Sunday, March 12, 2023

Russo-Ukrainian Outcomes for America

Giving Ukraine a blank check, as some wish us to do, 
is the very opposite of a prudent U.S. foreign policy.


We are now a year into the Russo-Ukrainian War, with no end in sight. Assessments have been all over the board. Early on, the consensus held that the Russians would win quickly. Then the narrative shifted: Ukrainian resilience and Western aid combined with Russian incompetence now favored Kyiv.

Then Russia sought to raise the cost of the war for Ukraine. Having repeatedly failed at the operational level of war—the conduct of campaigns to achieve strategic success in a theater of operations—Putin embraced the “Russian way of war,” which relies on brute force, making no distinction between military and civilian targets. Indeed, attacking civilian targets, especially those tied to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was considered a feature, not a bug, in Putin’s strategy. As David Goldman suggested several months ago, Putin seemingly sought to “ruin and depopulate Ukraine, the way Richelieu reduced large parts of Germany to cannibalism during the Thirty Years War.” 

Now, the conflict has become a stalemate, bearing an eerie resemblance to the Western Front in World War I. So where do we go from here? There seem to be three possible outcomes: a Russian victory; a Ukrainian victory; or a negotiated settlement of some sort, including a Korea style armistice/cease-fire with a political settlement to follow. But these all suggest a first and more important question: What does it mean for either the Russians or Ukrainians to “win?”

A Russian victory would entail, at a minimum, the retention of territory that it has seized—Russo-phone regions of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea—and assurances that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. A Ukrainian victory would entail, at a minimum, the expulsion of Russian troops from Ukraine. A more extreme version, favored by some in the United States, includes punishment of Russia and war crimes tribunals, perhaps even regime change.

The Ukraine victory narrative seems to be dominant in Washington, D.C.. It holds that with enough military aid, the United States and NATO can deal Russia a devastating defeat. Its advocates claim that “All the momentum is with Ukraine now and there is no doubt in my mind that they will win this war, probably in 2023.” But despite the wishful thinking of those who seek a Ukrainian victory, Russia is better positioned to prevail. The ability of the Ukrainian army to launch local counterattacks as it has at Kharkiv and Kherson does not translate into the ability to execute a massive counteroffensive that inflicts a crippling defeat on Russia. The advantages adhering to the defense and Russia’s dominance in tube and missile artillery suggest that Ukraine would have to pay a very high price to liberate all its territory. That’s a price that seems well beyond Ukraine’s ability to pay.

And although in war, non-quantifiable moral factors such as morale and esprit d’corps have made it possible for a combatant to prevail over an enemy with materiel superiority, quantitative factors still matter. The Russian Federation commands far greater resources than Ukraine. It is 30 times the size of Ukraine with three times the population and nine times the GDP. Moreover, Russia has made it clear that it is willing to absorb tremendous casualties. But it has inflicted heavy casualties as well, casualties Ukraine cannot afford in a war of attrition, which is what the Russo-Ukrainian War has become.

And the cost to Ukraine extends far beyond the battlefield. Millions of Ukrainians are leaving the country. The Ukrainian economy is in shambles. Putin has inflicted trillions of dollars in damage to Ukrainian infrastructure. The country is beginning to resemble 1918 occupied France and Belgium. As the recent critical infrastructure attacks illustrate, the fact is that for all of its operational, personnel, and logistical shortcomings, Russia still has escalatory options that Ukraine does not.

The desire to aid Ukraine in repelling Russian aggression is understandable, but our policymakers have to ask themselves if we, like the European leaders of 1914, are sleepwalking into a war, the possible consequences of which are disproportionate to U.S. interests, especially in light of threats to these interests in the Pacific.

Pro-Ukraine optimists believe that granting Kyiv a blank check will shift the advantage to Ukraine. It is understandable that Americans generally support Ukraine in its effort to repel Russian aggression, but open-ended material support has its own risks. By supplying weapon systems to Ukraine, we have depleted our own stockpiles of weapons such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and air defense systems. This has created problems for the United States, especially in the Indo-Pacific region where we face our primary strategic challenge from China. For example, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported in early October that some parts of planned joint drills between Japan’s ground forces and U.S. Marines were canceled due to a lack of shells for the U.S. HIMARS launching systems.

Given the unlikely prospect of either a Russian or Ukrainian victory, the best outcome in terms of U.S. interests is a ceasefire agreement that freezes the existing battle lines, leaving political arrangements to some later date. This would reduce the main threat to the security of the United States: the creeping escalation between the U.S.-led NATO and Russia.

The Biden Administration has refused to help negotiate an end to the conflict, despite the vast suffering of the Ukrainian people and the possibility that the United States might be drawn into a war with Russia. Instead, members of both parties seem open to a blank check for Ukraine, sending advanced Western weapons systems—including tanks, missiles, and now possibly latest-generation fighter aircraft—to Ukraine. What is lacking is a coherent strategic vision justifying such a blank check. What U.S. interests are at stake in Ukraine and how do they relate to U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific region?

Ukraine has the right to appeal to the United States for assistance in repelling Russian aggression, but American citizens have a legitimate expectation that Ukrainian interests do not come at the expense of U.S. interests. Giving Ukraine a blank check, as some wish us to do, is the very opposite of a prudent U.S. foreign policy.




X22, Christian Patriot News, and more- March 12

 




Regional Racism and the Democrats Who Love It


The accepted definition of "racism" is "prejudice against members of a different ethnic group," with "ethnic" defined as a "subgroup ... with a common national or cultural tradition."  By this definition, residents of the South and the West constitute "ethnic groups," and there is abundant evidence of prejudice against these regions in American history and in today's politics and media.

What the Northern and coastal elite feel toward the South and West is a level of contempt that amounts to racism.  For many decades, liberals have displayed a racist attitude toward white Southerners, a group with which most liberals in the coastal regions have little contact.  When liberals ripped down the statues of Southern heroes such as Robert E. Lee and treated them with contempt, that was not just an act of removing the images of slaveholders — it was a display of racial disdain for the people of another region, the vast majority of whom are not descendants of slaveholders.  One quarter of Southerners owned slaves, and some two percent owned large numbers of slaves on large plantations.

Regional racism of this kind has been a crucial element of American society since well before the Civil War — and it was, perhaps, the main reason why tensions between the North and South led to secession.  One would imagine that in 2023, 162 years after the Civil War began, the regional wounds would have healed, but that is not the case.  In a popular culture that appeals especially to Northern and coastal liberals, white Southerners are depicted as hillbillies, buffoons, racists, and religious extremists.

In the past, in a literary history stretching from Tobacco Road and The Grapes of Wrath to A Time to Kill and beyond, and in media from The Andy Griffith Show to Hee Haw, audiences despised, laughed at, and discriminated against Southerners.  But even so, traditional liberals admitted that conservative Southerners had a right to participate in the political process.  There was Hee Haw, but there was also Firing Line on public television, hosted by a conservative who defended states' rights and regional differences.  Now there is nothing akin to Firing Line on state-sponsored media, and progressives today would probably shut down Fox News if they could, just as they would eliminate the filibuster rule in the Senate so that debate emanating from the more conservative Southern states would be silenced.

It's not just Southerners.  The national psyche has always been ambivalent about the American West.  In spite of admiration for its great national parks and celebration of the romantic cowboy culture, the West has always been viewed as irrelevant to the national debate.  Its population is too small and, in the view of progressives, too culturally illiterate to count for much.  President George W. Bush was derided as a "cowboy," which meant an uncultured, poorly educated, and mentally challenged individual, despite his degrees from Yale and Harvard and his membership in Skull and Bones.  In reality, Bush was far from uneducated or unintelligent, as were Vice President Dick Cheney (from Wyoming) and adviser Karl Rove (from Nevada and Utah).  The view that everyone residing between the Mississippi and the Coastal Range, except those who ascribe to liberalism, is a dense cowboy with no right to be heard amounts to racism, and liberals need to admit it.

