears of an attempted Communist Revolution such as the 1918-1919 Spartacus Uprising due to the Reichstag Fire. The resulting Reichstag Fire Decree suspends human rights to allow easier arrests for the sake of "security" but enables Nazi Sturmabteilung (paramilitary troops, not uncommon to the Freikorps or private army organizations of Germany from the mid 1700s to the Nazi rise to power in 1934 -- and thus the army that Hitler used in the Beer Hall Putsch) to terrorize and intimidate the people without fear of legal consequences and thus to influence the votes for a new Reichstag (German legislative body) that Hitler had broken his promise about by almost immediately dissolving it upon becoming Chancellor.

March 5, 1933: The above enables Hitler to win a new coalition government for the legislature of Germany although Hindenberg remains President, but a coalition government in which his own Nazi party does not have a majority.

March 23, 1933: The manipulated Reichstag passes the Enabling Act which removes the necessity of the Nazi party to have a majority to control the Reichstag and reduces it to a rubber stamp with essentially no political power, reportedly due to the necessity of security in response to the emergency prompted by the attempted Communist Revolution which was attempted to be started with the burning of the Reichstag, thus all but transforming Germany into a legal dictatorship under Hitler since Hindenberg's failing health -- quite notably, his spells of dementia (forgetfulness) -- has left him as little more than a figurehead to be manipulated at this point. The Enabling Act is also given token renewals later in order to give it the semblance of it and thus all actions coming about because of it as being completely legal.

March 31, 1933: The First Gleichscaltung Law is passed, essentially extending the Enabling act to each Lander (German state) and thus extending Nazi influence from the national to the local level.

April 7, 1933: The Second Gleichscaltung Law appoints proconsuls who thus essentially act as dictators for the various Landers. Throughout Prussia, which was the Lander/State which made up most of Germany at that time, Hitler retains the rights of local proconsul for himself.

May 2, 1933: Economic resistance to Hitler's government mostly through trade unions is effectively removed by the arrest of the leaders of the ADGB (Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) and with all independent labor unions outlawed on the grounds of being Communist, with their former members then being forced to join the token German Labor Front under the control of the state.

July 14, 1933: The Law Against the Establishment of Political Parties bans the formation of new political parties. Political parties deemed Communist had already been banned, and with the still-existing political parties depending upon cooperation and thus coalition with the Nazis for any existence, this further removed any chance of political opposition such as through a new political party not legally imposed into cooperation in exchange for existence.

January 30, 1934: The Law Concerning the Reconstruction of the Reich "reconstructs" Germany through acknowledging that despite the First and Second Gleichscaltung laws, and in light of the fact that Hitler has proconsul rights and thus local government over the largest Lander/State of Prussia, that the national government and thus Hitler has local control as well since the new organization of the federal and local governments are essentially the same now. The Reichsrat -- prior to this and after this called the Bundesrat -- which gives local government then-token representation on the federal level is then dissolved in February 14, 1934.

June 30-July 1, 1934: The Knight of the Long Knives purge destroys the leadership of the Nazi Sturmabteilung and thus merges its remains with the German armed forces which Hitler now has effective control of to prevent any internal opposition, plus prominent opponents of Hitler and the Nazis outside of the Sturmabteilung are killed. 85 opponents or possible opponents to Hitler and the Nazis are murdered as well as more than 1,000 people are arrested. The action is undertaken mostly by the Schutzstaffel (loyalists to Hitler, formerly within the Sturmabteilung itself) and the Gestapo (secret political police). This actually has quite popular support due to a majority of Germans wanting to prevent any type of threat to their home, the nation of Germany, even before Hitler's July 13 speech (see below).

July 3, 1934: The Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense is passed, legally sanctioning the extralegal killings of the Night of the Long Knives as not being murder since they supposedly protected the German state from treason.

July 13, 1934: Almost a year to the day Hitler banned the formation of new political parties to prevent opposition to himself and due to public support of instead of horror in response to the Night of the Long Knives, he publicly admits and justifies the purge of the Night of the Long Knives in a nationally broadcast speech due to the knowledge it will not be objected to within Germany.

August 2, 1934: President Paul von Hindenburg, the last possible legal check and balance to Hitler, dies of lung cancer at the age of 86. As the government is already effectively under the control of and thus is a rubber stamp for Hitler, it passed a law just three hours before Hindenberg's death granting legal sanction to merging the German presidency (Reichsprasident) and the German chancellorship (Reichskanzler) into the office of "Leader and German Chancellor" -- Fuhrer und Reichskanzler -- in the event that Hindenberg died. This legally removed the last separation of powers that ensures a government has checks and balances within it in order to avoid any part of it, such as Hitler's former chancellorship, from becoming a dictatorship.

Aside from the above political and economic controls enacted by the banning of new political parties on this date in 1933 was a part of, the Gleichschaltung also instituted the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs to extend its influence into religion, by forming the compulsory organizations of the Pimpfen, Deutsches Jungvolk, Hitler Youth, Arbeitsdienst, and Wehrmacht (armed forces) for males of various ages as well as the Jungmadel and Bund Deutscher Madel for women of various ages in order to influence their thinking. The KdF (Draft durch Freude) was also set up to regulate even private clubs for hobbies and thus to influence thinking on that level as well, and finally also Reichsberufswettkampt competitions for various workers in order to influence their thinking as well.

The point here being that although many people like the order and arguably the safety and security that such extensive regimentation can provide, such as the aforementioned banning of new political parties on this date in 1933 -- so much so that the purge of the Night of the Long Knives was sanctioned despite being extralegal -- the problem with such organization to supposedly ensure such safety and security is that it tends to eliminate checks and balances which admittedly produces conflict but which also ensures that no one supposedly ensuring that lack of conflict actually uses the lack of conflict from within in order to confront and attack any perceived conflict from about. And here of course it is already known that lack of enough of any opposition to Hitler through his government banning new political parties and such is thus enabled his Nazi Germany to become one of the main antagonists of World War II.

"In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterize down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence -- which depends on its internal order and security -- cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." (Adolf Hitler, July 13, 1934 nationally broadcast justification for the Night of the Long Knives)

COTD: Too often we fail from lack of courage on the inside instead of from invasion from the outside.

BAD NEWS: Many doctors will not report their impaired colleages!

GOOD NEWS: The National League defeated the American League for the first time in thirteen years in the MLB All Star game!

HUMOR: Deceptive, but sweet (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 15, 1799: The Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt by the French Army under Napoleon Bonaparte.

The reason that the French were in Egypt at this time was a consequence of the Great French War of 1792-1815 which was essentially patriotic fervor prompting the first French Revolution to spill out of France. By conquering Egypt from the Ottoman Empire it would protect French trade interests and would hinder the trade interests of the British -- their main opponents -- by blocking the most direct route to trade interests within their then-colony of India. Also, however, this enabled the French to research ancient Egyptian culture to make France the center of world culture -- a secondary goal of the Great French War -- thus why Napoleon was accompanied by a Commission des Sciences des Arts corps (Commission of the Sciences and Arts) for that purpose. While the French garrison was strengthening the defenses of Fort Julien on this date in 1799 and at what was then called the city of Rosetta -- now the city of Rashid -- it therefore came under French possession and study. This because old Egyptian monuments were used as quarries to obtain stone for other projects (the Roman Coliseum is also fragmentary due to this same process after the fall of Rome in 476) and because the full stone was broken down and part of it then hauled out to Rosetta to build a fortress for Ottoman Mameluke Sultan Qaitbay sometime in the 1400s, thus how it was uncovered again on this date in 1799 when the French were reinforcing their Fort Julian.

The French were unable to maintain control of Egypt due to British and Ottoman attacks and thus the last French garrison there surrendered in 1801. As a result it came into British possession, rights of the Ottoman Empire to it at this time or not, and thus was transported to the United Kingdom in 1802. As of this writing it is still on display at the British Museum, but just why the Rosetta Stone is so important is that it eventually enabled a modern understanding of the writing system of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs which are partially logographic (pictorial) and part alphabetic (representative of sound).

The reason that knowledge of how to not only write but to also speak ancient Egyptian was lost (all languages evolve over time, hence how there are more ancient forms of all language -- the English that Shakespeare wrote in, for example, is different from modern English due to this) due to the remaining sources of it being closed off with Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I closing all non-Christian temples in 391. This because the Byzantine Empire had become Christian at this time and was in possession of Egypt at that time, and yes it is true this is an accurate historical fact alluded to in the 1994 film Stargate just after Egyptologist Daniel Jackson learns how to fluently speak a dialect based upon ancient Egyptian with the help of a number of hieroglyphs and a native speaker of it. Given that no one continued to speak ancient Egyptian after this (or a close enough dialect of it like Daniel Jackson's speaker) it is impossible to know exactly how the language was pronounced, but the writing on the Rosetta Stone does enable ancient Egyptian to be translated into modern languages since it contains a decree in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, then a translation of this in a more modern or demotic form of Egyptian, then a third translation into Ancient Greek given the recognition of Greek influence alongside Egyptian influence in the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.

Matching up the words and such within the three languages was a painstaking process since of course languages are fluid and do not match up exactly with each other, thus why it was not until the final work of Jean-Francis Champollion in 1822 that what the stone said, as well as what ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in the pyramids and other ancient Egyptian monuments said, once again. This of course because ancient Greek had not died out given Greek had been the second-most used language of the Roman Empire and its successor of the Byzantine Empire (Byzantium) in the Eastern Mediterranean, and thus how the ancient Greek on the stone was eventually successfully used to translate the demotic and ancient Egyptian texts. In short, the stone is a "Memphis Decree" (Memphis the capital of Egypt at this time, and which is what the city of Memphis Tennessee was named after) which deifies ruler Ptolemy V Epiphanes as part of an ongoing process to restore the order that was lost during a period of civil unrest that came about from the opportunism of him coming to rule Egypt at the age of five.

In contrast toRamses II/Ramses the Great/Ozymandius who has achieved lasting recognition outside of close study through being incorrectly declared to be the Pharaoh who would not let the Jews leave Egypt in the Biblical book of Exodus, Ptolemy V Epiphanes is not as memorable in more modern times, although since "Rosetta Stone" has become a common idiom it has even eclipsed Ramses II, the meaning being that of a key which unlocks the translation of language and/or the understanding of something that was unable to be understood before. As of this writing, the name "Rosetta Stone" is also the name of a computer software company that produces "Rosetta Stone" software to enable people to learn foreign languages and the fifth and most obviously Mormon book of Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series -- Earthborn -- actually has a key segment regarding translating the "Coriantumur Stone" which appears in part to be based upon the translation of the Rosetta Stone since it finally unlocks the meaning of the whole process that was begun over 500 years earlier in the previous Memory of Earth book -- in short a Mormon-based version of the utopia akin to what is found at the end of the Biblical book of Revelation (at least as I understand it, given I am a Christian).

Admittedly also, Card's Coriantumur Stone deciphering process might not actually be based upon the Rosetta Stone but instead upon the reported Golden Plates that Mormon founder Joseph Smith reportedly transcribed the book of Mormon from in 1823, although skeptics would be quick to point out that this was in the year after the Rosetta Stone was deciphered and that Smith reported that the Book of Mormon was written in "Reformed Egyptian," thus implying that Smith was actually inspired by scientific progress with the Rosetta Stone instead of by religious revelation. As well, some state that the similarities between the Christian Bible and parts of the Book of Mormon are a result of plagiarism of the Bible to create the Book of Mormon instead of genuine revelation from the same divine source of God, but delving any further into this type of comparative theology risks too much offense as well as straying quite far away from the original subject of the Rosetta Stone being found upon this date in Egypt and by the French in 1799.

COTD: When most of hundreds of people disagree with you, wouldn't you agree you are wrong?

BAD NEWS: Foreclosures are increasing in the US!

GOOD NEWS: BP's new cap is attached!

HUMOR: Just pull the plug (Baldo, by Cantu and Castellanos)!

HISTORY: July 16, 1945: The Trinity Test -- the US successfully detonated the first nuclear warhead at the Trinity Testing site of Alamogordo, New Mexico (USA).

YOUTUBE: Duck and Cover (This is parodied in the movie the Iron Giant)

I once asked a high school science teacher I respected, given he was fairly good at teaching by showing instead of teaching by telling and/or assuming, just how something at an atomic/nuclear level could be so powerful when it was microscopic. What he said to simplify the explanation was that it was because the forces holding atoms together was so powerful, which is a sufficient explanation without going overmuch into the complicated science of nuclear physics that makes manipulation of atoms and thus production of nuclear power or explosions possible.

Given just how powerful a nuclear explosion is, unfortunately the secrecy in developing nuclear technology ended up obscuring much of its history until the aforementioned Trinity Test, although it was not until the World War II atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 6 and August 9, 1945 (still respectively August 5 and August 8 in the US due to time zone differences) that a fuller revelation was forthcoming.

As such, looking into a timeline of history around the Trinity Test is worthwhile, otherwise the mistaken assumption might be that nuclear technology was suddenly and fortuitously there by accident as opposed to being discovered through deliberate research, which is actually what happened.

"One has to look out for engineers, they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb." (Marcel Pagnol)

August 2, 1939: Hungarian nuclear scientist (then in the US) Leo Slizard writes a letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt advocating research into nuclear fission to develop nuclear warheads to counter any nuclear research that the aggressively expansive Nazi Germany might be conducting. His friend, Jewish-German scientist Albert Einstein, signs the letter since he agrees with it. After the war it is revealed that Nazi Germany did have a nuclear program, but Nazi German over-reliance upon heavy water and successful Allied efforts to keep them from obtaining it as a needed component of nuclear reactions -- as well as Nazi German scientists never discovering that purified granite was needed for nuclear reactors -- prevented much success in the Nazi German nuclear program.

October 11, 1939: Economist Alexander Sachs delivers and thus makes sure that President Roosevelt himself becomes aware of what is now called the Einstein-Slizard letter by summarizing it aloud to him. Roosevelt had been preoccupied to receive the letter until this point in time, particularly due to the start of World War II on September 1, 1939 with Nazi Germany invading Poland -- the US of course being strongly Euro-centric. Roosevelt then orders nuclear research to begin.

"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb." (J. Robert Oppenheimer)

December 7, 1941: Japan attacks the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (USA), as part of a series of attacks that day designed to knock out any resistance and to seize supplies needed for the expansion of the Japanese Empire and thus the continuing modernization of Japan. Given Imperial Japan's alliance with Nazi Germany and the European focus of the US, Nazi Germany declares war upon the US on December 8 in the hopes of weakening the US effort through dividing it with a two front war. This accelerates efforts at nuclear research in order to counter Nazi Germany.

December 2, 1941: The Chicago Pile-1 at the University of Chicago (Illinois, USA) successfully produces the first artificial nuclear reaction. The name "nuclear reactor" was finally developed to describe the location in which a nuclear reaction produces energy in 1952, thus it is then retroactively applied to describe the "Chicago Pile-1." This part of the project was overseen and lead by Italian-American scientist (naturalized as a US citizen in 1944) Enrico Fermi, who would die of stomach cancer prompted by exposure to nuclear radiation in 1954.

"I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed." (Albert Einstein)

August 19, 1943: The Quebec Agreement allows British scientists join into the development of what is still called the "Manhattan Project" due to its earliest starting stages being conducted on the island of Manhattan near New York, New York (USA) prior to development then spreading to other sites across the US (Notably Hanford in Washington State, plus the Alamogordo, New Mexico site where the Trinity Test was conducted). Canadian scientists also become involved with the effort.

October 1943: Development of "Project W-47," later renamed "Project Alberta," develops the technology by which to deliver a nuclear warhead such as what was seen with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki within Japan in 1945.

"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce." (Winston Churchill)

December 1944: The explosive lens to detonate a plutonium nuclear warhead like the warhead code named "Fat Man" (since it was so round it was likened to a fat man) and which Nagasaki was bombed with is successfully tested.

May 7, 1945: The surrender of Nazi Germany invalidates the idea of nuclear research to counter possible Nazi nuclear research. Justification for developing nuclear technology is then shifted to the aggression shown by Imperial Japan since they have not surrendered yet, plus since the aggressive USSR is an uneasy ally only due to her previous betrayal by Nazi Germany (see the 1947-1991 Cold War). In short, by making an example out of Imperial Japan it is hoped that the aggressiveness of the USSR will be curtailed. This because Imperial Japan also had a nuclear program but it had suffered from technological programs and thus had stalled like the Nazi German program.

July 16, 1945: The successful first detonation of a nuclear warhead at Alamogordo, New Mexico (USA) in the code named "Trinity Test" takes place. The warhead is detonated upon a tower that was built for it, to approximate how a nuclear warhead delivered by the Project W-47/Project Alberta method would react.

July 24, 1945: US President Harry Truman (Franklin Roosevelt's former Vice President, who became President after Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945) informs USSR General Secretary (and thus leader) Joseph Stalin that the US has nuclear weapons. Diminishing the reasoning that US nuclear technology will prompt the USSR to be less aggressive following World War II is the fact that Stalin shows a complete lack of surprise as this news due to already knowing of it through espionage (spying). USSR research into nuclear technology had actually begun in the early 1930s but had been stalled due to philosophical and practical reasons (invading Eastern Europe and then being invaded by Nazi Germany), and with the aforementioned espionage upon the US Manhattan Project, the USSR Nuclear Program managed to develop its first nuclear warhead in 1949 -- thus prompting the Nuclear Arms Race of the US-lead West versus the USSR-lead East, despite greater USSR difficulties from use of the inefficient economic system of Communism.

"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." (Herbert Hoover)

July 25, 1945: Overriding the growing concerns of scientists due to the knowledge of just how destructive nuclear weaponry can be, President Truman gives the order to General Carl Spaatz to bomb one of four Japanese cities after August 3 with a nuclear warhead: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki, as soon as weather permits.

August 6, 1945: Hiroshima is bombed with the uranium-based nuclear warhead "Little Boy." Up to 166,000 people are killed, many of them innocent civilians. The city of Kokura was the secondary target if Hiroshima could not be bombed due to weather, and Hiroshima was the primary target since it was an industrial center producing material for the Japanese war effort -- thus how the aforementioned civilians were only at most tangentially involved with the fighting of the war.

"Nuclear weapons can wipe out life on Earth, if used properly." (Gareth Owen)

August 9, 1945: Nagasaki is bombed with the plutonium-based nuclear warhead "Fat Man" due to lack of a Japanese surrender close enough to American terms. The aforementioned Kokura was the initial target of Fat Man given it helps connect the main Japanese islands of Honshu and Kyushu and as well helps connect Japan to the Korean peninsula, but smoke from the more conventional firebombing of Yahata to destroy its industrial capacity obscured Kokura, hence Nagasaki was bombed instead and in order to destroy its industrial capacity and thus production for the Japanese war effort. Over 73,884 people are killed, again many of them innocent civilians. (The last city, Niigata, was more a connection site to the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo in China and elsewhere in Asia, but poor weather and its distance farthest north of the four targets, plus perhaps that the governor of the Niigaga prefecture had it evacuated due to rumors of impending bombing, helped save the city).

August 15, 1945: Japan and the US agree enough upon terms that Japan formally surrenders. At the time this is seen as a culmination of the war effort to counter Nazi Germany and of prompting the uneasy ally of the USSR to be less aggressive in the post-war era. As well, the firebombing alluded to was also done upon both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in an effort to intimidate the USSR in the postwar environment.

"Today I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place." (Colin Powell)

January 1, 1947: The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, better known as the McMahon Act, transforms the military Manhattan Project into the civilian US Atomic Energy Commission. Understandable controversy over uninformed human experimentation with nuclear material by the military later leads to the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974.

1974: The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 splits the US Atomic Energy Commission into the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Energy Research and Development Administration continues nuclear research whereas the Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes sure nuclear waste is disposed of as safely as possible.

YOUTUBE: Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima within the anime version of Barefoot Gen (Caution: this was recreated from the quite traumatic recollection Hiroshima survivor Keiji Nakazawa.)

Of course at this point I should note that the immediate common argument given supporting the nuclear bombings of Japan that the Trinity Test showed was feasible -- as well as the firebombing of Japan and also Germany which was also alluded to -- is the simplified argument that as Japan and Germany attacked foreign countries and thus killed and committed atrocities against innocent civilians, then attacking them as a means of defense justifies attacking them and thus also committing atrocities against their innocent civilians. Or if not put or condoned that nakedly, the therefore unintended deaths and injuries of civilians is referred to under the euphemism of "collateral damage," which suffice to say is so devastating it cannot be avoided through such a simplistic defense as the "duck and cover" Youtube segment linked to near the start of this writing. The argument to stress here being that the technology for defense against an aggressor including destroying their industrial capacity to wage war has expanded beyond killing those who are directly involved in fighting it and thus also onto innocents who are not directly involved in fighting it, but inadvertently or even deliberately harming innocent civilians no matter what country they might dwell within is neither something that should be praised for how it harms the enemy nor ignored through the simplification of ignoring the terror of collateral damage that even just defense of one's country can bring about. Even with a just war fought only against combatants, the terror of advances in technology -- such as the Trinity Test on this date -- is that innocent civilians will die as a consequence of that defensive war. For the technology of warfare today has increased so much that "collateral damage" is indeed the misfortune that war brings.

"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." (J. Robert Oppenheimer)

COTD: What do you do when somebody takes your kindness, chews it up, and spits it back out?

BAD NEWS: Dozens were killed in an Iraq hotel fire!

GOOD NEWS: The earthquake in Washington DC was a minor one!

HUMOR: Gold digger (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 17, 1918: The RMS Carpathia was sunk by a German U-boat during World War I, causing five deaths.

The name "Carpathia" likely does not stand out to many, although perhaps some recognize the name was derived from the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe -- the etiology of the name appearing to refer to the fact the Carpathian Mountains are perceived of as sharp and rocky. This ship Carpathia under the command of Arthur Henry Rostron did make a heroic rescue 710 survivors of the much more famous Titanic sinking in 1912, however, hence her connection to more commonly-known history.

American writer Walter Lord speaks very highly of Carpathia and Arthur Henry Rostron in his books A Night to Remember in 1955 and the Night Lives On in 1986 which are the definitive accounts of the events around the sinking of the Titanic (thus why film adaptations about the Titanic like the 1997 "Titanic" movie appear to use his books as a source), but the reason why the Carpathia herself was sunk on this date was because she was co-opted into serving as a troopship to ferry American soldiers to Europe to fight in World War I (1914-1918) since it was not until the 1950s that aircraft technology improved enough to transport great numbers of people great distances. Although traveling with a convoy of ships for protection through greater numbers, the German U-boat U-55 managed to torpedo and thus sink her because of course this would hinder the war effort against the Germans and their allies in Europe. The remains of Carpathia were located in 2000 and are about 120 miles (190 kilometers) away from Fastnet, Ireland.

The fact that flying has largely replaced sailing means that usually only the very famous ships are remembered (flying in addition to personal cars is also why use of trains has also become rather obscure) such as the Titanic, thus why it is generally only through Titanic that the aforementioned Carpathia is known, or the sister ships of the Titanic such as the Britannic or the Olympic. Britannic was co-opted into becoming a hospital ship for World War I and sank after hitting a mine, whereas Olympic also served as a troopship during World War I but was never sunk and thus was scrapped at the end of her civilian service prior to World War II -- and both Britannic and Olympic benefited from understandable design changes after Titanic sank and although Britannic was indeed sunk by a mine.

Also, a U-boat is a submarine, the term being the English term derived from the German "Unterseeboot" which means "undersea boat" and also which outside of Germany tends to be used to refer to German submarines that fought in either World War I (1914-1918) or World War II (1939-1945). Fortunately the experience aboard U-boats has been fairly faithfully captured (although not as much as in the original book version by Lothar-Gunter Buchheim) in the 1981 film Das Boot, thus offering a rare chance to experience what war is like from the other and thus the ultimately losing side of a war (in this case World War II), such as what is also seen in All Quiet on the Western Front (World War I) and its film adaptations, plus such works as Grave of the Fireflies and Saburo Sakai's biography Samurai.

The remaining ship that many may know of from history but which is not directly connected to the Titanic such as her rescuer Carpathia was -- and here I should note I am not condoning U-boat attacks despite willingness to understand the human cost upon the opposing side by looking at them as human people instead of simplifying and generalizing them all into a faceless and human-less enemy -- is of course the Lusitania which was sunk by the German U-boat U-20 on May 7, 1915. Lusitania was the name of a Roman province (what is today modern south and southwestern Portugal and Spain), and the sinking of that ship by a U-boat was of course portrayed as evidence that German brutality against a ship also carrying Americans was cause for the US to enter World War I -- this overlooking the small arms ammunition that was aboard the ship, and the measures the German government had taken to warn against the danger of German U-boats making these types of attacks before the Lusitania was sunk -- although US President Wilson did not ask for a declaration of war until April 6, 1917, after the Zimmerman Telegram was intercepted on January 16, 1917 and then decoded to reveal Germany's offer to trade help getting Mexico back what are now the US states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (which was part of the Mexican territory lost during the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War) if they would help keep the US neutral once Germany restarted the unrestricted submarine warfare -- submarine attacks with no warnings -- it had stopped following the sinking of the Lusitania (Mexico declined on the grounds it could not obtain enough arms or financial support for the certain war with the US this would entail, the significant Americanization of the aforementioned territories, plus how this would be counterproductive to its previous cooperative efforts with Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to prevent war with the US, thus improving diplomatic relations and helping prevent further US expansion south).

11,500 views, thank you.

COTD: I'm sorry, but I won't abuse even spoiled children.

BAD NEWS: A man just about killed himself eating a snake for a bet!

GOOD NEWS: The Gulf of Mexico well is still sealed shut!

HUMOR: Oof (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 18, 1913: Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton, American comedian, was born.

1913 is the estimated birthdate of Skelton as he later admitted he was actually older than he was but without being too specific, hence why the year of his birth is sometimes given as 1906 or 1910. One of the characteristics of Skelton's comedy routines is that he developed a number of recurring characters.

Unfortunately, Skelton has become rather obscure these days, but some of those familiar with other comedy might be aware of him through allusions made to him. There is supposed to be a Popeye animated cartoon (animated Popeye cartoons were produced from 1932 onwards, and the cartoon in question is probably either the 1939 black and white Ghosts is the Bunk, its colorized version Ghosks is the Bunk, or its 1954 remake Fright to the Finish) where Popeye declares aloud that he has encountered a "Red Skeleton," and in the 1956 Three Stooges short Creeps (itself a remake of the 1949 Ghost Talks short) the Stooge Shemp remarks upon how a skeleton the three encountered is "Red Skeleton" since the skeleton tells them his name is "Red."

An important point to note here is that Red Skelton's name is "Skelton" with no "e" between the letters l and t, but some of Skelton's comedy performed in his character of "Mean Widdle Kid Junior" found its way more directly into other comedy -- animation in particular -- since "Junior's" expressions of "I dood it!" and "He don't know me vewy well, do he?" as well as "He bwoke my widdle [insert body part here]" are directly quoted in a number of cartoon shorts, particularly those done by Warner Brothers (see the 1945 short Hare Trigger, for instance).

Actually, there a a number of old cartoon shorts that make various real world allusions for comedic effect, but given those real world allusions are now becoming obscure, unfortunately much of the comedic effect of them has become as obscure as say Red Skelton, who was active as a comedian all the way from 1937 to 1981, and who died September 17, 1997. He was married twice and had one son who predeceased him, and actually also painted as a hobby when not performing.

COTD: Get away from me, Mr. Fatigue!

BAD NEWS: Two people were shot to death in a park!

GOOD NEWS: A light earthquake in Haiti caused no damage!

HUMOR: Stick his landing (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: July 19, 1848: The first American Women's Rights Convention began at Seneca Falls, New York (USA).

The roots of the Women's Rights movement in the United States are within the circa 1790-1840Second Great Awakening of mostly Christian denominations due to the rediscovery of theologian Jacob Arminius's Arminiamism -- and the reemphasis of the theology of the founders of various Protestant Christian branches -- and thus to reform society. The Mormon/Latter Day Saints Church also traces its founding to this, and it was also during this period of time that the Millerites were founded who believed that Jesus Christ would soon literally return (and thus the "Great Disappointment" when he did not), some of which became Adventists who still believe that Jesus Christ will be returning soon.

Alternatively it was proposed to me that Christ's second coming is more figurative and thus is when anyone behaves towards others as Christ would, given that in Matthew 25:31-46 Christ states that those who do something to the least of creatures also do so unto him. Also, the Seventh Day Adventists resulted from the Millerites and the Branch Davidians ultimately broke away from the Seventh-Day Adventists -- the so-called "David Koresh" unfortunately taking control of a cult of it and thus leading to the well-publicized 1993 Waco Siege which lead to about 78 deaths. The point here being that sometimes reforms can go wrong, but the quite arguably correct reform for women's rights began in the 1790-1840 Second Great Awakening since because it was so inclusive that it challenged the conventional belief that women had to be subordinate to men.

Starting around 1832 the Abolitionist movement to completely end the practice of slavery in the US began. Here it important to note that although the victory of the Northern Union states over the later Southern Confederate States of America during the 1861-1865 US Civil War undid the contradiction that the ability to enslave another human being was supposedly justifiable property rights that needed to be defended, that it would take until the 1955-1968 Civil Rights Movement for the descendants of those slaves to finally be granted the second step of equal rights to go with their freedom, but it is also important to note that women emboldened by the Second Great Awakening were often also abolitionists, and through their experience as abolitionists some also began to advocate equal rights for women, sometimes up to suffrage/the right to vote.

Here it should also be noted that women were often active in various Temperance movements about the same time as well, which revolved around combating alcoholism through either getting alcohol banned or promoting moderate drinking of alcohol over consumption of alcohol to deliberately get drunk. This because the ills of alcoholism were readily seen by each wife who had now-unreliable spouse as a result of their husband's alcoholism (Irish-American Frank McCourt details growing up with an unreliable, alcoholic father in his memoirs of Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, an additional irony here being that he apparently passed away on July 19, 2009). Yes, this is also what prompted "the Noble Experiment" of an almost-complete ban of alcohol within the US from 1920-1933 with the practice of Prohibition which actually proved to be counterproductive through encouraging too much of a black (illegal) market for alcohol and thus which lead to growing disregard for laws one simply did not like and thus more influence and control of society by organized crime Mafia types such as Al Capone. The Women's Rights Movement has fared much better, however, given women across the US gained the right to vote in 1920 and gained equal civil rights later but without any of the overt negative effects such as those seen during Prohibition -- again, they able to combine their efforts with those of others during the aforementioned Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1968, although it should be noted that the gaining of equal rights for various groups has occurred at various paces around the world -- and the aforementioned Women's Rights Convention on this date in 1848 is seen as an important starting point in that process.

The idea for the Convention started after a Quaker/Religious Society of Friends service on July 9, 1848. The various branches of Quakers are actually more progressive than other groups in that they allowed women to speak out instead of expecting them to be subordinate around 1690 and thus prior to the aforementioned Second Great Awakening (and even the First Great Awakening which had started around 1730), and four Quaker women (one of them may have had her two daughters with her) met with a non-Quaker friend named Elizabeth Cady Stanton for tea. After Stanton voiced her frustration with being treated as a second-class citizen, the five women then decided to have a convention for the various Women's Rights groups while the noted Women's Rights activists and fellow Quakers of Lucretia Mott and her husband James Mott were still in the area. They organized it rapidly, and although their advertisement for it only gave eight days notice, the advertisement was spread through being repeated by other papers such as the abolitionist Frederick Douglass's North Star newspaper. As well as this, the convention was held at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York (USA) since that chapel was built and backed by abolitionists as well as the correct expectation that the chapel itself would only be large enough to hold the crowd that would gather for the convention.

