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1303
A peace treaty is signed between England and France.
1347
Cola di Rienzo takes the title of tribune in Rome.
1520
Hernando Cortes defeats Spanish troops sent against him in Mexico.
1690
England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.
1674
John Sobieski becomes Poland's first king.
1774
Parliament passes the Coercive Acts to punish the colonists for their
increasingly anti-British behavior. The acts close the port of Boston.
1775
North Carolina becomes the first colony to declare its independence. 1784
The Peace of Versailles ends a war between France, England, and Holland.
1799
Napoleon Bonaparte orders a withdrawal from his siege of St. Jean d'Acre in Egypt.
1859
A force of Austrians collide with Piedmontese cavalry at the village of Montebello, in northern Italy.
1861
North Carolina becomes the last state to secede from the Union.
1862
President Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, providing 250 million acres of free land to settlers in the West.
1874
Levi Strauss begins marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.
1902
The U.S. military occupation of Cuba ends.
1927
Charles Lindbergh takes off from New York for Paris.
1930
The first airplane is catapulted from a dirigible.
1932
Amelia Earhart lands near Londonderry, Ireland, to become the first woman fly solo across the Atlantic.
1939
Pan American Airways starts the first regular passenger service across the Atlantic.
1941
Germany invades Crete by air. 1942
Japan completes the conquest of Burma.
1951
During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Captain James Jabara becomes the first jet air ace in history.
1961
A white mob attacks civil rights activists in Montgomery, Alabama.
1969
In South Vietnam, troops of the 101st Airborne Division reach the top of
Hill 937 after nine days of fighting entrenched North Vietnamese
forces.
1970
100,000 people march in New York, supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam.
The TV series Mad Men
aired its final episode last night, and the 1971 Coca-Cola ad called
"I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" featured prominently. While fans of
the show are debating the meaning of how it was used, the man who
actually came up with the ad tells us the story behind his inspiration.
Bill Backer was the creative director at McCann at the time.
See,
my moment came out of truth and emergency. I had to come up with a
commercial, we were getting sent to record in London and were stuck in
Ireland.
I had to come up with something. I was stuck in an
airport. I had a studio rented and paid for, lots of actors and
producers. I looked around people were sitting there together having a
coke. So I wrote that on the back of a napkin: “I’ve got to teach the
world to sing. I’d like to buy the world a coke and furnish it with
love.” That’s what the product was doing at the time. It just felt like I
heard a voice from somewhere saying, “I’d like to be able to do this
for the whole world.”
In the interview, Backer explains what his job was like in the ‘60s and how it differed from the Mad Men version. Be warned it contains a video of the final scene in the series, in case you are avoiding spoilers
From their homes in the Shire to Mount Doom where they destroyed the One Ring, Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee traveled about 1,350 miles. That's the same distance as from Austin, Texas to Los Angeles, California.
Redditor Isai76 created a series of helpful maps that illustrate the distances in The Lord of the Rings
trilogy. How far was the journey of the Fellowship from Rivendell to
Moria? 175 miles, which is the same distance between London and
Manchester. Isai76 has helpfully laid out each leg of the journey of the
Fellowship. So start marching.
Book stair decals | Etsy.com | Name your title and the Etsy shop owner custom makes it for youThose
who love to read are kindred spirits, and few things are more
attractive to them than the thought of enlarging their personal
libraries. This collection of 32 items that are linked to literary life is full of gifts for the book lovers in your circle, even (or especially) if that person is yourself.
Fair
season is almost upon us and if you're dying to see what's in store to
fill your heart with cholesterol and your veins with sugar, then you'll
be excited to hear that some of the new food selections at one of our favorite fairs, The San Diego County Fair, have been announced. Among this year's more interesting selections are:
Chocolate-Covered Pork Rinds
Pig Trough -three pounds of pig skins topped with pulled pork and cheese
Wasabi Bacon Bombs –spicy pork with wasabi wrapped in dough and bacon and deep fried
10 feet of Bacon-on-a-Stick
Deep-Fried Starbucks -whole Starbucks coffee beans
and chocolate chips in sweet pastry dough, wrapped in bacon, deep fried,
rolled in sugar and served with whipped cream
Deep-Fried Slimfast Bar (presumably for the dieters)
Deep-Fried Peanut Butter Pickle – a hollowed out pickle filled with peanut butter and then deep fried.