Long ago, the eminent sociologist John Shelton Reed investigated the nuances of regional racism and its implications for the national culture.  Unlike ethnic racism, regional racism is largely invisible, at least to those outside the South and West.  Within the national culture, regional stereotypes such as the redneck and the mountain pink, the role perfected by Dolly Parton in her highly successful music and acting career, seem "natural" rather than socially imposed.  Today, from within the Second Reconstruction imposed by woke progressives, white Southerners are assumed to be racists and so are excluded from the national debate.  It is telling that there are no white Southerners or non-Hispanic Westerners in the Biden Cabinet.

As Professor Reed understood, Neo-Reconstructionism is politically dangerous for America.  Southerners; Westerners; and, increasingly, Midwesterners — the entire population of the American heartland — feel excluded and unrepresented by the leftist government in Washington.  For progressives, white Southerners serve as a convenient bogeyman intended to drive black voters to the polls.  As Biden once remarked during a 2012 campaign speech, "they're gonna put y'all back in chains," and President Obama's office stated that it had "no problem with the remark."

Who was the "they" in Biden's infamous statement, and what was the point of referring to "chains"?  The immediate object of his remark was the Romney presidential campaign, but beyond that, in Biden's own words, was "every Republican."  By analogy, Biden was linking his opponents to slave-owners of the past and to the entire history of slavery, as if slavery, which had ended 150 years before, might be resurrected.

To this day, Biden continues to stoke racial division, as he did on his March 5 visit to Selma, Alabama, where he repeated an unproven claim that he had been a "civil rights activist."  On the 58th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday,"  Biden claimed that for blacks in the South, the right to vote "remains under assault."  Biden also used the opportunity to attack Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has moved to block radical anti-white teaching in his state's public schools.  For nearly a century, Democrats have stoked racial, and regional, division to drive the black and liberal vote; there's no doubt Biden will use the false narrative of racism in the South to increase black support if he runs in 2024.  This time, it will be DeSantis putting y'all back in chains.

As Americans migrate in larger numbers to the South and West (the population of Oklahoma City is now close to three times that of Boston, and Miami is perhaps the most dynamic and technologically savvy city in the nation), the political and economic power of the South and West will grow.  So, too, will their cultural importance.  But politicians like Biden will continue to  stoke division for their own political purposes, no matter how damaging this divisiveness is to the nation as a whole. 

Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi — the three aging horsemen of the progressive apocalypse — are the last stand of the American left.  They represent the outdated hegemony of the liberal North, and with it the racial vestiges of a long-forgotten war.  Regional racism persists, but the mounting power and wealth of the South and West eventually will make it seem irrelevant.  Long ago, citizens of the South and West decided to put the past behind them and assimilate to the national culture, even after a civil war that killed 850,000 Americans and devastated the South.  Biden isn't doing the nation any good by attempting to exclude them.  America can succeed only if Americans are united and work together.


Economic Warfare is Nothing Short of Warfare

Rules for fighting back against those 
waging economic warfare against the Right.


Individually, or collectively, when you boycott, when you make a decision against your own economic interest, and penalize a merchant because you don’t like his politics, you are foreshadowing a far darker reality. You are preparing the field for battle. You are setting the stage for what Benjamin Franklin eventually endured when he wrote dramatic words to an old friend in 1775.

Mr. Strahan, You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction. You have begun to burn our Towns and murder our People.—Look upon your hands! They are stained with the Blood of your Relations!—You and I were long Friends:—You are now my Enemy,—and I am Yours.–B. Franklin

Here’s how it works. Before villages are burned by naval artillery, before farmers are murdered for securing their firearms, someone will propose measured warfare: “Let’s starve them out.” The American colonists tried this in 1768 with a non-importation agreement. After a series of wholly illegal revenue acts by the British ministry (commodity taxes on things like glass, lead, oil, paint, paper, and tea), the Americans simply determined not to trade with Britain.

This was the right measure at the right time. King George, and his pension-bought members of parliament, thought the Americans could be used as revenue slaves. The economic warfare began—the first blood was drawn—by British ministers who thought they could balance the ledger by taxing the Americans without their consent. (Need money? Tax the colonists. They are not represented in parliament. You don’t even need a whip to count votes.)

The colonists met political warfare with economic warfare. They orchestrated a measured response, and a collective one. It wasn’t some informal, social media “boycott Target Stores” campaign, proposed one day and forgotten the next. It had the high seriousness of covenant theology: trade with Britain and you are no longer one of us. “You are shunned. You are my enemy. I place the pointed-finger sign above your shop.”

My contention here is just this: it’s war. If you enter a man’s home and take away his family’s meal, night after night, you may not be putting the barrel of a gun to his head, but you are endangering their lives nonetheless.

If you are the victim of cancel culture, if you have lost your job because of political expression, if you can no longer trade with government agencies because you object to a pervert-story-hour for children, or you have some nagging doubts about election integrity, or you are one of the best character actors in the world and Hollywood won’t hire you, then consider this: you are one of the first soldiers to be wounded on the field of battle.

We all need to consider a very real danger on the horizon, which I will present by way of example. When Matt Walsh told Dylan Mulvaney, in no uncertain terms, his attempt at womanhood was a ridiculous farce, the real danger wasn’t Dylan Mulvaney, or even his kind. The real danger was the vast majority of well-meaning conservatives who thought Matt was being mean. When a family is harboring a dangerous psychotic or a shameless groomer, there’s always a greater danger than the threat itself: people who think you can ignore the problem and make it go away. It won’t go away. You need to shout it down.

Rules for warriors:

  • Don’t let the social justice warrior take the offensive. Let it be known, if you want to bring the kids to, say, a symphony, and someone describes that as “too Western” or “too white,” don’t be afraid to call this sort of objection moronic.
  • Leaders: do not allow your school, church, or company to be hijacked by someone compulsively claiming “racism, homophobia, patriarchy.” When you hear this sort of fundamentalist cult language, shame the person using it as someone beyond the pale.
  • Enjoy your life. It might inspire people without a life to seek one.
  • Your children and friends might not be on board. Harden yourself to their opposition. Let your loved ones know: “we’re in for a battle. If you want to be in the inheritance, you better start defending the inheritance itself.”

The hard core political Left are very few in number, but they show discipline in their battle plan. They walk into a charter school and demand everyone affirm their own irrational hatred for the “enemy.” They have their own version of the rules I’ve outlined above—and they follow those rules with cult-like devotion.

Learn something from these children of the devil, and apply it to building the kingdom of God: start buying goods and services from the people who will stand with you in the coming battle.

Find some local merchant who speaks the truth and start trading with them. We are certainly available, but it’s not about us.

Be that merchant, and that customer, wherever you are. There’s a war on. It’s about time some of you acted like it.



Wisconsin Indian Hostage Crisis Teeters On Violence Because Biden, Tony Evers Do Nothing


‘Nobody is taking responsibility.’



The ongoing hostage crisis in Lac Du Flambeau, Wisconsin, has entered week six, and two people with the power to stop it — President Joe Biden and Gov. Tony Evers — refuse to act. 

Some 65 non-tribal Wisconsinites cannot enter or leave their homes due to barricades erected by the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. According to Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, the barricades are illegal because the closed roads receive public funding.

