First I would like to say "thank you" to everyone who has viewed this thread. With over 1,000 views of it at this point, I would say it has not proven too uninteresting.

There is also a shortcut to viewing the most recent post without waiting for all my (admittedly lengthy) posts to load before that. Each thread allows one to jump to a certain page ("Go to page") via page numbers which are currently arranged in sets of 100 posts each, as is reflected in the HTML for the page (page one starts at viewtopic.php?f=21&t=16735&start=0 and page two starts at viewtopic.php?f=21&t=16735&start=100, the end "&start=" indicating the first post of the page).

By changing the page number after "start" to the "reply" number (not the view number) on the right, you can start a new page on the new post and thus end up with a one-post page which loads much faster. Go ahead and try it now by changing viewtopic.php?f=21&t=16735&start=200 to viewtopic.php?f=21&t=16735&start=201 and you will see what I mean (or do it with the most recently numbered post, for instance, given there has now been a number of posts since this one).

I have some other thread-viewing and posting shortcuts I use through the browser as well, but that should be sufficient for now. Thank you again, and now onto the next post ...

COTD: A long accident is not an accident, but an accident by design which is on purpose.

BAD NEWS: Three teenagers were killed by a train.

GOOD NEWS: A dog saved a little girl's life!

HUMOR: Diabetes (Calamities of Nature, by Piro).

HISTORY: February 22, 1403: Charles VII, King of France (1422-61), was born.

Most likely the name "Charles VII" does not implicitly mean anything to anybody, but the name which overshadows his probably does: that of Joan of Arc.

Suffice to say that events between France and England during 1337-1453 were involved in the Hundred Years' War due to the Franco-English connection which had resulted from Duke William I of Normandy (France) conquering and thus becoming King of England in 1066. This lead to disputes between the French and English over control of the throne and thus the government of France itself, and of course events were complicated since some of the French peoples -- such as the Burgundians/Arles -- actually fought for the English. In fact the uncle of Charles VII, Duke John the Fearless, was a Burgundian -- possibly why some of the men of Charles VII ended up killing him.

One of the reasons why Charles VII did not succeed to the throne of France when his father Charles VI died was because his parents had repudiated him as being illegitimate (possibly due to how Charles VI appeared to suffer from episodes of schizophrenia and because his mother Isabella of Bavaria-Ingolstadt was noted for having a number of extramarital affairs) -- although poetically enough, Charles VII was the only surviving child of the five children his parents had, hence why he ended up becoming the Dauphin, which means the French heir apparent.

Charles was protected by Queen Yolande of Aragon (part of what is today Spain), and those contesting the French throne with him were King Henry VI of England and Duke Charles I of Orleans (captured by the English). The claim of Charles VII was the weakest and he made it out of hopelessness, but this is where the aforementioned Joan of Arc comes in. The main immediate result of Joan's support was that it restored the confidence of Charles VII, which was also backed with the powerful political support of Queen Yolande of Aragon -- Charles VII also marrying into Yolande's family via marrying Yolande's daughter Marie d'Anjou, although he had a mistress in the form of Agnes Sorel. The result of Charles regaining his confidence was the eventual breakage of the English siege of the city of Orleans via the inspiration of Joan of Arc, thus why Joan is sometimes called the Maid of Orleans. At that time Orleans was then on the border between English and French controlled territory in France, thus the victory there turned the tide of the Hundred Years War back to the favor of the French, and Charles VII thus gained enough support to actually be crowned de jure (by fact) King (although this was still not recognized by the English nor the Burgundians) on July 17, 1429 -- he previously ruling after the 1422 death of his father as a de facto king in free France (northern France controlled by the English and/or Burgundians) but his actual crowning further legitimizing his rule.

The aforementioned Burgundians eventually managed to capture Joan of Arc and to turn her over to the English, hence how Joan of Arc was eventually executed on May 30, 1431. Tragically, Charles VII neglected making any attempts to save Joan despite her significance, but after this was able to sign the 1435 Treaty of Arras with Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy to thus turn the Burgundians back to the side of the French. Charles VII may have even sacrificed Joan in order to ensure the alliance of the Burgundians by making her a non-issue in switching sides following the English starting to lose the war with the breakage of the siege upon Orleans, plus of course in order to resolve the lingering animosity due to the fact that Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy had been assassinated by some of the men of Charles VII. Most importantly, switching the Burgundians to support of the French prevented any French or Burgundian noble support for the English claim upon the throne, thus why English control over France began to shrink away, essentially coming to an end in 1453 (although the English would maintain control of the formerly French Channel Islands, and would maintain control the city of Calais and the area around it until 1558 -- Calais being the closest foreign port to England).

In his later years, Charles VII came to quarrel with his own Dauphin Louis XI over power and over the fact that Charles VII had a shameless mistress in the form of Agnes Sorel, thus how Louis XI ended up first being banished from and then refusing to return to the side of his father. In 1458 Charles VII became ill with a sore on his leg that would not heal due to syphilis or diabetes, and infections of the sore on his leg caused him to suffer bouts of fever. By 1461 he was experiencing another infection in his jaw which lead to an abscess or tumor within his mouth which was so large he could ingest no food or water, thus how he starved to death on July 22, 1461.

Despite the scandalous end (which later helped lead to her sainthood) of Joan of Arc and the estrangement between Charles VII and his own Dauphin Louis XI (with some rivalry between Louis XI and Charles's other son Charles de Valois involved in the mix too), he is still notable for overseeing the essential reunification of France which had last been unified under the Carolingian dynasty (the greatest ruler of which was Charlegmagne) as long ago as 888. Thus although Louis XI quarreled with his father, Charles VII essentially left him what is today essentially the modern nation of France as his inheritance.

COTD: Don't say things too fast, or you will regret it.

BAD NEWS: A spectator was killed by debris at an NHRA event.

GOOD NEWS: Toyota has been subpoenaed!

HUMOR: I bet it is (Buckles, by Gilbert).

HISTORY: February 23, 1685: George Frideric Handel, German-English composer (Messiah), was born.

Although Handel was born a German, he ended up moving to England and becoming a naturalized British subject, perhaps because he became Kapellemeister (personal composer for) the German George of Hanover -- George of Hanover serving as one of thePrince-electors of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire (mostly Germany) which would elect the Holy Roman Emperor, yet would end up becoming King George I of Great Britain. The reason for which was that although he was German, he was the closest-related Protestant Christian successor to his predecessor Queen Anne of Great Britain -- the Act of Settlement of 1701 preventing Catholic Christians from becoming the regnant (reigning monarch) of Great Britain (most likely due to the link between Anglican Christianity and the throne established by King Henry VIII) and which constitutionalized the succession order to the British throne.

The type of music Handel composed was of course what today we call classical music, but the style he composed it in was baroque -- in the sense of music meaning it used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical notation, and made use of newer instrumental playing techniques then had been seen in the precedingrenaissance music period and which would actually become largely forgotten with the following classical music period (the name for which is extended over the medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist, and other such periods of what should perhaps more properly be called "art music"). Handel composed over 200 compositions in his lifetime, the most famous of which is his Messiah oratorio (a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists) which tells the Christian story of Jesus the Messiah, the most famous part of which is the Hallelujah Chorus -- the Chorus in itself thus often becoming a Christian Hymn in itself and of course both Messiah and the Hallelujah Chorus becoming popularly performed during Christmas.

COTD: I had a bright idea today and bought some light bulbs.

BAD NEWS: Indonesia is suffering from heavy rain and mudslides.

GOOD NEWS: A ceasefire is being signed in Sudan!

HUMOR: Irritant Savant (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power).

HISTORY: February 24, 303: Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered a general persecution of Christians.

The common image of Roman persecution of Christians involves rounding them up and throwing them to hungry lions with the Colosseum for sport, but the overall persecution of Christians was inconsistent. Since Rome was an empire which conquered many societies it commonly simply added various local gods to the Roman Pantheon of gods acceptable for worship in order to avoid alienating conquered peoples into rebellion too much. The problem with Christians in particular was that they refused to participate in the imperial cult which linked the Roman Emperors with the Gods in order to strengthen support for the Roman Empire, plus because they avoided publicity about themselves and thus tended to be quite secretive. This lead to speculation about instead of facts about Christianity taking precedent in the perception of them, thus why it was thought Christians were practitioners of black magic seeking to overthrow Rome (the miracles of Christ and the apostles), that they practiced incest and drowning babies (baptism), and that they practiced cannibalism (communion) -- offensive acts which should be repudiated and stopped, in other words.

At first persecution of Christians was more that perpetrated by mobs an people who did not hold public office, but by the 200s some rich and well-born persons had started to become Christians, hence official persecution began at this point -- aided by the fact that many Christians were quite obstinate in their Christian beliefs and refusal to support Rome in any way, plus due to the fact that Christianity was still quite closely linked with the Judaism which had given Rome so much trouble in Palestine due to the obstinacy of its own followers -- although official persecution of Christians was also inconsistent at first.

Prior to the "Diocletianic Persecution" (or "Great Persecution") and following the persecutions noted in the New Testament of the Bible, the only overall and official persecution of Christians that took place occurred under Roman Emperor Nero, who assigned Christians the blame for the 64 Great Fire of Rome -- the persecutions including the aforementioned throwing of Christians to hungry lions (the Christian response to which was using the "666" coding to refer to Nero within the Biblical Book of Revelation), and local instead of overall persecutions of Christians occurring until the time of Diocletian.

Diocletian's problem was that he was a religious conservative with a strong faith to the traditional Roman Dii Consentes of Gods (the twelve main gods from the Greco-Roman Pantheon of Zeus/Jupiter, Hera/Juno, and so forth) and thus wished to revive faith in the Dii Consentes gods in particular. This was not just due to personal preferences but because the Dii Consentes implicitly supported the whole Roman Empire as had been illustrated (fictionally) by the Aeneid written by Virgil, hence how faith in the Dii Consentes would also support the Roman Empire.

Ironically enough, Diocletian's religious conservatism ended up sparing Judaism since it was an older religion at this time and since Christianity had become distanced from it and recognized as a distinct and newer religion. Diocletian's persecution of Christians actually starts in 299 with him purging them from the Roman army, likely due to the manipulations of the strongly pagan and thus strongly anti-Christian Galerius Maximianus and who was a commander within the Roman army at that time. Increasing boldness by the religious in resisting Diocletian's religious conservatism reportedly also resulted in a debate between Galerius and Diocletian over how to respond to the growing boldness of Christians, a boldness that was broken by consulting the oracle of Apollo at Didyma, by which Galerius was able to persuade Diocletian to begin an overall and official persecution of Christians (the answer of the oracle itself being cryptic and thus both vague and open to interpretation).

The persecution actually began February 23, 303 with Diocletian having the new Christian church at Nicomedia destroyed, but since the first "Edict Against the Christians" by Diocletian was published to justify officially instituting persecution against Christians on February 24, February 24 is usually indicating as the starting date of the Diocletianic Persecution. This was also followed by second, third, and fourth edicts and would officially continue until the 313 Edict of Milan would restore religious tolerance for all religions once more. This edict of Milan was issued by Roman Emperor Constantine I, a convert to Christianity (see the 312 Battle of the Milvian Bridge) who due his own religious piety actually ended up turning Rome into a Christian empire, thus laying the roots for "Christendom" throughout Europe and from Europe also across the world.

Prior to the miraculous reversal of policy between Diocletian and Constantine, however -- it also being true that Christianity had already become too established to be conservatively purged from Roman society by the time the rich and well-born began to adopt it during the 200s -- Christians had to endure ten years of overall and official persecution, although it was true that enforcement of the persecution varied depending upon local preferences. Christian scriptures, books, and places of worship were destroyed, Christians were prohibited from coming together to worship, Christians were denied legal rights, Christians were no longer allowed to hold public offices or participate in the army, freedmen (former slaves now freed) who were Christians were re-enslaved, Christians were readily imprisoned, Christians were forced to make sacrifices to the aforementioned Dii Consentes, and in some cases Christians were readily tortured and executed.

The torture and execution of some Christians was done due to being part of local discretionary powers, although Diocletian officially requested the persecution to be done "without bloodshed." However, one irony is that burning at the stake became a common enough form of executing Christians in the Eastern Roman Empire at this time that it was co-opted by Christians to execute heretics later, and another is that with Constantine serving as a founding and unifying and protecting force for the orthodoxy (essentially the correct formula) of early Christianity against anti-Christian forces from without -- such as those exemplified by the Diocletianic Persecution -- it also more opened Christianity to divisions and conflicts from within such as various heresies (essentially the incorrect formulas) that arose within Christianity over the years, not to mention the divisions and conflicts between the various denominations which would end up branching out of Christianity. But it is still true that Constantine's rule did cease the last overall and official persecution of Christians from without and by the Romans which began on this date in 303.

COTD: Back up!

BAD NEWS: There was a shooting at a Colorado school.

GOOD NEWS: Charlie Sheen has entered rehab!

HUMOR: Oh, that's familiar (Calamities of Nature, by Piro).

HISTORY: February 25, 1882: Possible birth date of B[runo] Traven, German writer (Treasure of the Sierra Madre).

The reason this is only a "possible" birth date is that "B. Traven" appears to have been a pseudonym (fake name) that the author wrote under in order to hide his identity. Other birth dates for B. Traven range from February 23 to May 3 and from the years 1882 to 1890, although the date of "February 23, 1882" is most commonly given. The general consensus was that he was born in Germany as "Ret Marut" and that he became involved in leftist politics, which is why he ended up being sentenced to death for the treason of being involved in the secessionist Bavarian German Soviet Republic (a communist uprising and thus one crushed by German Freikorps) of 1918-1919. Escaping and fleeing to England in 1922, he spent time in prison due to his papers not being in order before being released and then departing England and arriving in Mexico in 1924, where he adopted the public name of "Traven Torsvan."

In Mexico, Marut/Torsvan began writing stories under the name of B. Traven in 1925 -- many first published in a serialized form for newspapers, as was common at that time -- and he was always able to write fairly anonymously through written correspondence with his literary managers. He also tended to write in German first, hence how his works had to be translated for his audiences. When his Treasure of the Sierra Madre was adapted into an American film in 1947 he actually appeared on the set of the film claiming to be Traven's representative "Hal Croves" in order to avoid being discovered. However, publicity about the film version of Treasure of the Sierra Madre also prompted a Mexican journalist by the name of Luis Spota to investigate and thus to link "B. Traven" with "Traven Torsvan" in 1948, prompting Marut to drop the "B. Traven" and to maintain use of the "Hal Croves" as a public pseudonym for the rest of his life (following Spota's article the next appearance of Hal Croves was in Mexico City in 1952, suggesting he was waiting for any attention to dissipate). He still had some short stories published under the name of "B. Traven" even after adopting the pseudonym of "Hal Croves" for good -- and even though his literary output had essentially stopped by 1939 with the end of his Jungle Novels -- but his last book of Aslan Norval in 1960 received poor reviews and was suspected to have been written by someone else (thus why it was reportedly never translated into English, along with his Land Des Fruhlings/Land of Springtime.

In 1957 Marut/Croves married his secretary Rosa Elena Lujan (she was convinced he was the actual B. Traven), continuing to deny that he was B. Traven yet still claimed that he was a writer, thus why he wrote a number of film scripts -- all of which were declined. A recording of his voice also substantiates he spoke with a German accent, thus strengthening the likelihood that he was actually the Germanic Marut/Traven/Torsvan. When he died on March 26, 1969 and was later cremated, his will had his death certificate register his name as that of "Traven Torsvan Croves" and to register his birth date and location of birth as May 3, 1890 and Chicago, Illinois (USA), respectively -- this offering an accounting of the Americanisms in his writing if one accepts the alternative theory that B. Traven was actually an American who wrote in German for enough publicity so that he could get published, but no theory completely accounts for all the facts since whoever B. Traven was, and no trace of a birth certificate confirming the May 3, 1890 date of birth has ever been found.

The writing of B. Traven is that of leftist anti-capitalism (against private ownership of business, the idea being the lack of regulation this encourages leads to abuses) and also of leftist pro-anarchism (against there being a government on the grounds authority is inherently oppressive and that lack of that authority will actually prevent abuses). This is reflected in how his The Cotton Pickers is about unions struggling against those who would exploit worker labor in Mexico, how his Death Ship is about a merchant sailor who is repeatedly deported by callous governments and who ends up being exploited for his work upon a decrepit ship (the "death ship" of the title) that would be worth more through the insurance on it if it sunk (the book version of this is glimpsed within the film version of the drug-crazy society-rejecting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and why his Jungle Novels offers commentary on the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917 -- the Mexican Revolution being marked by some of the issues that B. Traven was interested in.

B. Traven's Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a little different in that it is set in the 1920s Mexico where scattered bands of bandits in remote areas left over from the Mexican Revolution are still being hunted down by "Federales" (Mexican federal police) -- if caught these bandits being allowed a last cigarette and then being made to dig their own graves before being shot and executed. However, this is largely only background to the real story of how three Americans end up banding together and looking for gold in the remote Sierra Madre Mountains after finding themselves exploited for their labor within Mexico, since the story is more about how the character of one of the Americans -- Fred C. Dobbs, portrayed by Humphrey Bogart in the film version (the film version is highly regarded by critics but did poorly in its original release to the general public) -- ends up becoming quite selfishly and murderously paranoid as a result of his own greed.

In the end, the paranoia and greed of Dobbs is such that he ends up being killed by one of the aforementioned scattered bands and the more selfless other two end up surviving (although admittedly even they were tempted with murder the same way Dobbs was due to the brief appearance of a fourth American). The iconic "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges" line comes from the film version where the bandit "Gold Hat" impersonates that he is one of the Federales and responds to Dobbs's request to see his badge by saying "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges" -- a reply which is actually derived from a much more profanity-laced response that Gold Hat gives within Traven's book version.

COTD: What's with the floating plate, anyway?

BAD NEWS: An orca killed his trainer.

GOOD NEWS: Charlie Michael Lohman pled guilty.

HUMOR: Maybe you should ask questions, then (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power).

HISTORY: February 26, 1852: 450 people were killed when the British frigate HMS Birkenhead sank off of South Africa.

The custom of "women and children first" is not part of any official protocol and became popularized due to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 -- after which sinking of the Titanic becoming a popular reference due to it being one of the greatest maritime disasters ever -- but it actually had its origins in the sinking of the Birkenhead.

The purpose of the voyage of the final voyage of the Birkenhead was to transport British soldiers and some of their families to the mostly British-controlled colony of South Africa, where the British were fighting to suppress the rebellion of the Xhosa people to their rule. Captain Salmond decided to have the ship hug the coastline of South Africa in order to make the best time to the final destination of Algoa Bay, thus at 2:00 AM the ship struck an uncharted rock near what is as of this writing Gaansbaai, Western Cape (previously known by the appropriate name of "Danger Point").

Given that most of the occupants of the Birkenhead were soldiers it made it easier for the officers to maintain discipline amongst them. The fact that some were immediately deployed to man the pumps to keep the ship from sinking, that others were immediately deployed to ready the lifeboats, and that the remainder were deployed upon the poop deck (near the extreme aft or back end of the ship) in order to raise the stern (the front) of the ship to slow how it was now being flooded through its punctured hull (unfortunately made worse by efforts to free the ship) also set a precedent that helped maintain order.

Circumstances are hardly optimal when lifeboats need to be used, and this is why they were unable to be used in this case (this also happened in the case of the Titanic, although in that case the shortcut of not providing enough lifeboats in the first place was also true). When the ship finally sank after striking the submerged rock a second time while trying to back off of it, breaking the ship in two, Captain Salmond gave the order to abandon ship but a Colonel Seton countermanded him by ordering everyone to stand fast since he recognized the soldiers might swamp the cutter that the women and children who had been put aboard (the cutter a smaller ship used to move from shore out to the ship in order to avoid the ship running aground). Three soldiers broke ranks and tried for the lifeboats, but the rest obeyed the order and stayed put so that all seven women and thirteen children survived but most of the soldiers (except for 173 of them and one male civilian who also survived) either ended up dying of exposure, of drowning, or of being attacked by the sharks which frequent the waters near South Africa (sharks often eat seals, which congregate around South Africa).

This type of chivalrous behavior as a custom within terrible circumstances actually became known as the "Birkenhead Drill" by military types due to this incident, but it took until the 1860 use of the line "women and children first" regarding a shipwreck within the fictional book Harrington by W.D. O'Connor that "women and children first" began to replace "Birkenhead Drill," the new term for the custom finally being cemented into place with it being used during the symbolic (the folly of technological progressivism and classism) 1912 sinking of the Titanic. Unfortunately, since the ship sank in only 98 feet (30 meters) of water it has been frequently disturbed by those pursuing rumors of treasure (a military payroll) that were aboard the ship, despite the ship now essentially being a "war grave" memorial to those who lost their lives (exploring the remains of the Titanic has also raised ethical issues due to the ship not being a "war grave" but now essentially being a memorial to those that lost their lives when it sank).

A miscellaneous fact about the Birkenhead is that like many ships she used paddle wheels for propulsion (this succeeding the use of sails), but experiments about the time she was built revealed that the propellers/screws that are still commonly used for seacraft propulsion today were more efficient, thus why use of propellers/screws then began to replace the use of paddle wheels (although this also helps explain why there were ships with paddle wheels in the first place).

COTD: Poydi tuda, ne znayu kuda, prinesi to, ne znayu chto!

BAD NEWS: Andrew Koening's body has been found.

GOOD NEWS: California might recognize a profanity-free week.

HUMOR: I thought you were not ever supposed to lie (Heart of the City, by Tatulli).

HISTORY: February 27, 1881: Sveinn Bjornsson, President of Iceland (1944-52), was born.

Iceland is an island formed by volcanoes on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (part of the system of global drift) and is settled mostly by people of the Norse and Celtic cultures. Eventually controlled by Norway via the 1302 Old Covenant and then by Denmark-Norway under the 1536 Kalmar Union, it passed into Danish control when the Kalmar Union was dissolved in 1814 via the Treaty of Kiel (a result of the Napoleonic Wars). It then gained independence in 1918 via the Act of Union with Denmark, but only on a local level (national control remained with Denmark).

Although Iceland declared neutrality in World War II (1939-1945), the British preemptively invaded the country in 1940 out of fears of a German invasion (they also preemptively invaded the nearby Faroe Islands the same year for the same reason) and were then relieved by an American force in which stayed from 1941-1946, thus they ended up giving grudging support for the Allies during World War II but were officially neutral.

On December 31, 1943 the aforementioned Act of Union expired, thus why by Iceland became independent via referendum in 1944. Sveinn Bjornsson, born in Denmark, had become involved in Icelandic politics on a local level as early as 1912, thus how he had advanced enough to be elected President of Iceland by the Althing (General Assembly of Iceland) in 1944, then how he was elected President of Iceland by popular vote in 1945 and ended up being both unopposed and elected to three terms as President before he died in office on January 25, 1952.

Iceland prefers its neutrality, thus why there were riots in Iceland under Sveinn Bjornsson when it joined the NATO alliance in 1949 -- this being followed by a more legitimized presence within the country by American troops in 1951 as a result of the Cold War, the last American troops then being withdrawn from the country in 2006. Given that Iceland is a cold country with soil poor for farming, fishing is its main industry, and this has actually resulted in a number of incidents generalized as the "Cod Wars" resulting from conflicts with the British (who were suffering a decline in the fishing in waters closer to the British Islands, such as for cod fish) over fishing rights in the area.

COTD: A lion amongst tigers is still a cat.

BAD NEWS: Chile has suffered an 8.5 earthquake.

GOOD NEWS: Martin Bramwell has been evicted.

HUMOR: Never underestimate Coyote (Gunnerkrigg Court, by Siddell)!

HISTORY: February 28, 1925: Friedrich Ebert (Social-Democrat), President of Germany, died.

The son of Friedrich Ebert, Friedrich Ebert Junior, was a communist East German politician. This can be explained by the fact that socialism is technically supposed to be the transitional stage between capitalism (private ownership of business) and communism (government ownership of business), and because Friedrich Ebert Senior was a socialist.

To explain the capitalist-socialist-communist ideas further, each has the ostensive goal of preventing any of the abuses of exploitation via ownership and therefore through power -- either by individuals or by the government -- which may come about from either of the other two. The Social-Democratic political party (SPD) that Ebert belonged to was center-left to left in ideology ("left" meaning "liberal") which mixed some capitalist and some communist ideas, and thus can be considered to be moderates -- this also since they favored World War I (1914-1918) but at the same time also favored a compromise peace unlike those on the far left (very liberal).

Ebert actually did not want the continuation of the German monarchy by declaration instead of popular vote after Kaiser Wilhelm II ended up being forced from power during the German Revolution Germany went through near the end of the war, but his fellow Social-Democrat Philipp Scheidemann preempted him by declaring a republican (representative) government and thus ending the monarchy of (the supreme government power technically within) the Kaisers on November 9, 1918. He still favored a republican government and democratic changes via the voting of the people, however (this is actually at odds with the revolution to ensure communism that some call for, and which is a characteristic of some socialists), thus how he ended up being elected President of "Weimar Republic" of Germany by the Constituent Assembly that created a new constitution for the country, serving from February 11, 1919 until he died in office on February 28, 1925.

The term "Weimar Republic" comes from the fact that the politicians which formed the new government gathered at the city of Weimar in order to form it. The problem with the Weimar Republic was that while it was formed by more liberal politicians like Ebert, it was opposed by conservatives who were both monarchists and/or often members or former members of various German military organizations -- thus why civilians favoring social reforms to protect their rights collapsed the 1920 communist overthrow attempt of the government with theKapp Putsch with a general strike, since the Reichswehr (essentially the German Armed Forces of the time) had refused to help suppress it. Unfortunately this division was one which would linger during the time of the Weimar Republic as well, thus why many of these conservatives would later become Nazis. In the struggle to somehow hold these two opposing forces together -- not helped at all by the fact that the judiciary was sympathetic to these conservatives, as would be later evidenced by the lenient sentence given to future Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler for his part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch -- Ebert's health suffered and thus helped lead to his death on this date in 1925. The fact that the Weimar Republic also suffered from other problems coming out of losing World War I and then due to the economic crisis of the Great Depression starting in 1929, however, helped ensure that the Weimar Republic was only a transitional stage between the Imperial Germany which ended in 1918 and the Nazi Germany which began in 1933. Regardless, the new liberalism of the Weimar Republic did allow for more cultural revival and change during the "Golden Era" of 1923-1929, and one of Ebert's lasting legacies of this day is the Friedrich Ebert Foundation which the Social Democrats founded shortly after Ebert's death.

COTD: You have got to have a heart to shock it.

BAD NEWS: A father beat, bound, and gagged two small children.

GOOD NEWS: Some cookies have been recalled (they are still safe to eat, though).

HUMOR: Maureen might (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: I had a limited amount of time and more of this to do that usual -- given the leap day of February 29, and no February 29 of this year -- so here is a more limited timeline of events for that date.

1468: Paul III, Catholic Christian Pope (reigned 1534-49), was born.

1792: Gioacchino Rossini, Italian composer (Barber of Seville), was born.

1896: Ranchhodji Morarji Desai, Prime Minister of India (1977-79), was born.

1936: Jack R. Lousma, US NASA astronaut (Skylab 3, STS-3), was born

1948: Patricia [Anne] McKillip, US sci-fi/fantasy author (Fool's Run), was born.

1952: Tim[othy] Powers, US sci-fi/fantasy author (Epitaph in Rust, Night Moves), was born.

1956: Elpidio Quirino, President of the Philippines (1949-53), died.

1960: 12,000 people were killed by the 1960 Agadir, Morocco Earthquake.

COTD: When you have no facts nor law on your side, you cannot resort to yelling.

BAD NEWS: The death toll from the Chilean earthquake keeps climbing.

GOOD NEWS: Not much tsunami damage appears to have been done from Chile's earthquake.

HUMOR: Silence of the Cats (Lio, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: I had a limited amount of time and more of this to do that usual -- given the leap day of February 29, and no February 29 of this year -- so here is a more limited timeline of events for March 1.

1562: 1,200 Huguenots (French Protestant Christians) were murdered at Vassy, France.

1837: Ion Creanga, Romanian writer (Amintiti the Copilarie), was born.

1892: Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Japanese writer (Rashomon in Kappa), was born.

1910: 96 people were killed in the Wellington Disaster, an avalanche at Wellington, Washington (USA).

1914: Ralph Waldo Ellison, American writer (Invisible Man, Shadow and Cast), was born.

1922: Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel (1974-1977, 1992-95), was born.

1924: Donald "Deke" Kent Slayton, US NASA astronaut (Apollo 18), was born.

1926: Camilo d'Almeida Pessanha, Portuguese poet (China), died.

1932: Dino Campana, Italian poet (Canti Orfici), died.

1954: Five Representatives were injured when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire at the US capitol.

1962: 95 people were killed when American Airlines Flight 1 crashed into Jamaica Bay, New York (USA), due to a rudder control malfunction.

COTD: Of all the worst places to go, it's the best.

BAD NEWS: 58 people were killed by storms in western Europe.

GOOD NEWS: Pittsburgh has made some changes after a man's 911 calls were not responded to.

HUMOR: The facade (Calamities of Nature, by Piro)!

HISTORY: March 2, 1944: 426 people were killed in the Balvano Train Disaster in the Armi tunnel near Balvano, Italy.

The 1943-1945 Italian Campaign had successfully prompted Italy to surrender to the Allies of World War II (1939-1945) by 1943, but given the continuation of the campaign to force Nazi Germany to extend German defenses south over Italy as well (in addition to west towards France and east towards the USSR) and thus to divide and overcome Nazi Germany even further, the whole of Italy would remain involved until the end of the war.

Naples -- both the city and the province -- is in southern Italy, hence how it suffered severe wartime shortages during the war. Those shortages increased the demand in urban areas for butter, eggs, poultry, and dairy products that could be had in rural areas but which of course required people to actually get to those rural areas to obtain them, hence the use of the trains.

Suffice to say this enabled the black market or the underground and thus the illegal economy since there were severe restrictions on these and other goods so that more of them could be channeled into supplying the war effort (now necessarily part of the Allied war effort). Goods commonly sold on the black market are recreational drugs and sex via prostitution, given that supplying any demand there might be for them is more difficult due to them commonly being illegal. Butter and eggs and such are different, of course, which may be part of the reason why the hundreds of people who illegally rode freight trains (themselves part of the war effort) between urban and rural areas each day were ignored. As well, urban Italian civilians would trade for the extras of cigarettes, candy, and gum which servicemen were provided with in order to trade this to those in rural areas for butter and eggs and such and there was also the obvious fact that servicemen did not want the additional burden of a hostile civilian population, hence this was likely another reason why the illegal riding of freight trains was ignored.

On March 2, 1944, locomotive 8017 first stopped at the Balvano station which was between two parts of the aforementioned Armi tunnel -- meaning that about half of its 47 cars the tunnel. This was because a train coming the other way was having trouble so that it had to wait for a "clear track ahead" signal. This is not actually what lead to the disaster, but rather what lead to the disaster was that when the locomotive 8017 was cleared to proceed it ended up stalling with all but its last few cars within the tunnel due to it both traveling up a steep uphill grade (the train it had waited for was going downhill) and due to it being overloaded as a result of the illegal passengers.

The stalled train was driven by two engines, hence once both these engines were within the tunnel the exhaust from them had not much anywhere to vent to. This was also combined with the fact that the aforementioned wartime shortages had also reduced the availability of high quality coal (which burns energetically and thus is often burned to produce energy, such as for the steam engines of trains) so that poorer quality materials that had the side effect of producing more carbon monoxide often ended up being used. Suffice to say that carbon monoxide is a colorless and odorless gas yet it is poisonous to humans (and living organisms) since it combines with the hemoglobin which is in the blood and which is used to transport the oxygen inhaled into the lungs to fuel metabolism (the chemical reactions which maintain a body), thus it blocks the hemoglobin within the blood from obtaining the oxygen a living body needs.

In other words, most of the passengers that died in the Armi tunnel died of anoxia (a decrease in the amount of oxygen they were able to obtain from breathing) caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. The few survivors were those fortunate enough to be in cars that were left outside of the Armi tunnel so that they were able to breathe more oxygen-rich air. Given the overall environment of the conflict of the war -- Italy having had to surrender to the Allies and now helping against the Germans and such -- and despite the 426 deaths, the incident only began to receive publicity in the 1950s when survivors of those who died became confident enough to pursue lawsuits against the railway company which had operated the train.

Although there are obvious characteristics of carbon monoxide poisoning (which can be read at that link) it tends to be so subtle and thus so often underestimated that many people do not recognize it when it is actually happening. Fortunately carbon monxide detectors are widely available today (I have one myself, due to becoming aware of a number of close calls with carbon dioxide), but cases of it still happen these days: often the result of operating a barbeque indoors (often for heat in the case of a power failure), operating a power generator indoors (again often in the case of a power failure), or operating a motor vehicle indoors, and this is even happens when windows or doors and such to the outside are open. Aside from the grim fact that the subtlety of carbon monoxide poisoning is therefore one of the reasons why it is used in cases of suicide, improper venting leading to carbon monoxide poisoning (such as from a fireplace or a furnace) has also been suggested as a cause of "haunted houses," given that impairment of the thought process (including visual and auditory hallucinations) is one of the features common to carbon monoxide poisoning -- thus the sad fact that even if the 426 victims of the Balvano Train Disaster noticed even subtle symptoms of the carbon monoxide poisoning they were suffering, they were impaired enough to not ponder the significance of them.

COTD: People forget history.

BAD NEWS: Chile is suffering from post-quake looting.

GOOD NEWS: Shark attacks in the US declined in 2009.

HUMOR: This is with those of you in the northeastern US in mind (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 3, 1831: George M. Pullman, American industrialist and inventor of the Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car, was born.

Although he dropped out of school at age fourteen, Pullman became an influential industrialist of Chicago, Illinois (USA). He started as a businessman by manufacturing coffins but first came to prominence with the "Raising of Chicago" during the 1850s and 1860s -- that is elevating buildings above the ground and building new foundations under them due to the new sewer system needing to be built above the boggy ground that the city of Chicago is built upon.

Sleeping cars -- railroad cars in which one could easily lie down and sleep within -- had seen use since the 1830s, but Pullman increased the value of the Pullman Sleeper by making it a "palace car." Designed to be much more comfortable to sleep in he also added to their value by having kitchen cars and dining cars attached to it and by hiring former house slaves to serve as porters, waiters, chambermaids, entertainers, and valets for them.

Pullman's reason for hiring former slaves who had been freed as a result of the 1861-1865 US Civil War was not altruistic but rather because he felt they had the right kind of subservient attitude as a result of their background to provide the first-rate service that added value to his sleeping cars. Still, how Pullman essentially made his sleeper cars into "hotels on wheels" did allow the Pullman company to become the single biggest employer of African-Americans following the US Civil War.

Pullman's fortunes began to change with the Panic of 1893, however. Although he had bought out two of his railroad competitors in the form of the Detroit Car and Manufacturing Company (in 1869) and the Central Transportation Company (in 1870), and had bailed out (along with industrialist Andrew Carnegie and others) a third railroad company by the name Union Pacific in exchange for considerable control over it (in 1871) and thus had become quite wealthy, aggressiveness in the US railroad system caused over-expansion and thus bad financing (management of money, including loans) that eventually lead to a retraction of credit (loans, thus how it was connected to financing) that lead to a shortage of money by which to pay off debts, leading to runs on banks as people withdrew their funds to pay these debts and thus causing banks to fail when they themselves ran out of money to pay off their own debts. This is similar to what happened during the 2000s "US Housing Bubble" and is also similar to what happened during the 1980s to 1990s Savings and Loan Crisis, but how it effected Pullman in particular was that when banks started to fail so also did railroad companies that relied upon them for financing (as well as other businesses).

In short, Pullman needed to cut costs since demand and thus revenue for cars produced by the Pullman Palace Car Company was declining. By 1894 Pullman accomplished this by downsizing a number of employees (cutting their jobs), increasing the workday to twelve hours (no maximum limit of hours was set by law at this time), and also by reducing wages. This would have been bad enough in itself, but Pullman had also founded his own little town of Pullman for his workers to live in during 1880 (the city of Pullman in Washington State is also named after him, but is a different Pullman than the one mentioned here) and refused to lower the costs of rents and leases and such after the aforementioned cutbacks of 1894. True, he had overseen creation of his company town in order to make money off of it (via monopolizing what his employees could buy and pay for the use of in their ordinary lives), seeing it reach a maximum of USD $5 million in 1892, but he also alienated his workers by complete control of the town: independent newspapers, public speeches, town meetings, open discussion, and private charitable organizations were prohibited since Pullman felt without vice or agitation his workforce would be happier, but the fact was that Pullman's workforce chafed at his overbearing control despite how those outside the community could only see the town as a positive symbol of Pullman's benevolence and vision.

On May 11, 1894, the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company launched a wildcat strike (one unauthorized by their union) when Pullman refused to even listen to their demands -- Pullman hiring strikebreakers (those who will work despite an ongoing strike) as a result, and indirectly inflaming the situation further by hiring many African-Americans as strikebreakers since African-Americans were so discriminated against they were more fearful of completely being shut out of work. They strikers were assisted in this by the ARU (American Railways Union) who took sympathetic actions such as refusing to allow the passage of trains with Pullman Cars (African-Americans helped break this strike since the ARU kept blocking them from working for the railroads in order to give whites jobs), and also by sympathetic actions elsewhere in the US railway system. Although initially peaceful there were some incidents of violence, even before US President Grover Cleveland had the strike broken (the strikers were forced to disperse) by the US Army on the grounds it interfered with delivery of the US mail, ignored a legal injunction the railroad owners had obtained to end the strike, and on the grounds the strike was a threat to public safety. Thirteen strikers were killed and 57 were wounded, and USD $340,000 (USD $8,818,000 in the year 2010) damage was done.

Although Pullman could be said to have won in this conflict, he also lost. A national commission formed to study the cause of the strike found that Pullman's overbearing paternalism over the town of Pullman was partially to blame since it was "un-American" -- deviating from American norms, in other words. In 1898 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled the Pullman Company had to divest its ownership in the town, thus how Pullman was then annexed to the city of Chicago. True, this was after Pullman's death on October 19, 1897, but Pullman's overbearing paternalism as best evidenced by his company town of Pullman and the Pullman strike made him so unpopular with labor that his body was buried at night and several tons of concrete were used to make sure the reinforced steel-and-concrete vault his coffin was buried in would not be exhumed and desecrated by labor activists. The fact that some were sympathetic to the Pullman strike helped cost President Grover Cleveland another nomination for US President in 1896 (no two-term limit for Presidents was in effect by law until 1947), and since ARU member Eugene Debs had ended up being sentenced to prison due to becoming involved with ignoring the injunction against striking (some termed the strike "Debs's Rebellion") he ended up studying the works of communist ideologist Karl Marx while in prison, thus helping convert Debs into becoming the leading socialist -- essentially one seeking to end abuses under the private ownership of economic capitalism (such as those seen under Pullman) via more public control and ownership of economics by the government, although not to the extreme degree seen in economic communism (the extreme controls exerted by communism being one of the reasons why it commonly fails).

COTD: Does anybody love you?

BAD NEWS: A child was allowed to act as an Air Traffic Controller.

GOOD NEWS: Sully is retiring with honor.

HUMOR: It sure did (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 4, 1743: Johann David Wyss, Swiss writer (Swiss Family Robinson), was born.

Johann Wyss was a Swiss pastor who appears to have been inspired by English writer Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe which was published in 1719 -- Robinson Crusoe inspired by the account of Alexander Selkirk and the previous books of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and An Historical Account of the Island Ceylon. Robinson Crusoe has the most obvious influence upon it, however, given that Wyss derived the "Robinson" family name from Crusoe's first name (the literal title shows this even more clearly as it translates as "the Swiss Robinson").

Johann David's work -- which he wrote in German -- was edited by his son Johann Rudolf and was illustrated by his son Johann Emmanuel, and given that Johann David Wyss was a Christian pastor he wrote it as a story from which people would learn Christian lessons from -- this in line with the philosophical lessons of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and the Christian lessons within Robinson Crusoe. As such the Robinson family is shipwrecked on an island which fancifully includes a diversity of plant and animal life that one would never encounter together within real life and most memorably raises such issues as how to observe the Sabbath.

Unfortunately, so many versions of Wyss's original 1812 story have been made (due to translations, adaptations, and editing done outside of the Wyss family) that the original story that Wyss himself wrote has long since become obscured. Probably the two most famous adaptations of it are Walt Disney's 1960 loose film adaptation of Swiss Family Robinson (as of this writing, a remake of this film is scheduled for 2012) and the looser 1965-1968 Lost in Space television series (often compared unfavorably to the more intellectual 1966-1969 Star Trek: the Original Series but actually more popular at first due to focusing more on being humorous and entertaining).

The Lost in Space series was worked into a 1998 Lost in Space film received well by audiences but harshly criticized by critics, the Lost in Space franchise marooning a Robinson family upon an alien planet instead of upon a deserted island. Learning moral lessons due to the enforced solitude of being marooned has also continued to be popular plot device with even less related works as well, such as William Golding's 1954Lord of the Flies book, the 2000 Cast Away film, and the 2004-2010 Lost television series.

COTD: What is your driving force, love or fear?

BAD NEWS: Taiwan had a 6.4 earthquake.

GOOD NEWS: Spanish police busted a botnet ring.

HUMOR: Style (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: March 5, 1966: 124 people were killed when British Overseas Airways Flight 911 crashed at Gotemba City, Japan, due to turbulence around Mt. Fuji.

In short, the turbulence the flight encountered was due to lee waves, one of the many types of what are essentially strange currents of air such as oscillating waves (repeating waves) formed through deflection of wind by mountains. However, clouds can appear unbroken on the top of and below the air currents and also clear-air turbulence can occur (colliding wind currents) so that actually discerning the presence of lee waves can be quite difficult. As such they are definitely harmful to smaller aircraft and are possibly harmful even to larger aircraft such as the Boeing 707 which was involved in the accident.

Giving one an idea of how subtle lee waves can be, Captain Bernard Dobson who was in command of the flight had been flying Boeing 707s since 1960, and lee waves had been known of since 1933. Given the lack of obviously bad weather conditions or of bad flying decisions -- it being a clear day due to a strong cold front clearing the sky, and the aircraft 16,000 feet (4,000 meters) above the peak of Mt. Fuji -- it is thought that the flight crew altered their flight path en route (with permission) in order to give the passengers aboard the visual treat of seeing Mt. Fuji when the lee waves were encountered. The turbulence of the lee waves encountered was so violent that it broke up the aircraft due to structural failure (the stresses upon the aircraft exceeding what its construction could bear). In short, this broke off the control surfaces (the stabilizers, and the empennage/tail) and the pylons which attached the engines to the wings, fatally damaging the aircraft so that it went into an uncontrollable flat spin (a corkscrewing flight path) and thus crashed.

A US Navy A-4 Skyhawk fighter (the US having bases in Japan as a result of World War II) sent up to search for wreckage also encountered the same lee waves when it was sent up to search for wreckage from the flight, although the pilot of the flight only lost control temporarily and managed to avoid the breakup of his aircraft he feared at the moment he lost control. A more recent example of this type of accident occurred with Japan Airlines/Evergreen International Airlines Flight 46E on March 31, 1993, where the aircraft was damaged through loss of an engine that broke off due to flying into a lee wave (and also possibly due to a fatigue crack in the attaching engine pylon) around Anchorage, Alaska (USA) -- thankfully, even though the flight crew didn't think it'd make it the aircraft made a successful emergency landing with no loss of life amongst the five people aboard (the November 12, 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 was different in that improper training prompted too aggressive a response with the rudder by first officer Sten Molin after encountering wake turbulence caused by another aircraft, thus breaking off the vertical stabilizer and resulting in the loss of control and thus the crash, thus the crash was not Sten Molin's fault).

COTD: You think you have freedom?

BAD NEWS: Six people were killed in a bus crash.

GOOD NEWS: Jaycee Dugard is going to speak a little.

HUMOR: Flight supremacist (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 6, 1987: 193 people were killed when the British RORO (or RO-RO) ship Herald of Free Enterprise capsized and sank.

The Herald of Free Enterprise was a RORO (Roll On, Roll Off) ship -- meaning having ramps which allow any cargo to be brought in or off the ship upon wheels as opposed to loaded on or taken off the ship by a crane. This is why ferries for vehicles are ROROs, although the "RORO" designation is typically reserved for ocean-going vessels. In the case of the Herald of Free Enterprise, she was launched in 1980 to operate a route between Dover, England, and Calais, France -- this still being a practical way to get from the British islands to France and mainland Europe across the English Channel until the completion of the Channel Tunnel ("Chunnel") in 1994.

Although Dover and Calais are the English and French ports which are respectively closest to each other, on the day of the accident the Herald of Free Enterprise was actually operating on a Dover, England to Zeebruge, Belgium route which was a little further north than usual. The ability for this had been accomplished via a retrofit earlier in 1987 that enabled the forward ballast tanks of the ship (used to control buoyancy and stability) to be filled to lower the front of the ship enough to overcome the problems of unloading the Herald of Free Enterprise at a port she had not been designed for.

Here it should be noted that the ship was also accessed through watertight doors at the bow and stern of the ship -- the front and the back of the ship (some ROROs are designed to sail high enough they do not need watertight doors, however). Custom and responsibility for closing the watertight doors aboard the Herald of Free Enterprise was that of the Assistant Boatswain/Bosun (deck worker) Mark Stanley, but he left the doors open and took a break in his quarters -- where he ended up falling asleep -- after cleaning off the car deck of the ship and when it arrived at Zeebrugge. The backup to this was the First Officer of the ship who double-checked to make sure the doors were closed, but he skipped this step and trusted that Boatswain/Bosun Stanley had them closed in order to keep to schedule. Finally, the Captain on the bridge of the ship had no way of seeing the watertight doors from nor any instrumentation to show their status from the wheelhouse, hence he also assumed they had been closed.

In short, the ship left Zeebrugge with its watertight doors open and with the forward ballast tanks filled to lower the front of the ship, hence once it reached a speed of 18.9 knots (21.75 MPH, 33 KPH), the draft (depth) of the hull and the seawater pushed along by the ship got high enough to start seeping into the ship through the open doors (later tests confirmed the water would have stayed out of the ship had it remained below a speed of 18 knots, given that a "step change" or sudden change in the water pushed along by the ship occurs at this speed). The technical term for what happened is the "free surface effect," which essentially means that gravity and motion caused the water to pool within and weight down the ship in such a way that the ship could no longer balance upright. This is particularly bad in ROROs since the large open decks for cars cannot be subdivided into watertight compartments to contain the water, hence with the weight of the incoming water quickly becoming greater on the port (left) side of the ship on the car deck, the ship capsized onto its left side upon a sandbar which kept it from sinking completely under the surface in much deeper water.

"Capsized" is when a ship ends up on its side in the water (perhaps because the hull of the ship looks like a cap), whereas the term "turtled" means a ship turned completely upside-down with the hull facing up. Turtling is rare since ships are designed to counter capsizing and to float in an upright position the first place, hence why the only real account of a turtling is in such fiction as The Poseidon Adventure -- and in fact "turtling" is commonly subsumed under the term of capsizing. In the case of the Herald of Free Enterprise, the seawater also quickly destroyed the ship's electrical system so that only the fortuitous presence of a nearby dredging ship (used to keep sea routes free from accumulating sediment) allowed a quick rescue. Still, 193 of the 459 people aboard were killed due to suffering hypothermia from the frigid temperature of the seawater at the time.

In short, the main problem that lead to the capsizing and the sinking was assuming instead of confirming that the watertight doors were closed. The ship itself was successfully raised but scrapped in 1988 due to the accident, and the appearance and names of her quite similar sister ships was also altered in the aftermath of the accident. As of this writing, both sister ships are still in service but elsewhere besides the English Channel, and of course measures have been taken to prevent flooding through their watertight doors (if left open) from happening again (in the more recent case of the Estonia RORO sinking of 1994, unfortunately her bow watertight doors failed due to storm damage as opposed to being left open).

Related Youtube file: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D7ztCzaOAE.

COTD: Someone controls what you watch.

BAD NEWS: Turkey is angry at the US for recognizing the Armenian Genocide of 1915. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide)

GOOD NEWS: "Precious" has won big.

HUMOR: It's almost 70 though, since it's 64 (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: March 7, 1875: Maurice Joseph Ravel, French composer (Bolero), was born.

Although French, the Basque culture of his mother Marie Delouart was a strong influence upon him (his father, Joseph Ravel, was an industrialist who was Swiss by birth). Like a number of other notable composers he showed talent in music at an early age (despite no ancestors showing a similar talent) and was influenced by exposure to the works of others, and it was actually the positive response he received from an American tour in 1928 which earned him ovations for his works -- unlike the more conservative audiences he had encountered in France and Europe -- which helped make him famous.

What I actually find more interesting about Ravel is the few notes about his personal life. He did not live in a "bohemian" (unconventional) way and was meticulous about his appearance, was an intellectual who collected and read a library of over 1,000 volumes, enjoyed smoking, strongly-flavored meals, wines, and conversation. His health was rather frail during his life, thus why he was not allowed to become a pilot during World War I (1914-1918) but became a truck driver on the Verdun front instead -- a unit he was attached to at one time actually engaging a German unit which had future Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler in it.

Ravel's Bolero was completed in 1928, and given its repetitive nature -- it essentially the same theme throughout but with increasing amounts of ornamentation added to it -- has prompted some to suggest that Ravel had begun suffering from the mental illness of FTD (frontotemporal dementia) by that time. This is because FTD effects "executive function" which is essentially the ability plan things out and to reflect upon and adapt to the response to them -- those suffering from FTD sometimes getting essentially "stuck" in the same counterproductive behaviors due to their inability to exercise executive function. Regardless, Ravel did make some mention that he was going to "experiment in a very special and limited direction" through repetition without development when he composed Bolero, and the novelty of this approach was what made it such a popular success despite his claim that "it has no music in it."

By 1932 Ravel did actually begin to suffer mental problems, however, as he suffered a blow to the head in a taxi accident and began to suffer from absent-mindedness and aphasia, which is trouble with language due to damage to part of the brain. The aphasia aspect is illustrated by the fact that he started having trouble composing the musical ideas he could still imagine in his mind. Due to increasing problems with this in his life, he underwent experimental brain surgery to try to correct the problem on December 28, 1937. Sadly it was not successful since although Ravel woke from the surgery, he then lapsed into a coma and soon died. Some assert that the reason he had brain surgery was that he had a brain tumor, but this is due to confusing him with Ravel's fellow American composer George Gershwin, who died shortly after brain surgery to try to alleviate a brain tumor on July 11, 1937.

Ravel's own sexuality -- or rather what appeared to be the lack of it -- has also been a mystery since he never had any known intimate relationships. This has lead to unsubstantiated rumors that he visited brothels or that he was a closet homosexual, or else that his own sexuality was somehow stunted enough that he did not respond to it as strongly as others did. In any case, no evidence beyond the circumstantial exists to prove any of the rumors about Ravel, who once implied the reason he lacked much of a personal life was because "the only love affair I have ever had was with music," thus limiting his time for such activities -- which actually appear largely irrelevant anyway, since it did not interfere with the professionalism of Ravel which enabled him to become one of the greatest classical music composers of all time.

Related Youtube file: Bolero, by Maurice Ravel.

COTD: The group of one is outweighed by the singleness of the many.

BAD NEWS: Iraq suffered some election day violence.

GOOD NEWS: Youtube has added captions for the hearing-impaired.

HUMOR: She's not about to let it go that easily (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: March 8, 1983: US President Ronald Reagan first used the term "evil empire" to refer to the USSR, in a speech given to the NAE (National Association of Evangelicals).

Unlike other American politicians who begin their careers as lawyers, Reagan started his political career as an actor, generally appearing in "B films" which were generally quickly made with low budgets (such as Bedtime for Bonzo). He did, however, spend some time in the US Army from 1937 to 1945 -- his nearsightedness preventing him from serving overseas -- and it is true that some American politicians start their careers through service in the US military (some of them ending up serving both as lawyers and also within the US military). His long experience in acting gave him skill in communicating with people, hence why he also ended up being nicknamed "the great communicator" once he became involved in politics.

Like many actors who were aware of the diversity of cinema, Reagan started out as politically liberal -- thus supportive of the Democratic party with its liberal wing -- but ended up shifting to being a political conservative. The first part of the reason why was that he was an anti-Communist (the 1989 Autumn of Nations often being cited as proof of the errors of Communist theory), the second being the paranoia of McCarthyism during the 1940s and 1950s, and the third being the fact that he was the host of the General Electric Theater television program for a time -- the fact the show was hosted by the General Electric company thus making him quite familiar with the conservative business elements that managed General Electric. The skills that Reagan learned and the conservatism he adopted eventually enabled him to be steered into becoming first governor of the state of California, then President of the United States via the support of the conservative wing of the Republican party (the opposite of the Democrats).

It was as the US President (1981-1989) that he made the "evil empire" remark while making a speech critical of Communism. Some sources state this speech was actually his June 8, 1982 Speech to the British House of Commons, but Reagan never used the term "evil empire" within that speech. Reagan did correctly refer to how many economically Communist countries have totalitarian governments within the speech and appropriated the phrase "ash heap of history" to (correctly) predict what would happen to Communist governments within the House of Commons speech, however -- the irony being that "ash heap of history" is supposed to have been used by Russian Communist Leon Trotsky to describe where the Mensheviks (meaning the minority and thus the opposition) were headed when they angrily walked out of the Second Congress of Soviets and thus inadvertently enabled the Bolsheviks (meaning the majority) to become unopposed and thus to later evolve into the Communist Party of the USSR.

Actually it was not so much Reagan who used the term "ash heap of history" as it was the speechwriter who wrote the House of Commons speech for him -- the speechwriter admittedly using his knowledge to write what he knew Reagan would like and would use, and speechwriters often being used by US Presidents. Likewise, it was Reagan's primary speechwriter Anthony R. Dolan who came up with the term "evil empire" when he gave his 1983 "Evil Empire" speech to the NAE -- the point being that evangelicals are strongly religiously-based Protestant Christians who of course responded strongly and positively to the religious good-versus-evil message Reagan gave in his 1983 speech as well as to his casting of the Communist USSR as an "evil empire" -- specifically within the context of the nuclear arms race of the time -- since most Communists are atheists who deride religion as being merely "the opium of the people" to keep them from struggling against their true oppressors.

