1497 – In Florence, Italy, supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn cosmetics, art, and books, in a “Bonfire of the vanities“.

1812 – The strongest in a series of earthquakes strikes New Madrid, Missouri. And we’re due for another… And there have been some recent rumblings beneath Yellowstone Park, where resides a supervolcano.

1943 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy forces complete the evacuation of Imperial Japanese Army troops from Guadalcanal during Operation Ke, ending Japanese attempts to retake the island from Allied forces in the Guadalcanal Campaign. Japan is starting the death spiral, but doesn’t believe it just yet.

1949 – Joe DiMaggio becomes 1st $100,000 per year baseball player for the NY Yankees. $100K won’t pay the bat boy these days.

1974 – Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” opens in movie theaters. Still one of the funniest movies ever…

1986 – Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation. Twenty-eight years of a political dynasty? Who do they think they are? The Kennedy family? Or the Clintons?

1990 – Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power. Our own Leftists say, “They didn’t have the right people in charge. We can do the better”.

1991 – Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is sworn in. Aristide was deposed on 29 September 1991 by coup d’etat, a recognized political process in any Third-world Hellhole… In a demonstration of Haiti’s continued pursuit of good government, he’s re-elected in 2000 and re-couped in 2004, and now he’s back, no doubt to help with the billions of dollars in aid money thrown at Haiti after their earthquake.

1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed, leading to the creation of the European Union. Rome tried. Napoleon tried. Hitler tried. Each was worse than the previous. This time the bureaucrats did it. Wanna bet on the outcome?

1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan. He should have been immediately sewn into a bloody pigskin and left to die slowly in the noonday sun.

1997 – NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X. I loves me some OS X.