For over a month, the only way non-tribal residents have been able to leave the reservation is by crossing frozen lakes, which are quickly melting with spring. Racial tensions and the threat of violence are also rising as the residents grow desperate, the tribe refuses to negotiate, and the government ignores the crisis.

Why Are the Barricades There? 

The Lac Du Flambeau Reservation looks like patchwork, with sections of the land owned by non-tribal residents. The now-blockaded, non-tribal residents living on the reservation had right-of-way easements to their homes for sections of four roads owned by the tribe, but those easements expired more than a decade ago. 

With the easements long expired, tribal President John Johnson has closed the roads and is demanding $20 million from two title companies to reopen them for only 15 years. Residents, the title company, and the town say the easements are not worth $20 million.

“Our town has a budget of around $2 million a year,” said blockaded resident Joseph Hunt. “And no title company in the world would come up with the $20 million they were asking for just … for a small amount of houses.” The worth of the roads remains in question because, according to people familiar with the matter, the tribe has barred anyone from viewing the roads’ rights-of-way appraisals.

The reason easements were allowed to expire for over a decade is complicated. The tribe claims the title companies have not “negotiate[d] in good faith,” whereas the attorney hired by one of the title companies to represent the non-tribal residents says the tribe has been slow in responding and negotiating for years. Both parties say the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been unhelpful and unresponsive.

Tribe roads blockade

It’s worth noting many residents told The Federalist that prior to the barricades, the tribe had not been maintaining the roads despite receiving public funding to do so since at least 2018. Instead, the town, or in some cases the residents themselves, have been paying for the upkeep. The Federalist reached out to the town for confirmation but did not hear back. 

What is undisputed is that the tribe is refusing to negotiate and that it receives federal funding from the Tribal Transportation Program, which Tiffany and the landowners maintain makes the blockades unlawful.

Soon They’ll Be Prisoners

Since the road closures, residents have been unable to go to work or school, get groceries, or take out their garbage without crossing frozen lakes. Once the ice melts, “we’ll be actual prisoners,” said Hunt. Every day this week, the temperature in Lac Du Flambeau has reached above freezing temperature, and residents told The Federalist there aren’t more than a few days left before the lakes are unsafe to cross. 

[Visit The Residents’ Website: “Behind The Barricades”]

 “What’s going wrong with the United States of America where taxpayers are being illegally held from going into or out of their house, [but] everybody else in the world can walk freely across our southern border?” asked blockaded resident Marsha Panfil. “This is f-cking ridiculous.”

“People have been saying all along, ‘just rip the barricades down,’ and the residents have said ‘no, we don’t want this to be that aggressive,’” said blockaded resident Pam Kester. “We don’t want this to lead to violence, but I think it’s just around the corner.”

Kester is one of the residents who opted to leave town instead of relying on a frozen lake. She and her 17-year-old daughter Ming moved to Lac Du Flambeau in September from Iowa. They were attracted to the North Woods and the services the local school, Lakeland Union High School, could offer Ming, who has autism and reactive attachment disorder.  

Kester said that before the barricades went up, Ming was “flourishing” at Lakeland, but since they’ve been forced to leave town, things took a turn for the worse. Ming has “taken this really hard,” said Kester, explaining that due to the stressful situation, she’s been struggling with depression and her sleep patterns, and was even admitted to the emergency room last week due to a severe panic attack. Kester is trying to keep Ming enrolled at Lakeland, but Ming has struggled with the consequential remote learning and has had to drop all her classes except one. 

“At the school that I went to before [in Iowa], I was getting bullied a lot and that was really hard for me,” Ming told The Federalist. “Lakeland was just much different. I liked all my teachers at the school. I was making friends there, and it’s usually hard for me to make friends.” All Ming wants is to go back to school, but she said she’s beginning to “lose hope.” 

Like most residents The Federalist interviewed, Kester was not even aware of the expired easements. “Nobody told us,” she said, “not the previous owners, the realtors, or the title company.” “Our lives are trashed right now,” she added. “It feels like we’re collateral damage” and “nobody is taking responsibility.” 

Biden and Evers Abandon the People

According to a former deputy assistant secretary of Indian affairs, whom The Federalist granted anonymity to speak freely, there’s some precedent for how to handle the ongoing hostage situation. In 2020, two South Dakota Indian tribes set up Covid checkpoints on federally funded roads leading into the reservation. Similar to the Lac Du Flambeau barricades, the Covid checkpoints prevented certain non-tribal residents from using the roads. 

In response, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem “got involved,” said the former BIA deputy, and she appealed to the Trump administration, which in turn threatened to pull the tribe’s health-care and coronavirus relief funding. After that, the roads opened. “Theoretically, you could have the governor of Wisconsin call for the roads to immediately open,” said the BIA deputy. 

But neither Biden nor Evers have taken any steps to make the tribe remove the illegal barricades or come to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, the tribe has received more than $218 million in federal funds over the past 10 years. Why Evers and Biden are allowing the tribe to engage in dangerous and illegal activity while receiving an exorbitant amount of federal funding remains unclear. 

Not only has Evers refused to advocate on behalf of the residents, but he’s also allegedly affirmed the tribe’s supposed right to illegally erect the barricades. Hunt told The Federalist that when Evers visited Lac Du Flambeau in early February, “he met with the tribal council” and stated the tribe is “absolutely in the right to do this because [they’re] a sovereign nation. He didn’t talk to the town. He didn’t talk to the homeowners; he just left town.”

So far, Evers and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., have sent a letter to the BIA, asking that it be in “immediate engagement” and “aid in negotiations.” Tiffany and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent a letter to the Department of the Interior (DOI), of which the BIA is a subsidiary, and the Department of Transportation (DOT). According to Tiffany’s office, the BIA and DOT have been radio silent, and the DOI claimed it did not receive the letter the lawmakers sent a week ago. 

The problem is none of these bloated government agencies have the organization or capability to do anything. “The BIA is very powerless,” the former BIA deputy told The Federalist, and the agency is “going to defer to the tribal government in d–mn near every situation.” This again means the only people with the ability to force the tribe’s hand are Biden and Evers.

The Government Refuses to Clean up its Mess

Hunt said it’s clear to him that “the tribe wants their land back.” Indeed, as tribal member Melissa Christensen told The Federalist last week, she believes non-tribal residents “shouldn’t have been able to buy [reservation] property to begin with.”

But the land owned by the non-tribal residents was obtained legally. Non-tribal residents are allowed to live on the reservation because of the 1847 Dawes Act, which broke up communally run reservations and distributed plots of farmland to each head of an American Indian family. This led to parts of the reservation falling into non-tribal ownership over the years. 

Hunt told The Federalist he actually has “the bill of sale from the original sale of [my] property in 1923. I have a deeded access that says I can go out to the town road, and it’s all been ignored.”

Hunt said that if the tribe really wanted his and the other non-tribal residents’ property, they should have offered “a fair price” and bought them out. Instead, because his home is “worth nothing now” due to the barricades and government inaction, the tribe is “literally steal[ing] our homes.”

O





Of course, the tribe has no right to take the residents’ homes or erect the barricades. The blockaded roads are publicly funded, and the tribe is neither financially independent nor sovereign. Tribal members born on the reservation are born United States citizens on United States soil, and the supposedly “independent” tribes rely heavily on enormous amounts of federal funding. 

The disastrous American reservation system was created by the U.S. federal government, yet the government is doing nothing to clean up its mess. Meanwhile, people like Ming and her mother are suffering.



There is no reason Evers and Biden can’t threaten to pull funding from the tribe if it continues to blockade citizens and refuses to negotiate. But as Kester told The Federalist, “Nobody wants to be accused of saying anything negative about the tribe.” That’s particularly true of Democrat politicians like Evers and Biden, who have built their political power on identity politics.