One of the main results of the convention was the final drafting of the Declaration of Sentiments which is patterned after the US Declaration of Independence but which instead of complete female independence declared the more modest goal of achieving equal rights with men since women and men were both human and thus were entitled to the same inalienable rights as men, the declaration then noting the various negative sentiments against men that prompted the declaration -- in short various ways how men were denying women those inalienable rights the same way the Declaration of Independence declares various ways the British king denied the American colonists their rights and thus made them second class citizens.

Also of note here is that whether or not women should express the sentiment they were denied the inalienable right of suffrage was the most debated since it was seen as the most radical and thus the most controversial one at the time, and that it was the aforementioned abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the only African-American at the meeting, and also a former slave, who spoke eloquently in favor of women's suffrage through likening it to why African-Americans should also have the right to vote -- a right which they finally won from the 1955-1968 African-American Civil Rights movement. This although according to the rules for the convention, Douglass should not have been allowed to speak upon this debate since it was on the first day of the convention, although Douglass and a small number of men were allowed to attended on the first day despite the groundwork rules stating men could only attend the second day -- hence why more but a still small number of men attended on the second day, along with many more women.

In the end the Declaration of Sentiments was endorsed by 100 signatures (68 women and 32 men) out of the 300 people that attended the Women's Rights Convention of July 19-20, some responding favorably upon the convention due to its progressivism (with to reform away abuses) but others chose not to comment upon it since it was both so unconventional and arguably also quite radical due to going so far as advocating women's suffrage. The ugly argument here being that since suffrage entails voting responsibility through knowledge of the issues being voted upon, then given how women were (unfairly) second class citizens at the time thus would not allow them to vote responsibly through the knowledge of the issues being voted upon -- an argument often used in denying other minority groups suffrage as well. Yet curiously enough it is true that one of the early successes of the Women's Rights Movement within the United States was indeed achieving suffrage and thus the right to vote by 1920, although it would take until the aforementioned 1955-1968 Civil Rights Movement that their inalienable rights became legally protected against the sexism which is typically discrimination against women.

It is also of note that despite the initial reluctance to press for women's suffrage, the 1848 July 19-20 Women's Rights Convention started something of a precedent for various women's rights groups to start holding later conventions as well -- but more often so that these various women's rights groups could coordinate their efforts to achieve suffrage and thus through their voting power a means by which they could more readily enact the political changes needed in order to achieve equal rights. A final irony of which is that despite the fears that women would not be knowledgeable enough to vote responsibly since they did not have equal rights, the granting of suffrage to women actually (and more fairly) helped to end the maleself-fulfilling prophecy argument that women could not be responsible enough to have equal rights -- a self-fulfilling prophecy which the Declaration of Sentiments passed by the Women's Rights Convention on this date correctly denied.

COTD: A piece of toast on bread.

BAD NEWS: 61 people were killed by a train collision in India!

GOOD NEWS: British Columbia's rate of HIV transmission has dropped 52% in fourteen years!

HUMOR: He is wise to ask (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: July 20, 1917: The Corfu Declaration was signed upon the island of Corfu during World War I (1914-1918), establishing a precedent for the formation of Yugoslavia on December 1, 1918.

Yugoslavia is a country I found of great interest since the 1991-1995Yugoslav Wars which lead to the country being broken up were brought to my attention during a period of time I was able to make some study of Eastern European History. Thus given my enthusiasm, I will try to be brief.

The former Yugoslavia was actually known by various names over its existence, but always at the least colloquially as "Yugoslavia" -- the name meaning a union of Slavic peoples -- and was formed from the idea that pan-Slavism ("pan" being Greek for "all" and thus reflecting the wish to form a nation which joined all of them together) by the Slavic peoples of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes could be used to counter the pan-Germanism which had lead to the formation of Germany and which had lead to the Austrian and thus Germanic culture half of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Various Slavic intellectuals signed the Corfu Declaration and the proposed country had representation at the 1919Paris Peace Conference which both concluded World War I in addition to forming new countries and shifting borders for more national self-determination, thus leading to it being established out of some of the remains of the quite multinational Austrian-Hungarian empire (the former Czechoslovakia was established from the Paris Peace Conference and would have a similar type of experience).

Suffice to say that even from the start and even with the unifying force of pan-Slavism, internal divisions between the Serb, Slovene, Croat, and the Montenegrins who were added when that kingdom was officially recognized as part of Yugoslavia in 1922 (it was annexed November 13, 1918, despite Yugoslavia not being official yet) worked against the unity of pan-Slavism against pan-Germanism. The main conflict then resulting from this was between the Serbs due to the idea of forming a "Greater Serbia" which was most strongly opposed by the Croats. This internal conflict was thus the reason why, when pan-Germanism reared its head again with the rise of Nazi Germany's successes in Europe, that Yugoslavia ceased to exist from 1941 to 1945 when it attempted to break out the orbit it had put itself into around Nazi Germany for the sake of security -- one proposed consequence of which is that since Nazi Germany had to pause starting on April 6, 1941 in order to take over Yugoslavia in order to guard southern Europe, it may have fatally delayed the Nazi German-lead invasion of the USSR starting on June 22, 1941 to the degree the invasion of the USSR then stalled and failed.

Within Yugoslavia there was resistance to the takeover of the country, however, and this is how the economic Communist Yosip Broz Tito came to prominence. Not only was he able to oversee notable success of his Yugoslav Partisans in active resistance against the invasion but he was also able to portray them as doing more to counter the invasion than the non-Communist Chetniks who were pro-Serbian -- Greater Serbia was one of their goals -- and who had their eventual collaboration with the occupying powers in order to counter the Communists emphasized enough that by 1943 the Allied Powers of World War II were supporting Tito and his Communists due to the necessity of winning the war. I say "portray them as doing more" and note the collaboration of the Chetniks as "emphasized enough" since both sides were guilty at times of attempting to use the occupying force to weaken the side that would oppose them after the more-unified effort against foreign occupying powers was resolved by victory -- the same type of thing occurred in China during the Chinese fight against the Japanese that lead into World War II, for instance -- but Tito was skilled enough that not only did this let him take control of Yugoslavia after World War II, but it also enabled him to balance the various internal ethnic conflicts so that they were not the undermining force they were before Yugoslavia was invaded. He even managed to ensure some political rights for the Albanian minority within the country through the creation of the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, and the fact that Tito was Croatian also helped to counter the pro-Serbian precedent there was and which the Croats were the strongest opponents of.

Although it should also be noted that Tito did resort to the political heavy-handedness common to those who practice economic Communism, such as by banning nationalism and thus the ethnic forces which had caused the country's divisive internal divisions prior to the 1941 invasion, one benefit of his Communist forces taking political control of Yugoslavia was that it prevented the USSR from propping up their own Communists as the new government of Yugoslavia and thus prevented Yugoslavia from becoming a satellite or client state locked in a figurative orbit around the USSR such as what happened for many of the countries that the USSR liberated from Axis control during World War II. This was formalized by the Tito-Stalin Split of 1948, which like the eventual Sino-Soviet Split (between China and the USSR) in 1961 and the essential split of Romania from the USSR due to Nicolae Ceausescu forming a cult of personality about himself around 1965 thus made Yugoslavia (and China, and Romania) unusual allies of the economically capitalist West and thus levers they could use against the economically communist East. The effect of which was not only greater political independence for Yugoslavia but also better economic support since the US was then also able to extend economic aid to Yugoslavia via the Marshall Plan to help rebuild the country after the war, thus giving Yugoslavia a benefit that other newly Communist countries after World War II had to do without.

Tito died in 1980, but even before his death and during the 1970s Yugoslavia began to suffer economic problems through borrowing from the capitalist West to fund economic growth through producing products for exports to the West, but the following economic recession of the 1970s then left Yugoslavia with a significant debt problem that started to disillusion her people of its government. Following Tito's death and thus his significant ability to keep the multinational state of Yugoslavia more or less balanced, ethnic tensions and the idea of Greater Serbia began to threaten the country again, but the Communist influence over the country founded by Tito managed to keep it unified until the Autumn of Nations or collapse of the government of several economically Communist countries within Eastern Europe in 1989 lead to the Yugoslav Communist government conceding and thus in 1990 holding elections that allowed greater democracy but also greater chance of more autonomy for its various ethnic peoples, something which former economic Communists such as the Serbian politician Slobodan Milosevic seized upon -- along with the old idea of Greater Serbia -- as a way of continuing their political careers. This therefore had the side effect of leading to the 1991-1995 Yugoslav Wars which lead to the eventual breakup of the country so that it once again no longer exists.

There are two ironies here: first that Yugoslavia's multinational organization was like that of the USSR (which is also populated by many Slavic peoples, thus why the former USSR tends to support southeastern Europe), thus how it was held together by the imposing force of politicians using economic Communism and thus how it disintegrated like the USSR when the imposing force of that economic Communism was removed, and second that despite the pan-Slavism that lead to the July 20, 1917 Corfu Declaration and thus the formation of the country being used as a means of countering pan-Germanism, the various ethnic groups fighting within Yugoslavia during the Yugoslav Wars sometimes engaged in "ethnic cleansing" which is similar to the genocide that Nazi Germany engaged in as part of the pan-Germanism more commonly known as the Holocaust. The sad fact being that as times and peoples change, attitudes about what is acceptable changes as well -- although like how various Nazis were tried for various war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace by the international community, so too have a number of former Yugoslav figures. The most notable figure of which so far may be the aforementioned pro-Serbian Slobodan Milosevic since his actions also lead to the 1999 NATO Bombing of Serbia which was the first-ever NATO military action.

Here too it should be noted that although Serbs are often noted in connection to such activities as ethnic cleansing due to the precedent of the idea of Greater Serbia, ethnic cleansing was undertaken by other ethnic groups in Yugoslavia as well, most notably that undertaken by the notably main Serb opponents of the Croats against the Serbians (also see Genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995). But at the same time it should be noted that trying to find a way to end the madness pan-whatever upon the Slavic peoples of southeastern Europe was the motivation by which pan-Slavic forces signed the Corfu Declaration to protect some of the Slavic peoples there, despite the later and quite ugly imposition of Communism and then the balkanization of the country that occurred.

On a somewhat related note, one of the better known legacies of the former Yugoslavia are the various models of the 1980-2008Yugo (more properly the Zastava Koral) which was sold both in Europe and the United States and which some like the Car Talk radio program have included on their lists of worst cars of all time (see here). The primary reason why being that the Yugo used old technology to be inexpensive but use of that old technology thus made them less durable and thus vehicles that would readily develop problems without high maintenance. This in itself, unfortunately, thus provides a metaphor for why Yugoslavia failed despite the pan-Slavic optimism of those who signed the Corfu Declaration: because was composed of older ethnic nationalities that tended to divide the country without the imposition of higher maintenance from either Tito or his fellow Communists. Although more mundanely, the problems maintaining a Yugo have lead to Yugo jokes about their unreliability becoming a common convention for humor.

COTD: Remember that if you like doing what's illegal, the law is always biased.

BAD NEWS: California has a whooping cough epidemic!

GOOD NEWS: UAL posted its first profit since 2007!

HUMOR: Gold digger (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 21, 356 BC: A young man named Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, in an effort to immortalize himself to history.

Herostratus appears to have been a Greek as the city of Ephesus was first a Greek and then later a Roman city -- Ephesus is of this writing in southeastern Turkey -- and not only did the Ephesians torture Herostratus to death due to Artemis being quite respected amongst them, but they even banned mention of Herostratus's name upon pain of death in order to prevent Herostratus from being immortalized by history. A record of the event was made and is attributed to the Greek historian Theopompus, however (he may not have actually recorded it), hence why the somewhat obscure term "Herostratic" is sometimes used to describe those simply seeking fame no matter what the cost.

Artemis was identified as being the goddess of the moon, the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and young girls, and bringing and relieving disease in women. Her Roman equivalent was Diana, and the Ephesians also found an equivalent in Artemis with their previous goddess of Cybele (this comparative theology thus shows why co-opting aspects of other religions is rather common). The point to make here for those familiar with Christianity is the fact that Artemis is actually mentioned in the Biblical book of Acts (Acts 19:21-41) which is seen as laying the foundations of the Christian Church: in short, it is where the apostle Paul's work is said to be so successful that a silversmith named Demetrius and who made Ephesus a prophet through silver models of Artemis got the people of the city to start rioting against Paul and his Christians, although it was only Paul's later missionary work at Jerusalem got him arrested due to another riot -- he then appealing to Rome on the grounds he was a Roman citizen and thus was likely killed as a result of Emperor Nero blaming Christians for the 64 AD Great Fire of Rome (hence why the "666" in the Biblical book of Revelation is likely a coded reference to Nero).

Although Artemis is depicted in many ways, the way she was depicted at Ephesus was what today might be seen as an excessively female fertility symbol with many breasts, which is likely why she was simplified as "the mother goddess" in an earlier pro-Christian recount that I read about the incident with Demetrius prompting a riot against Paul. As for the Temple of Artemis, following Herostratus's arson it was first reconstructed in 323 BC (some debatable accounts maintain that since Artemis was preoccupied with Alexander the Great being born on the date when the incident took place, this is why she allowed her temple to be burned down). Like many of the ancient "Wonders of the World," however, it no longer exists due to natural decay (most of that decay coming from earthquakes shaking the wonders down) or outright destruction by human hands. In the case of the Temple of Artemis, raiding Goths also destroyed the 323 BC reconstruction in 268 AD, and (ignoring the account of the temple being destroyed by Christian prayer in the apocryphal Acts of John) was destroyed a final time by a mob after Ephesus had largely converted to Christianity in 401 AD.

The "Wonders of the World" that the Temple of Artemis was also deserves some attention since it is sometimes alluded to yet is not often specified, perhaps because those wonders actually vary depending upon who records them. The first list of seven wonders which are commonly termed the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" was recorded after the Macedonian Alexander the Great conquered and thus unified the world from southeastern Europe (the Balkans) and Egypt all the way east to what is today India during 336 to 323 BC, the result being greater tourism and thus lists of "theamata" or "must see" sites. Of these theamata, a list recorded in a poem by Antipater of Sidon circa 140 BC which had seven wonders on it became best-known (some maintain that the ancient Greeks and Macedonians viewed seven as a number of purity), hence the precedent of having seven wonders.

Antipater praised the aforementioned Temple of Artemis most of all, but the only Ancient Wonder still in existence and not in ruins today -- although it certainly shows the deterioration of time since it was built circa 2560 BC -- is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. And perhaps appropriately enough for those reading these words, in 2006 the Newspaper USA Today and the television program Good Morning America picked "Internet" with its location of "Earth" as fifth upon their lists of new Wonders of the World.

COTD: Illogic is not a substitute for logic.

BAD NEWS: Up to 701 people were killed by flooding in China!

GOOD NEWS: UAL posted its first profit since 2007!

HUMOR: That's because it's "rubberloin" (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: July 22, 1298: England defeated Scotland at the Battle of Falkirk during the Scottish Wars of Independence.

This battle is also worth noting again due to the fact that Mel Gibson was recently in the news for reported bigotry as of this writing, Mel Gibson being both an actor and director who starred as the William Wallace mentioned here within the historically inaccurate yet moving 1995 film about Wallace titled Braveheart, which Gibson also directed.

In short, the reason for the eventual union between Scotland and England in 1707 was disputed ascension to the Scottish throne around 1296 along with English interest in and provision of aid in the dispute. The dispute is also why there were "Guardians of Scotland" instead of kings as the head of the Scottish government at times, and William Wallace was the Guardian of Scotland between 1297 and 1298. The two battles which mark Wallace's tenure as Guardian of Scotland are the September 11, 1297 Battle of Stirling Bridge and the aforementioned Battle of Falkirk, both of which are portrayed in the aforementioned Braveheart.

The 1297 Battle of Stirling Bridge was a shattering defeat for the invading English since a Scottish army consisting of inferior numbers of troops was able to cut the English army in half due to the bottleneck of the English crossing the narrow Stirling Bridge, which also collapsed under the weight of retreating English troops, thus enabling the Scots to defeat the English (accompanied by some Welsh troops) in a piecemeal fashion. Oddly enough and reflecting its inaccuracies, the bridge is completely absent in the film of Braveheart, but accurate to history and within the film, this prompted King Edward I of England to return from attempting to expand English territory in France -- again a result of a disputed ascension to the throne, given that the English King William I "the Conqueror" had been a Duke of Normandy in France -- and thus also lead to the aforementioned Battle of Falkirk that occurred on this date in 1298.

The Battle of Falkirk is more realistically portrayed in Braveheart, although there is some question about whether or not some of the account of it is correct. Some state that the nobleman Lord "Red Comyn" and his forces were at the battle but then betrayed Wallace to remove him as a potential rival for power. As such there is a question of whether or not Red Comyn with his offensive force of cavalry (on horseback, thus much more mobile) persuaded Wallace into confronting the English at Falkirk and then abandoned him to defeat, but Red Comyn's role or not, Wallace had mostly a force of defensive schiltrons -- formations surrounded by shields with long spears pointed outwards to defend against an attack -- which although it could not be broken by an initial cavalry attack was successfully distracted with an infantry attack (soldiers on foot) so that the English were then able to attack with archers using longbows to fire arrows into the undefended schiltrons who could not divide their attention. Once this thinned out and thus weakened the Scottish numbers, then the English sent their offensive cavalry back in to smash the weakened schiltrons which thus sent the remainder of the Scottish army fleeing into the nearby Torwood Forest (not the "Sherwood Forest") since they no longer had a defensible position.

An important point to note here is that despite the 15,000 strong English defeating the 6,000 strong Scots so that 2,000 Scots were killed and 1,000 had to be abandoned (2,000 English troops were killed), Wallace had adopted a "scorched earth" policy which had deprived the English of resources to press further north and thus to (re-)conquer Scotland to put an end to the war, even though the loss of the Scots at Falkirk prompted Wallace to resign as Guardian of Scotland (although he remained involved in the fight against the English). As well, the initially-strong defense of the schiltrons caused the loss of some of the most loyal supporters of King Edward I, thus he was unable to maintain enough discipline amongst his troops to follow up with further battles that could slowly bring the English closer again to the (re-)conquest of Scotland. In short, although the English won the battle it did nothing but continue to stalemate the war.

The reason why Braveheart is historically inaccurate is because part of its source is the writer "Blind Harry's" book the Wallace, which he wrote 170 years after the events in question during a period of strong Scottish resentment against the English and which appears to be drawn in part from traditional oral and yet anecdotal stories about Wallace that were circulating at the time, thus which is likely as romanticized as the debatable English folk hero "Robin Hood" at times (ironically enough, and thus my earlier emphasis about how the Scottish army retreated through the Torwood and not the Sherwood Forest). As such, this might also explain why the English are so demonized and why they show so much bigotry in Braveheart (something I believe our English moderator Arcaton has understandably criticized) -- an irony of which is that if the current accounts about actor-director and now also producer and screenwriter Mel Gibson are correct, despite portraying the romanticized figure of William Wallace within Braveheart he might actually be as guilty of bigotry as the English within that movie were portrayed as. The ultimate point of which being that art is not always an accurate reflection of life, no matter whether if it reflects it as being better or worse.

COTD: Happiness is seeing "This post was made by Evil Troll who is currently on your permaban list."

BAD NEWS: A mother and her four children were killed in a fire!

GOOD NEWS: A pizza man saved another man's life!

HUMOR: Superior (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: July 23, 1943: The Treblinka camp was opened in Poland by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust of World War II (1939-1945).

The Holocaust is already quite documented, and although there was a distinction made between "concentration camps" merely to imprison people indefinitely and "extermination camps" to murder people en masse -- they actually existed alongside each other at the most notorious location of Auschwitz, for instance -- the methodology in any of the camps was much the same: by providing some psychological hope hope it helped keep those within the camp docile and thus more manageable that their situation would only be temporary ... until they were literally worked to death from exhaustion and starvation and sickness or else deliberately executed, that is. This is best reflected in the fact that the gates to Auschwitz were topped with a sign reading "Arbeit macht frei" and why the gates of Buchenwald were topped with a sign reading "Jedem das Seine," which mean "Work makes you free" and "To each according to his merits," respectively.

One of the reasons that liberating these camps was never pursued all that aggressively until actually coming across them during the course of the war was that the imprisonment and execution of the persons there was so brutal and systematic that reports of what was going on in the camps were dismissed as exaggerations, even despite evidence of the atrocities being smuggled out. The sad fact being that while those outside of the camps were in denial about what was going on within them, what was being reported was indeed going on within them. The reason for the denial may be because such concentration camps existed as early as 1933, but it was not until Operation Reinhard first put into effect in 1939 to better control Poland though genocide of "inferior" people such as Jews was expanded in 1941 to make up for the shortcomings of the roving Einsatzgruppen in murdering whatever persons of "inferior" races that they could find through making it systematic. Thus how in 1941 why camps explicitly designated as "extermination camps" such as the Treblinka II camp -- to which there was also a supporting Treblinka I "Arbeitslager" or forced labor camp which appears to be akin to a concentration camp but with much fewer deaths and also consisting of captured persons who were not of ethnic groups or nationalities commonly grouped together with the "inferior" groups of the concentration and extermination camps (the distinction between Arbeitslagers and the other camps is admittedly not entirely made clear, however).

Of course despite the false "Work makes you free" type hope provided, some understood how they were being lied to and thus offered resistance. Part of which was avoiding stooping to the level of a ruthless animal in order to survive and thus which kept one easier to control -- or to put it as Holocaust survivor Primo Levi put it, avoiding descending too far into the "Grey Zone" where one aided in the brutality of the various camps in an effort to gain enough favoritism or benefits to survive yourself, such as seen in some of the mostly-Jewish Sonderkommandos who assisted in the processes of the camps or the opportunistic brutality (beatings and stealing bread) shown by some of the stronger prisoners towards some of the weaker prisoners -- even direct relatives -- such as Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel describes in his memoir Night.

The other part of that resistance was that resistance groups would form to help prisoners escape the camps and sometimes violent revolts by those imprisoned would take place. At the notorious Auschwitz and more precisely at Auschwitz-Birkenau on October 7, 1944, the aforementioned Jewish Sonderkommandos actually attacked their SS guards (the SS were theSchutzstaffel, extreme Hitler loyalists who were often his bodyguards) with stones, work tools, and homemade grenades. They managed to overpower them and then to blow up Crematorium IV using explosives smuggled in by female inmates who worked at a weapons factory, then were joined by the Birkenau Kommando I Sonderkommandos of Crematorium II who overpowered their guards so that hundreds escaped -- however they were all soon captured and executed, along with other Sonderkommandos implicated in the revolt.

The aforementioned Elie Wiesel also notes that the Buchenwald camp he was in when he was finally liberated was the site of another revolt at the end of his memoir Night, Communist inmates apparently managing to steal one machine gun and 91 rifles over the years with which they attacked their guards on April 8, 1945 to keep from being forced to evacuate the Buchenwald camps which were then being overrun and thus liberated starting on April 4, 1945. Suffice to say that as these various camps were overrun the Allied armies which had dismissed the reports about them as exaggerations were finally forced to admit the reports were not actually exaggerations, and the part of the reason Wiesel survived was that he was faking sickness for the marginally better survival tactic of resting in the infirmary to save his strength at that time -- I say "marginally better" since he actually became very sick while in the hospital.

The Treblinka camp that was opened on this date in 1943 was also the site of a rebellion on August 2, 1943 -- not that long after the camp was opened -- in which the prisoners overpowered their guards by sheer numbers and thus armed themselves, then set fire to the various buildings with kerosene that actually lead to the deaths of many of their fellow prisoners along with the guards but which succeeded in allowing about 600 of the 1,500 prisoners at Treblinka at that time to escape. About 40 of them survived to the end of World War II, and with the damage from the uprising plus the fact that the massacre of the Jews of Poland -- the primary targets of the aforementioned Operation Reinhard -- had been declared complete by October 19, 1943, Treblinka was actually shut down sometime near the end of November that same year.

Sobibor was actually the site of the best-known rebellion on October 14, 1943, since a British television movie titled Escape from Sobibor was made about it in 1987 which was then aired on the US CBS television network. The resistance in the camp had planned to covertly kill off enough of their guards so that they could simply walk out the front gates of the camp on that date, after they had managed to kill eleven of the SS and a number more of the camp guards their killings were discovered so that they then staged a mass breakout under fire from the remaining guards. Of the 600 in the camp at the time, about 300 managed to escape into the surrounding forests where unfortunately many more of them were killed by mines surrounding the camp or else recaptured and then executed so that only about 50 to 70 of them ended up surviving to the end of World War II -- many of the survivors being found and hidden by sympathetic Poles at the cost of their own lives -- although despite this it makes the Sobibor rebellion the most successful one of the war. Again, as in the case of Treblinka, massacring the Jews of Poland per Operation Reinhard in order to remake Europe through opening new lands to resettlement was the primary reason for the Sobibor camp, and it was shut down shortly after the uprising -- both due to the damage done both to the camp and to the attempts to hide what was actually going on to prevent any type of resistance.

Aside from the more passive resistance of not descending to the brutal level of a feral animal or of violently rebelling, sometimes smaller escapes from the camps and via the help of resistance organizations was the form of resistance used. In the case of the Auschwitz camps, 802 individual or small group escapes were attempted of which 144 are known to have been successful. Starvation of would-be escapees was the common punishment for an unsuccessful escape attempt and starvation of ten random persons plus the prominent display of an escapee's family members in a camp was the common punishment for a successful escape attempt -- both of course in order to deter future escape attempts. But although Auschwitz is perhaps the most notable of the camps and an estimated 1.1 million people were murdered there, it was indeed camps like Treblinka that are notorious for being formed more explicitly for the murder of more of the six million estimated Jews (again, under Operation Reinhard) who were killed by the Holocaust which thus murdered between eleven million and seventeen million estimated persons overall, although Jews were indeed the primary group deemed to be "ethnically undesirable" amongst the many groups of Holocaust victims.

COTD: Pay no attention to the man in the fluorescent suit.

BAD NEWS: Tropical Storm Bonnie has halted the Gulf of Mexico cleanup!

GOOD NEWS: Ford posted a huge profit!

HUMOR: Humble (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 24, 1915: 844 people were killed in the SS Eastland disaster at Cicero, Illinois (USA).

Another figure I read said 845 people were killed in the disaster, but this may be due to confusion about how sometimes entertainer Jack Benny or US NFL Chicago Bears pioneer George Halas might be claimed as having been on the Eastland when they actually were not. Likewise, since the Eastland is a ship is likely is not as familiar to readers as the American-owned but English-operated Titanic, but also suffice to say that the Eastland disaster does actually have a connection to the April 14, 1912 Titanic disaster.

The Eastland was built during 1902 to 1903, and having a too high of a center of gravity such as was common amongst other Great Lakes Passenger Steamer (meaning they had routes upon the Great Lakes and the rivers around them) was also found amongst its design flaws. It was "top heavy," in other words, which caused the ship to easily list (to roll to one side). This was particularly noticeable when many passengers were on her upper decks, thus why as early as 1903 there was an instance where overcrowding aboard the ship caused it to list badly enough for water to actually flow aboard the ship via one of its gangplanks, as well as another notable but non-fatal listing incident in 1906.

One of the reasons of the aforementioned Titanic disaster was outdated regulations which allowed shortcuts to be taken regarding the safety of the ship, the one of which would effect the Eastland the most being not enough lifeboats (although not filling those lifeboats completely due to worries about getting at least some passengers to safety as well as the mistaken hope or confidence Titanic could stay afloat until rescue also helped lead to the estimated 1,517 deaths of that disaster). The US then passed the Seaman's Act in 1915 in order to retroactively require that all American ships should carry enough lifeboats for everybody to prevent such a disaster from happening again, thus overriding concerns that the Great Lakes Passenger Steamers like the Eastland should be exempt from the Seaman's Act since the additional load of lifeboats on their upper decks would make them more top heavy and thus prone to listing such as the Eastland was with her overly-high center of gravity design flaw -- which had already prompted special restrictions as to the number of passengers she could carry in order to avoid further listing incidents.

On the morning of July 24, 1915, the Great Lakes Passenger Steamers Eastland as well as the Theodore Roosevelt and the Petoskey were chartered to take Western Electric Company workers from Cicero, Illinois to Michigan City, Indiana, for a company picnic. Boarding started at 6:30 AM, and by 7:10 AM the ship was at her capacity of 2,752 passengers -- many of which chose to stand upon the open but top heavy upper decks, although more chose to remain within the ship to keep warm. With the new lifeboats retroactively fitted onto the ship and her design flaw of too high a center of gravity, she then began to list to port (left) and thus away from the wharf at which she was anchored. The crew's attempt to correct the list through selectively letting water into the ballast tanks which are used to help balance out a seagoing vessel produced minimal results, and within the next fifteen minutes a number of passengers started to congregate upon the port side of the ship -- perhaps due to canoe race that was passing by that side. In short this caused the Eastland to first lurch to port, then to capsize onto her left side so that many of the hundreds aboard but inside the ship trying to keep warm were then crushed by items shifting aboard the ship (survivors of the sinking of Titanic reported hearing sounds of a similar event when the aft or back end of the ship when it rose straight up due to the bow or nose of the ship nosing down during its sinking) or else were drowned by water which then flooded into the ship.

Despite being at a dock of the Chicago River and thus an almost-immediate rescue response, the capsizing of the Eastland due to the overloading weight on the top of her and her too-high center of gravity caused 844 deaths. After this she was raised on August 14, 1915 and turned into a gunboat (designed to bombard costal targets) named Wilmette which was commissioned by 1918 due to World War I, but given this was so late in the war she saw no combat. She was then used as a naval reserve training ship for much of the time until 1946 -- she undergoing a final name change to IX-29 in 1941 -- where she was unsuccessfully offered for sale, which resulted in her being scrapped in 1947.

Although 844 deaths is a considerable loss of life, the lack of infamy such as that found through the estimated 1,517 deaths and total loss of the Titanic on her maiden voyage of 1912 has caused the Eastland to be largely forgotten despite her connection to the Titanic. As of this writing the most public knowledge about the Eastland is a historical marker placed along the Chicago River at the site of the incident, but with the connection to the Titanic disaster the lesson of the Eastland disaster becomes more clear: although being thorough in ensuring the safety of passengers aboard ships is paramount, one needs to avoid any counterproductive side effects from those safety measures ... such as the additional heaviness from lifeboats aboard a too top heavy ship and thus which helped to enable the Eastland disaster.

COTD: Demonize your opponent, it's nothing new.

BAD NEWS: Alarms were actually shut off to prevent false alarms for that oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico!

GOOD NEWS: Tropical storm Bonnie is weakening!

HUMOR: More concise (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 25, 1536: Spanish conquistador Sebastian de Belalcazar, during his search for "El Dorado," founded the city of Santiago de Cali (now Cali, Columbia).

According to one account Belalcazar first arrived in the "New World" of the Americas with Italian navigator Christopher Columbus upon Columbus's third voyage (out of four) to the Americas in 1498, but it is more likely he fled to and began conquests within the Americas for the Spanish in 1507 after killing someone's mule and due to wanting to escape the poverty he had grown up in.