Personally, I'm looking forward to some chocolate-coverd pork
rinds this year. If you live in San Diego, you can stop by and enjoy
these treats for yourself between June 5 and July 5, but if you aren't
in the area, you can be sure a local fair will be swinging your way
sometime this summer carry some of these strangely wonderful treats.
Across the stony heel of
Italy, a peninsula ringed by the blue-green waters of the Mediterranean,
olive trees have existed for centuries, shaping the landscape and
producing some of the nation’s finest olive oils. Except now many of the
trees are dying.
Sprinkled
among the healthy trees are clusters of sick ones, denuded of leaves
and standing like skeletons, their desiccated branches bereft of olives.
The trees are succumbing to a bacterial outbreak that is sweeping
across one of Italy’s most famous olive regions, as families that have
manufactured olive oil for generations now fear ruin, even as officials
in the rest of Europe fear a broader outbreak.
“It
is devastating,” said Enzo Manni, director of ACLI-Racale, an olive
cooperative in the heart of the outbreak area. “It is apocalyptic. I
compare it to an earthquake.”
Today,
scientists estimate that 1 million olive trees in the peninsula, known
as the Salento, are infected with the bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, a
figure that could rise rapidly. The bacterium steadily restricts water
flow from the roots of a tree to its branches and leaves.
More details at the StarTribune. The bacterium "is believed to have arrived with plants imported from Costa Rica and has
destroyed citrus trees in Brazil and vineyards in California."
These days, it seems that the majority of wingnuts
tend to view the world through a very simplistic scope that allows
little room for discussion, interpretation, or compromise. We have
reached a point where any questioning of unregulated capitalism
automatically gets you labeled as a socialist, communist, Marxist, or
Fascist because those are all interchangeable right?
When President Obama became the Democratic nominee in 2008,
conservatives unleashed a vicious tornado of attacks labeling him a
Kenyan born dictator who supported redistribution of wealth, taking from
those who have, and giving it to those who do not. They were right
about part of that. He does believe in redistribution of wealth but
guess what? So do most Americans.
If your children go to a public school, if your streets are patrolled by
the city or county law enforcement, if your garbage is picked up by
city workers, if you have ever dialed 911, if you or anyone in your
family has worked in the public sector, if you’ve ever claimed
deductions on your taxes, and if you’ve ever driven on a public road,
not only have you condoned redistribution, you have supported it.
The modern day wingnuts are led to believe that all government is
bad, and that they don’t need government in their everyday lives. We
have reached a point of insanity where an average Joe making 30,000 a
year drives on a public road, to drop his kids off at a public school,
all while listening to wingnut hate speech radio tell him how evil every
aspect of government is. This disconnect from reality is unreal.
The truth is, many of the services that Americans rely on are rooted in
redistribution. Social Security, Medicaid, public safety services, and
emergency services are just a few of the redistributive services that
all Americans enjoy, while never even realizing that they are a form of
democratic socialism.
Why then do wingnut Americans freak out when a family needs food
stamps to eat, or when a young mother needs WIC, or TANF to survive? The
answer is racism.
I’ve had friends over the years that took advantage of public assistance
services for their families such as WIC or Food stamps. The truth of
the matter was, they really didn’t need them, but in their minds, they
earned the right to use these public services since they worked and paid
taxes. The problem was, they were all white, and they all shared a
disdain for minorities that receive public assistance. You see, when
white people use public assistance, they are getting back what they’ve
paid in – but when black people or other minorities use public
assistance, they are lazy and entitled. Sadly, that’s how wingnuts think.
The Republican Party has done a wonderful job of getting everyday, white
Americans to look down upon, and demonize minorities for doing the
same thing that they do, all while being oblivious to the fact that they
are being robbed blind by the billionaires behind the Republican party
money machine. In the South, there is an understood but subtle racism
among many white people that is rarely talked about, but always present.
Just delve into any comment section of a local news story on virtually
any city in a southern state that involves the subject of an African
American, and those dog whistles turn into sirens very quickly.
