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…