Columbus of course proposed sailing west for trade with the Indies due to the mistaken belief this would be faster and would allow foreign countries to bypass the Portuguese monopoly of sailing east around Africa -- thus bypassing the land routes which were blocked by the Ottoman Empire -- and the Spanish accepted his proposal because even if he was not right there was a chance he might find new lands to exploit (that Columbus sailed to prove the world was not flat is a common misconception due to conflict between science and religion, and a consensus held that the world was round long before Columbus). Thus why in the case of the Spanish conquest of much of South America northward to the continental United States multiple conquistadors would conquer whatever native peoples they might find in order to force them to turn over whatever gold or wealth they might have, then used them as slave labor to exploit the land for more in addition to forcibly assimilating them into the colonies they were setting up -- which the aforementioned Santiago de Cali was one of the cities of.

The case of the supposed "El Dorado" Native American city of gold that Belalcazar and others were looking for comes from subjective anecdotes about Muisca people. In Muisca mythology, gold represents the energy of their Chiminigagua trinity which embodies the creative power of everything that exists. As such they did not only prize gold but they used it in initiation ceremonies for their new kings or high priests -- the new prime king or priest and his subordinates would strip naked but would adorn themselves with gold dust and such before using a golden raft of rushes to float out upon Lake Guatavia (near Bogota, Columbia) where the gold on the raft would be thrown as an offering (presumably to the Chiminigagua trinity) into the lake and after which the initiation would be complete and the authority of those on the raft recognized.

The above was noted in the 1638 El Carnero "the Billygoat" account written by one Juan Rodriguez Freyle and which tells about some of the aforementioned conquests, the "El Dorado" being the Spanish "the golden one" term Freyle applied new Muisca king or high priest that he observed being initiated. Subjective anecdotes resulted in the wealth upon the raft being expanded into supposedly an entire and real city with the name of the new king/high priest "El Dorado" then used to name that supposed city. The sad fact being that although the Muisca people treasured the small amount of gold they had was because of its sacred connections instead of due to having an abundance of it, thus only helping to fuel the exploration and exploitation of the voluntary and opportunistic but better equipped armies of conquistadors which helped decimate the native culture of the area (early official Spanish attempts to stop abuses were ignored) while taking what little gold they could exploit from the land in the process of looking for more.

As of this writing, the most recent widespread reference to "El Dorado" was in the 2000 fictional animated film The Road to El Dorado, where in two con artists come into possession of a map showing the location of El Dorado, then end up inadvertently stowing away aboard the fleet of conquistador Hernan Cortez en route to his conquest of the Aztec empire (much of which is within what is today modern Mexico) in 1519, the capital of which here is presented as the fictional El Dorado instead of as the more historically accurate Tenochtitlan (which is today Mexico City). This does help explain why the con artists accept many "El Dorado" gold treasures as a substitute for the Aztec human sacrifices being offered them (the logic being it gives life back to the gods) as well as a boat to get back to Spain with, however. With the help of Cortez's (fictional) horse Altivo and a native female thief named Chel who trades her silence and assistance to them to escape justice, they end up saving El Dorado from the more ruthless Cortez via heroically sealing the cavern which is the entrance to the city in order to hide it, although this costs the con artists their gold and their ship and thus strands all four of them outside of El Dorado and within the New World in the process -- although they still all have each other.

The above version of El Dorado is also based upon subjective anecdotes about the Mayan and Incan cultures as well as the fictional culture of Atlantis in addition to the Aztec culture. In that sense it shows how subjective and quite creative anecdotes about the supposed city are much more interesting than the Muisca "El Dorado" ritual that inspired it and thus why it has become a stock anecdote in itself -- rather like the stock anecdote of a Fountain of Youth enabling eternal life (eternal life being a common anecdote in itself) which has even more obscure origins and which often seems to be in a fantastic nearby foreign land and thus not necessarily the Americas, although the most popular anecdote holds the Fountain of Youth is somewhere in the US state of Florida. As well, the "Water of Life" that restores life in fairy tales appears to be based upon it, but also suffice to say that fantastic anecdotes are much more interesting and inspiring than Juan Rodriguez Freyle's "El Dorado" stripping naked and throwing gold into Lake Guatavia -- so much so that this time the "Fountain of Youth" appears to be the bridging plot device between Disney's special effects-laden third and fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movies: namely the 2007 "At The World's End" and (as of this writing) the scheduled 2011 "On Stranger Tides."

COTD: If you are comfortable in your beliefs, isn't that enough?

BAD NEWS: Nineteen people died at a free dance festival in Germany!

GOOD NEWS: Street Fighter and Tekken will have some crossover games!

HUMOR: The way to be (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 26: 1875: In the US state of California, Charles "Black Bart" Bolles made his first robbery from a Wells Fargo (a financial services company) stagecoach.

Not much is known about "Black Bart" save for the fact that he had been a gold miner and had fought for the northern Union and had a distinguished career during the US Civil War (1861-1865), and it appears he took up robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches due to an unpleasant but not entirely disclosed 1871 incident he wrote to his wife that he would avenge himself for. His distinguishing characteristics were his polite instead of profane language and good manners even while holding others at gunpoint, how he always made his robberies on foot since he was scared of horses, plus how he covered his body with sacks and linens to better disguise his appearance. He gained the name "Black Bart" because he left two little angry poems at the scene of his August 3, 1877 and his July 25, 1878 robberies and which he signed "Black Bart" during his 1875 to 1883 robbery career. Caught in 1883 and released in 1888 due to his good behavior, his health had visibly deteriorated and he wrote his wife one last time about wanting to get away from everybody before never being seen again -- he never returned to his wife in Illinois, and had stopped writing her for some time after 1871 hence how she had assumed he had died while off prospecting in Montana at that time.

From the real Black Bart was derived the fictional Black Bart stagecoach robber of the so-called American Dime novels. Such novels did not always cost a dime but were the inexpensive precedent for comic books, mass market paperback books, and of the pulp magazines which between their ability to be distributed further and their tendency to carry sensationalized stories that easily drew attention thus made them profitable due to their quick and inexpensive construction. Improvements in printing technology by the 1920s made the use of cheapness through quickness less of a viable formula than quality, however, although during the late 1940s and early 1950s collecting dime novels became briefly popular again due to now-adult men remembering reading such novels when they were younger.

Like the aforementioned case of "El Dorado," therefore, the fictional Black Bart is therefore more interesting than the non-fictional one. Even more so since he is actually referenced by the main little boy character of Ralphie Parker (whom every male has now been told he looked like him at that age it seems) in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story which is now played quite extensively during the Christmas season due to becoming a classic, the film itself being derived from questionable anecdotal material from stories eventually written into book form by humorist Jean Shepherd about his childhood -- this because there is a question about how truthful his anecdotes were since humor was so often his goal.

As such, this may explain why Shepherd's anecdotes are condensed within the Christmas season near the end of the Great Depression era of the 1930s yet references the fictional Black Bart of the 1860s-1920s dime novels who was derived from the real Black Bart, although there is some mention of the term "Western Dime Novels" being used for some Western stories printed in the 1940s and thus where Shepherd may have got his reference to the fictional Black Bart from. The point here being that aside from the inevitable continuity errors from fiction and the almost-inevitable accidental anachronisms from someone putting together something fictional and about the past (up to 1980s material is seen despite the events taking place up to 50 years earlier, and also look at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/goofs) there is also the fact that the "time compression" possible from the speed of memory makes events over many years seem to occur all at once, thus for instance while the allusion to the 1939 movie version of Wizard of Oz and the Little Orphan Annie radio show sponsored by Ovaltine -- who ceased sponsoring it in January 1940 -- appears to date the events within the 1983 A Christmas Story as taking place within 1939, this might explain why Shepherd transplanted some fictional Black Bart reference he recalled from the late 1940s and early 1950s dime novel-collecting era back into 1939.

The Little Orphan Annie radio show actually had a decoder badge and not a ring, and never sent the message "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine" as said in the movie, although this is inserted as a subplot about being cheated out of what one expects. Plus although the Red Ryder BB Gun was introduced in 1938 (based out of what was originally a comic strip from 1938 to 1964) Shepherd apparently confused it with the concurrent "Buck Jones" BB Gun -- Jones a Western movie star of the 1920s to the 1940s -- which is the one with a compass and a sundial ("this thing which tells time") in the stock of the gun that Shepherd remembered. But although Shepherd did not correctly remember just which period he heard of the fictional Black Bart that he could pretend defending his family with his misremembered BB Gun, the fact is that Charles Bolles was the actual "Black Bart" of 1875 to 1883 upon whom the fictional Black Bart was based.

COTD: When people use peacemakers to make war, and noisemakers to make quiet, you know the mirror is lying.

BAD NEWS: Nineteen people were killed and 34 injured by fighting in Somalia!

GOOD NEWS: Britain's royal family is on Flickr!

HUMOR: He is lucky that way, too (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 27, 1996: Two people are killed (one indirectly) and 111 are injured when Eric Robert Rudolph's three pipe bombs in a backpack explode at the Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

Cases of terrorism -- that is to try and directly coerce one's opinion onto others through the use of terrible acts that cause fear, or else to manipulate others into distraction from rationality and thus distraction from opposition through that fear -- have actually occurred often in history but have often been overlooked due to arguably more evident and critical matters such as the many issues revolving around 1947-1991 Cold War, thus the ten years between the end of the Cold War and the September 11 Attacks were a time of increasing focus upon the issue of terrorism due to the resolution of many of the issues revolving around the more pressing Cold War. Evidence of this in the US is the greater focus upon the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, the 2000 USS Cole Bombing, and of course the aforementioned 1996 Centennial Park Bombing -- particularly after the September 11 Attacks prompted reflection upon the events which preceded them (the explosion and crash of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996 was an accident and not deliberate terrorism, although the initial fear it was terrorism sometimes causes it to be associated as such).

An important point to note about terrorism is that more often than not it tends to be more domestic and thus local than international. The international Islamic fundamentalist attacks (here stressing the word "fundamentalist" to avoid stereotyping all Muslims as being so) against the supposedly corrupting force of the West (meaning North America and Europe) from the Arab World (mostly Asia and Africa) -- ironically enough which were helped to be enabled starting with the USSR withdrawal from their 1979-1989 intervention in Afghanistan and which had absorbed much Islamic fundamentalist attention, a withdrawal which also foreshadowed the 1989 collapse of Communism in Europe and the 1991 collapse of the USSR -- tend to be an exception. Looking at the US between 1980 and 2000, for instance, 250 of the 335 terrorist incidents which occurred were incidents of domestic terrorism were Americans targeted other Americans due to them deciding to use fear to coerce others into accepting their opinion or to manipulate others into distraction from rationality and thus distraction from potential opposition. And the July 27, 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing was one of those incidents.

As such, the actual bomber of the Centennial Olympic Park was Eric Robert Rudolph, who not only bombed the Olympic Park but who also bombed an abortion clinic at Sandy Springs, Georgia (January 16, 1997 -- no deaths or injuries reported), a lesbian bar in Atlanta, Georgia (February 21, 1997 -- five injuries reported), and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama (January 29, 1998 -- two deaths and one injury reported). His motive was that as a member of the American far right and as a fundamentalist Christian he is white supremacist and anti-Semitic and is supposedly also anti-Socialist -- his stance against the politically leftist philosophy of Socialism being so extreme that he viewed the 1996 Olympics as a celebration of the evils of "global socialism," particularly in how such global socialism supposedly enabled abortions and other such ideas he was against in particular, so that it had to be countered in some way such as getting the games canceled or by at least handicapping them with fear. Caught and imprisoned after years as a fugitive in 2003 -- and more alarmingly, as the Jewish ADL (Anti-Defamation League) noted, apparently gaining the assistance of sympathizers who were also fellow extremists and members of hate groups during that time -- he plea bargained and thus avoided the death penalty in 2005 but is currently serving a number of life sentences for his act of terrorism, it also being noted that he murdered a police officer in 1998.

Rudolph failed in his attempt to get the 1996 Olympic Games to stop or even to handicap them with fear despite his bomb killing two people (the indirect death was a cameraman who had a heart attack running to the scene of the explosion) and wounding 111 others, but one misfortune of the bombing was that the security guard Richard Jewell who found Rudolph's bomb and thus who was a hero for raising an alert and starting an evacuation which saved lives -- it being important to note that Rudolph phoned a warning into the 911 emergency number while this was in progress -- but who was later implied to be a suspect through a "trial by media" process that kept emphasizing his possibly negative connections to the case. In short that since he had not accomplished much through only being a security guard he was possibly suffering from either "hero syndrome" through coveting attention to the degree of manufacturing a disaster he could counter for the praise and recognition it could bring him, or else that since his background of being an adult yet still living with his mother made him unusual enough to fit the unusual "lone wolf" type terrorist who identifies with unusual groups such as terrorists and thus who emulates them despite acting on their own. Firefighters who also become arsonists are noted as fitting the first definition while the actual bomber Eric Robert Rudolph fits the second, thus the additional tragedy in the case of Jewell is that the truth was projected onto him due to him also having an unusual background and regardless of his innocence -- guilt by association, in other words.

In October 1996 the FBI officially cleared Jewell and began following the evidence which lead to Eric Robert Rudolph being declared the suspect in early 1997 -- Rudolph's bombings then stopping due to him having to focus upon being a fugitive from justice for five years, thus preventing closure of the case -- Jewell filed a number of lawsuits which he stated were not for money but were for the principle of clearing his name of the libeling against him by the media due to the media using unreliable and incomplete information. Jewell was successful in or settled out of court with most of them, and was completely exonerated following the capture and acceptance of responsibility by the aforementioned real bomber Eric Robert Rudolph in 2005, although he later died on August 29, 2007 of severe heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and obesity.

The point to make here being that in addition to terrorism more often being domestic terrorism that was overlooked in the past, Eric Robert Rudolph was did partially succeed with his terrorism through manipulating others into distraction from rationality and through getting them to irrationally project their fear of terrorism onto the man who was actually the hero of the incident, Richard Jewell. Terrorism is not more about in succeeding at one's goal of disruption, in other words but is more about succeeding at the goal of distraction and thus prompting one's targets to start fighting against the heroes themselves.

DWOJ: Four.

COTD: Like a giraffe with a sore throat.

BAD NEWS: Consumer confidence keeps sinking!

GOOD NEWS: A toddler survived a rod penetrating inches into his brain!

HUMOR: Inanimate objects (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 28, 1976: An estimated 242,769 were killed (perhaps as high as 1.6 million) and 164,851 were injured by the 7.8 magnitudeTangshan Earthquake and its 7.8 aftershock in China.

The reason the Tangshan Earthquake was so lethal was because is occurred at 4:00 AM when most people were still inside and asleep, and also because it occurred in a location that was thought to be relatively safe from earthquakes and thus why many of the buildings there were not built to withstand earthquakes as well as being built upon unstable alluvial soil that had been deposited by water outside of a marine (ocean) setting.

Here it is important to note that although the Tangshan Earthquake in itself was bad enough, the fact that it occurred in 1976 helps mark the "Curse of 1976" in China. First suffice to say that if one ever wants to see why unfettered economic Communism or Socialism will not work -- there being slight differences between the two but both essentially referring to most economics being centered under direct government control instead of allowing private ownership and better competition -- then study Chinese history from the 1949 establishment of Communist China under Mao Zedong to the limited Capitalist economic reforms (Capitalism allowing private ownership and thus better competition, but which tends to become corrupt if not regulated by the government) instituted by Deng Xiaoping upon his coming to power in 1981.

1976 was of course a year near the end of that period of time, but in addition to the Tangshan Earthquake that year was also the fact that the politician Zhou Enlai who had begun the beneficial transformation of the Chinese economy that the aforementioned Deng Xiaoping would complete and who had solidified ties with the US in 1972 (the two more or less united against the USSR due to doctrinal differences which had lead to the 1961 Sino-Soviet Split) died of cancer on January 8, 1976. Also, as a result of hijacking Mao Zedong's too-radical Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976 in order to avoid Chinese culture lapsing into pre-Maoist Communist ways, the "Gang of Four" -- there were actually more than four involved with the gang, but there were four figures amongst them who were most prominent, in particular Mao's last wife Jiang Qing -- had come to power reportedly against the wishes of most Chinese and even reportedly against the wishes of Mao. Mao's death on September 9, 1976 also removed any real opposition to the Gang of Four (the Chinese words for "gang" and "four" are homophones and thus sound the same, the same way the English words "flower" and "flour" sound the same) -- and this because the cult of personality around Mao helped prompt the overlooking of the facts that some of Mao's failed policies such as his 1958-1961 "Great Leap Forward" attempt to communalize and rapidly industrialize helped lead to an estimated 30 to 70 million deaths due to agricultural shortfalls resulting from attempting the Great Leap Forward. But even before then, Mao's declining health had kept him from being real opposition and thus had resulted in the unpleasantNanjing Incident and Tiananmen Incident where attempts to mourn the passing of the aforementioned popular Zhou Enlai had been broken up on April 5 by force (April 5 of that year being the date of the Qingming Festival where the dead are honored).

Let me digress here for a moment that I have also heard that the 1958 short story Examination Day (by Henry Sleslar) was written for Western audiences (you may remember the name "Dickie Jordan" from it, but be sure to read the responses posted at the link) and thus might be familiar to some, as well as being in response to the madness of smothering power and control which had begun with the Great Leap Forward attempt of 1958. But to return to the Gang of Four, their motive in the Nanjing and Tianamen Incidents of 1976 was to impose the blame for them upon the aforementioned Deng Xiaoping, who as a successor to the popular Zhou Enlai would have presented them with serious opposition in the post-Mao era. Mao's designated successor Hua Guofeng surprised them by managing to gain the support of the Chinese armed forces and thus enough political support to remove the Gang of Four through having them arrested on October 6, 1976 and then convicted of various forms of treason in order to remove them from power, although the rehabilitated (due to his being previously targeted by the Gang of Four) Deng_Xiaoping would outmaneuver Hua Guofeng to become the preeminent political power until the 1990s and thus in the period between where he started resigning his posts and when he died (February 19, 1997). The irony being that the more flexible instead of dogmaticDeng Xiaoping Theory he developed allowed the some of the economic and political development which had previously been attempted and had gone so wrong by 1976 -- the "Curse of 1976" marked in particular by the Tangshan Earthquake that occurred on this date, or not.

However it should also be noted that incidents such as the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 (yes, this is where "Tank Man" comes from) implies that the post-Mao and thus the Deng Xiaoping Theory China still has some lingering issues from the "Curse of 1976" year.

DWOJ: Five.

COTD: Can fake eggs hurt your feet?

BAD NEWS: 152 people were killed when Airblue Flight 202 crashed!

GOOD NEWS: Being social improves your lifespan!

HUMOR: Sharp fingers (Lio, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: July 29, 1986: A jury ruled the US NFL violated antitrust laws against the USFL, but only awarded the rival USFL USD $1.00 in damages.

The US NFL (National Football League) was essentially a merger of a number of smaller professional American football leagues mostly during the 1920s and 1930s, although some of the remaining teams from rival leagues which went defunct were absorbed by the NFL even after that time and even though the entire AFL (American Football League) merged into the NFL as the AFC (American Football Conference) in 1970 -- this absorption actually being a common process amongst various sports leagues.

At least part of the reason for the success of the NFL is that it appeals to local sentiments through some of the largest American cities hosting those teams (which are thus often named after them) in contrast to some of the older teams which functioned out of smaller cities, amongst the many of which the many defunct franchises of Ohio outside of Cincinnati (which now hosts the Bengals) or Cleveland (which now hosts the Browns) in particular are notable (explaining Ohio's prominence is the fact it was once at about the geographical center of where the various NFL teams were based). As such, direct rival American-based leagues such as the 2000-2001 XFL have not fared as well due to the NFL already capturing most of the enthusiasm for them, and unfortunately this was also true of the USFL orUnited States Football League as well. As such they actually had their games during the period of time the NFL was in its off-season for the three seasons of 1983 to 1985 that it existed in but with plans to shift to the same time as the NFL season to capitalize upon enthusiasm for American football created by the NFL, but the USFL effectively ceased as a rival when it folded due to economic problems from aggressive budgeting in 1985.

Part of the USFL's problems was the aforementioned virtual monopoly the more-established NFL had in addition to the USFL's economic problems, however, thus why the USFL filed the aforementioned antitrust lawsuit against the NFL -- in short meaning that the NFL was unfairly stifling competition. The USFL was successful in its lawsuit on this date in 1986 but their victory was a Pyrrhic one in the sense that the jury found the NFL had used predatory tactics such as discouraging television broadcasts of USFL games to maintain a virtual monopoly but also found that the economic problems of the USFL and their planned switch to seasons at the same time as the NFL hurt their own ability to compete with the NFL successfully since the NFL had so much precedent in American football markets and the best hosting cities during that period of time. As well, they also discerned that the USFL was essentially confronting the NFL in the hopes this would encourage a merger which would eliminate a number of USFL teams and thus reducing financial burdens -- celebrityDonald Trump, who owned the New Jersey Generals team, has been noted as wanting a merger in particular.

As such the jury only awarded the USFL a minimal USD $1.00 award on this date, which in accordance to US antitrust laws was then tripled to $3.00, and which reached a total of $3.67 due to interest when it was finally paid by check in 1990 (the check was never cashed). It also turns out that the jury decided on $1.00 since they incorrectly thought the judge in the case could increase the award. The USFL appealed the decision but it was still affirmed in 1988 and thus prompted the formal dissolving of the USFL. They did, however, get awarded $5.5 million in attorney fees and $62,000 in court costs according to US antitrust laws allowing injured parties to recover those attorney fees and costs of litigation by 1990 (the delay until 1990 was because the NFL appealed that decision, although that decision was affirmed against the NFL upon appeal) but this still paled in comparison to the $160 million in debt the USFL found itself in by 1985.

Although the NFL absorbed no USFL teams, some of their players later ended up in the NFL and some of the innovations that the USFL followed -- such as allowing the two point conversion attempt after a touchdown score -- were then applied by the NFL as well. This is actually similar to how the XFL's following the convention of using a skycam during its games thus prompting the NFL to begin use of the skycam in their games as well (a small number of XFL players also found ended up in the NFL) but of course then the point becomes that these are arguably small and indirect contributions from such a massive effort such as going $160 million in debt and being originally awarded $1.00 for being subjected to predatory business practices is worth.

DWOJ: Six.

COTD: That's not my nickname for you.

BAD NEWS: 140 people died in a Congo boat accident!

GOOD NEWS: Dora the Explorer is ten years old!

HUMOR: Declaration of Independence (Get Fuzzy, by Conley)!

HISTORY: July 30, 1932: Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees short premiered.

YOUTUBE FILE: Flowers and Trees

Where the cartoon shorts of about eight minutes length originally played at was the cinema/movie theaters, which were essentially a form of television before television became pragmatic during the 1950s and 1960s. As such they had to be appealing in order to be purchased, thus after Flowers and Trees was begun in black and white and was 60% complete the aggressive Walt Disney (shorts by Warner Brothers also being a notable competitor) had it started over and completed in "three strip Technicolor."

The easiest way of explaining "three strip Technicolor" is to note there are multiple ways of showing color on film, and an inferior process of using "two strip technicolor" had been common previously. Disney had the fortune of seeing the superior quality of color in film produced by the three strip Technicolor developed by Herbert Kalmus and thus why he then aggressively switched Flowers and Trees as well as all the "Silly Symphony" shorts to color from that point in time -- although he deemed the shorts featuring Mickey Mouse popular enough to keep producing them in black and white for public releases until the February 23, 1935 the Band Concert.

Flowers and Trees is also notable because it not only helped prompt the creation of Academy Awards for Animated Short Films (previously for "Cartoons") on this date in 1932 but was what got Walt Disney twelve of the 22 Academy Awards he received. Even so, Disney's aggressiveness meant that production of shorts such as Flowers and Trees would start to decline starting around 1939 with Disney producing more feature length animated features (over an hour in length) such as the also three strip TechnicolorSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs which had been released in 1937. Even so, the commercial (popular) and critical (Academy Award-winning) success of such shorts as Flowers and Trees meant that it presented a foundation upon which Disney's "Golden Age" of animation between 1937 and 1941 would take place, producing multiple shorts starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto (but Silly Symphonies would be discontinued to free up productivity in 1939) while also seeing production of or the start of production of (given that they would only get released during the 1950s) such feature length features as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Dumbo.

The reason that some of these features only had "start of production" during this period of time -- they being released later and thus in the 1950s -- was because Disney's aggressiveness kept his animators overburdened with huge amounts of work and thus largely unpaid overtime followed by layoffs for the aforementioned 1937 Snow White, which even lead to Disney animators going on strike in 1941 (some of the clowns in the 1941 Dumbo are parodies of the strikers) and a number of his animators actually leaving the Walt Disney company over it. As well, this may also be why -- according to a documentary I saw -- that the Walt Disney company had some reluctance at starting to use extensive computer graphics for animation within the 1982 Tron, although by 1998 fully computer-animated films had become largely commonplace.

YOUTUBE FILE: Tron (1982): Lightcycle Race and Escape

In short, like the three strip technicolor that was used for Flowers and Trees, computer animation became quite popular both commercially and critically, but the reluctance to adopt the use of it was knowing the precedent of Disney's aggressiveness becoming counterproductive by asking for too much and thus alienating those who would be able to do it.

DWOJ: Seven.

COTD: Where have all the butterflies gone?

BAD NEWS: Over 400 people were killed by flooding in Pakistan!

GOOD NEWS: Eating white button mushrooms boosts your immunity!

HUMOR: Go lick your elbows (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: July 31, 1945: John K. Giles made his escape attempt from Alcatraz prison.

Alcatraz Island, nicknamed "the Rock," was originally named "La Isla de los Alcatraces" by the Spanish Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775. Although that translates as "the Island of the Pelicans" he was likely noting the large number of seabirds in general upon the island through using the more archaic "Alcatraces" term for pelicans instead of the more modern "Pelicanos" term for pelicans in particular.

Alcatraz first comes into American prominence between 1850 and 1861 as a location upon which to set up batteries (defensive guns) for the defense of San Francisco Bay, given the island is in San Francisco Bay, California (USA), but between 1861 and 1866 it was also used to imprison Confederate POWs (Prisoners Of War) from the 1861-1865 US Civil War. Upgrading the facility to provide sufficient costal defensive batteries proved to be too difficult with the island's isolated location following the Civil War, hence it was at that time it began to be more used as a prison -- its isolated location, the cold waters surrounding it which could cause hypothermia, and the treacherous currents which would tend to sweep people out to their deaths in the ocean if they tried to escape providing an added deterrent to escape attempts. By August 1934 it was switched over to a facility for civilian prisoners, one of the most famous of which was the Italian-American organized crime gangster Al Capone.

Given the reputation that Alcatraz had for being the most inescapable American prison due to being essentially a rock in the middle of the ocean (possibly the reason for its nickname), it became a popular American cultural reference the same way that Al Capone has due to Capone's shrewdness in exploiting loopholes to escape being convicted of his crimes (thus why he was ultimately only held accountable for income tax evasion). As such this is why my first recollection of Alcatraz was as a child repeatedly seeing the often-rebroadcast cartoon Rebel Rabbit on television (originally made in 1949 for cinema/movie theaters during the era before television became widespread, thus why such an obvious adult reference) since the character Bugs Bunny gets imprisoned there for outrageous behavior, but also apparently sometime after 1979 since I remember seeing my parents watching the 1979 Escape from Alcatraz movie on television as well (my father appreciates the acting of Clint Eastwood), and of course I have noted a number of other minor references as well since "Alcatraz" has become as much a synonym for "escape proof" as "Al Capone" has become for "gangster."

This does not mean that prisoners did not make escape attempts from Alcatraz, however, and although the aforementioned brilliant yet ruthless gangster Al Capone reportedly never made an escape attempt himself. In addition to impulsive and opportunistic escape attempts that seemed to be based more on the hopes that perseverance despite poor odds would somehow lead to success, some of the escape attempts proved to be quite resourceful and imaginative due to the effect of imprisonment providing little time to do much else but think in combination with providing motivation to get out since the freedom to do much of anything else was outside of the prison -- the hope being that prisoners reflect on their actions so they amend their behavior once they get out, but incorrigible prisoners instead using that time to devise escape attempts to get out early but without amending their behavior (as well, this also explains why sometimes prisoners are let out early for good behavior or for poor health which compromises their ability to misbehave). The aforementioned Escape from Alcatraz film my parents watched reflects the most thoughtful escape attempt made from Alcatraz on June 11, 1962, but the escape attempt that John K. Giles made on this date in 1945 is perhaps the second most thoughtful.

The reason that Giles was sent to Alcatraz on August 28, 1935 was because he was convicted of attempted robbery and murder which had got him sentenced to life in jail, as well as making several escape attempts. Part of the facilities on Alcatraz were to clean army uniforms, thus giving Giles access to them and enabling him to steal and hide parts of uniforms with which he assembled a facsimile of or else to steal an Army Technical Sergeant's uniform, as well as somehow managing to forge or obtain a forged pass to ostensibly permit him to travel to and from Alcatraz Island by 1945. When the ship General Frank M. Coxe arrived to presumably pick up the laundered uniforms, Giles slipped aboard the ship through a cargo hatchway below deck with his Army Technical Sergeant's uniform in order to initiate his escape.

The reason Alcatraz was being used for laundry services at this point was because the nearby Angel Island was then the site of Fort McDowell, a convenient location from which many US troops were transported out into the Pacific theater of World War II (1939-1945) and thus against the forces of Imperial Japan. Also suffice to say that measures such as head counts were in place to help prevent prisoners like Giles who were working upon the docks that day from escaping, hence why a head count which was then taken revealed one missing prisoner from the docks and one extra person aboard the General Frank M. Coxe. Alcatraz island then radioed to Angel Island to not let anybody off of the ship, and Alcatraz Assistant Warden E.J. Miller with some associates then following after the General Frank M. Coxe in a speedboat with presumably no radio in order to take whoever the escaped prisoner was back into custody.

Giles was unaware of the suspicion about him until the General Frank M. Coxe docked at Fort McDowell at Angel Island, when the Captain of the ship was ordered or when he followed his order to not let anyone off the ship in order to recapture the escapee. Unfortunately he assumed such an escapee would not have a pass and thus that the order meant not letting anybody off the ship who did not have a pass, hence Giles was able to bluff his way off the ship by showing his forged pass. He had another check to get through, however, in that officer of the day Lieutenant Gordon L. Kilgore noticed that the Army Technical Sergeant's uniform which Giles was wearing was incorrect -- a consequence of Giles not being able to know the Army codes for such uniforms. As such he then started questioning Giles, then eventually asked for his pass and was astute enough to recognize it was a forgery. As a consequence he then detained the found-out Giles until Assistant Warden E.J. Miller arrived to take him back into custody. Giles's escape attempt which had begun when the General Frank M. Coxe arrived at Alcatraz at 10:40 AM was therefore unavoidably over by 11:00 AM when Assistant Warden E.J. Miller then started him back from Fort McDowell upon Angel Island to the prison upon Alcatraz Island. He would therefore die while still imprisoned (but outside of the Alcatraz prison, which was closed by then) in February 1979.

Outside of the June 11, 1962 escape portrayed in the 1979 Escape from Alcatraz movie (released June 22, 1979, and thus ironically enough later in the same year that Giles died) and the escape attempt made by Giles himself on this date in 1945, the other most notable escape attempt made from Alcatraz was the Battle of Alcatraz during May 2-4, 1946 (and which I believe is referenced as background in the 1979 Escape from Alcatraz movie). Although considerably less successful, it emphasizes the brutality and ruthlessness often found within incorrigible prisoners who end up being sent to maximum security prisons like Alcatraz in that two guards and three inmates were killed as well as eleven guards and one inmate wounded in the battle. Tactics perfected as a result of fighting the Japanese during World War II had to be used to defeat the six prisoners after they were effectively blocked from managing to escape, resulting in the deaths of three of them and two of them being executed afterwards for murder -- some of that murder being to prevent the guards they managed to overpower at first from testifying against them.

