The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth. Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.
The society of jesus, a religious order under Ignatius Loyola, is approved by the pope.
1669
The island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea falls to the Ottoman Turks after a 21-year siege.
1791
Jews in France are granted French citizenship.
1864
Confederate guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson
and his henchmen, including a teenage Jesse James, massacre 20 unarmed
Union soldiers at Centralia, Missouri. The event becomes known as the
Centralia Massacre.
1869
Wild Bill Hickok, sheriff of Hays City, Kan., shoots down Samuel Strawhim, a drunken teamster causing trouble.
1916
Constance of Greece declares war on Bulgaria.
1918
President Woodrow Wilson opens his fourth Liberty Loan campaign to support men and machines for World War I.
1920
Eight Chicago White Sox players are charged with fixing the 1919 World Series.
1939
Germany occupies Warsaw as Poland falls to Germany and the Soviet Union.
1942
Australian forces defeat the Japanese on New Guinea in the South Pacific.
1944
Thousands of British troops are killed as
German forces rebuff their massive effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge
across the Rhine River in Holland.
1950
U.S. Army and Marine troops liberate Seoul, South Korea.
1956
The U.S. Air Force Bell X-2, the world’s fastest and highest-flying plane, crashes, killing the test pilot.
1964
The Warren Commission, investigating the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, issues its report, stating
its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman.
1979
US Congress approves Department of Education as the 13th agency in the US Cabinet.
1983
Sukhumi massacre: Abkhaz separatist forces
and their allies commit widespread atrocities against the civilian
population in the USSR state of Georgia.
1996
The Taliban capture Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul.
2003
European Space Agency launches SMART-1 satellite to orbit the moon.
2007
NASA launches Dawn probe to explore and study the two larges objects of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres.
2008
Shai Shigang becomes the first Chinese to walk in space; he was part of the Shenzhou 7 crew.
No reason was given for why these states and regions were singled out.
by Zaid Jilani
Thanks to provisions in the little-known Real ID Act – passed in 2005 – five states will soon require a passport to fly even within the continental United States.
The
Department of Homeland Security has named New York, Louisiana,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, American Samoa, and New Hampshire as locations
where the residents will be required to use their passports to fly on
commercial airplanes. Although there is no reason given for why these
states and regions were singled out, it could possibly be because
driver's licenses – the traditional form of identification used at
airports – have to be compatible with Real ID requirements, and it's
possible that the licenses in these states are not.
As an alternative, the Transportation Security Agency will accept
Enhanced Driver's Licenses, which are used in some border states to
allow travel to Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean, but few Americans
have them.
Ever hear someone talk in their sleep, or been told you do it
yourself? Whether it's coherent sentences or babbling, it can be a bit
nuts. What's going on? Wouldn't conversations be a lot better if you
could be awake to have them?
Crumbs don't make a cake, but across the country some measure of
progress is being felt in the fight against police brutality and racial
injustice in law enforcement. Brutal and corrupt cops are finally being
fired for their actions.This is just a start but it's a departure from the norm, in which
officers have almost universally been able to keep their jobs—regardless
of their actions. Make no mistake about it: In cities like New York,
where the officers who killed Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, and others still
have their jobs, progress is slow. But elsewhere, it's being felt.
First off, it needs to be said that losing your job is a ridiculously
small price to pay for what many of these officers have done. Many of
them should be in jail. Others were forced into retirement and received
all of their benefits when they should've been unceremoniously fired,
but they were removed from their jobs nonetheless. Ultimately, so much
of what police do is done because they can get away with it without
consequence. As we begin to see some consequences creep up, our fingers
are crossed that it may, just perhaps, have some downstream preventative
effect.
Small victories shouldn't be ignored. They build momentum to bigger ones. Here are a few of those small victories.
Years after he shot and killed Rekia Boyd, an unarmed Chicago woman who
was committing no crime whatsoever, a Chicago board has finally
recommended that Officer Dante Servin be fired. He should be in jail
right now, but it was beginning to look like he was going to be able to
completely escape all consequences for his awful actions.
The Seattle Police Department finally fired Officer Cynthia Whitlatch
for her abusive arrest of an African-American senior citizen, who she
falsely claimed swung a golf club at her. He was peacefully using it as a
cane.
An Oklahoma mother is furious after her
son’s preschool teacher forced him to write with his right hand because
she believes left-handers are “sinister.”
Amid outrage about sudden price hikes of specialty drugs, a company has reneged on its recent acquisition
of a tuberculosis medication, a deal that would have increased the cost
of the treatment more than 20-fold. Just three weeks after purchasing
the rights to the drug, Rodelis Therapeutics has agreed to return the
medication to the nonprofit that previously owned it.
The medicine, named Cycloserine, treats a form of tuberculosis that’s
resistant to multiple drugs usually used to treat it — in other words, a
serious form of the ailment. There are nearly 90 cases of
drug-resistant tuberculosis annually in the United States.