You see, it all goes back to looking at a very complex world through a
very simplistic lens. It doesn’t work. Modern day wingnuts truly
believe that everyone is given the same exact opportunity to succeed
regardless of their race or where they come from, and that is just not
true. Study upon study proves that African Americans and minorities have
a much harder path to success than their white counterparts, yet when
they look to take advantage of the same public assistance services that
many white people enjoy, they are demonized, they are called lazy
freeloaders, they are made into the punch lines of jokes, and they are
ridiculed beyond belief – all because of an obvious double standard that
is rooted in white privilege.
On
May 6, a white man and a black man conducted a high-risk experiment.
The two pro-gun, open carry supporters walked the streets of their
neighborhoods with the exact same type of gun — an AR 15 — slung over
their backs. They both live in places where it’s legal to open carry,
and they both got stopped by police.
That’s where their similarities end. It’s awfully strange how the
NRA-sponsored GOP loves open carry — and law enforcement tolerates it —
but not when black people do it.
The two men each went on their open carry strolls as someone followed
with a video camera. The videos — which they spliced together and
shared on Live Leak — show encounters with police that are disturbingly different.
The video first shows the white man — who hails from the state of
Oregon and posts lots of YouTube videos of his open carry adventures
under his Marked Guardian
handle — getting approached by a cop. The police officer clearly
dislikes the AR 15, demands Marked Guardian’s I.D., and asks a few
questions. Marked Guardian refuses to give the officer his ID,
explaining that open carry is perfectly legal in their state. And that’s
it.
If you search “Open Carry” on YouTube, you’ll see oodles of tense but
ultimately peaceful interactions like this, because these mostly white
people often record their walks and their interactions with police. What
we don’t see as often is what happens to black people who open carry.
The video switches over to the black man sauntering down the street
with his perfectly legal AR 15. When the police come, they don’t bother
asking him any questions, they just pull out their guns and order him to
drop his weapon and lie prone on the ground or they’ll shoot. Who
cares if open carry’s legal, they’ll arrest him anyway. Seconds later,
there are two police cars and three cops with guns drawn as the fourth
takes the black man into custody.
Now, this writer harbors a strong revulsion towards the open carry
movement and guns in general. Nonetheless, this black man was open
carrying an AR 15, which is LEGAL in his state and which he was not
pointing at anyone or waving around threateningly or doing anything
different than what the white man was doing. Yet the cops threatened him
with their guns, forced him to the ground, called another squad car for
help, and then illegally arrested him.
There’s something seriously wrong with open carry being legal, but there’s something even more seriously
wrong with black open carry activists getting abused and detained
illegally while their white counterparts walk away Scot-free.
Watching this video is almost enough to make you wonder whether open carry is
justified in some communities, and that’s a scary thing. You’d think
that communities of color would have more reason to fear police and
embrace open carry than white folks, but try explaining that to a bunch
of paranoid white tea baggers.
This is not the first time cops discriminated against black open carry activists.
White liberal folks (including this writer) love to tar the open
carry movement with the viscous brush of racism, but in some cases, it’s
more complicated than that. Last September Hell’s Saints, a mixed-race open carry group from Michigan, raised a hullabaloo after a black member got arrested for open carrying in Detroit. Naturally, he was the only
one who got arrested. At the time, this writer was unable to get the
standard police report information because Detroit’s GOP-run “Emergency
Manager” has privatized all the record-keeping and not only requires a
fee (which this writer would have paid), but requires you to come to the
Detroit Police Dept.’s main office in person.
Here’s the video with the sharp and disturbing contrast between the
white and the black open carry activists’ encounters with police in
Oregon — a state in which open carry is perfectly legal.
Note: This experiment is not exactly scientific, as
some commenters have pointed out. The incidents shown happened in
different locations, and others pointed out that the position of the
black man’s AR 15, slung alongside his hip instead of over his back, may
have provoked the police officer. Still, given what we see in the news
headlines every day, it is hard to see how an encounter between police
and a black man open carrying could have ended any differently than
this. Correction notice: An earlier version of this post
lumped law enforcement in with the “NRA-sponsored GOP” that “loves “open
carry. Obviously, that is not true. Anyone who has watched the numerous
open carry videos showing confrontations with police (as this writer
has) knows that people in law enforcement do not seem fond of
open carry at all, though they are forced by law to tolerate it. In
February, the Dallas News reported that a survey of 200 police officers
in Texas — ground zero for the open carry movement — revealed that 75
percent oppose open carry. This writer regrets the error.
