31 BC
Final War of the Roman Republic: Battle of Actium – off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeat troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
44 BC
Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion.
44 BC
Cicero launches the first of his Philippics (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony. He will make 14 of them over the following months.
1666
The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings including St Paul’s Cathedral.
1792
During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic Church bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathizers.
1864
American Civil War: Union forces enter Atlanta, Georgia, a day after the Confederate defenders flee the city.
1870
Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan – Prussian forces take Napoleon III of France and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner.
1885
Rock Springs massacre: in Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack their Chinese fellow workers killing 28, wounding 15 and forcing several hundred more out of town.
1945
World War II: Combat ends in the Pacific Theater: the Instrument of Surrender of Japan is signed by Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
1958
United States Air Force C-130A-II is shot down by fighters over Yerevan in Armenia when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a SIGINT mission. All crew members are killed.
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Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
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China and Russia signed a long-stalled agreement to build a massive new pipeline to send natural gas to China via Mongolia.
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Robert Galbraith’s Strike novels have sold, by 2024, a staggering 20 million books in over 50 countries.
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Fed governor Lisa Cook has been under attack for claiming two primary residences on mortgage applications. Bad "form," certainly, and not a signal of honesty and/or competence. But the attack on her has been withering. One guy said, despite her heavy academic background, that all of her written opinions concern sociological, not economic, elements, and that she is an unqualified DEI appointment. Really savage.
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The South Atlantic Anomaly, a weakened region of Earth's magnetic field over South America, is increasingly threatening the functionality of space technology, prompting urgent scientific investigations into its evolving dynamics. Yep, another Extinction Level Event.
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The Righteous Know No Borders
Microsoft on Thursday fired two additional employees after firing two others a day prior, following a break-in at the office of its vice chair and company president, Brad Smith, earlier this week, as part of a protest of the technology company’s purported links to Israel.
“Two additional employees were terminated due to serious violations of established company policies and our code of conduct, including participating in recent on-site demonstrations that created significant safety concerns for our employees,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News.
The terminations came after a group of seven people broke into executive offices at Microsoft’s global headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday to hold a sit-in.
Nine days ago, employees and former employees announced they were “taking over” part of the 500-acre headquarters campus in Redmond, Wash.: Dozens of employees, as well as former members of the firm, congregated on Microsoft’s campus in Washington on Tuesday afternoon (August 19). The employees, who were also joined by locals, are part of the No Azure for Apartheid group — which itself is part of the No Tech for Apartheid movement.
The group took over part of the campus which spans around 500 acres in Redmond and recently underwent redevelopment. They set up tents and declared the area a “liberated zone”. The group said they had changed the name of the area from the East Campus Plaza to “The Martyred Palestinian Children’s Plaza.”
This vision of ubiquitous self-righteousness has had some remarkable fallout.
Having a staff full of impassioned, sensitive, outspoken young progressives makes them nearly impossible to manage because everyone’s consumed by internal grievances, hurt feelings, and bickering. As The Intercept reported in 2022, “The progressive advocacy space across the board has, more or less, effectively ceased to function. The Sierra Club, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, the Movement for Black Lives, Human Rights Campaign, Time’s Up, the Sunrise Movement, and many other organizations have seen wrenching and debilitating turmoil in the past couple years.” (from nat. rev.)
This is one of the reasons sports are played on designated areas, like specific fields and structures. Polo can't be played in the library. Basketball needs a hoop.
Declaring the entire world an appropriate venue for your competition just doesn't work.
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