Suffice to say that the USSR responded to reports of the speech by referring to it as proof the US projecting its own motives of imperial domination of the world onto the USSR, that the USSR itself was opposing that in the name of humanity, and that Reagan's use of the term "evil empire" proved the US had become too paranoid and too confrontational. The September 1, 1983 USSR shootdown of civilian flightKAL Flight 007 after it twice inadvertently violated USSR airspace (flying from Alaska to South Korea) due to the prerogative to act first and question later to avoid weakness (the rationale or misunderstanding being it was actually a type of US spy mission hidden as a civilian flight, given there were US military aircraft in the area) would later help illustrate that tensions and confrontations between the US and USSR were indeed increasing -- the point being that Reagan's "evil empire" comment of March 8, 1983 can thus be seen as a symptom of the underlying problems between the two nations.

There is a split in opinion about how the conflict was eventually resolved. Those who are more politically conservative maintain that Reagan's strong pursuit of anti-Communism lead to the USSR essentially being bankrupted into losing the 1945-1991Cold War -- the name of the ideological struggle between the US and the USSR within which Reagan's "evil empire" comment all these events occurred -- due to the economic flaws inherent to economic Communism in opposition to the economic Capitalism practiced by the US. However, those who are more politically liberal maintain that the reformist measures of USSR General Secretary (effective leader) Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985-1991 are more of what defused the conflict, especially given the fact that Gorbachev won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in 1990 (Reagan never won a Nobel Peace Prize). Hence suffice to say that the compromise is to say that it was actually the conciliatory efforts between the two of them that lead to the end of the conflict, whether Reagan earlier termed the USSR as an "evil empire" or not.

COTD: Kind deeds are too often lost.

BAD NEWS: 51 people were killed by an earthquake in Turkey.

GOOD NEWS: Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar for best director.

HUMOR: Isn't this like the internet? (Stone Soup, by Eliot)!

HISTORY: March 9, 1862: During the US Civil War (1861-1865), the USA "Union" and CSA "Confederacy" forces conclude the Battle of Hampton Roads in a draw.

The name of this battle itself is often forgotten given the fact that the USS Monitor fighting the CSS Merrimack is what is often remembered instead ... so much so that the battle is often referred to as "the Battle of Monitor and Merrimack," although other ships were involved in the battle as well -- this because the western seaside area near Hampton Roads within the state of Virginia is that of a roadstead or harbor (Virginia having seceded from the Union to the Confederacy at the time of the battle) which was being blockaded by Union forces at the time.

"Ironclad" or metal ships had actually begun to be built as early as 1854, but use of wood had remained the predominant building material due to precedent at the time of the battle. The Merrimack (sometimes spelled "Merrimac") had been a wooden ship that Union forces burned to the waterline and then sunk to try to prevent it from being captured and used by the Confederacy on April 20, 1861 -- this because they were blocked from relocating the ship after Virginia seceded from the Union three days earlier. This however meant that the Confederacy was able to raise the sunken hull and to rebuild the ship as an ironclad ship which they renamed the Virginia -- although continued use of the old "Merrimack" name is more popular -- which they hoped would give the Confederacy the technological edge to break the Union naval blockade upon the Confederacy.

Suffice to say that the superiority of metal over wood meant that the Merrimack easily dominated the Union ships enforcing the blockade in the Hampton Roads area (she was escorted by two wooden Confederate ships) at the start of the battle on March 8 (originally intended as a shakedown cruise but stretched into a fight) hence the Union brought out its ironclad Monitor ship to counter the Merrimack on March 9. The two ships fought to a stalemate which essentially ended the battle, although both sides claimed victory since the Confederate Merrimack had so dominated the wooden Union ships it encountered while the Union blockade upon the Confederacy did not end up being broken by the introduction of the Merrimack. The Merrimack later ended up being deliberately burned and blown up by the Confederacy to prevent her from being captured by Union forces in May of the same year, while the Monitor ended up sinking in stormy seas while being towed along the eastern US coastline while being towed to the state of North Carolina to take part in the naval blockade there on December 31, 1862.

The real effect of the indecisive battle was that the navies of the United Kingdom, France, and across the entire world began wholesale abandonment of wooden ships and thus to convert their navies into ironclad metal ships, thus the decisive effect of the battle was proving the worth of advancing wartime technology. The revolving turrets of the Monitor later inspired similar designs for what became modern battleships, and even the ram that the Merrimack used with limited success -- it best used against wooden ships but prone to breaking off and getting stuck -- was incorporated into ironclad battleship designs until nearly the start of World War I in 1914.

DWOJ: Three.

COTD: His insanity was stolen.

BAD NEWS: Kane Gorny died.

GOOD NEWS: Haiti freed one of its last two imprisoned missionaries.

HUMOR: Takeout (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: March 10, 1957: Osama bin Laden, founding leader of the terrorist al-Qaeda organization, was born.

Depending upon what system one uses to translate his name from Arabic, Osama bin Laden's name can be spelled many ways. "bin Laden" is not his last name, however, as this is not his family name but instead is the part of his personal name which is "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of 'Awad, son of Laden" -- although referring to him as "bin Laden" has become customary.

The March 10, 1957 birth date is the birth date he gave in a 1998 interview. Born to a Yemeni father who had grown wealthy and thus connected to the royal family of Saudi Arabia, his first significant action was being persuaded by Muslim theologian Abdullah Yusuf Azzam to come to Afghanistan in 1979 in order to fight against the USSR occupation of the country from 1979-1989. Abdullah Yusuf Azzam therefore ended up serving as a mentor to Osama, and stressed to him the importance of Islamism -- that is to say an ultraconservative set of beliefs that Muslims must unite, return to the roots of Islam, and to reject most or all Western influences since these are incompatible with Islam (Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual and political leader of Iran from 1979-1989, is perhaps the best known other figure who followed the belief of Islamism).

Yes, Islamism is what some in the West have derived the term "Islamofascism" from in an attempt to link it with the more familiar European fascist movements near the time of World War II (1939-1945), but even without the mentoring of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam the fact was that Osama was raised as a Wahhabi Muslim, and Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab advocated violent actions to purify Islam. Also, although Osama had started out in a more supportive role for the various Afghan mujahideen (literally "freedom fighters") carrying a jihad (holy war) against the Soviets, he shifted more towards an active military role and thus this was why his al-Qaeda organization was formed in 1988 -- this with the goal of continuing to wage the jihad against the West following the defeat of the USSR.

A grim irony of this is that since the US and USSR were opposed to each other due to the Cold War, the Operation Cyclone used by the US to help the mujahideen against the USSR from 1979-1989 helped defeat the USSR but had the unintended side effect of helping create a new adversary for later. But in the meantime, with the withdrawal of the USSR's attempt to impose a Communist government in Afghanistan in 1989, Osama was able to return to his home country of Saudi Arabia as one of the heroes that had defeated the USSR. However, the rift between Saudi Arabia and Osama then began with Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, which lead to the 1991 Persian Gulf War which forced Iraq to vacate Kuwait. In short, Iraq invaded Kuwait in order to seize oil fields that would help pay off the debts incurred due to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War which had also started due to Iraq trying to opportunistically seize Iranian oil fields during the time of the Iranian Revolution (which enabled the aforementioned Ruhollah Khomeini to take control of Iran). President Saddam Hussein of Iraq used the propaganda of Islamism to justify Iraq's actions but Saudi Arabia's ruling House of Saud recognized it was actually over oil, plus that Saudi Arabia's oil fields were now endangered by the presence of Iraqi forces in Kuwait -- their caution later shown as justified due to the Battle of Khafji when Iraq attempted to invade Saudi Arabia from Kuwait. Given that Osama was also an believer of Islamism, Saudi Arabia's government rejected Osama's offer of using mujahideen such as his al--Qaeda to defend against Iraq and instead accepted the US offer of help instead (the US offer of help admittedly due to the US interest in oil from the region).

This prompted Osama to begin criticizing Saudi Arabia's dependence upon the US military since his religious beliefs prompted him to believe that the presence of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia profaned the sacred Muslim sites of Mecca and Medina that were within the country. His continuing criticisms of Saudi Arabia after this point lead to him being banished to Sudan in 1992, but more importantly in retrospect is that without his al-Qaeda being used against Iraq, Osama began applying his earlier plans to take it into a jihad against the West instead.

The earliest incident of this was the murder of Jewish Rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990, since Meir Kahane was an outspoken supporter of Israel (Arabs and Israelis having fought a number of wars over the land of Palestine that Israel occupies, due to both Islam and Judaism holding that land as sacred). The most memorable early incident of this, however, was the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, although there were a number of other attempted bombings and what were now terrorist actions planned by al-Qaeda within New York, New York (USA) which ended up being thwarted. As well, al-Qaeda also struck various targets outside the US, some of which were successful and some of which were thwarted, and Osama also supported and funded Bosnian mujahideen during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War which ensured the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia.

Osama's continued criticism of Saudi Arabia from Sudan, the 1997 Luxor massacre by Islamist terrorists not which Osama funded in Egypt, and also Osama's links to terrorist actions against the US was what got him forced from Sudan due to the efforts of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the US in 1996 -- and why he returned to Afghanistan, where he began to rebuild due to the potential seen from his contribution to defeating the USSR in 1989. He has also been linked with the Islamist EIJ (Egyptian Islamic Jihad) due to the affiliation between the EIJ and al-Qaeda even prior to their June 2001 merger into "Qaeda al-Jihad" -- the independent EIJ best known for it being suspected in the 1998 US Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania which killed over 200 people.

Suffice to say that everyone became well-aware of Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks which killed thousands of people (curiously enough, Osama denied responsibility for them until 2004). An Interpol warrant (essentially an international warrant) for his arrest was issued on March 16, 1998, and he was personally indicted by the US on June 8, 1998 for a 1995 truck bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed five Americans.

Attempts to capture or kill Osama have been unsuccessful, the greatest failure of this so far being due to limited action at the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan during October 12-17, 2001, which was during the 2001 onward Afghanistan War and which enabled Osama to escape into the rugged areas on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Conflicting reports about his location and whether he has died due to sickness and/or injuries have continued over the years, plus occasional messages that are said to have been made by him. As of this writing, he is currently one of the US FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Most Wanted for his connection to the 1998 terrorist US Embassy Bombings and his responsibility for the 2000 attack upon the USS Cole but not for his responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks due to a technicality of the list. Also, the notoriety he obtained due to the September 11 attacks faded considerably after he was falsely linked to Iraq as justification for the 2003 onward Iraq War, although there are still multimillion dollar (USD) rewards in connection with his potential capture.

COTD: Denial is proof!

BAD NEWS: Corey Haim died.

GOOD NEWS: Bank of America is going to end its automatic overdraft fees.

HUMOR: The Amish (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 11, 1985: Mikhail S. Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the USSR.

The position of a General Secretary was originally an administrative (managing) one when it was created in 1922 and with Joseph Stalin first holding it. Once Stalin came to dominate the Politburo (the executive committee), however, it became synonymous with that of the USSR Communist party leader and thus the de facto (by fact) ruler of the USSR.

Mikhail Gorbachev was born March 2, 1931, and grew up working on a collective farm. In 1995 he graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in law in order to become a lawyer, and also became involved in politics at the same time. As such, by 1970 he was First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom province, by 1971 he was a member of the Communist Party Central Committee, by 1974 he was a Representative to the Supreme Soviet (Council) of the USSR and Chairman of its Standing Commission on Youth Affairs, by 1978 he was the Central Committee's Secretariat (Senior Secretary) for Agriculture, by 1979 he was promoted to the Politburo itself, and by 1980 he was a full member of it.

Gorbachev owed his rapid advancement in part due to influential intellectual ideologist Mikhail Suslov -- who from 1970-1982 effectively controlled the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) -- favoring him, as well as General Secretary Yuri Andropov's favoring of him from 1982-1984 as well, this because the three had similar ideologies. Suslov died in 1982 and Andropov died in 1984, and perhaps the only reason why the Politburo did not make Gorbachev General Secretary immediately after Andropov because the qualified but unhealthy (he had begun to have health problems) Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko they elected was still older and thus more conservative in addition to being more experienced. As it was, Gorbachev's competence was why after Cherneko's death on March 11, 1985, the Politburo finally elected him General Secretary despite him being the youngest member of the Politburo -- thus how Gorbachev became the first USSR General Secretary born after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The primary reason for the reforms Gorbachev attempted was to revive the economy of the USSR since a Communist economic approach like that pursued the USSR tends to lead to lead to economic stagnation (little or no economic growth) preventing economic efficiency and also economic prosperousness. Since politics and social opinion are intertwined with a nation's economy, Gorbachev thus attempted "perestroika" (restructuring) reforms of the first two in order to fix the problems of the third. For instance, one of Gorbachev's first reforms was an anti-alcohol campaign to help reverse the social problem of widespread alcoholism throughout the USSR and which prompted citizens to use their purchasing power upon other goods which would help grow the economy -- the reform being successful but admittedly also reducing government revenue from alcohol sales and helped drive crime via installing alcohol sales as part of the black (illegal) market (ironically enough, the US attempt at prohibition of alcohol from 1920-1933 had the same effect from inflating alcohol into a black market good, and making alcohol legal again afterwards created some new jobs which helped the US economy).

The most significant reform that Gorbachev would make in 1988 was "glasnost" or greater transparency of the government to the people, thus allowing the Soviet people to have more accountability from their government. This meant that when Gorbachev's attempts at perestroika to reform the Soviet economy actually ended up being too counterproductive via increasing the country's debt and leading to shortages of goods (the attempt with alcohol itself illustrating this point) the Soviet peoples were encouraged to use glasnost in order to give voice to the various nationalist and anti-Communist sentiments which had been previously suppressed, even before the 1989 Autumn of Nations which Gorbachev's reforms had actually helped prompt -- specifically from him stopping the USSR policy of propping up Communist governments it had installed in Eastern Europe with military force (1953 East Germany, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968). He also decoupled the union of the CPSU from the government of the USSR in order to allow elections which would allow more glasnost (transparency), which was why the office of the President of the USSR was created in 1990. Gorbachev himself was elected the first President of the USSR -- he actually being elected to the office by the Congress of Soviets he had recreated in 1989 instead of by the popular votes he later intended, the special election reportedly for transitional purposes -- and thus gained him a significant degree of power despite voicing of nationalist and anti-Communist ideas possible from glasnost helping to begin dismembering the country.

The fatal blow came from the ultraconservative August 1991 USSR Coup Attempt. This was in the wake of a new Soviet Union treaty drawn up by Gorbachev in an attempt to bring an end to the various nationalist and anti-Communist forces dismembering the country by making federation within the USSR more voluntary as well as more democratic, hence the conspirators of the coup struck in an attempt to prevent the new treaty out of fear the treaty itself could more quickly lead to the dismemberment of the country. An unpopular coup, it only lasted from August 19-21 before collapsing, and even though Gorbachev was reinstated it became apparent that popular support had solidified behind Boris Yeltsin (President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic at that time) due to his open defiance of the coup -- and who was also willing to ride the still-present forces of nationalism and anti-Communism into becoming the first President of an independent Russia. In short, the thwarting of the coup was not so much to prevent the deposing of Mikhail Gorbachev due to his reforms but to ensure the increasingly unpopular USSR would not continue to be imposed over the people. As such, the USSR ended up dissolving between August 21 -- the day after the coup -- and December 26 so that its various Socialist Republics became the independent nations of Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan (officially due to the Belavezha_Accords, which were signed during this period of time).

Although Gorbachev has only had a minor role in Russian politics and has still not regained popularity following his resignation as the only President of the USSR on December 26, 1991 -- this because his record is mixed since the reforms he instituted did not do just what he wanted them to do -- he has been awarded a number of times for his efforts. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award in 1992, honorary degrees from both Carleton University and the University of Calgary in Canada in 1993, the Grawemeyer Award in 1994, an honorary degree from Durham University of England in 1995, the Courage of Confidence Award in 1996, another honorary degree from Trinity College of Ireland in 2002, the Point Alpha Prize in 2005, and the Dresden Award in 2010.

Finally, the "port-wine stain" birthmark on the top of Gorbachev's head is more properly called "naevus flammeus," and is caused by superficial and deep dilated capillaries of blood vessels within the skin. An obvious target of those seeking to make some sort of negative visual symbolism about Gorbachev, Gorbachev himself opted not to have the cosmetic surgery to remove the birthmark since he felt this would give the incorrect appearance of him being too concerned about his personal appearance than with more important issues.

COTD: See it happening now!

BAD NEWS: Chile is having big earthquake aftershocks.

GOOD NEWS: The seven year old Carlos helped save his family.

HUMOR: Seems you just about have it to me (Scrued, by Jewell)!

HISTORY: March 12, 1888: More than 400 people were killed over the next two days by the Great Blizzard of '88 in the northeastern US, which does USD $25 million in damages ($1.2 billion adjusted for inflation to the year 2008).

"Ice-Apocalypse" and "The Second Ice Age."

The technical difference between a snowstorm and a blizzard is the strength of the winds involved, such as the strictest American definition that a blizzard must include wind gusts up to 35 MPH during snowfall which causes blowing snow along the ground and which reduces visibility to a quarter mile or less over a period of three hours (if no snow is falling but snow on the ground is being blown around by blizzard-force winds, it is called a "ground blizzard"). Also, a blizzard is not the same as a "whiteout" in that a whiteout occurs when visibility and contrast is so reduced by the presence of any snow -- not just blowing snow -- that the ability to see a horizon or much of anything disappears, resulting in extreme spatial disorientation (sense of where one is).

In the case of the Great Blizzard of '88, unseasonably mild weather accompanied by heavy rains was met by a cold front -- how an unexpected cold front can drop the temperature rapidly thus making the many snowstorms and blizzards that occur hard to predict, and thus how they are often sudden -- that turned the rain into a snowstorm on March 11, with winds reaching sufficient speeds for it to be transformed into a blizzard shortly after midnight on March 12. The maximum amount of snow that fell over the northeastern US over this period was 58 inches (4.8 feet), the highest snowdrift reaching 52 feet (624 inches), and the coldest temperature reaching 9 degrees Fahrenheit.

Suffice to say such conditions paralyzed transportation, but they also disabled telephone and telegraph communications since overhead wires were used for these communication services -- as well as to carry power -- during this time within US cities, hence the wires broke due to the gusts of wind, from the freezing, and from being loaded up with snow. This was in part why a subway system was later built underground in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as why the practice of burying many of the aforementioned wires underground began -- transportation and communication conducted under the surface of the earth cannot be compromised by adverse weather conditions such as those encountered by the Blizzard of '88.

Since the terms "snowstorm" and "blizzard" are sometimes used interchangeably, the three snowstorms that took place in the US during February 2010 from February 1-6, February 9-10, and February 25-27 are sometimes called "the First American Blizzard of 2010," "the Second American Blizzard of 2010," and "the Third American Blizzard of 2010," but given blizzard and/or near-blizzard conditions only manifested themselves in very limited situations during these storms, they should more properly be called snowstorms instead of blizzards.

But still, there is some truth to what the above My Cage comic by DeJesus and Power implies since those snowstorms lead to people creating the terms "Snowmageddon," "Snowpocalypse," and "Snowzilla" in order to describe them. With or without the needed winds to make a snowstorm into a blizzard, a snowstorm in itself can also be very dangerous for many of the same reasons.

COTD: Those that continually give themselves something by essentially giving nothing therefore also deserve nothing in return.

BAD NEWS: Lahore, Pakistan has suffered another bombing.

GOOD NEWS: 9/11 recovery worker have won a $650 million settlement.

HUMOR: More Censor-sheep (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)! See http://mycagecomic.com/?tag=censor-sheep.

HISTORY: March 13, 1764: Charles Grey (Whig), the Earl of Grey and British Prime Minister (1830-34), was born.

Suffice to say that "Earl" is a rank in the peerage system for those who are British nobles (a hereditary caste of those who were supposed to be genetically predisposed to better leadership) and which includes those who have received particular honors within the United Kingdom. This explains how Charles Grey became involved with British politics, and the British Whig party to which he belonged was founded upon making the monarchy accountable to a constitution instead of being allowed to have absolute rule, later adding support of Parliament over the monarch, supporting of free trade, Catholic Christian emancipation, abolition of slavery, and expansion voting rights. Since they advocated the abolishment of slavery, this helps explain why Charles Grey oversaw the abolishment of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833, with Grey deciding to retire in 1834, and dying on July 17, 1845.

Grey's personal life was rather scandalous as even after he was married (having a big family of ten sons and six daughters, which was common for someone of his class at the time) he actually had a number of affairs with various women. One affair which preceded his marriage was the one he had with the married Georgiana of Cavendish, thus how she gave birth to one Eliza Courtney on February 20, 1792. Since Georgiana's husband -- Duke William Cavendish -- threatened to never let her see her children again if she left him for Grey, this resulted in Eliza Courtney being raised by Grey's parents as if she was Grey's sister (here it should be noted that Duke Cavendish had made a mistress out of Georgiana's friend Elizabeth Foster, who he had a child with while married to Georgiana and who he married after Georgiana's death in 1806). The end point of this all being that Georgiana was a supporter of her distant cousin and Whig party leader Charles James Fox, thus how Grey also became involved in Whig politics at that time.

Earl Grey Tea is indeed named after Charles Grey, who probably first received it as an employee benefit while serving in the British government and who liked it (an false anecdote says he received it in China -- tea originating in Asia -- although he never went there), thus how his name was applied to it. Earl Grey Tea is created by adding oil from the rind of a bergamot orange to it in order to give it flavor and originally only applied to black teas that were thus stronger in flavor (and caffeine) already, but today is more generalized to mean any teas with bergamot flavoring. And yes, for those familiar with Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Star Trek: the Next Generation series which began in 1987 (completing its television series run in 1994), Earl Grey tea is indeed Picard's "Tea, Earl Grey, hot" beverage of choice.

COTD: Why do children continually have to be mean to each other, and adults have to be worse than any child?

BAD NEWS: Baby slings are not safe.

GOOD NEWS: A drunken Ukraine crew was stopped from flying.

HUMOR: Rosemary's Baby (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary's_Baby.

HISTORY: March 14, 2004: The Wrestlemania XX pay per view takes place. In the main event, Chris Benoit wins the World Heavyweight Championship in a triple threat/three way dance match against Triple H (Paul Michael Levesque) and Shawn Michaels (Michael Shawn Hickenbottom).

YOUTUBE FILES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtP46aWmN3M (Chris Benoit's Win)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYN9akZIndU (Chris Benoit's Celebration)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwFyMLWxfzs (Press Conference on the 2007 Benoit double murder-suicide)

Something that fills me with chagrin is when people make claims of bias. The first reason is that those who commit and illegal act and who get caught committing that illegal act typically say those that caught them at it are guilty of it -- this due to the psychological projection of their own bias (only wanting to get exactly what they want, laws or not) onto those who point out what they are doing is wrong, and secondly because it discounts how one may have had several legitimate reasons to form their own and differing opinion, hence why one has to be tolerant instead of confrontational in listening to the opinion of others.

Professional wrestling is something I now have a number of legitimate reasons to criticize, although Benoit's win at the March 14, 2004 Wrestlemania XX was definitely the best event I had ever seen in professional wrestling given how I was following it at the time. Admittedly it is faked to the degree it is a soap opera-like "sports entertainment" instead of a legitimate sport, but part of good fiction is working enough truth into it that the division between fiction and reality is uncertain, which thus ensures interest in finding out what is actually real about it or not. In short, though Benoit's watch at Wrestlemania XX is faked, his weeping for joy and his being embraced by Eddie Guerrero and what the announcer says about him after the match is actually real.

Unfortunately, the around June 24, 2007 Benoit double murder and suicide of his wife, son, and self was real as well, but I am getting ahead of myself. The first reason I have to criticize professional wrestling is the November 9, 1997 Montreal Screwjob of Bret Hart, actually predating my re-interest in professional wrestling by about a year due to a shift to more young adult-oriented material around the same time (the "Attitude Era") although I still had some lingering interest in it from familiarity with the 1980s more family friendly material. The background of this is actually covered in a documentary titled Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows which is actually available for home release, and relates how owner Vince McMahon ended up breaking the contract he had with Bret Hart -- in my opinion putting McMahon completely in the wrong and putting Hart completely in the right.

The second reason I have to criticize professional wrestling is the accidental death of Owen Hart -- Bret Hart's brother -- due to a malfunction of a harness he was using to descend from the rafters of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri (USA), for a ring entrance. That a professional wrestler died while simply trying to do his job (no matter how fake at times it might seem, as Hart was portraying the superhero "Blue Blazer" at the time) was bad enough, but the fact that Owen was the legitimate brother of the aforementioned Bret made it worse.

Unfortunately, the third reason I have to criticize professional wrestling is yet another professional wrestler death, that of Eddie Guerrero. Not only did I admire Guerrero because he was quite mischievous and thus entertaining but also because he had overcome the adversity of a number of substance abuse problems during his life, but unfortunately his substance abuse lead to the arteriosclerotic heart disease that was the cause of his death on November 13, 2005. But also suffice to say that although independent online news sites were making me increasingly aware of dysfunctional issues created by the politics within professional wrestling were still going on outside of what happened to Bret Hart, and of course because the deaths of Owen Hart and Eddie Guerrero were shocking, they were not enough to turn me away from professional wrestling ... yet.

Here I should point out that one of the reasons why Chris Benoit had become my favorite professional wrestler despite my starting to age out of the "young adult" market because he was "for real," this in the sense that his talent was so diverse in the technical skills of legitimate wrestling holds and such (although such holds are applied more for appearance than to actually pain an opponent into defeat). In addition to that there was actually a considerable degree of drama in his actual personal life which thus intruded into his professional life (scripted appearances as a wrestler) and thus which is why he wept upon winning at Wrestlemania XX -- for the first time in a long time it appeared his perseverance had finally granted him the public vindication he deserved on March 14, 2004, no matter how dysfunctional one's private life and one's professional life could be.

But such perfect endings too often happen only in fiction. Part of the reason for the Benoit double murder and suicide around June 24, 2007 is retroactively apparent by the fact that in 2003 Benoit's wife Nancy Benoit filed for divorce and got a legal restraining order against him, although she later dropped each of them and had reconciled with him by the time of his Wrestlemania XX win (she and their children are seen coming into the ring to celebrate with him in some footage). Another part of it is apparent from the fact that he was later found to have been suffering from dementia pugilistica -- being "punch drunk" due to brain damage from his wrestling, as professional wrestlers still suffer legitimate injuries from the extravagant stunts or moves they perform, particularly when they go wrong (Owen Hart is the most obvious example). Finally, the third part of it comes from the fact that toxicology from his autopsy found a number of drugs in his system.

Just how each of these contributed to the double murder and suicide is still debated, but suffice to say that each of them reflected an aspect of my knowledge about how dysfunctional professional wrestling could be, as well as political. Benoit, for instance, was not featured in much of any way following his March 14, 2004 Wrestlemania XX win and thus it seemed that despite the merit of his perseverance he was viewed as having become too redundant to focus upon overmuch instead of upon newer talent. That might be a more realistic portrayal of how too much works in life, but the weight of that was so crushing after the previous experiences of what happened to Bret Hart, Owen Hart, and Eddie Guerrero that I had to turn from being a supporter to a critic of wrestling due to the legitimate reasons I have to criticize it.

Here I have to admit that I posed the possibility to myself that if I heard something came ofMr. Ken Kennedy (Ken Anderson) despite not following wrestling anymore, his character while wresting being one I found remarkably entertaining (it reminded me of what my alter-ego would be), I might start following wrestling again. I did not hear anything about him though, and in 2009 I learned he seems to have spent most of his time I stopped following professional wrestling either serving suspensions for drugs or else legitimately injured, apparently not learning from Benoit's example. For even if he does achieve the celebrity that Benoit achieved with his Wrestlemania win on this date in 2004, the cost of pursuing that celebrity can contribute to one's own destruction in the end.

COTD: Sinking to rise.

BAD NEWS: Corey Haim had an illegal prescription drug.

GOOD NEWS: A woman escaped a rapist.

HUMOR: I'll bet he is (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: March 15, 1311: At the Battle of Halmyros, the Army of the Franks (French) in Romania (the Catalan Company) defeated the forces of the French Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Crusader state of the Duchy of Athens (in Greece).

A "Crusader state" was a feudal state created by Christian European conquests against pagans and Muslims, hence how many of them existed in the Middle East. Also suffice to say that since the Middle East is at a crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa, it is home to a number of peoples and religions -- most notably Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- many followers of which who hold the land there as sacred due to the key religious events that had taken place there in the past (Christians observe the ministry of Jesus took place in the Palestinian region there, for instance).

With the decline and end of the Roman Empire by 476 AD via being effectively dismembered by Germanic tribes (the last part of it becoming the first Kingdom of Italy under the Germanic King Odoacer), the next pressure upon Europe was due to the expansion of the Muslim Great Seljuq Empire (1037-1194) by the Turkish peoples, then later the expansion of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1923) of the Ottoman peoples, given this put pressure on the Christian Byzantine Empire (330-1453) which acted as a buffer state against the Great Seljug Empire in the east. The Iberian Peninsula (today containing modern Spain and Portugal) was also largely conquered by aggressive Muslim expansion by Berber, Arab, and Moorish peoples coming North from Africa in 710, but by 1311 this process was being reversed via the "Reconquita" (and would be largely completed by 1492 -- see Timeline of the Muslim Presence in the Iberian Peninsula for more details) and of course Iberia did not contain any of the sacred sites of the aforementioned Middle East such as those within theHoly Land of Palestine.

One aspect that was common about fighting the Muslim Berber-Arab-Moorish people in the west and the Muslim peoples in the east was that there was a religious aspect to it, given how much of Europe had become Christian due to how the Roman Empire had turned Christian before 476. Thus although there were some religious differences that had developed between the Byzantine Empire and the rest of Europe -- that is, between what had become Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholic Christianity, respectively -- pleas from Byzantine Emperor Alexios I to Catholic Pope Urban II -- the nominal leader of all of Christian Europe -- is what lead to Urban II to begin the Crusades by preaching a call for what became the First Crusade in 1095, using both propaganda against the Muslims and the implication of forgiveness of sin for waging war to defend Christianity in order to add to the appeal of recapturing sites sacred to Christianity itself.

There are conventionally nine crusades numbering as having taken place starting in 1095 and ending in 1292 -- undertaken by governments with goals of reconquering areas of the Middle East -- but there were also other crusades as well, many of them outside the Middle East and lasting until 1399. Perhaps the best known example of these other crusades are the Northern Crusades by which mostly German armies of Christians subjugated various non-Christian peoples about the Baltic Sea and in Central Europe to thus force them to convert to Christianity. These Northern Crusades were more successful than the numbered Crusades, which at most were usually only able to conquer small states such as the aforementioned Duchy of Athens until the various Muslim peoples began to unite in order to repulse the invading European Crusaders.

Also, as the battling over the Duchy of Athens (1205-1458) shows -- the Duchy being created out of the Byzantine Empire as a result of the Fourth Crusade of 1202-1204 which had turned against the Byzantine Empire itself due to various conflicts -- unity amongst Christian forces was a problem as well. In addition to this, an even grimmer fact is that Crusaders would sometimes turn against and slaughter both Jews (who often ended up being sheltered in Christian churches to escape persecution, ironically enough) and pagans within Europe. This lack of unity as well as the distance involved is why the various Crusades waged outside of Europe ended up becoming failures. Even so, the Byzantine Empire which had indirectly started the many Crusades through Byzantine Emperor Alexios I appealing for help to Catholic Pope Urban II did manage to persevere until 1453, when it was finally conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

Further expansion of the Ottoman Empire was finally blocked by the improving power of various European navies and the fact that the expansion of Ottoman territory ended up leading to greater numbers of peoples and thus leading to greater divisions within the Ottoman Empire which lead to it itself being dismembered, although the modern nation of Turkey is indeed its successor state. The aforementioned Duchy of Athens was conquered by the Ottomans in 1458, however, and as of this writing is part of Greece.

More on a tangent, the "King Richard" mentioned in connection with the mythological figure of "Robin Hood" has been identified as King Richard I of England (1189-1199), who actually spent very little time in England itself but not because he was the Central Crusader commander during the Third Crusade (1189-1192) but rather because he preferred life in his French Duchy of Aquitaine. Renowned for his piety, Richard I "the Lionheart" was the one who actually taxed his subjects quite heavily to support his armies -- mostly to ensure control of his various French territories -- while delegating too much control over England to his subordinates, which contributed to how his brother Prince John came close to seizing control over England during the long absences of Richard, given that Richard was only in England for but six months of the ten years he ruled the country (and he was totally absent from the country the last five years of his reign). Richard ended up naming John as his heir anyway, but the mythological rebellion of Robin Hood was supposed to be against the tyrannical usurpation of rule over England by John, who ironically enough appears to have been assigned what were actually Richard's bad traits of ruling England -- that is excessive taxation and callousness about the common people, due to focusing overmuch on his French territories and upon military conquests such as that of the Third Crusade.

COTD: 90% is not a lie. 10% is a lie.

BAD NEWS: The Northeastern US had a bad storm, and more bad weather is on the way.

GOOD NEWS: An experimental blood thinner has been found to be effective.

HUMOR: Windows (Pluggers, by Brookins)! See http://lowtechtimes.com/2008/01/27/hand-crank-windows/

HISTORY: March 16, 1945: The island of Iwo Jima was officially declared secure from the Japanese by US invasion forces during World War II.

The reason that capturing Iwo Jima was important to US forces during World War II (1939-1945) was that it was an airbase for the Japanese to counter the American drive towards the island of Okinawa -- which was closer to the Japanese mainland and thus which served as a base from which American attacks were made upon the Japanese mainland itself -- as well as a base from which Okinawa itself could be supported.

The Japanese flying ace Saburo Sakai was present on Iwo Jima for some time although he and the other pilots on the island were evacuated before the invasion on the island upon February 19, 1945, and in his Samurai autobiography remarks the fact the island was not invaded in the summer of 1944 was a surprise to everybody since it only had a token defending force which could have been easily crushed during that time. In retrospect this appears to be first due to the fact that the US underestimated how much defense the Japanese would be able to muster -- focusing too much on the defensive strength of Japanese air forces -- plus the fact that recapturing the Philippines and thus cutting off their supplies for the Japanese mainland was given priority. This gave time for Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi of Iwo Jima to apply unorthodox defenses for the island with a series of bunkers and connecting tunnels in the interior of the island which greatly favored the defense since the tunnels would allow areas captured by the American-lead Allies to be surprised and recaptured. This was "unorthodox" in the sense that Imperial Japan typically set strong defenses right on the beaches of occupied islands to prevent any landings, but the wisdom of Kuribayashi's approach was shown by the fact that the defenses upon the beaches were destroyed during the opening US bombardment of the island, whereas various Japanese forces upon the island would continue to fight and thus some hostilities would continue until March 26 (despite the island being declared secured on March 16, thus how it was not actually secured until March 26) and two Japanese holdouts -- Yamakage Kufuku and Matsudo Linsoki -- even managed to evade being captured until sometime between 1949 and 1951.

It was in attacking the Japanese radio stations on the nearby Chichijima and thus to disrupt communications which could help the Japanese during the invasion of Iwo Jima that future US Vice President and then President George H.W. Bush was shot down, and the capture of Iwo Jima also ensured less of a chance of losing the atomic warheads of Little Boy and Fat Man in the ocean due to aircraft mechanical trouble since the aircraft carrying them could be launched from this closer island (yes, the value of the warheads which would start the nuclear age was such this was well planned out in advance). As for Kuribayashi, he actually conceded Iwo Jima could not be successfully defended from the huge resources US forces had due to the depleted state of Japanese forces at the time, but hoped that a prolonged effort needed to capture Iwo Jima would give Japan time by making the US reconsider the effort that would be needed to invade the Japanese mainland -- and thus unintentionally helped to prompt use of the atomic warheads of Little Boy and Fat Man upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, although this did end up preempting the 1945-1946 Operation Downfall invasion of mainland Japan and which in some cases was estimated as potentially causing the same numbers of deaths.

One of the icons from the Battle of Iwo Jima is the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, which took place on February 23. The flag-raising took place on the southern Mt. Suribachi upon the island when it was captured, and at first a small US flag was put up. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal actually had this flag brought to him as a souvenir so that the US Marines then obstinately and methodically replaced it with a bigger flag which they hosted aloft using a water pipe -- this second flag raising the one now commonly shown as a US icon due to the aforementioned obstinate and methodical attitudes involved. As well, two films were made by Clint Eastwood about Iwo Jima -- Flags of Our Fathers (based upon the book by James Bradly with Ron Powers) and Letters from Iwo Jima.

21,570 of the Japanese defenders died either by fighting or by suicide, with only 216 captured during the battle. The American-lead Allied forces suffered 26,038 casualties, with 6,821 killed in action. The reason that so many Japanese fought to the death or committed suicide was due to the essentially "no surrender" Samurai code of bushido used by the Japanese, as well as the fact that Japanese propaganda successfully portrayed Americans as being so much like animals that the small number who did surrender were quite surprised when instead of being ruthless, the Americans showed them compassion instead ... possibly also because bushido also portrayed those who surrendered as deserving of no respect nor any compassion at all.

Also see No Surrender: Background History.

COTD: Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile temus.

BAD NEWS: He Pingping died.

GOOD NEWS: President Mubarak of Egypt is recovering.

HUMOR 1: That sounds familiar (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HUMOR 2: Life is often like that (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: March 17, 1578: Francesco Albani, Italian artist (Mary's Ascension), was born.

There is actually some ambiguity about Albani, given that his birth date is sometimes given as August 17, 1578 and given that his last name is sometimes spelled as "Albana" or "Albano," plus that I am unable to find corresponding sources which confirm he painted any work he called Mary's Ascension -- although admittedly I did find a number of other Christian-related paintings he did, hence Mary's Ascension could have indeed been one of them.

More properly this "Ascension of Mary" appears to be a reference to what is now called the Assumption of Mary. The Mary in question is the Christian Virgin Mary, who according to some was a special case due to God's future plans for the birth of Jesus Christ and thus to fulfill His promise, hence how she was conceived and born without any of the original sin due to the fall of humankind (from the serpent tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, since Adam and Eve were all humankind) via the Immaculate Conception. In addition to her miraculous virgin birth of Jesus she is supposed to have remained a virgin for the rest of her life as well (this declaring that any brothers or sisters Jesus had were actually cousins or only half-siblings, the confusion due to translation errors) and thus how she was supposed to have ascended or to have been "assumed" (bodily taken) into heaven at the end of her life. The Biblical references to much about the Virgin Mary are vague and thus debatable, however, but Catholic Christians have held Mary's assumption to be so important that it was defined to be a dogma (sacred truth) by Catholic Christian Pope Pius XII in 1950.

It is also worthwhile to note that there appear to have also been more women by the name of "Mary" in Biblical New Testament times since in addition to the Virgin Mary there was also a Mary Magdalene/Magdala and a Mary of Bethany. Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9 state that Jesus drove seven demons out of Mary Magdalene -- after which she became one of his dedicated followers -- while Mary of Bethany is supposed to be the Mary who takes the better action of sitting and listening to Jesus while her sister Martha becomes frustrated by the extra work this leaves her to do (Luke 10:38-42), as well as being the brother of the Lazarus that Jesus revived from the dead (John 11) and as the woman who anoints Jesus (John 12: 1-8). Mary Magdalene is also commonly identified as the repentant yet unidentified adulteress Jesus saves in the scriptures, and some even go so far as to say she became the significant other of Jesus such as in the book and movie The Da Vinci Code, but like the evidence used to support the idea of the Assumption/Ascencion of Mary (which Francesco Albani is said to have painted) such evidence is vague and debatable -- as well as not being accepted by Catholics.

COTD: Ezbake is closer than you think.

BAD NEWS: A jogger was killed by an aircraft.

GOOD NEWS: Israel has lifted some restrictions on Palestinians.

HUMOR: Bread isn't a pillow (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: March 18, 1893: Wilfred Owen, English poet (Dulce et Decorum Est), was born.

At the start of World War I (1914-1918) there was optimism that the war would be short due to the short lengths of the 1912 and 1913 Balkan Wars -- World War I also being started on the Balkan peninsula due to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg in the Balkan province of Bosnia and Herzegovina -- and also due to improvements in technology. The arms race/militarism, nationalism, imperialism, the alliance system, and the development of trench and poison gas warfare all ended up prolonging the war, however, long enough for the enlisted Owen to suffer traumatic experiences which dramatically changed his own optimistic outlook.

In short, Owen's traumatic experiences were so great they lead him to suffer from CST (Combat Stress Reaction) -- more commonly known as "shell shock" or "battle fatigue" -- for a time. In the case of Owen, being blown into the air by a trench mortar and landing in the remains of one of his less fortunate fellow officers as well as becoming trapped for days in an old German dugout are noted as contributing to his CST. Those familiar with the controversial World War II (1939-1941) General George Patton may already be aware of CST since Patton once slapped and berated a soldier suffering from it on the grounds he was a coward who was using it as an excuse not to fight. Although Owen was able to recover from his own CST it destroyed his earlier optimism, leading him to write the poetry about the horrors of war that he is noted for. Dulce et Decorum Est, for instance, is Owen's rebuking of the ancient Roman poet Horace's poem of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori -- "How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country" (Ironically enough, one of Owen's opponents in the war -- the German Erich Maria Remarque -- would also end up noting the horrors of war in his book All Quiet on the Western Front).

Owen died on November 4, 1918. As an officer, he was leading troops across the Sambre-Oise canal in northern France when he was fatally shot in the head by enemy troops. It was almost exactly one week (even to the hour) before the war was brought to an end, and his mother received the telegram confirming he had died a week later when church bells were ringing in celebration about how the Armistice had been signed.

COTD: I'll be glad to get back to my home planet.

BAD NEWS: Cornell students keep committing suicide.

GOOD NEWS: FedEx's income is up 146%.

HUMOR: Rugly (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 19, 1906: Adolf Eichmann, Nazi German architect of the Holocaust, was born.

Adolf Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906. Living in Linz, Austria, and after completing his engineering degree and working at a variety of jobs, in 1932 he joined the Austrian Nazi party -- the party rapidly growing due to the conditions resulting from World War I and from the Great Depression.

In 1934, Eichmann got a job as a clerk studying the fraternal organization of the Freemasons for the German Nazi SS (Secret Service). Then he was assigned to the Jewish section. Eichmann dedicated himself so avidly to study of Jewish peoples that he became the acknowledged "Jewish Specialist" -- not due to any inherent anti-Semitism of his own, most agree, but because he seems to have understood this would help him succeed instead of fail within the largely anti-Semitic Nazi party.

Being the Jewish Specialist, Eichmann did indeed begin to rise through the ranks. By 1937 he was assigned to investigate the possibility of mass deportations of Jewish peoples from Europe, in order to solve the "Jewish Question," and by 1938, the Anschluss took place -- with Austria was annexed by Germany. Eichmann then became head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, Austria, which issued permits and safe passage for Jews to leave Austria, in exchange for most of their wealth. 100,000 Jews accepted the safe passage, in order to escape Nazi prosecution, and similar offices were also set up in Prague (then in Czechoslovakia) and Berlin (Germany) in order to capitalize upon the fact that Jews were fleeing Nazi-controlled territories due to anti-Semitic persecution.

With Eichmann's ideas of deporting European Jews to Palestine with the help of the Arabs blocked in 1937 by the British, he instead began to oversee having European Jews forced into deliberately small ghettos and concentration camps in occupied Poland, instead. His control over the Jews of Europe was then cemented in 1939, he was elevated to head of Gestapo Section IVB4 in Berlin, giving him full control of all policy toward Jewish peoples in all Nazi-controlled areas and making him one of the most powerful Nazis of Adolph Hitler's "Third Reich." As such, by July 1940, he presented a Madagascar Plan which suggested deporting all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, but his plan was rejected. This was because another plan had already been decided upon by Eichmann's superiors -- mass genocide of Jewish peoples, and other such "inferior" races. This had actually already been anticipated before European Jews in Nazi-occupied lands were forced into ghettos and concentration camps -- although the Wannsee Conference would only make this explicitly official in 1942 -- as the aforementioned ghettos and concentration camps were within close proximity to the railroad junctions which were later used to transport millions to the death camps.

Eichmann then dedicated himself to the implication of the policy of genocide, even traveling throughout Europe in order to oversee it. Meticulous records were kept of the murders euphemized as the "Final Solution," which began with mass shootings but then turned to more "humane" methods of "euthanasia" through mass gassings, which had already been which used in Germany to kill handicapped, retarded, and other "inferior" Germans -- what we now call the Holocaust, in other words.

In 1944, The German satellite state of Hungary was occupied by the Nazi Germany to keep it from disengaging from the war due to its strategic importance, after which mass deportations of Hungarian Jews -- whom had been allowed to be spared so far, given Hungary was a Nazi ally -- to the death camps. Elie Wiesel is perhaps the best known of these Hungarian Jews as he managed to survive and thus to write a number of books about his experience, the best known being his first book Night, and he also wrote about the Hungarian Death March.

By the end of 1944, the Red Army of the USSR was approaching from the East, hence Eichmann's superior Heinrich Himmler ordered him to cease deportations. This was consistent with the Nazi policy of trying to "hide" the genocide that had taken place, but Eichmann ignored the order and forced a death march of 50,000 Hungarian Jews (including Wiesel) into Austria, a fact which would later play a large part in his trial.

In 1945 Germany finally surrendered, but Eichmann managed to escape. He was found to be living in Argentina (which has a large German minority) in 1960, from which he was kidnapped by Israeli agents in order to be tried for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (Israel apologized to Argentina, and given the fact Eichmann was a Nazi, Argentina accepted the apology). Eichmann's defense was that everyone was committing these same crimes, that if he refused he would be executed, and the Nuremberg Defense that he was only following orders -- this because refusing to follow orders is illegal, but as a result of the Holocaust this is commonly refuted on the grounds that one has legal justification to not follow illegal orders.

What helps refute Eichmann's result of the Nuremberg Defense is the fact that Himmler had ordered him to stop deporting Jews from Hungary in 1944, yet he violated the order. This and other factors are why Eichmann was found guilty on all counts for his engineering of the Holocaust -- in other words, for becoming a "desktop murderer" through the paperwork he did in his various offices as the "Jewish Specialist" which enabled the Holocaust to kill an estimated six million Jews and seven million members of other supposedly "inferior" peoples.

Being found guilty, Eichmann was executed by hanging on May 31, 1962. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered upon the Mediterranean Sea beyond Israeli territorial waters on June 1, in order to ensure his body would have no final resting place to serve as a memorial. As of this writing, Eichmann remains the only civil execution carried out by Israel since Israel has a general policy against use of the death penalty.

YOUTUBE FILES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cOyYAgK1eg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYne0wzan80
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFZno0pROCY

COTD: What's in the corners?

BAD NEWS: Two Phoenix women were stung hundreds of times by bees.

GOOD NEWS: Two children were able to help their mother when she had her baby.

ODD NEWS 1: A man got caught breaking into churches because of his pornography habit.

ODD NEWS 2: A man put a baby in an oven overnight after drinking and doing marijuana.

ODD NEWS 3: A man who had been binge drinking exposed himself to a female officer.

ODD NEWS 4: A man tried to get his mother to hide his drugs.

ODD NEWS 5: Nicolas Brendon got drunk and disorderly.

HUMOR: That cannot be good (Calamities of Nature, by Piro)!

HISTORY: March 20, 1943: Date given by George Duncan's Assassination Attempts on Hitler's Life page for the assassination attempt made by Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff upon Adolf Hitler.

I say "Date given by George Duncan's page" because the more definitive Wikipedia page for Rudolf Chistoph Freiherr von Gersdorff gives the date as March 21, not as March 20. Still, whether the date is wrong or not, von Gersdorff is worth looking into.

The reason von Gersdorff was drawn into the many attempts that were made to assassinate Hitler was because he was befriended by his fellow career officer Henning von Trescow, who had begun to turn against Nazism when its gross excesses became too explicit to ignore with the extralegal Night of the Long Knives massacre in 1934 -- Trescow also being the conspirator who in the movie Valkyrie commits suicide by holding a grenade under his chin after the failure of the most famous Hitler assassination and coup attempt now known as the July 20th Plot.

In the case of von Gersdorff's attempt, after three attempts on March 13, 1943 were aborted or failed (most notably the aircraft bombing alluded to at the start of Valkryie, which preceded the July 20th Plot) von Gersdorff agreed to make a suicide bombing that would kill Hitler. When Hitler came to visit the Zeughaus Berlin (then an armory, later a museum) to inspect captured Soviet weapons and flags, and von Gersdorff was going to act as Hitler's guide to the inspection since he was an expert in this area. An added benefit in this case was that the key Nazis Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler, Wilhelm Keitel, and Karl Donitz would be attending as well, hence this would benefit the Operation Spark that was in place to take over the government after the assassination(s) took place (the July 20th Plot initially targeted Hitler, Himmler, and Goering in order to decapitate the Nazi regime to start a modified "Operation Valkyrie").

von Gersdorff's suicide bomb was hidden in his coat pockets and was activated by two ten minute delayed fuses, which he activated once Hitler arrived. After ten minutes passed von Gersdorff was supposed to grab Hitler in a bear hug in order to ensure the two of them were both blown up, but safety precautions caused Hitler's planned visit to be shortened from the planned twenty minutes to eight minutes instead, and Hitler -- in a manner typical of his impatience at times -- actually rushed through the Zeughaus Berlin in only two minutes. von Gersdorff then managed to defuse the bombs in a public bathroom and then transferred to the Eastern Front against the USSR in order to avoid any immediate suspicion through his presence even survived the war -- aided in large part due to the silence of his fellow conspirators who were mostly all caught, tortured, and executed as a result of the July 20th Plot.

von Gersdorff is also connected to the July 20th Plot by the fact that he helped Wessel von Feytag-Loringhoven get captured British explosives and fuses to Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg to use in that bombing assassination attempt, but as a coincidence of transferring to the Eastern Front he also found the mass graves of the Katyn Massacre. "Katyn" comes from the fact that Katyn Forest was near the Kozelsk POW (Prisoner Of War) camp in Russia that was used primarily to hold mostly Polish POWs since Poland had been essentially split by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in 1939. While some of the POWs were released, others such as military officers and intellectuals were viewed as being too dangerous to be released since they would strengthen Poland against Soviet domination within the half of Poland now annexed to the USSR. After April 3, 1940, 22,436 POWs and prisoners who were deemed to be "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" were therefore executed and most of them hidden by having them buried in the forest at Katyn.

This is where von Gersdorff comes back in, as soldiers serving under his command after he transferred to the Eastern Front following the March 21 attempt on Hitler's life found one of the mass graves in the Katyn forest on April 13, 1943 -- a grave of 4,243 Polish Reserve Army soldiers on Goat Hill. Of course Nazi Germany used the massacre as a propaganda tool against the USSR, given that the June 22, 1941Operation Barbarossa betrayal and invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers had turned the USSR to the Allied side, but the fact of the matter was that the massacre was real and was indeed committed by the Soviets. Suffice to say that the USSR responded to the discovery by declaring the massacre had been committed by Nazi German Einsatzgruppen in August 1941 after capturing Soviet-held Polish POWs who had been used for the forced labor of construction work west of Smolensk (a city west of Moscow, Moscow being east of the maximum extent of invasion forces into the USSR lead by Nazi Germany) during 1941. Some planning had been done for this possibility as German made Walther PPK handguns were usually used for the murders, but the evidence otherwise was proven by the international team of experts that Nazi Germany had examine the Katyn Forest mass graves (they reconfirmed their findings after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, thus affirming their findings had not been forced to be biased). This resulted in a rift between the Polish government in exile and the USSR, but the massacre and the rift was grudgingly ignored by the Allies since it was known it would be easier to defeat the Axis Powers with the help of the USSR instead of without.

When the USSR retook the Katyn forest area they covered up and destroyed evidence to implicate the Soviet role in the massacre, and of course Communist Polish leaders did the same. The massacre itself remained largely known but in the background due to the ideological Cold War of 1947-1991 between the US and USSR that followed World War II (1939-1945), however, although the USSR finally admitted its guilt in and started to make some amends for the massacre in 1990. But in any case, the murder of those found at Katyn did indeed help weaken Poland to the degree it was dominated by the USSR and by Communists despite coming into existence as a nation again after the war, although the "Western betrayal of Poland" in order to appease the USSR and to bring an end to open conflict in Europe also contributed to the chain of events set into motion when von Gersdorff's troops found the graves a Katyn following his failed assassination attempt of Hitler.

After surviving the war -- he was captured by Allied American forces at the end of the war due to being transferred back west to the Atlantic Wall defenses in 1944, and was released in 1947 -- and having made the military his career, von Gersdorff tried to restart his career by joining the Bundeswehr armed forces of what was West Germany and which is now the armed forces of all of Germany. Despite his distinguished service he was blocked from this by a number of West German figures who were actually former Nazi Germans and who did not want to have someone they viewed as a "betrayer" serving within any important position. As such, this meant he ended up dedicating the rest of his life to working for charity, most notably in how he was one of the founders of the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe in 1952. Born on March 27, 1905, he died on January 27, 1980 -- and sadly, the significance of his connection to the attempts upon Hitler's life as well as the significance of his troops finding the mass graves within the Katyn forest is now largely forgotten.

COTD: Intelligence plus bad attitude is septic.

BAD NEWS: A woman is actively trying to become the fattest woman in the world.

GOOD NEWS: Sanford's going to pay his fines.

HUMOR: I think so too (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: March 21, 1960: 69 people were killed and 180 were injured in the Sharpeville Massacre of South Africa.

Suffice to say that much of the conflict in 1900s South Africa was due to the practice of Apartheid (from the Afrikaans language and meaning "separateness" and "apartness"), actually starting during British colonial rule over the country from 1815-1910 during which measures were taken to ensure white British control over the country. The precedent set by this lead to the formalization of discrimination and segregation of non-white races in the now-independent South Africa (1910 onwards) in order to ensure white domination of the country with the passage of Apartheid in 1948, thus institutionalizing and formalizing discrimination and segregation until Apartheid was finally repealed in 1994. As of 2002, Apartheid was defined as a crime against humanity (prior to this embargoes and sanctions were enforced against South Africa, and there was considerable resistance to it by non-whites within the country), and in 2009 the science fiction film District 9 -- which was inspired by the events within District Six of Cape Town under Apartheid -- was released.

The main device by which Apartheid was enforced were the pass laws which were used to both restrict the movements of non-whites and to harass opponents of the National party which controlled the government of South Africa during 1948-1994. Severity begets resistance, however, hence the ANC (African National Congress) resistance organization planned to begin a campaign of protests against pass laws on March 31, 1960. The rival PAC (Pan Africanist Congress) resistance group therefore decided to pre-empt the ANC by starting their own campaign of protests on March 21, 1960 -- and both the ANC and the PAC became political parties with the end of Apartheid in 1994.

