On this day:
64
Great Fire of Rome: a fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control. According to a popular, but untrue legend, Nero fiddled as the city burned.
711
Umayyad conquest of Hispania: Battle of Guadalete – Umayyad forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeat the Visigoths led by King Roderic. This began the successful invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, less than 100 years after the death of the Prophet.
1333
Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Halidon Hill – The English win a decisive victory over the Scots.
1545
The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth; in 1982, the wreck is salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.
1553
Lady Jane Grey is replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after only nine days of reign.
1701
Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy sign the Nanfan Treaty, ceding a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.
1843
Brunel’s steamship, the SS Great Britain, is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.
1863
American Civil War: Morgan’s Raid – At Buffington Island in Ohio, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan’s raid into the north is mostly thwarted when a large group of his men are captured while trying to escape across the Ohio River.
1864
Taiping Rebellion: Third Battle of Nanking – The Qing Dynasty finally defeats the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
1942
World War II: Battle of the Atlantic – German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions in response to the effective American convoy system.
1963
Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 metres (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.
1981
In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French Prime Minister François Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing that the Soviets had been stealing American technological research and development.
1997
The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army resumes a ceasefire to end their 25-year campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.
***
"Liberalism is not about finding all life’s meaning in a shopping list, it just says that we need more meaning than can be found in a ballot paper. And that those who seek the meaning of life in collective projects that they try to enforce on everybody have less of a sense of the beautiful richness and diversity of human nature than the alleged cold and robotic market liberals."--Norberg
***
Umayyad conquest of Hispania: Battle of Guadalete – Umayyad forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeat the Visigoths led by King Roderic. This began the successful invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, less than 100 years after the death of the Prophet.
1333
Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Halidon Hill – The English win a decisive victory over the Scots.
1545
The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth; in 1982, the wreck is salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.
1553
Lady Jane Grey is replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after only nine days of reign.
1701
Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy sign the Nanfan Treaty, ceding a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.
1843
Brunel’s steamship, the SS Great Britain, is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.
1863
American Civil War: Morgan’s Raid – At Buffington Island in Ohio, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan’s raid into the north is mostly thwarted when a large group of his men are captured while trying to escape across the Ohio River.
1864
Taiping Rebellion: Third Battle of Nanking – The Qing Dynasty finally defeats the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
1942
World War II: Battle of the Atlantic – German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions in response to the effective American convoy system.
1963
Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 metres (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.
1981
In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French Prime Minister François Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing that the Soviets had been stealing American technological research and development.
1997
The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army resumes a ceasefire to end their 25-year campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.
"Liberalism is not about finding all life’s meaning in a shopping list, it just says that we need more meaning than can be found in a ballot paper. And that those who seek the meaning of life in collective projects that they try to enforce on everybody have less of a sense of the beautiful richness and diversity of human nature than the alleged cold and robotic market liberals."--Norberg
The country of Peru has seen an influx of babies named after the star of Norway’s World Cup team, Erling Haaland, with over 500 newborns having been named after the forward.
***
Tulsi Gabbard’s older brother allegedly tried to lure several young children into a hotel room with money and gum at a Hawaiian hotel resort.
***
The new Democrat bent is that the Constitution, the very declaration of the values that underlie the nation, is "nostalgic." It's appearing as a common talking point among national candidates. This is brazen, iconoclastic stuff, containing the seeds of a real disaster. And it would not be tried without some support in polling.
***
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is the only place besides Earth known to have standing liquid on its surface, and with it, rivers, rain, clouds, lakes, and seas fed by a weather cycle that runs much like our own. The rain and the rivers are liquid methane and ethane, and the ground they cut through is water ice, frozen so hard at Titan’s temperatures that it behaves like rock. It is the closest thing in the solar system to a working copy of Earth’s landscape, built from a completely different set of materials.
***
Sunday/More Parables and Christ's Commentary
A week after the Parable of the Sower comes today's gospel, the parable of the wheat and the weeds. A farmer sows his wheat and, in the night, an enemy oversows the field with weeds. (The weeds are darnel, strangely a name taken by football players and actors. Its historical meaning is "disorder.") The farmer decides to wait and harvest them all together for fear that extracting the weeds will harm the good wheat as well. Christ, in an unusual move, then explains the parable. A hard reading of it should be very alarming.
This is a significant insight into Christ's message. There is a Good. But there is also an Evil. And that Evil is sown by an Enemy, an active Enemy of the Good. The Enemy is surreptitious, and the Evil he sows is inextricably interwoven with the Good so that separating them is injurious to the Good. That is, Good and Evil are linked. There are incidental slaves in this parable--without comment--and the eventual harvesters are Angels.
Angels.
This is a battlefield, a struggle over the soul of man. Good and Evil are real and hard to separate, but separation will happen. And God is patient; His patience comes from a sincere interest in protecting the Good.
This is the picture of a religion with principals, not simply abstract principles, with active virtue and evil, and both have proponents.
Sowing Seed
As my hand dropt a seed
In the dibbled mould
And my mind hurried onward
To picture the miracle
June should unfold,
On a sudden before me
Hanging its head,
With black petals
Rotting and tainted,
Stood a flower, dead;
As if all the world's hope
Were rotting there,
A thing to weep for,
Ripe for burial,
Veined with despair.
Yet I cannot prevent
My ignorant heart
From trust that is deeper
Than fear can fathom
Or hope desert.
The small twy--bladed
Shoot will thrust
To brave all hazards.
The seed is sown
And in Earth I trust.
ROBERT LAURENCE BINYON
1869-1943 / England
This is a battlefield, a struggle over the soul of man. Good and Evil are real and hard to separate, but separation will happen. And God is patient; His patience comes from a sincere interest in protecting the Good.
This is the picture of a religion with principals, not simply abstract principles, with active virtue and evil, and both have proponents.
Sowing Seed
As my hand dropt a seed
In the dibbled mould
And my mind hurried onward
To picture the miracle
June should unfold,
On a sudden before me
Hanging its head,
With black petals
Rotting and tainted,
Stood a flower, dead;
As if all the world's hope
Were rotting there,
A thing to weep for,
Ripe for burial,
Veined with despair.
Yet I cannot prevent
My ignorant heart
From trust that is deeper
Than fear can fathom
Or hope desert.
The small twy--bladed
Shoot will thrust
To brave all hazards.
The seed is sown
And in Earth I trust.
ROBERT LAURENCE BINYON
1869-1943 / England