As well, the so-called "Birdman of Alcatraz," Robert Franklin Stroud, is also memorable but not because of any escape attempts he made but because he was romanticized due to his eccentricity of caring for various birds presenting a popular image of prison as a facility that could prompt the thought which would rehabilitate prisoners from having destructive and selfish criminal behaviors into ones that would be constructive and selfless ones which would benefit society -- Stroud's work, for instance, contributed greatly to understanding and combating the pathology of diseases in birds. However, the fact is that Stroud was also apparently a psychopath with thus little empathy for other human beings but who can emulate that quite successfully in order to manipulate others into getting what they wanted. This is probably best emphasized by the fact that although Stroud endured a great deal to care for his birds, it was later found he was using some of the equipment he was given to care for the birds to make illegal alcohol instead. He also did not care for his birds at Alcatraz but at the US federal penitentiary of Leavenworth, Kansas -- he ending up being transferred to Alcatraz after his production of alcohol using his bird-caring equipment was discovered, and thus why he was not allowed to care for any birds there. The image of a prisoner in a maximum security prison like Alcatraz being rehabilitated through caring through little animals such as birds instead of remaining incorrigible as he was, however, remains a popular although incorrect image of him even to this day.

As for the use of Alcatraz as a prison, its inaccessibility and deterioration due to being so open to deterioration from salt water saturation from the water for so long, plus the problems of polluting San Francisco Bay from it, lead to it being too problematic and expensive to maintain so that it was closed on March 21, 1963, although it became a national landmark in 1986. Despite it being closed and despite a 1969 Native American Occupation of Alcatraz to protest for Native American rights with some limited success, however, it still remains most noted for serving as a maximum security prison and thus the site of escapes such as that made by John K. Giles on this date in 1945.

YOUTUBE: Touring Alcatraz.

DWOJ: Eight.

COTD: Have a good vacation, and try not to get yourself killed!

BAD NEWS: There is a huge fire in California!

GOOD NEWS: The US is taking steps to stop passport fraud!

HUMOR: But she is agreeing with you (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: August 1, 2001: Alabama (USA) Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore violated the American separation of Church and State by having a monument of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments installed in the judiciary building.

The reason for the legal Separation of Church and State -- of religion and government -- within the US was founded more so due to concerns about the coexistence of many Christian denominations within the new United States, given that they not following the state-sponsored Christian religions in the countries they or their ancestors had come from had kept them from worshipping freely there. This Christian precedence and therefore dominance may be why conservative politicians such as Bob Dole have declared the US to be a Christian nation, but the "Church" in Separation of Church and State has become interpreted as any religion in order to provide greater fairness.

The problem therefore becomes in interpreting when various government officials are passively referring to religion while in office or are actively supporting religion through their government office. Roy Moore's background offers some explanation why he would prompt such a controversy upon this date as he was raised by a pious family and was noted for his severe discipline as an MP (Military Police) commander while serving in the US Army from 1969-1974, after which he became involved with law and politics.

The first monument of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments Moore created was a hand-carved version he created for his office while working as a private lawyer, but which he brought with him and installed in his courtroom when he became a circuit judge in 1992, as well as opening his court sessions with prayer. He claimed this was not to create controversy but to note that religion established the moral foundation of law. Although debatable, the precedent of opening prayers in Alabama courtrooms was already being practiced, hence it took the wooden hand-carved version of the Ten Commandments that Moore had to draw special attention to his courtroom, and thus why the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) filed a lawsuit against Moore due to his Ten Commandments display and prayers causing a lack of separation between church and state, thus imposing upon freedom of religious choice for others. Although a decisive ruling was never made in this case, the Christian support it gained Moore helped propel him to becoming the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court by 2001.

In addition to the support of the Christian Family Association being one of the leading figures in using the popular Christian sentiment within the state of Alabama to elevate him to Chief Justice, he also greatly benefited from the support of Karl Rove as a strategist, Rove being nicknamed "Bush's Brain" due to being the strategist who significantly helped George W. Bush become Governor of Texas and later President of the United States. His campaign was largely religious-based and thus why he argued that Christianity's declining influence "corresponded directly with school violence, homosexuality, and crime," and when he was sworn in as Chief Justice he declared that the First Amendment for freedom of speech was based upon relating to the connection between God and law. As such, this is why Moore brought back his Ten Commandments again -- but this time as the more ostentatious display of a 5,280 pound (2400 kilogram) granite block, three feet wide by three feet deep by four feet tall, covered with various patriotic quotes and topped with two large carved tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

By October 30, 2001 a lawsuit was filed for the removal of the monument on the grounds it violated the separation between church and state through endorsing religion in general and Judeo-Christianity in particular. Moore's argument was that although he had explicit religious reasons for placing the monument but that it did not violate the separation between church and state since they both owed their allegiance to and acknowledgement to God despite church and state needing to be kept separate. Along these lines he noted a number of times authorities had acknowledged or mentioned God in speeches but while at the same did not interpret God as a binding precedent for upholding the law. By having his ostentatious display of the Ten Commandments installed, Moore definitely moved past passively referring to religion and to actively supporting religion via violating the Establishment Clause which essentially says government may not establish a religion nor show a preference for a religion in particular, thus why the US District Court therefore ruled against Moore on November 18, 2002. After appeals and other legal processes, Moore was required to have the monument removed by August 20, 2002 but chose to violate the ruling at a cost of USD $5,000 per day, hence why the eight other Alabama Supreme Court Justices intervened by overruling Moore (councils of judges are used at higher levels of the US judicial system, with an impartial civilian jury in the middle level as the council and solitary judges at the lowest levels). Given the weight and thus the difficulty of moving the monument it was not removed entirely -- although it was moved out of public viewing on August 27 -- until July 19, 2004. As well as this, avoiding completely removing the monument at first avoided potential confrontations with Moore's Christian supporters who continually rallied outside the Alabama Supreme Court.

In addition to Moore's stance on religion, it was also noted in the 2002 "D.H. vs. H.H." case of a lesbian who petitioned her ex-husband for custody of their children on the grounds he was abusive that while the Alabama Supreme Court dismissed the case due to technical reasons, in his opinion Moore also equated homosexuality with a subversive and criminal lifestyle and stated it was sexual misconduct that was thus grounds for divorce. This drew strong criticism from civil rights groups and an official complaint, although this was overshadowed by the issue of his ostentatious Ten Commandments monument. It was also because of Moore's Ten Commandments monument that a complaint was filed with the Alabama COJ (Court of the Judiciary) on August 22, 2002 which thus effectively suspended Moore until finding on November 13, 2002 that since Moore kept voicing that he would defy higher court orders about issues such as those revolving around his Ten Commandments monument since they were illegal, the COJ permanently removed him as a justice -- as well as effectively ending his career as a lawyer, judge, and politician. In particular it was found that his defiance of supposedly illegal court orders was particularly dangerous since it set the precedent of not following a court order simply because one did not like it.

It is also worth noting as an afterthought here that on occasion there are individuals interested in the issue of philosophy in addition to the issues of law and/or religion due to a general overall curiosity about just what is ethical and moral behavior and thus about what is good and truthful. The point being that although there are these multiple ways of pursuing what is good and truthful and thus why they may be similar at times, this does not mean they are one and the same and thus why they should be kept separate. Moore's wish to be virtuous in pursing what is good and truthful may have made him appealing -- his stance against homosexuality also not being uncommon to conservative Christianity despite increasing scientific evidence that sexual orientation itself is not somehow a voluntary means of misconduct as Moore maintained in the case of D.H. vs. H.H -- but if he was going to pursue that not so much through law as through religion and as was evidenced most strongly by the controversy of his Ten Commandments monument, then he should have been ordained as a minister as opposed to being sworn in as a judge instead.

DWOJ: Nine.

COTD: Does the universe ever end?

BAD NEWS: Pakistan's flooding death toll is rising!

GOOD NEWS: California's wildfires are slowly coming under control!

HUMOR: Animal Farm (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 2, 1943: PT-109, a Motor Torpedo Boat commanded by John F. Kennedy, was sunk during World War II.

One of the reasons why John F. Kennedy is so prominent to American politics is because he was a member of the Kennedy family, an arguably liberal Irish-American family which favors the American Democratic political party and which has successfully used politics as a family business starting in 1947 (when John F. Kennedy was first elected to the US Congress as a Representative) and presumably ending in 2011 when Patrick J. Kennedy leaves office. The other reason why is because his saving his crew following the sinking of his PT-109 ended up making him a war hero and thus which helped him to become US President in 1960, his assassination in office adding to the supposed "Kennedy Curse" of something going terribly wrong but seeing such supposed curses not being uncommon when one focuses upon something in particular -- such as the aforementioned Curse of Tippecanoe -- hence which are likely more incidental than deliberate.

Motor Torpedo Boats relied upon their smaller size to give them speed and maneuverability to attack and escape via cover of darkness or smokescreens, and as they were also made of wood they were sometimes referred to as "plywood coffins," which also reveals how generally ineffective they were. Kennedy's father Joseph often used his financial influence to help his sons and thus got John Kennedy into the armed services during World War II (1939-1945) despite a bad back and of course because he knew the war might make his son a war hero which could propel him into politics -- the same idea as was followed with John's older brother Joseph Kennedy, Jr., who was actually killed over the course of the war.

In the case of PT-109's sinking, it was one of fifteen Motor Torpedo Boats sent to intercept and sink the nighttime Japanese supply ships of the so-called "Tokyo Express." After a poor performance where not a single hit was scored, the Motor Torpedo Boats with radar were allowed to leave although Kennedy's radarless PT-109 as well as PT-162 and PT-169 were ordered to continue to patrol in the case any enemy ships returned. At 2:00 AM on August 2, PT-109 was therefore idling along on one engine to avoid detection by enemy aircraft when she was either inadvertently or deliberately rammed by the Tokyo Express ship Amagiri which was hurrying back home to Rabul under cover of the darkness on the moonless night of August 1-2 which hindered Allied Air patrols -- thus part of the reason for using Motor Torpedo Boats to counter enemy ships at night as well.

A large metal Japanese Destroyer versus a small wooden American Torpedo Boat is no contest, hence PT-109 was cut in half as the Amagiri hurried onward. Out of the fifteen people aboard, two were killed and two were badly injured. PT-169 fired two torpedoes at the Amagiri which missed while PT-169's torpedoes misfired, then the two returned to base without checking for survivors. Given how Motor Torpedo Boats were essentially "plywood coffins" this was perhaps understandable, but by being rammed PT-109 actually ended up suffering a much lower loss rate than Motor Torpedo Boats struck by more explosive shells. The crew of PT-109 then improvised a raft and made their way to the unoccupied Plum Pudding Island 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) away for safety, Kennedy notably using his teeth to tow along one of his badly injured crewmates via a strap of his lifejacket through the shark- and crocodile-inhabited waters, then 2.4 miles (4 kilometers) more to the uninhabited Olasana Island since there was neither food nor water on Plum Pudding Island.

Australian coastwatcher Sub Lieutenant Arthur Reginald Evans observed the huge explosion caused by PT-109 being rammed from his post upon Kolombangara Island and reported it, thus like the other Motor Torpedo Boats it was assumed the entire crew had died and a memorial service was held. Evans, however, dispatched Solomon Islanders Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana in a dugout canoe to look for Kennedy and the survivors (Japanese who captured those engaging in such actions tortured and killed them) and ended up finding them, leading to their rescue over a week later. Kennedy was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his lifesaving efforts after the collision -- he was able to swim quite well since he had been on the varsity swim team at Harvard University -- and thus the precedent of him becoming a war hero was set to propel him into politics after the war (it also helped that he also rescued some Marines from Choiseul Island as the commander of the PT-59, which by then was converted from torpedo to gunboat, afterwards).

John Kennedy is said to have been thrown across the deck of PT-109 after it was rammed and so that he hurt his back even worse than he had before. As John "Dr. Zebra" Sotos notes, Kennedy also had a number of other health problems during his lifetime as well, but his bad back is notable in itself since some think the back brace he wore because of it inadvertently contributing to him remaining more upright then he would have otherwise when he slumped forward after being seriously but not fatally wounded by the first shot that hit him. Also, despite the tendency to focus upon a "Kennedy Curse" due to the focus upon the Kennedy family as a result of their long involvement with politics, it was the mere opportunism of Lee Harvey Oswald in seeking herostratic fame as opposed to any sort of curse or conspiracy that lead to Kennedy's death -- Kennedy's election as US President in 1960 thus also supposedly making him subject to the "Curse of Tippecanoe" I previously debunked as a coincidence due to US Presidential elections taking place on a year ending with zero one fifth of the time and a large number of Presidential assassination attempts overall while remarking upon the death but not election of President Zachary Taylor on July 9, 1850 (as well as how Theodore Roosevelt survived assassination attempts yet could also be claimed to be subject to the Curse of Tippecanoe since he was elected Vice President in 1900, since that lead to him becoming President when William McKinley as assassinated in 1901).

It is actually worth noting that of this writing the arguably conservative or neoconservative mostly English- and German-American Bush family is a counterpart to the Kennedy family in that they favor the Republican political party and have made politics a family business since Wall Street Banker Prescott Sheldon Bush used his financial experience plus his military experience in the 1917-1919 years at the end of World War I to become involved with politics from 1942 to 1963 -- most notably serving as a Senator for Connecticut. His son George H.W. Bush went through a similar experience by becoming a World War II veteran with the US Navy during its 1941-1945 years who was then able to use his father Prescott Sheldon Bush's financial connections to become wealthy in the Texas oil industry and which thus financed his political career which saw him most notably becoming President of the US from 1989-1993. Prescott's grandson and George's son George W. Bush then emulated the same pattern by serving in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968-1974 to gain himself military experience before using his family's Texas oil industry connections to finance his own political career which saw him most notably also becoming President of the US from 2001-2009. Prescott's second grandson and George's second son John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (and thus also the brother of George H.W. Bush) actually did not have any military career but focused more strongly upon a business career based upon property in order to provide financing before starting his own political career in 1986 which as of this writing has seen him most notably becoming Governor of Florida from 1999-2007 -- with some rumors that started as early as 2008 stating that he might also attempt to become US President and of course there still being future Bush generations that might become involved with politics as well. But though most of the Bush politicians so far have followed some pattern of a military career before a political one and although George H.W. Bush got shot down during World War II before being rescued four hours later and although it is often romanticized, none of them had an experience quite like that which Kennedy went through as a result of PT-109 being rammed and sunk by the Amagiri on this date in 1943.

COTD: Why do photographers use umbrellas?

BAD NEWS: A tropical depression has formed in the Atlantic!

GOOD NEWS: The Space Station crew is safe despite a coolant failure!

HUMOR: Smart boy (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: August 3, 1900: The American Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was founded by American businessman Harvey Firestone.

As of 1988 Firestone is a subsidiary of the Japanese Bridgestone corporation, noted mostly for its main business of producing of tires. It started out as a company most for the production of tires for wagons a buggies but correctly saw there would be a huge market for automobile tires, prompting the Firestone company to forge a relationship with the Ford Automobile Company by 1906 -- producing tires for Ford's Model T -- that was thus beneficial for both companies.

As the sale of Firestone to Bridgestone indicates, however, there have been times during which Firestone has struggled as a company. In addition to there being a Firestone Liberian Controversy which raises claims of child labor and modern-day slavery since opening a rubber plantation in Liberia in 1926, Firestone has also had problems producing Firestone 500 radial tires (superior in quality to non-radial tires) during the 1970s which caused the treads to separate at high speeds and thus which lead to many accidents and 34 deaths. The publicity of their case and the USD $500,000 fine they ended up paying to the NHTSA (National Highway Transportation Safety Association) is what lead to the decline of the company which prompted it to finally be sold to Bridgestone in 1988.

As well as this, it was noted in 1996 that some Ford models such as their Explorer which still used Firestone ties were suffering abnormal rates of tire failures and rollover accidents in the US as a result of those tire failures. This Firestone and Ford Tire Controversy lead to a final severing of the relationship between Firestone and Ford in 2001 since both companies essentially blamed each other for the accidents: according to Firestone the fault was with Ford for not specifying adding the necessary reinforcements to Firestone tires for use in the Explorer and other models within the US that tended to rollover following a tire failure nor did they change the suspension on the Explorer model in the US so that it could safely use the Firestone tires in question. According to Ford it was Firestone's fault for manufacturing defective tires again, although according to outside observers it is the fault of both companies that 250 deaths and more than 3,000 serious injuries occurred due to tread separation (again) occurring at high speeds -- a key difference here being that SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicles) like the Explorer are more prone to roll over in the event of a tire failure as opposed to the non-SUVs involved in the tire failures of the aforementioned Firestone 500 tire failures of the 1970s. Like in the previous instance the tires in question were recalled, but as of this writing there is also no mention of any NHTSA fines nor reports about damage to the reputations of these companies as a result of these failures.

Given that Firestone successfully transitioned from use of its tires in non-automobiles to automobiles, it is therefore akin to the Studebaker company that is now merged into the Studebaker-Worthington Corporation and which has largely left the automobile industry proper since 1967. Founded by a group of German-American brothers of the Studebaker family in 1852, by 1895 they began to see the potential of the automobile and thus began to switch their production of wagons and buggies and such over to automobiles, thus not only becoming the only company to successfully switch over their production this way and to produce automobiles noted for their quality and durability before leaving the automobile industry due to being outcompeted by the larger "Big Three" automobile companies of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors during the 1950s and 1960s -- thus the therefore curious fact that in the most recent popular reference to a Studebaker that I know of, the 1994 movie The Mask, a Studebaker is portrayed as an old and thus unreliable car (this by using a 1951 Studebaker Champion model that appears drivable and a 1950 Studebaker Commander model which eventually falls apart). It is also notable that one of the ways Firestone persevered was through association with Ford whereas Ford was one of the companies that outcompeted Studebaker, however.

Referring to Ford again also offers a chance to refer back to Firestone again through the controversy surrounding the Ford Pinto. The Pinto's controversy is due to the fact that its rear-mounted and largely-unprotected fuel tank made it prone to exploding when struck from behind in an accident and the claim that Ford neglected the USD $11 fix per car which would have corrected this problem due to viewing it as less expensive to settle any lawsuits resulting from deaths or injuries that might result from the aforementioned flaw. This is what is called criminal negligence or willful neglect of something which might be or which is harmful and thus what is also sometimes claimed in the cases of Firestone's defective tires -- the common defense to which is to project it back upon the persons making the accusations and thus why at times Firestone claimed their tires were failing due to abuse, misuse, and/or under-inflation by individuals or the Ford company that was using them.

Also suffice to say that despite Firestone's auspicious connection with Ford about six years after its founding on this date in 1900, although as Car Acronyms shows, even the notable Ford company is subject at times to some criticism.

COTD: Don't drink my bread.

BAD NEWS: Six teenagers drowned in the Red River!

GOOD NEWS: Bill Cosby is not dead!

HUMOR: Fruit might be better (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

US PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: Barack Obama: August 4, 1961 (Final Ranking Still Pending).

HISTORY: August 4, 1991: The MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of the "Wild Coast" Eastern Cape of South Africa. All 571 people aboard were saved due to the efforts of entertainers Moss Hills, Tracy Hills, and Julian Butler on the previous day.

First I have to note that I remember the sinking of the Oceanos as the start of popularizing reality television -- this because although taped instead of acted footage broadcast for entertainment on television has been in existence basically as long as television has existed, and although the America's Funniest Home Videos program was quite popular when it first started in 1989 and thus how it predates the 1991 Oceanos sinking, footage of the sinking of the Oceanos has been circulated amongst a variety of reality television programs consisting of various segments of less-related footage and broadcast by various networks unlike how the 1989-onwards program of America's Funniest Home Videos is based mostly upon the US ABC network. As well, the 1989-onwards series of Cops also predates the 1991 Oceanos sinking, but Cops started out primarily upon the Fox network before entire episodes of it were syndicated to other television stations. Also, of this writing, the US TruTV network may be the single most common broadcaster of various reality television programs.

"Reality television" is supposed to consist of remarkable incidents which are supposed to not scripted at all and which are supposed to feature real people instead of actors, although at times such programming has been guilty of both some scripting and some editing even verging into fiction for dramatic effect -- this becoming more evident if one sees footage of the same segment across a variety of reality programs -- even, for instance, ones upon the same network such as TruTV. Here too I have to point out that one benefit of the information available on the internet is that checking the veracity of such programs becomes much more easy as well -- for instance, I looked up the Operation Repo program online and found out it was faked through having real-world repossession incidents fictionalized through having them scripted for dramatic effect and following an episode where a repossessed car being towed with a cameraman within it was flipped through traveling too fast around a corner ... after which I ceased watching the program.

Fortunately the footage of the Oceanos is actual instead of scripted footage -- although it may be edited for dramatic effect -- as parts of it was taken with a camcorder (home video camera) which belonged to the entertainers who turned rescuers in the end, as well as by professional cameras carried by those responding to the sinking ship. Thus for instance why in the The Entertainers Turning Heroes to Rescue the Passengers Youtube segment below the camcorder-recorded incidents of the entertainers' rescue efforts on August 3 is mixed together with the professionally camera-recorded footage of both August 3 and 4 which makes it appear that the rescue and sinking took place on the same day instead of different days -- although of course despite the fact the Oceanos sank slowly it is often good idea to vacate a sinking ship sink since even if it does not sink, it might still capsize (roll onto its side) rapidly such as in the aforementioned July 24, 1915 capsizing of the Eastland which killed 844 people.

Oceanos was built by the French in 1952 as a cruise ship, and by 1976 following a number of name and ownership changes had become a Greek cruise ship for the now-defunct Epirotiki Line. By 1988 the ship was in bad shape not just due to her age but also because of neglectful maintenance: she had loose hull plates, check valves that had been stripped for repair parts, and four inch (ten centimeter) breach in her watertight bulkhead between the ship's generator and sewage tank. Even so, at the time of the sinking the ship had the highest safety rating of Lloyd's Register of Shipping, thus why she was still allowed to sail.

The precedent for the sinking was not as dramatic as say the recklessness and overconfidence which lead to the Titanic striking an iceberg and sinking on her maiden voyage of 1912, but rather rough weather which included 40-knot winds (knots being slightly faster than miles per hour, and slightly slower than two kilometers per hour) which caused 30 foot (nine meter) waves which only worsened as time went on. Eventually a muffled yet still unexplained explosion was heard from the engine room so that the ship lost engine power in addition to developing a more dangerous leak from the ship being shaken so badly from side to side by the waves, this one in the engine room's sea chest which scoops up cooling water for the engines and which was allowing water to flood the generator room, hence the captain ordered the generators shut down so that they would not end up shorting out because of contact with the seawater.

The stormy conditions also ended up severing the auxiliary power which could have run the ship's engines, however, thus the Oceanos was now adrift. With seawater now flooding into the ship from the sea chest, it eventually found the four inch (ten centimeter) breach in her watertight bulkhead between the ship's generator and sewage tank and thus filled it up with seawater -- here the aforementioned "check valves that had been stripped for repair parts" coming into play because check valves keep material from flowing back up out of the sewage tank. In short, seawater then began flooding upwards out of the ship's plumbing and thus began to flood the ship worse than would have been otherwise.

This would have been bad enough save for the fact that standard procedure in this case is to close all the portholes (essentially round windows that can be sealed shut in the hull of the ship) in the lower decks to slow the rate at which water will flood into a ship as it sinks lower in the water, but the crew neglected this and fled the ship in a lifeboat with some of their luggage while not even informing the passengers as well as neglecting their duty to the safety and security of the passengers aboard.

YOUTUBE SEGMENT: The Entertainers Turning Heroes to Rescue the Passengers.

It was at this point that the entertainers Moss Hills, Tracy Hills, and Julian Butler uncovered what was happening through noting the water flooding into the ship and the crew leaving, and thus responded by taking control of the situation by getting everybody into lifejackets and well as about half of the passengers into lifeboats and the other half off via helicopter after managing to radio for help, despite having no experience at handling this type of situation before. This because the ship at this time was so badly listing (leaning) to one side that only about half of her remaining lifeboats could be launched. Also, although it is not seen in the Youtube segment I have included here, Captain Yiannis Avranas of the ship responded to criticism that he and the crew essentially abandoned the passengers to their fate by claiming "When I give the order abandon ship, it doesn't matter what time I leave. Abandon is for everybody. If some people want to stay, they can stay" -- which is included on other segments about the sinking -- as well as claiming he left the ship to arrange for a rescue effort and then supervised the rescue effort from one of the helicopters involved. However, the fact the crew neglected to close the portholes, informed no passengers, and that the entertainers appear to have taken the captain's the captain goes down with his ship responsibility -- referring to the captain's responsibility for the safety and security of everyone aboard his ship, thus the expectation that better a captain die to prove he did all he could to save those aboard his ship rather than to survive and thus potentially to cost the life of others -- through summoning the help that arrived via the ship's radio appears to debunk this claim. Finally, the fact that the Epirotiki Line which operated the Oceanos went defunct sometime in the late 1990s is likely what most strongly emphasizes this idea.

It is also worth referring back to the Titanic for a moment to illustrate the "the captain goes down with his ship" type thinking in that at times J. Bruce Ismay of the White Star Line which operated the Titanic acted as a "Super-captain" while he was aboard and yet survived the sinking whereas Captain Edward Smith died in the disaster which claimed the lives of 1,517 people. As a result, in later years Ismay was vilified as "J. Brute Ismay" after leaving the ship in one of the few lifeboats that was managed to be launched from it -- only partially full -- during the similar poorly-executed evacuation effort aboard the Titanic.

COTD: Smile in private but laugh in public.

BAD NEWS: Nine people were killed in a workplace shooting!

GOOD NEWS: BP may finally be getting that well in the Gulf of Mexico plugged!

HUMOR: It's not working (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: August 5, 1862: Joseph Carey Merrick, the "Elephant Man," was born in England.

Although born looking normal, Merrick eventually developed a deformed appearance that understandably hindered his life due to the "Beauty and the Beast" type experience he went through -- that is to say that his appearance was so repugnant that people often treated him with repugnance despite his character being like that of any other person and thus he being a victim of his own appearance.

Just what caused Merrick's appearance to become so deformed has been inconclusive but has most often been suggested to be Neurofibromatosis type I and/or Proteus Syndrome. These cause growths of non-cancerous lumps, curvature of the spine, learning problems, eye problems, epilepsy, and skin overgrowth, nonmalignant tumors, plus atypical skeletal development, respectively. They both are caused by genetic problems and have asymmetrical results upon the human body (one of Merrick's arms and hands is much larger than the other, for instance), but at the time of Merrick's life as a victim, a freak show curiosity, and as a scientific curiosity, it was believed that Merrick's condition was due to the maternal impression resulting from his mother Mary Jane being knocked over by a frightened fairground elephant while pregnant with him.

"Maternal impression" is now obsolete but predates modern genetic theories as a means of theorizing why children would end up being born with such similarities to their parents, but more so to theorize why emotions of a mother would even effect her unborn children. Thus in short, it was thought that since Merrick's mother Mary Jane was sharply frightened when knocked over by the fairground elephant this essentially imprinted "elephant" upon her unborn child, and thus was why Merrick ended up becoming an "elephant man." As of this writing, both the Neurofibromatosis type I and the Proteus Syndrome that Merrick may have suffered from are incurable, and Merrick died from these or whatever caused his deformities on April 11, 1890. Officially he died from asphyxia (suffocation) caused by the weight of his enlarged head when he somehow got into a lying-down position while sleeping instead of his customary sitting-up position while sleeping to thus minimize the discomfort and difficulty breathing which was prompted by his deformities -- although a competing theory claims the cause of death was a "dislocated neck" which thus severed his spinal column from the rest of his brain when he deliberately or inadvertently moved too quickly from a sitting to a lying-down flat position due to the weight of his enlarged head. A dramatized movie version of Merrick's life that was filmed in black and white was released in 1980, and the film was preceded by a play version of Merrick's life that the film was not based upon which premiered in 1977.

COTD: Nothing moves more slowly than when you think it is supposed to be instantaneous.

BAD NEWS: Russia is still having troubles with wildfires!

GOOD NEWS: Several billionares are giving half their fortunes to charity!

HUMOR: But he can (Elwood, by Haldine)!

HISTORY: August 6, 1890: American William Kemmler became the first person executed by the electric chair.

Execution of someone who has committed a crime is referred to as "capital punishment" due to the Latin designation of certain crimes as capitalis, which literally means "regarding the head" and thus which were crimes the Latin-speaking Romans typically responded to via death through decapitation. Over time execution of someone sentenced to death via capital punishment has generally slowly changed from the idea of maximizing the length of time and pain of the execution such as by torture to instead minimizing its length of time and pain due to concerns about cruel and unusual punishment, even to the degree that some locations practice "abolitionism" and thus no death penalty, the general reasoning for which is that it does not make the justice system somehow better than the criminals it processes if that justice system uses methods such as killing upon those who kill others -- murder, for instance, being the most common crime with a penalty of capital punishment.

The first problem with any type of capital punishment is that even when one devises a means of death which is supposed to be instantaneous and thus painless for human beings in general, variations between human beings sometimes prevents a supposedly instantaneous death from actually being instantaneous regardless of whatever means of death is used. This is also one of the reasons why the argument of "cruel and unusual punishment" is used against supposedly more humane means as the electric chair -- the first argument against it being it makes it little better than the criminals it processes -- or the more common practice of lethal injection which is currently used as of this writing.

These issues were therefore raised about the execution of William Kemmler since he was the first person subjected to capital punishment in the electric chair, but adding to the circus-like atmosphere of his death was the fact that the electric chair was made part of the conflict between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla known as the War of the Currents. Since Edison's Direct Current had precedent he did not want it to be outcompeted by Tesla's superior Alternating Current method of providing electricity (and thus which supplanted it), thus why Edison successfully campaigned to have the first electric chair powered by his rival's Alternating Current to imply how dangerous it was.

The reason for an electrocution device in the form of chair is because in 1887 the first person to propose electrocution as a means of execution to replace hanging was Alfred P. Southwick of New York (USA), who had been a dentist and thus who had become accustomed to his patients resting comfortably in chairs as he performed necessary dentistry -- although of course in the case of the electric chair it also provided a means by which to restrain the person being executed. In the case of Kemmler, he was an alcoholic who murdered his common law wife Tillie Ziegler after becoming enraged at for supposedly stealing from him and planning to leave him while he was recovering from a drinking binge -- the point to make here before going on is that "common law" essentially refers to following precedents that are set, thus common law marriage usually results from a man and woman living together the way a husband and wife would despite never obtaining a marriage license and/or otherwise not being legally married (although even common law varies from location to location).

The way an electric chair is supposed to work is through an initial electric shock that caused brain death -- an irreversible end of the ability of the brain to maintain activity and thus life in the body -- followed by a second shock that fatally damages the vital organs of the body. As such, since the natural pacemaker of a heart responds to electrical shocks, overstimulation of the heart through electric shocks which prevents it from continuing to beat properly is usually what completes the death of someone executed in an electric chair. However, in addition to natural variations and although various animals had been electrocuted to death in previous experiments, Kemmler was the first human being executed by electrocution -- thus part of the reason why his electrocution went wrong. Although electrocuted with 1,000 volts for seventeen seconds which had rendered a horse unconscious and then dead by cardiac arrest the day before, although declared dead Kemmler was found to be still breathing and thus alive after the attempt, hence the chair had to be charged up again and the current was doubled to 2,000 volts. Although this did finally execute Kemmler, it caused blood vessels to burst under his skin so that he bled and there was a smell of burning flesh that prompted some to claim his body caught fire.

