On this day:
565
St. Columba reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland, in first recorded alien sighting.
1485
The Battle of Bosworth Field, the death of Richard III and the end of the House of Plantagenet.
1642
Charles I calls the English Parliament traitors. The English Civil War begins.
1780
James Cook’s ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).
1831
Nat Turner’s slave rebellion commences just after midnight in Southampton, Virginia, leading to the deaths of more than 50 whites and several hundred African Americans who are killed in retaliation for the uprising.
1910
Korea is annexed by Japan with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.
1922
Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army is shot dead during an Anti-Treaty ambush at Béal na mBláth, County Cork, during the Irish Civil War.
1963
American Joe Walker in an X-15 test plane reaches an altitude of 106 km.
1992
FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi shoots and kills Vicki Weaver during an 11-day siege at her home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
St. Columba reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland, in first recorded alien sighting.
1485
The Battle of Bosworth Field, the death of Richard III and the end of the House of Plantagenet.
1642
Charles I calls the English Parliament traitors. The English Civil War begins.
1780
James Cook’s ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).
1831
Nat Turner’s slave rebellion commences just after midnight in Southampton, Virginia, leading to the deaths of more than 50 whites and several hundred African Americans who are killed in retaliation for the uprising.
1910
Korea is annexed by Japan with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.
1922
Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army is shot dead during an Anti-Treaty ambush at Béal na mBláth, County Cork, during the Irish Civil War.
1963
American Joe Walker in an X-15 test plane reaches an altitude of 106 km.
1992
FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi shoots and kills Vicki Weaver during an 11-day siege at her home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
***
The hard work of reading, writing, and thinking is not a problem to be solved.”--Rosenweig
***
Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump, under whom the government has taken stakes in at least nine companies involved in steel, minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors, costing at least $10 billion in taxpayer money.--Cox
***
Reynolds, a City University of New York historian, uses his subtitle — “Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America” — to assert this: The White Lion, the ship that first brought slaves to Virginia, and the Mayflower, which brought to New England Puritans in flight from monarchical absolutism and Anglican bossiness, incubated two ultimately incompatible American futures.
***
The dismantling of Harvard University’s writing center, and the laying off of Rosenzweig, its director—both announced last month—has been seen as a human surrender in the ongoing wrestling match between human and AI creative content and expression.
***
SatStats
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, the number of Americans who “read literature” has fallen from 56.9% in 1982 to 46.7% in 2002 to 38% in 2022.
*
The day after the news, the Daily Mail had nine separate stories on the Sussexes' return leading its homepage; coverage in the Sun took up the first seven pages of its print edition.
*
In July, US spending on its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop, was greater than online spending at major retailers like Target, Costco, and The Home Depot, according to US credit and debit card transaction data compiled by the customer-intelligence firm Consumer Edge.
TikTok Shop accounted for about 2% of online US retail spending last month, up from around 1.2% a year ago, per Consumer Edge's analysis.
*
Mexico has quietly become a cornerstone of the AI boom, providing 40 per cent of US imports this year of the computer servers that are widely used in the data centres powering artificial intelligence.
Taiwanese manufacturers are rapidly expanding factories in Mexico to assemble servers, which are now the country’s top US export, overtaking autos that dominated its trade for decades.
Mexico is the second-largest provider of enterprise servers to the US so far this year, with sales reaching $46.9bn, behind Taiwan, which sold $53.5bn, though Mexico became the largest on a monthly basis in May.
*
Spain and Germany between them account for close to 40% of the EU's pigs, and Denmark is the only member state where pigs outnumber people, at 215 pigs for every 100 inhabitants.
*
Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their own teeth or gluing broken crowns back together.
*
The Balkans may be the only region other than central Asia where fertility has increased from 2015 to 2026.
All of the highest fertility rates in Europe are in the Balkans. As of 2024: Montenegro (1.8), Bulgaria (1.73) Moldova (1.73), and Serbia (1.64) are top four. France was next at 1.61.
*
By some estimates, more than 50,000 pieces of artwork are stolen each year, amounting to annual losses of around $6 to $8 billion globally. This makes art theft one of the most valuable criminal enterprises around, exceeded only by drug trafficking and arms dealing.
*
In the journal Venture Capital, an all-male team is about four times more likely to get funding than teams with any women on them.
*
In 2024, Washington Metro said about 70 percent of bus riders didn’t pay.
*
At the start of 2019, fewer than 2,000 active satellites circled Earth. By June 2026 there were 15,711 — and nearly two out of every three belonged to a single constellation: SpaceX's Starlink.
Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump, under whom the government has taken stakes in at least nine companies involved in steel, minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors, costing at least $10 billion in taxpayer money.--Cox
***
Reynolds, a City University of New York historian, uses his subtitle — “Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America” — to assert this: The White Lion, the ship that first brought slaves to Virginia, and the Mayflower, which brought to New England Puritans in flight from monarchical absolutism and Anglican bossiness, incubated two ultimately incompatible American futures.
***
The dismantling of Harvard University’s writing center, and the laying off of Rosenzweig, its director—both announced last month—has been seen as a human surrender in the ongoing wrestling match between human and AI creative content and expression.
***
If Democrats are victorious in the fall, expect a whole-of-Congress approach to driving President Donald Trump from office next year.--WSJ
***
SatStats
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, the number of Americans who “read literature” has fallen from 56.9% in 1982 to 46.7% in 2002 to 38% in 2022.
The day after the news, the Daily Mail had nine separate stories on the Sussexes' return leading its homepage; coverage in the Sun took up the first seven pages of its print edition.
*
In July, US spending on its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop, was greater than online spending at major retailers like Target, Costco, and The Home Depot, according to US credit and debit card transaction data compiled by the customer-intelligence firm Consumer Edge.
TikTok Shop accounted for about 2% of online US retail spending last month, up from around 1.2% a year ago, per Consumer Edge's analysis.
*
Mexico has quietly become a cornerstone of the AI boom, providing 40 per cent of US imports this year of the computer servers that are widely used in the data centres powering artificial intelligence.
Taiwanese manufacturers are rapidly expanding factories in Mexico to assemble servers, which are now the country’s top US export, overtaking autos that dominated its trade for decades.
Mexico is the second-largest provider of enterprise servers to the US so far this year, with sales reaching $46.9bn, behind Taiwan, which sold $53.5bn, though Mexico became the largest on a monthly basis in May.
*
Spain and Germany between them account for close to 40% of the EU's pigs, and Denmark is the only member state where pigs outnumber people, at 215 pigs for every 100 inhabitants.
*
Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their own teeth or gluing broken crowns back together.
*
The Balkans may be the only region other than central Asia where fertility has increased from 2015 to 2026.
All of the highest fertility rates in Europe are in the Balkans. As of 2024: Montenegro (1.8), Bulgaria (1.73) Moldova (1.73), and Serbia (1.64) are top four. France was next at 1.61.
*
By some estimates, more than 50,000 pieces of artwork are stolen each year, amounting to annual losses of around $6 to $8 billion globally. This makes art theft one of the most valuable criminal enterprises around, exceeded only by drug trafficking and arms dealing.
*
In the journal Venture Capital, an all-male team is about four times more likely to get funding than teams with any women on them.
*
In 2024, Washington Metro said about 70 percent of bus riders didn’t pay.
*
At the start of 2019, fewer than 2,000 active satellites circled Earth. By June 2026 there were 15,711 — and nearly two out of every three belonged to a single constellation: SpaceX's Starlink.
No comments:
Post a Comment