1782 – American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris (1783) — In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles recognizing American independence. (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).

1803 – In New Orleans, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

1886 – First commercially successful AC electric power plant opens, Buffalo, New York.

1934 – The LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman becomes the first steam locomotive to be authenticated as reaching 100 mph.

1939 – Winter War: Soviet forces cross the Finnish border in several places and bomb Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the war. Stalin’s slaughtered most of his general staff, the toadies he has left have their collective asses handed to them by the plucky Finns. That’s the ‘up’ side. The ‘down’ side is that Stalin’s army starts finding generals who can fight, people that turn out to be handy in a couple of years against Germany.

1941 – Japanese Emperor Hirohito consults with admirals Shimada & Nagano and rubberstamps the Pearl Harbor attack plan.

1988 – UN General Assembly (151-2) censures US for refusing PLO’s Arafat visa. At this time we should have given then a two-week notice to vacate the premises.

1993 – U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law. Thousands of criminals immediately turn in their handguns. Wait… They didn’t? You’re kidding, right?!?!?

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time. A reasonably well equipped machine shop could reproduce one. What does it take to reproduce an iPod?

1910 – The first US patent for inventing the traffic lights system is issued to Ernest Sirrine. City council immediately sets a fine for running one.

1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.

1944 – Johns Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery. Today it’s almost a yawner.

1947 – UN Gen Assembly partitions Palestine between Arabs & Jews, leading to the legal formation of the nation of Israel, restoring a nation that was torn apart by the Romans in 70 AD. But skip forward to 1978…

1952 – Korean War: U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfills a campaign promise by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict. Nuking Red China to a cinder would’ve worked…

1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to cover up the tracks investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This is like Al Capone investigating crime in Chicago…

1978 – UN observes “international day of solidarity with Palestinian people,” boycotted by US & about 20 other countries. The UN has been dead useless for twenty years when this happens.

1972 – Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) releases Pong (the first commercially successful video game) in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. And with this shot, a revolution begins. Ten years later I was making very good money on the side, working on arcade games.

2009 – Maurice Clemmons shoots and kills four police officers inside a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington. If Obama had a son…

1520 – After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific around South America. And THAT’S why it’s called the “Straits of Magellan”. The other route is around Cape Horn through an unpleasant stretch of the Southern Ocean.

1811 – Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, was premiered at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig without a lightshow and backup dancers.

1814 – The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience. Today, newspapers are sucking sludge trying to keep in business.

1907 – In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater. He’s one of the “M’s” in MGM… A scrap metal dealer. Mean ol’ America, holding folks down and all that…

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance. Yee-haw, y’all!

1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people. The exact number of dead varies in different reports, but it’s a lot.

1958 – Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French Community. Nothing starts a nation onto the path to become standards of fairness, security and prosperity quite like being a French colony.

1994 – In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium. Justice is served and for a brief moment harmony is found in the universe.

2014 – Gunmen set off three bombs at the central mosque in the northern city of Kano, Nigeria, killing at least 120 people. Nothing to see here, folks. It’s a simple disagreement among adherents of the Religion of Peace.

602 AD – Emperor Maurice is forced to watch his five sons be executed before being beheaded himself; their bodies are thrown into the sea and their heads are exhibited in Constantinople. How did this come about? He disrespected the army and they revolted.

1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress.

1826 – John Walker invents friction match in England.

1835 – James Pratt and John Smith are hanged in London; they are the last two to be executed for sodomy in England. Executed? Hell, it’s taught in schools now. In another twenty years it’ll be mandatory.

1839 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded. “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, da*n lies, and statistics.”

1868 – Indian Wars: Battle of Washita River – United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land.

1895 – At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies. He didn’t envision it becoming a propaganda tool, but parts of it have become just that.

1924 – In New York City, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held. They used animals from the zoo in the first couple of parades. In 1927, the first big balloon, Felix the Cat, made its debut.

1942 – World War II: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands. It’s their greatest naval victory of the 20th Century until they sink the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. And THAT wasn’t done by the French Navy.

1967 – Gold pool nations pledge support of $35 per ounce gold price. It’s at $1400 in 2010, and around $1460 right now.

1978 – In San Francisco, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White. The twink community treats this as if the guy was John F. Kennedy.

1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook and company become the first Europeans to visit Maui.

1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress. Pajama Boy gets bitch-slapped trying to explain how Hillary was robbed of the election.

1863 – United States President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. Following the Franksgiving controversy from 1939 to 1941, it has been observed on the fourth Thursday in 1942 and subsequent years.

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3000 years. Their faces melt off.