Biden Laughs About IRS Going After Americans, as Yellen Gives Away His Huge Lie

Biden Laughs About IRS Going After Americans, as Yellen Gives Away His Huge Lie

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Joe Biden just can’t stop lying about his policies that have crushed the American people.

How long has he been telling us that he only wants to go after the “rich” people with his phalanx of thousands of new IRS agents? A long time it seems. Anyone who knows Joe Biden knows what malarkey his claim truly is and we’ve pointed out some of the lies surrounding this claim in the past.

But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen finally admitted under grilling on Friday by Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE), the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, that 90 percent of the new audits were going to be on families and small businesses — lower and middle-income people making under $400,000, and not on “billionaires and tax cheats,” as Joe Biden has claimed.

Smith’s grilling revealed what deceitful characters the Biden people are.

“There’s been confusion about the meaning of the directive that you cited in the letter last August and then repeated here today,” Smith told Yellen, referencing her August 2022 letter in which she directed that the IRS shall not use new personnel or auditors “to increase the share of small businesses or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels.”

Yellen’s letter stated that “contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.”

Ah, no increase. That’s good, right? Then it’s not targeting us poor schnooks (even though it’s still wrongly targeting people for making more). Not quite. Read on, there’s a problem there.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that the majority of IRS audits fall on people/businesses below $400,000.

So Smith asked what are they talking about when they’re talking about “will not see an increase” — did she mean the total number of new IRS audits or a proportionate number based on historic levels?

“I’m talking about the proportion of those small businesses and families,” Yellen responded.

“Okay. So the proportion, I mean, just for the record, the proportion is 90%,” said Smith, referencing the GAO report. “So 90% of the new audits will be, you know, according to the data, that we can expect up to 90% of new audits to be on those making less than $400,000.”

Oh, so they were playing word games with us. They’re still going to have 90 percent of the new audits falling on us. What weasels. Not that we didn’t know that Joe was lying, but they are such slimy liars, particularly playing these word games.

Meanwhile, let’s listen to Joe Biden chuckle as he talks about who the IRS agents are going to be going after.

Biden does that weird whispering thing again saying the IRS agents are going to check out the accounts of the “superwealthy.” Sorry, Joe, Yellen just gave up the game, you can’t sell that lie anymore.

“I don’t know,” Biden says about the Republicans objecting to this. “We just have a very different value set.” You can say that again.




On This Date

 


Historical Events on March 12
  • 538 Witiges, King of the Ostrogoths, ends his siege of Rome, retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of victorious Byzantine General Belisarius
  • 1054 Pope Leo IX escapes captivity & returns to Rome
  • 1088 Odo of Lagery elected as Pope Urban II, succeeding Victor III
  • 1144 Gherardo Caccianemici elected Pope Lucius II, succeeding Callistus II
  • 1350 Orvieto city says it will behead & burn Jewish-Christian couples
  • 1365 University of Vienna founded
  • 1496 Jews are expelled from Syria
  • 1572 Poet Luís Vaz de Camões publishes the epic poem "Os Lusíadas" in Portugal
  • 1594 Company of Distant established for business on East-Indies
  • 1597 England sends troops to Amiens
  • 1609 Bermuda becomes an English colony
  • 1619 Dutch settlement on Java changes name to Batavia
  • 1622 Ignatius of Loyola declared a saint
  • 1664 1st naturalization act in American colonies
  • 1664 New Jersey becomes an English colony
  • 1755 1st steam engine in America installed, to pump water from a mine
  • 1773 Jeanne Baptiste Pointe de Sable found settlement now known as Chicago
  • 1790 French Revolution: The National Assembly issues a decree allowing for the sale of church land by French municipalities
  • 1794 Theatre Royal in London's Dury Lane opens after being rebuilt
  • 1799 Austria declares war on France
  • 1832 The ballet La Sylphide first premieres at the Opéra de Paris.
  • 1848 2nd Republic established in France
  • 1849 1st gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua en route to California
  • 1850 1st US $20 gold piece issued
  • 1862 24th Grand National: Harry Lamplugh wins aboard The Huntsman; first French trained winner; only human fatality recorded in the event, jockey Joe Wynne
  • 1867 Last French troops leave Mexico
  • 1868 Great Britain annexes Basutoland in Africa (later renamed the Kingdom of Lesotho)
  • 1868 Henry O'Farrell attempts to assassinate Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in Sydney, Australia, Duke is shot but survives
  • 1868 US Congress abolishes manufacturer's tax
  • 1877 Great Britain annexes Walvis Bay at Cape colony, Southern Africa.
  • 1881 Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player and captain
  • 1884 Mississippi establishes 1st US state college for women
  • 1888 2nd day of the Great blizzard of '88 in north east US (400 die)
  • 1889 Battle at Metema (Gallabad): Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV, defeated
  • 1889 Start of South Africa's 1st Test, v England, Port Elizabeth
  • 1894 Pittsburgh issues free season tickets for ladies on Tuesday & Friday
  • 1896 1st movie in Netherlands (Kalverstr 220)
  • 1900 President Steyn of Orange Free state flees from Bloemfontein
  • 1901 Ground is broken for Boston's 1st AL ballpark (Huntington Ave Grounds)
  • 1903 New York Highlanders (Yankees) baseball franchise is approved as a member of the American League
  • 1904 1st main line electric train in UK (Liverpool to Southport)
  • 1905 The continuing strikes and disorders that unsettle Italy force out Premier Giovanni Giolitti, though he will return in March, 1906
  • 1906 Heavy storm ravages Dutch west coast
  • 1908 Stanley Cup, Montreal Arena, Westmount, Quebec: Montreal Wanderers beat Winnipeg Maple Leafs, 9-3 for 2-0 sweep of challenge series
  • 1908 The Pan-Macedonian group is formed in Athens to support the Greek Struggle for Macedonia
  • 1909 Alarmed over increasing German naval strength, Parliament passes a new naval appropriations bill
  • 1910 Stanley Cup, Montreal Arena, Westmount, Quebec: Montreal Wanderers beat Berlin Dutchmen (ON), 7-3
  • 1912 Establishment of the first football club in Bulgaria - Botev Plovdiv
  • 1913 Foundation stone of the Australian capital in Canberra laid
  • 1916 French airship mistakenly attacks and sinks British submarine D3 with loss of all hands
  • 1917 In the wake of the February Revolution, Communist Party members Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Matvei Muranov arrive in Petrograd (St Petersburg) and seize control of the Pravda newspaper
  • 1917 [OS Feb 27] Russian Duma sets up the Provisional Committee; Soviets form Executive Committee
  • 1919 Austrian National Meeting affirms Anschluss (incorporate into Germany)
  • 1926 Denmark begins unilateral disarmament
  • 1928 In California, the St. Francis Dam fails, killing over 600 people
  • 1930 Stanislawa Walasiewicz [Stella Walsh] sets world record for the 220-yard dash (0:26.1)
  • 1934 Acting President Constantine Päts commits coup in Tallinn, Estonia
  • 1935 Britain establishes 30 MPH speed limit for towns & villages
  • 1938 Nazi Germany invades Austria (Anschluss)
  • 1940 Finland signs the Moscow Peace Treaty in Moscow, surrendering to Russia and ceding 11% of their pre-WWII territory, ending the "Winter War"
  • 1941 German occupiers confiscate AVRO studios in Netherlands
  • 1942 British troops vacate the Andaman Islands in Gulf of Bengal
  • 1943 Soviet troops liberate Wjasma
  • 1945 30 Amsterdammers executed by nazi occupiers
  • 1945 Italy's Communist Party (CPI) calls for armed uprising in Italy
  • 1945 NY is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment
  • 1945 USSR returns Transylvania to Romania
  • 1947 "Chocolate Soldier" opens at Century Theater NYC for 69 performances
  • 1947 Belgian government of Huysmans resigns
  • 1948 -5°F lowest temperature ever recorded in Cleveland in March
  • 1949 Ireland retains Five Nations Rugby Championship & Triple Crown with a 5-0 win over Wales at St. Helen's Ground, Swansea
  • 1950 Belgium votes (58%) for return of King Leopold III
  • 1950 Pope Pius XII encyclical "On combating atheistic propaganda"
  • 1951 Baseball Commish Happy Chandler loses fight (9-7) to stay in office
  • 1951 Comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appears in the British comic magazine The Beano'
  • 1951 Communist troops driven out of Seoul
  • 1956 Dow Jones closes above 500 for 1st time (500.24)
  • 1957 German DR accepts 22 Russian divisions
  • 1958 3rd Eurovision Song Contest: Andre Claveau for France wins singing "Dors, mon amour" in Hilversum
  • 1958 British Empire Day is renamed "Commonwealth Day"
  • 1959 Dutch Liberal Party wins 2nd parliamentary elections
  • 1959 US House joins Senate approving Hawaii statehood
  • 1962 Dutch Premier De Quay announces secret talks with Indonesia
  • 1964 S. N. Behrman's play "But for Whom Charlie" premieres in NYC
  • 1964 Union leader Jimmy Hoffa sentenced to 8 years
  • 1964 WKAB TV channel 32 in Montgomery, AL (ABC) begins broadcasting
  • 1965 "Wooly Bully" single released by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
  • 1966 Jockey Johnny Longden retires after 40 years (6,032 wins)
  • 1966 Love's 1st album released "Love"
  • 1966 Pioneer Plaza dedicated
  • 1966 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
  • 1967 Austria's Reinhold Bachler ski jumps 505 feet

