On this day:
1411
King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, as they had been doing for centuries.
1783
The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
1876
An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
1896
Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
1913
Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V’s horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness and dies a few days later.
1928
President of the Republic of China Zhang Zuolin is assassinated by Japanese agents.
1942
World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese navy.
1974
During Ten Cent Beer Night, inebriated Cleveland Indians fans start a riot, causing the game to be forfeited to the Texas Rangers.
1986
Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, as they had been doing for centuries.
1783
The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
1876
An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
1896
Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
1913
Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V’s horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness and dies a few days later.
1928
President of the Republic of China Zhang Zuolin is assassinated by Japanese agents.
1942
World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese navy.
1974
During Ten Cent Beer Night, inebriated Cleveland Indians fans start a riot, causing the game to be forfeited to the Texas Rangers.
1986
Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
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The pioneer liberals vindicated the supremacy of law over the arbitrary power of men. That is the abiding truth which we inherit from them.--Lippmann
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According to the Natural History Museum’s reference on mass extinctions, a mass extinction is conventionally defined as an event in which roughly 75 percent of the world’s species are lost over a short period of geological time — less than 2.8 million years. The Big Five mass extinctions are the End-Ordovician (~445 million years ago, glaciation and sea-level collapse), the Late Devonian (~360-375 million years ago, marine anoxia), the End-Permian “Great Dying” (~252 million years ago, the worst single event in life’s history), the End-Triassic (~201 million years ago, large-scale volcanism), and the End-Cretaceous K-Pg event (~66 million years ago, the asteroid impact that ended the non-avian dinosaurs).
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“Late-stage Kakistocracy” — the “phase of democratic decline where the regime starts running out of people who will work for it, and so the folks who aren’t qualified for their current positions are promoted to even larger positions for which they are even more unqualified.”
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Obama wanted to "fundamentally change" America. What did he mean by that?
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The Too-Forgiving Bell Curve
Lunatics come in many shapes and sizes, as do society's responses. Sometimes, a simple, small thing that goes wrong allows both totally crazy behavior and, strangely, a willingness of reasonable people to excuse the atrocity for its seemingly "symbolic" qualities. "Mad as it was, it was well-intentioned." So Mangioni has a fan club, Mamdani a mayorship, and Bill Gates a teaching position.
In 1914, Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery in London. It is said she wasn't crazy because there was a sort-of-recognizable, if disjointed, "purpose" behind this act. She was protesting the arrest of the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement in Britain. As a militant suffragette herself, Richardson decided to “destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for its role in the destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst and other beautiful living women.”
She pursued her life as a militant suffragette with various arsons and once bombed a railway station. Richardson was at the Epsom races on Derby Day, 4 June 1913, when fellow suffragette Emily Davison jumped in front of the King's horse. Ms. Davison died in Epsom Cottage Hospital later.
Ms. Richardson later became the head of the women's section of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) led by Sir Oswald Mosley.
Like pregnancy, craziness is an all-or-nothing affair, and it is in their deeds where people usually reveal themselves. As charming as he was and as talented a conversationalist, Ted Bundy was as crazy as a mud hen. But, in fairness to crazies, there is a grey area here. Crazies can not help themselves. Some people behave terribly or dangerously, not because they are crazy but because they are just plain vicious.
The Too-Forgiving Bell Curve
Lunatics come in many shapes and sizes, as do society's responses. Sometimes, a simple, small thing that goes wrong allows both totally crazy behavior and, strangely, a willingness of reasonable people to excuse the atrocity for its seemingly "symbolic" qualities. "Mad as it was, it was well-intentioned." So Mangioni has a fan club, Mamdani a mayorship, and Bill Gates a teaching position.
In 1914, Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery in London. It is said she wasn't crazy because there was a sort-of-recognizable, if disjointed, "purpose" behind this act. She was protesting the arrest of the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement in Britain. As a militant suffragette herself, Richardson decided to “destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for its role in the destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst and other beautiful living women.”
She pursued her life as a militant suffragette with various arsons and once bombed a railway station. Richardson was at the Epsom races on Derby Day, 4 June 1913, when fellow suffragette Emily Davison jumped in front of the King's horse. Ms. Davison died in Epsom Cottage Hospital later.
Ms. Richardson later became the head of the women's section of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) led by Sir Oswald Mosley.
Like pregnancy, craziness is an all-or-nothing affair, and it is in their deeds where people usually reveal themselves. As charming as he was and as talented a conversationalist, Ted Bundy was as crazy as a mud hen. But, in fairness to crazies, there is a grey area here. Crazies can not help themselves. Some people behave terribly or dangerously, not because they are crazy but because they are just plain vicious.
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