627 AD – Battle of the Trench: Muhammad undergoes a 14-day siege at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan. After his opposition breaks apart , MUhammad chases down the losers, gathers all the men, 700-900 of them, and beheads them. Women and children are taken into slavery, just like today.

1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act. That whole “Tea Party” thing really upset them. The original Tea Party folks didn’t dump their own tea in the harbor… We’re just not mad enough YET! Boil, froggy, boil!

1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. Nothing like armed naval vessels showing up on your doorstep with superior firepower to get the ol’ diplomacy going. Of course, those fops Obama and Kerry haven’t learned that lesson.

1889 – The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated. Built to commemorate the French national bloodbath Revolution, it is very French in that it is eminently elegant and does absolutely nothing except give the Germans something photogenic to march under…

1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association – NCAA) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States. Yeah. They’re amateurs like I’m Prince Consort to the Tsarina Katherine of All the Russias.

1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.

1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment. Federal dollars paid men to work. Families got money. The country got completed work. It wouldn’t work today because back then, people actually wanted to work. Today it’d just upset the dimmocrats’ biggest voting bloc. it’s easier to just pay ‘em to stay home except on election day.

1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer. The buyer is the United States Census Bureau. Let’s see – 5,200 vacuum tubes, 14.5 tons, 125 kW power consumption, $159,000 dollars, which in today’s dollars is $1,450,024.96. My iPhone beats in in so many ways it’s unbelieveable.

1992 – An era ends as the USS Missouri (BB-63), the last active United States Navy Battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

1814 – Britain & allies march into Paris after defeating Napoleon. this event marks the beginning of Parisian status as the five dollar whore of Europe. How many foreign armies have paraded through Paris? The ONLY way that fop de Gaulle was able to march ‘victoriously’ into Paris in 1944 was that the path was paved in the blood of America and the British Commonwealth.

1842 – Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Dr. Crawford Long. He uses ether. Ether this or it’s gonna hurt like h**l.

1858 – Hymen Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser.

1867 – Alaska is purchased for $7.2 million, about 2 cents/acre ($4.19/km²), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward. The news media call this Seward’s Folly. The news media is always right, you know…

1870 – Texas becomes last Confederate state readmitted to Union. Lately they’re asking about a do-over on that. If they do, I’m gonna get me a big hat and haul my Cajun butt over there.

1932 – Amelia Earhart is first woman to fly solo cross the Atlantic, spends first half of trip with left blinker on, applying mascara.

1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau. 5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 29,000 pounds (13 metric tons), consumed 125 kW in electricity.

1964 – Jeopardy!, hosted by Art Fleming debuts. It’s kind of like Wheel of Fortune for smart people.

1981 – President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr., who is trying to impress Jodie Foster. Contrary to rumor, I did NOT send Hinckley an letter telling him that Obama was banging Jodie Foster like a screen door in a tornado. Also shot of some others, including Jame Brady, who is then exhibited by his wife at various fundraisers as the Left’s Favorite Vegetable, a title he holds until bumped out of the slot by Christopher Reed.

1991 – William Kennedy Smith allegedly rapes a woman, in keeping with his family’s high tradition. Also in keeping with his family’s high tradition, he’s found “not guilty”

1806 – Construction is authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway.

1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: 2,200 British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus. Discipline, rifles and six cannon prove to be more than guts and spears and handful of captured rifles can overcome. The Zulus have just lost the war, like there was ever a doubt.

1886 – Dr. John Pemberton brews the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta. Theree’ a lot of money to be made in the sale of flavored water.

1911 – The M1911 .45 ACP pistol became the official U.S. Army side arm. I carried an M1911A1. Still own one, a brilliant design of the sainted John M. Browning.

1936 – In Germany, Adolf Hitler receives 99% of the votes in a referendum to ratify Germany’s illegal reoccupation of the Rhineland, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters. Just because it receives a majority vote doesn’t make it right. That’s why we (used to) have the Constitution.

1961 – The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections. There’s a bundle of dimmocrats there.