Appointment of Interest

1967 Indonesian congress strips President Sukarno of authority and names General Suharto as acting President

  • 1968 Indian Ocean island nation Mauritius gains independence from Britain (National Day)
  • 1968 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
  • 1969 120 cannabis joints found at George & Patti Harrison's home
  • 1970 US lowers voting age from 21 to 18
  • 1971 The Allman Brothers Band record their live album "Live at Fillmore East" on this date and the following day
  • 1971 Thousands of Belfast shipyard workers march demanding the introduction of Internment for members of the Irish Republican Army
  • 1971 Turkish Government of Demirel forced to resign by Army
  • 1973 Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In last airs on NBC-TV
  • 1975 Vietcong conquer Ban me Thuot, South Vietnam
  • 1976 South African troops leave Angola
  • 1980 NY Islanders 3rd scoreless tie, vs Pittsburgh Penguin
  • 1981 Soyuz T-4 carries 2 cosmonauts to Salyut 6 space station
  • 1981 Walter R T Witschey installs world's largest sundial in Richmond, Virginia
  • 1982 PLO chief Yassar Arafat appears on "Nightline"
  • 1983 4th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: St. John's beats Boston College, 85-77
  • 1983 Don Ritchie runs world record 50 mile (4:51:49)
  • 1984 British National Union of Mine Workers headed by Arthur Scargill supports regional strikes, calls for national action
  • 1986 210.25 million shares traded in NY Stock Exchange
  • 1986 Susan Butcher wins 1,158 mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
  • 1987 "Les Miserables" opens at Broadway/Imperial NYC for 4000+ performances
  • 1987 Ice Pairs World Championship at Cincinnati won by Ekaterina Gordeeva & Sergei Grinkov (USSR)
  • 1987 Men's Figure Skating Championship in Cincinnati won by Brian Orser (Canada)
  • 1987 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk (Soviet Union)
  • 1989 10th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Georgetown beats Syracuse, 88-79
  • 1989 2 cyanide-contaminated Chilean grapes found (Philadelphia)
  • 1989 30th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Alabama beats Florida, 72-60
  • 1989 36th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #9 North Carolina beats #7 Duke, 77-74
  • 1989 Madagascar AREMA party wins parliamentary election
  • 1990 LA Raiders announce their return to Oakland
  • 1991 OPEC announces oil production cut to 22.3 Mbbl/d (3,550,000 m3/d)
  • 1992 Mauritius becomes a republic while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations
  • 1993 317 killed by bomb attacks in Bombay
  • 1993 Cleveland radio station WMMS-FM/101.7 is bought by Disney
  • 1993 Entertainment Tonight's 3,000th show
  • 1993 Inkhata leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi begins 2½ week speech
  • 1994 The Church of England ordains its first ever 33 female priests
  • 1995 16th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Villanova beats Connecticut, 94-78
  • 1995 36th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Arkansas, 95-93 (OT)
  • 1995 42nd ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #7 Wake Forest beats #4 North Carolina, 82-80 (OT)
  • 1995 Congress party loses India national election
  • 1995 Ice Dance Championship at Birmingham UK won by Gritshuk & Platov (RUS)
  • 1995 Ice Pairs Championship at Birmingham won by Radka Kovarikova & Rene Novotny
  • 1995 Letitia Vriesde runs South American indoor record 800m (2:00.35)
  • 1995 World Ladies' Figure Skating Champ in Birmingham won by Chen Lu (China)
  • 1995 World Men's Figure Skating Champions in Birmingham won by Elvis Stojko of Canada
  • 1996 Leeward Islands beat Trinidad by 73 runs to win Red Stripe Trophy
  • 1998 "The Sound of Music" opens at Martin Beck Theater NYC
  • 1999 Former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO.
  • 2000 41st SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Arkansas beats Auburn, 75-67
  • 2000 47th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #3 Duke beats #20 Maryland, 81-68
  • 2002 US crime series "The Shield" starring Michael Chiklis premieres on FX
  • 2003 Elizabeth Smart found after having been missing for 9 months.
  • 2003 Zoran Đinđić, Prime Minister of Serbia, is assassinated in Belgrade.
  • 2004 Music work "I La Galigo" by Richard Wilson debuts in Singapore, based on Bugis creation myth from South Sulawesi (world's most voluminous literary work)
  • 2004 Roh Moo-hyun, President of South Korea, is impeached by its national assembly for the first time in the nation's history.
  • 2005 26th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Syracuse beats West Virginia, 68-59
  • 2005 Tung Chee Hwa, the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong, steps down from his post after his resignation is approved by the Chinese central government.
  • 2006 47th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Florida beats South Carolina, 49-47
  • 483 St Felix III begins his reign as Catholic Pope
  • 607 12th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
  • 624 Battle of Badr: Muhammad's Muslim forces win significant victory over Meccan army
  • 1560 Spanish fleet occupies Djerba, at Tripoli
  • 1564 Cardinal Granvelle flees Brussels
  • 1567 Battle at Oosterweel: Spanish troops destroy Geuzenleger
  • 1569 Battle of Jarnac, Count of Anjou defeats Huguenots
  • 1591 Battle at Tondibi: Moroccan army under Judar [Jawdar] defeats Sultan Askia Ishaq II of Songhai
  • 1634 First meeting of what would become the Academie Francaise in Paris at the house of Valentin Conrart
  • 1639 Cambridge College, Massachusetts, renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard
  • 1656 Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam
  • 1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
  • 1735 1st US Moravian bishop, David Nitschmann, consecrated in Germany
  • 1759 27th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
  • 1772 Gotthold Lessing's "Emilia Galotti" premieres in Brunswick

