1678 – The Godiva procession through Coventry begins. Now there’s a tax protest.

1884 – Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patents “flaked cereal”

1889 – Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. FEMA slow to respond. Bush widely blamed.

1911 – R.M.S. Titanic launched. This will end well.

1916 – World War I: Battle of Jutland – The British Grand Fleet under the command of Sir John Jellicoe &Sir David Beatty engage the Kaiserliche Marine under the command of Reinhard Scheer & Franz von Hipper in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive.

1927 – The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles. The VW Beetle (Type 111) finally beat that production number, topping out at 21,529,464. 15,444,858 of them were built in Germany.

1780 – At the Battle of Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford’s continentals allegedly after the continentals surrender. 113 Americans are killed. Nothing like a good massacre to show how you really feel.

1849 – Lincoln says “You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of people some of time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of time”. The dimmocrat party says “all you gotta do is fool enough to get yourself elected, then screw ’em all…”

1864 – Emperor Maximilian of Mexico arrives in Mexico for the first time. He has the full backing of the French government which naturally means he’s a despot, later executed by his own rebellious people.

1886 – Chemist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, the ad appearing in the Atlanta Journal.

1940 – The first flight of the Vought F4U Corsair. In the coming war, the Japanese called it “Whistling Death”.

1942 – Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra record Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”, the best-selling Christmas album in history, for Decca Records in Los Angeles. Come Christmas time, it’s either this, or “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”.

1953 – Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay are the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday. Hillary Clinton, born in 1947, is, by her own words, named after Sir Edmund, who was completely unknown in 1947, which means she should be president.

1977 – Janet Guthrie becomes first woman to drive in Indy 500, completes first ten laps while applying mascara.

1987 – Michael Jackson attempts to buy Elephant Man’s remains, offering a slightly used Cub Scout troop and an undisclosed amount of cash.

1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port). In a big hurry to get a butt-kicking…

1754 – French and Indian War: in the first engagement of the war, Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

1863 – American Civil War: the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first African American regiment, leaves Boston, Massachusetts, to fight for the Union.

1871 – Fall of the Paris Commune. In a war against the French, the French win!

1905 – Russo-Japanese War: the Battle of Tsushima ends with the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet by Admiral Togo Heihachiro and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Japanese Navy grows fiercely overconfident from this victory, and the overconfidence contributes to their losses in WW II.

1937 – Neville Chamberlain becomes British Prime Minister. The Neville Chamberlain School of Diplomacy is highly regarded by the Left. “Peace in our time”, my a**!

1940 – World War II: Belgium surrenders to Germany to end the Battle of Belgium. In ancient tongues, “Belgium” translates to “Gateway to Paris”.

1942 – World War II: in retaliation for the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis in Czechoslovakia kill over 1,800 people.

1964 – The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is formed, because hating Jews needs a new letterhead.

1987 – 19-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet Union air defenses and lands a private plane (stealth Cessna 172) in Red Square in Moscow. He is immediately detained and is not released until August 3, 1988. Several high (and low, no doubt) ranking officers are ‘disciplined’ in the Soviet military.

1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton’s former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud. Bill and Hillary, however, are as pure as the driven snow (or some other four-letter word beginning with “s”)

2002 – NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance. Bet you forgot that, huh?

1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg. Then it’s Leningrad. And now it’s Saint Petersburg again. In another five years it’s liable to be Putinopolis.

1919 – Charles Strite patents the pop-up toaster. I still contend that toast from a hot, butter-coated cast iron griddle is superior.

1919 – The US navy NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight. Wasn’t even close to being non-stop, and two sister aircraft, NC-1 and NC-3 didn’t make it.

1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men. There is epic sacrifice and bravery on both sides of the battle.

1995 – In Culpeper, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition, becoming the Left’s favorite vegetable.

1997 – The unusual tornado outbreak in Jarrell, Texas. 27 dead.

1828 – Feral child Kaspar Hauser is discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg. Today you can tour government-subsidized housing anywhere in American and see packs of feral kids roaming around. Today America’s cities are FULL of ‘children’ who are arguably feral.

1865 – American Civil War: Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.

1879 – Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state. They should’ve asked the Afghans.

1897 – Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is published.

1908 – At Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by the United Kingdom. Without oil, they’d still be molesting goats and nobody’d care…

1927 – Ford Motor Company manufactures its 15 millionth Model T automobile.

1938 – In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session. When Nancy Pelosi was speakeress, the House WAS ‘Un-American’ activities. Eben today, under a Republican majority, I think it’s STILL un-American.

1940 – World War II: Battle of Dunkirk – In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk, France. Hitler pulls his punch instead of allowing his army to push the attack forward, and thousands of Allied soldiers escape. Four years later, they’ll come knocking.

1521 – The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw. You can’t stuff the toothpaste back into the tube. The Protestant Reformation is under way.

1721 – John Copson becomes America’s first insurance agent. I suppose it had to happen. I mean, we already had LAWYERS and it was still too early for used car salesmen.

1837 – The Patriots of Lower Canada (Quebec) rebel against the British for freedom. Didn’t work out for them…

1895 – Oscar Wilde sentenced to 2 years hard labor for being a “sodomite, having “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons”. Today he’d appear on six talk shows and a congressional hearing. Hell, being a sodomite is a PLUS on a dimmocrat resume’.

1945 – Arthur C Clark, a science fiction writer, proposes relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit at a time when we couldn’t even get a rocket into low earth orbit.

1953 – First atomic cannon, Atomic Annie, electronically fired at Frenchman Flat, Nevada. Just what we needed – cannon-cockers* with The Bomb.

1961 – Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the moon” before the end of the decade. Kennedy was a dimmocrat. Some of his views, if propounded today, though, would put him on the far right wing of the republican party…

1977 – Star Wars is released. It rapidly becomes a cult classic and is the start of a six-movie franchise. Well, three pretty good movies and three subsequent releases that lived off the coat-tails of the others.

(* – “cannon-cockers” is a derisive term used in the army to refer to artillerymen)