Given that Kemmler accepted responsibility for what he did and thus both confessed and was cooperative, his grisly death may understandably prompt some to feel sympathy for him. As well, although routine problems resulting in essentially slowly burning criminals to death with electricity were overcome by 1903, lingering infrequent problems prompted it to start to be abandoned in favor of lethal injection during the 1980s and 1990s. Within the US it was at most used in about half the country (mostly the east and south, as the west and north tended to use suffocation in a gas chamber instead of the electric chair as a supposedly more humane means of death than hanging) and still continues to be used in some cases -- rather telling of how it is not as instantaneous as was hoped is the fact is the case of the state of Nebraska: starting around 2004 (prior to 2004 they used more electrocution) they used a fifteen-second-long application of 2,450 volts of electricity followed by a check for signs of life after fifteen minutes and then repeating the process if necessary. Prior to ruling it cruel and unusual punishment and thus unusable in 2008, In 2007 they then switched to a twenty-second-long application of 2,450 volts of electricity. That does not seem instantaneous, and there have also been cases where the electric chair in question has malfunctioned and thus burned up or which has quite painfully set the hair of the condemned who is sitting in the chair on fire. The most notable failure of the electric chair is in the case of Willie Francis who actually survived being electrocuted to death in 1946 since the trustee who had set up the chair had been drunk and thus set it up improperly, thus prompting his legal counsel to try arguing that although he did not die he had been "executed" and thus "re-executing" him would subject him to the double jeopardy of being illegally tried twice on the same facts -- he lost his case, however, and was fatally executed in the electric chair in 1947.

As well as this, the fact that some notable nicknames for these electric chairs were "Yellow Mama," "Old Sparky," and "Gruesome Gertie" only adds to the lasting grisly reputation of the electric chair, although problems with electrocution in the electric chair not being as instantaneous as the drunken man who inadvertently electrocuted himself to death on exposed power lines and thus who prompted Alfred P. Southwick to propose the electric chair which was first used to execute William Kemmler on this date in 1890 has prompted it at most to be a secondary option for a minority of states within the US as of this writing, although it may still be used as a primary means of execution in countries outside the US. Within the US and amongst the notable murderers like Kemmler (Kemmler being particularly notable through being the first executed in the electric chair) who were executed until the electric chair came into disuse, ironically enough another notable person executed in the electric chair was a woman named Ruth Snyder who helped murder her husband in order to be with her lover and thus to escape accountability for her infidelity to her marriage -- not just because her murder was another "crime of passion" such as Kemmler's was, but because a photographer named Tom Howard smuggled in a tiny camera strapped to his ankle and took a picture of Ruth Snyder just as she was being electrocuted and which was then published in the New York Daily News newspaper. The point being he had to smuggle in the camera since although witnesses are brought in to witness executions and thus to explicitly observe that a person is indeed dead to avoid any mystery about it and although public executions have been used to attempt to deter crimes in the past, concerns about cruel and unusual punishment like those that lead to the creation of the electric chair have also prompted such executions to become much less public and thus much less likely to prompt sadistic pleasure in the audience as well.

COTD: 100% knee jerk reaction.

BAD NEWS: 103 people were killed by flash floods in Indian Kashmir!

GOOD NEWS: The US attended the Hiroshima memorial for the first time!

HUMOR: Digging out the cars (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 7, 1942: The Guadalcanal Campaign (August 7, 1942-February 9, 1943) began during World War II.

The reason that Guadalcanal is so important to the Pacific theater (the war against the Japanese) during World War II is that not only was it the second major offensive taken against Imperial Japan following the July 21, 1942-November 16, 1942 Kokoda Track Campaign which kept Japan from using the territory of Paupa (southeastern New Guinea) to thus capture the Port Moresby there as a means of strengthening their position in the Pacific Ocean, but it also marked the turning point in the war -- despite the precedent of "Europe First" to defeat Germany and Japan to thus gain the US European help against Japan -- since it was where Allied forces switched to offense while the Japanese had to switch to defense due to their empire becoming overextended and thus also due to their inability to capture locations like Port Morseby that would allow them to successfully defend their captured territories.

Because of this, the victory of the Allies in the Guadalcanal Campaign of the Solomon Islands (in this case the Allies being the US, Australia, New Zealand, the British Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Fiji) was a strategic victory as it started the near three year process of Japan's eventual defeat. The Allies suffered 7,100 fatalities out of 60,000+ troops (four soldiers captured), 29 ships lost, and 615 aircraft lost while the Japanese suffered 31,000 out of 36,200+ troops (1,000 soldiers captured), 38 ships lost, and 683-880 aircraft lost.

Yes, US Marines were the initial invasion force against the Japanese, and bad weather helped screen the initial Allied movements so that the Japanese were caught by surprise. Their aforementioned greater losses shows they still fought fiercely due to the "fight to the death loyalty" code of bushido which had been adopted from the Samurai by the Japanese military. Despite bushido on the part of the Japanese, however, the ability of the US and the Allies to produce more than Japan through their greater military-industrial complex would eventually outlast the greater competence found in the Japanese forces since they had been aggressively expanding Japanese territory since the 1930s.

The Guadalcanal Campaign actually overlaps a rather famous dogfight I am aware of through my previous reading of the biography Samurai about the Japanese Navy pilot Saburo Sakai during the campaign. Relocated to the strongest Japanese position at Rabaul in Paupa New Guinea on August 3, Sakai's group flew a marathon flight -- the standard Japanese Zero fighter was found to have great fuel efficiency, thus enabling the Japanese to stretch their forces further -- to attempt to defend the Japanese forces being attacked at Guadalcanal on August 8, 1942. As such, Sakai ended up dogfighting against US Navy Pilot James "Pug" Southerland.

In the lead-up to the now-legendary dogfight between Sakai and Southerland, Southerland shot down two Japanese Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers before being engaged by first one, then two more Japanese Zero fighters. Witnessing Southerland outmaneuvering the three Zeros, Sakai then moved in to attack.

The aircraft Southerland was flying was a 4F4 Wildcat which had a slower top speed but with greater diving speed, maneuverability, and armor than the Zero, thus why it offered serious competition to the Zero but not as much as the later F6F Hellcat which could outspeed the Zero as well as outclimb it in addition to having what the Wildcat already had. As such, when Sakai fired a burst of gunfire to get Southerland off of the three Zeros he was dogfighting with -- Sakai judging Southerland to have the edge in the dogfight due to his evident superior flying skills in managing to not get shot down by three opposing Zeros -- Southerland snap-rolled (see Aerobatic maneuvers) and started climbing up at Sakai, thus prompting Sakai to snap-roll himself to try to get away from Southerland's attack. What followed next was one of the most famous and well-documented dogfights of the war. Southerland and Sakai were both experienced pilots at this point and pushed their aircraft to their limits, rolling and spinning and maneuvering to try to get on the tail of the other:



Although Sakai did not fully understand what had happened, Southerland -- who like Sakai also reportedly wrote his memoirs after the war -- had an idea of what happened. While shooting down the two "Betty" bombers -- the first one Southerland shot down being the first Japanese bomber shot down in that campaign -- his Wildcat fighter had incurred damage from the defenses of the bombers. Finally recognizing he could not outmaneuver Sakai and trusting in his Wildcat's armor, or perhaps unable to maneuver further due to damage to his aircraft, Southerland successfully baited Sakai into an attack by flying straight and level before "slamming on the brakes" through abruptly cutting his speed, the result being that Sakai overshot past him where Southerland could chew up his Zero with his guns to turn it into a fireball. Only a 7.7 mm Japanese machine gun bullet from one of the bombers had hit one of the .50 caliber shells in his guns so that it had exploded in his ammunition belt, thus effectively jamming his guns, and preventing Southerland from downing Sakai on that day instead of the other way around.

Here too it is important to note that Sakai was rather proud of himself, hence at times he would actually violate orders if he thought he knew better. One which he does not admit to in his biography but which is documented online is sparing a Dutch civilian DC-3 aircraft by letting it go when he should have either forced or shot it down according to his orders (also mentioned within the Wikipedia site for Saburo Sakai), and in the case of Southerland he also violated his orders by actually sparing Southerland's life. Instead of flagrantly targeting Southerland to finish him off so that he could not fight again, Sakai targeted Southerland's engine instead, thus giving Southerland a chance to bail out. Wounded in eleven places, Southerland managed to gain local help after parachuting to the ground which enabled him to escape the Japanese ground forces. Southerland would therefore fight in the 1945Battle of Okinawa which was the last major battle and a planned precedent for invading the Japanese homeland before the surrender of Japan was prompted partially in response to the August 6 and August 9 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He shot down two aircraft during that battle and another aircraft prior to that battle, and died in 1949 due to a jet training accident.

Sakai himself ended up surviving not only terrible wounds he suffered during the August 7, 1942-February 9, 1943 Guadalcanal Campaign (more on this on the Wikipedia site for Saburo Sakai) but also the war. More importantly, his dogfight with Sullivan appears to have been part of the process by which he came to denounce war and to become a pacifist afterwards ... but had Southerland's guns not jammed during or if Guadalcanal Campaign which began on this date in 1942 had not forced Japan back into a defensive position, perhaps Sakai's outlook would have been much different.

COTD: A parasite will cling to the top.

BAD NEWS: Ten aid workers were killed in Afghanistan!

GOOD NEWS: Megan Fox has donated to an abused womens' shelter!

HUMOR: I admit, you cannot buy that (Lockhorns, by Hoest and Reiner)!

HISTORY: August 8, 1929: The German airship Graf Zeppelin began a round-the-world flight.

Airships are more technically "aerostats" -- from the Greek words "aer" for air and "statos" for standing -- since they use lighter-than-air gasses to achieve lift. The "standing" part of the name comes from the fact that motion is not needed to achieve lift such as in an airplane or jet aircraft which must achieve a fast enough speed for the flow of air over its wings to generate lift. Airships are aerostats which can be propelled and steered through the air through the addition of engines and flight surfaces such as those found on aircraft (but which are used to impart direction instead of for speed to provide lift).

The remaining general designation of aircraft is therefore aircraft like helicopters that use engines to provide both lift and thrust, but since German inventor Graf (Count) Ferdinand von Zeppelin had notable success developing airships the name "zeppelin" became a synonym for them. Since they could be directed to steered through the air, the French called them "dirigible" balloons, since the French word dirigible means directable/steerable, and thus where the "dirigible" term for them comes from. Finally, use of the term "blimp" (the origin of this term is disputed) sometimes overlaps that of zeppelin and dirigible, but technically blimps are different since they have no semi-rigid or rigid skeleton supporting structure within them.

The benefit of airships during the late 1800s and early 1900s was that they were almost as fast as early aircraft but had a greater load capacity plus a much greater range and endurance of flight. As such, the luxury this afforded passengers aboard airships as opposed to airplanes made airships quite popular at first, thus prompting the 1929 "round-the-world" flight on this date which went from Lakehurst, New Jersey (USA) to Friedrichshafen, Germany, to Tokyo, Japan (flying a record nonstop 6,988 miles/11,246 kilometers across Siberia in the process), to Los Angeles, California (USA), to Chicago, Illinois (USA), then back to Lakehurst, New Jersey (USA) by August 29, 1929.

The Graf Zeppelin made a number of then-record flights which totaled to more than one million miles or more than one and half million kilometers, 590 flights, 144 ocean crossings (the only one not across the Atlantic going across the Pacific), and 13,110 passengers transported with a perfect passenger safety record, which thus made it the most successful airship ever built. Problems the Graf Zeppelin suffered during its lifetime illustrate some of the problems of airships, however: during the first transatlantic crossing in October 1928 some of the external fabric tore lose after passing through the wind of a squall line which also pushed the airship within a few hundred feet of the ocean's surface. In May 1929 it suffered engine failure in two engines which forced it to abort another transatlantic crossing, then lost two more engines while attempting to make it back to Germany so that it narrowly averted a crash landing in France due to having only one engine remaining.

Outside of these early accidents of the Graf Zeppelin, which suffered no more serious recorded problems during its career, was the fact that airships were used for bombing and spying raids mostly by the Germans during World War I (1914-1918) but proved to be inaccurate although psychologically intimidating bombers (a British postcard of the era dubbed one them "baby-killer"), particularly when they had to increase their height to avoid being fired upon by incendiary rounds which tended to ignite the hydrogen gas which was commonly used to provide them with lift (they flew high enough that air pressure inside and outside the airship was equal or ambient at first, thus preventing too much gas from leaking out when hit by non-incendiary rounds). Also, airships not even in active combat like the US airship Akron suffered various problems due to the difficulty of maintaining airships and thus why the Akron suffered four accidents during its lifetime -- the fourth of which was due to stormy weather and killed 73 people and marked the end of the US military's development of airships. The other problem was of course that while hydrogen was more readily available for much of the world as a lighter-than-air gas for airships, it was much more flammable, and with the US with its readily-available helium refusing to provide it to Nazi Germany due to their aggression in the 1930s (which of course helped lead to World War II from 1939-1945) this meant that the Hindenberg disaster of explosively burning up and killing 36 people on May 6, 1937 broke public confidence even in the German zeppelins which had flown with a much better safety record -- this because it had actually been British and American airships which had suffered the most problems during the "golden age" of airships between the World Wars. As well, aircraft such as airplanes had improved enough by the end of this "golden age" that despite the Graf Zeppelin performing so well as to fly round-the-world from August 8-29, 1929, it was thus retired as a museum one month after the grimly spectacular end of the Hindenberg, thus marking the end of airships as a means of transportation instead of for token advertising flights or flights requiring hovering over a fixed location such as in the case of sporting events.

The ultimate fate of the Graf Zeppelin was in World War II. Due to the Nazi German war effort, then Generalfeldmarchall (Field Marshal) of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force)Hermann Goering ordered all German airships dismantled so that their parts could be fed back into the German war effort, thus why the Graf Zeppelin was officially scrapped on March 1, 1940 -- perhaps a lingering irony being that an airship that once circled the globe to serve its needs was also destroyed to serve those needs as well (that Nazi Germany still used it for propaganda purposes is evident by a march dedicated to the airship, another airship named the Graf Zeppelin, and an aircraft carrier named the Graf Zeppelin, however).

YOUTUBE: The Graf Zeppelin.

COTD: So sweet I can see the slime dripping off of it.

BAD NEWS: About 100 people were killed by mudslides in China!

GOOD NEWS: Saudi Arabia extended its deadline for cutting off Blackberrys!

HUMOR: This store has everything (Lio, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: August 9, 1936: African-American athlete Jesse Owens won an unprecedented fourth gold medal in the Summer Olympics at Berlin, Germany.

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler successfully used the 1936 Summer Olympic games to show a resurgent Germany and the supposed superiority of the "Aryan" race -- Germany won more medals in every category than every other nation that participated -- although a notable exception to this superiority was in the case of Jesse Owens. He won gold medals for the 100 meter sprint, the long jump, the 200 meter sprint, and for being a part of the 4X100 meter relay team.

The term "Aryan" is rather nebulous but overlaps that of the supposed Nordic race and was defined by the Nazis as being more closely descended from a superior race (this in part due to ugly, historical prejudice against Jews and other minorities who were therefore supposedly genetically inferior as well) that was tall as well as having blond hair and blue eyes. The curious fact about which was that many of the leading Nazis did not have these types of characteristics -- most notably Adolf Hitler was only slightly taller than average for his time at about five feet eight and one half inches tall and thus was under the "six feet and therefore tall" mark (this was accentuated by the fact that he tended to surround himself with those more definitely of above-average and thus heights of six feet and up), had dark brown hair, and although his eye color was arguably blue it was such a light blue it was arguably "gray" -- although this might be rather hard to discern given not much color photography was practical back then.

However it was not the fact that even Hitler did not match up too well against this supposedly Aryan or Nordic superiority that prompted Nazi Germany to be more subtle in their racism during the 1936 Summer Olympics such as by removing racist anti-Jewish signs from the city of Berlin while arresting and detaining all Romani (Gypsies) of Berlin and detaining them in a concentration camp to avoid their presence in the city. What prompted that was the obvious fact that flagrant discrimination of course prompts quite understandable and counterproductive defensiveness towards such inflexibility. As such, although the racism of the Nazis was extended towards ethnic Africans such as Owens as well, Owens actually ended up enjoying lack of the "separate but equal" discrimination he had to put up with within the US at that time since he was allowed to use the same facilities and such due to Nazi Germany suppressing the more flagrant parts of its racism for the games.

It was actually also controversial for Owens to be allowed to participate by the Americans since some felt that a "white" athlete should have been given his spot -- and this despite the subtle antagonism towards Nazi Germany due to their own racism -- hence Owens proved to be a darling of the games since he succeeded so well that he became more symbolic of US and even the German audiences started cheering for him. Some say that Hitler snubbed Owens in particular by not shaking any hands of any victors following the first day of the games since officials told Hitler he could not shake only the hands of German athletes as he did so on the first day, but the fact of the matter is that Hitler was annoyed by anything that did not go just as he envisioned -- Hitler was annoyed the audience cheered the French for giving either the Nazi or Olympic salute during the opening ceremonies (the salutes looked familiar), for instance, thus as Owens was yet another of those annoyances he was the most visible one due to the color of his skin and thus the one most easily identified with what was causing Hitler's annoyance on a number of levels.

Rather controversially, Owens later claimed that Hitler did not snub him since he had waved at him while passing the review stand and that Hitler had waved back, but he said that US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did by not following the Presidential precedent of acknowledging athletes or others who achieve quite much. It was not until Dwight Eisenhower was President from 1953-1961 that he was honored by being named an "Ambassador of Sports," and although Owens was given a parade and celebration for his achievements upon returning to the US he quite notably had to ride the freight elevator instead of the regular elevator to get to the celebration for him in the Waldorf-Astoria luxury hotel due to segregation once he returned to the US.

Also notable about US racism is that after the 1936 Summer Olympics Owens tried to officially turn professional to make a living with his athleticism -- the Olympics originally being for amateur athletes to stress common origins and thus unity between all nations (professional athletes have begun to be sent on the grounds international competition can still foster community) -- at which most the offers he had received while he was an amateur then disappeared. The point being that while the novelty of Owens was accepted by the US while he was an amateur athlete, when he turned professional US racism asserted itself again to keep professional athletics still exclusive to whites. Here too it should be pointed out that sometimes the false argument is made that blacks are better athletes than whites due to enduring more under racism and such, however the truth of the matter is that many blacks like Owens have always been great athletes and that if prejudice to find that members of the Aryan race or the Nordic race or the white race or whatever race were somehow better was stopped sooner, then this would have been noticed sooner as well.

Denial plays a role in this as well, as of course some would argue that US racism was different from and thus was not the same as the racism that was seen in Nazi Germany -- but as the 1955-1968 African-American Civil Rights Movement was able to emphasize, it was indeed still racism. As such, Owens's attempts to make a career as a professional athlete was unsuccessful to the degree he eventually ended up running a dry-cleaning business, working as a gas station attendant, filing for bankruptcy, and in 1966 being prosecuted for tax evasion. With the help of the aforementioned African-American Civil Rights Movement he was able to recover and to become an official goodwill ambassador for the US government, and owned race horses after retiring from that role. As he was a smoker during the last 35 years his lifetime he died of lung cancer in 1980 -- it also being notable here that most of the recognition he received after winning his four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics was also received posthumously and thus after his death.

COTD: The wait goes on.

BAD NEWS: China's landslide death toll has risen to 337!

GOOD NEWS: McDonald's sales increased in July!

HUMOR: Because sometimes you must live for the moment (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

US PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: Herbert Hoover: August 10, 1874 (Most Recent Historian Rank: 36/43)

HISTORY: August 10, 2006: British Police completed 25 arrests which began the previous night (the arrests were an overnight operation) which blocked the 2006 Transatlantic Plot.

Suffice to say that with increased screening to prevent terrorism via aircraft over the years, terrorist techniques to circumvent that screening have increased over time as well. This is not true only in the case of the December 25, 2009 "underwear bomber" bombing attempt of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 such as through scattering to hide on one's person (shoes have to be taken off during screening now since the heels pass below the level of the scanners, and could thus be hollowed out to hide materials) or otherwise disguising parts of "microbombs" as innocuous materials in order to smuggle and detonate them aboard aircraft as early as 1995 (see Bojinka plot). Also, disguising explosive liquid or semiliquids or mixtures of those liquids or semiliquids as innocuous materials had been done against a commercial airliner as early as the 1987 bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 where liquid explosives were disguised as alcohol (the March 13, 1943 failed bomb assassination of Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler was disguised as two bottles of Cointrau alcohol but was not liquid explosive -- see Operation Spark). In the case of the 2006 Transatlantic Plot which was prompted by the stricter screening put into place after the September 11, 2001 attacks, this is why as of this writing the ability to carry any liquids or semiliquids aboard a commercial aircraft is still limited although not as severely as it was immediately following the incident.

The reason that this is a "Transatlantic Plot" and why British police foiled it is because the targeted aircraft would be flying across the Atlantic Ocean between the United Kingdom and either the United States or Canada. The British already had types they believed were in contact with the terrorist al-Qaeda organization (most notable for the September 11, 2001 attacks) under surveillance, thus why they secretly opened the luggage of one Ahmed Ali when he returned to the United Kingdom from Pakistan in June 2006 to find it also contained the unusual contents of the powdered soft drink of Tang and a large number of batteries. This aroused suspicions and thus was why the British expanded their surveillance, thus why they spotted one Assad Sarwar buying items that did not appear to fit his daily needs and which was suspicious given that Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar were seen meeting at a park. When the British MI5 then later secretly entered a residence being used by Ahmed Ali they found what appeared to be a bomb factory, hence they planted monitoring equipment which then recorded the two making devices out of beverage bottles on August 3. That Ali then spent two hours in an internet cafe researching flight schedules then prompted them to conclude that an attempt to bomb aircraft using liquid explosives was being planned.

Such a huge amount of material was seized in addition to the bomb-making materials when the arrests of the 25 suspects were made -- 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones, and 8,000 items of removable storage media -- and how this is still fairly recent in historical terms means that the final account has yet to be recorded. Suffice to say that the terrorists involved appear to be followers of Islamism -- ultraconservative, fundamentalist Islam that promotes Islam as both a religion and political system and thus which conflicts with the hegemony of the modernizing West so often identified with the United States -- and the arrests were made when it was feared that the attacks were imminent although later analysis suggests the 2006 Transatlantic Plot was actually at an earlier stage than was feared and thus the arrests might have been made prematurely enough that it counteracted potential terrorism less than it could have.

The alleged bombs would have been 500 milliliter plastic bottles. The sugary drink powder of Tang would have been mixed with hydrogen peroxide from hair bleach, and with other commonly-available organic materials in order to produce an explosive if mixed to a specific strength. The mixture would have then been injected into an unsealed bottle with the help of a syringe, then the hole from the syringe resealed to form a bomb. A high explosive hidden within an AA battery would have then formed the small charge required to detonate this main bomb, that high explosive detonated by linking the bottle of explosives to a light bulb and a disposable camera since the charge from the camera's flash unit would have be enough to trigger the high explosives in the AA battery explosion which would then detonate the constructed bomb -- thus why it is harder to carry materials such as these aboard commercial aircraft -- as well as luggage being restricted more and thus more bottlenecks for screening at airports as a result following the incident.

Controversies over whether Pakistan assisted in helping stop or was negligent in helping stop the 2006 Transatlantic Plot due to having ties to terrorists, the early stage at which the plot was stopped thus making it questionable whether the conjectured bombings would actually be attempted, the possible low probability of success such bombs was later conjectured as having, and potential use of the event as "scare mongering" by the government to use fear to push various politics into law (as well as skepticism by Muslims that the supposed terrorists were also Muslims) arose in the aftermath of the arrests, which resulted in eight trials and various convictions for the eight charged, some of which are still pending due to how recent this incident still is.

A little more humorous result of this incident I still remember from seeing the news at this time is that since passengers were abruptly less able to bring liquids or semiliquids aboard an aircraft immediately after the arrests, they were hurriedly drinking drinks they would have brought with them instead of losing them entirely before they boarded their various aircraft (the image I remember here is of a garbage can overflowing with various empty drink bottles at an airport from a news broadcast). The point being that ingesting high quantities of fluid before the stress of flying does not mix all that well, particularly if the mood-altering drink of alcohol happens to be one of the drinks hurriedly consumed. Also, one complaint I noted people having in particular how their toothpaste alone could not somehow bring down an entire commercial aircraft (this apparently not understanding the combination to build a bomb aspect at the time) and that while they were relatively easily able to obtain more toothpaste and such outside of the aircraft and while of course they indeed wanted to be safe while aboard the aircraft, having to get more toiletries consisting of various liquids or of semiliquids every time they flew aboard a commercial aircraft was irritatingly inconvenient.

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COTD: All your cold flock are belong to delicious.

BAD NEWS: China's landslide death toll has risen to over 700!

GOOD NEWS: A man was rescued from China's landslides after 50 hours of being trapped!

HUMOR: Formality reality (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: August 11, 1934: Clara Cluck made her first appearance (therefore this is considered her "birthdate") in Disney's Mickey Mouse: Orphan's Benefit cartoon short.

The first two points to note here is that other versions of "Orphan's Benefit" exist because it was later remade, and of course it is somewhat odd to speak of this date as Clara Cluck's "birthdate" since of course she appeared as an adult on this date, although it is somewhat easier to speak of fictional characters as if they were non-fictional people to avoid too much confusion about how fiction is ultimately arbitrary.

Reflecting this arbitrary nature is the fact that the hen Clara Cluck arguably appeared prior to her birthdate because she and Donald Duck had first appeared in (and thus how Donald was "born" on that date) the June 9, 1934 Silly Symphonies animated short The Wise Little Hen since British actress and singer Florence Gill voiced both characters, although Clara Cluck has not spoken audible words as an animated character outside of the small number of times she had a speaking part and when Florence Gill voiced both her and the Wise Little Hen, and Gill's death in 1965 plus the lack of a billed voice character for Clara since then makes it appear unlikely she will speak words instead of simply clucking within animation ever again.

As well, the Lady Cluck hen (left in linked picture) from Disney's 1973 Robin Hood appears to be so heavily-influenced by Clara Cluck that some assert the two are one-and-the-same and thus that (using non-fictional terms again) Clara Cluck underwent a heavy makeover in order to successfully appear in that role since the form of Clara Cluck that appeared in the 1934 Orphan's Benefit would reappear afterwards -- and here it is worthwhile to note that although actress Carole Shelley provided the voice of Lady Cluck, she is another British actress like Florence Gill was (the Lady Cluck appearance arguably an exception to Clara Cluck not speaking following the early part of the Clara Cluck form if one considers the three Disney hens of the 1934 Wise Little Hen, the 1934 Clara Cluck, and the 1973 Lady Cluck to all be one and the same).

Comparing Donald Duck and Clara Cluck also gives the chance to show some of what differentiates Disney's more prominent and less prominent characters. Donald Duck proved to have great potential for development since his speech impediment (which sounds like a duck's quacking mixed with words) and later anger management problems helped prompt the explosion of an expanding "Duck universe" about Donald to explain why he was as he was, whereas Clara Cluck's misfortune was essentially being given everything that was interesting about her all at once: lots of enthusiasm but limited singing ability -- as Mickey's Grand Opera shows (ironically enough pairing Donald with Clara, and also ironically enough giving Clara top billing) she can only really "cluck" when she sings instead of singing words -- and also lackluster support such as from even less prominent characters such as Clarabelle Cow who provided complacent accompaniment music to her singing also did attached flaws to her which made her interesting but which limited her frustration and thus the humor possible through her to less-expansive musical situations. As such, like other Disney characters who became obscure as more attention was focused upon more successful, flexible, and thus appealing characters such as Donald Duck, she did not end up rising to prominence but instead ended up as little more than an extra or supporting character.

Clara Cluck is actually unique in her decline to obscurity in that the exact moment of her disappearance into obscurity is captured in the March 20, 1942 Symphony Hour short since she appears as part of the orchestra featured in Symphony Hour during their rehearsal segment but not at all during their performance segment. Reverting to non-fiction for the sake of simplicity for a moment, given that Goofy manages to smash all the instruments via an elevator between the rehearsal and the performance but so that the musicians later could only struggle to play them in a "goofy" fashion, upon seeing the smashed instruments she reached a point at which she quit and walked out instead of being taken advantage of through poor support again. As an alternative, it is also true in uncut versions of Symphony Hour that Donald Duck loses his temper upon struggling with the smashed instruments during the performance segment and tries to walk out in mid-performance -- at which point Mickey Mouse actually threatens him back into line by pointing a gun at his head. The suggestion being that Mickey still had enough of a dark and unreasonable side at this point (since this was during 1942 and Mickey was created in 1928, his character was still evolving into the sweet and untouchable form he has as of the time of this writing) that Clara actually wisely quit before the performance not because of the smashed instruments but because Mickey actually had unethical and illegal qualities and thus why she did not want to end up being threatened like Donald Duck did.

Although the gun scene was in the original Symphony Hour because it was so excessive it was funny, it was obviously cut later since too often more fragile real life can imitate less fragile art (non-fictional people are considerably more prone to chronic injury and death than fictional ones, for instance). Symphony Hour did, however, unlink Clara from music and thus why she appeared in more non-musical roles afterwards but only as an extra. Quite notably she only appeared in Disney comics after this time, sometimes with her quasi-boyfriend in the form of the rooster Panchito Pistoles who had resulted from Disney's attempt to appeal to Latin and South America during the 1939-1945 crisis of World War II (1939-1945) and thus from the understandable Good Neighbor Policy the US put into place to resolve any more-domestic conflicts at that time, but she would only appear in animated form again -- excepting her possible aforementioned appearance as "Lady Cluck" in the 1973 Robin Hood -- as an extra in both the 1983 Mickey's Christmas Carol, then in the 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The 1999 Mickey's Mouse Works presents Clara as extra character and as a neighbor of Donald Duck's girlfriend Daisy Duck -- which follows how Disney comics portrayed Clara and Daisy as friends -- which perhaps explains why Clara also appears as an extra in the 2001 House of Mouse and in the notable Double Date Don episode becomes rapidly enamored with and thus essentially tries to steal Donald (yes, him again) away from Daisy by turning predatory female due to the soap operas she is watching now as a result of her character becoming disconnected from music long ago -- this humorous since it switches the conventional image of the aggressive male and thus also the conventional image of the love triangle from two men competing over a potential wife to two women competing over a potential husband. However, the more serious argument which can be drawn out of this is that the more rapidly aggressive another person is with their affections, the more short-term their goals tend to be ... thus the irony why one actually has to be somewhat on guard against affection in case of comes from opportunists. This although Clara's affection for Donald appears genuine and not opportunism due to some sort of preexisting conflict with the unforgiving Daisy -- who in "Double Date Don" complains that Clara is a snoop after Daisy herself notes that she was snooping on Clara -- for instance.