Scientific Discovery

1781 William Herschel sees what he thinks is a "comet" but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus

  • 1790 John Martin, 1st American-born actor, performs in Philadelphia
  • 1797 Luigi Cherubini's opéra-comique "Médée" premieres at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris, France
  • 1846 Friedrich Hebbel's play "Maria Magdalena" premieres in Königsberg
  • 1852 Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly
  • 1861 23rd Grand National: Joseph Kendall wins aboard Jealousy at 5/1

Historic Event

1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs bill authorizing use of slaves as soldiers (US Civil War)

  • 1869 Arkansas legislature passes anti-Ku Klux Klan law
  • 1875 English FA Cup Final, Kennington Oval, London: Royal Engineers and Old Etonians draw 1-1; replay won by Engineers, 2-0
  • 1878 Oxford University defeats Cambridge University in their 1st golf match

Assassination

1881 Alexander II of Russia is assassinated by members of far-left terror group 'People's Will' who throw a bomb at him in the city of St. Petersburg

  • 1884 Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins by Mahdist forces, lasts 10 months
  • 1884 US adopts Standard Time
  • 1888 Great Blizzard of 1888 rages across the east coast of the USA and Canada
  • 1894 J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate
  • 1897 San Diego State University is founded.
  • 1900 British troops occupy Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State (Boer War)
  • 1900 In France the length of the working day for women and children is limited by law to 11 hours.
  • 1901 Amidst increasing anti-gambling sentiment, wagering on horse racing is banned in San Francisco, CA; Ingleside Race Track closes March 15
  • 1903 Fall of the Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria, the British claim supremacy on over 500,000 square miles
  • 1904 Bronze statue of Christ on Argentine-Chilean border dedicated

Music History

1905 Mata Hari first performs her dance act at the Guimet Museum, Paris

  • 1911 Ivan Caryll's musical "The Pink Lady" premieres at the New Amsterdam Theatre, NYC; runs for 336 performances
  • 1911 Stanley Cup, Dey's Arena, Ottawa, ON: Ottawa Senators beat Galt (ON), 7-4
  • 1911 The Colonial-Born and Settlers Indian Association is formed at a meeting in Durban, South Africa, and has at its aim to fight the infamous 3 poll tax
  • 1912 Bulgaria and Serbia conclude an alliance pact ostensibly against Austria, but it secretly provides for a possible war against Turkey
  • 1912 Stanley Cup, Quebec Skating Rink, Quebec City, Quebec: Quebec Bulldogs rout Moncton Victorias (NB), 8-0 for a 2-0 sweep of the challenge series
  • 1913 Kansas legislature approved censorship of motion pictures
  • 1915 Brooklyn Robins manager Wilbert Robinson tries to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane, but the pilot substitutes a grapefruit
  • 1918 1st NHL championship: Toronto Arenas beat Montreal Canadiens, outscoring them 10-7 in a 2 game set
  • 1918 American Red Magen David (Jewish Red Cross) forms
  • 1920 After the German government is forced to cut its army to 10,000 men, military groups plot an unsuccessful coup - a revolt ended by a general strike
  • 1921 Mongolia (formerly Outer Mongolia) declares independence from China
  • 1922 NHL Championship: Ottawa Senators outscore Toronto St Pats, 5 to 4, in 2 games
  • 1922 WRR-AM in Dallas TX begins radio transmissions
  • 1923 American inventor Lee de Forest demonstrates his sound-on-film moving pictures (NYC)
  • 1925 NHL Championship: Montreal Canadiens sweep Toronto Arenas in 2 games
  • 1925 Tennessee makes it unlawful to teach evolution
  • 1928 Rudolph Friml's musical "Three Musketeers" premieres in NYC

Cricket History

1929 20 year old Australian cricket super-batsman Don Bradman scores 123 in 5th Test vs England at MCG; his second Test century

  • 1930 Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory
  • 1933 American banks allowed to reopen after a government imposed bank holiday
  • 1935 Driving tests introduced in Great Britain
  • 1936 Irish-bred Golden Miller with Evan Williams aboard wins record 5th consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cup steeplechase at 21/20 favourite; only horse to complete Gold Cup-Grand National double
  • 1938 In a process known as Anschluss, Austria is annexed into Nazi Germany
  • 1938 World News Roundup is broadcast for the first time on CBS Radio in the United States.
  • 1940 Finland-Russian cease fire signed, the Winter War ends. Finland gives up Karelische
  • 1941 A Bougne forms AGRA (Amis du Grand Reich Allemand)
  • 1942 Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps, becomes 1st woman colonel in US army
  • 1943 Baseball approves official ball (with cork & balata)

Historic Event

1943 Failed assassin attempt on Adolf Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight

  • 1943 Frank Dixon wins Knights of Columbus mile (4:09.6)

Historic Event

1943 Nazis liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków; Oskar Schindler with advance information, saves his workers by keeping them in his factory overnight

  • 1945 Nazi Sicherheitsdienst arrests Dutch resistance fighter Henry Werkman
  • 1946 Paul-Henri Spaak (Belgium Socialist Party) forms Belgian government - then shortest Belgian government (ends 31 March)
  • 1947 "Brigadoon" opens at Ziegfeld Theater NYC for 581 performances
  • 1947 19th Academy Awards: "Best Years of Our Lives", De Havilland, March win
  • 1948 Ireland beats Wales, 6-3 at Ravenhill Stadium, Belfast to clinch the Five Nations Rugby Championship and first Grand Slam
  • 1949 US Ladies' Figure Skating championship won by Yvonne C Sherman
  • 1949 US Men's Figure Skating championship won by Richard Button
  • 1951 2nd Dutch government of Drees forms
  • 1951 Israel demands DM 6.2 billion compensation from Germany

Sports History

1954 Braves' Bobby Thomson breaks his ankle, he is replaced by Hank Aaron

Historic Event

1954 Viet Minh General Võ Nguyên Giáp opens the assault on French forces at Dien Bien Phu, northwest Vietnam

  • 1955 Bir BSD Mahendra succeeds Tribhubana as king of Nepal

Golf Tournament

1955 LPGA Titleholders Championship Women's Golf, Augusta CC: Patty Berg wins her 6th Titleholders title by 2 strokes from Mary Lena Faulk

Film Release

1956 "The Searchers" American western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayneand Natalie Wood is released

  • 1956 NZ bowl out WI for 77 at Eden Park to score their 1st Test Cricket win

Battle of Interest

1957 Bloody battles in Cuba after the student led "Revolutionary Directorate" attacks the presidential palace in Havana in an unsuccessful attempt to depose dictator Fulgencio Batista

  • 1958 Government troops land in Sumatra Indonesia
  • 1960 LPGA Titleholders Championship Women's Golf, Augusta CC: Fay Crocker of Uruguay wins by 7 strokes ahead of Kathy Cornelius
  • 1960 NFL's Chicago Cardinals moves to St Louis
  • 1960 White Sox unveil new road uniforms with players' names above number
  • 1961 Elizabeth Gurley Finn (70) becomes President of US Communist Party

Historic Event

1961 JFK sets up the Alliance for Progress

  • 1961 Landslide in USSR, kills 145
  • 1961 Old type, black & white notes cease to be legal tender
  • 1962 Yugoslavia grants 1,000 prisoners amnesty
  • 1963 Indonesia & Netherlands reinstate diplomatic relations
  • 1963 Two Russian reconnaissance flights over Alaska
  • 1964 Turkey threatens Cyprus with armed attack
  • 1965 Beatles' "Eight Days a Week" single goes #1 & stays #1 for 2 weeks