On March 21, 5,000 to 7,000 people converged on the police station in the town of Sharpeville starting at 10:00 AM, protesting through civil disobedience through peacefully offering themselves up for arrest in a not carrying their pass books. There were only around 20 police officers in the station to begin with, hence measures were attempted to simply disperse the crowd through use of low-flying military aircraft in order to avoid overwhelming the police. As well, the police set up armored vehicles in a line facing the protestors to prevent violence, but violence occurred at 1:15 PM when the police that had been mustered fired upon the crowd.

The official police report stated that the crowd incited the violence by throwing stones, prompting inexperienced officers to open fire upon the crowd spontaneously. There was some justification for the officers to be nervous as nine police officers were killed by a mob two months previously at Cato Manor, but the fact of the matter is that the police continued to fire into the crowd even after the crowd had begun to run away, thus why a majority of those wounded and killed were found to have been shot in the back. No evidence of anyone armed within the crowd was armed. The commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar -- although he denied having given any order to fire or that he would have ever done so -- also did not help the case of the police as his attitude towards the "natives" is revealed by his statement that "the native mentality does not allow them to gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to gather means violence."

Suffice to say the response to this Sharpeville Massacre was immediate, prompting demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, and riots. A state of emergency was declared on March 30, and the government ended up detaining more than 18,000 people. The massacre was also condemned internationally, and lead to South Africa becoming increasingly isolated from the international community due to the practice of Apartheid. It also lead to the guerilla or terrorist (depending on how one looks at it) Umkhonto we Sizwe "Spear of the Nation" ("MK") of the ANC and the Poqo/APLA (Azanian People's Liberation Army) of the PAC in order to start applying armed as well as passive resistance against the practice of Apartheid.

Apartheid itself would only end after a long struggle in 1994, withNelson Mandela -- a former leader of the Umkhonto we Sizwe -- serving as the first post-Apartheid president of South Africa during 1994-1999. March 21, the date of the Sharpeville Massacre, is now commemorated in South Africa as Human Rights Day.

YOUTUBE FILE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF_xsi1ltWA

COTD: Be sure you turn over the balloon.

BAD NEWS: Police had to be called to the home of Jesse James and Sandra Bullock.

GOOD NEWS: More restrictions are being put on tobacco.

HUMOR: Isn't that sweet? (Sabrina Online, by Schwartz)!

HISTORY: March 22, 1992: 27 people were killed when USAir Flight 405 crashed upon takeoff from New York, New York (USA), due to failure to de-ice.

YOUTUBE FILE of De-ice/Anti-ice Routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ty_xqeOe_s

USAir Flight 405 should not be confused with US Airways Flight 1549, which was the "Miracle on the Hudson" landing on January 15, 2009 following its engines being disabled by birdstrikes.

In brief, what happened with USAir Flight 405 was that repeated delays -- mostly due to poor weather -- appear to have caused the flight crew to lose track of just how much their aircraft was de-iced, although it is true that the flight crew not being well-informed about conditions that would cause icing was also a contributing factor. As a result, they took off 35 minutes after the second time they were de-iced by trucks when the de-icing from trucks (de-icing trucks use various de-icing mixtures) lasts about eleven minutes -- thus although inspection from within the aircraft did not reveal ice, icing had actually formed on the aircraft after the second time it had been de-iced.

The problem with icing is not the weight of the ice or snow upon the aircraft but rather the fact it increases the drag and changes the other aerodynamics of an aircraft. Drag in this case being resistance to moving through the air due to friction of the air against the aircraft, and aerodynamics are what enables the aircraft to fly through the air in a stable manner. In short, USAir Flight 405 crashed upon takeoff not because it was weighed down by the icing, but rather because the icing resulted in drag which contributed to how the aircraft suffered an aerodynamic stall and thus a loss of control (the attempt to rotate the aircraft upward to gain altitude prior to achieving enough speed to do so was another contributing factor).

"Aerodynamic stall" means an aircraft has entered conditions where the flight surfaces like the wings are no longer able to provide lift and stabilizing forces for the aircraft (unlike a motor stall, which is where a motor quits for varying reasons). Since coatings of ice change aerodynamics -- the way air flows over an aircraft -- this is why USAir Flight 405 could both not gain altitude and why the flight crew could not maintain control of the aircraft, resulting in it crashing into Flushing Bay in a partially inverted (upside-down) position.

There are actually a variety of ice protection systems for aircraft, some of them even part of an aircraft itself. Even if conditions are not at or near freezing on the ground, the ability to de-ice is still important since sometimes an aircraft will encounter clouds of super-cooled droplets of water which cannot freeze due to lacking "contaminants" to form a nucleus for the water droplets to freeze into ice upon -- the fuselage (body) of an aircraft thus providing those contaminants and thus why ice can freeze onto the fuselage in as little as five minutes while in flight.

Some other incidents of accidents connected to aircraft icing are Air Florida Flight 90 on January 13, 1982, American Eagle Flight 4184 on October 31, 1994, and Colgan/Continental Air Flight 3407 on February 12, 2009. Although Air Florida Flight 90 also crashed upon takeoff due to failure to de-ice, both American Eagle Flight 4184 (insufficient aircraft de-icing systems) and Colgan/Continental Air Flight 3407 (icing more a contributing factor due to considerable flight crew errors) crashed after flying through clouds of the aforementioned super-cooled droplets.

DWOJ: Three.

COTD: Surfing while flying.

BAD NEWS: A volcano erupted in Iceland for the first time in 200 years.

GOOD NEWS: The biased Raiton Loy was excused from jury duty.

HUMOR: Some people should diet that way, though (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 23, 1994: 75 people were killed when Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed near Mezhdurechensk, Russia, due to the captain allowing his children to play with the controls and thus to inadvertently disengage part of the autopilot for the aircraft.

The captain's name was Yaroslav Kudrinsky, who at the time of the accident was taking advantage of how Aeroflot allowed families of its pilots to travel at discounted rates once per year by having his son Eldar and his daughter Yana travel with him. Deciding to spoil his children a little bit, he let Eldar sit in the pilot seat and let Yana sit in the copilot seat, Yaroslav adjusting the autopilot's heading to give Yana the impression that she was in control of the aircraft.

Suffice to say that this was against regulations because it unintentionally put the entire aircraft in a higher-risk situation of something happening to it despite the autopilot being on to thus prevent the loophole of the children taking control, which is exactly what happened when Eldar actually used enough force against the control column (essentially the stick/steering wheel of the aircraft) to cause it to disengage control of the ailerons (which enable an aircraft to roll side to side) from the autopilot for 30 seconds. This disengaging feature is to allow the flight crew to rapidly respond to an emergency situation that autopilot might unintentionally put the aircraft into, and is accompanied by a warning light, but Yaroslav and his first officer did not notice this since they did not hear the warning signal that accompanied the warning light upon other aircraft they had flown -- the Airbus A310-304 model aircraft used in the flight only providing a visual signal.

Because Eldar now had control of the ailerons, he ended up starting to bank (that is lowering a wing in order to make a turn) the aircraft so that it turned to the right. This and the indications on the instruments showing this confused the flight crew since they did not recognize that Eldar had aileron control over the aircraft, hence he ended up causing the aircraft to bank turn as much as 90 degrees, far more than it was designed to. When the aircraft had banked as much as 45 degrees the g-force (force of acceleration) was such the flight crew could not properly get back to the controls to regain control of the aircraft. When the aircraft reached 90 degrees the autopilot recovered with the remaining controls it had by putting the aircraft in a nearly vertical ascent which almost aerodynamically stalled the aircraft (got it going too slow for its aerodynamics to keep it in the air), after which Eldar and the copilot managed to put the aircraft into a nose dive which enabled Captain Yaroslav and the copilot to get properly back to the controls but at too low an altitude to keep it from crashing, thus killing all aboard.

American writer Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942-November 4, 2008) actually referenced this incident in his 1996 book Airframe, given that Crichton was fond of adapting actual historical events into the fiction he wrote in order to give a sense of authenticity -- authenticity thus suppressing disbelief and thus maintaining interest due to the perception the events could indeed happen or could have happened. He also combined the events of Aeroflot Flight 593 with the April 6, 1993 events of China Eastern Airlines Flight 583 -- where during flight a flight crew member accidentally deployed the handle for the slat controls used to increase the lift of the wings only during takeoff and landing, and thus resulting in severe oscillations (shakings back and forth) that resulted in 60 injuries and two deaths. Within his book, Crichton took the two events and hybridized them into "Transpacific Airlines Flight 545" where a captain lets his son sit at the controls of an aircraft while it is on autopilot and where the son ends up fighting against the autopilot for control of that aircraft as the autopilot attempts to compensate for an error caused by undetected bad parts resulting from bad maintenance -- this leading to the "severe turbulence" that results in an undetermined number of injuries and three deaths before the aircraft makes an emergency landing.

Crichton actually also makes a more direct reference to the May 25, 1979 crash ofAmerican Airlines Flight 191 -- resulting from separation of an engine and thus loss of control while in flight due to bad maintenance -- in order to further increase the sense of aforementioned authenticity. The curious aspect of Crichton, however, is that he was often fond of writing about how systems were in place that seemed redundant enough to keep everyone safe yet especially through human interaction were still somehow flawed enough to somehow break down, yet he was a critic of the idea of global warming -- global warming being seen by its proponents as evidence that the Earth's weather system is not redundant enough to keep from breaking down due to human interaction. Finally, although Crichton began getting his writing published as early as 1966, probably the best way to frame his 1996 Airframe book -- which was based in part upon the aforementioned Aeroflot Flight 593 crash -- is through his 1973 science fiction film of Westworld (he wrote the script for it and directed it, as he did write film and television scripts on occasion) and his science fiction 1990 book and 1993 movie Jurassic Park.

Westworld actually takes place within the adult amusement park of "Delos" which is subdivided into American Old West ("Westernworld"), Middle Age Europe ("MedievalWorld"), and Ancient Roman ("RomanWorld") divisions. To enable visitors to do anything they want the amusement park is populated by carefully programmed and indistinguishable androids, but what seems to be a computer virus causes the androids to start to override their protocols and thus to malfunction as well as to start acting more lifelike, leading to everyone becoming inadvertently trapped within the amusement park with an attempted shutdown following when the "Black Knight" actually kills a guest due to a serious software failure. The "Gunslinger" then also ends up shooting and killing one of two good friends in the American Old West section, hence the remaining friend then ends up fleeing from and barely surviving the attacks of the now Terminator-like (cyborg assassin) Gunslinger before becoming the implicit sole survivor of the entire amusement park of Delos.

Jurassic Park, written as a book in 1990 and thus nearly 20 years after Westworld (and thus six years before Airframe, based in part upon the Aeroflot crash) is essentially the same story but with cloned dinosaurs more intended for the amazement of children instead of indistinguishable androids intended for the uninhibited fancies of adults. Prompting the failure this time is not a computer virus but rather industrial sabotage used to cover the greedy bioengineering theft of an employee who has been turned into a mole (essentially an undercover agent) for a rival genetic engineering company -- although it is true that mistakes make in genetically engineering the dinosaurs of the park had enabled them to start to breed and thus to begin to find a natural equilibrium that overrode human attempts to control it prior to the aforementioned industrial sabotage removing the last measures that contained it. The result for much of the rest of the story and/or movie, therefore, is either the Tyrannosaurus Rex or Velociraptor ("raptor") dinosaur clones stalking the survivors much in the same way the Gunslinger of Westworld stalked the sole survivor of that movie ... the final escape actually coming from fleeing the island where the "Jurassic Park" theme park is, however, as of course the dinosaurs will never run out of power the way the androids of Westworld did (and of course which allowed a loophole for sequels through returning to the island or finding locations off the island that the dinosaurs have founded colonies upon via escaping to, thus essentially becoming an invasive species).

Thankfully, in real life the loopholes enabling scientists to extract viable dinosaur DNA from dinosaur blood consumed by insects later caught in the amber of trees are too figuratively small for something like "Jurassic Park" to actually come to be, but of course Crichton was fond of posing failures of complex systems through probable loopholes at the same time. To ignore the possibility of a loophole such as Crichton warns against, therefore, might not be as dangerous as "Jurassic Park" but is certainly as dangerous as in a case like Aeroflot Flight 593 can be, however.

COTD: Don't duct tape my mouth and wrists.

BAD NEWS: Eight Chinese children were stabbed to death.

GOOD NEWS: Selling stockpiled ivory has been blocked.

HUMOR: No, it would not (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: March 24, 1989: The Exxon's Valdez spilled 10.9 million gallons in Prince William Sound, Alaska (USA).

On March 23, 1989, the Exxon Valdez was guided out through the Valdez Narrows via a pilot ship. After receiving permission from the Coast Guard, the Exxon Valdez was maneuvered out of the outbound shipping lane and into the inbound shipping lane avoid icebergs around 11:00 PM. Afterwards, Captain Joseph Jeffery Hazelwood departed the wheel house while putting Third Mate Gregory Cousins in charge and leaving Able Seaman Robert Kagan at the helm.

The ship was on autopilot when it ran aground on Bligh Reef at around 12:04 AM March 24, this after departing the Valdez Oil Terminal in Alaska (USA) for Long Beach, California (USA) the previous day. This resulted in an official (some say underreported) figure of 10.9 million US gallons of oil being spilled into Prince William Sound, Alaska, due to the hull being punctured through running aground. Prince William Sound is quite remote and thus was a haven for wildlife, thus it is estimated that 100,000-250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas were killed. In addition to this billions of salmon and herring eggs were destroyed, thus destroying the seafood industry of the area. As of this writing, Exxon has continued to appeal judgments against them for up to nearly USD $5.3 billion on the grounds that not more than $25 million should be paid by the company, mostly upon the grounds that the spill was an accident.

Here is should be noted that while it is strongly implied that Captain Joseph Jeffery Hazelwood was drunk at the time of the accident and thus was sleeping it off, it is known that Third Mate Gregory Cousins and Able Seaman Robert Kagan were tired because they had not actually been given their mandatory six hours off duty before their scheduled twelve hour shift, plus it was asserted that the US Coast Guard had failed to provide an effective vessel traffic system. Part of the reason why the amount Exxon was sued for was as high as $5.3 billion was not only because it not only devastated the wildlife of the area and thus its tourism industry, but because it also devastated the seafood industry which depended upon the wildlife of the area -- for instance, a number of residents of the nearby Cordova, Alaska committed suicide in the aftermath of the spill and both the Chugach Alaska Coporation and the Alaska Native Corporation went bankrupt.

Finally, although serious changes were made to prevent devastating oil spills like that of the Exxon Valdez in the future, the effects of the spill itself are expected to persist for up to as long as 30 years (until 2019). The ship herself was repaired and retrofitted with a double hull (which would have reduced the amount of oil spilled) in the aftermath of the accident before being sold -- it now being operated as the Dong Fang Ocean and registered in Panama at the time of this writing.

COTD: How long in advance do you think I think these up?

BAD NEWS: California made parole easier.

GOOD NEWS: Toyota is providing free gas pedals.

HUMOR: That's not very helpful (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 25, 1949: Over the next four days, 90,000 people were deported from the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by Operation Priboi ("Costal Surf") in the USSR.

The USSR portrayed the deportations as "de-kulakisation," "kulaks" in the sense of those who were wealthier peasants, and thus who were "enemies of the people." In reality it was an excuse to force members of rural households into the collective farming program of the USSR and to eliminate a support base for the Forest Brothers guerilla fighters who resisted the USSR occupation of the Baltic States. As well, those who aided and were families of those who aided the German occupation of the Baltic States during World War II were targeted, as well as those who had connections to anti-Soviet agitation in the area. Those that were deported were sent to collective farms in Siberia, where they experienced a high death rate during their first few years due to the neglect -- deliberate or not -- to provide them with proper clothing or housing. Due to the high death rate, Operation Priboi today is considered to be an act of genocide and thus a crime against humanity.

Within the USSR and at the time of Operation Priboi, orders and medals for the operation's successful completion. 75 people were awarded the Order of the Red Banner (in George Orwell's Animal Farm it was parodied as "the Order of the Green Banner," the democratic socialist -- "democratic socialism" meaning change to Socialism/Communism through voting rather than by revolution -- Orwell substituting green for red in what was his parody and criticism of the flaws within the early USSR) and seventeen people were awarded an Order of the Great Patriotic War: First Class for their efforts in the deportation (seemingly Orwell's "Animal Hero" awards in Animal Farm, the "Great Patriotic War" meaning the 1941-1945 phase of World War II after Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers betrayed and invaded the USSR).

COTD: 80% of success is showing up.

BAD NEWS: The damage estimate from Cyclone Tomas in Fiji is now USD $5 million.

GOOD NEWS: A grandson caught his grandfather's killer after 40 years.

HUMOR: I saw that one coming (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: March 26, 1997: 39 members of the American "Heaven's Gate" cult are found to have committed mass suicide.

The cult itself starts with Marshall Applewhite. The son of a Presbyterian Christian minister who hoped to become one himself, his musical talent lead him to instead begin a music career which saw him appearing in stage musicals and even in the Houston Grand Opera. He also taught music on a college level -- the key episode here being that he was fired from his job at the University of St. Thomas in 1970 due to "health problems of an emotional nature."

In 1972 Applewhite came into contact with a nurse interested in astrology named Bonnie Nettles at a Houston, Texas (USA) psychiatric hospital, which he had voluntarily entered because of depression and hearing voices -- this although there is some claim he was recovering from a heart attack which caused him to have a near-death experience at the time. The result was that the two of them founded a cult which actually had a number of names before becoming known as "Heaven's Gate" and which combined aspects of Christianity, New Age Faiths (themselves mixtures of many faiths), and science fiction -- or instance, the two of them thought that they were the witnesses spoken of in the Biblical Book of Revelation 11:3, that Applewhite was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and that Nettles was right in trying to create an environment where all thinking was already done for everyone (everything was labeled and/or monitored, hence no one was ever allowed to be alone), but they were both supposed to actually be extraterrestrial aliens who had to leave the Earth before it was "recycled" due to an impending apocalypse.

The Heaven's Gate cultists gave up their material possessions and lived a highly ascetic (simplistic, devoid of pleasures) life. Seven of the male members of the 40 member group (recruited through a variety of methods), including Applewhite, were voluntarily castrated in order to achieve this goal. Moving periodically and often using aliases/nicknames, Applewhite being depressed from the death of Nettles in 1985 from liver cancer is also thought to have prompted him to convince the cult to commit mass suicide (the suicide itself is very briefly alluded to in the 1997 film Contact, given one of its themes is that of science versus religion) sometime between March 19 and March 24 in 1997 -- and also because of the approach of the highly visible Hale-Bopp comet towards Earth at the same time, given the fact that the science fiction aspects of the cult lead to the belief an alien spacecraft was hiding behind it.

As is often stressed, the cult was originally against suicide as a means of supposedly transcending their current form in order to leave the Earth, but changed their assertion through redefining suicide as actually turning against the "Next Level" when it was offered -- in other words, choosing to not die so that one's soul could supposedly board the alien spacecraft, although in contrast to this, Applewhite also persuaded cult member Rio Di Angelo to not commit suicide so that he could continue to spread material about Heaven's Gate following the suicides.

Given that the Hale-Bopp comet was closest to the Earth on March 26, the suicides actually began on March 24 and were achieved through overdosing on phenobarbital which was mixed into applesauce and consumed with vodka, leading to unconsciousness and then death. The process was aided by having bags tied over the heads of the first 37 victims in order to induce suffocation as well -- fifteen on March 24, then fifteen more on March 25, then the last nine on March 26. The last two victims were two women (the third to last was Applewhite) who had nothing over their heads since there were no members of the cult left to induce suffocation that would aid in death.

Suffice to say that today the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult is therefore alluded to as an example of the too-familiar practice of cult suicide where nearly all members of a cult commit suicide at the same time and in the same place due to their beliefs (the largest and thus most well-known suicide is that of 909 members of Jonestown on November 18, 1978). The Heaven's Gate cult also has two unfortunate connections to the popular Star Trek franchise in connection with the suicide since the victims of the suicide were all found wearing armband patches reading "Heaven's Gate Away Team" -- part of the cult's common co-opting of nomenclature from popular science fiction -- and also because one of its (now-deceased) members was Thomas Nichols, a brother of actress Nichelle Nichols who originally portrayed the original series character of Nyota Uhura (on a happier but more tangential note, it is said that Whoopi Goldberg was inspired to become an actress by seeing Nichelle Nichols as Uhura and thus why she herself became an actress, most significantly periodically appearing as the character Guinan for the Star Trek: the Next Generation part of the franchise).

COTD: Above all else, be armed.

BAD NEWS: Three people died in a helicopter crash.

GOOD NEWS: Unemployement claims are down.

HUMOR: That does seem excessive (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 27, 1964: 131 people were killed by the 9.2 Great Alaska Earthquake/Good Friday Earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska (USA).

For a briefer summary, see here.

The reason the Great Alaska Earthquake (also called the "Good Friday Earthquake" since it happened on the Christian Holiday of Good Friday that year) was so powerful was because it was a megathrust earthquake, where one tectonic plate is subducted (forced under another) instead of simply sliding against each other such as in the case of the San Andreas fault of California (USA). This means that larger sections of the fault end up building up pressure due to larger sections of the tectonic plates getting stuck together, given that the plate being subducted can only get pushed down to a shallow dip of a degree.

Earthquakes of course are caused by plate tectonics, where the lithosphere (the crust and upper mantle of the Earth, essentially the outer covering of the Earth) essentially floats upon the more plastic (flexible) athenosphere (lower mantle) from which magma wells up to erupt out the mid-ocean ridges of the lithosphere as lava. This erupting causes the fracturing of the tectonic plates of the lithosphere and thus pushes them in various ways across the athenosphere (although here it should be noted that all volcanoes are connected to plate movements melting rock into magma which then erupts back to the surface, thus why volcanic eruptions are connected to earthquakes). Since these tectonic plates get stuck against each other due to friction when they come into contact with each other, pressure from magma welling up from the mid-ocean ridges builds up until they finally break free -- the breaking free causing earthquakes when the tectonic plates overcome the friction and thus move more rapidly than usual.

Plate tectonic movements are usually a small number of inches per year, but after an earthquake it is not unusual to find tectonic plates have moved by several feet, and plate tectonic movements are also why there is continental drift as well. As of this writing, the more recent 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake that caused deadly tsunamis ("tidal waves") and the 2010 Chile Earthquake are also examples of megathrust earthquakes, reaching strengths of 9.3 and 8.8 on the Richter scale, respectively.

In the case of the Great Alaska Earthquake, only nine people died during the initial earthquake in Alaska -- the power of which should not be underestimated as it raised some ground as high as 30 feet higher while dropping other ground -- but 106 were killed by the ensuing tsunami wave trains (the more proper name for the series of "tidal waves" generated by an earthquake, the "tidal" name due to the fact that it looks something like a rapid form of the ocean tides) in Alaska, accompanied by sixteen more deaths from tsunamis generated by the earthquake on beaches in the US states of Oregon and California. In short, tsunamis are the result of strong natural forces of earthquakes being exerted underwater (storm surges cause similar effects but are the result of forces being exerted upon the surface of water, such as through wind), the result being similar to when one jerks one's body back and forth violently in a bathtub full of water. Damages also amounted to around USD $500 million at the time, and the tsunamis also caused damage in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Finally, it should be noted that effects of the disaster reached as far away as the US state of Louisiana (some sunken houseboats) and that water in wells in Africa was seen to be sloshing around due to the whole lithosphere moving as a result of the Great Alaska Earthquake, which also prompted more earthquake-proof engineering within the US state of Alaska -- the lesson learned from the earthquake.

Over 10,000 aftershocks were recorded after the earthquake itself occurred at 5:36 PM local time on March 27. Of the initial eleven aftershocks on the same day, the strongest was around 6.0 -- a strong earthquake in itself -- and it took eighteen months total for the aftershocks to finally stop.

YOUTUBE FILE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci9fQR_U2uA

COTD: I will not be triumphed over.

BAD NEWS: A South Korean ship sank.

GOOD NEWS: A crashed World War II era aircraft was found.

HUMOR: Women are too smart (Calamities of Nature, by Piro)!

HISTORY: March 28, 1979: The nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, Middletown, Pennsylvania (USA), begins to suffer a partial nuclear meltdown.

YOUTUBE FILE: Smart Talk: Three Mile Island Disaster 30th Anniversary.

Up to 2007, 63 major nuclear accidents occurred at nuclear power plants, 29 of which occurred since the USSR Chernobyl disaster. 45 out of these 63 nuclear accidents (71 percent) have occurred in the United States. In short, this is proof that nuclear accidents can happen even after the lessons learned from 1986 USSR Chernobyl disaster (a massive nuclear steam explosion which released 400 times more fallout than the 1945 World War II atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan did) and that they can even within the United States -- the most significant nuclear accident within the United States being the partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, which actually took place before Chernobyl since it happened in 1979.

Partially as a result of World War II, nuclear technology began to be looked into as a means of creating electrical power. This is done by creating a nuclear reaction to heat water, causing steam, the motion of which is used to generate the power.

As with many technologies, there were some failures at first. In November of 1955, there was a partial meltdown of an experimental reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho (USA) that was attributed to operator error. This was followed by the Windscale Reactor in Europe catching fire, causing the release of 20,000 curies of radioactive iodine across the English Islands and Northern Europe. In January of 1961, another reactor near Idaho Falls (USA) had a runaway nuclear reaction, rupturing the core and releasing 500 rems per hour before it was shut down. After this, the experimental Enrico Fermi reactor near Detroit Michigan suffered an "uncomfortably close call" that left the reactor permanently disabled, although a runaway nuclear reaction was prevented. But with what was learned from the early failures, along with the power shortages of the 1970s -- in part caused by cutbacks by OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) in oil to retaliate against Israeli occupation of territory after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and in part order to raise the prices of oil -- nuclear technology was viewed as a viable alternative.

At 4:00 am local time on March 28, 1979, at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power plant near Middleton Pennsylvania, the main feedwater pumps to cool Reactor Unit Two malfunctioned and stopped. This caused an increase of the pressure within the reactor due to the excessive heat. The pressurizer relief valve then opened in order to decrease the pressure. However that relief valve then malfunctioned and remained open, although this was not signaled to the operator, thus causing the pressure to decrease below operating conditions.

42 hours prior to the malfunction of the feedwater, the emergency feedwater system had been tested by closing the valve to the emergency feedwater and then opening it again. However reopening the valve had been missed. This was discovered at 4:08 am, after which the valve was opened and after which the emergency feedwater began to be fed into the reactor. However, at the same time the pressurizer valve was still open, causing the pressure in the reactor to still decrease. This resulted in voids (areas of no water) forming inside the reactor as the water shifted with the changing of pressure. This shifting caused some of the water to get pushed up into the pressurizer valve. With water now in the pressurizer valve, the readings incorrectly indicated that the reactor had been filled back to normal with water, thus the emergency feedwater was incorrectly turned off.

With the reactor erroneously reading an adequate level of water and the pressurizer valve now unable to release pressure due to being full of water, the nuclear fuel continued to overheat and thus to increase the pressure within the reactor, reaching temperatures of 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit (2,371 degrees Celsius) and thus nearing the temperature of a meltdown. At the same time, the operators continued to struggle to correct the problem, convinced there was no chance of a core rupture and that the reactor were safe due to their belief that the malfunctioning safety and backup systems were functioning properly. As it was, inadequate training of the operators and the ambiguous control room indicators were also later found to be a contributing cause of the accident.

When nuclear-contaminated feedwater began to leak into a building adjoining the reactor, as well as into the basement of the facility, it helped to provide physical evidence that this was indeed not the case, thus the first general emergency due to problems at a nuclear power plant in the United States was then declared. However the information being given the public was contradictory due to the owners of the plant, Metropolitan Edison, trying to downplay what was happening.

By March 30, 1979, Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh advised that pregnant woman and school-age children should leave the area around Three Mile Island, resulting in 140,000 people leaving the area. In addition, it was also found that the excessive heat of the core had begun to melt the zirconium cadding jackets which held the nuclear fuel. The zirconium then reacted with the water and formed hydrogen gas, which formed a bubble in the atmosphere above the reactor core. The result of the bubble was the
fear that, in essence, an H-bomb nuclear warhead had formed, and that it could possibly be detonated through some form of ignition.

Some hours after the discovery of the hydrogen bubble, US President Jimmy Carter arrived at the area in order to reassure the nation that the crisis was under control. As President Carter went out of his way to do this, it caused the nation to regain its confidence and trust. Later that day scientists announced that the hydrogen bubble was no immediate threat, and that the reactor core had been stabilized -- this although it would take ten more days to shut down the core. Further, scientists admitted that some radiation had been released, but claimed that it was insignificant.

The hydrogen bubble was reduced by adjusting air and water pressure within the reactor, which kept it from expanding from the addition of further water into the core while attempting to cool the overheated reactor. By April 4, citizens were being allowed back to their homes. Tests were also done, and showed that those present near Three Mile Island had received negligible doses of radiation. In addition, insurance checks were issued to those whom had lost productivity during the crisis. The official word was that although some of the fuel had melted during the malfunctioning of the core, technically a meltdown had not occurred.

Reactor Unit 2, where the partial meltdown occurred at Three Mile Island, was too badly damaged and contaminated to continue to be used to generate nuclear power. It was online for only three months before the accident occurred, thus resulting in it being permanently shut down and cleanup taking place to help contain the radiation between August 1979 and December 1993, costing USD $975 million. In 1982, a robotic camera was lowered into the reactor core, finding that fifty percent of the core had melted down. In other words, while a full meltdown had not taken place, a partial meltdown had. Total fault for the incident was assigned to human, design, and mechanical errors, and changes were recommended based on these findings.

In April of 1983, The Atomic Industrial Forum published a statement that said despite the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, no one had ever been injured or killed from an accident or from radiation at a nuclear power plant, and that nuclear power plants still had an unparalleled record of safety. However, in October of 1983, the US Congress voted down funding a new reactor planned for Clinch River, Tennessee. Then in May of 1984, the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the University of North Carolina linked cases of
cancer in workers at the Savannah River nuclear power plant to exposure to radiation they had received at the plant.

How dangerous the form of energy with "an unparalleled record of safety" was shown fully in April of 1986, when a catastrophic runaway nuclear reaction at the aforementioned Chernobyl nuclear plant in what was then the USSR resulted in the worst worldwide nuclear accident of all time -- this because 75 million people were exposed to potentially fatal levels of radiation when one of the reactors exploded. Regardless, nuclear technology is still being explored and utilized as a means of producing energy. However, the problem remains that building nuclear reactors poses the potential of a nuclear meltdown at each reactor -- a nuclear explosion like what happened at Chernobyl, in other words, as well as posing the problem of what to do with the lethal nuclear waste which is leftover from production of nuclear power.

Additionally, the US movie industry has made two movies about nuclear accidents. While no movie has yet been made based upon the Chernobyl disaster, the unpopular 2002 movie K-19: the Widowmaker was based upon the July 4, 1961 nuclear accident aboard the USSR K-19 submarine (K-19 was actually nicknamed "Hiroshima" instead of "Widowmaker" due to the number of accidents that occurred upon this nuclear submarine during her construction and service), and the popular 1979 China Syndrome movie about a near-meltdown seems to have eerily anticipated the Three Mile Island accident since it was released on March 16, 1979, and since it actually includes a line stating that a "China Syndrome" would render "an area the size of Pennsylvania" permanently uninhabitable -- "China Syndrome" being a real metaphor for a nuclear meltdown due to the creative belief an American nuclear core that melted down would then burn all the way through the Earth to China (this although it is actually the Indian Ocean instead of China which is on the direct opposite side of the Earth from the United States).

ALSO SEE: List of Military Nuclear Accidents and List of Civilian Nuclear Accidents.

COTD: Ideas control the world.

BAD NEWS: Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed Ale Nahyan is missing after a glider crash.

GOOD NEWS: Butler University is scoring some upsets.

HUMOR: It just was my birthday too, you know (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 29, 1961: The Twenty-Third Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, giving Washington DC three electoral votes.

To begin to explain this, suffice to say that the US uses an indirect election system of voting for the President and Vice President called the Electoral College (more formally, the "College of Electors"). Originally there were plans for the President (the executive) to be elected by the Congress (the Legislature) but due to fears too many vested interests ("intrigue") the compromise was to give each state the same numbers of votes as the numbers of their representatives in Congress (meaning both Senators of the Senate and Representatives of the House of Representatives). Electors are pledged to vote for whichever Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate wins the popular vote in their respective states but may vote otherwise, although this has consequences upon the elector which vary from state to state. An absolute majority or supermajority which exceeds more than 50% of electoral votes are what determines the winner, thus this number is currently set at 270 of the 538 total electoral votes (just one vote more than 269, which is half of 538).

This indirect system is also why there are sometimes disputes due to candidates winning the popular vote but the corresponding votes of the Electoral College then ending up voting the other candidates to victory, such as in the some the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election of 2000 (thus why the disputed electoral votes of the state of Florida were pursued so aggressively), but as the District of Columbia/Washington DC was a district set aside for the federal government in particular and not a state, its citizens were excluded from these elections until the aforementioned Twenty-Third Amendment was ratified on this date in 1961. For more representative purposes, the reason that Washington DC gets three electoral votes is because the Amendment decrees that Washington DC can only have as many electors and thus electoral votes as the least populous state has, which as of this writing is the state of Wyoming with its three electors and three electoral votes.

The reason for having Washington DC separate from the states is reportedly for its safety, given this helps prevent opportunistic state-based violence against the federal government such as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783. Washington DC itself is ordinarily governed by a mayor and a thirteen-member city council, but since the US Congress has ultimate authority over the District it can overturn local laws. Given the District is a district instead of a state it is only represented within Congress by a non-voting (but who can lobby for legislation) "At-large" Congressional delegate within the House of Representatives. As such, in addition to the controversy over lacking the ability to vote in Presidential and Vice Presidential elections which was finally addressed on this date in 1961, the controversy over how residents of the District have no voting representation in Congress and yet unlike other areas with non-voting Congressional delegates such as US territories are still subjected to all federal taxes (yes, this has roots all the way back to the 1775-1783 "no taxation without representation" argument for the US Revolutionary War against the British) is still an issue as of the time of this writing, despite attempts to elevate the District into Statehood to gain representation in Congress (opposed on the grounds it is a single city and thus is not a state) or else to amend the US Constitution so that the District would otherwise have some sort of voting representation within Congress (despite the popularity of these ideas, the awkwardness of implementing them has kept such measures from passing).

On a little more of a tangent, popular anecdote holds it that the White House ("White House" is actually a nickname formalized by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901) at the center of Washington DC due to being the residence and workplace of the US President was painted white to hide scorch marks resulting from damage to the building when the District was occupied and burned by the invading British during the 1812-1815 American War of 1812, which in itself was a tangent to the British role in the 1803-1815 Napoleonic Wars -- the United States fighting against the British due to being indebted to France (then ruled by Napoleon Buenoparte) for French aid during the 1775-1783 Revolutionary War and also due to still having issues with the British from the 1775-1783 Revolutionary War. This is not true, however, as the White House has always been painted white since its initial construction from 1792 to around 1800 due to the white mixtures applied before the paint to seal its porous sandstone walls, and the "White House" nickname actually began before the War of 1812 since the earliest recorded popular references to "White House" are recorded as having taken place in 1811.

COTD: The world is a harsh place.

BAD NEWS: The Moscow (Russia) subway was suicide-bombed.

GOOD NEWS: A British billionaire giving half his fortune to charity.

HUMOR: Witches (Calamities of Nature, by Piro)!

HISTORY: March 30, 1982: US NASA mission STS-3 landed at White Sands Missile Ridge, New Mexico (USA).

"STS" stands for "Shuttle Transport System," and thus which is more commonly known as the "Space Shuttle." The idea of the STS was to keep escalating costs down through use of a (partially) reusable spacecraft, but reuse has proven to neither be able to keep escalating costs down nor to allow enough upgrading of the Space Shuttles through retrofitting, although the STS has proven durable since it was originally engineered with a ten year and 100 launch lifespan starting in 1981 yet was extended to a 29 year lifespan ending in 2010 (a replacement program is still pending, due to the planned replacement of the Orion program being canceled due to being both behind schedule and over budget). It consists of an orbiter (the actual spacecraft) mounted upon a large fuel tank with two solid rocket boosters flanking it to the sides to provide enough thrust to lift the orbiter into orbit -- the whole assemblage more properly called "the stack" -- with the empty fuel tank ending up being discarded and the solid rocket boosters splashing down into the ocean where they can be retrieved and reused. The orbiter itself returns from orbit by descending through the atmosphere like a glider, then touching down on a runway like an aircraft.

There have been seven orbiters that were built in connection with an STS system: Enterprise (previously named "Constitution" but renamed due to the growing popularity of Star Trek with its own "Enterprise" ship -- itself actually named after a quite successful US Naval Ship -- prior to the first Star Wars movies), Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour, and Buran -- all but Buran built by the United States, as Buran was built by the USSR as a part of their own aborted STS program in 1988. Enterprise was never used as more than a test vehicle, Challenger and Columbia were later destroyed by in-flight disasters during 1986 and 2003, respectively, and Buran itself was destroyed by a hanger collapse in 2002.

The orbiter used for STS-3 was Columbia, and was the only shuttle to ever land outside of the primary launching and landing site of Kennedy Space Center in the state of Florida (the closer to the equator, the less energy needed to escape the atmosphere and to achieve Earth orbit) or the primary backup site of Edwards Air Force Base in the state of California -- which was actually the primary landing site until 1991, when landings were moved to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to avoid the cost and effort of having to mount an orbiter on the back of a modified Boeing 747 aircraft to fly it from California back to Florida (the orbiter can only function as a glider within the atmosphere). The reason Columbia did not land at Edwards Air Force Base in California following STS-3 was because excessive rain had flooded the landing site (mission STS-3 was extended a day so that the equipment could be moved from California), and although Columbia did land safely it did sustain some damage from the sand of the desert surrounding the White Sands Missile Ridge in the state of New Mexico, given the runways there are actually dry lakebed.

There were actually a number of sites chosen in advance as locations the Space Shuttle could abort to in an emergency or else use for a backup landing at, but White Sands Missile Ridge is the only one of them ever used. This is also referenced in the 1986 book-based movie Space Camp where (through creative liberties) a group of mostly-young people from the real life Space Camp at Huntsville, Alabama (USA) ends up being inadvertently launched into orbit due to a "thermal curtain failure" of the solid rocket boosters during an engine test with the orbiter Atlantis completing the stack (the orbiter, external fuel tank, and solid rocket boosters all together) -- the "thermal curtain failure" being complete fiction in itself (although a grim coincidence is that problems with the O-rings of the solid rocket boosters during cold weather are what lead to the destruction of Challenger in 1986). In short, troubleshooting by the unprepared and inexperienced crew ultimately gets them to a safe landing at White Sands Missile Ridge in New Mexico.

It is worth mentioning that due to the great speeds involved plus the surrounding equipment, successfully aborting a flight of or bailing out of a Space Shuttle is in itself quite limited and dangerous (the near-instantaneous breakup of Challenger during its failed launch in 1986 often being cited as an example). Ejection seats were initially present on the Columbia during STS missions 1-4 (1981-1982) but were removed afterwards due to this fact. An ejection capsule system that would enable the whole cockpit to eject in the case of an emergency would also be too complicated and resource-consuming to implement as well, hence why this idea was never implemented.

The novelty of the Space Shuttle due to it being the first reusable spacecraft has made it a popular science fiction reference within popular culture, most significantly in how the long-running Star Trek franchise commonly features various spacecraft named "Enterprise" which through its various series traces its Enterprises back to the aforementioned "Enterprise" US NASA orbiter.

COTD: I said he was mean, not cruel.

BAD NEWS: Nine teenagers bullied a girl to death.

GOOD NEWS: The Large Hadron Collider has set a record.

HUMOR: I've wondered that myself (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: March 31, 1990: The British Poll Tax Riots took place.

A "poll tax" is a tax placed upon voting. "Poll" is from an old English word for head (meaning for everybody), whereas a tax is what is used to generate revenue to fund the functions of a government. In the United States poll taxes are illegal since they were used to disenfranchise (take the vote away from) members of minorities who could not pay the tax -- such as African-Americans after the US Civil War, given the blame for losing the US Civil War was then assigned onto them by the former states of the Confederacy, given that the most visible effect of the primacy of the federal government from that war was making the race-based slavery practiced in the Confederate states illegal -- and disenfranchisement was actually a concern with the British use of a poll tax as well.

More precisely, the British poll tax was called the "Community Charge." The Conservative government lead by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began introducing it in 1988, and resistance to the poll tax lead to the organization of "the Fed," or more precisely the "All Britain Anti Poll Tax Federation" which coordinated the activities of local APTUs (Anti-Poll Tax Unions) so that they were more noticed on a national scale. While nonpayment of the poll tax was one main method, demonstrations against it was another -- and it should be noted that liberal/left-wing organizations such as Militant Tendency tended to dominate the Fed since the British government at the time was dominated by conservatives/the right wing.

In the case of the demonstration on March 31, around 200,000 to 250,000 demonstrators marched from Kennington Park in south London to Trafalgar Square in central London. Police were worried about the marchers reaching Downing Street -- the residence of the British Prime Minister -- thus they then blocked the advance of the march. The problem with the unprepared police response -- which included anti-riot police -- was that it was annoying to the marchers and that at first it ended up blocking both advancing towards and retreating from Trafalgar Square, thus when the police tried to clear the protestors with little of anywhere to go they began physically resisted the attempts, thus escalating the march into a riot which lasted from 3:30 PM to 3:00 AM the next morning (April 1).

Given that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was ultimately responsible for what happened -- given she was the leader of the British government at the time -- it helped emphasize how she had low poll ratings, a combative personality, and too much willingness to override her colleagues' opinions. In addition to this there was the fact that the British economy at the time was suffering from the recession of 1987-1995, thus lead to her being succeeded as Prime Minster by her Chancellor of the Exchequer -- the individual in charge of financial matters of the United Kingdom -- John Major on November 28, 1990. Major overturned Thatcher's "Community Charge" poll tax with a "Council Tax" in 1993 which better took into account the ability to people to pay it since it was based on the amount of residential property one owned as opposed to being a fixed rate for everybody. The point here being that it was not the Poll Tax riots alone which helped to end Margaret Thatcher's reign as British Prime Minister, but rather the fact that they emphasized a number of negative issues that took place under her reign.

COTD: Operation Pig.

BAD NEWS: There were more Russian suicide bombings.

GOOD NEWS: Many members of Huatree have been arrested.

HUMOR: The cheap kind (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: April 1, 1873: 562 people were killed when the British ship RMS Atlantic sank near Nova Scotia, Canada.

The RMS Atlantic was launched in 1871 as a steamship with four masts so that she could also be operated as a sailboat. On March 20, 1873 the ship left on its final voyage from Liverpool in the United Kingdom, and the crew decided to make a stop at the harbor Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) in order to replenish coal for the boilers of its steam engines. Due to encountering a storm along the way, they were unknowingly driven twelve and a half miles (twenty kilometers) west of the harbor at Halifax the ship was attempting to make landfall at. As such, at around 2:00 AM the ship struck the Marr's Head rock near Meagher's Island, Nova Scotia on April 1, 1873. Lifeboats were lowered but were washed away by the stormy conditions which then sank the now-mortally wounded ship, resulting in 562 deaths of the 952 people that were aboard -- most of those dying civilians, and most of the crew survived. Captain Williams of the ship was found to be at fault for the disaster through his negligence.

The first odd note from the disaster is that one of the crewmembers who died, who was supposed to be an American by nationality, and who was referred to as "Bill" was actually discovered to be a woman age 20-25 after her body was recovered and was being prepared for burial. After learning this, one of her apparently clueless crewmembers reportedly remarked about "him" that "I didn't know Bill was a woman. He used to take his grog as regular as any of us, and was always begging or stealing tobacco. He was a good fellow, though, and I am sorry he was a woman." The second odd note is that a German doctor named Emil Christiansen is sometimes listed as dying in the sinking but he survived with only a broken arm, It is thought the confusion over his fate is due to the fact he had poor English skills, as well as the fact that his name was spelled differently on various passenger lists, thus prevented him from being able to correct the error before he left for the United States -- he marrying in 1876 and then having four children, thus how one of his descendents was able to visit the SS Atlantic Heritage Park and Interpretation Centre to thus point out the error.

The RMS Atlantic also happened to be a ship of the White Star Line (more properly the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company/White Star Line of Boston Packets), the same company that operated the Titanic (a characteristic of the White Star Line was that the names of her ships ended in "ic"). Thomas Ismay bought the White Star Line out of bankruptcy in 1867 (new financial problems cause it to finally completely cease to exist in 1950) -- the aforementioned RMS Atlantic being one of the first "ironclad" ships Thomas Ismay had built for his White Star Line since he correctly perceived future ships would be constructed in more durable metal instead of in wood (and he reportedly safely voyaged upon one of them once, although not the Atlantic). Thomas Ismay's son Joseph Bruce Ismay then inherited control of the White Star Line after his father died in 1899, and while sharing his father's business intelligence, after escaping the sinking of the Titanic his career was ruined since he was vilified by some for acting like a reckless and therefore negligent "Super Captain" aboard the Titanic and also for having survived via leaving in a lifeboat since such a large number of women, children, and other people died who could have taken his position within a lifeboat instead (never mind the boat was already incompetently being lowered while only partially full).

More on a tangent but still pertinent to April 1 is that in addition to more serious events, there are also a number of less serious events that have taken place due to April 1 commonly being observed as "April Fool's Day," the precedent for which appears to have been set by misunderstanding Geoffrey Chaucer's reference to 32 days after the month of March as 32 days from the start of March within his foolish "Nun's Priest's Tale" of his 1392 Canterbury Tales. One of the more famous episodes of foolishness on April 1 was the hoax about Spaghetti trees which was run the British BBC program Panorama in 1957 -- the point here being that although April 1 is a popular date for joking so that one should be suspicious of what is said on that day, sometimes more serious and true events such as the sinking of the Atlantic still occur (not to mention the strange but actually true, such as the reference to the female sailor "Bill" and the German doctor who was listed as killed in the sinking yet who actually survived).

COTD: Doesn't an ad hominem attack need to be given by a man?

BAD NEWS: New England was flooded with record floods.

GOOD NEWS: Wanda Wilson is all right despite being hit by Denard Span's foul ball.

HUMOR: When they said "Keep cool with Coolridge," that isn't what they meant (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)! See http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9026133.

HISTORY: April 2, 1982: Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, starting the Falklands War.

One aspect of American author Tom Clancy's writing that I am familiar with is that he favors simplistically explaining the Falklands War as the way Argentina's ruling junta (military dictatorship), lead by General Leopoldo Galtieri, enacted a quick fix means of distracting from chronic economic and human rights problems (symbolic of the human rights problems were that some opponents were simply "disappeared" and thus were never seen nor heard from again, which Argentine courts have ruled was genocide since "disappearing" someone means they were secretly tortured and executed) -- which were due to the junta itself, in other words -- through distraction of patriotic feelings towards the Falkland Islands. However, this generalization about is essentially correct, although the fact is that Argentina did not actually want to go to war with the British over the Falkland Islands.

Why juntas end up taking control of countries is generally because the political government proves to have become incompetent at ruling the country, hence the country's military -- the central goal of which is to defend the country -- takes over the government since it has the ability to impose its will through the military resources that are granted to it, thus keeping the country united. Argentina had been prosperous up until 1948 when an economic crisis had begun, the now incompetent rule of President Juan Peron only worsening conditions until he was deposed in 1955. Involvement of Argentina's military in deposing Juan Peron thus politicized the military, leading up to Argentina's military taking over the government from President Arturo Illia in 1966 due to his attempts to include Peronists (supporters of Peron's policies). Although Peron was able to manipulate events to again become President in 1973 until his death in 1974 -- and since his third wife and Vice President Isabel Martinez de Peron then briefly succeeded him as President but proved to be incapable of correcting the problems of the country -- by 1976 the military alone had solidified its control of the government via a junta.

Suffice to say that the junta was not competent enough to correct Argentina's problems, either, hence how the President of the junta, General Leopoldo Galtieri, thus began to consider the Falkland Islands. Since 1764 the Falklands were disputed between the United Kingdom, France, Spain, the United States, and also Argentina (formerly known as the United Provinces of the River Plate). The United Kingdom was ultimately the victor in the dispute through its 1833 Re-establishment of British Rule on the Falklands naval operation, although Argentina made the next-strongest claim upon the Falklands due to her greater proximity to them, thus the reason for the patriotic feelings that Argentines had for the Falklands.

The junta under Leopoldo Galtieri carefully planned out the occupation to avoid any international or British protest. Since Argentine intelligence officers had been working with the US CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to help the Contras to overthrow the Socialist government of Nicaragua (yes, this later lead to the Iran-Contra Affair under US President Ronald Reagan) and because of the USMonroe Doctrine (which essentially stated the US would prevent European interference within the continents of North and South America) it was believed the United States would not interfere with the invasion, and hints at invading the Falklands at the United Nations were not responded to by the British, hence the Argentines came to believe the British would not respond with military force if the Falklands were invaded, either. As well, the British had reduced the size of their Navy in 1981 and had reduced the British citizenship possible for residents of the Falkland Islands, hence it seemed that the British were losing interest in them.

Finally, the diplomacy which had resolved the crisis caused by the 50 man invasion of the British South Sandwich Islands via Operation Sol in 1976 had also lead the Argentines to believe that the British would not respond with military force, although the British did also stage Operation Journeyman to protect the Falkland Islands from an Argentine invasion following the Operation Sol invasion of the South Sandwich Islands.

A March 19 Argentine civilian invasion of South Georgia of the Sandwich Islands had resulted in diplomacy instead of warfare as well, but suffice to say Argentina's plans did not unfold the way they anticipated after they invaded the Falklands on April 2. The British painstakingly set up means for retaking the Falklands with military force ("Operation Corporate") and the United States, after their attempts to resolve the crisis through acting as a mediator was rebuffed, sided with the British -- the US not remaining neutral as the Argentines anticipated due to the "special relationship" the US and United Kingdom still shared from the 1939-1945 World War II overriding the Monroe Doctrine. The resulting war would see controversial episodes like the sinking of the Argentine ARA Belgrano while sailing outside and away from the Total Exclusion Zone that the United Kingdom had set around the Falklands for the purpose of the war (although such zones are to protect neutral vessels instead of belligerent ones) and because the British Sun newspaper gleefully ran a headline story of "Gotcha" in response to the sinking -- thus by June 20 the war was over and the British had won.

YOUTUBE FILE (45 seconds): Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the Belgrano's Sinking.

Here it should be noted that Argentina's initial success in the war was also part of its downfall. As Argentina had a border dispute with Chile due to the long border the two countries share, the fear that Chile (then under the junta of Augusto Pinochet due to Chile's own political and economic crises, which also lead to Chile having human rights abuses such as "disappearings") would opportunistically invade the disputed border regions resulted in a haphazard invasion of the Falklands in order to keep enough forces ready to respond to just such an invasion. However, the initial popular support for Argentina's junta following the April 2 invasion prompted keeping a strong instead of token Argentine military presence in the Falklands which thus inflamed British opinion against it even more, the gamble that democracies such as that of the British were too weak by being too averse to risk to start a war that would require them journey across the vast and difficult distance between the United Kingdom and the Falklands.

The loss of the war caused the quick and then the remaining support for Argentina's junta to collapse -- this despite the quite strong and positive response to the initial invasion -- and thus lead to elections in 1983 which resulted in the restoration of a more democratic government. Dealing with economic problems has continued to plague Argentina, however, in addition to the problems created by her past human rights abuses (such as "disappearing" people). In the United Kingdom it also allowed the Conservative government lead by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to rebound from low poll ratings and British economic problems so that it remained in control of the country (ironically enough the Argentine invasion of the Falklands helped the British government do what the Argentine government was trying to do). The United Kingdom also restored full British citizenship to the Falklands after the war, but although the Argentina junta is no more, as of this writing Argentina does still continue to make claims upon the Falklands -- this resulting in continuing conflicts between the two, the most recent one (as of this writing) being the 2010 British plans to start drilling for oil there.

COTD: Fumigate the fulminators.

BAD NEWS: An oil refinery exploded and burned.

GOOD NEWS: MySpace removed an accused sex offender's profile.

HUMOR: Completely reassuring (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 3, 1882: American outlaw Jesse James (not the unrelated Jesse James born in 1969) was killed by Robert Ford.

Jesse James was born in Missouri on September 5, 1847. His biological father was Robert S. James, a Baptist Christian minister who owned a hemp farm, and his mother was Zerelda Cole James. The hemp farm was prosperous and Robert James ended up buying six slaves to help run it (slavery was still legal in Missouri at that time). He later died of pneumonia while trying to get to California during the gold rush in 1849 (he had left his family in Missouri, saying he would call for them once he was established). After Zerelda married and divorced the too-inflexible James Simms, she later married doctor Reuben Samuels in 1855, buying up to seven slaves to help in the cultivation of what was now their tobacco.

Fighting in the adjacent "Bleeding Kansas" from 1854-1860 over whether the state would be a slave state or a free state had already begun at this time, and after the US Civil War war began in earnest in 1861, Jesse James' older brother Frank joined a Confederate guerilla group and ultimately joined the band of Confederate guerillas (then called "bushwackers") fighting under William Quantrill in Kansas, given that his family sided with the southern Confederacy as opposed to the northern Union. Thus sometime in 1863, Union soldiers arrived at the home of the James-Samuels (note: they did not hyphenate the name, but members of the family used either family name) looking for the guerilla group to which Frank James was a member. According only to legend, James ended up attacking the commanding Union officer and getting lashed by the Union soldiers, but it is factually true they did actually briefly torture James's stepfather Reuben Samuel by hanging him from a tree.

At age sixteen Jesse James also joined his brother Frank as part of Quantrill's Raiders, supposedly fighting for "The Cause" of the Confederacy -- the rights of States over the Federal government and also due to what the Union had done to his family. Still, it should be noted that organizations such as Quantrill's Raiders engaged in escalating cycles of atrocities which were typical of guerillas on both sides at the time as they would loot, pillage, rape, and murder innocent civilians more often than actually fighting against the opposing side (such as against opposing guerillas) during the US Civil War. In fact, it should be noted that many members of Quantrill's Raiders had actually been criminal fugitives prior to joining Quantrill at his guerilla warfare, thus how their activities were not that surprising.

Quantrill and his main lieutenant, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, were eventually killed by Union forces, thus by 1865 Jesse was fighting with guerillas under Archie Clement, one of Anderson's subordinates. Learning the US Civil War was over and while he and Clement were deciding what to do, they encountered a Union cavalry patrol near Lexington, Mississippi, which left Jesse with a dangerous chest wound (he had suffered a dangerous chest wound earlier during his guerilla fighting as well). His main nurse while recovering at his uncle's boarding house in Missouri afterwards was his cousin Zerelda Zee Mimms, which began a romantic relationship which would see the two of them married nine years later, in 1874.