Here I should also note that Mickey's Mouse Works and House of Mouse were criticized for recycling essentially the same old Disney materials too much. Daisy Duck's conflict with yet caring enough about Donald to aggressively and even selfishly intervene in order to keep him had already been quite vividly referenced 54 years before the 2001 House of Mouse's "Double Date Don" episode with the 1947 Donald's Dilemma short, for instance (she costs Donald a singing career due his voice changing due from a flowerpot hitting him in the head, thus enabling her to keep him as her boyfriend). As well, in "Donald's Dilemma" Daisy suffers stress even to contemplating suicide via handgun -- although this is often cut for similar reasons to Mickey threatening Donald with a gun in the 1942 Symphony Hour -- and one even sees an echo of this with Clara threatening to drown herself in order to get Donald in "Double Date Don" (curiously enough not cut despite its accidental near-success). Still, a benefit of such recycling is that it does allow for the acknowledgement of the earlier yet forgotten contributions more-obscure characters like the aforementioned Clara Cluck.

Aside from Clara Cluck's essential disappearance with the 1942 Symphony Hour, that short also marked the disappearance of a number of the other more minor Disney characters such since it appears that Disney did not need so many regular furry/anthropomorphic extras as they needed for the orchestra in Symphony Hour after this. Most notable about this is the more obscure Horace Horsecollar in particular since one discarded idea from the 1990s was to give him a "Maximum Horsepower" cartoon to actually "explain" his disappearance as being the result of him being abducted by extraterrestrial aliens to become a superhero in 1939 -- although since he reappeared with Clara Cluck as an extra in Mickey's Christmas Carol this would have placed his return to Earth in 1983. Indeed, as may have been noticed, it may have only been Clara's continuing connection with the strongly-popular Donald Duck since the prototypes of the two characters appeared in the June 9, 1934 The Wise Little Hen, through her official creation with the August 11, 1934 Mickey Mouse: Orphan's Benefit and even up to her 2001 House of Mouse "Double Date Don" appearance that has kept her from becoming as obscure as say Horace Horsecollar has -- thus while she is indeed not as prominent as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck or Goofy (or any of the other "Fab Five" and thus most prominent Disney characters) she may indeed be the most prominent of the obscure ones (so hey, Disney -- why not get her a voice actress to let her actually speak words instead of having her mindlessly clucking like she did in "Double Date Don" for a change?).

YOUTUBE: Clara Cluck in the 2008 "Boo to You" Halloween Parade at Disneyworld.

COTD: I will be all right, if I can just stop yawning!

BAD NEWS: China's landslide death toll has risen to over 1,117!

GOOD NEWS: Four people survived a small aircraft crash in Alaska!

HUMOR: Ashley would do that (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 12, 1281: The Mongol fleet of Qubilai Khan was destroyed by a "kamikaze" typhoon during a second invasion attempt of Japan.

To understand this first, suffice to say that the reason the Mongols conquered huge empires after being largely unified by Genghis Khan in 1206 was because the Mongols were a nomadic people, a lifestyle which requires use of or control of greater amounts of territory. A large part of the reason for their great success was effective use of cavalry, which is actually common to a number of nomadic empires. However, like other empires, nomadic empires also tend to keep expanding until something stops them -- and in the case of Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan, what stopped him from conquering Japan was the kamikaze typhoons in combination with the heroic defense of the Japanese.

The reason that the Mongols attempted to invade Japan was that the Japanese -- then under the military dictatorship of the Kamakura shogunate -- was that they refused to be bullied into a tributary state for peace. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Mongol invasions of both 1274 and the aforementioned one on this date in 1281 followed a period of more than 50 years of peace so that the Japanese were less experienced, the Mongols tended to fight en masse instead of in the Japanese customary fashion of single individuals or small groups dueling each other on a battlefield -- one legacy of which can be seen in much of the fighting commonly portrayed in manga/anime, meaning Japanese comics and animation -- and because the aggressive expansion of the Mongols had enabled them to come into contact with and thus prompted them to adopt superior foreign weaponry they came across such as proto-grenades and early rockets which thus gave them superior long-range attacks over the Japanese. As well, the fact the Mongol troops were experienced fighters who thus developed superior tactics and also adopted the superior tactics of their opponents when they came across them meant that the Japanese fared badly at first.

What changed the situation both times was the timely appearance of a typhoon, later referred to as "kamikaze" or "divine wind" by the Japanese as it was assumed to have been sent by one or some of the Shinto deities to which Japan is first and foremost since according to Shinto, Japan was the first land created by those deities. After the 1274 invasion was thus blunted by the Mongol troops returning to their ships and then being largely destroyed by the approaching typhoon which they were afraid would have marooned them in Japan, the Japanese increased their costal defenses so that despite being outnumbered they were able to largely hold the Korean and Chinese fleets of the invading Mongols off until yet another kamikaze typhoon struck the invasion fleet and decimated the Mongols, leading to their defeat.

Additional factors noted as contributing to the decimation of the Mongol fleet on August 12, 1281 are the facts that Kublai Khan should have taken about five years to have his invasion force sufficiently prepared, but that he rushed it together in one year due to the cost of it. As a result, most of the ships of the invasion fleet were flat-bottomed river boats obtained or built in China which thus lacked a curved keel to prevent them from capsizing on the open seas even during calm weather. As well, the Chinese likely had little empathy for the Mongols since the Mongols had conquered much of China at this time, hence it is possible they may have more-deliberately provided the Mongols with inferior ships. As it was, given that the core of the Mongol forces was land-based cavalry and thus how the expanse of ocean between what is today Eastern China and Japan thus posed a difficult barrier for them to attempt to cross -- rather like how the English channel contributed to protecting the British Islands from Nazi German invasion during World War II (1939-1945) due to Nazi Germany lacking much of a navy -- until the 1945-1951 Occupation of Japan following World War II, these two invasion attempts were the closest Japan ever came to ever being occupied by a foreign power. Thus why once Japan began to be threatened by possible invasion and occupation by Allied powers during World War II that the Japanese began utilizing suicide attacks generalized as kamikaze attacks which would often (if not outright expected to) result in the death of the attacker but which would deal such damage to a potential invader that it was hoped this would turn that potential invader away just as the kamikaze typhoons had blunted the Mongol efforts in 1274 and in 1281.

This is not to somehow justify the expansion of Imperial Japan which thus contributed to the necessity of World War II to blunt Japanese aggression, but rather to note the Japanese analogy of the typhoon kamikaze which prevented a Mongol invasion and of the suicide attack kamikazes which were used in an attempt to prevent an American invasion -- both types of kamikaze being "divine wind" attacks to defend the Japanese homeland (regardless of the Japanese overwhelming the defenses of other nations' homelands leading up to World War II). In any case, a lasting effect of the 1274 and 1281 typhoon kamikazes was setting the precedent that a combination of the Samurai code of Bushido or of fight-to-the-death type loyalty which had prompted them to fight against the Mongols despite what seemed to be overwhelming odds to allow the Shinto gods the time to deliberately protect Japan thus set the precedent that through perseverance Japan would not suffer the ultimate defeat of conquest and/or occupation by even an overwhelming foreign power ... thus why they aggressively ended up overextending themselves during the 1930s and thus suffering defeat and the only historical occupation of Japan as a result of World War II.

As for the Mongol Empire(s), ultimately fragmentation due to disputed control over various Mongol-occupied territories plus the first appearance of the "Black Death" of the bubonic plague in 1348 -- the plague ultimately coming from the bacterium Yersinia pestis in Central Asia (which infected fleas, which then were transported by rats infested by those fleas) and thus also transported to Europe in part due to the connections of the Mongols -- began the process by which the Mongols began losing their vast territories, although the disintegration of the Mongols would last until 1783 (when Russia annexed the Crimean Khanate) and following which the Chinese would actually assert control over the Mongols until the 1920s when the modern nation of Mongolia was established as a buffer state between Russia and China.

Finally, referring once again to fighting as is commonly portrayed in Japanese manga/anime, the segment from the Bleach series showing Komamura fighting Poww also provides a modern reflection of Bushido in that Komamura does not only persevere against and thus manages to end up defeating the implicitly more powerful Poww, but because Komamura's "Bankai" powerup is essentially a giant samurai which thus symbolizes Bushido (which in addition represents Japan, as both Komamura and his Bankai samurai have the prominent red coloring which is often used to symbolize Japan -- see Flag of Japan).

COTD: Don't go to the bad side just in order to be strong.

BAD NEWS: Stocks keep sliding!

GOOD NEWS: A stabbing spree suspect has been arrested!

HUMOR: Behind you (Garfield, by Davis)!

HISTORY: August 13, 1704: The English and Austrians defeated the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim during the War of the Spanish Succession.

To explain this briefly, suffice to say that both royalty and nobility (kings, queens, counts/earls, countesses, knights, and so forth) are essentially a hereditary aristocracy that was thought to be predisposed to better rule. The obvious modern check upon this is in a system of democracy where others have a say via a vote upon who will be the rulers, but with a system of royalty and nobility it encourages marriages or otherwise finding ways across royal or noble family lines so that more political power might come to those families -- for instance, the historical conflict between France and England and as most exemplified by the 1337-1453 Hundred Years' War (which includes the appearance of Joan of Arc) was prompted by the fact that King William I "the Conqueror" of England was also Duke William II of Normandy, France, thus linking the thrones and the governments of England and France until the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War. In the case of the 1701-1714 War of the Spanish Succession, King Charles II died without issue (direct children, descendants, heirs) and thus passed them onto his closest issue Philip V -- this since the aforementioned finding ways across family lines meant that Philip V was the grandson of the half-sister of Charles II, Maria Theresa of Spain, who had become the queen of France through marriage to King Louis XIV.

The problem with Philip V becoming King of Spain was that since Philip V was the younger son of the Dauphin or French heir-apparent -- the Dauphin of course the son of Maria Theresa and Louis XIV -- and thus that France could also inherit Spain's empire through this linkage of the thrones and thus the governments of France and Spain. First the Holy Roman Empire began fighting against France to support Austrian claimants to the throne of Spain as part of the series of wars France fought for both greater control of European territory and for greater control of New World colonial territory, then other European nations such as England, Portugal and the Dutch Republic sided against the French (Spain saw civil war during the conflict). The peace in 1714 saw Philip V removed from the line of succession to the French throne and some territorial changes in order to ensure peace and which marked the start of an evolving balance of power idea that would find its greatest expression during the later use of the Congress or "Concert of Europe" System which came into being for a period of time following the 1792-1815 Great French War period of French expansion (including the appearance of Napoleon Bonaparte) in an attempt to keep much of Europe from lapsing back into war again. The more direct sequel to the War of the Spanish Succession was the 1717-1718 War of the Quadruple Alliance which resulted from Philip V threatening to claim the throne of France again -- in addition to his ambitions to expand Spanish influence in Italy -- due to unexpected deaths from illness in the French royal family making the son of Louis XIV, Louis XV, King of France at only the age of five.

Suffice to say that the importance of the Battle of Blenheim on this date in 1704 is that it was seen as one of the main turning points of the war since English Duke John Churchill of Marlborough (yes, the later British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was linked by family relations to John Churchill, and John Churchill was quite the successful commander during the war) managed to secretly move his troops from Bedburg to Vienna in five weeks and thus preventing the fall of the strategically-important city of Vienna. The resulting decisive victory kept the "Grand Alliance" against the French from fracturing, removed Bavaria as an opponent, and thus set the precedent for capturing territories which would thus later lead to taking the war into France itself despite the fact that it would take until 1714 for the war to come to a close.

Connecting this to something a little more modern is the 1998 movie Ever After, which takes the Cinderella fairy tale and rewrites it as feminist (pro-female) historical fiction, hence the reason why such obviously-historical characters as Leonardo da Vinci and Prince Henry II of France appear in it -- Henry II being the "Prince Charming" of the story -- and thus why although da Vinci did die in France in 1519 and although why Henry II was born that year, the film shows an elderly da Vinci interacting with a young adult Henry II (who in real life was not nearly as charming as "Prince Charming" was, either). Given the movie rewrites the Cinderella fairy tale as historical fiction, certain elements of it are vaguely familiar to those also familiar with history. Specifically in connection with the aforementioned War of the Spanish Succession that the Battle of Blenheim on this date in 1704 being the almost-marriage of the French Prince Henry II with an unnamed Princess of Spain within the movie and thus which alludes to -- although inaccurately -- the means by which the threat to the European balance of power was once made through the near-linkage of the French and Spanish thrones which thus prompted the War of the Spanish Succession and thus the successful Battle of Blenheim against the French on this date in 1704.

COTD: Putting the kid gloves on after delivering the gratuitous slap does not work.

BAD NEWS: Mental illness is rising at the college level!

GOOD NEWS: A man had a pea plant removed from his lung!

HUMOR: Oh, that's it (Baldo, by Cantu and Castellanos)!

HISTORY: August 14, 1972: 156 people were killed when an East German Interflug flight crashed during a flight from what was then East Berlin to Konigs Wusterausen in East Germany.

"Interflug" is a shortened form of "Internationaler Flug," which in German means "International Flight." Since airlines are quite expensive and risky to run there are several of them which are "flag carrier" airlines which are supported by the government in some way -- thus the "flag carrier" designation may be from the extrapolation into aviation of the maritime law that all naval ships had to fly the flag of the country they were registered with -- although in the sense of aviation this "flag carrier" designation is more of a metaphorical representation of the government support the airline has.

For the US, Pan American World Airways or "Pan Am" for short was the de facto flag carrier airline from around the 1920s until its decline in the 1970s and 1980s, and because of strict antitrust laws as of this writing the US has five major international airlines in the form of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, and US Airways -- and international flights are another characteristic of flag carrier airlines.

Interflug flew commercial flights of USSR-built aircraft primarily to USSR-aligned countries but also provided domestic flights within East Germany (although it obtained some Western-built aircraft in 1989 due to the political reason of economic Communism collapsing in Europe that year). In the aforementioned 1972 accident was therefore an Ilyushin IL-62. In the case of the crash of this aircraft, very hot air escaping from an unsecured air-con coupling actually melted insulation off cabling, causing a short circuit in the elevator or stabilizing system of the aircraft and also causing a fire which compromised/damaged the integrity of empennage or tail of the aircraft until it actually broke away while in-flight, leading to a loss of control and thus the crash. In the case of the second recorded Interflug crash, on September 1, 1975 26 people were killed when the flight crew of a Tupolev TU-134 descended below the minimum altitude of the glide path to landing and while landing so that the aircraft struck a radio tower and crashed -- for which the flight crew was sentenced to years in prison for manslaughter. In the third recorded Interflug crash, on March 26, 1979, ten people were killed when an Ilyushin IL-18D suffered an engine failure upon takeoff so that it crashed into the ILS (Instrument Landing System) localizer antenna after overrunning the runway. In the fourth and final recorded Interflug crash, on June 17, 1989 21 people were killed when an Ilyushin IL-62MK struck various obstacles after overrunning the runway at takeoff -- this because the rudder and elevator were jammed as a result of failure to remove the elevator and rudder gust locks and because the flight engineer mistakenly switched off the trust of the engines when reverse thrust was ordered in an attempt to keep the aircraft from crashing.

Originally Interflug wanted to have a name including the word "Lufthansa" -- "luft" being the German word for "air" and "Hansa" referring to the historical Hansa which was theHanseatic League that had a control of trade over parts of northern Europe from 1159 to 1862, but they were unable to do so because West Germany already had a Lufthansa airline. Interflug operated from 1958 to 1991 and at a loss which left the company deep in debt due to the inefficiency of economic Communism, hence with the end of the East German government support for its flag carrier with the 1990 German reunification Lufthansa ended up absorbing much of Interflug although 32 aircraft of its near-40 aircraft fleet were sold off as a result of being obsolete (one notable exception being three Airbus A310 aircraft acquired in 1989 due to the collapsing of economic Communism in Europe, these three aircraft then being used by Germany's government as VIP transports).

Some of Interflug's USSR-built aircraft are preserved via private collections in their remaining Interflug condition, such as this Tupolv TU 134 in Finofurt Germany, perhaps because it is a "very nice old Russian air plane." Yes, it is true it was used by East Germany but it is still figuratively "Russian" through built in "Soviet Russia" as a result of being built in the USSR, and Soviet Russia itself having an odd sort of appeal due to it having a corrupt and intrusive but developed philosophy (often subject to parody) yet one not as vilified as the corrupt and intrusive philosophy of Nazi Germany. This despite the fact that the odd crash of the Interflug flight on August 14, 1972 -- it due to leaking hot air causing fire that ended up essentially burning the tail off of the Ilyushin IL-62 that was flying the fight for the debt-ridden Interflug company, which thus in itself can be seen as a similar metaphor -- also serves as a metaphor for the inefficiency of economic Communism.

COTD: wenever i writ sumthing that the hole werld cood potenshully reed, i try to be a good speller.

BAD NEWS: Paracetamol helps cause asthma!

GOOD NEWS: German ten year bonds went up for the third time in a row!

HUMOR: Oh, that's why she dates him (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 15, 1961: East German Bereitschaftspolizei (Riot Policeman) Hans Conrad Schumann escaped over the Berlin Wall into West Berlin, Germany.

YOUTUBE: Schumann's Escape.

First the bad news about Schumann: After the end of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany (as the Federal Republic of Germany) with the collapse of Communism in Europe via the 1989 Autumn of Nations, Schumann appears to have become depressed due to frictions with those he left behind and thus why he hung himself on June 20, 1998. But he is more famous to history on this date for his escape over the Berlin wall -- which at this point was still being constructed and thus was only a low barbed wire fence at the corner of the Ruppiner Strasse and Bernauer Strausse streets where it was being built -- largely due to his escape being captured on film.

The background to Schumann is of course World War II, the result of which divided Germany into West and East Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, respectively). Political reasons left the formerly (and then once again) unified German capital of Berlin divided between West and East Germany despite it being entirely within Eastern Germany, thus why it was a popular location to attempt to escape to by Eastern Germans and why the Berlin Wall was built -- although Eastern German politicians referred to it as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Wall" to imply that Western Berlin was still under some control of the intrusive ideology of Nazi Germany-era fascism or total control by the government or totalitarianism which is now known as Nazism. The point to make here being that totalitarian governments will employ any means to achieve their control, thus as economic Communism is also one of the more commonly-used means of achieving that control (although Communist loyalists would disagree) thus the many attempts to escape into West Berlin and/or into West Germany since transportation through Eastern Germany territory between West Berlin and West Germany was permitted as a result of politics.

The name "Berlin Wall" is somewhat of a misnomer because it was a complicated defensive structure including land mines and such, although the fact it was much more developed than the Inner German Border defensive system between West and East Germany as well as its location in the unified Germany's former (and now-again) capital has made it iconic. A system of "Schiessbefel" (order to fire) was in place to stop at gunpoint or to kill defectors -- who were deemed to be "traitors" and thus who were essentially guilty of treason and thus subject to severe consequences were -- in place for East German Bereitschaftspolizei like Hans Conrad Schumann since an estimated 100-200 people of the estimated 5,000 who attempted it died trying to cross into West Berlin over the Berlin wall, as well as an estimated 900-1,000 of the remaining estimated 35,100 who attempted it died trying to cross into West Germany at other points and thus over the Inner German Border. Those who assisted escapes were subject to harsh consequences for the same types of reasons -- this in particular since they were deemed to be "Menschenhandlers" or "human traffickers" since human trafficking is a modern day form by which to enslave human beings for sexual exploitation or forced labor (here one should note the easy justification achieved for these actions through the use of selective language). In total, an estimated 40,100 East Germans escaped to either West Berlin or into West Germany, with 163,815 more escaping through managing to travel to another country first (which may therefore look less fatal but which was likely more difficult) and 29,670 more being ransomed by West Germany.

In the case of Schumann, he was still a young and impressionable teenager when he became part of the East German Bereitschaftspolizei after three months training, thus after volunteering for service in Berlin, finding himself guarding the location at which the Berlin Wall was being built and was only a low barbed wire fence at the time since construction of the Berlin Wall had only begun on August 13, and upon seeing West Berliners on the other side shouting at him "come over" he succumbed to the peer pressure by jumping over the fence and running into West Berlin, where a police car then picked him up and rapidly drove him away to keep him from being taken back and thus how he became the first but not the last East German border guard to escape to the West.

The imagery of Schumann's escape in itself has become iconic -- a "Mauerspringer" ("Walljumper") statue by Florian and Michael Brauer and Edward Anders was later erected at the site -- because of the powerful imagery that even an agent of and thus a symbol of the imposing nature of Communism would actually end up repenting and fleeing from it. Schumann was not the only notable defector from Eastern Germany who went over the Berlin Wall, however, and a number of creative methods were used even as the fortifications of the Berlin Wall were continually improved over time: digging long tunnels under the wall, flying over the wall with various aircraft, sliding along aerial wires, working their way through the sewers under the wall since the sewers predated the wall's construction, or even using vehicles to ram through the wall (vehicle escape attempts were a particular reason the wall was continually improved). Similar methods were also used at other points along the Inner German Border to escape, one of the more unique being fourteen East Germans (eleven of them children) who were smuggled across the Inner German Border hidden under the carcasses of slaughtered pigs in refrigerated truck in September 1964.

Finally, there are some other notable defections or attempted defections both from Communist East Germany and from various oppressive Communist countries of the East as well, some of them even approaching the iconic status of Hans Conrad Schumann's escape:

Sometime in 1961: Jonas Pleskys (USSR), a submarine tender captain violated orders by sailing his tender to Gotland, Sweden, where he was successfully evacuated to the West by the US CIA -- likely the inspiration for Tom Clancy's story The Hunt for Red October.

August 17, 1962: Peter Fechter (East German), teenage bricklayer shot so that he died in one of the Berlin Wall's "death strips" in plain sight of those in West Berlin as a result of the short height of the wall in that location at that time.

October 15, 1970: Pranas Brazinskas and his son Algirdas Brazinskas (USSR) managed to hijack Aeroflot Flight 244 despite a shootout that left one dead and several wounded in order to make it to Turkey, where they were convicted and imprisoned for air piracy but were later granted amnesty and allowed to complete their defection to the West via the US (ironically enough, in 2002 Pranas was murdered by Algirdas in a family argument).

November 23, 1970: Simonas "Simas" Kurdirka (USSR) jumped from the USSR ship Sovetskaya Litva to the US Coast Guard ship Vigilant. Kurdirka was improperly turned back over to the USSR after a ten hour stalemate but it was later found that Kurdirka was able to claim American citizenship through his mother and thus why he was able to legally come to the US as a US citizen in 1974.

September 6, 1976: Viktor Ivanovich Belenko (USSR), piloted a MiG-25 fighter aircraft to Japan from the USSR and thus defected to the Capitalist West via the West-aligned Japan, thus also giving the West a unique chance to examine the technology of the aircraft.

Sometime in July 1978: General Ion Mihai Pacepa (Romanian) defected to the West via the American Embassy at Bonn while on a diplomatic mission. The highest-ranking military defector from the Communist East to the Capitalist West, he is also notable since Romania hired the terrorist "Carlos the Jackal" Illich Ramirez Sachez in a failed attempt to then assassinate him (the Jackal's nickname came from a pre-existing story from 1971, not the other way around).

August 21, 1979: Alexander Godunov (USSR) defected while on tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York, New York (USA). Also an actor who thus then also appeared in eight American films in addition to appearing then in American ballet, he is noted in particular through portraying the main antagonist "Karl" in the quite-popularly received 1988 American movie Die Hard.

September 16, 1979: Eight members of the Strelzyk and Wetzel families (East Germany) used a homemade hot air balloon to fly over the Inner German Border and thus to defect from East Germany to West Germany. A historically-based movie version of this was made in 1981 titled Night Crossing, which starts with a stock footage summary including Hans Conrad Schumann's aforementioned August 15, 1961 jump to give a background of the situation the Strelzyk and Wetzel families were facing (although they flew over the Inner German Border and did thus not go over the Berlin Wall like Schumann did).

November 18, 1983: Seven young intellectuals (USSR) attempted to hijack Aeroflot Flight 6833 to make it to Turkey and thus to imitate the October 15, 1970 hijacking of Aeroflot Flight 244. Their attempt failed, however, thus why four of them were executed and three of them were imprisoned for air piracy they supposedly committed for being "drug addicts" and "bandits" instead of due to their professed wish of "having a better life and living in a free society."

In addition to the iconic imagery of Hans Conrad Schumann jumping over the then-barbed wire Berlin Wall on this date in 1961, one may also remember the iconic imagery of US President Ronald Reagan using the iconic phrase of "tear down this wall" on June 12, 1987 while making a speech commemorating the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin and thus imitating the 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech that US President John Kennedy had made early after the Berlin Wall was built in 1963, and while en route to a G7 Summit in Italy. The problem with which at the time -- which was also why opinions about it were divided and why it was not publicized much at first -- was that Reagan had productively softened his stance against Communism as time went on and had defused the confrontational defensiveness from Communists that his previous harder stance had helped engender. In short this was why the USSR's news agency of TASS then decreed that Reagan had essentially lapsed through giving an "openly provocative, war-mongering speech," although the 1989 Autumn of Nations and thus the resulting "tearing down" of the Berlin Wall then retroactively brought much attention to Reagan's previous speech and thus made it as iconic as Hans Conrad Schumann's jumping over the early Berlin Wall had been.

COTD: Your logic is not allowed to prove itself.

BAD NEWS: A man shot eight people in a Buffalo restaurant!

GOOD NEWS: A better contraceptive should soon be available!

HUMOR: It never gets old (Heart of the City, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: August 16, 1819: An estimated seventeen people were killed and 600 in a crowd of over 60,000 were injured by the Peterloo Massacre at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England (United Kingdom).

The "Peterloo" name comes from the Battle of Waterloo which took place earlier and which ended French power under Napoleon Bonaparte as a threat. This is appropriate since with the end of the concluding Napoleonic Wars era of the Great French War in 1815 and the end for higher demand prompted by a war, the British economy went into a recession which hurt the textile industry in particular, as well as causing high unemployment. "Corn laws " or rather laws putting tariffs on foreign foodstuffs to protect the British agriculture industry were put into place but thus raised the cost of these even-inferior foodstuffs despite the economic hardships of the time. Adding to this was political inequality in that suffrage or voting rights was restricted to adult males who owned land worth forty British shillings at that time and that those in northern England could not even vote at that time, which in combination with the unequal voting power of the time meant that voting power could not even be used to remediate the situation. In short, this prompted political radicalism and thus the organizing of a "great assembly" by the Manchester Patriotic Union in order to agitate for political reforms which were hoped to be able to correct the situation.

Unfortunately the British government learned of the planned assembly, and due to them interpreting it as a planned insurrection -- ironically enough because a letter written by Manchester Patriotic Union chair Joseph Johnson to ask orator Henry Hunt actually stressed the wish to prevent an insurrection -- the government thus banned the planned meeting upon the date of August 9 after it was delayed a week due to planning difficulties. Showing how this type of reasoning further went was the fact that when the Manchester Observer newspaper announced the delay and noted the great assembly was to attempt radical reforms and to obtain an MP (Member of Parliament) for the district of Manchester in particular, the government declared that "the election of a Member of Parliament without the King's writ" (formal written order) was also illegal and thus this was yet another reason why the planned meeting was illegal and should be banned. In short, everything those who planned the meeting did to assure the authorities of peaceful and legal intentions was interpreted the worst way so that the meeting appeared increasingly hostile and illegal.

The meeting finally took place on August 16 after the British Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth had pointed out to the more local authorities that intention alone to elect an MP was not illegal, although actually doing so but without the King's writ would be illegal, thus somewhat dismantling the argument that the planned meeting was illegal. In the resulting worry and confusion from the size of the crowd and the hostility of the authorities gathered to help maintain order, however, the confused response by the authorities in attempting to arrest the notable leaders of Henry Hunt, Joseph Johnson, John Knight, and James Moorhouse at the meeting and to disperse those there thus lead to the Peterloo Massacre. Public sympathy was with the residents of Manchester after word of what happened spread, but the response of the British government to this and other acts deemed related to it such as the Cato Street Conspiracy (an assassination attempt upon cabinet members of the British government) was to immediately start attempting to block reforms such as via the Six Acts which would prevent even meetings to press for similar reforms in the future, as well as curtailing rights. As such, the response of the public and that of the government essentially canceled each other out so that over time many of the reform measures sought by the great assembly at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England (United Kingdom) were achieved over time -- between 1832 (with the Great Reform Act and 1837 when Manchester finally gained full its fullest representation through becoming a Municipal Borough, although this thus did indeed take eighteen years after the Peterloo Massacre in order to come about.

It can be argued that the effect of the Peterloo Massacre was negligible since it ended up having no effect on the pace of reforms seen in the United Kingdom during the 1800s, but one notable effect of Peterloo was some British businessmen who were sympathetic to what had happened as a result of the massacre founded the newspaper The Manchester Guardian in 1821 and in order to promote reform and thus liberty. As of this writing the Manchester Guardian is still in existence although it has since been renamed the Guardian. Admittedly "center-left" or somewhat liberal in its outlook due to its foundation being that of supporting liberty and reform, its printed version is still popular as of this writing and it also enjoys strong online readership (as of this writing, the editorial staff claims its online version is the second most-read upon the internet).

It is at this point that the history of the Peterloo Massacre is linked to the present by the Guardian in that even as an American I am aware of this British paper through using the onlineGoogle News aggregator as a source for news I would have otherwise obtained through a newspaper. The benefit of which is that since Google News is an automated site that automatically collects various news stories from across various online newspaper editions and thus also including the aforementioned the Guardian. The benefit of which is that this allows comparison and contrast between various online versions of newspapers so that it allows one to better discern through consensus what is newsworthy instead of what is notable due to one's focus such as the aforementioned "center-left" focus of the Guardian. In short, while I often find the Guardian a good source due to the lasting effects of its foundation upon supporting liberty and reform following the Peterloo Massacre, I only look for stories in its online version if they come up with a large aggregation of stories from Google News and thus are in consensus with what is newsworthy instead of only notable due to whatever focus a news organization might have -- this because developing a consensus helps prevent potential counterproductive bias that can inadvertently result from focusing overmuch upon a fewer news organizations and thus whatever focuses (every organization has one, due to opinions playing a role in the reporting of news) they might have. But finally suffice to say that history records that the events at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England (United Kingdom) were not reported as "Peterloo" merely due to focus, but rather because it was indeed a massacre.

COTD: When somebody starts talking to you about something completely different, you know they are lying.

BAD NEWS: A truck crashed into a crowd at an off-road race!

GOOD NEWS: The US dollar is holding its value!

HUMOR: Or maybe that is a blessing (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 17, 1907: Pike Place Market, the longest continuously-running public market in the US, was opened in Seattle (Washington).

Suffice to say that the appeal of Pike Place Market is that of nostalgic history in that it is one of the few places left where farmers can legally sell food directly to the public instead of the more modern process of selling it to someone to market it for them, the food including such goods as produce (fruits and vegetables) and fish. While this serves as the center of Pike Place there are also antique stores, comic book shops, street entertainers ("buskers"), and some small family restaurants in Pike Place as well.

The reason why Pike Place was founded was complaints from local area farmers due to not being dealt with fairly when they would sell their goods to a middleman -- someone to market their goods for them, given their limited time -- and thus needing the chance to sell directly to the public in order to make a profit. This because due to economics, middlemen would buy goods as cheaply as possible from the farmers and then sell those goods for as much as possible to consumers in order to make a profit, thus by cutting out the middleman such farmers could make more a profit for themselves -- this although having to keep their selling operation small due to the additional work of doing the marketing for the highest prices for their goods in addition to producing those goods in the first place.

