1581 – Francis Drake is knighted by Elizabeth I for a circumnavigation of the world. Took him three years. It cost him five ships and a couple of hundred men, but the cargo he brought back was of greater value than the entire OTHER revenue of England that year.

1814 – Napoleon abdicates for the first time and names his son Napoleon II as Emperor of the French. Revolution? What revolution?

1818 – The United States Congress adopts the flag of the United States with 13 red and white stripes and one star for each state (then 20). Adding a stripe for each state didn’t work.

1859 – Bryant’s Minstrels debut “Dixie” in New York City in the finale of a blackface minstrel show.

It’s politically incorrect now. You may never hear it performed in public again.

1922 – WAAB (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) becomes first US radio station with “W” calls.

1933 – USS Akron (ZRS-4) wrecked off the New Jersey coast due to severe weather, precipitating the demise of combat Zeppelins. The things were so big that the winds at one end could be different than the winds at the other and the framework was too delicate to handle the stresses.

1944 – World War II: First bombardment of oil refineries in Bucharest by Anglo-American forces kills 3000 civilians. It’s tough enough working in a refinery WITHOUT somebody bombing the crap out of it.

1945 – World War II: Soviet troops liberate Hungary from German occupation and occupy the country itself, replacing rule by one dictator with rule by another ruthless dictator. That was ‘liberation’. Real liberation was forty-five years into the future.

1949 – Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Today it exists only so that Europe can rattle their decorative sabers and call US for a real military. Except the French, who do quite well against African tribes and boats full of hairy hippies. And other French.

1958 – The CND peace symbol is displayed in public for the first time in London. In 1968 WE knew it as “the footprint of the American chicken.”

1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots break out in many cities. Half the rioters have no idea why they’re rioting other than free stuff.

1972 – First electric power plant fueled by garbage begins operating. Tree-huggers swoon.

1973 – The World Trade Center in New York is officially dedicated.

1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen, both of them college dropouts.

1984 – President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons. One man’s ‘weapon’ is another man’s disinfectant or insecticide or cleaning agent. You can’t repeal chemistry.

1994 – Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark found Netscape Communications Corporation under the name “Mosaic Communications Corporation”. Somehow they’ve morphed into Mozilla.

2009 – France returns to being a member of NATO because a fish really NEEDS a bicycle.