One of the benefits of the 1865 surrender of Robert E. Lee -- the General-in-chief of all Confederate forces by that time -- was that his rejection of letting the Confederate army dissolve into guerilla fighters instead of formally surrendering to thus bring about reconciliation between the warring halves of the country thus set a precedent that kept guerilla violence down after the war, but many of those who had fought as guerillas instead of as part of the Confederate armies continued to fight after the war, thus part of the reason why Union forces kept a military presence in the Confederacy during the 1865-1877 "Reconstruction" period. Jesse's leader Archie Clement therefore continued the guerilla activities that had begun during the US Civil War but was shot dead by Missouri state militia after his guerillas occupied the town of Lexington, Missouri in 1866, thus then the remainder of the guerillas started to dissolve away due to many of them getting killed or arrested.

After the 1866 death of Archie Clement, a large part of the activity by these guerillas-turned-outlaws was directed at robbing banks to supposedly attack the federal United States government, although most of the banks they robbed were actually smaller ones with essentially no connection whatsoever to the federal government at that time -- this because there would be no FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) to connect most banks together until 1933. Jesse and his brother Frank eventually joined/rejoined these guerillas-turned-outlaws (just when is of some question), and what made Jesse James himself famous was a December 1869 robbery of the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri -- this because James mistook employee John Sheets as being Samuel P. Cox, the militiaman who had killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the US Civil War, thus James shot and killed him.

After the murder of Sheets, James and Frank managed to break through a posse to escape and thus made James the most famous guerilla-turned-outlaw since this got their names mentioned in the news, prompting Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden to set a reward for his capture. It also got James connected with John Newman Edwards, a former Confederate cavalryman who had become the founder of the Kansas City Times newspaper and thus who ended up using James's letters of (supposed) innocence to him to portray him as a symbol of Confederate defiance of Reconstruction. James also reflected this in that the James-Younger gang he belonged to (the core of which were the James family and the Younger family brothers) wore Ku Klux Klan masks when they added train robbery to their usual habit of robbing banks and stagecoaches from Iowa to Texas in 1873 -- the hate group of the Ku Klux Klan also becoming symbolic of the former Confederacy's resistance to the Union, and railroads also being seen as a dangerous centralization of power that worked against the more dispersed and thus local control favored by former Confederates.

On January 26, 1875, the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency mistakenly tracked Jesse and Frank to their mother's home in Missouri -- only his mother Zerelda and their young half-brother Archie Samuels (named after the aforementioned Archie Clement) were at the home on that night. One of the agents threw a bomb in the house which set it on fire in order to drive the people out of it, thus causing Zerelda to lose an arm and leading to the death of Archie when it exploded. Suffice to say that this counterproductively thus generated yet more sympathy for Jesse as well -- this because Jesse James was a pure outlaw, and not the folk hero he is so often referred to as.

The Jesse-Younger gang then planned the robbery that was its downfall, that of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, on September 7, 1876. They wanted to rob it since they mistakenly believed that Benjamin Butler -- a former Union General (now a politician) reviled by the South as "the Beast" for his perceived mistreatment of New Orleans -- had a direct connection to the bank. Their better reason was their secondary reason of how Reconstruction-period Mississippi governor Adlebert Ames was a stockholder in the bank -- and it was true he was the son-in-law of Butler, hence Butler had a connection to the bank but it was more indirect. The gang ended up wounding employee Alonzo Enos Bunker in the shoulder and murdering employee Joseph Lee Heywood when he refused to open the bank's safe, and also murdered civilian Swedish immigrant Nicholas Gustafson when he did not follow their command to move due to not understanding enough English. The two James brothers were the only persons able to escape as the Younger brothers were captured and because the additional outlaw Charlie Pitts was killed.

After laying low for three years, Jesse and Frank (who would turn himself in during 1882, and who seems to have been acquitted and unofficially pardoned of the few charges brought against him) ended up recruiting a new gang for a new series of crimes that started on October 8, 1879. James's new recruits were not experienced and started to turn against each other, however, thus James ended up killing one and frightening away another due to his paranoia about how they might turn against him. By 1881 Jesse trusted the Ford brothers of his new gang the most, but it was then that Missouri governor Thomas T. Crittenden got the railroad and express companies to put a USD $5,000 bounty on each of the James brothers (he was barred by law from doing this through government offices). The newest recruit to the gang, Robert Ford, had also been engaging in secret negotiations with Crittenden about capturing Jesse James since Crittenden had made capture of the James brothers his highest priority (moving about from time to time, laying low, and use of the pseudonym "Thomas Howard" by Jesse how he avoided detection despite staying mostly in the state of Missouri), and of course because betraying Jesse for the bounty upon him was quite the opportunity.

On April 3, 1882, while Jesse was discussing another bank robbery at his rented home in Saint Joseph, Missouri with the Fords -- whom were living there at the same time in order for safety -- the Fords had already planned to turn on Jesse. Since it was a hot day and Jesse did not want to look suspicious by repeatedly going outside with his firearms on after taking his coat off prior to readying their horses, he took off both his coat and his gun belt. He was therefore unarmed when he saw a dusty picture and stood on a chair to clean it, turning his back so that the opportunistic Robert Ford then shot him dead through the back of the head.

The Ford brothers then immediately fled the house and Robert wired governor Crittenden to let him know what happened in order to collect the bounty, but after they surrendered to authorities they were dismayed to be immediately charged with first degree murder. They then pled guilty and were sentenced to death by hanging but then were both pardoned -- all in the same day. Hence suffice to say Crittendon's perceived whitewashing also prompts some to believe there was a financial conspiracy to get away with an extralegal (outside of the law) murder -- and here it should be noted that the bounty was split between the Fords and a number of law enforcement officials in the end -- added further to Jesse's prestige.

The prestige attached to Jesse James is where history goes wrong, however. This is because instead of being a Robin Hood-type righteous hero struggling against powerful oppression despite weakness or even an antihero (an antagonist who nevertheless has some admirable qualities), James never used the benefits of his crimes to help others outside of his gangs (such as the mythological Robin Hood's supposed robbing of the rich to help the poor) and was willing to even harm and murder the innocent in order to continue his life as a criminal, despite his rationalizations and the false rationalizations of others to the contrary. Hence while it was wrong for the Fords to ambush him the way they did on this date in 1882, it is more wrong to justify his and thus all criminal activity through rationalizing him as being a type of "Robin Hood," in other words.

COTD: Always remember that the proudest people give us the harshest lessons about humility.

BAD NEWS: Five people were killed when that oil refinery exploded and burned.

GOOD NEWS: Although US unemployment is still high, payrolls are up.

HUMOR: So it's a given then (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: April 4, 1968: African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.

By vocation, King was a Baptist Christian minister, as was his father before him. As such he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree on June 5, 1955 via his dissertation on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman" -- here it being important to note that a 1980s inquiry concluded portions of it were plagiarized but that his dissertation still made "an intelligent contribution to scholarship." He also engaged in a number extramarital affairs (which the US FBI would also try to pressure him with after they started wiretapping him in 1963) to reportedly reduce his anxiety -- shown by the fact that although he was 39 years of age when he was assassinated, his heart was found to be as worn as that of a 60 year old man -- and which he reportedly privately felt quite guilty over. Here, of course, it being important to note that the worth of a person is the sum of both the good and the bad they do, hence as King did so much to attain equal rights for blacks the above unpleasant episodes are quite pale in comparison (despite, of course, the inability to condone them).

Some of the initial influences upon King were obviously German Protestant Christian leader Martin Luther (the "Martin Luther" in both King and his father's name was "Michael" until a 1934 visit to Germany and some of the sites associated with the original Martin Luther) and Mahatma Gandhi of India. The connection to Gandhi was encouraged by one of King's father's classmates, Howard Thurman, who had met Gandhi and who mentored King -- Gandhi being the Indian patriot who used a campaign of civil disobedience and nonviolence to win the independence of India from the British, hence a large part of where King got his own ideas about using civil disobedience and nonviolence to achieve equal rights for blacks from.

The benefit of using nonviolent means of civil disobedience is evident in that since it was so often responded to with a violent police response -- there being some historical footage of people engaging in nonviolent protest being attacked with water from fire hoses, attacked by police dogs, and otherwise being assaulted before being imprisoned -- that the irrationally angry and thus response to the peaceful protest against unjust laws thus emphasized how the laws were unjust. This was particularly true when nonviolent protestors under attack refused to fight back, since it ended up emphasizing that those who upheld the unjust laws instead of those that opposed them were the aggressors in the first place (in contrast, the opposingNation of Islam has a somewhat more confrontational approach).

In addition to working for equal rights for blacks, King actually began to voice some opposition to the 1959-1975 Vietnam War as early as 1965, although it was not until 1967 that he began to speak out publicly against it. He argued the US was essentially attempting to exploit the whole of Vietnam as if it was a colony, and that the resources the US was putting into Vietnam could have been better utilized for social welfare within the US -- a stance which caused some to turn against him due to paranoia about the excesses and atrocities committed under the economic system of Communism (such as within North Vietnam at the time). He also began campaigning for more help for all poor regardless of their race during 1968, which gained some criticism for being too broad and too revolutionary.

The US FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) actually began wiretapping King's phone and that of his other SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) leaders in 1963 (the roots of the organization were with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the SCLC being used to coordinate protests for equal rights from the boycott onward). This was due to concerns that Communists would infiltrate the SCLC in order to use it as a subversive organization. No real links were ever found, but given that director J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI was paranoid about Communists, he called King "the most notorious liar in the country" after King's repeated denials that the SCLC was infiltrated by Communists. Further, in 1963 the FBI also concluded that King was "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from Communists" in order to create a "Negro-labor" coalition detrimental to American security.

At most King made some token supports of democratic Socialism -- essentially change from a form of economic Capitalism (personal, private ownership of economic means) to a form of economic Socialism (more government or public control of economic means, in order to prevent private opportunistic abuses) through public voting and political reforms. This is in opposition to economic Communism which advocates the same type of thing through political revolution, and King rejected Communism (correctly, I would argue) due to its "materialistic interpretation of history" its "ethical relativism" (that morality is not absolute and depends on one's nature), and its "political totalitarianism" (that pure Communism tends to give too much political power to the state) -- plus of course because pure Communism rejects religion on the grounds it is an "opiate of the masses" designed to trick them into a false happiness which makes them easier for those with power to control, which of course would be quite abrasive to King given that he was a Baptist Christian minister.

Prior to King being assassinated on April 4, 1968, he was stabbed with a letter opener by the deranged African-American woman Izola Curry on September 20, 1958. It nearly killed him since she stabbed him in the chest and the tip of it reached his aorta, the largest artery in the whole body. Had it punctured King's aorta he would have died, and the story related to him by the doctors -- who had to painstakingly remove the letter opener with a three hour surgery -- was that if he had so much as sneezed, the letter opener would have punctured his aorta. Still, King forgave Curry for the attempt. The April 4, 1968 assassination took place in Memphis, Tennessee, at what was then the Lorraine Motel. He was there in support of black sanitary public works employees represented by AFSCME Local 1733 who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and fairer treatment, and was staying in room 306 -- a room he stayed at so often while in the area that it was unofficially referred to as the "King-Abernathy Suite" (Abernathy being a friend of King's), thus how King's assassin was able to predict his moves and lie in wait for him. King was shot to death by a sniper as he stood on the second floor balcony of the hotel as 6:01 PM.

Officially, King's murderer was habitual criminal James Earl Ray -- his habitual and thus opportunistic tendencies explaining why he committed the murder -- although conspiracy theorists maintain Ray was a scapegoat used to cover up political reasons behind the murder. After all, he had no prior record of committing violent crimes with a weapon. Current US African-American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was part of King's SCLC and thus was together with King at the time he died, although some say Jackson has exaggerated his reaction to King being shot for his own benefit. Also, of because King's preference for 306 at the Lorraine Motel and because he was under surveillance by the police, undercover officers who had been stationed in a nearby fire station and therefore who had actually seen King shot thus rushed out and were the first to administer first aid to King -- here it also being important to note that the rooming house that Ray was staying in at the time was next to the fire station.

King won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work during his lifetime, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal after his death. The American Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday which commemorates King is the third Monday in January, the closest Monday to his birthday of January 15, 1929. First considered by the US Congress in 1979, it finally passed in 1983, and was first officially observed in 1986. Arguments against honoring King with the holiday are (1) his opposition to the Vietnam War, (2) his supposed support of Communism, (3) the expense of giving federal employees another paid holiday (which is what a federal holiday is), and (4) because he was a private citizen who had never held public office (federal holidays often being connected to those who had held a political office). The cost concern was what prompted then-President Ronald Reagan to threaten to veto the bill making the new federal holiday, but he relented when it was passed by the US Congress with a majority high enough to reach the two-thirds majority which would have been needed to override a Presidential veto. Finally, despite the reluctance by some states to actually observe the holiday under some form of his name in particular, by the year 2000 all 50 US states finally did so.

COTD: Stabbing you to death with a toothpick.

BAD NEWS: It took years for a child molesting priest to be defrocked.

GOOD NEWS: It is Easter and it is Passover.

HUMOR: I do not think this is what they mean when they talk about sharing (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: April 5, 1242: The Battle of the Ice takes place at Lake Peipsi-Pihkva (Lake Pepius) between what is now Estonia and Russia.

Sometimes one looks back at history and is surprised at just how much a foreshadowing of the future it provides, and the "Battle of the Ice" is indeed one of those events -- as those who have read Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising might know.

The background to the Battle of the Ice actually begins with the Crusades, the mentality of which actually began with Pope Alexander II giving his blessing to Christians fighting to retake the Iberian Peninsula (as of this writing consisting of Spain and Portugal) from the Muslim forces which had come to occupy most of it, thus setting the precedent of not only warring against Muslims and Islam but of waging war to protect Christianity -- the crusades mentality, in other words. Thus while a number of crusades were at first to retake the holy land of Palestine, there were a number of Northern Crusades waged by Christian Denmark and Sweden and the Christian German Livonian and Teutonic military orders against the pagan peoples about the Baltic Sea. Sometimes the campaigns of these groups against Russians who were Eastern Orthodox instead of Roman Catholic Christians are included in these crusades as well, thus how the Battle of the Ice between the Russian Novgorod Republic and the Livonian Order of the Teutonic Knights is connected to it.

It is worth mentioning that there was a wedge of pagan (usually polytheistic) peoples about the Baltic Sea due to competing efforts between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians to convert the area. What prompted the Teutonic Knights to attack the area was that first the Tartars/Golden Horde Mongols invasion of 1236-1240 and then the Swedish Battle of the Neva invasion of 1240 -- the goal of each being to expand at the expense of the various Russian states -- had weakened the Russian Novgorod Republic. It was due to opportunism, in other words, thus how the eastward advance of the Teutonic Knights continued through 1240.

In 1241 when the Livonian Order began attacking the Novgorod Republic's city of Novgorod, the Grand Prince of Novgorod and Vladimir, Alexander Nevsky -- noted for his military prowess such as in the Battle of Neva, but who had been exiled from Novgorod to Pereslavl due to bad relations with boyar noblemen due to his growing political influence -- was recalled to help reverse the course of the Livonian Order, and successfully retook the cities of Pskov and Koporye (but not Izborsk), although it would not be until the Battle of the Ice that efforts of the Teutonic Knights would be decisively blunted for another century.

Lake Peipsi-Pihkva has a larger northern part and a smaller southern part, connected together by a strait (narrow neck) of water. On April 5 the lake was still frozen over, hence Nevsky began retreating across the ice in order to lure the Livonian Teutonic Knights onto the ice of the lake, which they did because they were both aggressive and overconfident. Nevsky's tactic of using the terrain to his advantage worked since the skill of experience the Knights had built up was hampered through being unable to maintain secure footing on the ice, Nevsky's forces thus being able to fight the Knights to a stalemate and to thus exhaust them via fighting them for hours.

Here it is important to note that most of the Livonian Teutonic Knights were on-horseback cavalry whereas most of Nevsky's forces were on-foot infantry. The greater mobility of cavalry usually entails it defeating infantry, but Nevsky's tactic of luring them onto the ice had countered that. When Nevsky then ordered the right and left wings of his archers into the battle against the now-exhausted Knights, they began to retreat further across the ice to safety, then when a fresh Russian cavalry appeared, they fled in disorder. Gathering together at an edge of the lake to regroup, the ice gave way underneath them -- perhaps because at this edge of the lake the ice was thinner, and certainly because more weight was concentrated upon it -- thus many of the Livonian Teutonic Knights then ended up drowning in the water below since they were weighted down by their armor. The end result was a decisive victory for Novgorod which blunted Northern Crusades in the area for another century and thus which further added to the prowess of Nevsky, who was later sainted by the Russian Orthodox Christian Church.

Some argue that the significance of the Battle of the Ice has been overstated, given the Teutonic Knights were busy elsewhere and because Nevsky followed a policy of enforced cooperation with the Tartars/Golden Horde Mongols which can be argued as weakening the various Russian states that existed at the time. Regardless, as of this writing Nevsky is commonly viewed as a heroic figure for his efforts against invasions from the west by Russia. Also, although Nevsky's Novgorod Republic and his co-commander Andrey Yaroslavich's Grand Duchy of Vladimir forces were Russian, and though there were some Danish Knights and Dorpat (Estonian) Militia who fought with the German Livonian Teutonic Knights, the battle itself has become seen as Russian forces resisting German invasion in particular. This is why when the 1938 Russian film Alexander Nevsky was made, it was actually used as a subtle pro-Stalinist USSR propaganda film against Nazi Germany by working Nazi imagery into the equipment used by the Livonian Teutonic Knights -- such as the Knights wearing helmets modeled after the stahlhem helmets which succeeded the Prussian German pickelhaube (spiked helmet frequently associated with World War I) from 1916 to 1945 and thus which became strongly associated with Nazi Germany (in fact they began to be abandoned in 1945 due to that fact).

It is true the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact offered a brief respite between Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR when it was signed in 1939 (essentially allowing Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR to split eastern Europe between themselves), which resulted in the Alexander Nevsky film being withdrawn, but suffice to say it was re-released when Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers invaded the USSR in 1941. This in itself is where the reference to Tom Clancy's 1986 Red Storm Rising book comes from -- at one point two American intelligence officers pirate the USSR state television satellite feed and end up viewing a broadcast of the 1938 film Alexander Nevsky which was being broadcast primarily as part of a means of prompting anti-German sentiment due to the USSR plan to start what became World War III, the two of them commenting about the battle upon the frozen lake (the "Battle of the Ice") in particular.

Alexander Nevsky is also mentioned in the 1984 movie Red Dawn, also about World War III following a USSR invasion of the US, since the USSR makes it the only film allowed shown in movie theaters of the captured American city of Calumet, Colorado (a remake making the antagonists Chinese is reportedly scheduled for release in 2010). However, Red Storm Rising is an eerie foreshadowing of events because Islamic terrorists destroy the USSR oil production facility at Nizhnevartosk (the explosion from which is seemingly based upon the supposed 1982Siberian Pipeline Explosion), prompting the ruling Politburo of the USSR to engineer a Warsaw Pact limited war against (what was then) Western Germany through the engineered claim that West Germany had begun a terrorist war against the USSR (appropriately enough, through a bombing in Pskov) -- the actual goal of which being to seize oil fields in the Persian Gulf region in order to make up for the lost oil, although the conquest of West Germany is anticipated as a bonus through splitting the US-dominated NATO alliance through presentation of the war as legitimate and through the fresh anti-German sentiment prompted by the aforementioned showing of Alexander Nevsky.

The key miscalculation made by the USSR-dominated Warsaw Pact alliance in the book was assuming that the US would ignore the Carter Doctrine, which is that attacks upon US oil interests within the Persian Gulf is an attack upon vital US interests and thus will be responded to as if they were an attack upon the US itself, the USSR losing their gamble that with the US able to obtain oil from elsewhere and with NATO split, the US and therefore NATO would be unwilling or unable to counter the false German aggression reason or the true oil reason for starting what became World War III. The point here being that outside of the Battle of the Ice and the Alexander Nevsky references, the aforementioned Carter Doctrine helps explain why the 1990-1991 Gulf War was fought between a US-dominated coalition and Iraq after Iraq's August 2, 1990 invasion of Kuwait and its oil fields in an attempt to recoup losses it had incurred during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, which was itself prompted by Iraq's attempt to opportunistically seize Iranian oil fields (although it is true that there were human rights abuses against the Kuwaitis by the invading Iraqis). As well, the book's major Islamic terrorist attack upon the USSR's Nizhnevartosk anticipated how the major al-Qaeda Islamic terrorist attack upon the US on September 11, 2001 brought fundamentalist Islamic terrorism (here I must stress "fundamentalist Islam," as mainstream Islam condemned the attacks) to the forefront.

As well, there is the fact that the Islamic fundamentalist attack both in the book and in real life resulted in the attacked side being mislead about and thus fighting back against the wrong supposed antagonist, the USSR fighting the (Western) Germans which they again demonized with the Alexander Nevsky film and the US fighting the nation of Iraq which was falsely further demonized through being linked to the September 11 Attacks under the administration of then-US President George W. Bush. Hence suffice to say that although the April 5, 1242 Battle of the Ice may have taken place nearly 765 years prior to this writing, it is amazing how it can still be linked to the present day. As the philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

COTD: All insert coin to continue.

BAD NEWS: A man stabbed his wife 70 times.

GOOD NEWS: Many of the trapped northern Chinese miners are finally getting rescued!

HUMOR: Human exercise is boring (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: April 6, 1930: Indian patriot Mohandas Gandhi began the Salt Satyagraha ("Satyagraha" literally "asking for truth," but translated by Gandhi as "truth force") by making illegal salt at the end of his Salt March to Dandi.

The reason for colonialism or imperialism is ultimately for the ruling country to make money off it its colonies. This is why the United Kingdom passed salt taxes upon India after making it a colony -- and yes, this same type of reasoning of making money off of a colony is what prompted the similar Tea Act upon the thirteen American colonies (later the United States). Preventing a financial recession such as the collapse of "too big to fail" aspects of an economy aside, however, such taxes beget resistance -- in the case of India that resistance from the salt tax being used as part of the British system to deny Indians freedom, in the case of early America that resistance being due to having no real representation in government ("no taxation without representation").

Since paying salt taxes -- which were also used to pay for the importation of salt to India -- was the law, finding ways of circumventing paying those taxes was illegal. Gandhi, with his system of civil disobedience (refusing to obey laws one views as unjust), therefore set the example using illegal salt as a means of civil disobedience by marching to the sea and boiling salty mud in seawater to produce salt, thus circumventing the United Kingdom's monopoly over salt that British forces enforced all over India.

Gandhi chose salt in particular since salt was used by nearly everyone in India, because it represented 8.2% of the British tax revenue, and because it was very difficult for the poorest Indians to pay it. As well, it effected the Hindu and Muslim religious groups of India -- which were often in conflict with each other -- fairly equally, hence how he hoped it would help unite India. It worked as well, since in addition to refusing use of British salt the Indians also began spreading towards other goods controlled by the British, turning Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha into a mostly nonviolent mass Satyagraha that British efforts proved incapable of quelling.

The Salt Satyagraha actually failed to achieve the goals that Gandhi had set for it, however. It did not force the British to relinquish their taxation upon India and it also was largely ignored by Indian Muslims, but it did help bring the Indians to recognize that British taxation and British rule over India was due to their own grudging consent, thus how India could once again achieve independence by refusing to give that grudging consent. Gandhi also eventually lost overall control of Indian independence efforts to the Indian National Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru -- the Congress officially ending use of Satyagrahas in 1934 (perhaps because the future Indian government recognized it needed the future consent of its citizens in order to be able to govern them) -- but it did set an important precedent for throwing off British rule. After all, to arrest nonviolent Satyagraha protestors was to give inadvertent recognition to their political protest, to not arrest the protestors was to allow them to circumvent the law, and certainly using force against the protestors would only bring further sympathy and thus support to them -- Gandhi also already having gained a large scale of international attention from the international press due to the large numbers of people who joined him to watch his Salt March to Dandi conclude with him boiling salty mud in seawater in order to make illegal salt at the seashore.

COTD: I consist of scar tissue.

BAD NEWS: 25 miners were killed in the US state of West Virginia.

GOOD NEWS: Toyota recieved a record fine for concealing its accelerator problem!

HUMOR: Testosterone did (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 7, 1922: Albert Fall, US Secretary of the Interior, illegally leased the oil fields at the "Teapot Dome" in Wyoming to Harry Sinclair of Sinclair Oil, with no competitive bidding (first reported by the Washington Post newspaper on April 14).

"Teapot Dome" is an oil field in the state of Wyoming which is so named since it bears the quite visible landmark of "Teapot Rock" -- a rock formation that some say looks like a teapot. The oil there is supposed to be held for emergency use by the US Navy, thus why Teapot Dome was under control of the US Navy until 1921, when an executive order by President Harding transferred control of it to the Department of the Interior -- this after the urging of Albert Fall.

The fact that oil fields of the US are coveted by US oil companies helps explain what was happening in advance. After obtaining control of Teapot Dome, Albert Fall then leased Teapot Dome to Harry Sinclair's Mammoth Oil subsidiary of Sinclair Oil without competitive bidding -- that is without competition for the best price for the rights to something, which implies vested interests. These interests are illustrated by the fact that when Fall quit his position as Secretary of the Interior in March 1923, Sinclair "loaned" him a large but undisclosed amount of money. I say "loaned" since this was later found to be the type of bribery known as a "kickback" where a bribe is paid after as opposed to before someone is convinced to illegally alter their fair behavior. It took some time to catch Fall as well, since he withdrew from public office and had documentation of the kickback which thus implicated his guilt destroyed so that he could not be found out -- the important fact to note here being that the lease of Teapot Dome alone was legally questionable but not clearly illegal, although the illegal kickback Fall received did indeed make it illegal. Fall also was not too bright, either, as his failure to fully cover up his improved financial situation raised questions about how he could have got so rich so quickly.

The US Senate investigation which caught Fall was actually able to do so due to another scandal that Fall had become involved in as Secretary of the Interior. In November 1921 Pan American Petroleum tycoon Edward Doheny had "loaned" USD $100,000, interest-free, to Fall -- after which Fall had leased the Naval Oil Reserves at Elk Hills, California, to Pan American Petroleum. This was clear evidence of a bribe, evidence that Fall forgot to destroy with his concentration on hiding Sinclair's Teapot Dome kickback and which lead to Fall being connected to both the Teapot Dome and the Elk Hills scandals starting in 1924 -- the connection also being found due to how Fall received $404,000 in additional "gifts" from Sinclair and Doheny as well. Fall was thus eventually sentenced to one year in prison and was fined $100,000, Sinclair was sentenced to six months in prison and a $100,000 fine for jury tampering and contempt of court (attempting to unduly influence the jury and disrespecting a court, respectively), while Doheny actually managed to get acquitted of bribing Fall but became ended up becoming a recluse and an invalid due to the numerous lawsuits brought against him by his shareholders following the scandal.

Both the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills oil fields were restored to the US government via a US Supreme Court decision in 1927. The scandals are actually characteristic of the administration of President Harding, who was popular during his 1921-1923 time as US President due to the economic prosperity of the "roaring twenties/crazy years" but who in the aftermath of his Presidency was found to have been a weak President (he was actually chosen against his will by the Republican party as a compromise candidate, having offended nobody) due to the health problems (thus why he did not want to become President) that eventually lead to his death in office and which also lead him to delegate too much to his "Ohio Gang" of closest supporters who had enabled him to have a political career in the first place -- supporters such Albert Fall, for instance.

COTD: ezbake accidentally the whole domains.

BAD NEWS: A woman shot her cousin to death for wearing shorts and a T-shirt to Easter dinner.

GOOD NEWS: The police finally tried to do something about an annual Easter riot in New York!

HUMOR: He must read important things, then (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: April 8, 1820: The Venus de Milo was discovered on the Greek Island of Milos.

An image of the statue is here.

The term "Venus" comes from the Roman name for the ancient Greco-Roman Goddess Aphrodite -- the goddess of love and beauty -- and is a half-naked (from the waist up) marble statue noted for missing its arms. The reason it is half-naked is because the naked human form was seen as beautiful by the ancient Greeks, and its arms were somehow broken off before it was found -- this despite French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (which had control of Greece at the time) Charles-Francois de Riffardeau's anecdote attributing the breakage of the arms to it being dragged over rocks during fighting between French sailors and "Greek brigands" over it. The plinth (pedestal it sat on) it sat on is missing and a plinth that fit it was dismissed as inauthentic due to being added during a later period, and even the legible inscription upon later plinth did not identify the statue, hence how it is only by consensus and guesswork that the Venus must be Venus/Aphrodite.

About the missing arms: experts determined the right arm extended the right hand to the right knee as if holding the drapery up around the waist of the statue, whereas the left hand was holding an apple the statue was looking at (here I have to think it was the Apple of Discord she successfully bribed her way into getting) -- remains of the left arm also being found, though erroneously initially dismissed due to being rougher in finish as a result of being above the eye level of the viewer. As well, the whole finishing applied to the statue shows it was meant to sit in a niche with the left side out, that niche at an ancient Greek gymnasium used for athletic games. It was also actually in worse shape than just missing its arms and its plinth when found since it was actually broken in half at the waist.

A large part of why the statue is so famous is that after being found by a Greek farmer by the name of Yorgos Kentrotas and French naval officer Olivier Voutier, the French obtained possession of it and used propaganda to emphasize its importance. This because Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I of France had successfully pressured the city of Rome in what is now Italy into giving the similar Venus de' Medici to France between 1803 and 1815 to add to French prestige, after which it was given back following Napoleon's final removal from power in 1815, thus why the French emphasized the Venus de Milo as being even better than the Venus de' Medici they had lost.

It is thought that the Venus de Milo was sculpted by the ancient Greek artist Praxiteles, who was active sometime around 364 BC, and as of this writing it is stored at the Louvre museum of Paris, France. Praxiteles was also one of the first to begin sculpting the female form semi-naked or naked, although clothed female statues had been done prior to that time (naked male statues preceded this, however, as the naked male form was found to be beautiful by ancient Greek artists).

Finally, as is also shown by this parody, humor is often connected to the Venus de Milo by imagining it with arms.

COTD: Pain doesn't feel too good.

BAD NEWS: A Qatari Diplomat caused a midair scare.

GOOD NEWS: The US and Russia signed a historic nuclear treaty!

HUMOR: Execute Plan 66 (Heart of the City, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: April 9, 32: Calculated date upon which the Christian Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem upon the first Palm Sunday.

The city of Jerusalem is important to the religion of Judaism since in ancient Judaism, worship could only be properly performed by a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem. Today the followers of Judaism are typically allowed to worship outside of Jerusalem at various synagogues, but also suffice to say part of the effect of worship only at the temple in Jerusalem was a centralizing effect to help keep the twelve Jewish tribes that made up the nation of Israel united -- a process only partially successful since Judah in the south would sometimes break away from Israel.

The reason that Jesus Christ went to Israel on this date, therefore, was in order to observe the Jewish holiday of Passover. The reason the date of the Jewish Passover (unleavened bread or "matzo" has come to symbolize the holiday of Passover, since the Jews reportedly had to leave Egypt so quickly afterwards they could not wait for their bread to rise) and of the Christian Easter varies from year to year is because the date of both is figured at least in part through the timing of the moon ("moons" from which the word "months" is derived) instead of through the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun. The holiday is called "Passover" since it commemorates the angel of death "passing over" Jewish homes marked with blood from a spring-born lamb on their doorposts during the tenth of the ten plagues God reportedly sent upon Egypt in order to make Egypt's Pharaoh release the enslaved Jews in the Christian Biblical and Jewish Torah book of Exodus -- the tenth plague being the death of all firstborn male offspring except those within homes that were marked.

Since the result of the tenth plague was reportedly Egypt's Pharaoh releasing the Jews from their captivity so that their leader Moses could lead their "exodus" from oppression and slavery in Egypt (although he reportedly later reneged upon the release and thus was destroyed by God at the crossing of the Red Sea), since the Romans had control of Israel during 32 AD (the Roman empire controlled Israel from 333 BC to 330 AD, after which it began to be inherited by the successor state of the Byzantine Empire) they were identified with the historical Egyptians from Exodus, thus how when the prophet Jesus Christ showed up the easy Passover-influenced consensus was to identify him as being a type of Moses who was going to lead the Jews out of their oppression by the Romans. Covering the path of someone with garments and such was a symbol of giving them one's highest honor (perhaps because this would enable them to not get their feet dirty, which is perhaps also why shoeing is considered an insult in the Middle East). The palm fronds laid down but reportedly mentioned only in the Biblical book of John have come to symbolize the date in Christian tradition, most likely appropriated because they were also symbols of triumph and victory in Jewish tradition as is mentioned in Leviticus 23:40 and Revelation 7:9.

Probably Jesus rode in on a donkey because it was a common and supposedly humble animal not so associated with war as a horse is, and there is some consensus he rode into Jerusalem through the Golden Gate (the oldest gate in the wall originally surrounding Jerusalem) since this is the gate where the Jewish Messiah is reportedly anticipated as entering Jerusalem at. Of course the aforementioned consensus quickly changed following fears the Romans might commit further atrocities, hence how Jesus Christ was necessarily crucified to absolve the sins of the world according to Christian religion (it being important to note that mainstream Christianity has also absolved Jews of any guilt in the death of Christ since then) and thus which lead to the Christian holiday of Easter.

Maundy Thursday or "Holy Thursday" is supposed to be part of the Holy Week (which ends with the Biblical crucifixion) when Jesus took the Last Supper with his apostles, their Last Supper actually being part of their celebration of Passover. "Good Friday" (the "Good" perhaps because the terrible sacrifice necessary for Christian redemption was finally made) is the day Jesus was supposed to have been crucified on, with his resurrection then taking place the following Easter Sunday -- thus symbolically bringing about full circle what had been begun a week earlier on Palm Sunday.

If the calculated date of April 9, 32 is correct (the Christian-based BC/AD calendar dates meaning "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini" -- Latin for "in the Year of Our Lord," meaning after the birth of Christ*), this would have placed the first Christian Palm Sunday on the Jewish calendar date of Nisan 11, 3792 (the Jewish calendar date starts on the day that the first two humans, Adam and Eve, were reportedly created by God on the sixth day of His creation of everything). The consensus derived from the first three quite similar synoptic and canonical gospels is that the first Good Friday Christ was crucified on was April 14, 32/Nisan 15, 3792, although consensus is that the canonical gospel of John places it on April 13, 32/Nisan 14, 3792 -- this is because it was written later than the first three and thus with a stronger Christian as opposed to Jewish emphasis, its earlier crucifixion date thus placing it on the day that lambs were being slaughtered for the aforementioned Passover feast Christ came to Jerusalem for on what is now recalled as Palm Sunday (the gospel of John actually recounts Jesus making three trips to Jerusalem, the third one being the one which ended in his crucifixion) -- this thus more strongly linking Christ with Christian "lamb that was slain" imagery, although it also appropriates the Jewish symbol of palm fronds.

* One alternate to the BC/AD calendar system is to use "BCE/CE" instead, as it is more politically correct through substituting "Before Common Era" and "Common Era" for "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini," respectively, although for simplicity's sake the BC and BCE dates and the CE and AD dates are the exact same, respectively.

COTD: Firing bullets at the anti-selves.

BAD NEWS: Scott Cunningham was denied breast cancer screening.

GOOD NEWS: The US Navy has banned smoking on submarines!

HUMOR: He should not push his luck, though (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 10, 1953: The Warner Brothers company premiered House of Wax, one of the first 3-D movies.

House of Wax actually offers some insight into the entertainment business. A popular means for entertainment was and still is stage acting, or drama, but the problem with stage acting is that but one story can be presented at a time. This was addressed in the United States and Canada during the period of the 1880s to the 1930s via what is known as vaudeville, which is essentially a variety theater show featuring several unrelated acts. The introduction of radio and also cinema/movie theaters, however, made available entertainment more varied and easier to pick and choose from by audiences, hence vaudeville disintegrated although some of its performers and acts transitioned into performances for movie theaters, such as "the Three Stooges" -- who then also later had their performances repackaged for television.

With the advent of television in the 1930s, movie theaters began losing audiences (attendance dropped from 90 million to 46 million in 1948) since television could do much of what movie theaters could do (movie theaters would show newsreels, cartoons, and a variety of short programs in addition to movies prior to competition with television -- thus perhaps the reason for the more accurate name of "cinema"). Increasing the appeal of movies with sound and color was experimented with before competition with television -- and would be experimented with later during competition with television as well -- hence experimentation with other methods such as 3-D films (which give a more realistic impression of depth and distance "into" the screen) was begun.

Cinerama -- use of three cameras to create a huge picture that more surrounded the audience -- proved to be more difficult and expensive in contrast to 3-D films, hence how 3-D films became the precedent of choice from 1952 to 1955. Afterwards Cinerama became more practical since technology improved enough it could be done with only one camera, but 3-D films have remained an area of secondary experimentation ever since then.

Given the focus upon Cinerama at the time, 3-D movies were overlooked until Arch Oboler independently produced the first full color, 3-D movie Bwana Devil in 1952 -- actually based upon the "Tsavo maneater lions" who chose to prey upon human construction workers upon the Kenya-Uganda railway in 1898 (the story was made again into the 2-D movie Ghost and the Darkness in 1996). A surprise success due to its story being criticized by movie critics yet large audiences still going and seeing it due to its color and 3-D (it was later purchased by the major film studio of United Artists, in order to reap profits from it), the major movie studios quickly began the brief changeover from Cinerama to 3-D during 3-D's "Golden Period" of 1952-1955. Warner Brothers released House of Wax on this date in 1953 and incorrectly billed it as the first 3-D film released by a major movie studio -- the truth, however, being that major movie studio Columbia Pictures released the 3-D Man in the Dark on April 8, 1953 -- thus what it is commonly yet incorrectly remembered as.

The 1953 House of Wax is a remake of the 1933 Mystery of the Max Museum, and is a horror film in that the incredible realism of the figures in the museum in question is because they are actually murder victims who then had their bodies re-used by coating them in wax to make them dummies for the exhibits (it also includes the stock character of a hunchbacked, unusual assistant by the name of "Igor"). It itself was essentially remade as a 2-D House of Wax horror film in 2005, and a Carry on Screaming parody of the 1953 version was made in 1966.

Most likely the more recent re-emergence (from around 2010 onward) of 3-D as more than a novelty is that improvements with technology have helped diminish its relative cost -- although it is true the cost of 2009's 3-D Avatar was upwards of USD $500 million -- plus of course increasing competition improving television-based means of entertainment within private homes such as High-Definition Televisions (as of this writing, incorporating 3-D into HDTV is also being researched), material on Blu-Ray DVDs, and also Video On Demand. In short, the emphasis upon quantity of entertainment from the dramatic acting-vaudeville days has now shifted into the quality and convenience of the technology used for that entertainment, something which Warner Brothers astutely recognized back in 1953 and thus why they released House of Wax in 3-D.

COTD: Pluck out the yellow eyebrow.

BAD NEWS: A Polish Air Force Tu-154 crashed in Russia.

GOOD NEWS: A passenger in a police car was charged with underage drinking!

HUMOR: He may be sensitive about his weight (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: April 11, 1986: The 1986 Miami Shootout took place.

At first I thought this was referring to the North Hollywood Shootout, but that took place on February 28, 1997. The lessons learned from the various shootouts between criminals and law enforcement officers even around the two events, however, have lead to the same types of lessons in the end: better and more accurate training and tactics for the situations the officers might encounter, access to and familiarity with higher power firepower when needed, and also better armor to protect the officers who may be involved in a shooting -- SWAT, or "Special Weapons and Tactics," is also a part of this but actually predates the incidents mentioned since SWAT began in California 1968 during the Civil Rights movement due to tactical situations like snipers and urban guerilla warfare arising when civil rights events inadvertently turned violent in ways officers were not well-prepared for.

The earliest incident Wikipedia links to in relation to the 1986 Miami Shootout following an attempted felony traffic stop (where the suspects are already known to have committed a violent crime) is the April 6, 1970 Newhall Massacre of California (USA), so named since the deaths of the four officers in the shootout following a felony traffic stop (one of the two suspects was also killed) was the highest number of officers killed in a shooting within the state of California to that date. The Newall Massacre itself also being notable since former US Marine Gary Kness ended up joining the fight and helping the officers.

After this comes the May 9, 1980 Norco Shootout of California (USA) is what Wikipedia lists next, with the shootout taking place between five bank robbers and nine officers, with two of the bank robbers killed and one officer killed. The key difference here being that one of the officers brought an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle into the shootout which finally matched some of the weaponry the robbers were using, causing them to start to attempt to flee the gunfight and thus leading to them breaking off what appeared to be an attempt at a fight to the death. The officer that brought the AR-15 was San Bernardino Sheriff's Deputy D.J. McCarty.

The 1986 Miami Shootout is what Wikipedia lists next, also as a result of a felony traffic stop attempt. The unusual fact about the 1986 FBI Miami, Florida (USA) Shootout being that the law enforcement officers were Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, two of which were killed in the shootout. The reason the FBI was involved was because the two suspects (who were also killed) were criminals wanted for a number of bank robberies around Florida -- the FBI being essentially the US national police force (the CIA -- Central Intelligence Agency -- has more of an international focus since it engages in espionage or spying to protect national security).

After this comes the aforementioned February 28, 1997 North Hollywood Shootout of North Hollywood, California (USA), which was also the result of bank robbery. Much of the shootout between the two serial bank robbers and the officers in this case was actually taped by news helicopters from above and thus has been frequently shown on television. They had fully automatic, police body armor-piercing weapons and had actually cobbled together some heavy homemade body armor which the rounds fired by the officers could not penetrate but which also limited their mobility (their interest in bodybuilding and weightlifting might explain how they were able to stand wearing it). Just how they were able to be stopped was that one was shot in his too-lightly or unarmored right hand and then either deliberately committed suicide or inadvertently shot himself through the head trying to reload a handgun with his wounded hand when another bullet hit him in his unarmored neck and incapacitated him by severing his spine (there is debate outside of Wikipedia whether his final shot was deliberate or not), while the other was taken down by being shot in his unarmored lower legs via an officer firing below the vehicle the final robber was taking cover under -- the second robber then bleeding to death before the area could be secured enough to get him to proper medical attention. Thankfully in this case no officers (or bystanders) were killed, though eighteen people were wounded.

In regard to the North Hollywood Shootout, there have been some suggestions the 1995 movie Heat was part of the inspiration for it -- as well as it inspiring a number of other armored car/bank robberies elsewhere -- since the robberies within the film were portrayed so graphically and since they had apparently been quite well thought out by the writer and director of the movie, Michael Mann. If true this is not only yet another case of life attempting to imitate a fictional art but also those who doing the imitating apparently forgetting the fact that even in fiction, usually the bad guys/robbers/whatever get taken down by the good guys no matter how well-prepared and super-powered the bad guys think they are -- which is also the case in Heat, particularly since the protagonist Lieutenant Hanna manages to fatally shoot antagonist Neil McCauley at the end of it.

Of the above shootouts, more of which can be read at the respective Wikipedia links I have provided, an eight minute Youtube file of the In the Line of Duty television movie made about the April 11, 1986 Miami Shootout itself can be viewed here, whereas a four and a half minute compilation from a recreation of the incident on TruTV from their 44 Minutes: the North Hollywood Shootout program can be found here. One final point to make being that although incidents such as these have been used by police departments to gain better access to weaponry to counter it, it has also prompted some debate about whether such incidents are frequent and/or deadly enough to do so since granting greater firepower to police weakens the Second Amendment to the US Constitution -- the right to bear arms, which of course was seen as part of the key means by which the unfair government by the British was overthrown during the 1775-1783 American Revolutionary War -- by giving authority figures even stronger firepower to begin with.

COTD: Heartbeat of Jaws.

BAD NEWS: The UK has several errors in its organ donor list.

GOOD NEWS: Germany's loaning some money to Greece!

HUMOR: They're not helping (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 12, 1961: USSR Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human launched into outer space, aboard the Vostok 1.

YOUTUBE FILE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQ1ZAQJzY8

Gagarin's flight -- which had followed testing of animals launched into Earth orbit -- is not just notable for proving that humans could be sent into the zero gravity of outer space and return to Earth, but also because there are some falsehoods attached to his flight.

The first falsehood is that during his flight, Gagarin reported to his ground control crew that "I don't see any God up here." There are no records of him saying this during the flight, but what happened is that USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev once said "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any God there" when discussing anti-religious propaganda -- the Communist economic system often embracing atheism on the grounds that religion was designed to deceive people that they were happy despite being exploited by the leaders of the Capitalist economic system. As Khrushchev was therefore respected due to his position, Gagarin was retroactively yet falsely assigned the comment "I don't see any God up here." In fact, Gagarin had been baptized into the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church as a child, hence it would have been unlikely for him to make such a sweeping statement.

The second falsehood regards the FAI (Federation Aeronautique Internationale) guidelines for being recognized by the FAI's records. The FAI was established in 1905 in order to have a standard, international set of rules regarding air and space precedents and records, and at the time of Gagarin's flight had specified those who went into space had to land with their spacecraft in order to have their accomplishments observed by the FAI. In order to save on the design and weight the Vostok 1 did not have cushioning for its landings (the US NASA Apollo program had its capsules parachute into the ocean to break their fall when they landed, and the US Space Shuttle Orbiters were designed like aircraft in order to use the air to slow their descent to a safe rate) and thus Gagarin actually ejected from the Vostok 1 and parachuted down to the ground after he was a safe distance in the atmosphere. Witnesses also reportedly said they saw the Vostok 1 landing so hard it actually bounced once, which implies that Gagarin would have been injured or killed had he landed with it, but these facts were covered up by USSR officials who lied by stating that Gagarin had actually touched down to the ground within the Vostok 1 in order to get recognized by the FAI. Years later the truth of what happened was revealed, but the FAI also changed its guidelines somewhat to thus recognize Yuri Gagarin as the first human to fly into and to return from outer space.

USSR spacecraft actually usually allowed their cosmonauts to return to Earth while still aboard them, the spacecraft designed to be launched and landed in land areas controlled by the USSR. This is actually where the third falsehood comes in, however, as USSR wanted to keep the exact location of its Space Center a secret from potential spying. As such, they reported to the FAI that the Vostok 1 had been launched with Gagarin aboard it from the city of Baykonur, when it was actually from the city of Tyuratam -- now renamed "Tyuratum Baikonur" -- which is 160 miles/250 kilometers away.

Although afterwards Gagarin became a valuable propaganda tool for the USSR in the ongoing ideological Cold War with the US at that time -- one of the main reasons for the "space race" between the two in order to dominate outer space near the Earth as well, thus also the reason why the US developed the Apollo program to land astronauts upon the nearby Moon -- and thus was treated as a precious commodity, but was eventually allowed to re-qualify as a fighter pilot (cosmonauts, astronauts and such are typically chosen from the disciplined and patriotic members of a country's armed forces in order to best represent their respective countries) and actually ended up dying due to a crash for ambiguous reasons during a training flight on March 27, 1968 (age 34 at the time of his death, as he was born March 9, 1934). He was and still is, however, celebrated internationally for being the first-ever human to fly into and then to return from outer space.

"Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!" (Yuri Gagarin)

COTD: Body and face have changed a lot.

BAD NEWS: There was a seven alarm fire in New York.

GOOD NEWS: A Colorado's Sheriff's deputy was suspended for tazing 30 students!

HUMOR: It certainly does (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: April 13, 1953: US CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) director Allen Dulles began the illegal mind-control program MKULTRA.

The "MK" is the cryptonym for the CIA's Technical Services Division, with the "ULTRA" being another cryptonym which had been used to refer to the secret classification of most World War II intelligence. As of this writing It was most recently and popularly referenced in the 2009 movie ofThe Men Who Stare At Goats. Here, however, it should be noted that most records of the project were destroyed in 1973 under orders of then-CIA director Richard Helms, hence the limited amount of material available about it has made guessing about it popular for conspiracy theorists (particularly regarding its use of LSD) in addition to creators of fictional stories and such.

Officially in response to mind-control techniques being used upon POWs (Prisoners Of War) by the USSR, China, and North Korea during the 1950-1953 Korean War -- but precedents for which went back to the 1945 recruiting of former Nazi Germans who had studied use of torture and mind control, due to the anticipation of future conflict with the USSR -- essentially revolved around experimentation with large numbers of drugs and/or controlled substances in order to manipulate the behavior of the person subjected to their use. LSD reportedly proved to be the most popular drug used for experimentation at doing this, perhaps because those who took it were absolutely certain they could withstand interrogations even including torture -- this even though sometimes information was obtained by those who had been given LSD. Often times this was done for even up to days at a time (77 consecutive days on LSD appears to be the record, and one person reportedly died due to ingesting too much LSD) and without the consent or knowledge of those being administered the drugs, thus violating the Nuremberg Code for ethical experimentation that the US had agreed to follow after World War II -- Nazi Germany performing sadistic, horrific experiments upon those it held in concentration camps during the 1933-1945 period when the Nazi party was in power.

The existence of MKULTRA was finally uncovered by the New York Times newspaper in December 1974, thus starting in 1976 this lead to Executive Orders from US Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan officially banning such activities unless consent was given and the experiment was witnessed by a disinterested third party. There is also some implication that the various branches of the US Armed Forces conducted their own illegal experiments along the same lines, and one theory is that part of the explanation for the strange behaviors of Jim Jones's "People's Temple" cult at Jonestown, Guyana, was not because of the cult of personality that cult leader Jim Jones had built up around himself but allegedly because 1978 Jonestown was one of the sites still being illegally used by the CIA to conduct MKULTRA mind-control experiments after the Presidentially-ordered end of the program in 1976 -- thus MKULTRA program instead of Jones's own mind-control is supposed to be the actual reason why almost all the 900+ people there committed suicide.

But, as has been previously noted, so much about it has been concealed that the extent of MKULTRA is nearly impossible to know.

COTD: There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who is sober enough to fly a plane?

BAD NEWS: Steven Segal is being sued for sexual assault.

GOOD NEWS: A particular diet can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's!

HUMOR: Must be a B movie (Lio, by Tatulli)!

HISTORY: April 14, 1912: The White Star line ship Titanic struck an iceberg off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada), which sinks it on April 15.

As of this writing, the most recent widely-known reference to this incident is the 1997 movie Titanic (new home editions of it were released in 2005, and a 3-D version of the 1997 version is scheduled to be released in 2011 -- just one year before the 100 year anniversary of the sinking). As such, it should be noted that filmmaker James Cameron (as of this writing best known for the 2009 film Avatar) took facts from primary sources (closest to the account itself, such as from those who actually witnessed it and survived) about the sinking and molded them to fit the around fiction of the love triangle/star crossed lovers he inserted to act as a vehicle (pun intended) by which to maintain viewer interest over the entire film -- which sometimes also takes creative liberties more akin to the popular 1972 escape-a-shipwreck Poseidon Adventure movie. This is particularly noticeable in the case of the historical character Charles Joughin -- who I will get back to after a moment.

The definitive secondary source (which discusses primary sources) for the sinking is Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On -- this because he reasons out a consensus about the facts presented by those primary sources despite how sometimes they are contradictory and sometimes outright wrong, and does so in a fashion I feel is even better than Wikipedia's article. He also makes the notable point not to rely too much on experts (within The Night Lives On) because they can be wrong, however, noting that after exploring consulting the aforementioned primary resources the experts had decided the Titanic went down intact yet it was found to have broken in two at the surface so that she went down in pieces. As well, Lord debunks the claim that Titanic was given the official number 3909 04 -- which looks like the ominous words of "No Hope" when viewed in a mirror (this in addition to the ominous fact that the Titans lost to the Gods in Greco-Roman mythology), and which I actually saw claimed as fact by the expert opinion of a US History Channel program -- by noting her Harland & Wolff builders gave her the number 401 and that her Board of Trade official number was 131,428.

Briefly put, the ship ended up breaking in two and sinking because she was traveling too fast (a large object like the Titanic takes longer to turn or stop, and there is evidence the rudder of the Titanic was too small for ship of her size) and because a good and proper lookout -- such as to avoid a collision with an iceberg -- was not kept, although convention at the time was to keep sailing full speed until ice became visible even during instances where it began to grow cold and where ice began to cover the routes used by ships. Also, although the idea the ice cut a gash through or repeatedly punctured the hull has been used to describe the damage inflicted upon the Titanic, the damage was more a buckling or denting of the brittle hull due to the blunt force impact that opened up seams which enabled water to flood into the ship -- as well as popping off several of the plates riveted together in order to make the hull, which can be further explained by noting there is some evidence that inferior quality rivets were used to hurry the completion of the Titanic. Finally, the reason the ship was able to float for a time but then to finally sink was the nature of her so-called "watertight compartments."

A watertight compartment is supposed to contain a leak within one part of a ship by preventing the water from flooding more than the compartment itself, but in the case of Titanic her watertight compartments were open at the top like a seamless ice cube tray. While the ship was buoyant enough that she could still float with four of these open watertight compartments flooded, when five were flooded it weighted down the ship so that the top of the watertight compartments kept getting pulled below the waterline (level of the ocean) so that the incoming water spilled in through the top of the remaining watertight compartments to pull the ship down further -- again, rather like how an ice cube tray will fill up with water -- hence how the ship ultimately filled up with water, broke in half due to how the water was filling her up, then sank.

For the sake of brevity, here is the timeline of Titanic events modified from those Lord presents as taking place over April 14-15:

4/14/12 -- 9:00 AM receives ice warning from Carona.
4/14/12 -- 1:42 PM receives ice warning from Baltic.
4/14/12 -- 1:45 PM receives ice warning from Amerika.
4/14/12 -- 7:00 PM temperature drops to 43 degrees Fahrenheit.
4/14/12 -- 7:30 PM temperature drops to 39 degrees Fahrenheit.
4/14/12 -- 7:30 PM receives ice warning from Californian.
4/14/12 -- 9:00 PM temperature drops to 33 degrees Fahrenheit.
4/14/12 -- 9:40 PM receives ice warning from Mesaba.
4/14/12 -- 10:00 PM temperature drops to 32 degrees Fahrenheit (freezing at the surface).
4/14/12 -- 10:30 PM sea temperature at 31 degrees Fahrenheit (salt causes seawater to freeze at 28.5 degrees).
4/14/12 -- 11:00 PM receives second ice warning from Californian.
4/14/12 -- 11:40 PM collision with (sideswipes) iceberg.
[Midnight, April 15 Begins]
4/15/12 -- 12:05 AM Captain Smith gives the order to prepare and launch the lifeboats.
4/15/12 -- 12:15 AM radio calls for help are begun.
4/15/12 -- 12:45 AM emergency signals of rockets begin to be fired, first lifeboat launched.
4/15/12 -- 1:40 AM last emergency signal of rockets fired.
4/15/12 -- 2:05 AM last lifeboat successfully launched.
4/15/12 -- 2:10 AM last radio call for help (power fading aboard the ship due to the flooding/sinking).
4/15/12 -- 2:18 AM power fails aboard the ship.
4/15/12 -- 2:20 AM ship sinks.