1971 – A Los Angeles, California jury recommends the death penalty for Charles Manson and three female followers. And he’s STILL alive, but his victims are still DEAD.. Our enlightened overlords call this “justice”.

1973 – Vietnam War: The last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.

37 AD – Roman Emperor Caligula accepts the titles of the Principate, entitled to him by the Senate. The Left is contemplating this as we speak. Then they can quit worrying about those pesky elections.

193 AD – Roman Emperor Pertinax is assassinated by Praetorian Guards, who then sell the throne in an auction. Secret Service? Hey guys, I have a twenty in my back pocket if the opportunity avails itself. Wait! Gimme a bit… I can take up a collection!

845 AD – Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collects a huge ransom in exchange for leaving. In 1944, the US and its allies paid the price to get the Germans out so that prancing fop deGaulle could waltz in after the Americans, Brits and Canadians had cleared the way for him.

1871 – The Paris Commune is formally established in Paris. In the aftermath of ANY national disaster, you can depend on the communists to try to take over. the commune ends when the French Army intervenes. As is usually the case since Napoleon (who wasn’t French, he was Corsican), the French Army is most victorious against the French.

1933 – German Reichstag confers dictatorial powers on Hitler. History. Learn from it.

1979 – In Pennsylvania, a pump in the reactor cooling system fails in the Three Mile Island accident, resulting in the crapping of many pairs of pants. Zero, that’s ZERO!, deaths.

1994 – In South Africa, Zulus and African National Congress supporters battle in central Johannesburg, resulting in 18 deaths. You’ll see more of this as South Africa follows Zimbabwe’s path. In Africa, espite what We want to think, tribe trumps ‘nation’ at any time. The ‘nations’ were laid out by the colonial powers and are only couple hundred years old. Tribes go back much further.

1513 – Spaniard Juan Ponce de Leon discovers Florida. Couldn’t locate that “Fountain of Youth” thing, though… And to hell with a “Fountain of Youth” anyway. We need a “Fountain of Smart”.

1794 – The United States Government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates. “Let there be squids.”

1836 – Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre – On the orders of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican army butchers 342 Texas POWs at Goliad, Texas.. Goliad is near one of my stations. Driving around there, you’re driving through history.

1945 – US 20th Army corps captures Wiesbaden. I was stationed right across the Rhine from Wiesbaden in the mid-1970’s, spent a month in the hospital there, and it was a favorite place to visit.

1945 – World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan’s ports and waterways begins. By war’s end, the official ration for a Japanese subject was 1500 calories per day. What they gave prisoners of war is left to your imagination.

1964 – The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage. Effects were wide-ranging. Waves moved boats from their moorings in southwest Louisiana.

1977 – Tenerife airport disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). 61 survived on the Pan Am flight.

1980 – The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212. Offshore drilling and energy production remains a dangerous field. So are many other tasks that keep civilization going, even in the beginning, when the horde leaving to collect a mammoth knew the risks.

2000 – A Phillips Petroleum plant explosion in Pasadena, Texas kills one and injures 71. See the above entry.

2002 – Passover Massacre: A Palestinian suicide bomber evangelist for the Religion of Peace kills 29 people partaking of the Passover meal in Netanya, Israel.

2009 – A suicide bomber kills at least 48 at a mosque in the Khyber Agency of Pakistan. All too often, this is a valid form of political expression in Muslim countries.

1812 – A political cartoon in the Boston Gazette coins the term “gerrymander” to describe oddly shaped electoral districts designed to help incumbents win reelection. Today it’s standard procedure to shape a district as necessary to guarantee minority representation in Congress. You should see some of the ‘districts’ Louisiana had to keep a black congressman elected.

1942 – World War II: In Poland, the first female prisoners arrive at Auschwitz. That’s what REAL Nazis do. Kind of puts that “they won’t pay for my birth control” argument in perspective, doesn’t it?

1967 – Ten thousand people gather for one of many Central Park be-ins in New York City, 4000 hippie chicks and six thousand guys who heard “hippie chicks are easy.”

1979 – Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter sign the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington, D.C.