On this day:
70
Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital with four Roman legions.
1294
Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty with the reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong. I think this is Marlowe's Tamburlaine
1865
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
1912
The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm. The ship sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.
1986
1 kg hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1999
NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees – Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.
2003
The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
***
If the Democrats came up with a plan for all Americans to jump off a thousand-foot cliff tomorrow, some Republicans would come up with an “alternative’ plan in which we would all jump off a 500-foot cliff next week.*--Sowell
According to MLB.com’s Jason Mackey, Kelly turned down at least six interviews for managerial roles because he “felt like the best thing for [his family] was to be in Pittsburgh.”
***
On this day, Lincoln is shot, and the repercussions continue to this day. And the Titanic finds her iceberg.
***
Lincoln
We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that the conspirators stalked General Grant to his train the same night. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly, it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.
Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.
“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.
“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.
“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”
Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital with four Roman legions.
1294
Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty with the reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong. I think this is Marlowe's Tamburlaine
1865
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
1912
The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm. The ship sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.
1986
1 kg hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1999
NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees – Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.
2003
The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
***
If the Democrats came up with a plan for all Americans to jump off a thousand-foot cliff tomorrow, some Republicans would come up with an “alternative’ plan in which we would all jump off a 500-foot cliff next week.*--Sowell
***
According to MLB.com’s Jason Mackey, Kelly turned down at least six interviews for managerial roles because he “felt like the best thing for [his family] was to be in Pittsburgh.”
***
On this day, Lincoln is shot, and the repercussions continue to this day. And the Titanic finds her iceberg.
***
Trump might be the most progressive president since, early in the 20th century, progressivism defined itself with three core tenets:
First, only an energetic executive can make modern government “wieldy” — Woodrow Wilson’s word. (“The president,” said Wilson, “is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.”)
First, only an energetic executive can make modern government “wieldy” — Woodrow Wilson’s word. (“The president,” said Wilson, “is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.”)
Second, the separation of powers is a premodern mistake that permits Congress to meddle in government and allows the judiciary to inhibit the executive.
Third, conservatives see modern society’s complexities as reasons to avoid attempting dramatic social engineering, lest unintended consequences overwhelm intended ones. Progressives think conservatives are worrywarts, too timid about wielding government.--Will
Third, conservatives see modern society’s complexities as reasons to avoid attempting dramatic social engineering, lest unintended consequences overwhelm intended ones. Progressives think conservatives are worrywarts, too timid about wielding government.--Will
***
Lincoln
We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that the conspirators stalked General Grant to his train the same night. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly, it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.
Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.
“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.
“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.
“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”
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