Music History

1965 British guitarist Eric Clapton quits the Yardbirds due to the band moving away from traditional blues; Jeff Beck becomes his replacement

  • 1967 Congo sentences ex-premier Moise Tsjombe to death
  • 1967 Robert Anderson's "You Know I Can't Hear You ..." premieres in NYC
  • 1968 Beatles release single "Lady Madonna" in the UK
  • 1968 Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah, kills 6,000 sheep
  • 1969 Apollo 9 returns to Earth
  • 1970 100 year Beehive anniversary ends in brawl in Amsterdam
  • 1970 Digital Equipment Corp introduces PDP-11 minicomputer
  • 1970 San Francisco city employees begin 4-day strike
  • 1971 18th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: South Carolina beats North Carolina, 52-51
  • 1971 Australian Open Women's Tennis: Margaret Court wins her 10th Australian singles title; beats fellow Australian Evonne Goolagong 2-6, 7-6, 7-5
  • 1973 "Irene" opens at Minskoff Theater NYC for 605 performances
  • 1973 Minskoff Theater opens at 200 W 45th St NYC
  • 1973 Syria adopts constitution
  • 1974 Glenn Turner scores twin tons for NZ's 1st win against Aust

Film & TV History

1975 Bernard Slade's stage comedy "Same Time, Next Year", starring Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin, opens at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, NYC; later transfers to the Ambassador Theatre, and runs for a total of 1,453 performances

  • 1977 Dennis Lillee takes 6-26, England all out 95 in Centenary Test
  • 1978 Moluccan "suicide commandos" occupies Province house
  • 1979 European Monetary System is established, ECU created
  • 1979 Gairy dictatorship in Grenada overthrown by New Jewel Movement

Murder of Interest

1980 American John Wayne Gacy receives the death sentence in Illinois for the murder of 12 people

World Record

1980 American speed skater Eric Heiden sets world record 1000m (1:13.60)

  • 1980 Ford Motor Co found innocent in death of 3 women in a fiery Pinto
  • 1980 Men's Figure Skating Championship in Dortmund won by Jan Hoffmann GDR
  • 1982 Ice Pairs Championship at Copenhagen won by Baess & Thierbach (GDR)
  • 1982 Worlds Ladies' Figure Skating Champs in Copenhagen won by Elaine Zayak (USA) who lands 6 triple jumps
  • 1983 1st USFL overtime game-Birmingham Stallions beat Oakld Invaders 20-14
  • 1983 24th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Georgia beats Alabama, 86-71
  • 1983 30th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: NC State beats Virginia, 81-78
  • 1983 Peter Stone's musical "Woman of the Year" closes at Palace Theater NYC after 770 performances
  • 1984 Last day of 1st-class cricket for G Chappell, R Marsh, B Laird
  • 1984 WA beat Queensland by four wickets to win the Sheffield Shield
  • 1985 Michael Secrest (US) begins 24-hr ride of 516 miles, 427 yards
  • 1986 Microsoft has its Initial public offering.
  • 1986 Soyuz T-15 carries 2 cosmonauts to Soviet space station Mir
  • 1987 Ice Dance Championship at Cincinnati won by Bestemianova & Bukin (URS)

Historic Event

1987 John Gotti, boss of the Gambino crime family, is acquitted of racketeering

  • 1987 Washington Caps score 5 goals against Toronto in 3 mins & 3 secs
  • 1988 29th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Georgia, 62-57
  • 1988 35th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: Duke beats North Carolina, 65-61
  • 1988 9th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Syracuse beats Villanova, 85-68
  • 1989 27th shuttle, Discovery 8, launched, 1st woman to do the countdown
  • 1989 FDA orders recall of all Chilean fruit in US
  • 1989 US space shuttle STS-29 launched
  • 1990 Nicholoas Braithwaite elected premier of Grenada
  • 1991 Exxon pays $1-billion dollars in fines & cleanup of Valdez oil spill
  • 1991 Saudi Arabia and Iran say OPEC oil production cuts will take effect April 1
  • 1992 An earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale kills over 500 in Erzincan, eastern Turkey.
  • 1992 FCC rules companies can own 30 AM & 30 FM stations (formerly 12)

Election of Interest

1993 Australian Federal elections: Australian Labor Party headed by Paul Keating re-elected for a fifth term

  • 1993 Blizzard of '93 hits north-east USA
  • 1994 15th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Providence beats Georgetown, 74-64
  • 1994 33.3% of Austria votes for ultra-right Freedom Party
  • 1994 35th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Florida, 73-60
  • 1994 41st ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #4 North Carolina beats Virginia, 73-66
  • 1994 Oil tank/airship crash at Bosporus (huge fire/15+ killed)
  • 1994 President Mangope of Bophuthatswana deposed
  • 1995 Anti-fascist Kazakhstan anti-parliament forms
  • 1995 Hungarian Forint devalued 9%
  • 1995 Istanbul police shoot dead 16 Alawitische demonstrators
  • 1996 At Dunblane Primary School, Scotland, 16 children and 1 teacher are shot dead by Thomas Hamilton who then commits suicide. Results in handguns being banned in the UK.
  • 1996 Sri Lanka beat India in World Cup semi as riots stop play
  • 1997 India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader
  • 1997 Phoenix lights seen at night over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television. Now a hotly debated controversy.
  • 2003 The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy
  • 2004 25th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Connecticut beats Pittsburgh, 61-58
  • 2005 46th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Florida beats Kentucky, 70-53
  • 2005 52nd ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #3 Duke beats Georgia Tech, 69-64

Film & TV History

2005 Bob Iger is named CEO of Walt Disney International, succeeding Michael Eisner

  • 2005 Terry Ratzmann shoots and kills six members of the Living Church of God and the minister at Sheraton Inn in Brookfield, Wisconsin before killing himself.

Hall of Fame

2006 21st Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees: Black Sabbath; Blondie; Miles Davis; Lynyrd Skynyrd; Sex Pistols; Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss

  • 2008 Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000.00 an ounce for the first time.
  • 2009 30th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: #5 Louisville beats #10 Villanova, 69-55
  • 2010 31st Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: #7 West Virginia beats #22 Georgetown, 60-58
  • 2011 52nd SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Florida, 70-54
  • 2011 58th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #5 Duke beats #6 North Carolina, 75-58
  • 2012 110 people are killed and 63 are missing after a ferry collides with an oil tanker near Dhaka, Bangladesh
  • 2012 19 people are shot dead in a bus attack in Ethiopia
  • 2012 28 people, including 22 children, are killed in a motorway bus crash near Sierre, Switzerland
  • 2012 Encyclopaedia Britannica announces that it will no longer publish printed versions of its encyclopaedia
  • 2013 10 people are killed by a suicide bombing in Kunduz province, Afghanistan
  • 2013 Aleqa Hammond’s Siumut party wins the Greenland parliamentary elections
  • 2013 An Embraer 821 aeroplane crashes and kills 9 people in Para, Brazil
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Victory in Battle

1369 Battle of Montiel: Peter of Castile (Peter the Cruel) with support from England is defeated by an alliance between the French and his half-brother Henry II

  • 1489 The last Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro is forced to abdicate by Venice
  • 1559 Storm floods ravage Gorinchem, Dordrecht & Woudrichem, Netherlands
  • 1592 "Ultimate Pi day": on this day at 6.53am is the largest correspondence between calendar dates and significant digits of pi, since the introduction of the Julian calendar (3.14159265358)
  • 1644 England grants patent for Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island)
  • 1647 Thirty Years' War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm
  • 1743 1st American town meeting is held in Boston's Faneuil Hall
  • 1757 On board HMS Monarch (his own flagship), British Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad for failing to come to aide of besieged British garrison

