| 1515 | King Francis of France defeats the Swiss army under Cardinal Matthaus Schiner at Marignano, northern Italy. | |
| 1549 | Pope Paul III closes the first session of the Council of Bologna. | |
| 1564 | On the verge of attacking Pedro Menendez’s Spanish settlement at San Agostin, Florida, Jean Ribault’s French fleet is scattered by a devastating storm. | |
| 1759 | British troops defeat the French on the plains of Abraham, in Quebec. | |
| 1774 | Anne Robert Turgot, the new controller of finances, urges the king of France to restore the free circulation of grain in the kingdom. | |
| 1782 | The British fortress at Gibraltar comes under attack by French and Spanish forces. | |
| 1788 | The Constitutional Convention authorizes the first federal election resolving that electors in all the states will be appointed on January 7, 1789. | |
| 1789 | Guardsmen in Orleans, France, open fire on rioters trying to loot bakeries, killing 90. | |
| 1846 | General Winfield Scott takes Chapultepec, removing the last obstacle to U.S. troops moving on Mexico City. | |
| 1862 | Union troops in Frederick, Maryland, discover General Robert E. Lee‘s attack plans for the invasion of Maryland wrapped around a pack of cigars. They give the plans to General George B. McClellan who sends the Army of the Potomac to confront Lee but only after a delay of more than half a day. | |
| 1863 | The Loudoun County Rangers route a company of Confederate cavalry at Catoctin Mountain in Virginia. | |
| 1905 | U.S. warships head to Nicaragua on behalf of American William Albers, who was accused of evading tobacco taxes. | |
| 1918 | U.S. and French forces take St. Mihiel, France in America’s first action as a standing army. | |
| 1945 | Iran demands the withdrawal of Allied forces. | |
| 1951 | In Korea, U.S. Army troops begin their assault in Heartbreak Ridge. The month-long struggle will cost 3,700 casualties. | |
| 1961 | An unmanned Mercury capsule is orbited and recovered by NASA in a test. | |
| 1976 | The United States announces it will veto Vietnam’s UN bid. | |
| 1988 | Hurricane Gilbert becomes the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, based on barometric pressure. Hurricane Wilma will break that record in 2005. | |
| 1993 | The Oslo Accords, granting limited Palestinian autonomy, are signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House. | |
| 2007 | The UN adopts a non-binding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. | |
| 2008 | Five synchronized bomb blasts occur in crowded locations of Delhi, India, killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 100; four other bombs are defused. | |
| 2008 | Hurricane Ike makes landfall in Texas; it had already been the most costly storm in Cuba’s history and becomes the third costliest in the US. | |
She wasn’t the most likeable character of her time. Once rumoured to be the most beautiful woman in 19th century Europe, a queen of both style and drama; model, mistress, self-appointed muse, narcissist; if there’s one thing to know about the Italian Countess de Castiglione– it’s that she was seriously vain. Shipped off to Paris in 1856 to compete for the affection of the reigning King Napoleon III, she wasted no time weaving herself into a highly scandalous affair with the crown, all the while cultivating her own celebrity through hundreds of elaborate, self-directed photo shoots. At a time when photography was still in its infancy, the Countess had a body of work that could be compared to Kim Kardashian’s selfie collection. It was her vanity and obsession with her own beauty that came to define her entire lifestyle, around which her status, identity, and ultimately her demise, revolved. A cautionary tale of a woman who thought her beauty would last forever…The Countess was used and abused by the European nobility for their own ends in her younger life, which reads like gossip column fodder. But she is most remembered for her legendary vanity and her portrait obsession. Read about the Countess of Castiglione and see more images at Messy Messy Chic.
Party on, old man!
Read about glitter, glass. mosquitoes, and other odd ways police have found a perpetrator at Cracked.Glitter might look all the same to you while you're trying to get that shit off your sweater, but there's reportedly "tremendous variation" in the stuff. Bulk glitter conglomerates can boast of having tens of thousands of different types to decorate your belongings, nether regions, and disgruntled pets as you see fit. Knowing this, one can see how leaving even one fleck behind after committing a foul deed can lead investigators right back to the exact Frederick's of Hollywood where you bought your sparkly apple-flavored nipple balm.
The first recorded instance of glitter being used as trace evidence happened at the end of the Cold War in Germany, when the U.S. Army's crime lab used it to solve a sexual assault case during a local celebration. Specific glitter from the victims' Mardi-Gras-like costumes was found on the clothing of the suspects. Another time, a killer in Alaska was nabbed in part because his estranged wife had dropped glitter in his car at some point, and some of it stuck to his victim. More recently, this method was used to bust a deadly hit and run driver who denied being at the wheel, but had a hard time explaining how the exact same cosmetic glitter she wore on her face wound up plastered to the airbag.
People who live among the lakes have tried many ways to control salvinia: sweeping it up in nets, building barriers, and even blowtorching it. Importing weevils seems to be the best bet, but even that program has drawbacks: lack of government funding, a climate that salvinia survives better than weevils, and the fact that importing one invasive species to get rid of another can have devastating consequences. Read about the invasion of giant salvinia at Texas Monthly.Australian researchers have calculated that, given the right conditions, an M&M-size salvinia plant could blanket 39 square miles of water in just over three months. As the advancing front reaches maturity, it swells into a carpet of vegetation up to three feet thick, smothering other life in its path by consuming nutrients and blocking sunlight from penetrating the water below. Fish can’t survive. Native plants and amphibians struggle. Lake recreation halts as viny roots clog boat engines and become ensnared in propeller blades. In some areas, the dense layer of salvinia can even become a substrate for other opportunistic weeds, making it difficult to tell where the lake ends and the shore begins.
