1536
Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest. She is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.
1567
Mary, Queen of Scots, marries James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, her third husband.
1648
The Treaty of Westphalia signed.
1776
American Revolution: the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.
1864
American Civil War: Battle of New Market, Virginia – students from the Virginia Military Institute fight alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1891
Pope Leo XIII defends workers’ rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the beginning of modern Catholic social teaching.
1963
Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space.
***
Camp Century, a U.S. military base built under Greenland’s ice during the Cold War, was part of an ambitious and clandestine Pentagon plan for a network of nuclear-missile launch sites beneath the Arctic ice. It was partially constructed in 1959, abandoned in 1967, and is now buried under at least 100 feet of ice.
***
Pete Rose was posthumously removed from the Major League’s banned list yesterday. An Index for people.
***
A series of studies published in Science in February 2025 provides the best evidence yet that birds and mammals did not inherit the neural pathways that generate intelligence from a common ancestor, but rather evolved them independently. This suggests that vertebrate intelligence arose not once, but multiple times. Still, their neural complexity didn’t evolve in wildly different directions: Avian and mammalian brains display surprisingly similar circuits, the studies found.
***
Tick Tock
In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, TikTok will challenge the law banning it from U.S. app stores. TikTok argues in its brief that the law demands a divestiture (from Chinese ownership) that is technologically and commercially impossible — and unprecedented: “Never before has Congress expressly singled out and shut down a specific speech forum. Never before has Congress silenced so much speech in a single act.” In 2023, TikTok says, U.S. users uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos were viewed worldwide more than 13 trillion times. TikTok argues that the ban violates the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee and the guarantee of equal protection under the laws.
Granted, any company beholden to China’s Leninist party-state will do what the Communist Party dictates. But labeling speech (often accurately, regarding TikTok) as foreign propaganda does not license government interference with it. In 1965, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a law that burdened citizens’ “right to receive” communist propaganda mailed from a foreign adversary.
…..
The TikTok law asks us to trust the government that evidently thinks we cannot be trusted to cope with propaganda. Trust the government that tried to suppress as misinformation true criticisms of the government’s pandemic policies? The government, which in 12 months extending into this election year, overstated by 818,000 the number of jobs created during the Biden administration?--from wsj
Camp Century, a U.S. military base built under Greenland’s ice during the Cold War, was part of an ambitious and clandestine Pentagon plan for a network of nuclear-missile launch sites beneath the Arctic ice. It was partially constructed in 1959, abandoned in 1967, and is now buried under at least 100 feet of ice.
***
Pete Rose was posthumously removed from the Major League’s banned list yesterday. An Index for people.
***
A series of studies published in Science in February 2025 provides the best evidence yet that birds and mammals did not inherit the neural pathways that generate intelligence from a common ancestor, but rather evolved them independently. This suggests that vertebrate intelligence arose not once, but multiple times. Still, their neural complexity didn’t evolve in wildly different directions: Avian and mammalian brains display surprisingly similar circuits, the studies found.
***
Tick Tock
In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, TikTok will challenge the law banning it from U.S. app stores. TikTok argues in its brief that the law demands a divestiture (from Chinese ownership) that is technologically and commercially impossible — and unprecedented: “Never before has Congress expressly singled out and shut down a specific speech forum. Never before has Congress silenced so much speech in a single act.” In 2023, TikTok says, U.S. users uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos were viewed worldwide more than 13 trillion times. TikTok argues that the ban violates the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee and the guarantee of equal protection under the laws.
Granted, any company beholden to China’s Leninist party-state will do what the Communist Party dictates. But labeling speech (often accurately, regarding TikTok) as foreign propaganda does not license government interference with it. In 1965, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a law that burdened citizens’ “right to receive” communist propaganda mailed from a foreign adversary.
…..
The TikTok law asks us to trust the government that evidently thinks we cannot be trusted to cope with propaganda. Trust the government that tried to suppress as misinformation true criticisms of the government’s pandemic policies? The government, which in 12 months extending into this election year, overstated by 818,000 the number of jobs created during the Biden administration?--from wsj
The great problem with democracy is that it burdens the citizen with decisions. And those decisions will be influenced by their education and common sense. Free societies will always be faced with such problems that are not just homicidal, they are suicidal. The choice is obvious.
The American Revolution changed the world. But it came very late to the human social table, so it must not be a no-brainer. It is through education that the government should arm its citizenry. If it must protect them through control of its intellectual atmosphere, it is too late.
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