1939 – Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Army orchestrates the incident which is used to justify the start of the Winter War with Finland four days later. Tiny, out-numbered, under-armed, gutsy Finland gives the Russians more fight than they bargained for.

1942 – Holocaust: Shoah: 572 Norwegian Jews are deported to Auschwitz on the cargo vessel Donau. This was the first step on the journey to the death camp Auschwitz. Altogether the total number of Jews deported from Norway was 767, 25 of the deported survived. If the Trump Administration were Nazis as the Left has screamed since his election, THIS is what you’d have seen. The Left couldn’t FIND a Nazi if one bit them on the ass.

1943 – World War II: HMT Rohna sunk by the Luftwaffe using a radio-guided bomb in an air attack in the Mediterranean north of Béjaïa, Algeria. Of the 1,138 men lost, 1,015 were American. The attack constitutes the largest loss of U.S. troops at sea in a single incident.

1944 – World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth’s shop on New Cross High Street, United Kingdom, killing 168 shoppers. If one would’ve hit a Wal-Mart on any Black Friday, it would’ve raised the state’s average IQ a dozen points.

1950 – Korean War: Troops from the People’s Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces (Battle of the Ch’ongch’on River and Battle of Chosin Reservoir), ending any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.

2000 – George W. Bush is certified the winner of Florida’s electoral votes by Katherine Harris, going on to win the United States presidential election, despite losing in the national popular vote as reported by the mainstream media. When you factor out the dead votes ( a heavily dimmocrat-leaning block) and the ‘extra’ votes cast by ‘community activists’, Bush won the popular vote as well, just like this last time.

2008 – The first shots of many attacks on Mumbai, India are fired. These ten coordinated attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists kill 164 and injure more than 300 people in Mumbai. Included among the victims are members of Mumbai’s tiny Jewish community, specifically targeted, lest you mistakenly think terrorists have forgotten the Jews.

1491 – The siege of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Spain, begins. They’re back now!

1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reaches its peak intensity which it maintains through November 27. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die. FEMA slow to respond. Bush widely blamed.

1867 – Alfred Nobel patents dynamite, taming the power of nitroglycerine.

1950 – The “Storm of the Century”, a violent snowstorm, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. 323 people die due to the storm. Da*n that global warming!

1950 – The People’s Republic of China joins the Korean War, sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river border to fight United Nations forces. Otherwise, the war was over. Now it will drag on, fighting in earnest for three years, and then border incursions by North Korea for the next few decades.

1973 – Maximum speed limit cut to 55 MPH as an energy conservation measure. Communities get used to money from speeding tickets as a revenue stream. Federal fiat produces a nation of scofflaws and hundreds of local governments who cash in on traffic fines.

1984 – 36 top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas” in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. A fine example of self-important, deluded pricks using sympathy to peddle their wares to their ignorant fandom. Slacktivism at work.

1999 – The United Nations establishes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the murder of three Mirabal Sisters for resistance against the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic. Of course, violence against women in Muslim countries is roundly ignored, because it’s, like, their CULTURE, you know…

1832 – South Carolina passes the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring that the Tariffs of 1832 and 1838 were null and void in the state, beginning the Nullification Crisis. The states were sovereign, existing within the framework of a Constitution that limited the powers of the Federal government. That all went away in the Civil War, but it’s back as cities and states declare themselves “sanctuary” for illegal aliens.

1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).

Concerned Official: I called for the Texas Rangers to put down a riot. They only sent ONE?
Texas Ranger: You only got ONE riot, don’t’cha?

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1906 – A 13–6 victory by the Massillon Tigers over their rivals, the Canton Bulldogs, for the “Ohio League” Championship, leads to accusations that the championship series was fixed and results in the first major scandal in professional American football. Come on, guys! Who do you think you are, the New England Patriots?

1941 – World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French Forces. the French who escaped Hitler had little besides their skivvies and a pompous figurehead.

1943 – World War II: The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks. Only 272 of her crew of 916 were rescued. The ship was less than a year old.

1950 – UN troops begin an assault intending to end Korean War by Christmas. What they do is aggravate the Chicoms, who rush across the Yalu River, and the war goes on for years.

1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald is assassinated by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters on live television. Conspiracy? Oh… no… Purely coincidental act by a big-time JFK fan. Right?!?

1963 – Vietnam War: Newly sworn-in US President Lyndon B. (Lyin’ Bastard) Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.

1965 – Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997. This is standard politics in Africa.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D.B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money – neither he nor the money have ever been found.

1973 – A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasted only four months. A year later I’m in Germany and the locals are still shaking their heads about that boneheaded move. Nothing like passing a law that nobody obeys, like our own politicians did with the 55 MPH limit on interstate highways designed for 70. Local governments find a new love for traffic fines that continues to this day.