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Today in History

1400 Owain Glyndŵr is declared Prince of Wales by his followers.  
1575 King Johan Casimir of Palts promises military aid to the Hugenots
1597 French troops chase away Albrecht of Austria  
1630 Massachusetts village of Shawmut changes its name to Boston
1652 Spanish troops occupy Dunkirk
1654 Russian troops occupy Smolensk on Poland  
1666 "Messiah" Sjabtai Tswi becomes Islamiet  
1668 King John II Casimir of Poland resigns, flees to France  
1701 James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the "Old Pretender", becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland.  
1702 Emperor Leopold I declares war on France, Cologne & Bavaria
1729 Willem KH Friso installed as viceroy of Groningen  
1747 French troops occupy Bergen on Zoom  
1782 Great Seal of US used for 1st time  
1795 British capture Capetown, South Africa from the Dutch  
1810 Mexico issues Grito de Dolores, calling for the end of Spanish rule (Mexican Independence Day)  
1830 Oliver Wendell Holmes writes "Old Ironsides"  
1858 1st overland mail for California  
1862 Gen Bragg's army surrounds 4,000 federals at Munfordville, KY  
1863 Robert College of Istanbul-Turkey, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.  
1864 Battle of Coggin's Point, Virginia (Hampton-Rosser Cattle Raid)
1867 Ottawa Rough Riders & Senators play Canadian Football game  
1873 German troops leave France  
1893 Cherokee Strip, Oklahoma opens white settlement homesteaders  
1906 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen discovers the Magnetic South Pole  
1908 Carriage-maker, William Durant, founds General Motors in Flint, Michigan
1913 1000s of women demonstrate for Dutch female suffrage
1915 US takes control of customs & finances of Haiti for 10 years  
1919 American Legion incorporated by an act of Congress  
1920 Bomb explosion in Wall Street, kills 30  
1922 Turkish troops chase Greeks out of Asia
1926  Hurricane in Florida & Alabama, kills 372
1926 Italian-Romanian peace treaty signed  
1928 Hurricane hits West Palm Beach-Lake Okeechobee Florida; 3,000 die  
1929 Police shoot at strikers at Maastricht, 2 killed
1931 Blimp is moored to Empire State Building (NYC)  
1940 Luftwaffe attacks center of London  
1941 German armor troops surround Kiev Ukraine  
1941 Jews of Vilna Poland confined to Ghetto  
1942 Japanese attack on Port Moresby repelled  
1943 Montgomery's 8th army contacts invasion - arm forces at Salerno
1943 Soviet army under general Vatutin reconquer Romny
1945 Barometric pressure at 856 mb (25.55") off Okinawa (record low)  
1947 Typhoon Kathleen hit Saitama, Tokyo and Tone River area, at least 1,930 killed.  
1950 Cleveland Browns (formerly AAFC) play 1st NFL game, beat Philadelphia 35-10) 
1950 Viet Minh-offensive against French bases in Vietnam  
1957 Coup in Thailand (Premier Songgram deposed)
1961 USSR performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR  
1962 USSR performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR  
1965 Sobibor trial opens in Hagen, West Germany  
1967 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1970 King Hussein of Jordan forms military government
1971 6 Ku Klux Klansmen arrested in connection with bombing of 10 school buses  
1971 A number of Unionists resign over the proposed tripartite talks involving Northern Ireland, Britain, and the Republic of Ireland  
1975 Papua New Guinea gains independence from Australia (National Day)  
1976 Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from the trolleybus that had fallen into Erevan reservoir. 1978 25,000 die in 7.7 earthquake in Tabar, Iran  
1978 Grateful Dead perform in Cairo, Egypt  
1979 Coup in Afghanistan under Hafizullah Amin
1979 USSR performs nuclear test  
1979 The families of Peter Strelzyk and Gunter Wetzel arrive in West Germany from Communist East Germany in a hot air balloon  
1982 Massacre of 1000+ Palestinian refugees at Chatila and Sabra begins  
1986 Fire in Kinross gold mine, Transvaal South Africa, 177 killed
1987 New York City's WNET-TV channel 13 begins round clock broadcasting  
1987 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR  
1992 900 die in flood in Pakistan
1992 FCC votes to allow competition for local phone service  
1994 Fire Dept puts out smokey electrical fire in White House
1996 Space Shuttle STS 79 (Atlantis 17), launches into space  
1999 1st ever season of "Big Brother" reality show begins on the Veronica channel in The Netherlands
2005 Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro is arrested in Naples.  
2007 One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew and passengers crashes in Thailand killing 89 people.
2012 8 female civilians are killed by a NATO airstrike in Laghman, Afghanistan  
2012 8 police officers are killed by a roadside bombing by Kurdistan Workers' Party militants in Turkey
2012 14 people are killed and 7 wounded by a roadside bomb Jandol, Turkey
2012 Anti-Japanese protesters set fire to Panasonic plant in Qingdao, China
2013 21 people are killed by Hurricane Ingrid in Mexico
2013 12 people are killed after a gunman opens fire at a naval yard in Washington, D.C.  
2013 Paul Kagame wins the Rwandan presidency in a landslide
2015 700 million Maleria cases prevented in Africa since 2000 in report by University of Oxford in "Nature" journal  
2015 Report 3 million people die each year of air pollution, more than Maleria and HIV/Aids combined published in "Nature" journal
2015 8.3 magnitude quake hits off coast of Illapel, Chile killing 11 and prompting evacuation of 1 million  
2015 Oil tanker explosion kills 170 in Maridi, South Sudan  
2015 Military coup in Burkina Faso, President Michel Kafando and other officials seized by presidential guards

