1619 – In Jamestown, Virginia, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time. Being all white, they’re under investigation by the Holder ‘Justice Department’.
1866 – New Orleans’s Democratic government orders police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150. Republicans in New Orleans today wouldn’t fare much better.
1898 – Will Kellogg invents Corn Flakes.
1916 – Black Tom Island explosion in Jersey City, NJ was an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the materials from being used by the Allies in World War I. Today we have the anti-American Left happy to thwart war efforts on our enemies’ behalf.
1945 – World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis (CA-35), killing 883 seamen. Sharks play a major role, as recounted in Jaws.
1956 – A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto. Then in 1965 US President Lyndon B. (Lyin’ B*stard) Johnson says, “Why fret over all that “god” stuff? We’re the government and WE’LL take care of you”, and he signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid, giving us a taste of how well the government can handle health care.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission – David Scott and James Irwin on Apollo Lunar Module, Falcon, land with first Lunar Rover on the moon, adding tire tracks to the American footprints.
1974 – Six Royal Canadian Army Cadets killed and fifty-four injured in an accidental grenade blast at CFB Valcartier Cadet Camp. Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is NOT your friend.
1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again. I have looked inside Chrissy’s purse. His body could be in there and nobody’d ever know…
1984 – Alvenus, a British tanker at Cameron La, spills 2.8 million gallons of oil. This, then the BP thing, that’s the Brits trying to get even for that Battle of New Orleans thing.
2003 – In Mexico, the last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line. Ferdinand Porsche’s pre-WW II design was quite successful as the first foreign compact car to gain wide acceptance in America. I owned a couple myself.
1974 – All accounts I can find agree that this was a single live grenade mixed into a set of dummy ordnance, but that seems like an incredible number of casualties from just one grenade. How big was it?
“…Chrissy’s purse.” At my house it is called the ‘Black Hole’.
Way back when, I was working for the supplier of Speedy Oil Change, and was in a Speedy in Metaire, LA. Old style Beetle sitting over the pit with young worker in the pit looking really confused.
me – “See that plate with all the acorn nuts holding it on?”
worker – “um … yeah”
me – “Does it have a drainplug in the middle of it?”
” … noooo”
“Well, then, you will have to loosen all those and the oil will come out”
“Okay …. where is the oil filter?”
“It’s a screen behind that plate.”
“Umha …” I don’t think he was really believing me at that point.
Then the Manager walks out, leans over and says “For god’s sakes don’t strip or lose any of those nuts dropping that plate … we don’t have the kit on hand to fix it … I doubt we even have the gasket. Hold on, let me check” wanders into the store room.
Then, I noticed it has a few extra vacuum lines … then the manager comes back, (they had two gaskets!) and he and I note how clean the car is … wait, is that a Catalytic Converter? Yes, yes it is … then we find the build sticker in the rear window and see that it has Mexican plates. It was a brand new ’92 Beetle with 3000 miles on it. Then the owner got off the phone and said he lived down the road from the factory and every mile on the car was his, He sat in it as it rolled off the line and fired it up … “I figured I best get one before they stopped making them.”