Last week, Rodelis Therapeutics, the company at the center of the
controversy, defended its decision to increase the price of the
tuberculosis drug, saying it needed to invest and ensure the drug
maintained its effectiveness. But the Purdue Research Foundation, the
Indiana nonprofit that sold the drug to Rodelis, remained unconvinced, taking back Cycloserine on Monday.
“We discovered literally on Thursday the strategy that had been
undertaken [by Rodelis],” Dan Hasler, president of the Purdue Research
Foundation, told the New York Times. “We said this was not what we had intended.”
Dozens of panicked Tennesseans took to the
streets carrying placards and handguns amid fears that Common Core is
promoting islamic principles in public schools, but the wide-ranging
nature of wingnut 'grievances' on display called to mind a famous
exchange from the 1953 film, “The Wild Ones.”
The former hedge funder who bought the
rights to a lifesaving anti-toxoplasmosis drug, then jacked the price up
5,500 percent has executed this money-making maneuver before with a
medicine for adults and children with kidney disease.
Mack Charles Andrews, a pastor at the
heavily wingnut united pentecostal cult is accused of raping
“Jane,” a pseudonym to conceal the identity of the victim, along with
multiple other minors.
Here’s a nice and horrifying story for you. The New York
Times reports that in our completely necessary Freedom War in
Afghanistan, the United States military has told soldiers and Marines to
please ignore the fact that American-trained Afghan military and police
leaders are forcibly fucking children on our military bases. Pay no
attention to the sounds you’re hearing and don’t tell anybody, no way
Jose. We’re a bit at a loss as to whether this is just one of those ...
Last
month, Tyler Balak was a few hundred feet out into the water at Buxton,
North Carolina. He was enjoying a pleasant day surfing when he saw
something moving in the water. At first, he thought it was a shark.
Then, when he saw that it was a deer--a baby deer.
Balak picked up
the fawn and carried her to shore. He and other people on the beach
located a wildlife rescue center nearby and took the deer--which was
clearly in shock--there. The Virginia Beach Pilot reports:
On the Internet, they discovered Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation, an animal rescue shelter 6 miles away in Frisco.
Lou Browning, president of the nonprofit, put the fawn in a padded room.
"It
was coming out of its ocean shock at that point and ready to go
ballistic," Browning said, adding that fawns can hurt themselves in
captivity.
So Browning watched, and all signs pointed to a happy
ending. The fawn had good muscle tone and no ticks around its eyes and
ears. It moved well, could see and had no obvious injuries. A few hours
after the deer arrived, Browning sedated it, took it back to Buxton and
released it.
No one knows how it ended up so far out into the ocean.
A clever Cocker Spaniel has stunned members of a conversational Gaelic
speaking class by mastering the necessary basics, for a dog, of the
notoriously difficult-to-learn language in three weeks.
Four-year-old Ginger responds to “suidh” (sit) “fuirich” (stay) and
“trobhad” (come here) and understands when his owner, retired Neil
Smith, praises him with “cu math” - good boy.
Mr Smith, 67, who is profoundly deaf, said he was amazed by how quickly
Ginger, a hearing dog, learned to understand the native tongue of Mr
Smith’s great-grandmother. It can take months or even years for people
to grasp the tongue.
He credits Ginger, who is an English Cocker Spaniel (working breed),
with encouraging him to continue going to weekly Gaelic speaking class
classes at Strone Cult of Scotland near Dunoon in Argyll.
Mr Smith, who lives in Strone, attends the group every Friday along with
23 other people.
He said: “”Ginger learned Gaelic because he has been coming with me to
the drop-in center and I thought it would be good fun.
He has picked it up really quickly - it only took him about three weeks.
It is great because I can show off that he is a bi-lingual dog - people
think it is amazing that he can do that and it is a wee bit of added
interest to the class.”
The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Cult of Scotland, the
Right Rev Dr Angus Morrison, who has officially announced that the group
had changed its name from Strone Gaelic drop-in center to Ionad na
Ceilidhe - the meeting place to talk - said he was “very impressed” by
Ginger’s grasp of the language that he also speaks.
Dr Morrison said: “It is great to see an older person enjoying such a
good relationship with his dog where Gaelic is the medium of
communication.”
Elma McArthur, who grew up in Tiree in the Inner Hebrides but now lives
in Dunoon and leads the conversation class, said she, also, was
impressed by the speed Ginger had picked up the complex language.
She said: “He is a very, sharp clever dog.
I have never heard of a dog learning it as a second language before.”
Mr Smith said Ginger’s “unique” ability had encouraged him to continue
his studies.
He said: “He has given me a lot of confidence because I used to be a
very shy person and often felt quite isolated in company, even with
family and friends.”
Mr Smith said his deafness meant he tended to shy away from
conversations but Ginger had “broken down barriers” for him.
He said: “Going to the Gaelic class gets me out and about to meet people
and I have always wanted to learn the language because my
great-grandmother spoke it but it was not passed down through the
family.
Ginger is helping to lead a family revival.”
