SatStats

On this day:

1260
The spectacular Cathedral of Chartres is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
1911
Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
1929
“Black Thursday” stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.
1944
World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1960
Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union’s Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash.
1990
Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian “stay-behind” clandestine paramilitary NATO army, which was implicated in false flag terrorist attacks implicating communists and anarchists as part of the strategy of tension from the late 1960s to early 1980s.
1998
Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission
2002
Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
2008
“Bloody Friday” saw many of the world’s stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.

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"I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!"--Woodrow Wilson

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Tennis star Serena Williams needed surgery to remove a blood clot from her lungs in 2011, and nearly died from a pulmonary embolism and related complications after she gave birth to her daughter in September 2017.

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Ms. Chevalier is typical of the intellectuals who Hayek described as being guilty of “constructivist rationalism.” This mouthful of a term applies to those persons who are convinced that if they can think of a concept (details are unnecessary) – if they can describe a concept in words or graphs or equations – then that concept is therefore not only possible to achieve in reality, but achievable in a way that has no unforeseen negative consequences.--rothman

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Mamdani in DC. A bill would establish a new “Department of Defense Equity Investment Account” in the Treasury and authorize OSC’s director to use that account to make equity investments.

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During 2025, Boeing churned out 600 commercial airliners from its assembly facilities in Washington state and South Carolina. Many of those planes were sold to foreign airlines and exported. This is tremendous news for the workers at Boeing and for the company’s shareholders. It’s also great for those foreign buyers—airlines can purchase Boeing planes without first needing to develop a local airliner-production industry. They can develop a transportation industry.

Now use that info as a metaphor for the Balance of Trade

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Bernie Sanders schemes to have government seize 50 percent of the equity of AI firms. Imagine that. Imagine thinking that in America.

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Biden and Trump administrations previously asked SpaceX to switch Starlink on or off, six former officials say
Biden officials asked SpaceX to cut service tied to Houthis and Hezbollah, former officials say
Trump officials discussed activating Starlink in Iran after 2025 and 2026 strikes, sources say
US reliance on SpaceX raises questions over Musk’s influence on policy decisions--Reuters says

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Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have unionized.

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SatStats

On Oct. 14, 2026, Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2026 edition of Prime Cuts. First published in 1993, when the national debt was $4.4 trillion, its 494 recommendations, drawn from proposals from both Democratic and Republican administrations and members of Congress, and nonpartisan sources, would save $639 billion in the first year and $5.6 trillion over five years.

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In the salary cap era 112 teams won three games or less over the first 10 games of a season. Only 21 of them made the playoffs.
That is roughly 16 percent.

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By the dawn of the twentieth century, the U.S. had become almost as large economically as England, Germany and France combined.

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E-bike injuries have increased almost 800%

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Congressional Budget Office report projected annual deficits increasing from $1.9 trillion in fiscal 2026 to $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2036. Over these ten years, deficits will average $2.44 trillion a year, adding $24.4 trillion and pushing gross federal debt to $64.6 trillion by fiscal 2036, 61.5 percent more than today.

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Only 38.4% of students in California public schools showed math proficiency on tests this spring. Only 49.3% met or exceeded state standards in English.

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In the first half of this year, China’s disciplinary authorities filed roughly 538,000 cases, an average of nearly 90,000 a month, up from about 83,000 a month in 2025. At the top, 36 senior officials at the provincial or ministerial level and above were investigated or disciplined in the first half of this year alone.

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China's economy is half of America’s GDP, and its debt is 75% of America’s.

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Shares in the South Korean data-center startup, Elice, plummeted over 30% on their trading debut, signaling renewed investor caution toward artificial-intelligence stocks. Elice had raised the equivalent of $151 million from its IPO.

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"The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 23.1 percent average rate, six times higher than the 3.7 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers," the Tax Foundation's Erica York noted in 2024, of 2022 tax data. "The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent."
The share of taxes paid by wealthy Americans is higher than in most other countries.