Satstats

On this day:

1897
The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire.
1906
An earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California.
1930
BBC Radio announces that there is no news on that day.
1942
World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya are bombed.
1943
World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island.
1988
The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

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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

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The Iroquois Confederacy — or the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — was a league made up of six distinct Native American Indian nations that spoke the same language. The Confederacy is most well-known for its role in the Fur Trade and the major wars that shaped the American Colonies.

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Many reports act as if Iran--or the U.S.--never considered the posibility of taking advantage of the chokepoint in the Persian Gulf. They must not remember the Iran-Iraq War and its spillover when Iran incidentally mined a U.S. ship, resulting in Operation Praying Mantis.

By 1988, Iran and Iraq had been locked in a brutal war for nearly eight years. Hundreds of thousands had died in grinding trench warfare reminiscent of World War I. Both nations sought to strangle the other's economy by attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps laid mines in international shipping lanes and used small speedboats to harass and attack merchant vessels. The conflict became known as the Tanker War.

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Braden “Clavicular” Peters was rushed to the hospital earlier this week after suffering a suspected drug overdose.

The 20-year-old is a so-called “looksmaxxing” influencer who attempts to “maximize” his physical appearance through often ill-advised practices, which range from treating facial acne to plastic surgery and “bonesmashing,” a bizarre phenomenon that involves striking one’s own face with a hammer.

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Satstats

According to Bilmes, a policy lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, the cost of the ongoing Iran war is likely to exceed $1 trillion.

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In 2015 coal generated 69% of China’s primary energy, and by 2024 it was down to 56% — much higher than the US at 8%. But the actual volume of coal consumed was greater than ever, simply because China’s electricity demand continues to grow. Despite its efforts to reduce coal use, four years after Xi’s pledge, China was consuming 40% more coal than the rest of the world combined.

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A full 29% of the city’s budget, an astounding $39 billion, goes to a school system where enrollment is down, truancy is up, and achievement is stagnant.

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There are over 4400 hit and runs a year in Pittsburgh

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The defense budget is just 13 percent of total federal spending.

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Last year, we paid $970 billion in interest costs; this year, we will surpass $1 trillion. Interest costs so far this year “have been the second-largest spending category for the federal government — outpacing outlays for all budget categories except for Social Security.”

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Almost a quarter-billion calls are placed to 911 each year in the United States. A large share of them involve social problems, not crimes or emergencies—yet police are always dispatched.

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Physician incomes are extraordinarily high in the United States. A new NBER paper finds that U.S. physicians earn roughly two to four times as much as their counterparts in Canada, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

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Though roughly the size of California, Paraguay’s $47 billion economy is about 1% of California’s.

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By one metric, all ten of the most influential science papers of the last decade came from the United States.