It is also of note here that many farmers selling goods in Pike Place during the 1940s were of Japanese descent and thus the internment of the Japanese in Internment Camps during World War II unfairly dispossessed (such internment was later deemed illegal) and thus removed the strong Japanese presence in Pike Place. Also, one of the main attractions of Pike Place is its Fish Market area due to the trademark "flying fish" practice of fishmongers tossing salmon over a counter to be prepared for final sale -- this reportedly due to tiring of walking around the counter every time a fish was sold, and as it is the most notable feature about the Fish Market area which has come to symbolize Pike Place thus often being used as a symbol for the market and thus Seattle as well (also notable is that the "flying fish" aspect has raised some concerns from animal rights activists about being too demeaning towards animals, however).

To expand from this historical cultural area into the counterculture (unique and unusual) area, however, it should also be noted that Pike Place also reportedly contains a "head shop" due to much of what a head shop sells existing in a legal gray area or in a semilegal status. The best way to explain this being that while most of the time the drug marijuana is illegal due to its great potential for abuse and thus its harmful side effects, in certain situations marijuana can be legally used for medical conditions and thus as medical marijuana instead of as recreational marijuana -- thus for instance a head shop is sometimes a location that would sell products such as medical marijuana despite the debatable result of drug dealers using such shops as a loophole by which to sell their recreational instead of medicinal drugs legally as well as consumers using such head shops as a loophole to get "legally high" for recreational instead of medicinal purposes.

More commonly, however, such smart shops sell drug paraphernalia which is associated with the production or consumption of drugs due to this not being illegal (although the association certainly makes it suspicious), as well as items to supposedly enhance sexual intercourse such as the sex toys of dildos and vibrators. But also suffice to say that since this aspect is more countercultural than cultural such as the rest of Pike Place tends to be, as well as the potential for harm it implies (arguably more so than the "flying fish" aspect) this aspect tends to be downplayed. As such, the entire Pike Place Market that was founded on this date in 1907 is still a popular tourist attraction for all types, even up to the time of this writing.

COTD: To a drug addict, common sense is pulled out of thin air.

BAD NEWS: At least 71 people were killed by a suicide bombing in Iraq!

GOOD NEWS: A boy survived being impaled by a stingray barb!

HUMOR: Yes, it certainly is (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: August 18, 1907: Lydia Litvyak, USSR female World War II (1941-1945) fighter ace, was born.

The term "ace" -- which can be allied to those who make kills outside of fighter aircraft, but which tends to be used for kills made in fighter aircraft and thus why it is sometimes termed "flying ace" -- actually comes from French newspapers prior to World War I (1914-1918). They began using the term "ace" to refer to the best sports stars and then extrapolated it to combat by calling French pilot Adolphe Pegoud an ace after he had succeeded in becoming the first French pilot to shoot down five German aircraft. This set the precedent of five "kills" via shootdowns as what established an ace although the number of kills needed for the status of flying ace or its equivalent has varied from country to country. Germany, for instance, originally had eight kills needed for its Prussian ace-equivalent "Pour le Merite" (which is French for "For the Merit," although the medal awarded for it made it more popularly known as "the Blue Max") as well as requiring ten kills to gain the status of Uberkannen ("Big Guns"), and the British originally recorded kills by squadron instead of by individuals so that they originally recorded no aces at all.

It is also difficult at times to distinguish whether a kill was made or not during the chaotic nature of combat, hence the aforementioned USSR fighter ace Lydia Litvyak is usually credited with eight to thirteen solo kills and two to four shared kills during her 1941-1943 years of service (most notably Nazi German pilot Erwin Maier, who met Litvyak afterwards and had a hard time believing he was shot down by a woman). Friends with and sometimes accompanying the USSR's other notable flying ace from World War II, Katya Budanova -- who had a comparable experience and who was also eventually shot down and killed -- Litvyak was shot down and killed on August 1, 1943 after attacking a flight of German bombers due to missing the fact that German fighters were escorting the bombers from above, enabling them to surprise and overwhelm her.

In the now-former USSR, what is elsewhere called "World War II" is referred to as "the Great Patriotic War," and by exaggerating her previous flying time by 100 hours to give her enough flying experience through lying was able to join the all-female 586th Fighter Regiment in 1941 -- such a female regiment likely also formed for the propaganda purpose of both showing everyone willing to fight against the Nazi German-lead invasion of the USSR that had occurred at that point as well as to supposedly show how economic Communism lead to more egalitarian or equal relations between the sexes. Litvyak had been enthusiastic about flying since she was fourteen and actually flew her first aircraft at the age of fifteen, hence perhaps the reason why she succeeded so well and thus became a fighter ace despite lying her way into become a fighter pilot. She had the nicknames of "Lilya," "the White Lily of Stalingrad," and "the White Rose of Stalingrad," the last nickname being the most popular one in English due to this being how her nickname was recorded in original reports about her in English.

To expand this a little further, the first flying ace in the form of the aforementioned World War I Adolphe Pegoud is sometimes incorrectly claimed to be the first pilot to have flown a loop despite Russian pilot Pyotr Nesterov actually flying a loop before him on September 9, 1913, and in one of war's terrible ironies was actually shot down in 1915 by a German but former prewar flying student of his named Unteroffizier Kandulski. The iconic German pilot Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen or "Red Baron" (a translation of the aristocratic title granted his family by the earlier Holy Roman Empire) of World War I became iconic through both painting the aircraft he flew red so that he could be seen and his kills counted more easily plus establishing an early kill record conventionally recorded as 80 kills, before he was fatally wounded (but not shot down, as he managed to emergency land his aircraft safely) in 1918. The ace with the most recorded kills ever, however, is the Nazi German Erich Hartmann who scored somewhere between 345-352 kills during World War II -- the larger number of kills meaning the correct number is disputed more often, it often noted he was allowed to keep flying against inferior pilots instead of being retired to teach his skills to new pilots such as is common elsewhere in the world, and he actually managed to survive his service during World War II so that he died in 1993.

Here I have to point out that although the success of such aces the aforementioned USSR's Lydia Litvyak might make air combat look easy, to borrow from the Japanese flying ace Saburo Sakai who I am quite familiar with, it actually is not. One of the comments Sakai makes in his biography Samurai, for instance, is that despite his success (conventionally recorded as 64 kills) he frequently emerged from his dogfights physically exhausted and dripping with sweat due to the life-and-death concentration and struggle needed for a dogfight. Hence as Litvyak has endured that much such as these other aces did and as I have not, she was likely much tougher than I am.

COTD: Using law to keep the justice away.

BAD NEWS: Six people were killed in more Iraq violence!

GOOD NEWS: Algeria is allowing foreign organizations to return!

HUMOR: At least he did not ask to help (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

US PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: Bill Clinton: August 19, 1946 (Most Recent Historian Rank: 13/43)

HISTORY: August 19, 1812: During the American War of 1812, the American USS Constitution defeated the British HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia (now part of Canada) earning the nickname "Old Ironsides" in the process.

That the USS Constitution earned the nickname "Old Ironsides" due to the shots of the HMS Guerriere bouncing off it during the War of 1812 is a common bit of trivia, but it is easier to understand that trivia with an even greater context.

The prime reason for the American War of 1812 was essentially as an extension of the Napoleonic Wars era of the European Great French War of 1792-1815 -- that is to say when Napoleon Bonaparte had control of France and thus the fervor that had begun spilling out of France via their pursuit of French nobles fleeing the 1789-1799 French Revolution. Under the guidance of Napoleon France was able to achieve hegemony (leadership, control) over most of Europe and thus to upset the prior status quo of more a balance of power, but at the same time the new country of the United States of America was indebted to France as a result of French assistance during the 1764-1783 American Revolution, plus also because of lingering issues from the 1775-1783 American Revolutionary War/War of Independence since although now-independent of the United Kingdom the United States was still a newer and thus still fairly weak nation.

In the case of both the Great French War and the American War of 1812, they both essentially came to an end when Napoleon overreached himself by attempting to defeat Russia (this foreshadowing Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler's overreaching through attempting to defeat the USSR during the 1939-1945 war of World War II) and thus weakened France to the degree that the often English-lead coalitions against France were finally able to defeat her. At best, the War of 1812 itself can be declared to be indecisive since each side involved with it could declare victory -- the Americans managed to get the British to stop some of their abuses (notably the impressment or forcing of Americans into the British Navy), the British were able to stalemate the Americans enough to meet their objective of defeating Napoleon's France, and the Canadians defeated American attempts to invade and thus to expand American territory through what is now Canada (with the exception of Carleton Island on the St. Lawrence River). Most important about the easing of relations between the Americans and British is that it encouraged trade and thus even alliance between the United States and United Kingdom (this was arguably what each had wanted all along, given the Quasi-War due to French hostility to American attempts at obtaining British trade between 1798 and 1800) which British politician Winston Churchill would refer to as a Special Relationship in 1946.

Prior to all of this, however, there was understandable hostility between the British and the Americans, hence the reason for the American War of 1812 and the naval battle of the USS Constitution fighting the HMS Guerriere. The first important fact to note about which is that the USS Constitution was built as a capital ship or as one of the best ships and thus as a foundation for the US Navy, thus why she and her sister-ships (other capital ships built at the same time) were larger, more heavily armed, and built more thoroughly than other ships of that period. In contrast, the HMS Guerriere was an older ship that had originally been a French ship and which had been captured previously during the Napoleonic Wars era of the Great French War. As such, when the masts of the USS Constitution and the HMS Guerriere became entangled during the fight, it was the masts of the HMS Guerriere which ended up snapping off to break the two ships free. Although shots from firearms are also common in such a fight, the main armament of broadsides or firing of all guns on one side of the HMS Guerriere are noted as being "generally inaccurate" as well -- although this is not specified as being either due to her construction or whether due to the rolling of the waves hindering getting a clean shot -- hence reportedly when a cannonball fired in these difficult situations struck the hull of the better ship of the USS Constitution but failed to do much damage before bouncing off, an unidentified Constitution crewman reportedly exclaimed "Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!" and thus set the precedent that would earn the ship her nickname.

The USS Constitution under the command of Captain Isaac Hull won this early battle (the Americans had declared war upon the British in late June) and thus boosted American morale for the war with it. Captain Richard Dacres of the HMS Guerriere later was acquitted in a British court martial which was customary for the loss of his ship through noting much of what has already been mentioned about the older HMS Guerriere such as noting the ship had been on her way to be refitted (repaired, updated) and that her masts had snapped off as much due to general wear and tear as battle damage. Also, although the HMS Guerriere was so badly damaged by the battle that she was then burned and thus sunk afterwards, the "Old Ironsides" of the USS Constitution still exists today as a museum ship and thus provides nostalgia for American history.

The practice of the British putting commanders who lost their ships through a court martial is actually not reflective of the severe measures used to ensure discipline instead of negligence by the British Navy, as court martials are actually common practice in many navies following the loss of a ship in order to ensure that the circumstances surrounding even an unavoidable and thus guiltless loss of the ship are known despite how a court martial is often associated with serious offenses. William Bligh, the commander of the British ship Bounty was put through a court martial but acquitted for the 1789 mutiny against him which lost him his ship, for instance, and ten of those aboard the Bounty who were later rescued (as in the case of loyalists who could not fit or were prevented from coming aboard the small launch ship Bligh and others were placed into by the mutineers) or captured were also put through a court martial (four loyalists acquitted, three found guilty but pardoned, and three executed by hanging).

Captain Richard Dacres of the former HMS Guerriere defeated by the USS Constitution later ended up rising to the rank of Vice Admiral through the distinction of his service -- although like how William Bligh is more often remembered for the Bounty mutiny against him, it is more often Dacres's ship in the form of the HMS Guerriere being defeated by the USS Constitution during the War of 1812 that Dacres is more often remembered for due to result of the USS Constitution becoming known as "Old Ironsides" as a result of the battle.

COTD: You might put a dent in it, or you might make the dent in it worse.

BAD NEWS: Seven people were killed by a bombing in China!

GOOD NEWS: The last US combat brigade has left Iraq!

HUMOR: Norman is so much like me (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

US PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: Benjamin Harrison: August 20, 1833 (Most Recent Historian Rank: 34/43)

HISTORY: August 20, 2008: 154 people were killed when Spanair Flight 5022 crashed at Madrid, Spain, due to the aircraft being in improper configuration for takeoff.

The easiest way to explain "improper configuration for takeoff" is through noting that the flight surfaces such as the wings which enable flight for most aircraft include what are called "flaps" and "slats" which essentially extend the wings so that the aircraft can fly more slowly but with a greater angle of attack -- "angle of attack" essentially meaning the lifting power of the wings due to aerodynamics. Since any aircraft upon the ground will be moving at a slower speed then if it was in the air, and since an aircraft needs to be able to "rotate" or to pull up in order to climb into the air once it leaves the ground, the flaps and slats have to be extended or configured correctly to compensate for the slower speed and the greater angle of attack needed in order to have the aircraft climb into the air -- or in short, the aircraft has to be "configured" correctly in order to take off properly.

The first aircraft noted in connection with Spanair Flight 5022 due to improper configuration at takeoff is the Lufthansa Flight 540 of November 20, 1974, due to failure of the slats to be deployed correctly contributing to a crash at takeoff which resulted in 59 deaths. The important result of this crash being that as the aircraft involved in this accident was a Boeing 747-130, the aeronautics-leading company of Boeing began installing additional warning systems to warn of improper configuration at takeoff and in the case flight crews somehow missed the properly configuration of their aircraft for takeoff while following their preflight checklists and as happened in the case of Lufthansa Flight 540. However, even with such alarms this did not prevent Northwest Airlines Flight 255 (a McDonald Douglas MD-82) from crashing on August 16, 1987 with 156 deaths due to following an improper preflight checklist procedure and the apparent nonfunctioning of the alarm system designed to warn about the improper takeoff configuration -- a flaw in the circuit breaker for the alarm system aboard this model of (McDonald-Douglas MD-82) aircraft being noted as a possible cause the alarm system did not function. It also did not stop Delta Airlines Flight 1141 (a Boeing 727) from crashing on August 31, 1988 with fourteen deaths due to improper takeoff configuration of both flaps and slats as a result of excess conversations instead of a sterile cockpit (no casual conversations) plus the nonfunctioning of the alarm system designed to warn about improper takeoff configuration. As well, it did not stop LAPA Flight 3142 (a Boeing 737-204C) from crashing on August 31, 1999 with 65 deaths due to the flight crew's outright ignoring the warning which sounded about the aircraft's flaps not being configured correctly due to lack of discipline, excess conversations instead of a sterile cockpit (no casual conversations) resulting in neglect of the flaps portion of the preflight checklist, and other issues. As well, it did not stop Mandala Airlines Flight 091 (a Boeing 737-200) from crashing on September 5, 2005 with 143 deaths again due to improper takeoff configuration of both flaps and slats due to following an improper preflight checklist procedure and the apparent nonfunctioning of the alarm system designed to warn about the improper takeoff configuration.

Unfortunately much of the above was repeated in the Spanair Flight 5022 (another McDonnell Douglas MD-82) instance on this date in 2008 when both flaps and slats failed to be extended and thus the aircraft configured correctly for takeoff, this because the copilot simply voiced the correct flaps and slats values when going over the preflight checklists instead of actually physically checking them -- this defeating the three checklists in place for redundancy to prevent just an incident from happening. As well, the apparent nonfunctioning of the alarm system designed to warn about the improper takeoff configuration (possibly due to the faulty circuit breaker) shows that the flight crew was overtrusting that technology would keep them safe when the fact is that it is being able to monitor technology correctly and thus to anticipate what it may warn one of at the last minute which thus keeps one safe, since it is the ability to monitor such technology instead of becoming dependent upon it to save those using it that those using it safe. Hence the overtrustingness of the flight crew is what lead to the crash of and the 154 deaths of Spanair Flight 5022 on this date in 2008.

COTD: Be sure to stock the lectern with two water bottles and bendable straws.

BAD NEWS: The oil plume is persisting in the Gulf of Mexico!

GOOD NEWS: "Bonnie and Clyde" were caught!

HUMOR: Should have taken that more seriously (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 21, 1945: Armenian-American scientist Haroutune Krikor "Harry K." Daghlian, Jr., was fatally irradiated in a criticality accident.

Suffice to say a criticality incident is an inadvertent nuclear reaction. In the case of Daghlian, he was part of the American Manhattan Project to develop nuclear technology such as nuclear warheads before Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan might have a chance to develop them during World War II (1939-1945), and the research into which continued after the war (the final surrender, that of Japan, was announced on August 15 but was made formal through signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2). What Daghlian was doing when the accident occurred was building by hand a neutron reflector around a plutonium core in order to reduce the mass needed for the plutonium core to reach criticality. In other words, by reflecting scattered neutrons back into the core it increased the chance they would contribute to a nuclear reaction.

The neutron reflector that Daghlian was building was made of tungsten carbide bricks, and when he would have placed the last brick his neutron counters warned him this would have caused his assembly to become supercritical -- above that needed for a nuclear reaction -- hence he pulled back his hand and the last tungsten carbide brick but inadvertently dropped the brick into the center of his assembly, reflecting enough neutrons back into the plutonium core to thus prompt the criticality incident of an inadvertent release of nuclear radiation. Understandably startled, he first tried to slap the extra brick away, then after failing in that then partially disassembled the tungsten carbide bricks about the plutonium core to stop the reaction. Since he ended up absorbing an estimated 510 rems of radiation with the fatal dose range beginning as low as 200 rems and going as high as 1,000 rems (above which is generally considered invariably fatal), he then ended up dying of radiation poisoning on September 15, 1945.

Rems are still commonly used today but are considered obsolete due to being supplanted by other units such as those known as "Grays," and in terms of Grays a radiation dose of more than 30 Grays is considered to be fatal. Symptoms of such poisoning are nausea, vomiting (sometimes bloody vomit), headache, fatigue, weakness, fever, hair loss, infections, bloody stools and diarrhea, dizziness, disorientation, and low blood pressure. An additional irony is that since radiation can cause mutations in genes it can lead to cancer in the long run, although doses of radiation are also used to combat cancer since it disturbs and thus interrupts cell division -- too-rapid cell division being what cancer is. Also suffice to say that additional safety measures were developed after Daghlian's fatal accident.

In the case of a criticality accident, what one usually observes is a blue flash of light known as ionized air glow which results from the energy being released exciting molecules in the air. Heat is often felt as well, likely due to infrared and ultraviolet light released by the such a criticality incident. Finally, since Canadian scientist Louis Slotin accidentally fatally irradiated himself through a similar criticality accident on May 21, 1946 (he died from radiation poisoning on May 30, 1946) through an assembly using the same amount of subcritical plutonium in its core, a plutonium core with that same subcritical amount of plutonium has since become known as a "Demon Core."

Finally accidents of both Daghlian and Slotin have become a popular allusion when referring to nuclear technology, most notably in how the two accidents are combined together and fictionally inserted into the 1989 Fat Man and Little Boy/Shadow Makers film about the aforementioned Manhattan project, the segment from the film of which is actually available here on Youtube under the title of "The Demon Core 1945." But suffice to say despite the combination and fictional insertion of the accidents of Daghlian and Slotin into an earlier date for more dramatic purposes (not to mention the large number of othernuclear accidents which have occurred over the years), nuclear technology might yield quite productive and independent energy but can indeed be quite inherently dangerous.

COTD: It is one thing to preach to the choir, and quite another to convert a sinner.

BAD NEWS: Pesticide exposure appears to help lead to ADHD!

GOOD NEWS: Percy Harvin appears to be all right!

HUMOR: Should have seen that coming (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 22, 1952: The French penal colony on Devil's Island was permanently closed.

Devil's Island is a part of French Guiana (an "overseas region" of France) which today is noted for its FrenchGuiana Space Centre commonly used by the European Space Agency -- this because proximity to the equator best increases the speed of eastward launches due to the rotation of the Earth and also because proximity to the equator makes maneuvering satellites into geosynchonous orbits easier (thus also the reason for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration to be based in southern Florida). Prior to this, however, it was noted for the Devil's Island penitentiary that was opened there in 1852.

Also suffice to say that French penitentiary upon Devil's Island was essentially France's version of the aforementioned American prison on Alcatraz Island, except that political prisoners (those who strongly disagreed with and who might act upon their political views) were sent there as well. The harsh conditions upon the disease-ridden island and the only escape being through the jungle and the ocean meant that not many were able to escape once they were sent there and thus to an essential death sentence -- although some even went so far as to even lie about having escaped from the island -- and some measures were taken to encourage convicts who manage to survive Devil's Island to settle elsewhere in French Guiana -- thus like the British sending prisoners first to the future United States and the future Australia, being sent to Devil's Island was a form of penal transportation by which the home country would attempt to rid itself of undesirable present or former criminals.

Just why the penitentiary on Devil's Island was closed is not explicitly mentioned, but likely it was closed for the same reason that Alcatraz Island was -- too expensive and difficult to maintain, plus too much deterioration of the penitentiary due to too much exposure to the elements. Also like Alcatraz Island, Devil's Island is referenced a number of times in history and culture: its most notable prisoner was the Jewish-French military officer Alfred Dreyfus who was framed for espionage against France for Germany due to anti-Semitism and who was imprisoned there from 1895 to 1900, the 1925 movie version of Phantom of the Opera cheapens but makes more familiar the character of Erik/the Phantom by making him an escapee from Devil's Island (where he was sent for practicing the "Black Arts"), and at one point in the 1978 Revenge of the Pink Panther movie the Inspector Clouseau character warns his man-servant Cato Fong that Cato's running a brothel could get them ten years on Devil's Island -- this although of course the penitentiary upon Devil's Island had been closed long before the 1978 year within which Revenge of the Pink Panther is supposed to take place.

"The Pink Panther" also deserves another mention: a series of comedy films based around the barely-competent, exaggeratedly-French, clumsy and thus humorously-erring Inspector Jacques Clouseau from 1963 to 1993 and which was rebooted (restarted) in 2006. The "Pink Panther" is actually a (fictitious) diamond stolen in the 1963 Pink Panther movie and in the 1975 Return of the Pink Panther -- not the 1978 Revenge of the Pink Panther which features the reference to "Devil's Island" -- which due to the first and most of the other original films about the Inspector Jacques Clouseau featuring an animated opening sequence with an anthropomorphic panther character of the Pink Panther in them to set the comedic tone thus prompted the identification of "Pink Panther" as Jacques Clouseau instead of the aforementioned diamond. As such, the anthropomorphic Pink Panther character has eclipsed even Clouseau via being spun off into comic, cartoon, and other appearances increasingly only tangentially related to Clouseau (despite the sharing of the "Pink Panther" name) and thus most certainly never making any allusions to the Alcatraz-like Devil's Island such as that made by Clouseau in the 1978 Revenge of the Pink Panther.

COTD: Go forget!

BAD NEWS: More eggs had to be recalled!

GOOD NEWS: Derek Lanphier did not have to pay the $1 million in charges fradulently posted to his PayPal account!

HUMOR: Credit card offers (Heart of the City, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: August 23, 1858: Fourteen people were killed and 50 were injured in the Round Oak Rail Accident in the United Kingdom.

According the Guard Cooke in the rear brake van (caboose), the Round Oak Rail Accident occurred at the Round Oak station of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway between Wolverhampton and Worcester because when the train was divided in order to make it up a steep incline and the first segment with his brake van at the rear was near the top of the incline, he locked up his brakes but it failed to stop the train so that it turned into a runaway. Then, when it was going to collide with the second segment which was now climbing up the incline via another locomotive (which managed to come to a complete stop before impact) he jumped clear of the train and urged others to jump as well in order to avoid being killed.

Investigation of the accident revealed that Cooke was lying about what happened, however. Not only was the nut of the brakescrew in Cooke's brake van in the off position as well as being bent so that it could not have been moved by the collision, but by recreating the accident it was found that had Cooke actually applied the brakes as he claimed he did, it would have stopped the first segment of the train. What had happened was that Cooke had left the train for whatever reason -- this neglect in line with his apparent drinking and smoking with passengers in the brake van as well as allowing them to apply the screw brake and thus breaking various train couplings and side chains required to keep the train together three times during the day-long trip, each time requiring temporary repairs. A coupling that was not repaired before the accident occurred gave way when the runaway exacerbated by Cooke's overtrustingness that the technology of the train could endure the aforementioned abuse and could thus essentially save itself instead of being present to apply the brakes. As such, Cooke was convicted of manslaughter for the deaths of the fourteen people that occurred when Cooke's brake van and the two coaches ahead of it were smashed to pieces via hitting the second segment of the train -- although the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line was also criticized for the neglect of hiring such an unreliable employee as well as letting the planned excursion for school children degenerate into a "free-for-all" for anybody.

The British Board of Trade inspector at the time also termed the accident "decidedly the worst railway accident that has ever occurred in this country" due to the gross neglect involved, although other accidents have seen higher death tolls, such as the later-occurring 1915 Quintinshill Rail Disaster with 226 fatalities and which was also caused in part by neglect. It is also worth noting that perhaps the best-known American railway accident, that of Casey Jones on April 30, 1900 due to him being willing to taketoo many chances to keep his trains running on time and thus to avoid the more-severe penalties for being late -- although he is a heroic instead of neglectful hero to folklore largely due to the Ballad of Casey Jones which came into being soon after his own accident.

COTD: It's the fault of the intellectual for the anti-intellectual?

BAD NEWS: Seven people were killed in a Phlippines bus jacking!

GOOD NEWS: Chile's trapped miners are still alive!

HUMOR: Sometimes it does not. But keep going (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 24, 1857: The "Panic of 1857" arguably began in the US.

One aspect of economics is that general trust one's investments will make a return helps (but certainly is not the only factor in) in the promoting of economic stability and thus economic gains. Signs of an economic recession or slowing of economic growth had actually begun in 1856, but the aforementioned Panic itself did not occur until the New York, New York (USA) branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company collapsed due to embezzlement (secreting public assets for private gain, such as that done by Bernard Madoff before getting caught doing it in 2008) and thus prompted other banks to loan less in order to avoid being caught short of enough funds due to actually loaning out more funds then they had available, thus prompting people to start "runs" upon banks to withdraw their currency from them before potentially losing it (banks were not backed by the US government's Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation at this time, as this was put into place only as a result of the Great Depression starting in 1929).

"Business cycles" or fluctuations of activity -- usually growth alternating with shrinkage -- are a natural part of economics. Prior to the Panic of 1857 and the recession which helped set it off, American prosperity and speculation (anticipation of economic returns) due to gains from Mexico from the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 and the influx of gold from the gold fields of the state of California which were discovered around the same time. The 1853-1856 Crimean War for gains at the expense of the declining Ottoman Empire also helped draw American banking into the international banking community and increased the demand for American goods as well, thus adding to prosperity and increasing the growth of American banks who then unwisely began loaning more funds then they had available due to speculation of future profits (and along the same way that people bought stocks they could not afford due to speculation of future profits to pay them off prior to the Great Depression).

Adding to the problem of the above was the fact the British generally appear to have viewed the decision to invest in American banks as a temporary measure for financial security during the Crimean War, thus why they withdrew their funds afterwards which implied impending financial insecurity. As well, Russia re-entering the grain market after the war -- using it to feed their soldiers during the war -- and a great grain harvest in 1857 resulted in too many agricultural products which thus drove the prices down for them (this is like what happened after Europe had recovered after World War I and started growing its own wheat again, thus resulting in too much wheat as a result of Americans making up the difference but being slow to relinquish wheat production in the meantime). As well, some of the speculation about profits that had been going on collapsed due to economic realities. The result being that loss of confidence in future economic growth and thus fears of banks and businesses being unable to pay off the aggressive loans they owed at present resulted in the failure of some banks such as the aforementioned New York, New York (USA) branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company as well as more than 5,000 businesses.

What helped the US to recover was the Tariff Act of 1857, which reduced the tariff (a tax upon imports in this case, in order to encourage domestic industry) to 20%, thus reducing the economic pressure prompted by the recession and helping reverse the Panic which by then had begun to effect economics across the world. The recovery from the recession which began in 1856 and which saw a sharp downward spike due to the Panic would be unequal across the US due to differing regional economies, and the recovery itself would not be completed until after the 1861-1865 US Civil War and thus about ten years after the recession and panic itself had begun.

Rather than make a reference to the prior economic crisis of the Great Depression (again), to conclude it is better to refer to the ongoing (as of this writing) subprime mortgage crisis for a comparison. What happened was that the housing market became quite popular by 2005-2006 and thus prices for houses started going up. Since the average person needs to obtain a loan to buy a house and thus to pay for it later by paying the bank from which they obtained the loan, encouragement to use higher-risk forms of loans connected to mortgages increased due to speculation that the continuing increase in demand for and thus prices for homes would allow refinancing or adjustment to paying off the loans on more favorable terms. Easy credit and thus easy loans prior to this worsened the situation because of course once the "housing bubble" of increasing demand and thus increasing prices for homes figuratively burst with demand finally declining and thus home prices declining as well, this prevented any success of speculation in the housing market and thus sent the US economy into a recession due to inability to repay such loans and thus a lack of economic confidence. As such, not only is preventing too much of the aggressiveness such as that which lead to the Panic of 1857 within the 1856-onward recession one way of reducing the severity of the effects of the current or any future recessions but also to restore economic confidence so that investments which will grow the economy are made once again -- but as the nearly ten-year period to recovery following the Tariff Act of 1857 shows, that economic recovery may indeed be a longer as opposed to shorter time in coming.

COTD: We haven't been discussing anything -- you've just been discussing it with yourself.

BAD NEWS: 31 people were killed at a Somalia hotel!

GOOD NEWS: Jimmy Carter is going to try to free an American imprisoned in North Korea!

HUMOR: Semantics (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: August 25, 1916: Saburo Sakai, Japanese World War II flying ace credited with 64 kills, was born.

Saburo Sakai is one of my favorite historical figures, both through how his account in the biography Samurai gives an opposing view of World War II (1939-1945) -- like Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front gives a historically-based account of an opposing (German) view of World War I (1914-1918) -- and also because he became such a pacifist after the war due to Japan's collective inability to accept responsibility for the war. In other words it was not the fault of just Japan's military which lead to the aggressive Japanese expansion in eastern Asia which then transitioned into World War II but also fault of Japan's politicians and her civilians in condoning the aggressive expansion which had lead to war -- one of the excuses for which was the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" but which was more to impose Japan's will for the prosperity of Japan in competition with the West (mostly Western Europe and North America). He said that because of that he was able to move on and thus to befriend those in the US and other countries.

The symbolism of Sakai befriending those in the West is also reflected in the fact that alliance with the West after World War II stabilized and benefited Japan more (as evidenced by Japan having the second largest and now third largest economy in the World behind the United States after the war) than fighting against the West during World War II, although this was admitted also to help the US-lead West contain the USSR-lead Communist Bloc from spreading its influence further during the Cold War which followed World War II. A reflection of this being that in the version of Samurai I read, in the foreword Sakai actually mentions the willingness to fly combat missions again if Communism was to directly threaten Japan.

Sadly, one part I wanted to share about Sakai here now appears to have gone offline although it still shows up on Google searches: It was a "My Father and I and Saburo Sakai" site put online by a "LCDRFR Stevens" which was about an American son and member of the military who sought out Saburo Sakai after World War II and during one of his speaking tours since Sakai had actually shot down and killed Stevens's father during the war. The purpose of Stevens not to obtain revenge against Sakai but to make peace with him, as is reflected in how I recall the article mentions Sakai meeting Stevens at his home and offering up a prayer for Stevens's father since Sakai became a Buddhist acolyte after World War II and reportedly vowed to "never again kill any living thing, not even a mosquito" which was why he reportedly prayed so much for everybody he shot down during World War II. A point to make here being that not only is this pacifism a substantial change from the militarism he followed prior to World War II, but as his aforementioned willingness to fly again due Communism threatening Japan with war shows, sometimes he seems to be of two minds about militarism although he commonly condemned Japan's role as an aggressor Eastern Asia up through World War II.