The Tasaday People

Earlier we had a link to a list at Business Insider called 10 scientific hoaxes that rocked the world. Interesting. The Cardiff Giant was there, and Piltdown Man, and some more recent science scandals, and the Tasaday people. What? The Tasaday were an isolated “stone age” tribe in the Philippines that was discovered in 1971. They knew nothing of agriculture or the outside world. As a 12-year-old National Geographic fan, I was fascinated with the story. But I lost track and never heard the updates years later. The list said,

The find: a "small stone age tribe" called the Tasaday tribe. A Philippine government minister named Manuel Elizalde claimed to have found the tribe living in complete isolation on the island of Mindanao. The tribe "spoke a strange language, gathered wild food, used stone tools, lived in caves in the jungle, wore leaves for clothes, and settled matters by gentle persuasion," the Guardian reports.
The president at the time declared the island a reserve, banning anthropologists from visiting the site and studying the tribe further.
The fallout: In 1986, the president was forced out of office, and two journalists snuck into the land, only to find that the Tasaday tribe lived in houses, wore regular clothes, and had only temporarily adopted the primitive, stone age lifestyle at the urging of the Elizalde.

Was that true? We checked Wikipedia, and while the entry acknowledges the questions about a hoax, the overall entry appears to accept them as a distinct tribe. The 1993 NOVA episode on the Tasaday does the same. But what about more recent news? The Museum of Hoaxes, which Business Insider cites as a source, has more on the Tasaday story. The longer story documents the initial discovery of a "stone age" tribe; the unveiling of the Tasaday as a "hoax," which included confessions from tribespeople; the evidence for a "reverse hoax," in which the Tasaday were paid to admit being fakes, mostly for political reasons; and a view of the truth somewhere between the extremes.

To sum up: The Tasaday weren't a true stone-age tribe. But nor were they farmers coerced into playing a stone-age tribe. Instead, they were very poor people living close to Nature in the Philippine jungle who became swept up in and manipulated by global events beyond their control. This version of events isn't as compelling as the versions that made headlines in 1971 and 1986, but it is a good illustration of how the truth is often far messier and more complicated than it appears at first glance.

The entire article at The Museum of Hoaxes is worth a read, not only because of the Tasaday themselves, but also as a look at the competing forces of science, journalism, and politics that blew their story out of proportion in all directions.

Researchers Unearth Ancient Mythological Statues in Jordan

Researchers Unearth Ancient Mythological Statues in Jordan

A team of North Carolina-based researchers helped unearth more clues this summer about the ancient Nabatean city of Petra in Jordan. As part of a larger excavation at the site, the group of North Carolina State University and East Carolina University faculty and...

The Post Office Costs Taxpayers Nothing ...

The Post Office Costs Taxpayers Nothing, and Gives Us So Much in Return

Cheap Stuff You Didn’t Know You Needed Until Right Now

Cheap Stuff You Didn’t Know You Needed Until Right Now

You’ll want to shout about these game-changing gadgets from a rooftop

Los Angeles Tops List for Most Tree Diversity

Los Angeles Tops List for Most Tree Diversity

Los Angeles has the most tree diversity, according to tree survey data from 20 cities that was analyzed by a team of researchers led by a University of California, Riverside, landscape ecologist. By combining datasets from 20 cities in the United States and Canada,...

6 Things You Can Do to Become a Morning Person

6 Things You Can Do to Become a Morning Person

Always hitting snooze? Use these tips to break the habit and conquer your morning

6 Fascinating Facts About Dreams

6 Fascinating Facts About Dreams 

Men Like Gouda More Than Women

Breaking: Men Like Gouda More Than Women

Most Say They're OK with Interracial Marriage, But ...