The death toll from the sinking of the Titanic has been estimated at 1,157 of the 2,223 people aboard, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters ever, primarily due to complacency about lifeboats. The first part of the reason is because overconfidence lead many to believe that devices such as the watertight compartments of the ship itself would keep her from sinking, the second part of it is due to inexperience actually launching the lifeboats, and the third reason was that the crew was too rushed and inconsistent in getting the lifeboats away in order to be sure of saving somebody -- hence why many of the earlier lifeboats left the ship unfilled and why there were actually rushes upon the last ones. Also, there was the sad fact that the Californian was outright willfully negligent by not responding to her signs of distress -- which Lord suggests was due to the autocracy (meaning he objected to second opinions) and fearfulness of ice possessed by the nearby Californian's own Captain Lord (no relation), as opposed to the open-mindedness and competence possessed by the Carpathia's Captain Rostron and which prompted him to come to the rescue.

Most of the deaths were due to suffering hypothermia in the 31 degree water, which brings me back to the curious case of Charles Joughin. His most visible appearance in the 1997 Titanic movie is during the final sinking of the stern/aft (back) part of the ship, actually starting when the fictional character Rose DeWitt Bukater (the "Heart of the Ocean" diamond she ends up with is fictional as well) looks right at him when she and her fellow fictional character Jack Dawson make it onto the stern.

Joughin was the chief baker of the Titanic and thus first made sure the lifeboats were stocked with four loaves of bread each, then helped launch some lifeboats. He reportedly then paused to take another of what was several alcoholic drinks he took during that night when he became aware the ship was sinking -- up to two bottles worth.

The vital organs within a human body are within the core of the body and what is also called the "trunk" -- meaning from the neck down to the waist, since all appendages (head, arms, and legs) "sprout" out of it. A human body's response to cold is to therefore constrict the blood vessels in the appendages so that less of the body heat in the blood can escape through those appendages and thus so that continues to heat the core of the body so that the vital organs continue to keep one alive -- in short, this is why the hands and feet get cold and go numb first when one encounters cold. A side effect of alcohol is that it dilates the blood vessels (opens them up) so that body heat starts escaping through to the surface of the appendages again so that one starts to feel warmer, but the reality is that one drinks is actually lowering the internal body temperature needed to keep the vital organs functioning via allowing more body heat to escape (the flushed appearance of Scrue after a few responsible drinks within in the second frame of this comic actually illustrates this).

What Joughin did also, however, was to actually start throwing/pushing an estimated 50 chairs out the windows of the promenade of the Titanic to serve as flotation devices. Since this kept him in motion, it caused him to generate more body heat to replace that which he was losing due to the alcohol he ended up drinking. When the bow (front) of the ship began to sink and then pulled the now broken-off stern to perpendicular (straight up) before completely breaking away, he ran to the stern of the ship and ended up walking/climbing up the side of the stern due to how it was being turned by how the bow was breaking away, then finally ending up standing upon the rounded part of the stern (the very back of the ship) where aforementioned fictional character Rose DeWitt Bukater looks right at him in Titanic.

Unlike what was portrayed in Titanic, Joughin said that riding the stern down to the level of the water when it sank was as smooth as an elevator, and he also said he did not even get his head wet. This does not entirely debunk the "suction" that many are worried about when a ship sinks, however -- and that was actually seen in Titanic. Still barely understood, suction in the case of a ship sinking currently seems to be due to air pockets within a ship being forced out due to water pressure as a ship sinks. When these air pockets are forced out they make air bubbles which make the water they travel through at random less dense since air is so much less dense than water, the usual greater density of water being what makes so much able to float upon it. Joughin therefore somehow managed to avoid any of these air pockets entirely, thus why he was able to calmly step of the stern in such a way he kept his head from even getting wet.

Aside from worries about the lifeboats getting sucked under by Titanic, the worry about the lifeboats getting swamped by those in the water trying to get into them was a genuine concern, but it was also weighted too heavily and thus resulted in the deaths of many now in the water but who could have been saved by those aboard the lifeboats -- with the exception of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," who rebuked those on lifeboat 6 enough for it that she ended up taking charge and getting them to row for help towards a never-identified light on the horizon due to the guess it might be another ship which could provide help (the movie omits her taking charge of the lifeboat, however).

The heat escaping from his body from the alcohol he drank and the heat his body was still giving off from throwing out the chairs actually effectively insulated Joughin from freezing to death from the hypothermia that nearly everyone died from that night, although it is also true he managed to swim to Collapsible B -- a lifeboat that had floated off the Titanic upside down due to not enough time to launch it correctly -- where he met his friend, entree chef John Maynard, and some other survivors clinging to the hull. Maynard and the others had actually kept others off in order to avoid the upside down collapsible lifeboat from being swamped entirely, hence Maynard compromised by letting Joughin grip his hand.

Still, the remaining heat Joughin was generating by now wading about in the water was enough to keep him alive to be picked up with the other survivors by the Carpathia between 4:10 AM and 8:30 AM. He would also later survive the later sinking of the ship Oregon in Boston Harbor (Massachusetts, USA), and died at the age of 78 in 1956 as perhaps the quintessential "lucky drunk" -- this because the typical advice today is to not drink alcohol in any way to keep warm, since doing this is more often harmful than helpful.

It is also worth mentioning some discrepancies regarding some other historical characters within Titanic. Captain Edward Smith's death is in dispute as some say he abandoned the ship before the final plunge while others say he met his death by staying within the wheelhouse as it sank underwater. There is controversy over what the bands (Lord notes two bands were aboard the ship) played to help prevent panic as the ship sank and how long they played it. Officer William Murdoch temporarily accepted no bribe from anyone (fictional character Caledon Hockley gives him one in the film) and it is questionable if any officer actually shot anybody for rushing upon a lifeboat and/or committed suicide with a firearm -- the "bribe" bit is an ugly rumor started by the fact that survivor Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon paid the crew of the special boat (it was not actually a lifeboat) he and his wife left on five British pounds each so the crew of the boat could each buy another "kit" for sailing after losing it with the sinking of Titanic along with some other measures of thanks, which was twisted about to say he had bribed them to row away without other survivors.

Finally, it should again be stressed that complacency leading to overconfidence is indeed the best single reason for why the actual tragedy occurred when it did, something that unfortunately tends to recur over and over during history. The sad fact is that even with increasing redundancy to respond to disasters, proper vigilance is still need to ensure one is not being so reckless or dangerous as to increase the chances of a disastrous situation from happening in the first place -- such as trusting the ice can be seen in time and that even should the ship hit the iceberg, it will not be damaged enough to end up sunk.

COTD: What good is following the golden rule if people want to cover it with your own blood?

BAD NEWS: China had a powerful earthquake.

GOOD NEWS: Nadia Bloom was found alive!

HUMOR: Whatever works (Pluggers, by Brookins)!

HISTORY: April 15, 1986: US President Ronald Reagan initiated Operation El Dorado Canyon, which was air strikes against Libya in retaliation for its perceived connection to the April 5, 1986 La Belle Berlin Discotheque Bombing.

Suffice to say that this story begins with the Libyan Revolution of 1969, which enabled Muammar al-Gaddafi to establish a military dictatorship over the country. Although closely aligned with the Capitalist West, since al-Gaddafi's government follows a "Third Theory" of Arab nationalism mixed with Socialism -- that is to say an economic form between Capitalism (private economic ownership of the segments of the economy) and Communism/Socialism (full economic ownership and control of the economy by the government) Libya became estranged from the US during the 1980s.

Here it should be noted that while Capitalism usually results in greater economic growth by empowering local entrepreneurs (people starting small businesses) who better know about local economic wants and needs, it can result in an unfair concentration of political power within business ("wage slavery"). This is the reason why Communism/Socialism has an appeal -- since the government has greater control of economics it supposedly prevents an unfair concentration of political power within business, but often the end result of Communism/Socialism is over-empowering the government utilizing it so that there is an unfair concentration of economic power within the government. To put it another way, one generalization of Communism/Socialism is that it is simply "Capitalism by the State."

al-Gaddafi's following of the Third Theory might therefore appear sensible, but in the environment of the 1947-1991 ideological Cold War between the US-led West and the USSR-led East, Libya's following of the Third Theory appeared to be a flirtation with the USSR since Libya was moving away from the US. Part of the resulting antagonisms between the two was al-Gaddafi claiming much of the Gulf of Sidra -- the big bay or gulf of the Mediterranean Sea that extends into Libya's northern border -- and stating in 1973 that there was a "Line of Death" across the Gulf of Sidra at the limit of Libyan claims which would therefore provoke a military response if it was crossed. This is because Libya claims the Gulf of Sidra as a territorial sea instead of as a costal area, the differing terminology about which was worked out in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The United States maintains Libya has exclusive rights to much less of it since it is only a Libyan costal area, however, thus how the United States maintains the right to conduct operations within what it maintains are international waters within the Gulf of Sidra, and thus to assert freedom of navigation within the Gulf of Sidra. This has resulted in aircraft confrontations between Libya and the United States within the Gulf of Sidra, the first significant one being the 1981 Gulf of Sidra Incident and the second being the 1986 Gulf of Sidra incident -- the first being precipitated when a Libyan aircraft actually fired at American aircraft but missed and the second being precipitated by Libyan aircraft repeatedly approaching and threatening (but not firing upon) American aircraft who were already cleared to open fire if threatened, both incidents resulting in two Libyan aircraft being shot down (there was also an incident prior to the 1981 incident where a missile fired at a US military aircraft missed, but it was not significant since then-US President Jimmy Carter did not authorize any military response to it).

The April 5, 1986 La Belle Berlin Discotheque bombing -- where a bomb was planted under a table by hand, resulting in four deaths and 230 injuries, many of them amongst US servicemen -- was believed to have been Libya's retaliation for the March 24, 1981 Gulf of Sidra incident, plus the 1986Action in the Gulf of Sidra Incident two weeks before the bombing where 35 Libyan servicemen on a patrol boat in the Gulf of Sidra had been killed in another conflict started when Libyan missiles were launched at US forces. This was largely due to the intercept of congratulatory telex (a communications network) communications between Libya and the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin (Germany and Berlin being split due to the Cold War at this time), but the guilt was not clear until in the 2000s Libya agreed to pay a number of compensations for the discotheque bombing and other 1980s terrorist actions that some insist they had connections to, although al-Gaddafi has insisted upon the innocence of the Libyans reportedly involved in those actions. As such, Operation El Dorado Canyon was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 79 to 28 and by consensus around the world, with Operation El Dorado Canyon condemned upon the grounds it violated international law through circumventing UN Charter Article 51's limitations upon use of force for self-defense in the absence of clear evidence of aggression.

In all, 45 Libyan servicemen and officials were killed in the attack upon Libyan military installations, plus fifteen Libyan civilians (some attacks missed their military targets). al-Gaddafi himself was narrowly missed but his fifteen month old adopted daughter and two of his sons were killed (the US later stated that al-Gaddafi himself had not been deliberately targeted despite how his residence at Tripoli was bombed, and lost two servicemen aboard a US aircraft were killed when their aircraft was shot down). Libya retaliated for the attack by firing two missiles at US Coast Guard stations on the Italian island of Lampedusa which missed and increased Libya's aid to terrorist groups, it was maintained al-Gaddafi arranged for the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 on September 5, 1986 in retaliation for the death of his daughter, and he also asserted a revolt he had to put down afterwards was engineered by the US. In addition, Libyan-supported or Libyan-inspired terrorist groups like Hezbollah ended up executing five American and British hostages and kidnapping another in response to Operation El Dorado Canyon -- the link to Hezbollah being important, however, since Hezbollah is actually a Lebanese and not a Libyan organization.

Even prior to Operation El Dorado Canyon, the USSR had grown increasingly estranged from Libya due to al-Gaddafi frequently denouncing them the same way he had denounced the US, which combined with international sanctions placed upon Libya and their aforementioned compensation agreements during the first decade of the 2000s that some reconciliation between the US and Libya has occurred as is evidenced by then-US President George W. Bush granting Libya immunity from claims stemming from reported Libyan links to terrorism in 2008, although Libya-US antagonism over such issues as the "HIV Trial in Libya" (also known as the "Bulgarian Nurses Affair," which maintains the six accused deliberately infected up to 400 children with HIV/AIDS in 1998) took place as late as 2007, and Libya's heroic welcoming back of Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi following his release from life imprisonment upon the compassionate grounds he had terminal cancer -- although al-Gaddafi maintains the innocence of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi -- has prompted some to speculate that the reconciliation was simply because al-Gaddafi was greedy.

As an afterthought, it is also worth noting that the quite tenuous ties of Iraq to the September 11, 2001 attacks -- the supposedly strongest tie being how 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef entered the US on a questionable Iraqi passport in 1992 for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and who in 1994 successfully bombed Philippine Airlines Flight 434 (one death, two injuries, and the aircraft managed to make a safe emergency landing), since Ramzi Yousef's uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed masterminded the September 11 attacks for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda -- appear to have been envisioned by then-US President George W. Bush as being solid proof that the antagonistic nation of Iraq had ties to the September 11 terrorist attack which were as strong as those that the antagonistic Libya had to the various terrorist actions it reportedly sponsored. A key difference being that since Iraq was banned from having WMDs (Weapon of Mass Destruction, such as chemical or nuclear weaponry) as a result of the 1991 Gulf War and since Bush came to assert that Iraq was illegally developing WMDs anyway, it meant that the conservative President Bush could attack Iraq further than the air strikes that the conservative President Reagan had attacked Libya with since this authorized the armed intervention now known at the Iraq War (2003 onwards). The point being that since Bush's emulation of Reagan actually ran afoul since the aforementioned ties to terrorism cited by members of Bush's administration have been increasingly shown to be false instead of true over time, unlike how Libya's ties to terrorism by reportedly sponsoring it appears to have only grown stronger over time.

In short, the Bush administration's linkage of WMDs to Iraq was pure opportunism in order to go to war against Iraq as a result of vested interests in the wake of perceived American weakness following the September 11 attacks, hence why members of Bush's administration such as Dick Cheney, Condolezza Rice, and Karl Rove have stooped to ex post facto (after the fact) rationalizations for the Iraq War such as preventing Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven and preventing Iraq from developing WMDs despite asserting that efforts at both were already in progress or were actually already done. In other words the fact that the United States was condemned for Operation El Dorado Canyon against Libya due to use of force without clear evidence of direct aggression at the time, plus how much of the US conflict with Libya has become resolved with much less in the terms of military conflicts despite the growing evidence of implicit guilt by Libya, is yet another rebuttal against the supposed necessity of the Iraq War which was initiated by US President George W. Bush.

COTD: The best way to make a bridge is from both ends.

BAD NEWS: The death toll from China's earthquake is rising.

GOOD NEWS: US foreclosures dropped again!

HUMOR: Boy, does he know her (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 16, 1943: Swiss scientist Dr. Albert Hofmann accidentally discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamine).

Hofmann was a scientist at the Sandoz Laboratories (later Novartis) at Basel, Switzerland, where he worked on isolating compounds to use as pharmaceuticals (medical drugs). Since the fungus ergot was one of the substances he worked with and since lysergic acid can be produced from ergot, he ended up first synthesizing LSD on November 16, 1938 while researching for pharmaceutical derivatives of lysergic acid that were analeptics (which stimulated breathing and blood circulation). Displeased with the results, Hofmann forgot about it until he decided to take a second look at it by synthesizing more of it on April 16, 1943 (LSD is sensitive to air and light and thus loses its potency easily). Since LSD can be ingested through absorption through the skin, he ended up accidentally absorbing some of it through his fingertips and thus experienced a two hour psychedelic experience.

In short, the psychedelic experience prompted by LSD involves hallucinations with bright colors and a change in mood not unlike that caused by consumption of alcohol, thus how its unique yet not entirely predictable effects allows those who consume it to make radical changes (paradigm shifts) in their thinking. As such it was actually initially seen as a means of combating mental illness and alcoholism, and like other psychedelic drugs was at first even seen by some (most notably the British intellectualAldous Huxley, who is notable for his dystopia Brave New World, which includes use of drugs) as a means of prompting greater creativity.

The first problem with LSD, however, is that its results are not always predictable and that it -- like other psychedelic drugs -- can quite easily lead to LSD addiction and thus abuse. The lack of predictability is why it sometimes causes acute panic, dangerously psychotic (abnormal) mind function, and too-vivid flashbacks which prevent a user from being able to perceive their present reality, as well as abnormally dilating the pupils of the eyes so that those who ingest it become quite sensitive to light. The growing evidence of these problems due to the fact that many had begun to abuse LSD by using it as a "recreational" drug during the 1960s was then why it began to become illegal across the world starting in 1966.

The dangers of LSD are actually again illustrated by an experience Hofmann had -- although he would argue the worth of LSD as a pharmaceutical drug for the rest of his life -- on "Bicycle Day." Bicycle Day was April 19, 1943 when Hofmann intentionally ingested a 250 microgram dose of LSD to further test it, he guessing that 250 micrograms was a threshold dose -- that is, the lowest amount of a drug needed to witness its effects. The actual threshold dose of LSD is only 20 micrograms, however, thus suffice to say that Hofmann overdosed on LSD. Since he performed the experiment at Sandoz Laboratories, when he realized he was in trouble he asked his assistant to escort him home, the two of them making the trip by bicycle since restrictions from World War II prevented them from going by automobile -- this thus giving the name to what the day was later named after. Until his doctor was able to reassure him that he was not somehow poisoned and the dose started to wear off, Hofmann suffered from acute panic, the fear he was going insane and the illogical belief that his next door neighbor was a malevolent witch. Being calmed enabled him to persevere through the overdose until it wore off to the degree he was able to again experience a psychedelic experience not unlike what he had experienced as a result of his first accidental use of LSD, however.

Although it takes 30 to 90 minutes for LSD to take effect after being ingested, the potency of LSD (thus the ability to experience it fully from but a small dose) as revealed by Hofmann's experiments is one of the reasons why it has such appeal. Aside from how it can produce hallucinations such as "hearing colors and seeing sounds" that people find pleasant, also amongst the negatives that Hofmann experienced by overdosing on Bicycle Day are increased blood pressure and heart rate, dizziness, a decrease in appetite, dry mouth, profuse sweating, nausea, numbness, tremors, and unstable emotions. It also does not promote greater creativity, but only alters one's mood so that greater creativity is perceived but not actually accomplished. Also, suffice to say these negatives are often overlooked by those who like the psychedelic experience caused by LSD. Physical tolerance to LSD also arises quickly, and long term effects of LSD use are continuing episodes of psychosis (abnormal mind function) and flashbacks even when one is no longer using LSD.

The first reference to the negative qualities of LSD I ever heard was in the time traveling 1986 film Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home, where the character James Kirk disingenuously explains the seemingly uncomprehending character Mr. Spock was "Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the sixties" and that "I think he did a little too much LDS" in order to avoid a time paradox. The "LDS" being Kirk's erroneous reference to LSD and thus seeming to be a plausible explanation for why Mr. Spock's behavior seemed so abnormal -- it also being pointed out to me that an unintended and thus unfortunate result of the erroneous reference was that it might unintentionally offend members of the "Latter Day Saints" who are more commonly known as the Mormons. Aside from this, in V for Vendetta's original graphic novel/comic book version, the character Eric Finch actually eventually ended up taking LSD to correctly perceive some of the reasons for what the character V was doing, although in the 2005 film version he does not take LSD but recognizes some of what V must be planning due to fatigue resulting from insomnia. Finally, of course, there is the fact I just recently looked up information about MKULTRA for my April 13 entry, which helps explain how in addition to becoming a commonly abused "recreational" drug, LSD also became a drug used to attempt mind control as well, thus taking it quite far away from the pharmaceutical roots (the results of this thus illustrating the truth of the generalization about how "drugs are bad," for instance) that Dr. Albert Hofmann envisioned for it after first experiencing it on this date in 1943.

COTD: Have you ever been liberated before?

BAD NEWS: A man tortured his girlfriend's 4 year old son to death for wetting his pants.

GOOD NEWS: A man got USD $31,600 for his old video game!

HUMOR: It worked too well (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: April 17, 1961: Forces are landed in Cuba for the US CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion, a failed attempt to overthrow Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

It is better to focus upon the Bay of Pigs invasion in the greater context of the Cold War, given that it was one of the many crises that occurred between the US-led NATO and the USSR-led Warsaw Pact. The term "Cold War" was actually coined by George Orwell to refer to a world threatened by a possible nuclear (thus highly destructive) war between the US and USSR following World War II, after which it became expanded to also refer to any of the ideological conflicts between the two sides.

Fortunately many of the conflicts were antagonistic arguments between the two sides, but on occasion those conflicts escalated into more significant conflicts, including "hot wars" -- the term derived from the "Cold War" term -- which were armed conflicts between opposing countries supported by the US or USSR in such a way that US and USSR forces never directly fought each other, although some argue that the Cold War started as early as 1917 with the Bolshevik Communists taking over Russia (later the USSR), especially since this included Allied troops from World War I directly assisting the White Army which unsuccessfully opposed the Communist Red Army during the 1917-1923 Russian Civil War. Consensus, however, places this the first of the precedents for the Cold War, the start of which is usually dated to February 27, 1947 with US President Harry Truman setting the precedent of the Truman Doctrine to stop the spread of the economically Communist governments (meaning which completely controlled their various countries' economies, thus how there were no rights to the private ownership of business known as economic Capitalism) that the USSR was propping up to both act as buffer states against invasion for the USSR (it having suffered European invasions from Napoleonic France around 1812 and Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers around 1941, for instance) and because of their ideological belief in Communism.

Interestingly enough, what prompted Truman to begin the Truman Doctrine was the fact that the United Kingdom had vested cultural interests in supporting the government of the Greek Monarchy in its fight against Communist forces in the 1946-1949 Greek Civil War following World War II, but due to the effects of World War II (1939-1945) became unable to afford to continuing this support, thus why the US took over applying that support in Greece and also throughout the rest of the World via the Truman Doctrine. Here too it is important to note in addition to economic Communism not working as well as economic Capitalism (as was evidenced by Communism collapsing across Europe during the 1989 Autumn of Nations), Communism is typically used by countries with totalitarian as opposed to more representative democratic governments, hence why those who employ it are typically ruthless and brutal in the methods they employ (see for instance The Black Book of Communism). In short, containing Communism to prevent the spread of ruthless and brutal governments (including that of Fidel Castro) was a good thing -- although a counter argument can be made that the US sometimes ended up propping up its own ruthless and brutal governments to counter Communism, such as the Chilean government under Augusto Pinochet which supplanted the economically Communist government of Salvador Allende -- but once the Truman Doctrine was passed in order to resolve the fact that Communism had to be contained, it then lead to an escalation of conflicts such as the aforementioned Bay of Pigs Invasion which mark the Cold War proper.

As such, the Bay of Pigs invasion is but one of a series of conflicts which happened during the Cold War, thus marking it with episodes of international conflicts in addition to the aforementioned ideological conflicts. Those international conflicts include the following:

(1) June 24, 1948 to May 12, 1949 Berlin Blockade -- the encircled city of Berlin, Germany was airlifted supplies to prevent war but to also keep it from being taken over by the USSR.

(2) June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953 Korean War -- proxy war which kept Korea from being united under either the economically Communist North Korean or the South Korean government.

(3) June 4, 1961 to November 9, 1961 Berlin Crisis -- the stalemate over the encircled city of Berlin resulted in it being divided into East and West Berlin by the Berlin Wall in order to prevent a war.

(4) September 26, 1959 to April 30, 1975 Vietnam War -- proxy war over which lead to Vietnam being united under the economically Communist North Vietnamese government, Cambodia and Laos also taken over by economically Communist governments (arguably an overall long term US victory since it drained the weaker economic system followed by Communism, but commonly seen as a waste due to Vietnam being too far removed from US interests to have warranted such a strong US response).

(5) May 1, 1960 U-2 Incident -- an internationally illegal US spyplane flight over the USSR is shot down, the flights being made to monitor USSR nuclear capacity due to the possibility of a nuclear war (internationally legal spy satellites succeed the spy aircraft afterwards, due to airspace not extending into outer space).

(6) April 17, 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion -- US fails in an attempt to overthrow the economically Communist government of Cuba. This leads to the following Cuban Missile Crisis.

(7) October 14, 1962 to October 28, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis -- USSR withdraws nuclear warheads placed in Cuba following the Bay of Pigs invasion to protect it from US intrusion in return for a no-invasion pledge and the withdrawal of US nuclear warheads the US had placed in Turkey.

(8) December 27, 1979 to February 15, 1989 Soviet War in Afghanistan -- USSR attempt to prop up an economically Communist government in Afghanistan through military intervention fails. The attempt was prompted by US President Carter's success in reconciling Israel and Egypt over control of Palestine via the Camp David Accords, preventing the USSR from taking advantage of that conflict to further divide US attention upon international affairs.

(9) September 1, 1983 Korean Air Flight 007, a commercial airline flight, was shot down after twice straying into southeastern USSR airspace due to fears it was a US spy flight. This was due to declining relations with the US due to President Reagan's initial confrontational aggressiveness towards Communists, prompting the USSR to perceive any questionable activity as a portent of an impending war. This then prompted the following Able Archer 83 exercise.

(10) November 2, 1983 to November 11, 1983 Able Archer 83 Exercises -- USSR mistook a NATO simulated nuclear exercise in response to the shootdown of Korean Air Flight 007 as actual preparations for a nuclear first strike and considered preempting it by launching a nuclear first strike of their own.

Returning to the Bay of Pigs invasion, given the proximity of Cuba to the US state of Florida (only around 90 miles) it was a figurative thorn in the side (a minor yet still quite irritating problem) to the US government, particularly due to how this essentially gave the USSR a way to get close to the US since it backed Cuba -- due to anticipations of events such as those seen during the Cuban Missile Crisis which followed it, ironically enough. The CIA was also confident it could engineer the overthrow of Cuban dictator Castro since it had already quietly and successfully overthrown the government of Guatemala in 1954 since it was deemed to have been Communist, hence its confidence lead then-US President Dwight Eisenhower to authorize a similar effort at overthrowing Cuban dictator Castro since he had declared his government to be economically Communist. The attempt was actually made after John Kennedy had become President and had authorized the continuation of the plans begun under Eisenhower (Eisenhower having completed his legal two terms in office by 1961) and the armies that were landed were made up mostly of Cuban exiles. The secret of the impending invasion was poorly kept and easily detected, plus the invasion itself was so poorly executed it was essentially crushed by April 19. Part of the reason for the poor execution of the invasion is that invasions such as these are internationally illegal (see crimes against peace and war of aggression), hence why Cuban exiles were used -- to give the appearance it was not an external American effort but instead that it was an internal effort being waged by the remnants of those who still opposed Castro within Cuba. The consensus about why the invasion went on despite it being both glaringly obvious and illegal was because of the flaw of groupthink amongst the US CIA at the time -- where objectivity and rationalism is set aside to prevent conflict between the members of a group so that it remains united, the key problem with which is that the members of a group may retain the virtue of being united in their decisions but their unanimous decisions have the fallacy of being incorrect and poorly implemented due to the overconfidence that can result from unity in making decisions (more recently, groupthink was found to have been a contributing factor as to why the Iraq War was started in 2003).

The most important fact to remember about conflicts of the Cold War such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, however, is to remember they are all connected and thus are not the isolated incidents they often seem to be. The Bay of Pigs invasion was lead into by attempts at containment which preceded it and directly lead into the Cuban Missile Crisis in response to those attempts at containment which succeeded it, thus how the possibility of nuclear warfare between the US and USSR was present during all conflicts which took place during the Cold War (indeed, Orwell coined the term due to foreseeing this). What has helped prevent this is the knowledge of MAD -- Mutually Assured Destruction -- since even the most conservative predictions of deaths from a nuclear war range into hundreds of millions of deaths on both sides, with the more liberal predictions of deaths predicting it as essentially ensuring a doomsday event which at the least would result in the near-extinction of humans plus irreversible, permanent damage to the entire biosphere, ecosphere, and climate of the Earth. The point being that it is largely accepted that while victory in a nuclear war would be possible, the devastation would be such that such a victory would definitely be a Pyrrhic victory due to it coming at such a great cost to the victor. However, even a Pyrrhic victory is seen as better than a complete loss -- this perhaps best illustrated by how within the movie of Dr. Strangelove how US General Buck Turgidson argues for following up after an illegal first nuclear strike upon the USSR since it will slightly reduce the numbers of US millions that are killed.

Plus of course there is the fact that the US and USSR have actually been close to nuclear war a greater number of times than the above expansion off of the Bay of Pigs Invasion reveals, since this figuratively only "scratches the surface" about the number of times the temptation of nuclear warfare in order to achieve that Pyrrhic victory has presented itself. But suffice to say for now that the effects of the Bay of Pigs Invasion on this date in 1961 went far, far beyond the small number of days that actually enacting the failed invasion during the month of April ever took.

COTD: It is not that I am unplugged, but rather that I am unmiked.

BAD NEWS: Deaths from the Chinese Yushu earthquake are now at 1,100.

GOOD NEWS: A farmer found a metorite fragment!

HUMOR: Answer provided (Dilbert, by Adams)!

HISTORY: April 18, 1949: The keel of the first new US Navy aircraft carrier of the "Supercarrier" class, the United States, was laid down. Its cancellation five days later (April 23) then leads to the Revolt of the Admirals.

The keel of a ship is the foundation upon which the rest of a ship is built, hence why "laying down the keel" is seen as a significant undertaking (the keelhauling now associated with piracy was a cruel punishment which involved dragging a sailor under the keel so that he was cut up by the marine growth there). The start of the "Revolt of the Admirals" begins before the keel of the United States was laid down, however, as in 1947 the US Army Air Force was separated from the US Army to become an independent US Air Force (see History of the US Air Force) due to the growing recognition of the significance of air power during times of war. In short, the Army is for land, the Navy is for water, the Air Force is for the skies, and the Marines are for amphibious operations going between land and water -- although it should be noted some of their functions overlap each other and thus why the Navy still has aircraft, for instance.

Hindsight is often quite perceptive, but I still cannot feel a little irony about the following given what I just mentioned about nuclear weapons in connection with the preceding Bay of Pigs invasion: the admirals of the newly-formed US Air Force began arguing that strategic bombing which destroyed the economic capacity of a country would be the key to winning future wars and that a new fleet of heavy bomber aircraft should be built in order to accommodate this -- the strategic bombing carried out by these aircraft including the use of nuclear weapons in particular. The US Navy disagreed with this, citing the precedent of how the aircraft carriers of the US Navy had lead to US dominance over Japan during World War II (1939-1945) and declaring that attacking even enemy civilian economic centers was immoral.

The result was the United States and the new supercarrier class of aircraft carriers, which therefore were for the US Navy but which could carry heavy bombers which could use nuclear weapons. Part of the reason the Navy won the argument was because the first Secretary of the US Department of Defense -- the overall Department of Defense for all US Armed Forces being created in 1947 -- was James Forrestal, a former Secretary of the Navy. When he retired due to health problems on March 28, 1949, he was replaced by the Air Force-supporting Louis A. Johnson.

One can already see where this is leading: Johnson then canceled the United States on April 23 and announced he would be merging the aviation assets of the Marines into the Air Force. Objections from the US Congress prompted Johnson to drop the second part of his plan, and the US Navy began gathering material critical of the proposed B-36 Peacemaker bomber in order to block the US Air Force from getting it with any of the leftover funds resulting from the cancellation of the United States.

The reason the event is called the "Revolt of the Admirals" is because a number of Navy Admirals resigned in protest -- as did the Secretary of the Navy, John Sullivan -- or were forced into resigning, or else ended up being fired due to protesting Johnson's decision, as did a number of other officials, most of them in the Navy, who were involved in the conflict. In the end, the Congressional House Committee on Armed Services which oversees the Department of Defense essentially decided that Johnson overstepped himself by attempting too much unification within the new Department of Defense too quickly, and also that the Air Force and the Navy had vested interests due to being essentially in a competition with each other for as much of the US national defense budget as they could get due to the budget still being drawn down following the high spending which had been necessary for the US to win World War II.

Returning to the issue of using nuclear weapons, as well as using strategic bombing, what resolved that conflict was the 1950-1953 Korean War. Instead of using nuclear weapons (although US Army General Douglas MacArthur would argue unsuccessfully for their use during the war) or using strategic bombing (including bombing with conventional, non-nuclear warheads), the precedent of using conventional ground forces, conventional naval gunfire, and conventional amphibious assaults was followed instead. As well, the World War II precedent of using aircraft carriers for naval support was followed as well, thus how the new Forrestal class of aircraft carriers began to be built for the US Navy at that time, thus supplanting the aborted supercarrier class that the United States had intended to be the first of eight ships of -- "supercarrier" still being maintained as the unofficial name for the largest ships of the US Navy, the Forrestal class notably carrying conventional instead of nuclear weaponry as was envisioned for the original Supercarrier class, however.

As well, the use of strategic bombing to destroy the economic capacity of an enemy nation such as the firebombing practiced during World War II -- it actually also being the reasoning that was behind using nuclear warheads on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II -- has remained in limited use, although detractors refer to it as"terror bombing" due to noting that in addition to destroying economic capacity it has the capacity to kill large numbers of innocent civilians, the waves of continual innocent deaths coming about from that destruction thus destroying civilian morale and thus further pressuring the enemy government to surrender so that at least some of their civilians will be left.

The point here being that given how any victory in a war involving use of nuclear weapons would indeed be a Pyrrhic victory (as mentioned in connection with the Bay of Pigs Invasion), it is a good thing that strategic bombing using nuclear weapons as the US Air Force was advocating during the "Revolt of the Admirals" never came about. Plus, as is alluded to in such works as Grave of the Fireflies, even conventional strategic bombing can be deadly enough.

Also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbEyjUsWKZA.

COTD: Please get me the police. I'm being murdered.

BAD NEWS: Pakistan had a suicide car bombing.

GOOD NEWS: Charles the cat found his way home!

HUMOR: Bridget's right (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 19, 1775: The Battles of Lexington and Concord start the American Revolutionary War/the American War of Independence.

Although the Battles of Lexington and Concord officially started the war, events following the end of the French and Indian War/the Seven Year's War by 1763, which left the British in control of much of former French territory in North America (what is now the Eastern United States and Eastern Canada, up to about the Mississippi River) but which left the British with huge war debts they tried to pay by raising new taxes upon the American colonies which were unrepresented (other than by "virtual representation") within the British Parliament had been resulting in growing antagonism for years, including violent episodes such as the January 17, 1770 Battle of Golden Hill (bruises, bayonet wounds, and one death), the March 5, 1770 Boston Massacre (five deaths and eleven injuries), the June 9, 1772 Gaspee Affair (one British officer wounded, customs ship used to collect taxes burned to the waterline), and the October 19, 1774 Peggy Stewart Affair (merchant ship burned to the waterline for attempting to circumvent the American boycott of British tea, which was used to collect British taxes despite lack of Parliamentary representation). In addition to this there were events such as the Powder Alarms which started on September 1, 1774, where the British began seizing gunpowder from magazines due to rumors of war prompting the fear that the American colonists might use that gunpowder to supply themselves for open rebellion.

The Powder Alarms prompted American patriots to revive a system of "alarm and muster" that had been used until the French and Indian War/the Seven Year's War in order to keep the British from seizing supplies before they could be used by the Americans. This is where Paul Revere's Midnight Ride comes in, as well as the "one if by land, two if by sea" signal of using lanterns hung in the steeple of the Old North Church of Boston, Massachusetts. Here it should be noted that quite a number of creative liberties were retroactively added to all these events by patriots as well -- Revere was actually soon captured, actually made his ride with two friends who ended up doing more warning than he did, and never was so obvious as to race through towns shouting "the British are coming!" -- but the reason why the British were indeed coming starting at around 9:00 PM on the night of April 18-19 was in order to seize a stock of weapons, powder, and supplies that were being gathered at Concord, Massachusetts, by colonial militia. British disorganization resulted in them being late, losing the element of surprise, and allowed the American militia to be waiting for them when they came across the sea and then began to make their march past Lexington in order to make it to Concord.

To this day, no one is certain who fired first (varying accounts are given) when the British first encountered American militia at Lexington at around 5:00 AM. Neither side wanted to give the appearance of being the aggressor, and a standoff appears to have ensued with the British demanding the American militia to disperse but the militia proving to be reluctant to do so. Witnesses later reported hearing scattered shots from both sides before the British troops began firing volleys of shots into the militia to defend themselves and then who initiated a bayonet charge without being ordered to so do. The result was a British victory with only one British death to the eight militiamen killed before the militia broke ranks and retreated, with ten additional militiamen wounded (no British were wounded).

From the American perspective, therefore, the British had begun the war due to their clear aggression at Lexington. They continued on their mission to seize the weapons, powder, and supplies at Concord, but reports of the Battle of Lexington prompted militia from towns further west to start gathering at Concord in order to oppose the British. The militiamen of both the city of Concord and the nearby town of Lincoln originally wanted to defend the town itself but were outnumbered by about 500, but their retreat to the North Bridge about a mile north of the town -- thus allowing them to observe the British -- was fortuitous since it gave them both high ground to fight from and space within which they could better join together with the militias coming in from further west. The end result was that when the militia began to attempt to push a 90-95 light infantry British force out of the town from near the bridge that had erroneously formed up for street firing down narrow areas despite being in the open space beyond the bridge -- the militias now numbering 400 and consisting of militiamen from Acton, Concord, Bedford, and Lincoln -- a likely tired and inexperienced British soldier fired a warning shot that prompted two more British soldiers to fire, then the British infantry fired a volley that was answered by a volley from the militias.

The British light infantry could see it was overmatched and thus was too fearful to follow up with another volley, thus it retreated from the area. The militias were also reluctant to continue firing -- as was later explained, the consensus of both sides was that neither would actually go beyond posturing with their weapons and thus that neither would actually open fire on each other -- and thus stopped despite being ordered to continue firing after the first volley, thus allowing the British to retreat but to maintain control of the town of Concord, which they searched for the aforementioned supplies while overlooked at a distance by the militias in their defensive positions at the North Bridge. The result of the battle was therefore an American victory with two American deaths and four wounded, with three British killed and thirteen wounded. Still, the British actually took until after noon to finally leave from the town, thus actually allowing the American militias to send word of their version of events all the way back along the route back to Boston. In short, American militias were prompted to thus harass and attack the retreating British all the way back to Boston (exact numbers of killed and wounded from both sides here are more uncertain), turning their retreat into a rout which saw numbers as high as 4,000 militiamen to the 500 number British forces, and by the morning of April 20 the British in Boston found themselves surrounded by a force of 15,000 militiamen from across the New England area -- thus starting the Siege of Boston -- many of which would form the core of the new "Continental Army" which was the regular American Army during the American Revolutionary War/the American War of Independence. It was true that the American patriot politicians (or rebel leaders, if one supported the British) manipulated the accounts of what happened in order to more fully justify the account as the start of a just defensive war, but above all else the explicit fact that British and American army forces had fired upon each other meant that a war had truly begun -- the war itself momentous for being the first time a war would fought against European imperialism by American colonial powers.

It is also worthwhile to note the song "Yankee Doodle" made an appearance during the British retreat. "Yankee" came to mean English inhabitants of what is now the New England (northeastern) part of the United States due to it being a word with obscure Native American and/or Dutch origins (both cultures supplanted by the American culture within New England), with "Doodle" being derived from the low German word "dudel/dodel," meaning "fool/simpleton." The "Macaroni" (capital M) now referred to in the song (which varied over time) was actually an extremely fashionable wig during the 1770s, thus the taunt was that the uncultured, colonial Americans would claim sticking a single feather in a cap made the cap as fashionable as a Macaroni wig. Troops of the British Earl Percy played the tune of Yankee Doodle to mock the Americans when they marched from Boston to rescue the trapped forces of the British General Gage during the retreat, the irony of which was that the Americans then quickly co-opted the mocking song into a patriotic American one, in order to project it back at the British, during the course of the war that then followed.

COTD: Call me the OB unit, would you?

BAD NEWS: The Space Shuttle Discovery cannot land yet.

GOOD NEWS: The British are sending their Navy to pick stranded travelers up!

HUMOR: Nothing that's somehow something (Precocious, by Paulsen)!

HISTORY: April 20, 1792: The French Revolutionary Wars began when France declared war on Austria to gain access to the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium).

The French Revolution of 1789 preceded the French Revolutionary Wars in that previous French wars had impoverished the nation due to wartime debts, and because the country began to suffer famine due to climate problems and the failure of the French to adopt the hardy staple crop of the potato. This lead to the end of the first French Monarchy and the start of a chaotic process (much more so than that experienced during the American Revolution, although similar types of chaos were experienced during the American Revolutionary War as well) by which a democratic French Republic was formed. Since many countries of Europe were ruled by their own monarchies, the monarchs aligned with each other -- both in order to protect their governments by containing the revolutionary fervor of the French within France, as is shown by the Declaration of Pillnitz.

Part of the aforementioned chaos was mass executions of opponents or of probable opponents -- not all of them nobles who had enjoyed special privileges under the monarchy via the guillotine, which was also used to execute King Louis VXI and his wife Queen Marie Antoinette despite attempts of the other European powers to restore the French king and queen. The reason the French were interested in the Austrian Netherlands was because its proximity to France prompted many French nobles to flee there following 1789, thus why this following the executions of Louis VXI and Marie Antoinette -- both of them being executed for what the French Republic termed to be "treason" -- prompted the start of the French Revolutionary Wars.

The French were actually successful in the various coalitions that fought against it after severe losses at first, due to use of a new "Levee en masse" form of mass conscription to raise armies faster than her opponents could, although they would come to emulate it later in order to fight the French, plus a brutal "reign of terror" to suppress dissent within the country -- including some civil war -- and to keep it united against external threats.

It was within the context of the French Revolutionary Wars that Napoleon Bonaparte became distinguished through his military success, thus why his military success allowed him to end up taking political control of France in 1799. The reason why these "French Revolutionary Wars" then become the "Napoleonic Wars" in 1802 was because the French and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Amiens on March 25, 1802, which stopped the war until May 18, 1803 since France was exhausted and the United Kingdom was the only serious French opponent that was left. This was the longest peacetime break in the 23 years and seven months of European-linked fighting that followed the French declaring war on the Austrian Netherlands on this date in 1792 and also offered the chance to recognize how what was now Napoleon's France now had effective control of continental Europe, thus why the subsequent fighting was known as the "Napoleonic Wars" -- although sometimes the entire 23+ years of flighting is gathered together under the term of the "Great French War."

Whatever one wants to call it, the final end to the 23+ year long conflict came when Napoleon Bonaparte was decisively defeated at Waterloo and forced to abdicate his rule over what was now Imperial France for the second and final time.

COTD: They eat more than they can live.

BAD NEWS: A ten year old is pregnant.

GOOD NEWS: Some flights have been allowed to resume!

HUMOR: Nothing Too much of a generalization (Stone Soup, by Eliot)!

HISTORY: April 21, 1918: The German fighter ace Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen ("The Red Baron") was shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme, France, during World War I (1914-1948).

Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on May 2, 1892 as the firstborn son (a daughter named Ilse was born before him) of German army Major Albrecht Freiherr [Baron] von Richthofen and Kunigunde von Richthofen. The name of "Richthofen" had been bestowed to their family line by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I as a way of honoring their service to the Empire, and the name means "court of judgment."

Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen had been one of the first Richthofens to try a military career, and it so pleased him that he decided that all his sons would also become career military officers, which they did. Hence at age eleven, Manfred entered the Wahlstatt cadet school in Berlin. However, he disliked the school's rigid discipline and thereby received poor grades except in the subjects he enjoyed, which were athletics and gymnastics. After six years and despite his poor grades, Manfred graduated to the Senior Cadet
Academy at Lichterfelde and found it more enjoyable, hence his grades improved. After the final completion of his military courses at the Berlin War Academy, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen then joined the cavalry in order to do scouting (on horseback) for the German army.

In 1911, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen received his first commission, and by 1912 he was promoted to Leutnant (Lieutenant) and was stationed in Militsch (now Milicz, Poland). Therefore, by August 1914 found himself involved with the German army in World War I. Given the main push of the Germans was to the west through Belgium and into France, Richthofen's cavalry unit was attached to an infantry unit in order to do their reconnaissance. However, the German advance into France was soon halted and both sides began to learn the lessons that had been illustrated with the first "modern" war, which had been the US Civil War of 1861 to 1865. Namely that weapons were now more accurate over longer distances, thus trenches had to be dug and a new "trench warfare" developed in order to avoid even more catastrophic losses. This meant that cavalry had become obsolete, thus Richthofen was transferred to the Signal Corps to lay telephone wires and to deliver dispatches, duties which frustrated him.

He was, however, aware that airplanes were becoming the new cavalry. To go through pilot school would take months of time, something that Richthofen did not want to do (and which was possible he would not be granted permission to do) because it would keep him away from fighting for his homeland on the front. Therefore, by May 1915 he had requested and was given a transfer to the Fliegertruppe (Air Service), the training period of which at the number seven Air Replacement Station was much shorter.

Inauspiciously, Richthofen's first time up in a plane was rather tragic -- he was disturbed by the propwash of the propeller (combat planes at this time all had open cockpits), he also found it too loud to communicate with the pilot easily, he took out a piece of paper to mark on but it blew away, his flying helmet was blown off, and his jacket nearly got blown off of him because it was not buttoned securely enough. Once in the air, he also quickly lost sense of direction and was unable to give the pilot any directions.
Even so, he continued to study in order to learn how to read maps, drop bombs, locate enemy troops, and to draw pictures while observing from an open cockpit.

Richthofen eventually passed his observer training and was assigned to the Eastern front that Germany had with Russia. Then after several months he was sent back to the Western front to report to the "Mail Pigeon Detachment," which was the code name for a new unit that the army (no separate air force yet) ambitiously hoped would one day be able to fly over and bomb England.

On September 1, 1915, Richthofen was observing while being flown by pilot Leutnant Osteroth, when he spotted an enemy aircraft in the air. Fighting had begun spreading to the air between planes with hand weapons, hence Richthofen took out their rifle and fired several times, but failed to shoot down or force the enemy plane to land. A few days later, the pair encountered a French plane, and this time Richthofen had a machine gun. He kept firing at the enemy plane until the gun jammed, then frantically unjammed it and resumed firing, eventually managing to shoot down the plane. However, it did not count according to German military procedure because it had been shot down behind enemy lines and therefore not witnessed except by those involved.

On October 1, 1915, Richthofen found himself on a train for Metz with the noted German pilot Leutnant Oswald Boelcke, who would eventually be credited with shooting down 40 enemy planes. Thinking there must be some sort of talent one must learn to shoot down planes so readily, Richthofen asked Boelcke how he did it, at which Boelcke laughed and said "Good heavens, it indeed is quite simple. I fly in as close as I can, take good aim, shoot, and then he falls down."

A little frustrated at the evasive and vague answer, Richthofen instead thought things through. Instead of trying to apply Boelcke's advice, he decided a large part of it was due to the new Fokker Eindecker single seated biplane that Boelcke flew, because it was easier to shoot from. As well, they were the planes which most often engaged enemy planes over the German lines. But to get a Fokker Eindecker, Richthofen would need to be accredited a pilot himself. Therefore, he asked his friend Zeumer to teach him how to fly.

After a very quick series of lessons, Richthofen's friend Zeumer let Richthofen make his first solo flight on October 10, 1915. Richthofen was nervous until he got into the air, and did all right until he tried to land -- at which he crashed his plane, but survived the crash relatively unhurt. After much more learning, he finally passed all three of the fighter pilot examinations, and on December 25, 1915 he received his best Christmas present ever -- his pilot's certificate.

Over the next several weeks, Richthofen flew with the 2nd Fighting Squadron near Verdun in France, engaged many enemy planes and shot a French one down, although he was not credited with the kill because it was over enemy lines. Then, the whole 2nd Fighting Squadron was sent to the Eastern Front in order to drop bombs on Russian forces.

Richthofen could have lapsed into obscurity at that point, save for the famed German pilot Oswald Boelcke. On a 1916 return trip from Turkey -- who fought on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I -- he visited his brother Wilhelm Boelcke, who happened to be Richthofen's commanding officer. He was also wanting to gather talent in order to join his new Jagdstaffel 2 -- his "Hunting Squadron 2," which was sometimes abbreviated "Jasta" -- that was based in Lagnicourt, France. Thus by September 8, 1916, Richthofen found himself with several other pilots back on the Western front.

On September 17, Richthofen made his first official kill by shooting down an English plane. He landed next to it and took souvenirs from it, as well as ordering a two-inch silver cup from a jeweler in Berlin on which was engraved "1 VICKERS 2 17.9.16," the first number being the official kill number, the name the type of airplane, the second number being the number of crew aboard, and the remaining numbers being the date of the kill in day, month, and year sequence.

This was a precedent he would follow with later kills, and he would order a trophy twice as large for every tenth kill he made, though he eventually decided to cease trophy collecting after his 60th kill since the jeweler told him metal shortages in Germany would have forced the 61st trophy he to be made of a substitute ersatz metal instead of silver. For while he struggled at first to learn the skills of being a fighter pilot, once he had them understood he became incredibly skilled with them.

On October 28, 1916, an accident occurred which was partially the result of a flaw in the biplane (front double wings) design. While trying to evade an enemy plane, Oswald Boelcke's and Leutnant Erwin Bohme's plane's grazed each other. Bohme recovered, but Boelcke lost control and plummeted toward the ground. He tried to regain control, but one of his biplane's wings broke off, causing a complete loss of control which contributed to the crash of the plane, killing Boelcke on impact. Germany suddenly lacked a hero pilot.

Richthofen continued to make kills, and though frustrated at not receiving the Pour le Merite, the "Blue Max" award equivalent of becoming an ace at nine kills, he continued to make kills until he achieved it at the new minimum of sixteen official kills on January 12, 1917. Now given command of the Jagdstaffel 11 squadron, he decided to follow the precedent of painting his plane to distinguish it from a distance -- which was done to ensure credit for their kills, and also to be distinctive enough to one's own side in order not to get shot at.

Richthofen knew that it was hard to see just one particular painted part of a plane in battle, which was what pilots had done up to then. He also knew that his idol Boelcke had painted the nose of his plane red, and that red had been one of the colors of the Uhlan cavalry regiment to which he had once been assigned. Therefore, decided to paint his biplane red -- not just part of it, but all of it. This was something no one had the audacity to do before, but Richthofen was such a talented pilot by now that no one challenged it. His squadron respected his decision, and began to add red coloring to their own planes as well in order to show solidarity. Later on, some British planes painted the noses of their planes red to note that their intention to shoot down Richthofen, who had become so talented a pilot that he would make 80 official kills of enemy planes.

Richthofen's skills turned him into a hero in German propaganda, which dubbed him "Der Rote Kampfflieger," which means "the Red Battle Flier." The French therefore called him "Le Petit Rouge" and "Le Diable Rouge," which respectively means "the Little Red" and "the Red Devil." The English and Americans had their own names for him: "the Red Devil," "the Red Falcon," "the Bloody Baron," and "the Jolly Red Baron." This last name was contracted into the name most often remembered to English-American history about Albrecht Freiherr [Baron] von Richthofen: "the Red Baron."

On January 24, 1917, the lower wing of Richthofen's biplane broke off while in flight, yet Richthofen survived without serious injury. On March 9 of that year he was actually shot down, but survived so unhurt that he was flying again the very same day. On April 7 of the "Bloody April" of 1917 -- named so due to the prowess of Richthofen and the superior numbers of German planes in the air -- he was promoted to Rittmeister (Cavalry Captain), thus when a lower wing of another German biplane in his squadron broke off and he wrote an angry letter to Berlin about the design flaw, German aircraft designer Anthony Fokker himself actually came out to the trenches to observe the German biplanes in action. This lead to the development of the German Fokker Triplane by August of 1917, in imitation of the English Sopwith Triplane that Fokker also saw engaged in battle, a plane which Richthofen would fly after then for the rest of the war and which is therefore the plane he is most remembered for, despite the fact he spent most of his career in biplanes.

On April 29 of Bloody April, Richthofen shot down four planes in one day, his personal best. After the month was over, England alone had lost 912 pilots and observers, and Richthofen himself had shot down 21 English and French planes in that month. After Richthofen eclipsed his mentor, Oswald Boelcke, by making his 41st kill, German command ordered him on leave to put him on propaganda tours, which he did until June of that year. For with his 41st kill he had become the greatest World War I fighter pilot -- indeed, the greatest fighter pilot of all time -- and therefore a great promoter of German morale. Which is not bad at all, especially in light of his disastrous starts as an observer and as a pilot.

German command changed the structure of their air squadrons on June 24, 1917, combining Jagdstaffels 4, 6, 10, and 11 into the Jagdegeschwader 1 ("Fighter Wing 1") which was put under the command of Richthofen. Later renamed the Jagdegeschwader Frieherr von Richthofen ("Fighter Wing of Baron von Richthofen") in his honor, it was also commonly called the flying circus, and was often abbreviated as the J.G. 1. However, in early July of that year, Richthofen was wounded.

While pursuing several enemy planes, a bullet hit Richthofen in the side of the head. Although it did not kill him, the bullet temporarily paralyzed him and blinded him, thus his plane began to plummet toward the ground. At about 2,600 feet he managed to regain part of his mobility and part of his eyesight, thus he was able to safely land his triplane. However, the wound in his head kept him out of action until mid-August of that year, and a lingering effect he suffered from the wound was frequent terrible headaches.

German command feared what the loss of Der Rote Kampfflieger Richthofen would mean to German morale, hence they prohibited him from flying unless absolutely necessary -- "absolutely necessary" being a clause that Richthofen stubbornly interpreted as liberally as possible in order to keep flying and fighting for his country. In any event, by late 1917 with America entering World War I on the side of the English, French and Italians, German command realized that they had to let their most talented fighter pilot Richthofen fly full time in order to have any hope of holding out against increasing unfavorable odds in order to win the war. Thus they soon gave him official permission to do so.

Conditions worsened as the war continued into 1918, and Richthofen stubbornly continued to fly despite becoming fatalistically sullen and depressed about the fact that it was apparent Germany was losing the war, a depression that caused some to urge him to retire from flying -- especially since now English and French planes were in the majority, with dwindling supplies and the death of pilots reducing the numbers of German planes in the sky.