This is the grave of Julia Nathalie Graham Forsythe.
She rests in the Gillespie Evergreen Cemetery in Transylvania County,
North Carolina. Three of the biggest events of her life occured on same
day of the year--May 14--each of which was a Monday. I've verified this
with an online date calculator.
There
are a lot of post-apocalyptic stories out there ranging from zombie
attacks (The Walking Dead) to diseases (12 Monkeys). While the end of
the world is a fascinating story setting, the reality would be more
depressing than practically any of us could remember -that's because
nuclear disasters, fire, floods, disease, malnutrition and more would
actually leave everyone dead within a short span of time. Survivor
stories aren't exactly all that interesting when there aren't any
survivors and this TopTenz article explains why there's a good chance that any disaster on this scale would wipe out all humans -not just most of them.
Two Gulf nationals were sentenced to one year in prison each by a Qatari
court for shaving half the head, beard and mustache of an expatriate
driver to punish him.
The court in the capital Doha said the two men were guilty of attacking
and humiliating the Asian driver.
The driving license of the Gulf driver will be revoked for three months,
the court also ruled.
The defendants said they were forced to react after the Asian driver
overtook their car in a reckless manner that almost caused them to hit
the pavement of a major road in Qatar.
They claimed they were driving calmly when they were almost hit by the
Asian driver who wanted to move ahead of them without any signal or
warning.
In his declaration, the driver said that he was driving his car normally
on a public road when the driver of another car signaled him to pull
aside.
He said that he opted to ignore the signal and kept on driving his car.
However, after being chased for some time, he decided to stop on a side
road and inquire about the motives of the two people in the other car.
When he stopped, he was confronted with insults from the two men who
accused him of putting their lives at risk through his reckless driving.
“The two defendants held me and tied me up on the back seat of my car,”
the driver said. “Then, one of them took out a shaver and shaved off
half of my head, beard and mustache.
“They eventually untied me and sped away in their car. I alerted the police and an investigation was launched,” he said.
The two men were arrested and referred to the public prosecution for questioning before they were put on trial.
They admitted they abused the victim, but insisted they wanted to teach him a lesson for putting people’s lives at risk through reckless driving.
The court issued the jail sentence, but turned down other requests from the victim’s lawyer.
The nationalities of the defendants and the victim were not revealed.
Two 12-year-old girls were walking in the Glen Tara neighbourhood of
Chesterfield County, Virginia, last Sunday when they said a man driving a
red Chevy low-rider truck crept by them.
Some residents of Richmond, Virginia, expressed concern when they
spotted a mural being painted on the side of an adult bookstore.
The vibrant, cartoonish work depicts a female feeding a purple beaver an
apple. But some fear the colorful creation may attract children.
Jason Sears has nothing but praise for the mural, but questions where it
was installed.
When Canadian science graduate Christopher Charles visited Cambodia six
years ago he discovered that anemia was a huge public health problem.
In the villages of Kandal province, instead of bright, bouncing
children, Dr Charles found many were small and weak with slow mental
development.
Women were suffering from tiredness and headaches, and were unable to
work.
Pregnant women faced serious health complications before and after
childbirth, such as hemorrhaging.
Ever since, Dr Charles has been obsessed with iron.
Anaemia is the most common nutritional problem in the world, mainly
affecting women of child-bearing age, teenagers and young children.
In developing countries, such as Cambodia, the condition is particularly
widespread with almost 50% of women and children suffering from the
condition, which is mainly caused by iron deficiency. The standard
solution - iron supplements or tablets to increase iron intake - isn't
working.
The tablets are neither affordable nor widely available, and because of
the side-effects people don't like taking them.
Dr Charles had a novel idea. Inspired by previous research which showed
that cooking in cast iron pots increased the iron content of food, he
decided to put a lump of iron into the cooking pot, made from
melted-down metal.
His invention, shaped like a fish, which is a symbol of luck in
Cambodian culture, was designed to release iron at the right
concentration to provide the nutrients that so many women and children
in the country were lacking. The recipe is simple, Dr Charles says.