Most Say They're OK with Interracial Marriage, but Could the Brain Tell a Different Story?

NC teabagger wingnut who voted for ‘bathroom bill’ panics as poll numbers plunge

NC teabagger wingnut who voted for ‘bathroom bill’ panics as poll numbers plunge

This Idaho prosecutor has a troubling pattern of giving passes to child rapists and sex abusers

This Idaho prosecutor has a troubling pattern of giving passes to child rapists and sex abusers

An Idaho prosecuting attorney is drawing complaints for allowing child sex abuse suspects to escape serious punishment with plea deals considered to be too lenient.

'Christian' Pastor Gets BUSTED In Arizona For Molesting Children For Decades

'Christian' Pastor Gets BUSTED In Arizona For Molesting Children For Decades

An Arizona pastor used his position to get close to children for decades so he could rape them – and now he has finally been arrested by law enforcement. Jose...

Arizona pastor who ‘married’ a 10-year-old busted for widespread child molestation

One victim who came forward claimed that Morales molested her between the ages of 7 and 12, while another claims that he sexually assaulted her after luring her to his home.

Rape Apparently Doesn’t Earn Jail Time Anymore

Rape Apparently Doesn’t Earn Jail Time Anymore – Even If The Victim Is Only Two Years Old

This guy will see absolutely no prison time for raping a 2-year-old. Let that sink in for a minute.

UNC Campus Police LAUGH In Rape Victim’s Face . . .

UNC Campus Police LAUGH In Rape Victim’s Face . . . Because Football

Everybody knows that athletes get a free pass when it comes to rape, right?

DUI suspect said his speech was slurred due to wisdom teeth being removed 20 years ago

A driver who smelled of alcohol excused his slurred speech during a DUI investigation by telling police he just had his wisdom teeth pulled out. But the credibility of Michael Reyna’s explanation may have suffered when he said the procedure had occurred two decades previously. Police in Fellsmere, Florida, ended up arresting Reyna, 46, after the incident that began at about 1:22am on Aug. 28, an affidavit states. Fellsmere police stopped him after an officer noticed his truck was speeding. He shuffled through credit cards and his Ford manual bag after being asked for his registration and proof of insurance.
An officer noted Reyna’s speech was slurred, his eyes bloodshot and glassy and that he smelled of alcohol. As part of field sobriety exercises, the officer asked Reyna whether he had any medical conditions that could make it tough for him to do the exercises. He said he’d been stabbed in the leg several years ago. Reyna also reported a medical condition with his eyes, but the officer couldn’t understand the word because of his slurred speech.
“Michael then excused his slurred speech by stating he just had his wisdom teeth pulled out,” the affidavit states. “When asked how long ago they pulled out his wisdom teeth, Reyna stated ‘twenty years ago.’” After performing some of the exercises, Reyna, of Fellsmere, was arrested on a DUI charge. Breath tests measured his blood alcohol content at 0.094 and 0.095, greater than the 0.08 legal limit.

Man arrested after allegedly attacking gazebo with Samurai sword

A man is facing charges after police said he attacked a gazebo in Warwick City Park, Rhode Island, with a Samurai sword.
37-year-old Andrew Rich, who lives in Warwick, was arrested on Monday and charged with vandalism, disorderly conduct, as well as having a prohibited weapon.

YouTube link.

Authorities said they were initially called to the park just before noon for a report of two people sword fighting. Rich was taken into custody after he was found to be striking the posts of the gazebo with a sword.
Forty-year-old Jessica Cole was also arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and having a prohibited weapon, which they said was a police-style baton.

The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired "The Rats of NIMH"

John Bumpass Calhoun was a researcher at the the National Institute of Mental Health beginning in 1954. He had spent years already studying the behavior of groups of mice kept in captivity. Now he had space and resources to build mouse utopias. And he did, ever bigger an better. His largest experiment was a room sized mouse universe in which he placed eight mice in 1968. They thrived quickly due to the many amenities: plenty of food and water, nesting boxes, room to run, and most important for a mouse, safety from predators. Soon, they began to have families.

This is a far cry from a wild mouse's life—no cats, no traps, no long winters. It's even better than your average lab mouse's, which is constantly interrupted by white-coated humans with scalpels or syringes. The residents of Universe 25 were mostly left alone, save for one man who would peer at them from above, and his team of similarly interested assistants. They must have thought they were the luckiest mice in the world. They couldn't have known the truth: that within a few years, they and their descendants would all be dead.

Calhoun saw the results of this population growth experiment echo his earlier, smaller mouse utopias. Read about Calhoun’s experiments and how he inspired a book called Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which was later made into a movie called The Secret of NIMH, at Atlas Obscura. There's also a video that further explains the experiment. 

Animal Pictures