On April 21 at 10:30 AM local time, one day after Richthofen had made his 80th kill, there was a report that several English aircraft were present near the front. Therefore, Richthofen took a squadron of his planes up to confront them. In the ensuing battle, English Second Lieutenant Wilfred "Wop" May -- who was on his first combat fight -- was ordered out of the fight by his old friend and superior officer Captain Arthur "Roy" Brown in order for him to observe the tactics used and also so that he was not shot down without a chance to learn. Lieutenant May followed orders but then could not resist and joined in the battle, firing his machine guns until they jammed, then breaking off and flying off for home.

Richthofen saw May, and followed him.

Lieutenant May saw the bright red plane behind him and panicked. Here he was on his first combat flight and the Red Baron himself was after him! He flew erratically and in unorthodox patterns deeper into the English lines, somehow managing to avoid being shot down by Richthofen.

Captain Brown had seen Richthofen go after Lieutenant May, thus he went after Richthofen to save him, a fact that Richthofen seems not to have discerned or that he thought he could ignore or evade while shooting down May. He also appears to have thought that he was not yet falling into a trap of being a fighter pilot he had written about and which had been adopted as a warning by the entire German Air Service, namely that "one should never obstinately stay with an opponent which, though bad shooting or skillful turning, he has been unable to shoot down while the battle lasts until it is far on the other side." It is suggested he made the errors he did during his last dogfight due to brain damage (possibly the actual cause of his depression) and target fixation -- focusing too much on his target instead of on what was around him.

May tried flying as low as treetop level over the Morlancourt Ridge, but Richthofen anticipated the move and started to cut May off. By now Captain Brown was close enough to begin firing on Richthofen, and AZNAC (Australian and New Zealand Corps) troops on the ground who had been watching found themselves close enough to and did open fire on Richthofen's plane.

Richthofen was wounded but then managed to make an emergency landing, but then died two minutes later. When the AZNAC troops raced to the plane and realized that it was the Red Baron himself who had been shot down (he only told them "kaputt," which means "incapacitated") they tore his plane to pieces in order to take souvenirs. Richthofen's body was recovered by English officers, and he was later buried with full military honors. He was 25 years old.

The cause of death of the Red Baron was determined to be a single bullet, which had been shot from behind him, which had entered the right side of his back and which had exited two inches higher on the left side of his chest. However, whether the fatal shot had come from the AZNAC troops or Captain Brown was ambiguous, thus who shot down the Red Baron is still debated even today.

The Red Baron's brother, Lothar Freiherr von Richthofen, was recovering from wounds he received after surviving being shot down himself when he learned that Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen had been shot down and killed. He took over command of the J.G. 1 upon returning to combat, and had his plane painted completely red in memory of his brother. However, after Lothar Freiherr von Richthofen was shot down on August 13, 1918, his wounds forced him into retirement with 40 kills to his record. What followed after this was a period of unsettled succession to Der Rote Kampfflieger until Herman Goering (yes the Nazi Goering who was head of the German Luftwaffe or Air Force during World War II) took over command of the J.G. 1, at which he chose to paint his plane all white instead, which ended the practice of red German fighter planes. However, the memory of the Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen and his red triplane continues on even to this day with the legends about the "Red Baron."

COTD: Don't change the work, change the order within the work.

BAD NEWS: Eleven people are missing after an oil rig explosion.

GOOD NEWS: A bride and groom were able to get married online despite flight cancelations from Iceland's volcanoes!

HUMOR: Geopolitical subtlety (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: April 22, 1945: Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler may have suffered a mental/nervous breakdown upon realizing his orders to counterattack a pincer movement upon Berlin by the USSR Red Army were not going to be carried out.

Hitler's last days have been recounted a number of times, some of them more accurate than others and usually framing themselves around the stretch of days from his 56th birthday on April 20, 1945 until his death by suicide on April 30, 1945. Suffice to say that by 1944 it was becoming increasingly apparent that Germany could not sustain the war -- most vividly helping prompt the July 20th Plot that same year -- yet Hitler would not stop the war, although with US President Franklin Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945 he made a slight attempt to negotiate a separate peace with the US and the United Kingdom forces coming from the west in order to focus upon the USSR forces that were coming from the east. He actually had his Fuehrerbunker ("the Leader's Bunker") built as an ultimate fallback in 1936, with a lower and newer section added to it in 1943.

A bunker is a hardened shelter buried underground in order to protect those inside it from bombing attacks, and Hitler took up residence within the Fuehrerbunker on January 16, 1945 due to the successes of the USSR Red Army's Vistula-Oder Offensive, which enabled USSR troops to move from the Vistula River in Poland past the Oder River which was just 70 miles away from Berlin in Germany. It was elegantly furnished and supplied, as was evidenced by how Hitler was reportedly able to still drink ten to sixteen cups of tea despite the acute shortages caused by war, but he was reportedly depressed by continuing failures and thus was often drugged in order to counteract his depression by that time, which may be visible in some film footage of Hitler awarding Iron Crosses to young boy members of the paramilitary (near-military) organization of the Hitler Youth on April 20 -- the Hitler Youth being essentially a proto-Nazi soldier organization for youths age ten to eighteen -- since by then the Hitler Youth had been co-opted into first an auxiliary force and then a type of reserve army due to shortages of troops.

On April 21, 1945, Hitler ordered a counterattack to stop a USSR pincer movement that was being used to encircle the German capital of Berlin, which of course was also where the Fuehrerbunker was located. In short, by then there was such an insufficiency of troops that Hitler's orders were never carried out and nobody pointed out how the orders could not be carried out due to fears of how Hitler would react as a result of his obstinacy about getting what he wanted and also his anger management problems. As such, when Hitler learned the counterattack had not been carried out by April 22 and that some of his orders had actually weakened the defenses around Berlin to allow the USSR Red Army to close even more quickly upon it, he had his aforementioned possible nervous breakdown as a result of his anxiety and depression -- the term in short referring to inability to function in real life due to difficulties adapting to the hardships encountered. Hitler's reaction on April 22 is described as a "tearful rage" but which is otherwise notable because Hitler also went so far as to say the war was lost and that he would shoot himself -- Hitler's serious declaration that the war was lost being quite atypical. Given that he also often threatened to execute his subordinates for failure, General Alfred Jodl managed to calm him down by suggesting the Twelfth Army that was facing an American Army on the west side of the Elbe River could be moved east to support Berlin since the American Army would allow the USSR Red Army to attempt to capture Berlin -- Jodl's assumption being correct as is illustrated by the fact that the Elbe River formed part of the former boundary between West and East Germany, and thus giving Hitler some hope that calmed him from taking actions as drastic as killing himself for a short while.

By April 25 the USSR Red Army had completed encircling Berlin, and being cut off from any troops outside of Berlin meant that the efforts of any troops within Berlin would only be delaying actions. Changes were coming fast and furious due to desperation at this point, hence when Luftwaffe (German Air Force) head Herman Goering heard of Hitler's nervous breakdown of April 22, and knowing he had been appointed Hitler's successor, he sent his carefully-wordedGoering telegram to Hitler asking if he should take over leadership of Nazi Germany. Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann then used the Goering telegram exactly the way that Goering feared he might. Although Goering was indeed loyal enough he did not want to hesitate and to thus cause a crisis of succession over Nazi Germany, Bormann used it as part of the usual political intrigues that Nazi subordinates used to gather power unto themselves and thus along with Hitler's false hope from the moving of the Twelfth Army presented it as a betrayal that prompted Hitler to removing Goering completely from power and succession, thus why Hitler then prompted Robert Ritter von Greim to succeed Goering -- this notable not because von Greim was wounded in the leg when the talented pilot (and mistress of von Greim) Hanna Reitsch flew him into Berlin for the promotion, but because when von Greim was flown back out again by Reitsch on April 28 the USSR Third Shock Army mistakenly thought Hitler himself had escaped them when they were unable to shoot down the aircraft of the two -- testimony from other captured Nazis soon after, however, later confirmed that Hitler was still in his Fuehrerbunker.

Hitler actually ordered von Greim back out in order to arrest Heinrich Himmler of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) for attempting to negotiate some form of peace with and thus to gain some concessions from the soon to be victorious Allies -- the point here being that Hitler had regained some hope but even his closest supporters knew and acted upon the knowledge it was false hope (Himmler escaped von Greim, and committed suicide after being captured by the Allies later). It was also on April 28 that Hitler started to become extremely paranoid, now first hearing about the execution of his former ally in the form of Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini that same day, and had the cyanide capsules Himmler had gotten him tested upon his pet dog "Blondi" to both euthanize her to prevent her from being abused if captured (Hitler had a remarkable fondness for animals) and to make sure they indeed worked, which they did (the aforementioned Martin Bormann was who had got Hitler Blondi, and a number of other pet dogs in the bunker at the time were killed at the same time for the same reasons).

On April 29, Hitler married his then-mistress Eva Braun and completed a short Last Will and Testament, and following further reports of the German defense collapsing on April 30, but after reluctantly granting permission to General Helmuth Wielding of the Berlin Defense Area -- Wielding asking for permission during the morning despite also noting the defenders would probably run out of ammunition by that evening since they were only around 1,640 feet from the Fuehrerbunker, and Hitler not granting that permission until around 1:00 PM -- Hitler and Braun committed suicide within his Fuehrerbunker study at 3:30 PM, also to prevent themselves from being abused and exhibited after capture. It is known that Hitler shot himself in the head due to the gunshot wound in his skull, and it was assumed Eva took cyanide since there were no wounds upon her body but there was the distinct "burnt almonds" odor common to hydrogen cyanide (it comes from the prussic acid common to each), although there is some suggestion Hitler may have bit down on a cyanide capsule at the same time he shot himself. In accordance with Hitler's final wishes the bodies were then taken to a shell hole outside the bunker in the garden and were cremated by being doused with gasoline and set on fire. Their remains were actually buried at around 6:00 PM since the improvised cremation could not be completed, then were dug up and reportedly later buried in secret graves elsewhere by the USSR, then were finally dug up, destroyed, and scattered about in 1970 order to fully prevent anyone from making their final resting place a shrine (the Fuehrerbunker was later destroyed for the same purpose as well).

A skull fragment supposedly from Hitler that was retained was later found to have belonged to a woman between the ages of twenty and 40 in 2009, and the handgun Hitler shot himself with was actually the same Walther PPK that his niece Geli Raubal had reportedly killed herself on September 19, 1931 with due to Hitler's inappropriate infatuation with her, and is the case with most head gunshot suicides the handgun ended up at Hitler's feet due to him craning his head into the barrel and then dropping it after firing the gunshot. These details are known since some in the Fuehrerbunker survived and testified what happened afterwards, another notable fact about which is that many of those in the bunker then started smoking since Hitler -- a defensive ex-smoker himself, who actually managed to quit the habit of it earlier in life -- quite angrily opposed it (an additional fact about Hitler is that he engaged in a type of quasi-vegetarianism reportedly since he felt fruits and vegetables were healthier. Hitler's opposition to smoking and his quasi-vegetarianism are also briefly alluded to at the start of the 2008 film Valkyrie when he visits the Eastern Front of the war so that one officer puts out a cigarette before Hitler sees him with it, as well as the fact that a meal of potatoes is given to Hitler soon afterwards).

Why Hitler's opposition to smoking and his quasi-vegetarianism would be so important is because of course he had what is called a cult of personality around him that made him appear messianic to Nazi Germany, hence why they are often viewed as significant factors others would at least give the appearance of emulating instead of eccentricities that could be ignored. It should finally be noted that Hitler had repeatedly said that he would shoot himself during periods of stress in the past, hence that -- along with his depression from the failure of the war, his perception of betrayals at the end of the war, and his fear of what would befall him if he was captured by the USSR at the end of the war -- combined with the effects of his April 22 breakdown to prompt him to finally follow the impulse of doing it (suicides most often are impulsive and thus not much thought out, hence why suicidal feelings are so dangerous) on April 30.

The Fuehrerbunker itself was captured by the USSR on May 2, and suffice to say that the madness of Nazi Germany that was overseen by Adolf Hitler is such that any perceived support of Nazism or fascism, including denying the murder of millions of innocents known as the Holocaust, is now illegal within modern Germany.

COTD: You need to aim the projector into a mirror.

BAD NEWS: Greece's budget troubles are worse than once thought.

GOOD NEWS: US existing home sales increased in March!

HUMOR: She's nervous (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 23, 2003: All schools in Beijing, China, were closed for two weeks due to the SARS epidemic.

Part of the reason I had such a strong interest in SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) when the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic occurred (epidemic meaning cases of a new disease spreading more contagiously than expected, a "pandemic" meaning an epidemic which is worldwide) was because I was reading The Changeling Plague by Syne Mitchell, which is about a fictional but much more fatal worldwide epidemic which actually started in the American Pacific Northwest area within which I live. Thus although SARS only has a 9.6% case-fatality rate, it was eerie to keep track of the news and to see the epidemiology of SARS matching that within the book I was just then reading -- the epidemiology within the book likely created from researching past real world epidemics like the 1348-1350 Bubonic Plague outbreak known as the "Black Death" or the 1918 "Spanish Flu" Pandemic.

Tracing just where a disease starts can be very difficult. In the case of the Black Death it was found that rats had something to do with it, but then it was found that infected fleas were infecting the rats -- fleas from the rats then biting humans and infecting them. Further research has actually showed the fleas which moved from rats to humans were infected by a bacteria from central Asia which actually caused the Black Death, however (rats piggybacking upon contacts between the Mongol empires and Europe thus carried those bacteria-infected fleas along with them), hence it is uncertain if the SARS virus originated as a virus harmless to but carried by the Masked Palm Civet Cat of Asia, or if the Masked Palm Civets were infected by something else before then inadvertently spreading SARS to humans.

By "harmless virus" it should be noted a number living organisms carry or tolerate forms of bacteria and viruses that cause them little trouble due to evolved immunities, but should their bacteria or viruses be spread to organisms outside of those which have evolved immunities to them through jumping between species such as the Black Plague did (influenza such as the 1918 Spanish Flu achieves the same by moving between swine, birds, and humans), then lack of immunities leads to an epidemic. With SARS, the first case was on November 16, 2002 when a Chinese farmer became ill with it after eating Civet Cat meat that was undercooked. Cooking helps make meat safer by killing any bacteria or virus within it, but the undercooking error was made since consuming wild as opposed to domesticated animals is more unusual (the popularity of consuming wild animals in Asia declined following the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic).

The Chinese farmer appears to have been the patient zero of SARS -- the first person to have become infected with it -- and he died soon after seeking treatment for it. Afterwards, one of the doctors who had begun to attempt treating the disease within the Chinese province of Guangong within which the farmer had lived became sick with it, and not understanding the new disease thus inadvertently enabled it to begin an international spread when he checked into the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong for a wedding he was attending -- this because hotels are frequently inhabited by international groups of travelers. The doctor himself died from SARS on March 4, and it was not until a WHO (World Health Organization) doctor named Carlo Urbani ended up treating Chinese-American businessman Johnny Chen -- who had been inadvertently infected by the doctor who had treated the farmer at the Metropole Hotel -- and then witnessed some of the hospital staff becoming ill with it that he finally recognized SARS was a new disease instead of yet another form of the common but rarely deadly "bird flu" of avian influenza.

China was later criticized for covering up what happened instead of being transparent and telling WHO (the World Health Organization, which is designed to help prevent epidemics like this) what happened in order to save their own pride. About 8,273 people were infected with it, with 775-835 people dying from it between the beginning of the SARS epidemic in November 2002 and the effect end of the epidemic on July 31, 2003. Isolated cases occurred later in 2003 and into early 2004, however, although knowledge about the disease has prevented it from again spreading out from where the 2002-2003 epidemic started and to thus start a new epidemic. Symptoms of the disease are obvious flu-like symptoms -- the SARS virus being a member of the coronavirus family that spreads by water droplets spread mostly through air and which also includes the viruses which cause common colds and flus -- such as fever, muscle pains (myalgia), lethargy, digestive (gastrointestinal) problems, coughing, sore throat, shortness of breath, and a variety of other symptoms. Unfortunately there is no rapid screening test for SARS which is available, but the more technical symptoms can eventually be detected such as atypical pneumonia (SARS is sometimes called "Yellow Pneumonia") or Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome -- both of which result in the person suffering from those symptoms having trouble breathing due to infection in the lungs, which can ultimately lead to a person suffocating to death. Given the ease with which it spreads, those infected with it must be kept within negative pressure rooms which pull air into but not out of themselves, plus complete barrier nursing precautions so that those treating those infected with SARS do not become infected with it themselves (work on a vaccine to prevent people from being sickened by SARS in the first place was reported in 2004). Treatment as of this writing entails mostly use of anti-fever drugs (antipyretics) to help lower fevers caused by SARS, plus supplemental oxygen and ventilatory support to help those infected with it to breathe so that their bodies can essentially heal themselves. Also, as of this writing experimentation and research to find improved cures is still ongoing.

Fortunately, despite the limited means by which there is to combat SARS, using the available means at the time of its initial epidemic kept the death rate at a low 9.6%. But still, 9.6% across the entire world meant 775-835 deaths out of the 8,273 people who where infected with the disease, thus why China earned some worldwide condemnation for covering up what was happening in order to save their own pride -- although following the epidemic the Chinese government reportedly changed some of its policies to prevent such things from happening in the future. Finally, about the fictional The Changeling Plague I mentioned at the start -- the organization Mitchell focuses upon combating that disease is the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), a US organization which cooperates with WHO (and thus which helped combat the spread of SARS) but which of course is more focused upon preventing the spread of diseases within the United States. Suffice to say that the realism of Mitchell's fictional epidemic makes her book a good read, but unfortunately for her -- though more fortunately for those who have survived an actual epidemic -- given the abruptness with which an epidemic seems to end once the measures for containing it are enacted, there is too much conjecture in Mitchell's book. Although I admit it is quite imaginative conjecture since it includes altering genetic cures for her fictional plague into means by which to retroactively (in adults) genetically engineer humans into whatever forms they wish.

Such retroactive genetic engineering would of course becontroversial since it would give greater advantages to those simply able to easily afford such retroactive engineering instead of rewarding dedicated efforts which produce competence (as well as raising questions about the ethical concerns of manipulating nature). Of course what makes the situation simpler is that Mitchell's book is fiction while SARS was real, thus conjecturing to the end of the SARS epidemic and then achieving it is enough for the most of us.

COTD: Follow the white rabbit, Neo.

BAD NEWS: 60 people were killed by bombings in Iraq.

GOOD NEWS: A man thought missing was only napping!

HUMOR: A stumper (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 24, 1916: The Easter Rising began against British rule over in Ireland, starting on Monday after the Christian Holiday of Easter Sunday.

Ireland was originally settled by various hunter-gatherer peoples from continental Europe sometime after 10,000 BC, when the last major ice age ended. The group that most significantly contributed to Irish culture later upon their arrival were the tribal people known as Celts, which the Romans noted during the period of Roman Britain (control over England and Wales of the United Kingdom) from 43-410 AD.

The tribal nature of Ireland was eventually replaced by a more national form of culture, likely through contact with Britain, and also was likely converted to Christianity through such contacts as well -- such as through the reported work of Saint Patrick around 432 AD.

Irish pirates would often raid western Britain, thus the reported reason Patrick was supposed to have been taken into slavery in Ireland so that he ended up Christianizing the nation later (some suggest Christian missionaries were already at work in Ireland before Patrick's arrival there, however). English and therefore British involvement in Ireland was cemented when Normans (meaning in this case people from the "Normandy" part of France) invaded Ireland in 1167, creating a Norman Ireland which lasted until 1185. Since the English did not want a strong Norman state in Ireland in addition to the rival Norman state in France, a policy of weakening the Normans in Ireland and expanding English influence there was followed -- Ireland quite divided amongst a number of Irish and other rulers and such at the time. This successfully eliminated Norman influence upon Ireland and enabled the English to fully conquer Ireland by 1541. Full integration with Britain was thwarted by the fact that the Celt-dominated culture of Ireland had experienced a resurgence with how the cultures of the largely city-dwelling Normans and English had been decimated by the plague of the Black Death in 1348 (it spreading more easily in the denser conditions of cities), plus the fact that most Irish were steadfast Catholic Christians who remained opposed to the Protestant Christianity of Anglicanism founded by the English KingHenry VIII in 1533 as part of his political intrigues to ensure his family's dynasty (continuing rule) over England would continue.

Suffice to say that English domination over Ireland as a result of these events fostered the resentment of the Irish against the English, and thus set the historical precedent of the antagonism which exists between the two. There were a number of Irish rebellions against British rule as well, such as the Rebellion of 1641 and the Rebellion of 1798, both of which were defeated. The Easter Rising of 1916 was the next most significant rebellion following those of 1641 and 1798, named the "Easter Rising" since it took place during the "Easter Week" which had begun with the Christian holiday of Easter that year. To be brief, the rebellion was planned and executed by Irish "Republicans" who believed that to ensure Irish freedom Ireland should be an independent Republic instead of part of the United Kingdom -- the Act of Union of 1800 being the British response to the 1798 rebellion and thus formally uniting the governments under the British-dominated government of the United Kingdom. The reason the Republicans planned their actions for 1916 was because by then the United Kingdom was involved in World War I (1914-1918) and would have to split its efforts between fighting the German-dominated Central Powers as well as the Irish Republicans, plus of course because the Republicans could appeal to the Germans for arms against the British. In fact, the Germans sent arms to the Irish Republicans to start their rebellion on the Easter Sunday of April 23, 1916, but British counterintelligence managing to capture the arms ended up delaying the pre-planned Easter Rising for a day -- thus why it began on the Easter Monday of April 24, 1916 instead.

The Easter Rising lasted until April 30 and was unsuccessful as the British were still able to defeat the rebellion, with 132 British dead, 397 wounded and 9 missing. Amongst the Irish there were 318 dead and 2,217 wounded. 90 individuals were also sentenced to death by court martial (a military court) and fifteen of these had their sentenced confirmed so that they were executed for their treason (according to the British) by taking part in the Easter Uprising, and 1,480 additional Irish were interned under the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act which had been passed to make it easier for the United Kingdom to fight World War I.

Contradicting orders from the leadership of the rebellion plus the fact most Irish did not join the Republicans against the British due to viewing Germany and the Central Powers of World War I to be the greater threat appears to be why the Easter Uprising failed -- although resentment against the British would resume at the end of World War I. However, it did set a precedent for the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence, which was a guerilla war fought within Ireland between Republicans and Loyalists (the Irish loyal to the United Kingdom government) and which by treaty lead to first the self-governing British dominion of the 1922-1937 Irish Free State and after 1937 by referendum lead to the now entirely sovereign Republic of Ireland. The precedent being that the Republicans who were involved with the Easter Uprising and who were imprisoned under the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act were emboldened to move against the British since they had actually had not that much to do with the Easter Uprising in the first place -- most notably the future Irish patriot Michael Collins.

The reason that Northern Ireland still exists and is still part of the United Kingdom is due to the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which enabled the Houses of Parliament of Northern Ireland to opt out of the Irish Free State since Protestant Christians tend to have a majority there and thus tend to be Unionists since they agree to union with the Protestant Christian-dominated United Kingdom, as opposed to how Catholic Christians tend to have a majority outside of Northern Ireland and thus how they tend to be Nationalists/Republicans opposing union with the United Kingdom -- and the whole process of the division is commonly referred to as the Partition of Ireland.

As of this writing, violence still takes place in Northern Ireland due to the religio-political divisions between Northern Ireland and Ireland, some of which comes from groups which are successors to the IRA -- Irish Republican Army -- which was first formed around the time of the Easter Rising. Finally, writer Frank McCourt's father Malachy McCourt (he also had a brother named Malachy) appears to have been from what is now Northern Ireland but to have been a Republican according to Frank McCourt's memoirs of Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, which appears to have been part of the reason why Malachy would share his patriotism with the rest of his family. Just how much Malachy may have been involved in the fighting connected to the Easter Rising or the Irish War of Independence is uncertain, however, as Frank McCourt also recounts that Malachy was turned down for compensation for whatever his role was, Malachy's alcoholism being noted as a key factor within that rejection.

COTD: Remember, a good fantasy life requires reality.

BAD NEWS: The eleven missing oil rig workers are now considered dead.

GOOD NEWS: Bret Michaels has been stabilized!

HUMOR: Wishing for still working (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: April 25, 1939: The superhero Batman appeared for the first time, in Detective Comics May/#27 by DC Comics (formerly National Allied Publications/National Publications).

The story of Batman actually begins with the story of the superhero Superman. The success of Superman lead DC Comics to request another superhero along the same lines, hence cartoonist Bob Kane and his collaborator Bill Finger came up with the concept of Batman, which essentially took the superhero concepts behind Superman and developed them a different way -- such as how Batman has no superpowers but uses an endless number of devices to achieve what he does -- to thus produce the new superhero.

A large part of the reason for the continuing popularity of Batman -- evidenced such as the 1989 Batman film and the 2005 Batman Begins film -- is that the varying elements worked out as his history have been remixed together to "reboot" or rather to restart the series to renew interest in it from time to time. Given that the series started in 1939, this means that there was 50-65 years of material to draw the best elements out of for those reboots in 1989 and 2005, respectively, thus why those reboots were so popular. As well, this explains why the 1966-1968 television show of Batman was so "campy" -- the television show was essentially a reboot which framed Batman using the 1960s idea of doing something badly or in a fake manner which thus actually appeals through being atypical of what people actually look for.

Over time Batman has varied between a lighter tone such as the 1960s television show and a darker "gothic" tone such as the 1989 and 2005 movies in order to maintain a more diverse interest in him without making him so grim that it discouraged interest in him. Also, rather bemusing fact about Batman -- plus about other superheroes -- is that since stories tend to be written for males so that there are not that many female characters within them, leading to some to assert the lack of female characters is proof of homosexual psychology behind them. The earliest assertion to this was made in 1954 with psychologist Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, which for instance asserted there homoeroticism was a subtle reasoning for giving the mature Batman a younger male sidekick in the form of Robin -- and the fact that the 1995 and 1997 Batman Forever and Batman and Robin were directed by openly gay director Joel Schumacher, who was willing to include homoerotic moments, also did not help matters any.

I personally tend to think that the assertion of homosexual psychology or homoeroticism is reading too much into Batman, given for instance the negative critical and financial reaction to director Joel Schumacher's aforementioned efforts. In other words, since homosexuality does not sell well to mainstream and thus largely heterosexual audiences, that is not something that would have been risked due to the chance of handicapping what has proven to be a quite profitable franchise (likewise, I would assert the connection between Superman and Batman is due to their similar origins and not because of homosexual connection between the two, which some have actually suggested). To give one an idea of how much can be read into a comic, however, it has been asserted that the cartoon characters known as the Smurfs must be economic Communists or Socialists since they are presented as living an extremely cooperative lifestyle without using any money and that the only reason that the female Smurfette was created was to as a heterosexual object of desire to counter the idea the originally all-male population of other Smurfs must therefore be homosexual.

Probably part of the concern about the above is that of setting a bad precedent for the naive (such as children) to follow instead of allowing them to think their way through to making their own choices while bearing in mind what society finds acceptable, in order to avoid coming into either direct or indirect conflict with society -- that indirect conflict through such measures as essentially hiding homosexuality in plain sight such as through giving Batman the younger sidekick of Robin. However I would argue that because that concern is more unhealthy paranoia since products such as Batman are ultimately produced because of their continuing marketability instead of their counterproductive controversy, thus the reason why Batman still exists despite being created more than 70 years ago as of this writing is not because he is some sort of closet homosexual but because he has been proven to be of interest to the mainstream, largely heterosexual audiences that various Batman products have been produced for over all of these years -- the aforementioned reboots of 1966, 1989, and 2005 to adjust it to mainstream audiences at each of those times thus illustrating that in particular.

YOUTUBE: Typical scene from the 1960s television show.

YOUTUBE: Scene from the 1989 Batman movie.

YOUTUBE: Scene from the 2005 Batman Begins movie.

COTD: Crazy enough to build a UFO weather balloon in the backyard.

BAD NEWS: Ten people were killed by a tornado in Mississippi.

GOOD NEWS: The United Kingdom is restoring orchards!

HUMOR: Unicorn (Pickles, by Brookins)!

HISTORY: April 26, 1933: The secret police of Nazi Germany, the Gestapo, was formed.

"Secret police" operate to support the political power of the current regime of a country instead of upholding the law for everyone, which is why they operate in secret and are associated with totalitarian regimes and acts such as kidnapping, coercive interrogation, torture, disappearances, and assassinations. The precedent for the Gestapo (GEheime STAtsPOlizei -- Secret State Police) was the Prussian Secret Police force which had been set up to maintain the status quo across the various German states due to the unrest caused by the failed German Revolution of 1848 which had attempted to create a united Germany, given the current rulers of the various German states preferred the political status quo. Prussia was the largest of these German states, thus why it had so much hegemony (dominance, political control) over the various German states and for a time over Germany itself following unification of the country in 1871 despite the efforts of the Prussian Secret Police.

Also of note about the unification of Germany is how it had to be achieved without the inclusion of Austria, which of course Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler managed to have unified with Germany between 1938 and 1945. But in terms of Germany and Austria-Hungary, their alliance during World War I (1914-1918) was because they both contained German peoples, and because Germany was organized as a "Kleindeutsche Loesung" (lesser German solution) small type of Germany which could be dominated by Prussia as opposed to the "Grossdeutsche Loesung" (greater German solution) which would have included and thus would have lead to domination by Austria -- the latter being the concept that Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler used to successfully achieve the Grossdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich, more commonly Grossdeutschland -- Greater Germany) which included Austria after Austria was no longer in a position to dominate Germany.

The irony, therefore, is that while the Prussian Secret Police was to slow unification of Germany, the Gestapo which succeeded it was to help ensure unification of Germany under Nazi Dictator Adolf Hitler. Sometimes the term "Domestic Intelligence Agency" is used as a euphemism for organizations which are actually secret police -- although there are legitimate Domestic Intelligence Agencies which protect the national security of a country other than by flagrantly propping up their current political regime via kidnapping, coercive interrogation, torture, disappearances, and assassinations -- but also suffice to say that the Gestapo was not one of these.

Looking at the power structure of Germany is also like looking at a hydra (a type of monster with many heads), hence suffice to say that the paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung) Freikorps of the Nazi Party was merged into the German armed forces which were used to add territory to Nazi Germany, the SS (Schutzstaffel) seceded from the SA due to being the fanatics that would blindly support Hitler and thus who oversaw many of the war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out through acts of genocide by Nazi Germany during World War II (which was to supposedly provide space to rearrange Europe according to the "Aryan" visions promoted by Nazi Germany), and the Gestapo operated within Germany to prevent threats to Hitler's power (one notable exception to which being how the SS bloodily turned on the SA to purge it of its leadership to thus weaken it to the degree it could be merged into the German armed forces which were larger and more professional military forces directly controlled by Hitler). The reason the Gestapo came to exist was because the Nazi Hermann Goering had inherited Prussia's police forces through becoming the Interior Minister for Prussia through the bargaining which had lead to Hitler becoming Chancellor (head) of Germany, he then merging the formerly separate political and intelligence departments of the Prussian Secret Police to form the Gestapo on this date in 1933.

The situation with the various German police forces is even more of a hydra than Nazi Germany itself since police forces are essentially paramilitary forces as well, as well as the fact that the political maneuvers of various Nazi officials to consolidate as much power as they could to each other, makes fully explaining the varying police situation of Nazi Germany difficult, hence suffice to say that due to mutual distrust of the SA Hermann Goering gave authority of the Gestapo over to Reichsfuher (a rank meaning essentially the leader) Heinrich Himmler of the SS, leading to it becoming the secret police of all Nazi Germany when Himmler was named chief of all German police on June 17, 1936.

When the distrusted SA was purged in the Night of the Long Knives by the SS and Gestapo it was June 30-July 2, 1934, with 85 given as the minimum number of deaths and "hundreds" given as the estimate of the maximum number of deaths. More importantly, it enabled consolidation of the totalitarian political regime of Adolf Hitler through eliminating opponents of his regime and possible opponents of his regime such as the SA on the false grounds that the SA was about to be used to attempt a coup -- the preference for political stability actually leading to popular and even legal support for the extra-judicial killings of the purge, which of course provided the precedent for the millions of deaths in the Holocaust which then followed, which was also why a number of former members of the SS and of the Gestapo were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity following the end of World War II in 1945.

A number of secret police forces exist even today, ostensibly for national security but ultimately more for the security of the regime in power instead of the country itself. This is why as of this writing some of the more well known secret police organizations were the Stasi (STAAtsSIcherheit) of East Germany, the Tokko (TOKubetsu KOto Keisatsu -- Special Higher Police) of Imperial Japan, and the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti -- Committee of State Security) of the USSR. The ThinkPol (Thought Police) of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Fingermen (more literally "the Finger") of V for Vendetta are two of the more well known fictional secret police forces, although by no means are they the only fictional secret police force which has been portrayed.

One of the key roles the Gestapo would play in Nazi Germany was in thwarting or responding to a number of plots to assassinate or depose Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, the most notable of these being the 20 July Plot. Although the Operation Valkyrie the July 20th conspirators co-opted for the plot would have likely prompted them to move against the fanatical SS first due to the extreme loyalty that the SS had for Hitler, it was mostly the aforementioned Gestapo which was used to respond to the plot by having around 7,000 people arrested, which lead to 4,980 of them being executed (failures and thwarted plots before the 20 July Plot had increased Gestapo vigilance as well).

COTD: The arrogant know not of their idiocy.

BAD NEWS: A suicide bomber attacked the British ambassador in Yemen.

GOOD NEWS: Stocks keep going up!

HUMOR: He has a lot of drive (Pickles, by Brookins)!

HISTORY: April 27, 1945: Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was arrested by Italian partisans at Dongo, Italy, while attempting to escape into Switzerland.

YOUTUBE: Mussolini speaking in English (he was able to speak in Italian, English, French, and German).

Suffice to say that Mussolini was an economic Socialist before breaking from it and forming system known as Fascism, a totalitarian political system which greatly increases the power of the government and which was actually a precedent to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, since he actually borrowed much from Mussolini -- thus allowing one to recognize what Fascist Italy must have been like.

Mussolini was ultimately an incompetent politician, however, hence how he and Fascist Italy essentially ended up in orbit around Hitler and Nazi Germany instead of vice versa. As such, racism was not as large a part of Italian Fascism as it was of Nazi German Fascism, although it is true that Mussolini did pass the Manifesto of Race in July 1938 to strip Italian Jews of their rights as a means of remaining on good terms with Hitler through portrayal of Italians as also an "Aryan" race.

Here it should be noted that when Mussolini became "Il Duce" -- the leader -- of Italy in 1922, the government of Italy was a constitutional monarchy with its monarch fulfilling a superficial role (as of this writing, the most well known still-present constitutional monarchy is that of the United Kingdom). This is why when the coalition government (a number of parties working together due to lack of dominance by any one party) collapsed due to infighting in 1922, Italian King Victor Immanuel III ended up asking Mussolini to form a government -- which Mussolini then used as his first step in forming a Fascist dictatorship over Italy.

Mussolini ended up ruling a long time despite his overall incompetence, but it was Italy bearing the brunt of Axis power losses against the Allies during World War II, even as early as 1940, which turned Italy against Mussolini. By July 24, 1943 his own Grand Council of Fascism government turned against him when he tried to regain their support due to the failures of the war, and a motion which restored King Victor Immanuel III to his constitutional powers was passed which was essentially a successful vote of no confidence by the government in Mussolini, thus leading to him being stripped of his powers (as a dictator, he tried to ignore it completely at first) by Immanuel III the next day -- Immanuel replacing him with Pietro Badoglio, who became Prime Minister and who negotiated an armistice with the Allies.

Furthermore, Immanuel had Mussolini arrested as well, but Hitler had him rescued via the Gran Sasso Raid and used him -- he actually unwilling to continue and wanting to quit but being threatened into doing it by Hitler -- as the head of a puppet government of an Italian Social Republic in Northern Italy in order to help protect the southern border of Germany (part of which was the northern border of Italy). Regardless, Allied advancements north up the Italian peninsula were why he and his then-current mistress Clara Petacci -- Mussolini engaging in some promiscuity and adultery -- were captured by Italian partisans at Dongo on this date in 1945 when attempting to flee into Switzerland. He was disguised as a German soldier at the time, and the plans were to flee to Spain since Spain was also a Fascist state at this time (and would continue to be so until 1975) and thus would harbor him.

The Italian partisans were essentially Italian guerilla army groups (although with some civilian elements) that opposed Mussolini's government, although this would not include his own government and Italy outside of the Italian Social Republic after he was deposed on July 24, 1943. The ones that caught Mussolini and the other fifteen people with him -- most of them members of the Italian Social Republic -- happened to be Communist partisan. They gave him a summary execution (an execution on the spot, without a trial) on April 28, reportedly ordered by the National Liberation Committee, which coordinated the resistance movement.

Walter "Valerio" Audisio was the Communist partisan commander who reportedly executed Mussolini. When he entered the room where Mussolini and the others were being held, he reportedly set them at ease so they could be better controlled by lying to them and saying "I have come to rescue you! Do you have any weapons?" Then he had them loaded into transports and driven a short distance to an empty space where they could be executed. Mussolini's mistress Petacci (Mussolini's wife at the time and many of his children actually survived the war) refused to move away from hugging herself tightly to him, hence after shots were fired she was mortally wounded and fell, but Mussolini was still standing, hence he opened opened his jacket and screamed "Shoot me in the chest!" Audisio complied, but Mussolini did not die from the shot, hence Audisio then came up and shot Mussolini in the chest one more time. The expression on Mussolini's face was one of pain when he finally died, reportedly prompting Audisio to comment "Look at his face, the emotions on his face don't suit him."

On April 29, 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the most of the fifteen others who had been with them -- they were executed by a firing squad later -- were transported via a moving van to Milan, where at 3:00 AM they were dumped at was then the "Piazza Quindici Martiri." When the bodies were found a mob formed which then shot, kicked, and spat upon them before finally hanging them upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station so that stones could be thrown at them by the angry mob, reportedly to discourage any Fascists from continuing to resist the anti-Mussolini forces and as an act of revenge for the previous hangings of many partisans which had been done in the same place.

COTD: Continually parking in the red zone tends to make people blue.

BAD NEWS: An oil slick is spreading through the Gulf of Mexico.

GOOD NEWS: The "Hollywood" sign has been saved!

HUMOR: That's humble of you to say, Norman (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: April 28, 1993: Two people were killed when the flight crew of a GP Express aircraft attempted the prohibited maneuver of a barrel roll while on a check (non-revenue, testing the operation of the aircraft) flight.

GP Express Airlines -- a small and thus regional airline -- had an unusually high fatal accident rate for its fleet size during its years of operation (1975 to 1996, when it went bankrupt), which if the April 28 accident is any indication was due to the unprofessionalism which lead to GP Express employees to disregard Federal Aviation Regulations, GP Express procedures, and to maintain prudent concern for safety.

Suffice to say that professionalism is behaving seriously towards the work one has specialized their career towards, thus although achieving a certain amount of rapport (friendship) through more casual behaviors such as irrelevant behaviors/small talk (interacting with each other simply for the sake of socializing) is permitted, such rapport is never allowed to detract from professionalism and thus to allow the situation to become unprofessional so that there are counterproductive results -- such as breaking the rules for fun, resulting in two people being killed and an aircraft being destroyed.

As well, the illegal barrel roll was attempted during a night flight when poorer visibility made merely flying more dangerous in the first place. A transcript of the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) from the flight can be found here, the "lazy eights" referring to a legal maneuver and the rest of the numbers referring to various models of aircraft, with the "Gs" referring to G-forces (essentially due to acceleration and the pull of gravity).

Barrel rolls are often confused with aileron rolls. Fortunately illustrations of each exist on Wikipedia to show better than through words how each work, but in a barrel roll the entire flightpath of the aircraft corkscrews through the air (like the curly "helix" bottom of a basic corkscrew) whereas in an aileron roll the flightpath stays straight as if the aircraft was riding on a rail running through the aircraft which it is spinning around.

The barrel roll-aileron roll confusion is actually illustrated by the Starfox video game series since initiating an aileron roll temporarily shields the Arwing fighters yet is referred to as a barrel roll (as well, the Immelman turn is referred to as a U-turn by the series). In addition to this, if one took damage in the Starfox 64 game when the Peppy Hare character advised to "do a barrel roll," the programming of the game would cause Peppy to repeat "do a barrel roll" again, thus prompting it to become an internet meme though posting variants and variations of Peppy's "do a barrel roll" statement across the internet (although those looking for a much more serious look at Peppy should see this scene from the Starfox Assault game).

Starfox also provides an illustration of an aileron roll through the page of the official comic that was done for it in 2002 and which can be seen here, but also suffice to say that a true barrel roll earned its name through envisioning an aircraft as if it was on wheels rolling and rotating lengthwise (thus corkscrewing) through the inside of a barrel.

A true barrel roll is also supposed to be visible in the 1986 film Top Gun sometime after one of the times Pete "Maverick" Mitchell uses the "hit the brakes" maneuver he creates (RIOs are "Radar Intercept Officers"). Although the film was badly received by critics, despite the sizeable number of errors in the film (visible even in the line of the opening statement which says "to insure that pilots receive the training" instead of the correct "to ensure that pilots receive the training") the creative liberties taken with it essentially made it a commercial for the US Navy (the flights being made from US Navy aircraft carriers in the film), thus why US Navy and the US Air Force both saw an increase in the number of applications (500% increase in recruits for the US Navy) due to fans of the film being encouraged to learn to fly.

The 1991 film Hot Shots! is also a parody of Top Gun, but suffice to say that even the early behavior of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell within Top Gun until the accidental death of his close associate (and original RIO) Nick "Goose" Bradshaw is dangerously unprofessional, although unlike the unprofessionalism of the GP Express pilot that crashed his aircraft by doing an illegal barrel roll on this date in 1993, fortunately Maverick's unprofessional behavior did not contribute to the accident nor to the death of Goose.

Finally, it should be noted that one of the benefits of professionalism is that it decreases the chances of something going wrong, as things going wrong can happen even to a professional. What leads to the accidental death of Goose within Top Gun was originally going to be a deliberateflat spin portrayed as an accidental flat spin (accidental in the terms of the fiction of the film), which was deliberately portrayed by renowned aerobatic pilot Art Scholl. Something went wrong with Scholl's aircraft during the filming so that he spun through the lowest altitude he could have recovered at, thus resulting in his own death (thus the film Top Gun is dedicated to the memory of Art Scholl).

COTD: Go catch a chicken.

BAD NEWS: The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico may reach the beaches of four states.

GOOD NEWS: US consumer confidence increased in April!

HUMOR: An apt way of putting it (Lockhorns, by Hoest and Reiner)!

HISTORY: April 29, 711: The Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula (today consisting of Portugal and Spain) began when Moorish troops under command of Tariq ibn-Ziyad were landed at Gibraltar.

The reason jihad or "holy war" is associated with Islam is because one concept of Islam is to struggle to expand and defend it. Warfare is the most aggressive way of doing so but of course a concept can be expanded and defended without resorting to warfare, thus why terming jihad "holy war" is not entirely correct since it includes nonmilitant means -- although it is also true that how one defines jihad also depends on how one interprets the Qur'an/Koran holy book of Islam.

The case of why Moorish Muslims were landed at Gibraltar (the name being derived from "Jabal Tariq," meaning "Mountain of Tariq" and thus being renamed after Tariq ibn-Ziyad after being previously called one of the Pillars of Hercules) are not entirely clear: it seems that the Germanic tribe of the Visigoths was in control of Hispania (the Roman name for the territory within the Iberian Peninsula) at the time, but there was some sort of disputed accession to the throne of Hispania that prompted either a request for help from, or exploitation by, the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate which controlled from Northern Africa through the Middle East. Whatever the case, it resulted in the abrupt collapse of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania following the ensuing Battle of Guadalete and its addition to the Umayyad Caliphate, after which Muslim forces began pressing their advantage north.

By 732 Muslim forces had pushed as far north as what is now southern France, which is where a greater linkage to European history begins as the Frankish (French) Charles "the Hammer" Martel lead the Franks to victory at the Battle of Tours in 732, prompting this to be seen as the turning point in a war which was also about Islam versus Christianity. Charles Martel was the father of Pippin the Younger, who in turn was the father of Charlemagne -- Charlemagne being who founded the Holy Roman Empire from which the nations of both France and Germany would spring, thus helping lead to the formation of modern Europe.

Further south, in what is now Spain and Portugal, what was now called theReconquista would continue until 1238 when the Emirate of Grenada became a vassal state of the Kingdom of Castile (what is now part of Spain), although 1492 is often cited as the correct ending date since this was when the Emirate of Granada was conquered as a result of the Granada War which fully united all of what is now modern Spain and thus which completed the Reconquista -- the completion of this more internal matter thus clearing the way for the external gamble of letting the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus essentially explore west through granting him a commission to try and sail west instead of east to reach the Indies, leading to the discovery of the Americas and thus Spanish domination over Europe (through exploitation of American supplies) until the 1803-1815 Napoleonic Wars lead to France supplanting Spain but then the United Kingdom supplanting France as the dominant European and even the dominant power of the world via the "Pax Britannica" or "British Peace" (the transition provided by the 1914-1918 World War I and the 1939-1945 World War II would leave the United States as the dominant world power, especially with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 at the end of the 1947-1991 Cold War).

Finally, suffice to say that Portugal became an independent kingdom out of disputed claims to throne of what is Portugal resulting from the Reconquista, but a timeline of the whole process begun by the Moorish troops being landed at Gibraltar can be found here.

COTD: Where are the adults in this story?

BAD NEWS: The oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is leaking five times faster than first thought.

GOOD NEWS: A girl was stung by a box jellyfish, yet survived!

HUMOR: She wanted him to do that shampooing (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: April 30, 1927: Hollywood icons Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became the first to officially leave their hand and footprints in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

"Hollywood" is technically a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California (USA). A number of film studios moved there was to escape the unintentional smothering effect of theMotion Picture Patents Company of New Jersey (the legal system of the state of California was reluctant to enforce the claims of the MPPC) and which had been used to prevent competition of domestic with foreign films within the US, and also so that inventor Thomas Edison could better profit from the patents on motion picture cameras he owned. This migration then lead to the Hollywood neighborhood of the large city of Los Angeles, California becoming the center of the US film industry, after which the "Hollywood" name was applied to the US film industry itself.

The novelty of Grauman's Egyptian Theater due to the discovery of the lost and then forgotten tomb of "King Tut" Tutankhamun in the early 1920s -- thus leaving most of its ancient Egyptian culture, wealth, and possessions intact instead of being stolen by grave robbers -- had proved quite profitable, hence when showman Sid Grauman wanted to build a second theater he picked ancient Chinese culture as its theme, but it was the practice of Hollywood icons leaving their hand and footprints in the concrete of the forecourt of the theater which has proven to be the bigger novelty leading to the appeal of the theater.

There are actually conflicting stories about what began the tradition of leaving footprints-- along with signatures to identify them -- in the concrete of the Chinese Theater's forecourt. The official account is that Hollywood Icon Norma Talmadge accidentally stepped into wet concrete while visiting there. However, another account says Grauman came up with the tradition after accidentally stepping in wet concrete in the forecourt, after which he got Hollywood icon Mary Pickford to leave her footprints there on April 30, 1927 -- Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks already readily agreeing to leaving his footprints there due to being in a business partnership with Sid Grauman for the theater at the time. In the third account, a construction foreman named Jean Klossner -- reportedly hired to develop an extremely hard cement, who later became the "Mr. Footprint" who conducted the ceremonial leaving of hand and footprints in the cement from 1927 to 1962 -- left his autograph in the wet cement by the right hand poster kiosk and that is actually what gave Grauman the idea for the tradition in the first place.

Regardless of how the tradition began, in 1968 the theater (reportedly still being used to play films as of 2008) became a historical and cultural landmark due to the footprints left in the forecourt making it the "Forecourt of the Stars." Norma Talmadge is actually the first person to leave her footprints there, but her footprints are post-dated (the actual date they were left is unknown) to the May 18, 1927 opening date of the theater, hence why the accurately dated April 30, 1927 (still before the opening day) footprints of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are commonly counted as the first. Suffice to say that the prints there read like a "who's who" of Hollywood over the years, with variants upon footprints leading to the addition of handprints, other parts of the body, and even objects associated with the Hollywood icons over the years (the "footprints" of Star Wars characters instead of the actors who portrayed them, imprints of the magic wands of the three main characters of the Harry Potter movies).

Some also assert that Hollywood icon Charlie Chaplin -- now often known for his criticism of Nazism through parodying Adolf Hitler in the 1940 film The Great Dictator -- had his prints removed due to paranoia about his perceived political beliefs during the Hollywood blacklisting era of "un-American Communists" during 1947-1960, although he reportedly never was invited to leave any prints there. The tire prints of the Volkswagen Beetle Herbie the Love Bug were left there in 1977 as a publicity stunt for the movie Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo -- this during the 1969-1980 period the supposedly "living" car was quite popular (an unpopular and badly reviewed Herbie: Fully Loaded was made in 2005), but were indeed later removed.

Here I also have to note that in 1991 the film The Rocketeer was made. It was well-reviewed but not popularly received until after home release, and was set in 1938 since it was based upon a comic book series set in the same era. Although the historical references are much more downplayed in the film version, they are more prominent in writer Peter David's book version of the film -- David's book version of the film not only including a scene (which is not in the film) where the Rocketeer inadvertently leaves his footprints and a mark from the thrust of his rocket pack at Grauman's Chinese Theater, but also by having US FBI agent Wooly make the comment that "the monkey" Adolf Hitler looks like Charlie Chaplin when discussing the dangers of Nazism with his colleague Fitch -- thus anticipating by two years when Charlie Chaplin would appear as a parody of Hitler in The Great Dictator.

"The Rocketeer" (trailer for the film in the link) was never actually popular enough when the film version was released to be actually leave prints in the Forecourt of the Stars at Sid Grauman's Chinese Theater, however, although David's reference makes it apparent that some thought highly enough of the character to pose him as doing so.

COTD: Geek Boy spouts demagogy, Limburger spouts doughnuts, and Raccoon spouts explosions.

BAD NEWS: Chinese children keep getting attacked in spree attacks.

GOOD NEWS: A new prostate cancer drug has been approved!

HUMOR: He could just ask them (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 1, 2003: US President George W. Bush gave his "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, declaring the end of "major combat operations" in the Iraq War.

"Former President Bush is writing his memoir. Writing his autobiography about his eight years in the White House. He's not done with it yet, but he's already put up the 'mission accomplished' banner." (David Letterman)

In retrospect, President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech appears to be propaganda -- such as was seen in the cases of soldiers Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch -- in order to restore prestige to the US following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks upon the US homeland which killed nearly 3,000 people and which injured more than 6,000.

The first aspect of Bush's speech on this date is the fact that he was flown to the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, off the shore of the US state of California, in a jet fighter. The Abraham Lincoln was actually within range of the Presidential helicopter from mainland California at the time the flight was made, but the jet fighter landing plan was not aborted due to already being in place and purely because Bush wanted to have the experience of landing on an aircraft carrier -- thus emulating what his father, the former President George H.W. Bush had done during World War II (1939-1945) -- but in a jet fighter.

The second aspect of Bush's speech was that a banner reading "Mission Accomplished" was present in the background while Bush gave it. Officially the banner was to mark the end of the ten month overseas deployment of the Abraham Lincoln -- she would dock in San Diego, California after the speech and would return to her home port of Everett, Washington, on May 6 -- and was reportedly made and hung up for the crew of the Abraham Lincoln by Bush's White House staff (originally they claimed they had not hung it up) since there were no materials to make it with aboard the aircraft carrier herself.

There is also the fact that Bush's speech was going to make reference to the words "Mission Accomplished" but then-US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made sure references to those words were deleted, Rumsfeld also later lamenting that the sign had not been fixed as well. As it was, Bush still made reference to "Mission Accomplished" on June 5 in a speech at Camp As Sayliyah, however.

The point here being that no matter what the intentions were, the mere presence of the "Mission Accomplished" sign and Bush's speech gave the impression that the whole Iraq War was over instead of the record-long deployment of the Abraham Lincoln (the longest experienced since the Vietnam War). So implicit was the message that it overshadowed how Rumsfeld himself had declared an end to major combat operations in the Afghanistan War earlier upon the same day, although it did not overshadow how over 98% of casualties have occurred in Iraq due to the Iraqi insurgency and following the speech.

In short, the speech can be interpreted in two ways: as being mishandled enough so that the passing reference to "major combat operations" in combination with the "Mission Accomplished" sign gave the impression that all hostilities would now cease, or else as a flagrant publicity or public relations stunt to restore prestige to the US and thus to President Bush and his fellow Republican Party politicians who controlled the federal US government at that time. In more recent times the latter view has prevailed, although it should be noted that it was not until the near 2,000 deaths and USD $81.2 billion devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 due to the poor response to it by the federal government, which lead to the perception of the "Mission Accomplished" speech as a stunt, that the resulting lack of confidence in the Republican Party headed by Bush and lead to it being voted out starting (but not ending) with the US Senate Elections and the House of Representative Elections in 2006.

COTD: The world should not be a place where you can do everything right and still fail, or where you can do everything wrong yet still succeed.

BAD NEWS: A Lebanese mob beat a murder suspect to death.

GOOD NEWS: Michigan has banned texting while driving!

HUMOR: Good for you, Bridget (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 2, 1863: During the 1861-1865 US Civil War, General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson was wounded by friendly fire after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville.

The first roots of the US Civil War are actually in the military tradition of the Southern United States, where the militaristic idea of using warfare to defend one's home was passed down from generation to generation. As such, this is why much of what is considered to be the Southern United States seceded from the union of the United States of America and then formed the Confederate States of America when they concluded the US federal government was no longer upholding their rights -- what they called "the Cause." The irony here being that a common practice in Southern United States at that time was continuing to allow legal slavery -- which had become raced-based and thus why slaves in the Southern United States were black by this time -- which of course is the most naked means possible of denying people their rights.

The start of the Civil War was the issue over whether the Union of the United States was perpetual, since the 1781 Articles of Confederation -- or rather, the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" -- had set the precedent that the union of states would be permanent, yet the United States Constitution which replaced it did not explicitly mention this, thus the 1865 victory of the United States of America over the Confederate States of America reinforced the permanence of the union.

The issue of slavery denying people their rights was added into the war with United States President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation executive orders of 1862 and 1863 freeing most American slaves by declaring most slaves in the Confederate States of America were now freed (the United States federal government did not recognize the Confederate States as a separate nation), although it was not until the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was passed that slavery itself was declared illegal.

Here, however, it should be noted that racism was a serious problem throughout the United States even following the US Civil War -- not just in the Southern United States where blacks were retaliated against due to being linked to the Civil War that had been lost -- even up to such measures as Jim Crow laws, hence why the 1955-1968 African-American Civil Rights Movement effected the United States as a whole.