"Boil up water or soup with the iron fish for at least 10 minutes.
That enhances the iron which leaches from it.
You can then take it out. Now add a little lemon juice which is
important for the absorption of the iron."
If the iron fish is used every day in the correct way, Dr Charles says
it should provide 75% of an adult's daily recommended intake of iron -
and even more of a child's.
Trials on several hundred villagers in one province in Cambodia showed
that nearly half of those who took part were no longer anemic after 12 months.
Around 2,500 families in Cambodia are now using the iron fish and the Lucky Iron Fish company
has distributed nearly 9,000 fish to hospitals and non-governmental organizations in the country.
What pleases Dr Charles most is the fact that villagers appear to have
accepted the smiling iron fish, which is 3in (7.6 cm) long and weighs
about 200g (7.1 oz).
The World Health Organization estimates that two billion people - over
30% of the world's population - are anemic, mostly due to iron
deficiency.
It says stopping iron deficiency is a priority - for individuals and
countries.
However, there are other forms of anemia. It can also be caused by
vitamin B12 and A deficiencies, parasitic infections, such as malaria,
and other infectious diseases.
There's an additional news video here.
Ah, Australia: where big spiders explode into hordes of little ones and cobwebs cover entire towns. It is the continent where, more than anywhere else, Nature is trying very hard to kill you in creative ways.
For
the residents of Goulburn, New South Wales, that means spiders.
Millions of them appear to be raining down from the sky. Now you may
argue, “John, that’s not how the water cycle works.” To which I will
reply, “But: Australia.” And that reasoning will prevail.
Scientist
Martyn Robinson suggests that what’s happening is that baby spiders are
engaging in the “ballooning” migration technique. They build streamers
of silk which catch the air and carry them away—sometimes as high as 3
kilometers off the ground. Those silks cover buildings and fields in a
phenomenon called “Angel Hair.” The Sydney Morning Herald quotes Robinson:
"They
can literally travel for kilometers … which is why every continent has
spiders. Even in Antarctica they regularly turn up but just die," he
said.
"That's also why the first land animals to arrive on new islands formed by volcanic activity are usually spiders."
In
some years, the mass migration of baby spiders means "you can have
entire fields and paddocks and trees festooned with this gossamer or
Angel Hair, as some people call it," he said.
Just be glad that Australia’s snake population doesn’t migrate this way (to the best of my knowledge).
A beaver wandered into the parking lot of the Lowe's construction and
home improvement store in Fairbanks, Alaska, at about 7am on Friday,
triggering the automatic doors and strolling inside.
Once inside the store, the beaver made its way to the plumbing
department, where store employees attempted to provide assistance to the
wild animal.
A cellphone video of the incident shows employees asking the beaver if
there is anything they can help it find in the store.
However, the beaver seemed to prefer to wander aimlessly through the
store instead of asking for help.
One witness in the video observed that the beaver appeared to be
injured.
Eventually, employees were able to trap the beaver under a cardboard box
until a technician with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game could
arrive to remove the animal from the store and bring it to wildlife
biologist Tony Hollis, who had received a wake-up call about the beaver
from the Alaska State Troopers dispatchers.
"Often it's usually something like there's a bear in town or an ornery
moose or something, but this was a little different," Hollis said.
Hollis took the beaver for a ride down to the Chena Pump Boat Launch,
where he released it into the Tanana River. He said he chose the
location because it seemed like a place at which the beaver wouldn't
become too much of a nuisance.
It's not exactly clear where the beaver came from since there is no open
water in the direct vicinity of the Lowe's store, but Hollis guessed it
may have come from the wetlands several blocks to the north and come
south across the Johansen.
The beaver was about the age where it would typically be kicked out of
the house and head out to build its own lodging, according to Hollis.
"I'm not really sure what he was thinking, but he was the age class
that's dispersing out of the house," Hollis said. "Whether he got confused or who knows what happened in his mind that
he ended up at Lowe's."
According to Assistant Store Manager Adam Vanhoveln, this is the first
time an animal has triggered the store's automatic doors. Vanhoveln said
the beaver didn't cause too much of a disruption to the store's
operation.
There's a short video here.
