On this day:
1501
Catherine of Aragon (later Henry VIII’s first wife) meets Arthur Tudor, Henry VIII’s older brother – they would later marry.
1576
Eighty Years’ War: In Flanders, Spain captures Antwerp (after three days the city is nearly destroyed).
1677
The future Mary II of England marries William, Prince of Orange. They would later jointly reign as William and Mary.
1839
The Newport Rising: the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.
1847
Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.
1921
The Sturmabteilung or SA, whose members were known as “brownshirts”, physically assault Adolf Hitler’s opposition after his speech in Munich.
1922
In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
1942
World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein – Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel leads his forces on a five-month retreat.
1956
Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union, that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
1966
The Arno River flooded Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m, leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books.
1979
Iran hostage crisis begins: a group of Iranians, mostly students, invades the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American)
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Gick Cheny died. So did Cheryl Ladd.
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Oracle founder Larry Ellison paid $10.7 million for a historic pub in Oxford, England, that was a beloved hangout of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and was owned by a college of the University of Oxford. Since 2023, the American tech titan has spent hundreds of millions on real estate in and around Oxford. Ellison is bankrolling a massive for-profit research campus outside the city center costing upward of $1.3 billion. Some Oxford insiders and university supporters worry the Ellison Institute of Technology could hollow out the 900-year-old institution’s faculty and research.
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The dream of every hard-working citizen is to stumble upon a plaisible non-profit.
Social justice radicals flourish in non-profit sectors. This means that they are accountable to neither customers nor reality.
A great technique is to demand access to something in inexhaustible supply.
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Mamdani
The great Mamdani hype is here. Today, New Yorkers who want a life they can't afford will vote for a man who promises to give it to them. This is not the usual political exaggeration and falsehood; this is a specific American lie. America has been the 'shining city on the hill', a refuge of liberty above the international boiling wildfire of political abuse, thievery, group hatred and murder for 250 years. But it has also been a practical beacon. The government has been constructed to make the building of the foundations of political fantasies impossible. Now, one of the hardest-bitten of American cities will vote for Hogsworth.
There are countless relevant themes here. The importation of the very tyrannies that immigrants are fleeing. The vulnerability of democracies to sincere candidates, however wacky. The ever-present deathless monster of perceived inherent injustice as an explanation of social and economic distinction. The weirder faith-based notion that disparity is the result of ancient curses rather than something you are, have done, or have not done.
There are many others, the most important being the difficulty of maintaining a civil democracy when voters see no need to be informed, and society sees no need to educate them.
This will end in failure. The government has neither the money nor the power to do the magic. And, with luck, this will end with a new appreciation of the country, its laws and limits, and its strengths. That could be a terribly disillusioning process for some. But, like a car wreck, we can't look away.
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