Of course this was far in the future from General Jackson getting shot at Chancellorsville, but gives the context of "the Cause" (flawed or not, given how it was linked to slavery) of the Confederate States of America for which he fought. Working backwards a little, some might be aware that in 1993 a popularly-received film called Gettysburg was released about the Battle of Gettsyburg turning point in the US Civil War (based on the earlier book the Killer Angels, which was followed up by a prequel book and movie which were both titled "Gods and Generals" -- and the "Fredericksburg" chant taken up by the victorious Union near the end of the film refers to the 1862Battle of Fredericksburg when the situation had been essentially reversed). In Gettysburg Confederate General James Longstreet is shown as the main subordinate of the main Confederate General Robert E. Lee, but the fact of the matter is that General Stonewall Jackson had also been quite prominent -- perhaps even more prominent than Longstreet -- before dying after being wounded by friendly fire at the Battle of Chancellorsville on this date in 1863.

Following the military tradition common to the Southern United States, Jackson was accepted to West Point to train for the US military in 1842. His previous schooling had been poor, but through his characteristic determination he worked his way up from being at the bottom (the worst) of his class to graduating seventeenth best out of the 59 students of his class. Like many of those who would later fight in the US Civil War he also fought in the 1846-1848Mexican-American War -- an irony of which is that many of the leading American figures in that war would end up fighting against each other in the 1861-1865 US Civil War. The point being that his actions in the Mexican-American War showed he was able to actually apply the lessons he had learned at West Point, this being important since the largely uncontrolled conditions of a battlefield are actually quite different from the controlled conditions used as a classroom.

Jackson's character was stern and quite religious, and although his own immediate family did own slaves he was noted as being kind to both slaves and free blacks, although being from Virginia he would fight for the Confederacy during the US Civil War due to believing in "the Cause" -- fears that President Lincoln would end slavery and would thus take away the rights of those in the Southern United States helping prompt the southern states to illegally secede. He earned his nickname of "Stonewall" because he so strongly instilled discipline in his troops that they did not break and run, as was noted in theFirst Battle of Bull Run/First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861 (there is some controversy over what gained him that nickname, but this is the most popular account of it).

Jackson's strength was that he possessed a combination of audacity, excellent knowledge and shrewd use of the terrain, plus the ability to inspire his Confederate troops to great feats of marching and fighting that enabled his smaller numbers of troops to succeed against poorly coordinated and/or more-timid opposing commanders of Union forces which often outnumbered the Confederate troops. The aforementioned General Longstreet was better at defensive strategies and tactics, hence the strengths of two of them often outweighed their mutual weaknesses and complimented each other so that Jackson was referred to the "hammer" of the Confederacy, and Longstreet the "anvil." It was with Stonewall Jackson "the hammer" that full General Robert E. Lee struck the oblivious and negligent 11,000 strong right side of the Union/Federal lines during the aforementioned Battle of Chancellorsville (Lee -- also fighting for the Cause despite ridiculing its reasons -- was the best of the five full generals the Confederacy had, and both Jackson and Longstreet reached the rank of Lieutenant General) during the May 1-2 period of the April 30-May 6 battle. The decisive rout left Jackson's 26,000 Confederates with 4,000 prisoners and left Confederate troops in command of the elevated Hazel Grove area where artillery could both be effectively used against the remaining Union troops and as a means of keeping Jackson's troops united with those of Lee.* Having won a great victory that day, the aggressive Jackson himself scouted ahead with his staff for the possibility of a rare night attack given there was the light of a full moon that night. When he and his staff returned to the Confederate lines, an alarmed Confederate North Carolina regiment set up as pickets (regiments have varied in size from a few hundred to 5,000 strong, pickets are troops placed merely to warn against the advance of enemy soldiers) spotted the incoming Jackson and staff and despite calling out the common "Halt, who goes there?" was so nervous that they fired a volley upon merely hearing and thus not judging the reply. When Jackson's staff then began frantically identifying themselves, Confederate Major Barry quickly concluded it was a Union/Federal "Yankee" trick and ordered "It's a damned Yankee trick! Fire!" which resulted in a second volley.

The darkness resulted in confusion even following what was this "friendly fire" incident on May 2, 1863, killing a number of Jackson's staff and horses, and leaving Jackson twice wounded in his left arm and once in his right hand. As such, he was also inadvertently dropped from his stretcher while being evacuated due to incoming artillery rounds (although the side the rounds were fired from is not identified). Jackson's left arm was amputated due to the wounds in it (a too-common practice at the time, although amputation can be legitimately used to prevent the spread of disease and infection to the rest of the body) and of course he had to be removed from his command in order to recover, but more serious was the fact that Jackson complained of having a sore chest. A sore chest is one characteristic of pneumonia, which is abnormal inflammation of the lungs due to a variety of causes and thus which can result in a person essentially suffocating to death due to not being able to breathe in enough air. He seems to have begun to develop pneumonia prior to being wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville, but with his bullet wounds attended to and the soreness of his chest being mistakenly attributed to being dropped from his stretcher and otherwise being roughly evacuated, the pneumonia was missed and he was mistakenly expected to be able to recover.

Although Jackson initially began to recover from the bullet wounds he suffered on May 2, complications from his pneumonia began to develop after that so that he died on May 10, 1863. Upon hearing of Jackson's death, Robert E. Lee mourned his loss -- both a friend and a trusted subordinate -- saying such things as that Jackson had lost his left arm, but with Jackson's death Lee himself had lost his right arm.

Some propose that if Stonewall Jackson had survived, the outcome of the July 1-3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg would have been different due to his audacity, excellent knowledge and shrewd use of the terrain, and the ability to inspire providing the Confederacy with an added offensive advantage, but it should also be noted that the defensively-minded General Longstreet has sometimes been made a scapegoat (see Lost Cause of the Confederacy) to avoid too much criticism of General Lee, who became so beloved by the Southern United States for his central role in fighting for "the Cause" that they were slow to criticize him. For instance, the evolution of Lee's tactics at Gettysburg were separate attempts to cave in either flank of the Union lines in order to take them from the rear, then to divide and conquer the Union army by splitting it in two with "Pickett's Charge" which was actually a march over a long stretch of open ground with a charge at the end, but Longstreet argued quite strongly against it due to him accurately seeing it as an untenable attack that would break the strength of Lee's Confederate Army -- which it indeed did, thus helping lead to the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865 (the defeat at Gettysburg also turned the British away from possibly supporting the Confederacy due to their industrial dependence upon cotton from the Southern United States).

As well, Longstreet's later willingness to criticize the beloved General Lee, as well as his willingness to become a "scalawag" who supported the Reconstruction after the war, plus the fact that he also came to support the very same Republican party that President Lincoln had been the leader of, have caused detractors to read to read a growing defeatism in the actions he took starting during the US Civil War, whereas his supporters argue his defensive tactics were sound given the smaller size of the Confederate armies and the fact that direct offensive confrontations such as Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg were too aggressive to work.

If somehow Stonewall Jackson could have somehow made Lee's overaggressive tactics at Gettysburg work due to the strengths of the offensive tactics Jackson himself was able to employ remains unknown, however, as he had of course been wounded by friendly fire at Chancellorsville on May 2 and then had died on May 10, around two months before the Battle of Gettysburg.

-------------------------------

*Union Major General Daniel Sickles and his forces were withdrawn from Hazel Grove by his commanding General Joseph Hooker due to fears they were then too exposed following Longstreet's attack, thus why the bitter Sickles later violated orders and moved some of his troops to the high ground of a Peach Orchard at the aforementioned 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, where they became too exposed and thus how the left flank of the Union lines was smashed through by troops under Longstreet until being stopped at Little Round Top by the brilliant tactics of then Colonel Joshua Chamberlain.

COTD: I am the lemming that clings to the cliff.

BAD NEWS: A China Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing due to a joke about a bomb.

GOOD NEWS: A car bomb has been stopped from going off in Times Square!

HUMOR: Dreams ... (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: May 3, 1942: During World War II (1939-1945), the Japanese begin Operation Mo Sakusen, which leads to the notableBattle of the Coral Sea.

"Operation Mo," as it is commonly remembered, was the Japanese attempt to strengthen the defenses of Imperial Japan via isolating Australia and New Zealand from United States support through taking control of the base of Port Moresby in what was then the Territory of New Guinea and other areas in Oceania (consisting of the islands southeast of Asia such as New Zealand, and including Australia -- and some of the most significant World War II battles were fought for the island of Guadalcanal which is also in this area).

The reason Operation Mo was ultimately aborted was because of the June 4-7, 1942 Battle of Midway, which the Japanese attempted to set up as a trap to finish off the remains of the American Navy which has survived the December 7, 1941 attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The American forces were able to detect the trap and thus to actually score a decisive victory over the Japanese at Midway, however, thus how the Battle of Midway was seen as the turning point in the Pacific Theater of the war against the Japanese.

Prior to the Battle of Midway, however, there was the notableBattle of the Coral Sea which was precipitated by the start of Operation Mo. Officially taking place during May 4-8, 1942, the result of the battle was a tactical victory for the Japanese but a strategic victory for the Americans. "Tactical victory" means that the Japanese lost fewer resources in the battle, and "strategic victory" means that though the Americans lost more resources they were able to stop the Japanese advance and thus to delay Operation Mo until it could get canceled by the Japanese as a result of the American decisive victory at the Battle of Midway -- "Decisive victory" essentially meaning a victory that is both a tactical and strategic victory.

Rather than go point by point over the order of the Battle of the Coral Sea that was precipitated by Operation Mo on May 3, suffice to say that in addition to it being a significant battle due to the strategic victory it allowed the Americans, it was also the first naval battle which was fought with aircraft attacking the opposing ships and opposing aircraft attacking each other instead of with the ships attacking each other -- this because the ships themselves always managed to keep out of direct contact with each other. The Battle of Midway itself was another of these battles, which are more properly called "Carrier versus Carrier" battles since they essentially pit the aircraft of various aircraft carriers against each other with their aircraft as their artillery -- their long range, offensive weaponry. With this in mind, this shows why navies actually have an emphasis upon aeronautics these days which is second only to that of the world's various air forces -- something already reflected in the aeronautically-heavy US Navy-based Top Gun film I already alluded to in my April 28, 1993 post about the GP Express aircraft that crashed after attempting an illegal barrel roll.

In short there is a considerable amount of air power now involved with naval forces due to the precedent that was set in motion by the May 3, 1942 start of Operation Mo -- this in itself again reflected by the fact that the US Air Force became the second most popular armed force to enlist in following the release of the pro-Navy but aircraft-heavy 1986 Top Gun movie. Warfare is not fought entirely in aircraft and by ships in water, however, hence the Japanese made one last attempt at capturing the base at Port Moresby (after the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway) with the Kokoda Track campaign of July 21-November 16, 1942. Fought mostly by army troops of the invading Japanese versus army troops of the defending Americans and Australians along the rugged and disease-plagued Kokoda Track (in addition to this, the Japanese troops were so poorly supplied they resulted to cannibalism), the Americans and Australians won a strategic victory that made it impossible for the Japanese to have any realistic attempt at capturing Port Moresby in the Territory of New Guinea for the rest of the war, thus preventing the Japanese from being able to overcome the handicap they had encountered due to being unable to complete Operation Mo.

COTD: Part of avoiding making mistakes is not putting yourself into situations where you can make them.

BAD NEWS: The southeastern US is suffering from bad storms.

GOOD NEWS: Fortunately Ralph Hudson was able to stop before backing up too much!

HUMOR: He is reading too much into it (Ozy and Millie, by Simpson)!

HISTORY: May 4, 1988: Two people were killed, 372 were injured, and USD $100 million in damages were done by the PEPCON Disaster at Henderson, Nevada (USA).

PEPCON stands for Pacific Engineering Production COmpany of Nevada, the plant of which at Henderson manufactured the oxidizer ammonium perchlorate for solid fuel rocket boosters, most notably for those of the US NASA Space Shuttle fleet (thus giving one an idea what it can do).

After the January 28, 1986 Challenger disaster placed NASA missions on hold. Since shipping the ammonium perchlorate to a more proper storage location was overlooked, the PEPCON plant stored its ammonium perchlorate on-site. Excessive amounts of ammonium perchlorate ended up being produced following the hold put on NASA missions following the Challenger disaster, hence after the aluminum bins used to store the product were filled up it was also placed into HDPE (High Density PolyEthylene) plastic drums which were stored in parking lots at the plant.

On the day of the disaster, employees were using a blow torch to repair the steel frame of the drying process structure after it had been damaged in a windstorm. Unfortunately, the blow torch also ended up igniting the fiberglass walls and roof of the structure, and the flames were accelerated by residue from the aforementioned ammonium perchlorate.

Although the employees started trying to put out the fire with hoses, when the fire began causing the aforementioned HDPE drums to detonate -- the plastic acting as fuel for the spreading fire -- the employees began fleeing the area (the employees of a nearby Kidd and Company marshmallow factory also evacuated upon beginning to hear the explosions). About 75 of them managed to escape but the two that were ultimately killed by the explosions were Roy Westerfield and Bruce Halker. Westerfield was PEPCON's Comptroller (one who oversees accounting and financial controls) and professionally stayed behind in order to coordinate via phone with emergency services while Halker was unable to escape due to being wheelchair-bound.

There were ultimately seven explosions as a result of the accident, the largest as powerful as the smallest nuclear warhead of the W54. The two largest of these seven explosions also registered as earthquakes of 3.5 and 3.0 magnitude, and a crater 15 feet (4.6 meters) deep and 200 feet (61 meters) long was blasted into the storage area, as well as destroying the plant (the nearby Kidd and Company marshmallow factory was also destroyed). A fireball was also temporarily created due to the explosions rupturing a high-pressure natural gas line which also ran under the plant. The explosions also rendered the fire department unable to respond, as they shattered the windows of approaching fire department vehicles and injured the firefighters inside with shards of glass.

Damage within 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) around the plant was severe as was noted (complete destruction of the plant), while it was less severe at a distance of seven to ten miles (eleven to sixteen kilometers) the damage was less severe with cracked windows, doors blown off of their hinges, and people injured by flying glass and debris. PEPCON (who changed their name to Western Electrochemical Company after the accident) was sued for the accident and as they were at fault, ultimately paid out a USD $71 million settlement to the over 400 victims (mostly injuries, but also the two deaths) and their families.

Much of the disaster was captured on camera by television engineer Dennis Todd since he was on the nearby Black Mountain performing maintenance on a television tower. Aside from the lessons about proper storage of material and following correct procedures, the professionalism of Roy Westerfield due to his heroic attempts to help direct firefighters to the disaster to keep it from escalating and to keep others safe from it is also of note since it is proof that the trust that was placed in him to uphold moral and ethical standards was not misplaced. The account of a 1997 accident that occurred at where the plant relocated to can be read here, it also being of note that two of the buildings of the new plant were named after PEPCON disaster victims Roy Westerfield and Bruce Halker (the Kidd and Company marshmallow factory rebuilt on the same site).

Finally, a Youtube file of some of the disaster (sound travels slower than light, hence why the sound can be heard after the explosions and the ripples from the shockwave on the ground are seen) can be found here.

COTD: Where is the other place?

BAD NEWS: A woman stabbed four people in a Target store.

GOOD NEWS: The Times Square bomber was caught!

HUMOR: Abstract art (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 5, 1864: The US Civil War Battle of the Wilderness marks the start of US General Grant's Overland Campaign against the Confederate States of America.

There were two reasons the Southern Confederate Army attacked the Northern Union Army in the Wilderness within Spotsylvania and Orange County of the state of Virginia: first the nearly impenetrable scrub growth and rough terrain of the area would help compensate for the lower number of troops and inferior artillery (long range offensive weapons) of the Confederate troops -- this severely damaged by losses at the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg that I alluded to in discussing the April 30-May 6, 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville -- and second because the Union Army had to be stopped before it penetrated far enough south to threaten the Confederate States of America federal government at Richmond, Virginia.

Some state that the Battle of Chancellorsville and the Battle of the Wilderness were fought in the same spot, but this was only roughly the case since the centers of the Battles were four miles apart from each other, hence only some of the battlefields overlapped each other (one battle from the French and Indian War/Seven Years War between the British and French over colonial control of North America was fought near the same area in 1755 and thus is also sometimes called the Battle of the Wilderness). An additional irony of this similarity, however, was that a Confederate General again ended up being wounded by friendly fire: Confederate States of America General James Longstreet.

When the battle began it was initiated by troops under the overall direct command of Confederate General Lee. On May 6 -- for the Battle of the Wilderness lasted from May 5 to May 7 -- Longstreet's troops arrived to reinforce Lee about noon and thus hours later than expected, and although Longstreet is noted for his defensive strategies he went on the offense and not only regained the two miles that Lee had been driven back over, but gained an extra mile more. Nightfall and lack of troops prevented him from pressing his advantage further, plus of course the fact that he was wounded by some sort of friendly fire incident in which a bullet went through his shoulder and tore a gash in his throat. He lost the use of his dominant right arm and hand but was later regained the use of his hand despite nerve injuries from the wound -- he would pull on his right arm with his left hand to move it around, although for instance he also taught himself to write left-handed -- but his wounds meant he was kept recovering for several months, during which time his skill was sorely missed since the Confederates began to experience increasing numbers of losses.

Here an aside should be noted in that one of the notable points from the Battle of the Wilderness is that some type of combustion from firearms or some type of campfire accidentally started a brush fire that burned at night, hence the soldiers of each side could hear soldiers too wounded to move and left laying on the battlefield at night screaming as they were burned alive and thus killed by the flames -- yet another of the horrors of war. But to return to Longstreet, the previous Confederate General wounded by friendly fire was Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, whom lost his left arm due to injuries suffered in his friendly fire incident and whom later died of pneumonia, prompting Lee to comment that Jackson's death was like losing his right arm. As far as we know, Lee never made a similar arm-related comment about losing Longstreet until October due to the injury that cost Longstreet the use of his right arm, but Longstreet was indeed sorely missed since General Grant -- then General-in-Chief of all Union Armies -- then shifted his tactics into the aforementioned "Overland Campaign." Prior to this the general tendency in the eastern United States would be for Union armies to move South from Washington DC in order to try and capture or threaten the Confederate States of America federal government at Richmond, Virginia, at which they would be attacked and defeated by Confederate troops (arguably under better leadership due to the military tradition of the Southern United States) so that they would then retreat back to the safety of Washington DC once more. Grant, however, simply withdrew from the battle and continued pushing south, essentially continually attempting to step around the Confederate army to stretch it thin and to put it in a position where it was continually fighting and thus had no chance to rest and recover while protecting the Confederate federal government as had been afforded by Union retreats before. The Battle of the Wilderness can therefore be called a tactical victory by the Confederacy since Grant withdrew, but a strategic victory since Grant's starting of the Overland Campaign was successful and lead to the end of the war about a year later (it also being of note here that in the latter stages of the war the Confederate Army controlled the Confederacy so much they finally overrode the barring of blacks from serving as soldiers for their freedom. One general indicator of a failed government also appears to be more military as opposed to civilian control of it).

Grant has gained a reputation as a "butcher" for initiating the Overland Campaign with the Battle of the Wilderness and due to the many casualties his troops suffered -- less than his predecessors combined together over the previous three years -- but in retrospect it is an arguably sound strategy since it worked, since the other offenses he had devised for elsewhere -- except for General Sherman's campaign in Georgia (gaining him much hatred from the Southern United States) -- were not working. As Longstreet himself said about Grant to Lee, "he will fight us every day and every hour until the end of the war," and as US President Abraham Lincoln said to defend Grant from criticism, "I can't spare this man, he fights."

The sad fact is some injuries and deaths are going to befall one's own troops even in victorious warfare, and thus are unavoidable. The fact that Grant's immediate predecessor George Meade did not follow up with destroying the remainder of the Confederate army at or following the turning point in the war, the aforementioned Battle of Gettysburg, has been cited by some as why President Lincoln replaced him with Grant. In any event, Grant concluded the Overland Campaign he had begun with the Battle of the Wilderness by shifting tactics again and thus conducting the June 9, 1864 to March 25, 1865 Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, which thus cut what supply lines there were to feed and supply both the eastern Confederate armies and the Confederate federal government further north at Richmond, Virginia. Confederate General-in-Chief Lee was eventually forced to abandon protecting both Petersburg and Richmond due to being stretched too thin so that the federal government of the Confederate States of America collapsed, and then the surrender of his now severely-depleted army as a result of the Appomattox Campaign brought an effective end to the war on April 9, 1865 (although some scattered fighting continued after Lee's surrender).

In short, due to the tenacity to continue fighting instead of retreating to Washington DC following the Battle of the Wilderness on this date in 1864, Grant achieved what his predecessors did not. Warfare of course is not a pleasant business, however, thus why some unfairly characterized Grant as a butcher afterwards. But "butcher" or not, his strategy coming out of the Battle of the Wilderness did indeed win the US Civil War for the Northern Union.

COTD: Those who say they do not offend easily are those who quietly offend the most easily.

BAD NEWS: There is rioting in Greece.

GOOD NEWS: Bret Michaels was able to leave the hospital!

HUMOR: Soul on the floor (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 6, 1527: The European "Renaissance" was effectively ended when the city of Rome was sacked by 34,000 German, Italian, and Spanish troops under Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

The word "Renaissance" is actually used quite often to describe various parts of history. It comes from the French word of "rebirth" and tends to entail a resurgence of learning based on classical sources, the development of linear perspective in painting, and gradual educational reform. In Europe various types of Renaissance bridged the Middle Ages to the Modern Era whenever it occurred, the "Middle Ages" or "Medieval Period" beginning after the effective end of the (Western) Roman Empire in 476 and thus after the close of the "Classical Era," the "Modern Era" -- the Modern Era noted for its emphasis on science --sometimes dated as starting with the 1527 Sack of Rome.

It should be emphasized that sometimes the dates for the various periods vary, as of course time periods tend to seamlessly flow into each other and because the Renaissance occurred at various times across Europe. The earliest starting date of "Renaissance" I found was actually 1070 and the latest date of Renaissance ending was 1660, for instance. But suffice to say that the "Renaissance" in the sense of the above was prompted by rediscovery of Roman and Byzantine works of antiquity -- written in both Latin and Greek, the main two languages of the two Empires (the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium being the eastern half of the former Roman Empire) -- after the politically destabilized period following the effective end of the political oversight of the Roman Empire in 476. For instance, this instability is why there is a "bishop" in the game of chess -- in some cases the political vacuum left from the instability was such that the Christian church itself moved to fill that political gap.

About Charles V, he ruled not just the Holy Roman Empire but also Spain and much of Italy at the time as a result of how European nobles married each other due to being part of the European royal aristocracy at the time. France itself had been effectively split off from the Holy Roman Empire in 843 with the Treaty of Verdun which had divided the Holy Roman Empire between the three sons of Louis the Pius, the son and direct successor to the first Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne -- the middle kingdom of the three ending up being split between what became France and what was then once again effectively the Holy Roman Empire in 870 via the Treaty of Meerssen. European politics at the time of the 1527 Sack of Rome were also complicated since religion was involved in them too, with both the Christian Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor claiming precedent over both within Europe, hence Pope Clement VII gave his support to France to counter the claims of Charles V upon the region.

In short, this is why Spanish and German and Italian troops ended up fighting and defeating French troops in Italy as part of the 1526-1530 War of the League of Cognac which had come about with disputes over control of Italy resulting from the 1494-1559Italian Wars. However, since funds were not available to pay these troops of Charles V they took matters into their own hands around April 20, mutinying and thus ending up sacking -- that is, looting -- the cities of Acquapendente and San Lorenzo alle Grotte in order to receive some pay (they occupied the cities of Viterbo and Ronciglione as well) en route to Rome.

The reason why the army went after Rome may have been because some early Protestant Lutheran Christians joined the army and persuaded it that the Catholic Christian city of Rome was a legitimate target for religious reasons (Martin Luther himself was actually against this type of thing), but also because opportunists saw an opportunity and thus joined up with the army along the way purely for the chance to engage in opportunistic banditry.

The total number of defenders of Rome was only around 5,000, consisting of militiamen and the Pontifical Swiss Guard (the direct bodyguards for the Pope). Pope Clement VII survived largely due to the heroic defense of the Swiss Guard -- of the 189 of them, only 42 survived (new members to the Swiss Guard are sworn in on May 6 in order to commemorate this heroic defense) -- but the end effect was that the prestige of the Pope was badly damaged so that not only did the more secular Holy Roman Emperor himself ended up taking the lead in trying to suppress the Protestant Christian Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire (which he ultimately failed at, due to the expansive nature of the European Wars of Religion which were precipitated by the Protestant Reformation), but more importantly it lead to Pope Clement VII essentially giving a free hand to Charles V in political matters such as struggling against France in order to maintain the survival of the Papacy. This essentially removed religion from the ongoing conflict between France and the Holy Roman Empire, thus allowing more of the aforementioned emphasis upon science instead of religion that is characteristic of the the Modern Era -- although the current era within which we live is called the "Contemporary Era" which is often dated as starting in 1945 with the end of World War II and which is characterized by increasing availability of not just technology, but also of information.

COTD: Stop making rubbish and cabbage.

BAD NEWS: There has been more deaths and damages from the flooding in Tennessee.

GOOD NEWS: Russia freed a hijacked oil tanker!

HUMOR: Pluggers would still actually have typewriters, too (Pluggers, by Brookins)!

HISTORY: May 7, 1999: A jury found that the Jenny Jones Show, Telepictures, and the Warner Brothers company were liable in the amount of USD $25 million for the murder of Scott Amedure by Jonathan Schmitz -- although this was later overturned on appeal.

The 1991-2003 Jenny Jones Show was at first a traditional talk show, but then began focusing more upon unusual topics in order to increase its ratings. This is why on March 6, 1995 the episode "Same Sex Crushes" was taped, within which Jonathan Schmitz's friend Scott Amedure -- who was homosexual -- admitted he had intimate feelings (a "crush") upon Schmitz. Schmitz laughed off the incident but according to his account, three days later Amedure later left a suggestive note at Schmitz's home.

Schmitz reportedly responded to the note by buying a shotgun and then going to Amedure's home, where he left the shotgun in his car at first and questioned Schmitz about the note, then he got his shotgun from his car and fatally shot Amedure twice in the chest, then called the US 911 emergency number and confessed to the murder.

Schmitz was sentenced to 25-50 years in prison for second degree murder, and part of his defense was the temporary insanity gay panic defense which is characterized by a temporary diminished capacity to reason and uncharacteristically violent behavior ("trans panic" is what this is called in the case the temporary insanity occurs in response to a transgender or intersexed person who has had a sex change or who is has an atypical mixture of male and female characteristics due to unusual physical development). That Schmitz reacted three days after the show was taped -- which was never shown as part of the Jenny Jones Show due to the murder -- and also that he had a history of mental illness and of substance abuse therefore outweighed the temporary insanity gay panic defense and resulted in Schmitz being convicted. As well, neglecting to uncover Schmitz's mental illness and substance abuse was what Amedure's family sued for, although the overturn on appeal was due to the producers of the show not being liable for what happened to those that appeared on it after the show itself.

The gay/trans panic defense has also been considered in a number of other cases, most notably the American 1998 murder of the homosexual Matthew Shepard. In the case of Shepard, the gay panic defense was disallowed due to it not being allowed as part of the temporary insanity defense within the state of Wyoming were the murder occurred -- Shepard's murderers therefore argued that while under the influence of drugs (which others testified was not true) they had only planned to befriend a homosexual man in order to rob him on the night of October 6-7 (Shepard's murderers were sentenced to two life sentences each). The fact that Shepard was tortured so badly that his skull was fractured, that he was later found in a coma still tied to a fence, and that he survived until October 12 brought considerable publicity to the case and thus much quite understandable public sympathy for Shepard, plus providing some motivation to extend hate crime legislation (hate crimes being crimes due to bias) to protect homosexuals.

COTD: I hear the insult in your voice.

BAD NEWS: US unemployment is up.

GOOD NEWS: US hiring is up!

HUMOR: Vegetarian (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 8, 1927: French World War I (1914-1918) aviators Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli took off in their White Bird aircraft from Paris, France, in an attempt to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in a nonstop flight to New York, New York (USA). They disappeared somewhere en route.

In 1919 US hotel owner Raymond Orteig decided to take advantage of the publicity to be had through taking advantage of the rapid increases in technology, thus he offered a prize of USD $25,000 for anyone who could fly across the Atlantic Ocean in a transatlantic flight between the cities of New York and Paris. British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown managed a nonstop transatlantic flight in 1919 from the shorter distance of St. John's, Newfoundland (Canada) to Clifden, Ireland to win a Daily Mail prize of 10,000 British Pounds, and there was a nonstop flight of Zeppelin ZR-3 under command of Hugo Eckner from Germany to New Jersey (USA) in 1924, but the first transatlantic flight to be made nonstop and fitting Orteig's conditions was made in 1927 by Charles Lindberg -- the ability to fly a transatlantic flight nonstop being seen as an indicator that technology had indeed increased. Transatlantic flights with stops had first successfully begun in 1919 (Lindberg's flight is therefore only notable for being nonstop) and may have been why Orteig offered his $25,000 Orteig Prize, or else he offered it due to publicity about Alcock and Brown (the fact they crashed upon landing in Ireland raises a question of whether their flight can be defined as successful or not). There was actually no interest in it at first, hence why Orteig renewed the prize in 1924 so that Lindberg's successfully captured it on May 21, 1927 -- thus prompting the great interest in aircraft that would help shape the twentieth century.

In the case of Nungesser and Coli, their redesigned biplane aircraft was called the "White Bird" (or "White Dove") was painted white and jettisoned its landing gear at takeoff (the gear is now visible at the French Air and Space Museum in Paris) in order to reduce weight and to be able to make a successful water landing in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York, New York (USA) -- the flight also being notable since it was an attempt from Paris to New York instead of the other way around. The redesign included making the engine more powerful, increasing the fuel capacity, and reinforcing the fuselage (body) of the aircraft so that it could indeed readily survive a water landing.

The fact that the White Bird, Nungesser, and Coli were never seen again has prompted many theories about what might have happened, the one most accepted by experts being that the aircraft encountered bad weather and crashed into the ocean. However, since the aviators planned a "great circle" route which took them across as much land as possible -- over southwestern England and Ireland, and also across the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia before crossing over the US state of Massachusetts before it reached New York -- there were a number of accounts that people along the route, particularly in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and the US state of Maine (the state furthest to the northeast and north of Massachusetts) reported seeing or hearing an aircraft (sometimes an aircraft having engine trouble) that might therefore have been the White Bird.

Reportedly some parts from a foreign aircraft have been found over the years while searching for the White Bird, although no signs of either Nungesser or Coli (although one account is that they lived the rest of their lives with Native Americans in Canada), and the parts found were too small in number be positively linked to the White Bird (larger and more identifiable metal parts from the White Bird such as the engine and fuel tanks have only been rumored as having been found). However, officially the flight was lost at sea.

Despite the official theory, In 1989 the television show Unsolved Mysteries advanced the common competing theory that the White Bird almost made it but crashed somewhere in the state of Maine, given the aforementioned witness accounts. Whatever happened, however, suffice to say that today both Nungesser and Coli are French heroes for their attempt aboard the White Bird.

COTD: As Irish as Lucky Charms.

BAD NEWS: US lettuce had to be recalled.

GOOD NEWS: A bus bomb scare was just a misunderstanding!

HUMOR: At least she admits it (Pickels, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 9, 1726: Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin, and Thomas Wright were executed via hanging in England for sodomy after being caught in a raid upon Margaret Clap's coffee shop, which was actually a molly house.

Some sources say five men were executed on this date after being caught in the raid. "Sodomy" can be defined as sexual acts judged by the law to be unnatural, and a "molly house" was a relatively private location within which groups of homosexuals could meet with each other -- hence they were rather like the precursor of gay bars (alcohol-serving establishments that cater to homosexuals).

Not much else is known about Margaret Clap except that she seems to have run it as a courtesy for members of the homosexual/gay community instead of as a profit-making brothel -- although copious and promiscuous homosexual sex was certainly allowed there -- during its 1724-1726 period of existence, which caused it to become quite well known by homosexuals. Here too it should be noted that "Molly" is perhaps a derived from a nickname of Margaret and was used to describe those men at the molly houses who would roleplay as women, hence why the name was applied to both the places where they met as well as to describe the types of men ("mollies") who frequented the molly houses -- plus also men who were viewed as being effeminate or who were viewed as being guilty of the nebulously-defined charge of sodomy.

The raid upon Margaret Clap's house took place during February 1726 and after her molly house had been under surveillance for a year or two, reportedly instigated when Mark Partridge was "outed" (publicly revealed as homosexual without his consent) as a homosexual and thus became an informant for the police, reportedly bringing a single undercover police officer to molly houses as his "husband" so the officer could spy upon what was going on in exchange for presumably not being tried for sodomy since he was reportedly never tried for it (a Thomas Newton is also mentioned as a molly-turned informer, hence if one incorrectly figures in Partridge and Newton in with the other three then this might be where the figure of five executions instead of three comes from).

As can be expected, typically laws against sodomy (sodomy is also given various other names) are only enforced for sexual relations outside of heterosexual ones, and more often for sex between men given that society tends to view that type of homosexuality more often as being unnatural. The number of laws against sodomy throughout the world have actually been declining over the years -- this for what I would guess is due to increasing amounts of information available making it more evident that many who are homosexual or who are otherwise not heterosexual can and have been functioning within contributing to society without inadvertently harming it via what amounts to a minority lifestyle, plus more information being made available about how much biology as opposed to choice influences it -- but of course the resistance to repealing sodomy laws is within the fact that it makes natural sexuality arguably too complicated to understand instead of retaining the simple and conventional definition that heterosexuality -- particularly monogamous heterosexuality within a marriage -- is the only natural and thus legal sexuality.

I should close here by noting that the punishment in England at the time of the raid upon Margaret Clap's molly house actually varied from fines and imprisonment to execution. In contrast to the aforementioned executions, another man named Charles Hitchen ended up only being sentenced to pay a fine of 20 British pounds, being publicly exhibited in a pillory for an hour, and then to serve a six month prison sentence after being convicted of attempted sodomy charges (although here it should be noted this may have been more due to his struggle with another corrupt public official by the name of Jonathan Wild) -- although it is true he died soon after his release from prison, most likely the start of the poor health that lead to his death being the fact that the public beat him so badly when he was helpless within the pillory that he was released from it before his hour was up, this in an effort to preserve his life.

COTD: Don't you think about your not thinking?

BAD NEWS: Dozens of people were hurt in a ferry crash.

GOOD NEWS: A man has been arrested for filing a disturbing yet false police report!

HUMOR: Norm must have had a high school like mine (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 10, 1933: Public book burnings began to be staged in Nazi Germany.

The reason I say book burnings began being staged is because some were postponed a few days because of rain, while others were delayed until the summer solstice (the longest day of the year, in terms of how long the sun is visible) on June 21 since this was a traditional date of celebration (there is also a reference to the burning taking place on May 9, 1933, but this appears to be incorrect). These book burnings are also actually referenced in the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade which is about a search for the Holy Grail (and a fragment from the end of scene where books are burned can be seen within the trailer here, specifically where the Grail diary-holding Indiana inadvertently encounters Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler -- although there is also a later reference to burning books in the tank scene that comes later).

Here it should also be pointed out that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is set in 1938, which is long after the Nazi political party managed to impose its will upon Germany and thus likely would not need such spectacles as public book burnings anymore -- one answer to which is that so many creative liberties (which allows the reference to the book burning in the tank later, given the Grail diary is a book) are taken with actual history by the Indiana Jones movies that it is best to assume they occur in parallel timeline which is separate but quite similar to ours. Separate timelines or not, however, the reason that book burnings were staged by the Nazi party was to supposedly purge Germany of the supposed decadence and moral corruption of "Jewish intellectualism." Not all books burned were by Jewish authors, but were considered to be practically Jewish since they were supposedly anti-German -- although Jews in particular were targeted due to them having no home country of Israel at the time and thus of being "internationalists" who were against national unity and thus who were leading members of the supposed Dolchstosslegende/Stab-in-the-Back conspiracy which had lead Germany to lose World War I.

In other words, the burning of books was seen as a way of purifying German culture so that literature and German universities would become centers of German nationalism. The problem with which is that it gave implicit permission for greater censorship by and thus political control by the Nazi political party over Germany, the madness of which is already known due to Nazi Germany being one of the main antagonists of World War II (1939-1945).

YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ppe9WBLu_w Footage of the "Action against the Un-German Spirit."

Officially this book-burning event was called the "Action against the Un-German Spirit," and was put together by the Main Office for Press and Propaganda of the Deutsche Studentenschaft (German Student Association). It was actually announced on April 6 in order to give time for it to be quite well publicized, and the reason that fire in particular was chosen to be the tool of the "cleansing" was ultimately Protestant Christian founder Martin Luther: This both because Luther had symbolically burned a papal bull (a set of letters written by the Catholic Christian Pope) during his conflict with the papacy, and also because Luther had actually turned quite anti-Semitic (against the Jews) during the later stages of his life -- the most ugly mistake he ever made and thus how the Lutheran Christian church has been publicly repudiating Luther's anti-Semitism since 1980.

Yes, Luther's anti-Semitism and German identity made his history an easy tool for the Nazi party to use, although the emphasis he placed upon faith (belief in and response to redemption) over works (actions for redemption) is still viewed as being quite important by Protestant Christians and also despite Luther's obviously flawed overall vision. In addition to burning books by those perceived to be Jewish, books by those perceived to be economic Socialists or Communists and thus also "internationalists" were also burnt, as well as books by foreign authors and who were thus "corrupting foreign influences."

Here it should also be noted that the Denazification which began after World War II in 1946 -- very briefly mentioned in the movie Patton since US General George S. Patton made the controversial comment in response to it that "The Nazi thing is just like a Democrat-Republican fight" -- actually employed some of the same types of methods to reduce the prevalence of the Nazi party within Germany after World War II (and as of this writing, pro-Nazism and denying the Holocaust is illegal in Germany), although here I would argue the results of the Holocaust and World War II justify countering it through being much more obvious than some vast international conspiracy that any failure of Germany was conveniently projected onto. Although here it should also be noted that a danger of such book burning was reflected in German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine's play Almansor -- some of Heine's poetry books burned on this date in 1933 -- within the line "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people," and of course as Ray Bradbury would note by writing Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, that lack of critical thought through reading can lead to a hedonistic (impulsive and pleasure-driven) society lacking the ability to engage in critical thinking (determining whether there is adequate justification for a conclusion to be true) as well as lacking the ability to maintain self-control.

COTD: Suffer for your art.

BAD NEWS: 67 people were killed by bomb attacks in Iraq.

GOOD NEWS: Oakland Athletics Pitcher Dallas Braden pitched a perfect game!

HUMOR: Too many people having time off (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: May 11, 1996: Eight people out of 34 died in the 1996 Mt. Everest Disaster.

First, most likely the reason people climb mountains such as the tallest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest, is summed up in a comment ascribed to British mountain climber George Mallory, since he reportedly said he would climb a mountain "Because it's there." The point being that it gives someone an opportunity to do something momentous which few others have been able to do, thus making one's achievement quite memorable.

George Mallory also happened to die due to falling while attempting to climb Mt. Everest, and in the case of the eight people who died in the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster (technically during the night of May 10-11) it also inspired a number of books to be written giving the varying accounts of some of the climbers involved since there is some dispute about the events that happened -- although the most well-known book written about the incident was Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

Technically the cause of two of the deaths is listed as "unknown" while the other six are listed as "exposure," but the primary cause of death from that exposure to the elements overwhelming the ability of the climbers' bodies to maintain homeostasis (to maintain internal equilibrium and thus life) appears to have been the progression of altitude sickness into HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) and/or HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema). What happens is that since oxygen content at higher altitudes is lower, the body adjusts itself to try and compensate for the lack of oxygen but cannot adjust all that quickly (hence it can vary from individual to individual), hence why symptoms begin to occur. Mild altitude sickness includes headache, dizziness, light-headedness, lack of appetite, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, weakness, feelings of "pins and needles" as if parts of the body are "falling asleep" due to lack of blood flow, peripheral edema (swelling in the hands, feet, and face), shortness of breath, nosebleeds, rapid pulse, and a general feeling of being unwell.

More severe symptoms of altitude sickness are akin to and can progress into the aforementioned HAPE and HACE -- and all three can be fatal. Suffice to say that "edema" is accumulation of fluid in the tissues of the body so that swelling occurs, thus HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) is fluid in the lungs and HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema) is swelling of the brain, these occurring since blood vessels expand and contract (vasodilation and vasoconstriction) to augment the flow of oxygen-carrying blood in the body and thus to compensate for the lack of oxygen -- this increasing the pressure on the blood vessels and leading to leakage.

In addition to a number of climbers likely suffering from altitude sickness during the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster, a blizzard descended upon the mountain at around 3:10 PM on May 10 which caused whiteout conditions and which buried the fixed ropes that had been put into place to mark the trail for the climb, hindering attempts to get back to the safety of the base camps (some climbers did make it to the summit although some did not, and all the deaths occurred when they were trying to get back down). As well, since there were 34 climbers on the mountain that day it caused bottlenecks which prompted some climbers to impatiently delay past the 2:00 PM submission time which required to get back down to the safety of a base camp in time (a number of camps are set up the trail leading up the mountain, for the safety of the climbers), thus why they were caught when the blizzard descended upon the mountain around 3:10 PM. Frostbite of the hands and feet of the climbers -- this due to the body's response of attempting to keep the vital organs in the central trunk of the body warm and thus alive at the expense of the peripheral parts of the body, when hypothermia (the body getting too cold) is experienced -- also hindered the climbers since it kept them from being able to make much use of their hands and feet. In addition to this, in 2004 it was estimated that the storm which caught the climbers near the summit (the top) of the mountain on the evening of May 10, and thus which began killing them in the early morning hours of May 11, also depressed available oxygen levels by fourteen percent.

Sometimes bottled oxygen is used to compensate for the lack of oxygen (hypoxia) while climbing high mountains, but it has been argued that sometimes this gives a false sense of security. One of the guide climbers (for the Adventure Consultants company) who died and who was named Rob Hall, for instance, became temporarily unable to use his bottled oxygen since his oxygen regulator had become frozen shut due to the extreme cold. He managed to get it working again around 9:00 AM on May 11 but was having trouble climbing due to frostbitten hands and feet, hence he had a satellite call placed to his wife Jan Arnold to tell her that he was reasonably comfortable and to "Sleep well my sweetheart. Please don't worry too much," but he died after placing the call. Drinking water also helps since the air at higher altitudes is thinner and drier (oxygen is a fairly heavy gas, thus why there is less of it at higher altitudes) so that in a bit of a paradox (given the fluid in the lungs of HAPE) it can also dehydrate a body of fluid through the lungs, although it is also possible to encounter problems through drinking too much water (see water intoxication and hyponatemia).

The aforementioned drying out of a body through the lungs is actually accurately reflected in how Jerry Shepard begins coughing quite badly when his expedition in the Antarctic with Davis McClaren turns into a race to save McClaren's life in the dog-based fictional movie Eight Below, as well as the hypothermia and frostbite the two are portrayed as suffering from. In all, a record fifteen people died during the 1996 climbing season trying to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, and the eight deaths on the Mt. Everest disaster of May 11 set a single day record. This raised questions about making mountain climbing a commercial (public and thus widely available) industry, and here too it should be noted that even the aforementioned notable British mountain climber George Mallory ended up dying on Mt. Everest -- it is thought that either he or his climbing partner Andrew Irvine must have slipped, and while Mallory was trying to dig his ice axe in a "glissade" to stop his sliding, it bounced off a rock and thus fatally injured him by puncturing his forehead. Evidence from this comes from the condition which Mallory's then-mummified body was found in when it was finally discovered in 1999, although the body of Irvine itself has never been found.

Those that died in the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster listed by name, nationality, and location as follows. Please note that the Indo-Tibetan Border Police were on a private expedition, which is why they were attempting to reach the summit from a different route since they were not actually looking for the other climbers, as may be incorrectly assumed:

(1) Scott Fischer, American (guide of Mountain Madness). Died on Southside route to summit.
(2) Rob Hall, New Zealander (guide of Adventure Consultants). Died on Southside route to summit.
(3) Doug Hansen, American, (customer of Adventure Consultants). Died on Southside route to summit.
(4) Andrew Harris, New Zealander (guide of Adventure Consultants). Died on Southside route to summit.
(5) Lance Naik Dorje Morup, Indian (Indo-Tibetan Border Police). Died on Northside route to summit.
(6) Tsewang Paljor, Indian (Indo-Tibetan Border Police). Died on Northside route to summit.
(7) Yasuko Namba, Japanese (customer of Adventure Consultants). Died on Southside route to summit.
(8) Subedar Tsewang Samanla (Indo-Tibetan Border Police). Died on Northside route to summit.

COTD: When the tree makes sense, you know they won't.

BAD NEWS: Joe Biden's son has been hospitalized.

GOOD NEWS: The German government approved a loan for Greece!

HUMOR: I'm more surprised it lasted that long (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 12, 1932: The body of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the one year old son of American aviator Charles Lindbergh, was found following his kidnapping for a ransom (extortion) on March 1.

Aside from the elder Lindbergh's first nonstop transatlantic flight, the kidnapping (sometimes called "child abduction" when the kidnapped child is removed with the child's consent but without that of his guardians), ransoming, and death of his son is the second most common story mentioned in relation to him -- aside from the more rarely mentioned fact he may have been anti-Semitic he was quite strongly anti-war until the December 7, 1941 attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In the case of his son, German immigrant Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of not only kidnapping but also of murdering him, although some controversies remain about his conviction -- Hauptmann insisted upon his innocence even up to the moment of his death, and some suggest the skull fracturing which killed Lindbergh's son was accidental (and thus manslaughter instead of murder) which occurred due to a fall from the segmented ladder used to enter the upstairs bedroom where Lindbergh's son had been placed into his crib to sleep.

One lasting effect of the Lindbergh kidnapping, in addition to a number of hoaxes, was the June 13 passage of the Federal Kidnapping Act which was nicknamed the "Lindbergh Law" or "Little Lindbergh Law" which thus allowed FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) federal agents pursue kidnappers after they crossed state lines of the United States through making that a federal crime (a national crime), thus circumventing how local law enforcement could not regularly cross state lines and better ensuring the safety of a victim who was kidnapped. Possibly what prompted this was that the home of the Lindberghs was in the state of New Jersey at the time of the kidnapping whereas Hauptmann made his home in the state of New York at that time.

Some states also passed their own Little Lindbergh Laws in the wake of the Lindbergh kidnapping, their change to the law sometimes making kidnapping alone a capital offense (potentially entailing the death penalty), and sometimes making kidnapping a capital offense if the victim was physically harmed in any way during the kidnapping. However, US Supreme Court and thus federal decisions in the 1970s ruled that kidnapping alone as a capital offense was unconstitutional and thus ruling it to be a capital offense was illegal, however, although of course the remaining laws regarding kidnapping vary from state to state across America -- and of course elsewhere throughout the world.

COTD: You will drown out your own point if you use obscenities.

BAD NEWS: Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashed.

GOOD NEWS: Iran is allowing the mothers of three imprisoned hikers to visit them!

HUMOR: I think she emphasizes her point quite well (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 13, 1961: US professional basketball player Dennis Rodman was born.

The reason Rodman is notable is because he was shy and introverted at first due to the precedent set when the father of his family left and thus impoverished it when he was three (his father then reportedly going on to father a total of 27 children with various women), but after which he eventually responded by reinventing himself as a self-confident "bad boy" with tattoos and piercings and dyed hair -- dyed blond at first to emulate the Simon Phoenix antagonist of the 1993 Demolition Man movie which is in part about a repressive dystopia -- who engaged in numerous controversial antics because he decided to live life in whatever way he wanted to so that he could be happy, as he describes in his first autobiography Bad as I Wanna Be (wanna = want to). His antics also included such things as headbutting people he felt were antagonizing him during games (even referees) and kicking professional cameraman Eugene Amos in the groin after tripping over him in a January 15, 1997 game.

YOUTUBE: Some of Dennis Rodman's antics in response to being ejected.

As such, Rodman has also participated the antic-driven world of professional wrestling and has also done some acting -- most notably in the badly received 1997 movie Double Team, but his appearance and behavior also got him fictionally referred to as being an alien in the 1997 movie Men in Black ("All right, let's put in a call to Dennis Rodman, he's from that planet." "Rodman? You're kidding!" "Nope." "Not much of a disguise."). Likely part of the reason for his antics is that his salary starting back when he was a competent professional athlete (although he was also frequently ejected from games) has enabled him to earn enough money to pay the numerous fines and such he incurred. He has also reportedly had police respond to his home over 70 times due to noise complaints from parties, has been convicted of drunken driving (once without a valid license), was convicted of domestic violence in 2008, and has also gone through drug rehabilitation. Thus although there may be something to Rodman overcoming the negative effects of introversion and thus experiencing all that life has to offer, I would suggest he has overcompensated to the degree of encountering the negatives of extroversion. To borrow part of the title of his last autobiography (as of this writing) as another way of describing it, sometimes Rodman's antics are such that one might think he "Should Be Dead Now."

COTD: Sometimes when things get easier, they are actually getting worse.

BAD NEWS: Montreal Canadiens fans rioted after defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins.

GOOD NEWS: Ruben van Assouw survived the aircraft crash in Libya!

HUMOR: He is probably right (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 14, 1796: English scientist Edward Jenner first experimented with using cowpox as an immunization for smallpox.

There are actually multiple ways of prompting immunity through variolation -- that is to give a person a mild dose of some type of sickness that while it does not overwhelm their immune system, it prompts their immune system to respond so aggressively to future infections that they do not get sick from it. This was actually practiced in colonial America around the time of the US Revolutionary War, but exposing healthy individuals to the milder form of smallpox (Variola minor) or a weakened form of the stronger form of smallpox (Variola major) actually began in India somewhere between the 200s BC and the 700s AD, after which the practice was spread to Europe first. However, the problem with variolation is that it actually does cause a mild infection of smallpox which caused terrible scarring of the face and even death -- about 20%-30% of those infected with smallpox other than by variolation died during the numerous epidemics of it, for instance. As such, Jenner did not invent the practice of artificial immunization, but he came to observe that milkmaids who became infected with cowpox from the cattle they worked with tended to not become infected with smallpox, hence he thought that the pus from cowpox blisters might somehow prevent smallpox.

Jenner was actually preempted in his discovery by an English farmer named Benjamin Jesty who had observed and experimented with preventing smallpox through infection with cowpox in 1774, although he did not receive recognition for it since at first he did not widely publicize his findings like Jenner did later, although anecdotes of what Jesty did may have prompted Jenner to undertake the later experiments he did. What Jenner did was to first infect an eight year old boy named James Phipps with cowpox pus on this date in 1796. Some days later after Phipps recovered from a mild case of cowpox, Jenner then used the old variolation method of using a mild infection of smallpox to promote immunity, yet Phipps developed none of the mild smallpox symptoms associated with using variolation to prompt immunity to smallpox. Since Phipps remained immune to smallpox for the rest of his life and subsequent experimentation showed that Jenner's new "vaccination" instead of the old variolation method with its 3% at highest percent fatality rate was thus safer, thus contributing quite significantly to immunological research into keeping the public healthy -- and perhaps most significantly leading to the World Heath Organization certifying smallpox as extinct in the wild by 1979.

Smallpox is a disease which started within rodents and which causes blisters on the skin and other symptoms, particularly upon the face, and death appears to occur when it so overwhelms the immune system that various organ failures occur. The milder disease chickenpox started out with chickens and is related both to smallpox and the cattle-originating cowpox, all three diseases causing blisters although chickenpox is different enough from the other two so that a separate vaccine had to later be developed for it. The term "pox" refers to the pockmarks or scars the disease can leave, and the word "vaccination" to developed to describe what Jenner did since "vacca" is the Latin word for "cow" ("inoculation" is another word used to describe all the various measures to promote immunity). Today using actual forms of the sickness (such as a virus) which have been scientifically proven to be dead or weakened within vaccines is actually practiced, but the point is that until the later experiments of the French Louis Pasteur it was largely unknown how to do this more effectively and safely than by variolation -- hence the significance of Jenner's vaccination, which at first was indeed only used to protect from smallpox by use of cowpox at first, in the meantime.

Two last notes about the process of vaccination credited to Jenner is that it is not actually foolproof and is sometimes not permanent despite being much safer, but it does reduce the occurrence of disease much more so than either going without or through the prevention of disease via variolation. Finally, is also worth noting that some make the controversial claim that traces of mercury in vaccines can cause autism despite claims to the contrary, but one of the earlier and more bemusing false worries made about vaccination (both in response to Jesty's and Jenner's experiments) was that it was going to cause those who were vaccinated to transform into cattle-human hybrids or at the least was mocked by portraying those who were immunized as developing cattle-shaped blisters -- some of these worries also reflected in reasoning about earlyblood transfusions where it was thought that the person receiving blood would start developing the characteristics of whoever they received it from. This of course due to it taking until 1953 forthe American James Watson and the British Francis Crick to uncover DNA alone as being at the root of the genetics that had first begun being discovered through the experiments of the Austrian Monk Gregor Mendel during 1856-1863.

COTD: Stack overflow at line 1.

BAD NEWS: The Thailand protests are turning more violent.

GOOD NEWS: Jakarta stopped an assassination plot!

HUMOR: He does not want to get up (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 15, 1928: The character Mickey Mouse first appeared in a Walt Disney cartoon.

Although the creation of Mickey Mouse is often dated to the release date of the November 18, 1928 release date of the Steamboat Willie cartoon -- the first Disney cartoon originally done with sound -- he first appeared in the originally silent cartoon (sound was added later) Plane Crazy on this date in 1928. An originally silent Gallopin' Gaucho Mickey Mouse cartoon was made before Steamboat Willie as well, but was not widely circulated until afterwards, and it should also be noted that Mickey's behavior was sweetened up quite considerably by the time of Steamboat Willie (although there have been some complaints that Mickey somehow playing various animals as musical instruments and otherwise handling them roughly in Steamboat Willie is cruelty to animals) and thus why he became more appealing. Credit for his creation goes to both Walt Disney himself and cartoonist Ub Iwerks.

By "sweetened up" suffice to say that Mickey tried such actions such as forcing a kiss from Minnie Mouse in Plane Crazy and actually laughed at her at one point. It also being important to note here that Mickey Mouse was developed in a design similar to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit due to conflict over creative control and budget between Disney and Universal Pictures since Universal pictures actually owned all rights to Oswald at the time -- the point being that by creating Mickey Mouse it not only gave Disney creative control over a character to prevent a similar future conflict (they had been doing Oswald cartoons for Universal), but also started the precedent of Disney repeatedly re-using whatever characters they had brainstormed by placing them into new roles. Even so, the popularity of Mickey Mouse became so great after his actual and more inauspicious premiere that today he is an icon of the Walt Disney Company, whereas Oswald is now a much more obscure character -- most of the rights to which, ironically enough, now belong to Walt Disney.

