1915 – The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes. While tied to the stupid DOCK! No icebergs. No torpedoes. NO storm. Just tied to the DOCK!

1929 – The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it is first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers). Yeah, that’s gonna work real well.

1935 – The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aircraft bomb Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings. And this wasn’t considered “collateral damage”.

1948 – Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian makes his first appearance in the cartoon Haredevil Hare.

1950 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket. In less than twenty years a rocket will leave here putting Americans on the moon. Actually, Apollo 11 splashed own on this date in 1969, returning from that moon trip. 2011 – we’re reduced to hitching rides with the Russians.

1967 – During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! (“Long live free Quebec!”). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians. Sadly, many people outside France don’t know that Charles deGaulle single-handedly drove the Germans from France in WW II, so they aren’t properly worshipful and appreciative of the greatness they have witnessed.

2001 – Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office. You know who else’s family name was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha? The current British royal family before they changed it to ‘Windsor’ because it sounded just a bit too German in World War I.