A minor fact about Sakai is that his personal name of "Saburo" literally means "third son" since he was the third son of his Sakai family (in many Asian cultures the family name is printed first, hence more correctly he should be referred to as "Sakai Suburo"). A more popular reflection of this type of Japanese naming convention might be seen in the personal name "Ichiro" since it means "first son" and since there is a current Japanese US MLB player named Ichiro Suzuki who goes by the name "Ichiro" on his jersey instead of his family name of Suzuki (there being enough leeway in the rules to allow this). However, Ichiro Suzuki apparently writes "Ichiro" using a different Japanese character which translates to "brightest, most cheerful" instead of due to the prestige of being a first son. Additionally, "Jiro" is a name which literally means "second son" hence how the "uro" or "iro" suffixes are version of the Japanese word "rou" for "son."

Saburo Sakai was the third son of seven siblings who suffered much poverty as a result of Japan abolishing the feudal han system which supported the samurai caste from which the Sakais were descended, as part of the successful process to modernize Japan and thus to compete with the West which had begun in 1871. He ended up in the Japanese navy in a successful effort to recapture his lost prestige when he did not fare well in school despite his education being underwritten by a wealthy uncle, thus how he ended up fighting in World War II. After surviving the war and even surviving gruesome injuries during the 1942 Guadalcanal campaign, he often served as a motivational speaker due to his motto of "never give up." He died after suffering a heart attack on September 22, 2000 while he was a guest of honor at a US Navy formal dinner at the Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan.

Finally, although the aforementioned Stevens's site is no longer online, as of this writing there is still a "Pacific Wrecks" site online which mentions that Harold L. Jones, the American SBD gunner who seriously wounded Sakai at Guadalcanal, actually once met him and shook hands with him. Harold Jones himself appears to have passed away in 2009, but the legacy connected to him through shaking hands with Saburo Sakai still lives on.

COTD: If you do not like what was said, you need to not say it for a change.

BAD NEWS: 72 bodies were found on a ranch in Mexico!

GOOD NEWS: Dinosaur bones were found while digging a sewer in Canada!

HUMOR: Try mistletoe (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: August 26, 1346: The Battle of Crecy/Cressy was won by the English-lead army via use of the English longbow over the French-lead army, thus symbolizing the end of the age of chivalry.

The background to the Battle of Crecy was the 1337-1453 Hundred Years War -- really a series of conflicts over 116 years instead of continual warfare over 100 years -- due to the connection of the thrones and thus the governments of England and France as a result of Duke William II of Normandy, France, conquering England and thus becoming King William I of England in 1066. The first point to make here being that although England won the Battle of Crecy, the French won the Hundred Years War and thus why England and France were broken apart as separate countries again.

To simplify the concept of "chivalry," suffice to say it involves all the romantic imagery of castles and armored knights often on horseback (sometimes with dragons and magic thrown in for more fanciful elements) fighting each other and thus all that is attached to it -- this representing the pinnacle of warfare during the time it is remembered for. Tactics to counter the powerful force of knights -- strongly defensive due to armor, yet still easily mobile at the same time despite the weight of their armor via use of horses for transportation -- were of course researched and are most often connected to the use of gunpowder finally becoming widespread throughout Europe by 1600 and following its introduction to Europe from China (where it was discovered as early as the 800s) around 1200. This because gunpowder-driven weapons such as cannons and guns could penetrate and defeat armor, thus making it ineffective and thus raising an outcry amongst more conservative elements that it was "Black Arts" due to how it thus rendered armor obsolete.

In truth, however, the introduction of gunpowder only completed making armor obsolete through making it technologically obsolete following it being shown to be tactically obsolete as a result of such events as the August 26, 1346 Battle of Crecy. At the Battle of Crecy, the extra weight of the armor of the French-lead knights exhausted those who went into battle on foot and who also had to cross through hard-to-traverse mud to reach where the English-lead army had the advantage of the high ground via a shallow hill, plus of course while a knight was armored his horse was minimally-armored at best and could be killed to thus destroy the mobility of a knight so that he was then faced with the more exhausting task of fighting on foot which was worsened by the mud and so forth. As well, the English had developed the new weapon of the English/Welsh longbow which was a powerful and large (up to six feet tall) bow which at this stage could fire arrows over long distances at a greater speed than crossbows and actually with enough force at the right angles to actually penetrate the armor of the knights -- the armor of the nights not thickened enough to take the mixed blessing of further-sacrificed mobility for defense against the longbow yet. Some use of gunpowder by the English played a role as well, thus all of this in combination with the mistakes of some bad tactics by the French such as the notable over-aggressiveness of the French nights thus lead to English victory in the battle and thus the symbolic demise of chivalry, although the French would indeed end up winning the Hundred Years War that the Battle of Crecy was a part of (most notably through winning the June 18, 1429 Battle of Patay in which the French were actually able to use the waning power of knights to defeat the English, changing the course of the war and thus leading to French victory by 1453 -- the historical French patriot Joan of Arc figuring into history here, as she was fighting for the French at this point).

It is also worth mentioning that the Battle of Crecy is likely seen as the end of the knight-dominated age of chivalry since it was part of the quite significant English-French conflict of the Hundred Years War. This because as early as September 11, 1297 and as the Scots were fighting the First War of Scottish Independence against the English they actually devised some of the first tactics by which infantry (those on foot) could defeat knights via using the bottleneck of the Stirling Bridge to divide and thus to defeat a stronger English force including knights at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (the battle being inaccurately and rather strangely portrayed in the movie Braveheart about the Scottish patriot William Wallace such as by removing Stirling Bridge entirely from the battle). The development of tactics to overcome the defense and mobility of armored knights using horseback was also seen prior to this with the July 11, 1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs (named for the golden spurs the French knights abandoned as they fled, such spurs having become symbolic of knighthood by this time) where the then-country of Flanders (today divided between France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) was able to defeat a French-lead army sent to impose French rule due to numerous ditches and streams preventing the knights from charging while on horseback and of course making it harder for them to attack if on foot due to their armor weighing them down into those ditches and streams, thus exhausting them by the time they were finally able to reach the army of Flanders so that they were defeated.

Use of knights is still recorded in battle and as late as the July 9, 1386 Battle of Sempach where Austria tried to regain Swiss territory it had lost (the previous Swiss independence from Austria being where the story of the historical figure and Swiss patriot William Tel reportedly comes in -- Tell's obstinacy resulting in him being forced to shoot an apple off his son's head with a crossbow due to not bowing to the hat-on-a-pole of the Austrian guardian Albrecht Gessler as he was required to do) and was overwhelmed by powerful flanking attack of Swiss infantry, and use of horse cavalry in modern warfare ("cavalry" became extrapolated to various forms of mechanical transportation afterwards) -- which was what knights were -- was actually continued until at least August 24, 1942 when Italian cavalry successfully charged a USSR artillery position on the River Don as part of the Nazi German-lead invasion of the USSR. The point being that such charges even with horses for cavalry worked due to overwhelming with numbers the ability to counter it quickly enough, although it left such cavalries extremely vulnerable in the event the forces being charged held their ground and did not scatter since by 1942 certainly increases in firepower meant even a position overwhelmed by cavalry could fight its way out of being overwhelmed. However, the developments of tactics and weaponry such as that seen in the Battle of Crecy and thus which thus rendered knights and their cavalry obsolete unless the element of surprise allowed a position to be overrun meant that with the ensuing defeat of the French knights, the age of chivalry symbolized by those knights had come to a symbolic close.

COTD: Fair enough. I'll go back and edit.

BAD NEWS: A cab driver was attacked with a knife for being a Muslim!

GOOD NEWS: A man survived getting shot in the head ... five years ago!

HUMOR: The Seagulls are coming (Elwood, by Haldine)!

US PRESIDENTIAL BIRTHDAY: Lyndon Johnson: August 27, 1908 (Most Recent Historian Rank: 16/43)

HISTORY: August 27, 1948: Robert "Sergeant Slaughter" Remus, American professional wrestler, was born.

The reason why Robert Remus ended up with his most successful gimmick (wrestling character) of Sergeant Slaughter comes in part from the fact he was once a US Marine who was a torpedo launcher specialist, but also because of more serious history in the form of the conflicts that the US has had with Iran and then Iraq given the 1979 Iranian Revolution overthrew a pro-American Iranian government with an anti-American one. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq then got greedy and tried to capitalize on the implicit instability resulting from that revolution by having Iraq seize Iranian oil fields in a supposedly disputed border region, the result being the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War -- the most significant part of which was actually an alliance between the US and Iraq since Iraq started smuggling its oil past Iranian forces through using tankers carrying Kuwaiti flags and thus why Iran started sinking Kuwaiti-flagged tankers (which were later flagged as American craft to keep them from being sunk), thus antagonizing the US more by making it harder for the US to obtain the oil it needed.

Add to this that Iranian-American Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri had ended up with his "Iron Sheik" gimmick due to the same reasons that Remus had ended up with his "Sergeant Slaughter" gimmick and one can see how Remus became quite popular through he (and Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri) capitalizing on the real-world political situation through fictional feuding with each other in wrestling matches. This was abruptly broken off in 1984 when Slaughter left what is now called the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) mostly due to the WWE not allowing him to be portrayed as a character in the Hasbro company-originated GI Joe and thus which would have earned him additional royalties -- one consequence of this being that it allowed for the greater ascension of Remus's fellow WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan since Remus's "Sergeant Slaughter" gimmick was essentially a Hulk Hogan prototype.

Remus's return to the WWE is also connected with real history in that he returned about the time in 1990 when President Saddam Hussein of Iraq attempted to gain more oil fields and to recoup the losses he has suffered from the Iran-Iraq War through taking over Kuwait and thus which later lead to the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War -- Remus taking the quasi-logical role of an antagonistic Iraqi sympathizer (and thus portraying a "heel" or bad guy instead of his former "face" or good guy role) and thus vaguely alluding to the US support that Saddam Hussein was gambling upon Iraq having in taking over Kuwait due to Iraq's earlier American support against Iran. With Saddam Hussein not getting that support due to Iraq being understood to be quite the aggressor in the case of Kuwait and the Persian Gulf War being quickly over, Remus then resumed his old pro-American Sergeant Slaughter role which he has periodically appeared in ever since -- not just in the fictionalized world of professional wrestling but also in various other fictional roles, including the aforementioned GI Joe franchise.

It is also noted that Remus is one of the few real world people who have more or less appeared in GI Joe, the others being William "The Refrigerator" Perry, Roderick "Roddy Piper" Toombs, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. I say "more or less" because for instance the version of Remus that appears in GI Joe is his "Sergeant Slaughter" wrestling gimmick instead of the actual person of Robert Remus himself -- this of course due to the fact that the fictional "Sergeant Slaughter" was a more popular way for GI Joe to capitalize upon real world feelings the same way that Remus capitalized upon them through wrestling as Sergeant Slaughter.

For that matter, the mentioned "capitalization" deserves further expansion as during the 1980s, a number of animated and even live-action series and movies began appearing based upon not only upon Hasbro's GI Joe, but also Hasbro's My Little Pony and their Transformers toy lines. The point to emphasize here being that the series and movies capitalized upon the appeal of the toy lines through expanding them via the introduction of new characters through reducing the presence of the older characters, and even in the case of the more-violent GI Joe and Transformers series by killing off or nearly killing off old characters in order to better make room for new ones -- this most significantly revealed by the apparent near-deaths (and essential remakes with reboots, as in the case of the later "Optimus Primal" of the Transformers franchise) of "Duke" and "Optimus Prime" in their respective series. The final point to make about Robert Remus being that benefiting from being featured in GI Joe through royalties from his "Sergeant Slaughter" character may have served him better than attempting to benefit through actually wrestling more. This because although professional wrestling and toy series may capitalize upon cartoony fictionalization of the real world like Sergeant Slaughter wrestling the Iron Sheik in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, unfortunately the real world people who portray those cartoony characters are much more fragile and thus can actually be more tragic than even those cartoony yet idealized characters who get killed or put aside to make room for more -- such as was most recently revealed by the 2008 movie The Wrestler.

COTD: Sorry, running on minimal sleep.

BAD NEWS: US economic growth is slowing!

GOOD NEWS: Philippine economic growth is still good!

HUMOR: Oh, dear (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 28, 1830: The development of the Tom Thumb locomotive marked the start of railroad development in the US.

Just how the Tom Thumb marked the start of railroad development in the US on this date appears to be in losing a race between the four-wheeled Tom Thumb and a horse-drawn car, both of which were set upon railroad tracks (horse-drawn cars on railroad tracks being somewhat common at this time, and one should also see rail transport). What happened was that the Tom Thumb easily pulled ahead of the horse-drawn car via its use of one of the steam powered engines which were powering the Industrial Revolution but developed mechanical problems ("the belt slipped off the blower pulley and/or a popoff valve was broken or was active") so that the horse-drawn car was able to pass the Tom Thumb and win the race -- this although the Tom Thumb so easily outpaced the horse-drawn car at first that it was correctly realized in the US (the British had started steam-powered railroad development around 1804) that mechanical locomotives would be leading-edge technology once their last mechanical problems were worked out. Which was why mechanical locomotives defeating horse-drawn cars was the rule instead of the exception in later races.

The benefit of railroads is that unlike the primary means of traveling like water routes, they would not freeze in cold weather nor have impassible stretches, and unlike ships did not tend to be wrecked due to inclement weather. They were also superior to the mostly-unpaved roads that existed at this time and which people could get stuck in through mud and such, and their efficiency meant that smaller amounts of goods could be transported upon them to reduce losses and to reduce storage costs since those goods could be transported more easily.

Overexpansion of railroads lead to troubles with the railroad industry at times, but what really caused a decline in railroads was the extensive development of commercial aircraft as well as modern paved and interstate highways and other paved roads over the existing unpaved road system so that the greater flexibility of these systems allowed them to outcompete the railroads following World War II (1939-1945). The use of aircraft also prompted some decline of water routes only passable with ships since of course they could simply fly over water that railroad trains (and automobiles) themselves could not pass through, although the cost of more-obsolete technologies then starts declining in response in order to compete more and thus why one still finds use of some water and train routes.

Ironically enough, in addition to new attractions such as "scenic railways" to allow some continuity of railroads (this imitating the leisure cruises now used by some ships upon the waterways), one of the ways that railroads have managed to persevere is through high-speed rail that travels much faster than either ordinary trail traffic or automobiles, meaning reaching speeds of 120 MPH (200 KPH) or greater. Although this is still slower than travel by aircraft, the irony is that although it has been over 180 years since the Tom Thumb was built, apparently the overall appeal of rail transport is still speed, speed, and more speed.

COTD: Rare request, your common malingering.

BAD NEWS: A man was shot and killed in a road rage incident!

GOOD NEWS: There are some signs of healing from Hurricane Katrina!

HUMOR: Sometimes looks are not deceiving (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: August 29, 1991: Italian businessman Libero Grassi was murdered by the Mafia for refusing their extortion demands.

Extortion is threatening a person for money, cloaking it in the excuse of "protection" from being harmed by supposedly other sources but which in reality is harm from the same source -- the expression of "protection" being used as an excuse by which to legitimize it as ethical although the consequences of not paying for protection range even up to murder. Finally, the "Mafia" in this sense means organized crime.

A good analogy of this is actually "Mittens the mafia cat" from Disney's Bolt movie (hence one reason why the US MPAA rated the movie PG, one degree above the mildest rating of G), but as for Libero Grassi himself, he owned a Sigma underwear and pajamas factory and in 1990 began refusing to pay the "pizzo" extortion just like half of the businesses in Palermo did. The reason why Grassi got on the nerves of the Mafia in particular was because he wrote a "Dear extortionist" letter to the Giornale di Sicilia to publicize his resistance and reported the names of his extortionists to the police so that five of them ended up being arrested.

While supported by those outside of his fellow businessman and his customers, his fellow businessmen and his customers criticized his choice to be so vocal in his resistance due to the fear it would endanger them as well. In the case of Grassi, first the Mafia robbed his factory of the amount he would not pay him, then unsuccessfully tried to burn his factory down with an arson attack, then finally murdered him with a handgun as he walked from his home to his car at around 7:30 AM in the morning. Support from those outside of Grassi's fellow businessmen and customers thus turned Grassi into an icon of resistance to the Mafia and to extortion and thus how in 2006 30 members of the Mafia were convicted of 60 murders -- including a conviction for Salvatore Madonia since he was the one who murdered Grassi -- and although Grassi's factory went bankrupt in the aftermath of his murder.

COTD: If you pour enough water on a duck's back, he will still drown.

BAD NEWS: Seven Americans were killed in Afghanistan!

GOOD NEWS: Brackett's hand is not broken!

HUMOR: Flaw in the plan (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: August 30, 1791: The British ship HMS Pandora was shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

"Pandora" likely does not mean much to those reading these words, but "Bounty" probably does, and the Pandora was actually sent to look for the Bounty mutineers after William Bligh managed his miraculous return to England to report the mutiny.

In the aftermath of the 1789 Bounty mutiny the mutineers that escaped accountability had ended up fighting amongst themselves so that by 1808 only the mutineer John Adams was left. Earlier on, however, the mutineers had made an effort at starting a colony on the island of Tubai (not an island of cannibals at the time, as was popularly portrayed) before splitting their numbers between Tahiti -- the pleasures of which had provided part of the inspiration for the mutiny -- and the then-uncharted Pitcairn Islands. Starting their search at Tahiti therefore enabled the crew of the Pandora to capture the fourteen of them that were still on Tahiti before unsuccessfully searching the surrounding islands for the next three months (the Bounty was burned and sunk after arriving at the Pitcairn Islands, and some of the mutineers on Tahiti had built themselves a ship to seek to better escape accountability but had not been able to flee upon it before the Pandora had arrived).

The reason the Pandora sank was that the crew erred attempting to make it through the Torres Strait on the previous day, a loss which Captain Edward Edwards and his officers were acquitted for in the ensuing yet routine court martial for loss of their ship (the same way that Bligh was acquitted for the loss of the Bounty). It is also thought that time has caused some of the behavior of Edward Edwards to be confused with that of the actually too-lenient Bligh -- who swore quite often but did who neglected to and who did not have any marines or officers to administer enough actual disciplining of the crew, thus how he could be countered when Fletcher Christian turned to drinking enough to become uninhibited to the degree of finally challenging him -- since although Bligh had identified four loyalists held back by the mutineers for their skills and because the smaller boat of the launch that Bligh and his loyalists were put into would not hold them all (one of the defenses used by the mutineers at their court martials) and although some of mutineers surrendered to the Pandora, Edwards declared all of them to be "pirates," had them all imprisoned in an improvised prison on the quarter deck (and in chains) which was mockingly referred to with the pun of a name "Pandora's Box," would not let them use an old sail to avoid the terrible sunburn they then had to endure, and who left most of them in the Pandora's Box after the ship struck the Great Barrier Reef so that two of the mutineers drowned due to the Pandora's Box being opened at the last second as the ship was sinking thus embittered the family of Bounty crewmember Peter Heywood in particular. So much so that the Heywood family used its connections to denounce and attack Edwards of the Pandora the same way that the Christian family used its connections to denounce and attack Bligh of the Bounty since Fletcher Christian was singled out in particular by Bligh for leading the mutiny. Over time, therefore, anecdotes from both accounts have been combined together and then assigned into an idealized account of the supposedly heroic Christian struggling against the supposedly tyrannical Bligh.

Unlike Bligh, who had to retire from seagoing command after a followup mission that successfully allowed the breadfruit plant to be transplanted from Tahiti to the Caribbean to provide food for slaves due to health problems resulting from being cast adrift by Christian earlier -- Edwards of the Pandora never received another seagoing command after the loss of the Pandora on this date in 1791, although like Bligh he did end his career after being promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral (Christian apparently died for some unclear reasons on the Pitcairn Islands whereas Heywood died in February 1831 after reaching the rank of Post-Captain and even being offered the rank of Commodore -- unlike three other mutineers with little family influence who were executed for their part or lack of action to prevent the Bounty mutiny, and this although Heywood likely committed perjury to help save himself at his court martial).

COTD: Oh, is that how your logic works?

BAD NEWS: Peter Lentz died!

GOOD NEWS: Americans are still consuming!

HUMOR: Too blank (Precocious, by Paulsen)!

HISTORY: August 31, 1997: Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed along with two other people in a car accident at the Pont de l'Alma tunnel of Paris, France.

Although divorced from Charles, Prince of Wales at this point, "Princess Diana" was still quite noted for her charity work and her work to remove land mines from old battlefields due to the injuries they can inflict upon children. Also, the titles of Prince and Princess of Wales unto the heirs apparent to the heir apparent of a constitutional monarchy appears to be due to the early inclusion of Wales into the United Kingdom, but Diana Frances retained the "Princess of Wales" title even after her divorce -- although not the "Her Royal Highness" title -- and thus is remembered by that name and as a British celebrity due to being both a member of the British aristocracy and for her charity work.

The above made the conditions surrounding Princess Diana's death quite a figurative "circus" and which even included rumors of conspiracies and assassination, but the simple truth of the matter is that the deaths of Diana and two of the remaining three people in their car was the result of a drunk driving accident (referred to as "drink driving" in the United Kingdom) that occurred at 12:23 AM. Perhaps part of the reason why this is the case is because Diana and her companions had originally intended to spend the night at the Hotel Ritz Paris when returning to London, England, following a yachting cruise. This may account for why chauffeur Henri Paul was legally intoxicated and was speeding at around 60 to 70 MPH (95–110 KPH) through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel despite the speed limit there being 31 MPH (50 KPH) and thus lost control so that Paul struck the thirteenth pillar in the middle of the tunnel due to there being no guard rails to prevent this, smashing the front of the car against the pillar and then smashing the rear of the car against the tunnel wall when the car rebounded. That the aggressive paparazzi or professional photographers following Princess Diana around were a minimal factor is shown by the fact a decoy vehicle had left to lure then away earlier and that they left the hotel at 12:20 AM from the rear and to spend the night at the apartment of the hotel's owner Mohamed Al-Fayed instead -- Mohamed being the father of Diana's romantic partner Dodi Fayed at that time -- but also in how Paul had apparently goaded them earlier and thus in combination with the alcohol in his system may have been uninhibited enough to speed recklessly away. Diana, Paul, and Dodi Fayed were the three people killed in the accident (bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones survived the accident). Here too it is also noted that although the vehicle in which Diana and the others were traveling was equipped with airbags, none of them had elected to wear seatbelts and thus why the result of the accident was worse than it could have been.

In short, there are three ways that impact is absorbed to minimize injuries to the occupant of a vehicle. The first is crumple zones at the front and rear of the vehicle which are designed to compress and thus to absorb some of the force of impact. The second is a seat belt/safety belt/safety harness which keeps those within the vehicle from being ejected from it and which holds them in the correct position for the third system which is airbags further designed to absorb the force of the occupants being thrown forward. The fourth is padding in the interior of the vehicle to absorb as much of the remaining impact as possible, but also suffice to say that all four of these systems are designed to work together. The point here being that without seat belts to hold the occupants of Diana's car in position, deployment of the airbags within the vehicle may have actually contributed to their injuries by slamming into them when they were not held in the optimal position by seat belts for an airbag deployment -- this in itself being a particular reason why infant carseats should always be in the rear seat of a vehicle to avoid being hit by the airbags in front of the front seats and designed to keep people from hitting the forward interior of the vehicle.

Some crossing of seat belts with airbags is actually now being attempted to thus create inflatable seatbelts to minimize the force of impact even further, but each these passive safety systems overall is designed to absorb the first impact of the vehicle's collision and the second impact of being thrown around inside (instead of being thrown from) the vehicle so that the third impact of the internal organs of the occupants striking the bones of the body (the brain striking the skull and causing a concussion, the heart and lungs striking against the sternum/rib cage and thus bruising or tearing them) is minimized so that overall internal and thus more serious injuries to the occupants is much less -- the results of the accident upon Princess Diana being the internal injuries of her heart being displaced from the left side to the right side of her chest so that vessels around her heart were torn so that it was eventually unable to keep beating and thus to keep her alive. Diana therefore died at around 4:00 AM, despite the ensuing resusitation efforts to save her life.

DWOJ: Two.

COTD: God hath seen thy arrogance, thus God hath struck thee down.

BAD NEWS: Hurricane Earl is coming!

GOOD NEWS: A two year old was not hurt by an escaped tiger!

HUMOR: Apt gift (Lio, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: September 1, 1902: A Trip to the Moon, the first science fiction (short) film at about fourteen minutes in length and by Georges Melies, was released in France.

Iconic imagery from this film is that of a bullet-like spaceship (fired from a giant cannon) impaling the eye of the Man in the Moon -- portrayed as a human face within the film -- although the film also contains all sorts of similar fantastic imagery through the use of special effects and animation such as to portray the "Seline" inhabitants of the Moon and thus why it became so popular. Based upon the science fiction books of From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells, unfortunately American inventor Thomas Edison had his film technicians steal it by making secret copies of it for distribution within the United States and so that filmmaker Melies was cheated out of some of his profits for it and eventually went bankrupt.

Here it should be noted that when one looks at science fiction films they can begin blending into other genres, the same way science fiction can blend into other fiction since given the link of being fictional. The fictional story of Frankenstein completed between 1818 and 1831 was originally written as a "ghost story" and thus as a gothic horror story according to its author Mary Shelly but given that Dr. Victor Frankenstein builds a human being and brings him to life using the popular and actual scientific process of galvanism being explored at that time -- movement from and thus the implication that life was caused by the right voltage of electricity -- in some respects Frankenstein is seen as science fiction (in contrast, fantasy fiction tends to use the occult force of magic as the force behind many of its results, instead more scientifically-based principles like galvanism). Because of this, many special effects along the lines of those seen in A Trip to the Moon are commonly seen in science fiction films but of course special effects and animation is not limited to science fiction (or fantasy, for that matter) alone, although extrapolation from modern elements of science is as common to science fiction as for instance Frankenstein was from galvanism.

It also has to be admitted that the fantastically imaginary elements of A Trip to the Moon also make it much more entertaining then say actual trips to the Moon such as the US Apollo 11, 12, and 14-17 missions (the landing of Apollo 13 upon the Moon was safely aborted due to a damaged oxygen tank exploding) which were incredible achievements but which was spacesuited astronauts moving around the barren landscape of the Moon patiently performing experiments instead of having to fight for their lives and to flee from the "Selines" (the peril of the vacuum of space just outside their spacecraft and spacesuits notwithstanding). But then again, one of the main purposes of even science fiction is for entertainment as opposed to for scientific information, thus why indeed A Trip to the Moon is so fanciful.

DWOJ: Three.

COTD: The bishop wants you to mow the lawn.

BAD NEWS: Eight people were killed in possibly drug-related violence in Mexico!

GOOD NEWS: The stock market made strong gains!

HUMOR: I suppose we can see why (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: September 2, 1901: Then-US Vice President Theodore Roosevelt first publicly used the phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" during a speech at the Minnesota State Fair.

There is some debate over just the way Theodore Roosevelt phrased the above -- which he referred to as a "West African Proverb," and which he had apparently used in a January 26, 1900 letter -- but in a more significant sense this lead to furthering of the "Big Stick ideology" that came into being when Roosevelt became President himself (following President McKinley's assassination). A less casual name for which was the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine was declared by US President James Monroe in 1823 and as an attempt to discourage European efforts at colonization and interference in the Americas and upon the grounds this would require US intervention. The reason for which was that the Great French War had finally come to a conclusion with the end the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and thus had allowed European powers to focus more upon the Americas again, thus interfering with the aggressively-expanding US interest in the Americas. Until the US was strong enough, what helped prop it up this Monroe Doctrine was the British (British Foreign Minister George Canning had suggested it as early as 1815) because this would stabilize markets in the Americas for British goods and would also open up the formerly-Spanish colonies who gained their independence in the Americas between 1808 and 1898 (often until 1815 using the Great French War in Europe to divide attention so they could better fight a war by which to gain independence). Roosevelt's "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine was one that asserted the US could actually "intervene" -- as in invade and occupy -- foreign countries in the Americas in order to stabilize them if they could not pay economic debts and thus to preempt possible European interventions in order to collect on those debts but thus to threaten the independence and/or US interest in those nations. As such this was why there were US interventions in Cuba (1906–1909), Nicaragua (1909-1910, 1912-1925,1926-1933), Haiti (1915-1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) before President Franklin Roosevelt instituted the Good Neighbor Policy to make peace with other countries in the Americas and in light of the increasing European tensions which would lead to World War II (1939-1945).

The way the early part of this was referred to, under the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Franklin and Theodore were fifth cousins from separate branches of the Roosevelt family), was as the "Big Stick ideology" given Theodore Roosevelt's fondness for using the "speak softly and carry a big stick" proverb. However, although policies such as this can be quite effective, it essentially means willingness to negotiate peacefully but with threats of and application of ready US military force if such negotiations break down or if they do not work out in a manner pleasing to US interests. Perhaps the most vivid example of this is actually the Panama Canal -- Panama used to be part of Columbia, and with the French seeking to build a canal across what is now Panama to better connect their colonial interests and the US also seeking a more efficient and thus strategic water route between the eastern and western US (the northern Arctic being frozen, of course) and thus higher costs than expected being proposed by the French company that was attempting to build the canal at first, the US engineered a Panamanian revolution to gain more control over and thus lower prices for the building of the canal.

In short, although the Big Stick ideology named after Roosevelt's use of the "Speak softly and carry a big stick" proverb did help US strategic interests, one of the problems with it was that it was an example of realpolitik or rather politics based upon pure power (literally "real politics") for selfish reasons instead of due to any altruistic ones, although altruistic ones such as helping the oppressed Panamanians achieve independence from the imposing Columbians are the ones most often voiced. Perhaps the best known international example of such realpolitik is Nazi Germany's 1938 supposed attempts to supposedly achieve freedom for Germans in the Sudetenland border regions of what was then Czechoslovakia through joining it to Nazi German via the Munich Agreement but thus which lead to the ultimate implosion and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and thus a failed means by which to appease Nazi Germany from going to war (which started the next year, with the start of World War II). To return to US examples, however, Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan also used the policy of realpolitik referenced by Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" proverb by supporting authoritarian regimes that were human rights violators in order to combat the spread of economic Communism and thus of the often-authoritarian governments who used it to maintain control over their countries but which in the case of US interests was considered to be the lesser of two evils given the context of the Cold War which was ongoing at the time of both Nixon and Reagan's presidencies.

On a milder note, the last popular reference to Theodore Roosevelt's use of the "speak softly and carry a big stick" proverb appears to be the 1951 Bugs Bunny cartoon Ballot Box Bunny where Bugs Bunny mimes Roosevelt and declares that he speaks softly but carries a big stick while campaigning against Yosemite Sam for mayor of a town -- which infuriates Yosemite Sam into declaring he has a bigger stick and that he uses it too, which he then does by clubbing Bugs Bunny in the head with it. The point here for the reader to consider therefore being if either or both of these two fictional politicians fighting against each other accurately portray speaking softly and carrying a big stick and/or realpolitik or not.