COTD: As overconfident as Thalidomide.

BAD NEWS: An 87 year old woman was caught selling crack.

GOOD NEWS: Jessica Watson completed sailing around the world!

HUMOR: I have worked with people like that (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 16, 1965: The US Cambpell's Soup Company introduced SpaghettiOs.

Campbell's is noted for providing various products which have undergone the complex process ofcanned, which prevents keeps the food inside the can fresh and edible through preventing it from being contaminated with various germs or microorganisms. SpaghettiOs (sometimes spelled "Spaghetti-Os") were thus developed by food developer Donald Goerke of Campbell's as a canned form of "kid-friendly spaghetti" through having entertaining shapes, through being edible with a simple spoon, which was less messy than ordinary spaghetti, and which could be more easily prepared for consumption. It has actually proven to be quite popular, with over 150 million cans of it sold each year.

Although I heard a story spaghetti was actually of Chinese origin, Wikipedia lists it as being a pasta of Italian origin, and also explains the etymology (naming) of "spaghetti" as essentially referring to how it looks like thin string or twine. The point being that SpaghettiOs started out as canned, O-shaped pasta segments which did away with that stringiness, with other shapes being added and experimented with later, as well as other experimentations such as adding little meatballs to it.

SpaghettiOs actually figure into the last meal of Oklahoma murderer Thomas Grasso (executed in 1995), who I will get back to in a moment. The practice of granting the condemned a last meal of their choice is known to have been practiced by ancient Greece, China, and Rome, and within Europe was regarded as a symbolic means by which those who were being executed made peace with those who were executing them -- by accepting the food the condemned implied he forgave the witnesses, judge, jury, and whoever else contributed to his conviction and thus accepted his execution, and the better the meal the better the forgiveness (I always tend to view it as proving one is better than the murderer one is putting to death through treating him more kindly at the point of death than the murderer did his own victims).

The fact such favoritism tended to calm the condemned also helped, and there was also a supernatural aspect involved due to superstitious types (those following irrationally-based folk beliefs) also believing that making peace with the condemned would keep them from coming back as a ghost or some sort of revenant (undead, reanimated corpse) to get their revenge. Sometimes the last meal requested has been sarcastic -- one James Edward Smith asked for a lump of dirt, which was denied -- but sometimes they have been quite extravagant, although of course the last meal has to be within a certain amount of reasonability. Like the last words spoken by various people, these special meals have also been a source of public and sometimes quite macabre fascination due to the inevitability of the death (a known and impending death, in the case of someone condemned to death) which then followed.

It also would seem that since SpaghettiO's are "kid-friendly" that someone grim enough to commit a murder instead of remaining innocent as a child would have nothing to do with them, although perhaps if an murderer still behaves in a "childish" and thus not in a mature and responsible manner, that might help explain it. In the case of Oklahoma murderer Thomas Grasso, to simply state it, his last meal reportedly consisted of mussels, a cheeseburger, a mango, pumpkin pie, a strawberry milkshake, and a can of Franco-American Spaghetti with Meatballs (another Campbell's product at the time). Specific and complicated requests are typical to last meals, however, thus why Grasso was upset at being mistakenly served the substitute of Franco-American spaghetti with meatballs when he had requested a can of SpaghettiOs instead. So much so that his childish last words before he was executed were "I did not get my SpaghettiOs, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this!"

COTD: Blocked by the FCC.

BAD NEWS: The Thai political protests keep getting worse.

GOOD NEWS: 78 drug suspects have been indicted in New York!

HUMOR: Creepies (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 17, 1809: Emperor Napoleon I of France ordered the Papal States annexed to the French Empire.

The story of the Papal States -- mostly a thick slash of territory in northern Italy -- actually starts out with the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine I to Christianity in the 300s AD. This lead to the Roman Empire actually spreading Christianity instead of persecuting or ignoring it, but by 476 the Roman Empire became no more and had become the Kingdom of Italy under the Germanic tribal chief Odoacer. What had been the eastern half of the Empire and which later became known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium, created by Emperor Theodosius the Great dividing the empire between his two sons in 285 AD, was also quite Christianized due to Constantine's conversion -- this because he set up its capital at Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) -- and in the 500s achieved some temporary success reconquering some of the eastern territories of the Roman Empire -- territories which were to the west of Byzantium.

These territories included Italy, but by the 600s the Germanic tribe of the Lombards ("long beards") ended up conquering northern Italy and thus cutting Byzantium off from the territories it had conquered in the Italian peninsula. Since Byzantium was a Christian empire it had supported a bishop in Rome, who moved to fill the political void left by the Lombard conquest of northern Italy. In short, this helped increase the authority of the Christian bishop in Rome and thus to empower him into becoming the Pope (from the Greek "pappas," which means "father") and thus the official leader of the Christian (later Catholic Christian) church. In 751 with Byzantine power weakening, Pope Stephen II appealed to the effective ruler of the Franks, Pepin the Short, for help against the Lombards. In short a political trade was made: the Papacy authorized Pepin to depose the figurehead Merovingian king Childeric III of the Franks and in return received not just Frankish support against the Lombards but also the territory known as the "Donation of Pepin" which was later expanded into the Papal States in 781 by Pepin's successor Charlemagne, who was crowned "Holy Roman Emperor" in 800 by Pope Leo III.

The reason why the Franks had a figurehead Merovingian king was because the Merovingians had actually ruled over the Frankish peoples, but disputes over succession amongst the Merovingians had lead to the Frankish aristocracy itself gaining political power -- both as allies of various Merovingians and by taking advantage of the political vacuum left by civil warfare (yes, the Merovingian dynasty was the inspiration for the overly-obscured French-based minor antagonist known as the "Merovingian" in the Matrix series). The Papal States themselves actually proved stable enough to endure the many political changes in Italy -- so many that there was a 1309-1378 Avignon Papacy where the Holy See (the Pope's official office or seat) was relocated to Avignon in what is modern day France to reportedly escape political turmoil, although it has been noted that the Avignon Popes also owed great patronage to the French Kings at the same time.

The Avignon Papacy also lead to the city of Avignon being added to the territory of the Papal States, although it was forcibly returned to France with the 1789 French Revolution. The strong French nationalism experienced out of the 1789 French Revolution had also emboldened Italian nationalism, which was then further emboldened by the Revolutions of 1848 and which was essentially completed in 1870 with the political vacuum left with the weakening of French power (still lingering from the earlier Frankish connection to the Papacy) from the Franco-Prussian War -- this because the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars (which had temporarily seen the Papal States annexed to the French Empire) around 1815 had prompted the main European political powers to strongly advocate a conservative status quo for stability (but also see Italian Unification).

In other words, although the Papal States had temporarily disappeared when Napoleon I had them annexed to Imperial France on this date in 1809, they were slowly conquered into Italy between the 1815 Congress of Vienna which closed the Napoleonic Wars (wars against Napoleon's Imperial France) and the effective completion of unified Italy 1870 with the Capture of Rome. The Papacy then rejected any reconciliation with Italy for the loss of the Papal States and as a religious power was not given any secular foreign support against Italy, thus it retired to the Leonine City on Vatican Hill -- the Apostolic Palace and buildings adjacent to it there.

Having gained and lost the territory of the Papal States a number of times by 1870, the various Popes continued to hold claims to the territory known as the Papal States and thus why there was the "Roman Question" which had started as far back as 1861 when the city of Rome had been declared the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. Resolving this question was actually one of the few successes that the Italian fascist government under Benito Mussolini achieved: after coming to power in 1922, in an astute political move he began negotiations with the Papacy to resolve the Roman Question and thus produced what is commonly known as the Lateran Treaty. The city-state of Vatican City was created within the city of Rome and essentially ruled by the Catholic Christian church which is headed by the Pope, with the Pope pledging to be neutral in international relations and Catholic Christianity declared the official state religion of Italy. Vatican City now thus forms the Holy See of the Papacy, and was also annually paid 3,250,000 lire (Italian currency) for the loss of territory. This was amended in 1984 with Catholic Christianity no longer supported as the state religion of Italy, and with the annual payment amended into a new eight per thousand income tax.

Given the fascist Benito Mussolini's general record of incompetence, sometimes the Lateran Treaty is called his only competent political work. However it should also be noted that in addition to reconciliation and thus resolution with the Papacy getting good public relations and thus support for Mussolini's government, Mussolini also had a vested political interest in hoping to use the Papacy against Nazi Germany. This because Nazi Germany had aggressive designs upon Italy-aligned Austria -- headed by Englebert Dolfuss, who was a personal friend of Mussolini and who ended up being assassinated during the struggle -- and also because the initial insanity of Nazi German "Aryanism" (that Germans were some sort of super race) tended to be condescending towards Italians such as through calling them a "mongrelized" race. In fact, at one point Mussolini actually asked the Papacy to excommunicate the nominally Catholic Hitler (he was raised as such) in order to weaken his position, but the Papacy declined to do so due to the concern this would be too antagonistic to a ruler who was quite powerful at that time. After which, of course, Mussolini's Italy was slowly drawn into orbit around Hitler's Germany due to Mussolini's overall incompetence but the shared imperialistic designs of each -- Mussolini having imperialistic designs to create a "new Rome" around the Mediterranean Sea, Hitler having imperialistic designs for his "Third Reich" (third after the 962-1806 version of the Holy Roman Empire and the 1871-1918 Modern German Empire).

The point here being that the Papal States also offer a look at the growing secular nature of political power at the time, with them being created by 781 when holy and secular power were so much one and the same that there could be a "Holy Roman Empire" yet them being dissolved by 1870 with capture of Rome during the formation of the modern nation of Italy. Of course the earlier annexation of the Papal States to Napoleon's French Empire on this date in 1809 had been reversed, but even so, it was an accurate foreshadowing of what would happen to the Papal States 50 to 60 years later.

COTD: My stock just went up.

BAD NEWS: A seven year old girl was accidentally shot and killed during a police raid!

GOOD NEWS: BP has managed to stop some of its oil leak!

HUMOR: He changed his name to "Steve" (Get Fuzzy, by Conley)!

HISTORY: May 18, 1812: John Bellingham was executed for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval.

"Bellingham" is actually somewhat popular family and place name, hence not Bellinghams are the same family nor the same place (there are two known US cities by the name of Bellingham, and there is a Bellingham neighborhood of London, England). In the case of the British John Bellingham -- who was raised in the English city of London -- he was a businessman who in 1803 who was suspected of reporting attempted insurance fraud in the case of the sinking of the Russian ship Soleure and who was therefore retaliated against by one Van Brienen by being accused of responsibility for a debt of 4,890 roubles, the end result of which was that Bellingham was unable to leave Russia between 1804 and 1809.

When Bellingham finally returned to the United Kingdom in 1809, he began petitioning the British government for compensation for his period of imprisonment in Russia. This was denied by the British government, however, since diplomatic relations with Russia had been broken in 1808. As was the case when Bellingham was still in Russia -- he had attempted to get the Governor-General who placed him in prison at the insistence of Van Brienen impeached, for instance -- he never ceased his efforts at getting compensation. By April 20, 1812 these efforts had escalated to the degree of buying two pistols and having a secret pocket put inside his coat within which to hide them. Thus on May 11, he made his way to the Parliament building and waited in the lobby until Prime Minister Spencer Perceval appeared, drew one of his pistols and shot him dead through the heart.

Bellingham made no attempt to escape, and was tried for murder on May 15. He said he had wanted to target the British ambassador to Russia but had killed Prime Minister Perceval since he was also a representative of the government that had wronged him and because members of the government are subject to the law themselves. Others attempted an insanity defense for Bellingham but he was still convicted of murder and thus was executed by hanging on May 18, 1812 -- those more sympathetic to Bellingham of course repeatedly emphasizing the worth of having members of a government subject to the law themselves as opposed to the fact that Bellingham had committed a murder.

As of this writing, Bellingham's assassination of Perceval is the only successful assassination attempt upon a British Prime Minister. Unless an assassination attempt is delusional -- such as the 1981 assassination attempt made upon US President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley to try to get actress Jodie Foster to love him due to his erotomania from watching the movie Taxi Driver -- usually the attempted assassination of a government official is due to the perception that official has become too powerful to be removed but must somehow be removed from power due to his corruption. Aside from greater gun control in the United Kingdom (starting with the Pistols Act of 1903) the fact there seems to be less of a "gun culture" in the United Kingdom say as opposed to the United States -- this due to the violence of the US Revolutionary War which founded the country -- also appears to be why assassination attempts in the United Kingdom are less frequent. This although those who support the gun culture correctly argue "guns don't kill people, people kill people," the fact of the matter is that guns make killing easier and thus help people kill people.

Emphasizing this point is the fact that other assassination attempts of British political figures have generally been unsuccessful. Aside from the failed Gunpowder Plot bombing assassination attempt of the entire British government in 1605 and the two attempts upon British King George III in 1796 and 1800 (the latter actually made with pistols, but the assassin missed), the Provisional Irish Republican Army failed to assassinate then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with their Brighton Hotel Bombing in 1984, and also failed to assassinate then-British Prime Minister John Major with their Downing Street Mortar Attack in 1991 (mortars being essentially cannons that can fire explosive shells).

Yes, the British Prince Charles also survived an assassination attempt made upon him by one David Kang with a track and field starter's pistol (as these are incapable of firing real bullets, hence this was more only to draw attention to what Kang was protesting) while in the less gun-restrictive Australia in 1994, but suffice to say had he used an actual firearm and targeted a Prime Minster such as John Bellingham had done, the outcome might have been much different.

COTD: Life isn't about whatever's convenient.

BAD NEWS: Eighteen people were killed by a suicide bombing in Afghanistan!

GOOD NEWS: Kerik started his prison term today!

HUMOR: You take what you can get (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 19, 1780: Thick smoke and heavy cloud cover caused the "Dark Day" of complete darkness to fall over New England and parts of Eastern Canada at 10:30 AM, only clearing around midnight so that stars first became easily visible again.

"New England" is the US States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and is where the Pilgrims seeking religious freedom from England first began settling in 1620 (it is also noted for its liberal politics). Given the piety and slower communications to share observations with at that time (such as how these signs were not visible outside of New England), some assumed the darkness was a sign from God such as of some impending apocalypse -- the precedent of which has caused some to still regard the "Dark Day" to be viewed as a religious sign or otherwise unexplainable event ("the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky" from the Biblical Matthew 24:29, for instance).

Suffice to say it was so dark that candles were brought out by the residents of the area by noon in order to have enough light to see by, but even before the Dark Day there were signs that something was going on. The sun had appeared to be red and the sky appeared yellow for several days before, soot was found in rivers and in rainwater -- and there was rain the morning of May 19, indicating cloud cover. In short, the appearance of the sky and the presence of soot implied a fire somewhere and the record of rain shows that clouds were covering the area, thus the combination of smoke and cloud is what closed out the sun. Later scientific research determined that there was a nearby forest fire in what is now the Algonquin Provincial Park near Ontario, Canada, thus while it was an "Act of God" due to being a natural disaster beyond human control (and which no human could be accountable for), it was only an incidental natural occurrence and it was not a deliberate sign from God.

Here I should also make a point of something I read in the book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries by Kenneth L. Feder. At one point he specifically points out that just because someone sees something one does not understand, that does not mean what cannot be understood must be something extraordinary. For instance, if one spots a UFO that means that one has spotted an "Unidentified Flying Object" and not one that can therefore be identified as the spacecraft of extraterrestrial aliens from outer space -- yet jumping to that conclusion has been done so often that the term UFO is commonly used as a synonym for an alien spacecraft. In reality, most (but not all) UFOs are merely more mundane objects in the sky that are not clearly seen and thus identified by observers, thus why they are classified as Unidentified Flying Objects. But not understanding what one is seeing most often means one is only seeing something simple yet obscured enough to not be entirely understood -- this as opposed to seeing something which appears complex even after being fully revealed and thus which still cannot be entirely understood.

Coincidentally enough, on May 18, 1980 -- nearly 200 years later -- Mount St. Helens violently erupted in the US state of Washington and caused its own "dark day" due to the huge amounts of ash it spewed out thus blocking out the sun and thus creating an artificial night around the area that required people to turn lights on in order to see during the middle of the day, but of course with increased communications and observations from 200 years gone by it was easily understood that this "dark day" was due to the natural event instead of the religious sign of the volcano erupting. A "dark day" created other than by purely incidental natural means -- in this case somehow due to the hatred of humanity -- was used in the original Twilight Zone series 1964 episode "I am the Night -- Color Me Black," however.

Twilight Zone: I am the Night -- Color Me Black (Part 1).
Twilight Zone: I am the Night -- Color Me Black (Part 2).
Twilight Zone: I am the Night -- Color Me Black (Part 3).

COTD: Power isn't might.

BAD NEWS: The riots in Thailand are getting even worse again!

GOOD NEWS: Nicole Kelly was caught despite trying to escape the police!

HUMOR: That is an attitude that many have (Baldo, by Cantu and Castellanos)!

HISTORY: May 20, 1896: One of the counterweights of the six ton grand chandelier of the Palais Garnier fell, resulting in one death and injuries to many others.

"Palais Garnier" is the more formal name of the Paris (France) Opera House, so named because it was designed by one Charles Garnier -- and yes, the falling of the counterweight was used as material by Gaston Leroux for his original 1910 story version of Phantom of the Opera, which even before Andrew Lloyd Webber remade it for his quite popular musical version was remade in a variety of formats by a number of people a number of times.

Suffice to say that the Paris Opera house was originally commissioned by French Emperor Louis-Napoleon III (who was the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been Emperor Napoleon I during the early 1800s and until around 1815) as part of the revisited imperialism of the 1852-1870 Second French Empire period of France. France has ended up trying various forms of government ever since the end of the first monarchy due to the first French Revolution in 1789, and the fact that the Third French Republic ended up replacing the Second French Empire as a result of France being defeated in the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War (used as a means of unifying the many German states into the nation of Germany) before the Paris Opera House could be completed in 1875 also added something to the strange nature of the Opera House in terms of politics. Also as is alluded to in Leroux's original story, since the Paris Opera House was built on extremely swampy ground it had to have a number of cellars built and an underground lake artificially contained within its lowest levels despite eight months of pumping in order to remove the water -- hence the existence of the underground lake often featured in various versions of Phantom of the Opera is a truthful and not merely a fantastic fictional element which was dreamed up.

Creative liberties were taken with the counterweight falling from the grand chandelier on this date in 1896 for Leroux's original Phantom of the Opera story (and the subsequent versions of it), however. A counterweight is used to keep a heavy load balanced as it is hoisted and/or hung, and from what I have read in the prologue to one version of Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (various translations of his works are available) this one broke away and fell from the grand chandelier due to normal "wear and tear" (natural use and aging) upon the chandelier and its counterweights.

I also read in that prologue that there was also something about the keeper of one of the boxes (the best seating areas) being fired and then her replacement being the one who was killed by the falling counterweight nearly the very next day, but a caution to mention here is that sometimes the division between history and historically-inspired fiction is hard to maintain -- for instance, I do not recall "injuries to many others" being mentioned in addition to the one death mentioned in that prologue, and the May 20 page of Wikipedia says the entire chandelier fell despite the Palais Garnier/Paris Opera House page of Wikipedia stating that only one counterweight fell, hence the May 20 page may be mistaking the creative liberty that Gaston Leroux took with the event as fact instead of fiction.

I have to admit I first envisioned someone ineffectively hiding in a basement when I first envisioned "Phantom of the Opera," but the strange nature of its multiple subterranean levels thus offers a mazelike quality that could allow someone as ugly yet as talented as Erik (the actual name of the phantom, according to Leroux) to hide away from those who would intrude upon his privacy due to his own unusual nature, although his attraction to the character Christine thus also introduces a "beauty and the beast" element to the story in addition to the love triangle that develops when Christine's old significant other Raoul shows up. As for "fact instead of fiction" with the counterweight, Leroux portrays Erik as resorting to the violence of causing the entire grand chandelier to fall in order to get his way when new management of the Paris Opera proves resistant to his demands to feature the aforementioned Christine as the prima donna (first lady, most important female singer) of the opera, to give him back box five for his free personal use, and to reinstate his favored box-keeper Madam Giry as the keeper of box five despite them firing her over her "Phantom" connections.

More likely just the one counterweight actually fell on this date in 1896, given the minimal damage that was done -- and here too it should be mentioned that even Leroux posed that there was only one death from the whole grand chandelier falling down upon the audience instead of the many that would be more realistically expected. So much so that sometimes versions of Phantom of the Opera move the drama of the falling chandelier to the point near the end where Erik makes the entire Opera House go dark and then kidnaps Christine in the middle of a performance due to knowing she is about to elope with Raoul -- a falling chandelier being much more spectacular than a sudden blackout -- although for those of you who are still wondering how Leroux put it in the middle of his original Phantom of the Opera story, here it is:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The house broke into a wild tumult. The two managers collapsed in their chairs and dared not even turn round; they had not the strength; the ghost was chuckling behind their backs! And, at last, they distinctly heard his voice in their right ears, the impossible voice, the mouthless voice, saying:

"She is singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!"

With one accord, they raised their eyes to the ceiling and uttered a terrible cry. The chandelier, the immense mass of the chandelier was slipping down, coming toward them, at the call of that fiendish voice. Released from its hook, it plunged from the ceiling and came smashing into the middle of the stalls, amid a thousand shouts of terror. A wild rush for the doors followed.

The papers of the day state that there were numbers wounded and one killed. The chandelier had crashed down upon the head of the wretched woman who had come to the Opera for the first time in her life, the one whom M. Richard had appointed to succeed Mme. Giry, the ghost's box-keeper, in her functions! She died on the spot and, the next morning, a newspaper appeared with this heading:

Two hundred kilos on the head of a concierge

That was her sole epitaph!

COTD: ezbake accidentally the whole domains.

BAD NEWS: Cyclone Leila has touched down in southeast India!

GOOD NEWS: Inflation is very low!

HUMOR: Subjective, relative opinion (Buckles, by Gilbert)!

HISTORY: May 21, 1924: American teenagers Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb attempted to commit the perfect crime of kidnapping, ransoming, and murdering Loeb's second cousin, the fourteen year old Robert Emanuel Franks.

The reason that Leopold and Loeb felt that they could commit such a crime was because they were both quite intelligent and from wealthy families. Leopold spoke his first words at an age of four months and had an IQ of 200, had completed college already and was attending law school, and could speak four languages (he claimed to have studied fifteen languages). Loeb had also already graduated from college and was planning to enter law school -- thus the two of them had met at the University of Chicago. They were age nineteen and age eighteen at the time the murder occurred, and had started committing crimes -- starting out with petty crimes but then progressing onto more serious ones -- due to reasoning they were intelligent enough to be the supermen (obermensch) that existentialist philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche had philosophized about.

Suffice to say that Nazi Germany borrowed from Nietzsche's existentialism, to explain that reference. They planned this particular crime for seven months and targeted one unrelated Armand Deutsch (grandson of Julius Rosenwald, part owner of Sears, Roebuck, and Company -- Sears being whom many in the wealthy Jewish-American neighborhood the crime took place in were connected to) before settling upon Franks since Deutsch was picked up for a dentist appointment on the planned day of the crime. They rented a car and managed to talk Franks into getting into it as he was walking home from school, then struck him with a chisel and stuffed a sock into his mouth, after which Franks died. They then stripped and hid the body of Franks and poured hydrochloric acid on it to make it harder to identify. They also destroyed the clothing that the two of them had been wearing to get rid of any blood traces, then cleaned the blood out of the rental car as best they could. After establishing a fake alibi by eating at a public hot dog stand, they moved the body to another hiding place and called the kidnapping in to the parents of Franks, then mailed a ransom note to them, the two of them then spending the rest of the evening playing cards to further create a false alibi.

The problem with a so-called "perfect crime" -- a crime that leaves no behind so that guilt cannot be traced to the criminal -- is that there is no perfect crime. Today attempts to destroy evidence often actually create more evidence that can be detected through forensic science -- particularly when burning is used to destroy evidence, as was in this case -- and even as early as 1924, it had improved to the degree that the events around crime did not go as perfectly as the two had planned. First, the body of Franks was discovered before the ransom could be paid, prompting the two to destroy the typewriter they had used to write the ransom note (I have heard elsewhere that some tracing of the location of the two was able to be done by tracing the font of the letters on the note to their typewriter model) and destroyed (by burning) a robe they had used to move the body of Franks the second time.

But more damaging for Leopold and Loeb was that Leopold had lost his glasses next to the second hiding place of Franks. Of course many people wore glasses, even in the relative anonymity of a city like Chicago, but this set of glasses had a unique hinge mechanism in the frames of the glasses (for the "arms" of the glasses which go back over the ears). By tracing records it was found only three people in the city of Chicago had glasses with the unique hinge mechanism -- and one of them was Leopold.

Leopold claimed to have lost the glasses while bird-watching, which matched the fact that he was also an expert ornithologist (bird-watcher). Further, Leopold and Loeb claimed as an alibi that the two of them had picked up two women and dropped them off at a golf course in Leopold's car the night of the murder, but Leopold's chauffeur and the wife of Leopold's chauffeur confirmed Leopold's car was being repaired that night and could not have been used.

From here of course the questioning might have lead to the fact that the two had rented a car, thus leading to the traces of blood that were still in it, hence with the increasingly implausible nature of their alibis and their growing fatigue at trying to defensively keep what they did a secret caused the two of them to confess, each trying to deflect blame through blaming each other as the one who actually murdered Franks. Probably Leopold actually killed Franks since witness Carl Ulvigh testified he saw Loeb driving with Leopold in the back seat during a time before the kidnapping -- thus illustrating yet another reason why there is no perfect crime: enough records are eventually put together to understand what happened although it may take some time to assemble the evidence (although it is also true that recollections and perceptions can be mistaken).

The notable lawyer Clarence Darrow, who would become noted for supporting the side of evolution in the "Scopes "Monkey" Trial -- was hired to defend Leopold and Loeb. He had the two of them plead guilty instead of not guilty by reason of insanity (and thus lack of competence for their actions) to lessen the chance that the two of them would receive the death penalty, and argued against the severity of the fault with the "broken machine" defense of noting that Leopold and Loeb were still young and naive enough to have been too accepting of what they were taught about Nietzsche in college. This, along with the fact that the two of them were still legally minors when the crime occurred, resulted in each of them being given 99 year sentences for kidnapping and a lifetime sentence for murder -- the two of them teaching school in prison due to how intelligent the two of them were.

Leopold was actually paroled from prison in 1958, and died of natural causes due to suffering a diabetes-related heart attack on August 29, 1971. There are some that say he and Loeb were homosexual lovers of each other and that Franks was molested before being murdered, but the consensus is against this and in his closing statement when convicting the two, Judge John Caverly noted that Franks had not been sexually assaulted. Loeb was actually murdered in prison on January 28, 1936 by fellow prisoner James Day -- Day slashing Loeb with a razor more than 50 times in a shower room and alleging that Loeb had tried to sexually assault him, which was accepted by an inquiry following the incident to avoid further embarrassment. The actual cause of the murder was actually money, however, as both Leopold and Loeb were given wealthy allowances by their families which they used to ensure the goodwill of their cellmates. Day continued to insist upon the same amount of gifts from Loeb when the warden at his prison reduced all prison allowances to a level at which Loeb could no longer afford them for Day, hence Day smuggled a razor into the shower room and slashed Loeb to death with it.

Also suspicious in the case of Loeb's death was that Day had no wounds whatsoever, thus weakening his claim of self-defense, whereas Loeb had a number of defensive wounds on his hands and arms from trying to ward off the razor-holding Day and also had a slash across the back of his neck. The Catholic chaplain Father Eligius Weir whom Loeb confided in stated that Day had actually wanted to have sexual relations with Loeb, and Leopold found the idea of Loeb sexually assaulting Day ridiculous. As well, Day was actually once found sexually assaulting another prisoner, hence there is some thought that Day might have actually been a sexual predator -- Day's assault upon Loeb reinforcing the incorrect conclusion that sex was involved as far back as the kidnapping of Franks.

Loeb also has one of the commonly cited last statements, since after being attacked by Day he reportedly lived long enough to say "I think I'm going to make it" before dying. However, here it should be noted that in addition to the Nietzsche element, the happy reactions and graphic recounts that Leopold and Loeb responded to interviewers with also showed that they had done what they did due to the selfishness of wanting attention. As well, the fact that the two of them also wanted to experience the "thrill killing" of experiencing the feelings one goes through from murdering another person likely also played a part in the crime, which for instance appears to have been the main motivation for the abduction and murder of the two year oldJames Bulger by the truant ten year olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables in England during 1993 -- the widespread modern-day use of CCTV for security purposes helping to solve that case, but as the previous "Leopold and Loeb" case before CCTV had already shown, there is always the slightest of evidence left behind so that there can never be such a thing as a perfect crime.

COTD: People won't donate to what they cannot see.

BAD NEWS: The body of a missing girl was found!

GOOD NEWS: A British girl actually grew new kidneys!

HUMOR: Re-introductions (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 22, 1962: 45 people were killed when Continental Airlines Flight 11 was destroyed by a bomb for insurance fraud while flying from Chicago, Illinois, to Kansas City, Missouri (USA).

Worldwide, airport screening of passengers boarding commercial aircraft began during the 1970s mostly due to the growing popularity of hijacking aircraft to obtain hostages and/or destroying the aircraft for political reasons, although of course sometimes other than political reasons were involved. Since this screening began later, this is how Thomas G. Doty was able to smuggle a dynamite bomb aboard Continental Airlines Flight 11. His reasons for doing so were that he had actually been recently arrested for armed robbery and had a wife and a daughter he was trying to provide for, hence he obtained what would have been a total of over USD $300,000 in the event of his accidental death and blew up the flight with himself on it in a failed attempt to do so -- that he had purchased dynamite before the crash, that the dynamite explosion had caused the aircraft to crash, and the rest of these details were uncovered by investigators of the incident.

Continental Airlines Flight 11 is also notable in that it inspired a number of aircraft disaster stories. Disaster stories in general depict an impending disaster and often features ensemble acting through having multiple story lines featured during attempts to somehow deal with a disaster, thus of course they do not always involve aircraft (as of this writing, for instance, the film 2012 involves numerous natural disasters and has been referenced numerous times due to posing it as a future event and using the presumed last year of the Mayan calendar to give it a historical precedent). Although writer Arthur Hailey wrote the script for the television movies Flight Into Danger in 1956 and the theatrical film Zero Hour in 1957 -- these films having many of the passengers and crew disabled through food poisoning so that a former wartime pilot who has not flown commercial aircraft has to somehow land the aircraft -- by 1968 he wrote the story Airport where he switched the form of the disaster to a bomb detonated for insurance fraud by a passenger, although unlike Continental Airlines Flight 11 the bomb does not crash the aircraft and the disaster is trying to land the crippled aircraft on a too-short runway as a result of a snowstorm. It was popular enough that in addition to being made into a theatrical film version by Universal in 1970 which also inspired three theatrical film sequels which unfortunately Arthur Hailey had little if any involvement in. I say "unfortunately" since although Hailey portrayed aeronautics and airport operations accurately in Airport this accuracy was disregarded for the film sequels of Airport 1975 (rated as one of the worst films ever just three years later, but also notable through it being additionally inspired by the 1954 the High and the Mighty which itself was inspired by actual events), Airport '77, and Airport: the Concorde '79 (which was re-titled Airport '80: the Concorde for its release in the United Kingdom). Instead of the Continental Airlines Flight 11-inspired bombing, the disasters in the sequels is caused by a midair collision, a hijacking which leads to the aircraft sinking into and thus trapping its passengers under the surface of the ocean, and attempts to destroy or shoot down the aircraft to stop testimony from one of its passenger about an illegal arms deal. Regardless, all the sequels except Airport: the Concorde '79 made a profit before the lack of realism alienated audiences.

With help from John Castle, Arthur Hailey actual novelized the 1956 television movie Flight into Danger into a book titled Flight into Danger: Runway Zero-Eight which was turned into back into another television movie titled Terror in the Sky in 1971 and thus which re-used the disabling food poisoning instead of the Continental Airlines Flight 11 bombing disaster device again, but with the effective end of the Airport series in 1980 Paramount actually found success with its parodies Airplane! (known as Flying High and Flying High! in Australia and New Zealand, respectively) and Airplane II: the Sequel (known as Flying High II: the Sequel in Australia and New Zealand) in 1980 and 1982, respectively. The Airplane series actually started out by purchasing the rights to the 1957 film Zero Hour and thus were able to liberally re-use the script for Airplane! almost verbatim with comedic instead of dramatic plot elements (it earned a mention as one of the 500 greatest movies of all time in 2008) and thus it re-uses the disabling food poisoning as the cause of the disaster, whereas Airplane II re-uses a Continental Airlines Flight 11 bombing for insurance fraud element but only as a subplot -- the actual cause of the disaster here is a malfunctioning computer which parodies the malfunctioning HAL computer of the 2001: A Space Odyssey series which had become popular in the 1960s, since the aircraft is now a spacecraft shuttle to the now-colonized Moon (the bomb is actually used to disable the computer to stop the shuttle from flying towards the Sun and thus to route it back to the Moon, and notably features William Shatner -- the Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek: the Original Series -- as the commander of a lunar base).

Footage of Airport 1975 was actually re-used a number of times, and the parody of an aircraft disaster film was revisited with MGM's Soul Plane in 2004 -- Soul Plane receiving negative reviews and performing poorly due to its stereotypical portrayal of black culture and crude humor. The main disaster here is created when the pilot actually dies from the food poisoning element and the copilot is incapacitated after slipping on water near the not tub of the aircraft (the film parodies Hip-Hop culture, a minor disaster of a mainstream airline enabling the establishment of a Hip-Hop-themed airline where the main disaster occurs), but suffice to say that the conglomeration of aircraft disaster ideas from the Airport and Airplane! series, plus from elsewhere over the years has, drawn conventional knowledge of it quite far away from the May 22, 1962 insurance fraud bombing of Continental Airlines Flight 11 which was a founding part of it.

COTD: Application, not background, makes you what you are.

BAD NEWS: Air India Flight 812 crashed!

GOOD NEWS: Jordan Romero climbed Mt. Everest!

HUMOR: Perhaps he's not quite that accepting (Garfield, by Davis)!

HISTORY: May 23, 1900: The African-American William Harvey Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery during the July 18, 1863 (Second) Battle of Fort Wagner during the US Civil War.

Fort Wagner was part of the defenses to the harbor of the city of Charleston, South Carolina, located on Morris Island. Behind it to the west it was defended by a swamp whereas in front of it to the east was the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the July 18, 1863 assault on the fort is portrayed in the 1989 film Glory.

William Carney was part of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry which consisted mostly of black enlisted men with white (and abolitionist) officers. This was controversial because even in the northern Union states blacks were viewed as inferior to whites (racism), although part of the Union's issues with the southern Confederacy that had lead to the civil war was the issue of continuing slavery -- which paradoxically was actually connected to racism by that time since American slaves had become predominantly black African-Americans by then. Further evidence of this is in how when the Union began drafting soldiers, blacks were even targeted by northerners as scapegoats during the New York Draft Riots and that the blacks of the 54th Infantry were initially paid less than their white counterparts. However, since fighting against the slavery-allowing Confederacy (who presented themselves as fighting for "the Cause" of their own more local and thus states' rights against that of a more centralized and thus federal government, despite denying the specific group of African-Americans any of those rights themselves due to still allowing slavery) was correctly seen the first step in the long process by which blacks would legally recognized as equals with whites (which finally happened with the 1955-1968 African-American Civil Rights Movement), this is why blacks such as Carney joined the 54th Infantry.

Carney was a Sergeant at the time of the July 18, 1863 battle, and the 54th Infantry was chosen to spearhead the assault on Fort Wagner. It is more difficult to capture a fortified or entrenched position and hence the reason why the Union lost that battle, but the fact that Union forces managed to capture part of the walls and the considerable valor shown by the 54th Infantry showed the worth of using black enlisted men to further add to the numerical superiority of the northern Union and thus which helped them to win the war. In the case of Carney in particular, when the colors sergeant in charge of the US flag was shot down, he grabbed the flag and planted it on the parapet (boundary of the edge) of the part of the wall the Union forces eventually captured, although he was wounded in the process. When the Confederate forces then began repulsing the attack and the order to retreat was given, the wounded Carney struggled his way back to the US flag and lead the way back to the Union lines with it despite being wounded twice more.

The visual cues of flags were used to help direct troops in battle, were in the center of the front lines of attack, and thus were also symbolic of one's country, thus why it was a blow to morale when they were captured. As such, this is why medals were often granted for protecting and saving flags used in battle, although it should also be noted that more than half of these medals were presented more than twenty years afterwards -- Carney having to wait 37 years for his. He and his father had also been slaves before escaping through the "Underground Railroad," after which they had purchased the rest of their immediate family members as slaves in order to buy them out of slavery. It is estimated that 1,515 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured -- so there were only 315 members of the 54th Infantry remaining -- during the July 18 attempt to take Fort Wagner, with Confederate Fort Wagner commander General Hagood reporting that he had 800 people buried in mass graves after the attempt.

In a way the terrible losses from the attack spearheaded by the Massachusetts 54th Infantry and thus troops such as Carney helped take Fort Wagner in the end, since Union Forces then laid siege to it and subjected it to such a constant bombardment that lead to Confederate soldiers abandoning it on September 7. This was first due to the bombardment itself but second due to the fact that this unearthed the mass graves and filled the air with the sickening smell of decay, as well as the third fact that the mass graves were so close to Fort Wagner that they ended up poisoning the well within the fort that was used for drinking water (as well as the fact that Union defensive trenches were getting closer to the fort itself).

The grave of the Union soldiers at Fort Wagner no longer exists as hurricane-driven erosion has washed the remains of those who were buried there out to sea. Carney himself survived the battle and the US Civil War, dying in 1908, eight years after finally being presented with the Medal of Honor for his actions at Fort Wagner -- the first actions ever by which an African-American earned a US Medal of Honor.

YOUTUBE: The Color Bearers: Sergeant William Carney.

COTD: My satisfaction is watching them whine for twinkies, while I know I'm not even going to give them as much as a zinc since they insulted me.

BAD NEWS: Alfalfa sprouts were making people sick!

GOOD NEWS: The first synthetic bacteria was created!

HUMOR: Score one for Jeff (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 24, 1970: Drilling for the record deep Kola Superdeep Borehole, a scientific drilling project, begans on the Kola Peninsula of the USSR (now Russia).

The total depth the Kola Superdeep drilling project for scientific purposes reached was 40,230 feet/7.6 miles (12,262 meters/12.3 kilometers) in 1992. With the temperature at 356 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius) instead of the expected 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) at that depth, drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible since the increasing temperature with depth meant that at 49,000 feet/9.3 miles (15,000 meters/15 kilometers) the temperature would have reached 570 degrees Fahrenheit (300 degrees Celsius), which would have kept the drill bit from working. The scientific research from this drilling has been used mostly for geophysical studies and has also reached rocks more than 2.5 billion years old.

In addition to the surprise of the higher temperature, another of the surprises encountered was mud flowing out of the bore hole which was "boiling" with hydrogen due to the drilling encountering surprising amounts of hydrogen gas. This in addition to the fact that the Superdeep Borehole is the deepest drilling on record is likely what inspired the "Well to Hell" hoax which began in 1989, which stated that a borehole had been drilled to a depth of nine miles/47,520 feet (14.5 kilometers/14,484 meters) in Siberia (the Eastern USSR and Russia, thus including the Kola Peninsula) and had encountered a cavity within which temperatures reached 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius) and from which a microphone could actually hear screams of agony -- the conclusion then being drawn that the borehole had actually drilled into Hell.

Suffice to say that unlike the actual Kola Superdeep Borehole, accounts of this fictional "Well to Hell" -- which obscures and exaggerates the truthful Kola Superdeep Borehole in order to make its case -- are used as a form of Biblical literalism by those seeking to prop up their faith. This because Biblical literalists accept Biblical accounts as if they are literally true (unless there is an explicit Biblical statement otherwise about a passage) so that everything within the Bible should be read as if it is pure history. To provide a comparison/contrast from Feder's aforementioned Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries for a moment, this means that Biblical literalists have resorted to some convoluted reasoning about the extensive evidence of the dinosaurs and of millions of years of prehistory to assert that the Biblical account of creation is true -- most often that humans and dinosaurs must have peacefully coexisted for a time -- instead of the simpler argument that whoever recorded the account was writing an account based upon their faith in the transcendent God instead of their knowledge of facts. The point being that if a Bible based more upon faith instead of facts is accepted, then acts of blind faith -- such as accepting the exaggeration that the Kola Superdeep Borehole is a "Well to Hell" -- are avoided, preventing one from being manipulated into irrationality by those who benefit from tricking others into abandoning the rationality of reason. The Kola Superdeep Borehole exists but is not a "Well to Hell," in other words -- and I would also argue from a faithful standpoint that although hell exists, it is not conveniently located underground where it can be conveniently drilled into, too.

Yes, here I should also add that earlier just this year (2010) the Biblical story of Noah's Ark was propped up by Biblical fundamentalists once again by having old wood hauled up Mt. Ararat in Turkey to be "found" and thus declared to be remnants of Noah's Ark. Along with the fact that scientific and other study has implied Noah's Ark would not have been a sufficient or manageable means by which to save all species of the Earth from an apocalyptic flood, the fact that it appears to borrow from other deluge myths implies it should be taken as a story of faith -- Noah and his immediate family being the only faithful people left upon Earth by the time of their flood -- instead of as fact (cobwebs on the wood which were impossible for where the wood was found was a significant clue the 2010 "finding" of Noah's Ark was yet another hoax). In other words, "pseudoscience" (non-science which is professed to actually be science, thus which is often practiced by Biblical fundamentalists) should not be accepted as bridging the gap between faith and fact, whether that be through asserting the exaggeration that a "Well to Hell" was drilled by the Kola Superdeep Borehole -- or through asserting that the wood planted on Mt. Ararat is evidence that Noah's Ark and thus proof of Noah's Biblical flood was actually found in Turkey.

COTD: Why do you think this is about you?

BAD NEWS: Simon Wonjack is dead!

GOOD NEWS: Existing home sales increased!

HUMOR: Come up with something else (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 25, 2002: 225 people were killed when China Airlines Flight 611 suffered an in-flight structural failure and then crashed into the Taiwan Strait.

The "China" mentioned here is not mainland or Communist China, but is Taiwan (also known as Formosa). What happened was that when the ruling Kuomintang "KMT" government was losing the Chinese Civil War (warfare as early as 1927 and as late as 1950) to the Communist Party of China, it ended up fleeing to the island of Taiwan on December 10, 1949. With the start of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, it became politically expedient for the United States to continue to support the Kuomintang via the Truman Doctrine of containment and thus why US President Harry S. Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet of the US Navy into the Taiwan straits to prevent the loss of Taiwan. Various Taiwan Strait Crises have occurred over islands near Taiwan since then, but the insertion of the Seventh Fleet essentially created the Communist "People's Republic of China" mostly on the mainland, with the Kuomintang "Republic of China" mostly upon Taiwan. Although economic ties now exist between the two, there are still some political tensions due at times to the governments of each of them considering themselves the legal government of the whole of China.

The claim to fame that my paternal grandfather (my father's father) has is that he was in the US Navy at that time and was on one of the ships of the Seventh Fleet that President Truman sent into the Taiwan Strait. Also, Taiwan's "China Airlines" should not be confused with the national airline of the Communist "People's Republic of China" which is "Air China," but also suffice to say that the flying record of China Airlines is not that good -- the worldwide airline average of fatal events per million flights since 1970 is under 1.5 deaths, but China Airlines's average of fatal events per million flights since 1970 is 6.44 deaths (although fewer fatal incidents occurred during more recent years). Some of which came from China Airlines Flight 611.

On February 7, 1980, the aircraft involved in the May 25, 2002 China Airlines Flight 611 accident suffered a tailstrike while flaring upon landing. The easiest way to explain this is to refer to the easy example of birds landing: when a bird lands it pulls back its wings almost vertically and sticks its feet out in front of itself to slow itself down to a controlled landing that will keep itself from falling on its face. This behavior, called a "flare," is imitated whenever a fixed-wing aircraft (airplanes, jets, gliders, and other such craft which must use forward motion to achieve flight) lands for the same types of reasons but of course birds and aircraft are not the same. As such, pulling back to raise the nose and lower the tail of the aircraft too aggressively can cause the tail of the aircraft to strike the runway and damage the aircraft while landing -- a tailstrike, in other words.

Fortunately the damage from a tailstrike is not usually immediately serious, but the damage can grow worse over time due to cabin pressurization. Commercial aircraft like the Boeing 747 involved in the China Airlines Flight 611 accident pump in compressed air for the breathing comfort of those aboard due to how the air is thin through lacking much oxygen (a heavy gas) at higher altitudes, and although metal is fairly resilient the difference in inner and outer air pressure causes the metal of the fuselage (body) of the aircraft to flex in and out slightly during cycles of pressurization and depressurization, something like a balloon being inflated and deflated. This causes metal fatigue which reduces the resilience of the metal of the fuselage, eventually leading to the skin of the fuselage cracking.

In the case there is a weak spot in the fuselage created by inadequate maintenance or repairs, the cracking will be worse there. Although China Airlines disputes the findings since this part of the aircraft was lost in the accident, it was found that repairing the damage caused by the February 7, 1980 tailstrike was not done with the thoroughness specified by the Boeing SRM (Structural Repair Manual) to ensure overall structural integrity was regained (the damaged section was not removed and the doubler plate which was installed did not cover the more than 30% of the damaged area specified as necessary to regain structural integrity). As such, once it reached an altitude of 35,000 feet on this date in 2002 and while flying from Taipei, Taiwan to Hong Kong, China, the damaged area finally cracked open so badly that a sudden uncontrolled decompression occurred.

A sudden uncontrolled decompression is more often called an "explosive decompression" since the escaping air of higher pressure inside tends to escape so suddenly and violently it is likened to an explosion created by traditional explosives. Fortunately not all uncontrolled decompressions are sudden -- for instance, the aircraft involved in the Japan Airlines Flight 123 accident of August 12, 1985 (which I will get back to) had a number of quite slow uncontrolled decompressions that resulted in "whistling" in the tail section before that date, but it was not until the aircraft suffered such cracking from metal fatigue that structural failure occurred on August 12 and it suffered an explosive decompression.

In other words, the metal skin of an aircraft fuselage is tough enough to not abruptly "blow up" if it ever develops a little crack or a puncture in it, but neglecting the cumulative effect of several small holes or cracks is as dangerous as if a sudden big hole or crack ever appeared -- or if such a case as a door to the aircraft malfunctioning and thus opening at a high altitude during flight ever occurred, which has happened on occasion. With China Airlines Flight 611, neglecting the cumulative effect of the several small holes or cracks from cycles of pressurization and depressurization through improper repairs following the February 7, 1980 tailstrike is thus why 22 years later on May 25, 2002 the aircraft thus suffered a sudden uncontrolled decompression which caused the aircraft to suffer a structural breakup in midair that lead to the aircraft disintegrating and crashing into the Taiwan Strait.

Perhaps more significant was that since smoking was allowed on many commercial flights until 1998, smoking aboard the Boeing 747 involved in the China Airlines Flight 611 accident had actually enabled nicotine to seep out through the cracks near the tail and to stain the area around the doubler plate on the outside of the aircraft, showing that cracks from metal fatigue were developing in the fuselage underneath which allowed too much air to seep outside and which thus threatened the very same explosive decompression which destroyed China Airlines Flight 711. However, the general attitude of neglect was still followed, thus why no corrections were made and thus why 225 people were killed when the explosive decompression caused the disintegration and crash of China Airlines Flight 611 on May 25, 2002.

The August 12, 1985 crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 (Youtube link) following its June 2, 1978 tailstrike, insufficient repairs, and neglecting the periodic whistling sound coming from the tail is actually better known due to its precedent, its tragic 520 death single-aircraft record, and because of the desperate and unsuccessful struggle of the flight crew to maneuver the damaged but initially still-flyable aircraft back to safety kept it from crashing for 32 minutes. Although Japan Airlines had to file for bankruptcy protection on January 19, 2010 (Air Japan is Japan's national airline), it still has a lower fatality rate per million flights than China Airlines has, as well as fewer accidents. Two additional accidents China Airlines suffered in recent years were the August 22, 1999 three-death crash of China Airlines-owned Mandarin Airlines Flight 642 and the August 20, 2007 fatality-free but quite publicized engine explosions of China Airlines Flight 120, for instance (Youtube links).

COTD: Will you be so kind as to bury my corpse?

BAD NEWS: Stocks are down!

GOOD NEWS: Facebook is simplifying its privacy controls!

HUMOR: Too late (Pickles, by Crane)!

HISTORY: May 26, 1977: Experienced mountain-climber George Willig climbed the 110 stories of the 2 WTC Building (the South Tower of the World Trade Center) in New York, New York (USA).

How Willig did this was he visited the World Trade Center a year before the stunt and took measurements for specialized clamps that would fit into the window washing tracks, then secretly tested them at night a number of times before beginning his climb at 6:30 AM. Police quickly assessed that he knew what he was doing, that he was not a threat, and that he was not a suicide risk, hence they essentially ended up letting him make the climb and then arresting him when he reached the top at 10:05 AM. Then-New York City Mayor Abraham Beame gave him a minimal fine of USD $1.10 -- or one cent for each story of the building he climbed.

The reason Willig received such a minimal punishment was that there was actually a grudging admiration for his symbolic feat -- the feat symbolizing the tough New York attitude. It also brought some positive attention since it took long enough for a crowd and for media to gather, and gained him guest appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Good Morning America, the Merv Griffin Show, and ABC's Wide World of Sports. It also gained him jobs as a stuntman for the television shows The Six Million Dollar Man, Trauma Center, and Hollywood Beat.

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, Willig initially said he now regretted his climb as it might have helped bring the World Trade Center them to the attention of terrorists, but later said he was still glad to have made his climb. Here, however, I would argue that although he is entirely guiltless of the September 11 attacks and the guilt of his climbing is minimal -- although arguably the fact he never bothered to ask for permission to make his climb implies he did indeed know he would be denied the chance to climb the building due to its illegal nature -- likely climbing the building was indeed made illegal out of concern that people who did not know what they were doing, or who were threats, or who were suicide risks might make the same types of illegal actions and hence with more severe consequences.

In addition to this, there is the fact that the World Trade Center was not just symbolic of the city of New York -- the city in turn being symbolic of the US -- but that it was also symbolic (through economics) of the Western Secularism which Islamic Fundamentalism has gone to war with. Not just with the September 11 attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center but from the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center Bombing that failed to destroy the World Trade Center. As well as that, there is the fact that the way the administration of then-US President George W. Bush insisted that the September 11 attacks had to be interpreted as at the time they occurred was proof of Iraqi links to anti-US terrorism and thus why the Iraq War had to be begun in 2003 -- this although the rationale for the Iraq War has since been proven to be false and thus was shifted to ending the poor human rights record of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the implicit good of creating a new Arab democracy.

In other words, part of the reason why climbing the World Trade Center was illegal may have been the possibly indirect (through attention) consequences of doing so, resulting in change like a butterfly effect over the almost 24 years between Willig's climb and the September 11 attacks. Although here too I have to note that even if true, this is a long chain of indirect connection and certainly was not solely due to Willig climbing the building. Here it also being important to note that on this same date in 2004, the New York Times newspaper admitted it had made journalistic failings through flawed reporting and lack of skepticism helped promote the belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction which further justified the Iraq War. Plus of course for those who may note the implication of incompetence by the administration of Republican President George W. Bush even following the September 11 attacks, May 26 also happens to be the date in 1868 upon which Democratic President Andrew Johnson avoided being impeached and thus brought to trial for violating the 1867 Tenure of Office Act -- Andrew Johnson commonly being ranked as one of the worst Presidents ever, and the point being that various Presidents of all major American political parties (Democrat, Republican, and even Whig) have been guilty of incompetence such as misrepresenting evidence in order to start a war at times.

COTD: That which is ridiculous has the strongest will to continue.

BAD NEWS: Johnson & Johnson is having problems with its children's medicines!

GOOD NEWS: Stocks are rallying!

HUMOR: The Lyin' King (My Cage, by DeJesus and Power)!

HISTORY: May 27, 1933: The Walt Disney short (distributed by Universal Artists) The Three Little Pigs was released as a Silly Symphony. It goes on to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

"The Three Little Pigs" of course is a fairy tale about three pigs avoiding being devoured by a wolf, and Disney's version of it was so phenomenally popular that it continued to be shown in movie theaters even up through 1934. As such it was added to the US National Film Registry due to its significance, and it also inspired a number of unfortunately inferior sequels.

As was noted this was one of Disney's Silly Symphonies, a sister series that allowed variety with many non-recurring characters instead of the continuity of characters provided by Disney's Mickey Mouse shorts. They were produced from 1929 until 1939 when Disney began focusing on producing feature-length animated films and new series of shorts, although the recurring characters of Clarabelle Cow, Pluto, and Donald Duck first appeared in Silly Symphonies cartoons. The song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf within the short was also popular because despite it being the song the foolish pigs sang instead of preparing against the hungry wolf, it was seen as a metaphor of defiance against the Great Depression which was depressing economics at the time (but also as a metaphor of the complacency that allowed the expansion of Nazi Germany in the 1930s).

One negative about the short was that Disney originally followed the casual racially stereotypical characterizations of the day, thus how the wolf disguises himself as a Jewish peddler at one point, which resulted in edits after the release of the short in order to portray the wolf as a less-Jewish Fuller Brush door-to-door salesman instead. It also of course downplays the violence sometimes found in some of the versions of the story: the two foolish pigs manage to flee the hungry wolf instead of getting eaten, and the hungry wolf is only burned by instead of killed, cooked, and eaten himself at the end of the story.

Given that fairy or folk tales often have the same types ofmorphology (structure) -- for instance, the Wolf and the Seven Kids and Little Red Riding Hood also feature fairly innocent characters somehow escaping from a hungry wolf -- an Aarne-Thompson Classification System was been developed for fairy or folk tales and was upgraded into the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) System in 2004. The ATU number for The Three Little Pigs is 124 "Wild Animals and Domestic Animals" and the Wolf and the Seven Kids is 123 "Wild Animals and Domestic Animals," but Little Red Riding Hood is 333 "Supernatural Adversaries" -- perhaps because humans are targeted by the wolf.