Historic Invention

1794 Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin machine revolutionizing the cotton industry in the southern US states

  • 1812 US Congress authorizes war bonds to finance War of 1812
  • 1821 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded (NY)
  • 1826 General Congress of South American States assembles at Panama
  • 1840 Jose Zorilla's romantic drama "El Zapatero y el Rey" premieres in Madrid
  • 1845 -5.3°F (-20.7°C) in Groningen, Netherlands

Music Premiere

1847 Premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Macbeth" at the Teatro della Pergola, Florence

Historic Event

1858 Ellen G. White receives a vision while attending a funeral service in Lovett's Grove, near Bowling Green, Ohio

  • 1862 Battle of New Bern North Carolina: General Burnside conquers New Bern
  • 1864 Union troops occupy Fort de Russy, Louisiana
  • 1869 Defeat of Maori Ngāti Ruanui leader Riwha Titokowaru in Taranaki, New Zealand by British forces
  • 1870 California legislature approves act making Golden Gate Park possible
  • 1874 English FA Cup Final, Kennington Oval, London: Oxford University beats Royal Engineers, 2-0
  • 1875 Bedřich Smetana's symphonic poem "Vysehrad" premieres
  • 1888 Second largest snowfall in NYC history (21")
  • 1889 August Strindberg's "Froken Julie" premieres in Copenhagen
  • 1896 Sutro Baths in San Francisco opens by Cliff House (closed Sept 1, 1952)
  • 1899 Stanley Cup, Montreal Arena, Westmount, Quebec: Montreal Shamrocks beat Queens University, 6-2 to clinch trophy for CAHL

Scientific Discovery

1900 Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries rediscovers Gregor Mendel's laws of heredity and genetics

  • 1900 US currency goes on gold standard after Congress passes the Currency Act
  • 1901 Germany's Chancellor von Bulow declares that the agreement Germany signed with Great Britain in October 1900, to restrain foreign aggression and maintain open trade, does not apply to Manchuria
  • 1903 1st national bird reservation established in Sebastian, Florida
  • 1903 Stanley Cup, Dey's Arena, Ottawa, Ontario: Ottawa HC beats Rat Portage Thisles, 4-2 for a 2-0 challenge series sweep
  • 1903 WB Yeats & Lady Gregory's "Hour-glass" premieres in Dublin
  • 1904 In a landmark case, Northern Securities Company v United States, the US Supreme Court finds the company has violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; first case in T. Roosevelt's 'trust-busting' campaign
  • 1907 By Presidential order, Japanese laborers are excluded from entering the USA
  • 1908 Stanley Cup, Montreal Arena, Westmount, Quebec: Montreal Wanderers beat Toronto Professionals, 6-4
  • 1909 Amsterdam Social-Democratic Party (SDP) forms
  • 1910 Lakeview Gusher, the largest U.S. oil well gusher near Bakersfield, California, vented to atmosphere
  • 1912 King Vittorio Emanuel III of Italy injured in an assassination attempt
  • 1913 South African Supreme Court declares that marriages not celebrated according to Christian rites and/or not registered by the Registrar of Marriages, are invalid; all Muslim and Hindu marriages are therefore declared invalid
  • 1914 Serbia & Turkey sign peace treaty
  • 1915 German cruiser Dresden scuttled off Más a Tierra, Chile, having been pursued by the Royal Navy after the Battle of the Falkland Islands, with her engines worn out and virtually no coal
  • 1916 Battle of Verdun: Germans capture Cumières-le-Mort-Homme and Chattancourt in France
  • 1918 1st concrete ship to cross the Atlantic (Faith) is launched in San Francisco
  • 1922 KGU-AM in Honolulu HI begins radio transmissions
  • 1922 KSD-AM in Saint Louis MO begins radio transmissions
  • 1922 WGR-AM in Buffalo NY begins radio transmissions
  • 1923 Allies accepts Vilnius taking East-Galicia in Poland
  • 1923 German Supreme Court prohibits NSDAP (Nazi party)
  • 1926 Train in Costa Rica falls into the Río Virilla, killing 248 and injuring 93
  • 1931 1st theater built for rear movie projection (NYC)
  • 1933 US Civilian Conservation Corp begins tree conservation program
  • 1935 36-Folsom becomes 1st line to use 1-man streetcars in San Francisco
  • 1936 Federal Register, 1st magazine of the US government, publishes 1st issue
  • 1936 Wales beats Ireland, 3-0 in Cardiff to clinch the Home Nations Rugby Championship with a 2-1-0 record

Radio History

1937 Battle of the Century: Fred Allen & Jack Benny meet on radio during their "feud"

Catholic Encyclical

1937 Pope Pius XI publishes anti-nazi-encyclical Mit brennender Sorge

  • 1939 England draw with South Africa at Durban on the 10th day
  • 1939 Nazi Germany dissolves Republic of Czechoslovakia

Film Premiere

1940 "The Road to Singapore" directed by Victor Schertzinger starring Bob HopeBing Crosbyand Dorothy Lamour, first of seven such films premieres

  • 1940 27 killed, 15 injured when truck full of migrant workers collides with a train outside McAllen, Texas
  • 1941 Nazi occupiers of Holland forbid Jewish owned companies
  • 1941 Xavier Cugat & orchestra record "Babalu"

Historic Event

1943 World War II: Kraków Ghetto is "liquidated"

  • 1945 RAF bomb cuts railway link Hannover-Hamm

Film Premiere

1946 American film noir classic "Gilda", starring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, and directed by Charles Vidor, premieres in New York City

  • 1948 Freedom Train arrives in San Francisco
  • 1950 FBI's "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" program begins
  • 1951 Earthquake at Euskirchen, Germany
  • 1953 KOLR TV channel 10 in Springfield, MO (CBS) begins broadcasting
  • 1954 KDAL (now KDLH) TV channel 3 in Duluth-Superior, MN (CBS) begins
  • 1954 LPGA Titleholders Championship Women's Golf, Augusta CC: Louise Suggs wins her second Titleholders title by 7 strokes from Patty Berg

Baseball Record

1954 Milwaukee Braves future home run king Hank Aaron homers in his debut exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox

  • 1955 Prince Mahemdra becomes king of Nepal

Contract of Interest

1956 50-year-old baseball pitching star Satchel Paige signs a contract to play for and manage the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro National League

  • 1957 Indonesian government of Sastroamidjojo resigns
  • 1958 Recording Industry Association of American created
  • 1958 RIAA certifies 1st gold record - Perry Como's single "Catch A Falling Star"
  • 1958 South Africa's government prohibits the African National Congress
  • 1958 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
  • 1958 USSR performs atmospheric nuclear test
  • 1960 14 die in a train crash in Bakersfield, California

NBA Record

1960 Philadelphia center Wilt Chamberlain sets NBA playoff record of 53 points in Warriors' 132-112 win over Syracuse Nationals at Philadelphia Civic Center

  • 1961 Former New York Yankees general manager George Weiss becomes first President of New York Mets after MLB expansion franchise formed
  • 1962 Disarmament conference opens in Geneva without France

NHL Record

1962 Red Wings' forward Gordie Howe becomes second player in NHL history to score 500 career goals in Detroit's 3-2 loss to NY Rangers

  • 1964 "Girl Who Came to Supper" closes at Broadway NYC after 112 performances
  • 1965 Israeli cabinet approves diplomatic relations with West Germany

Film Release

1966 British film "Born Free" based on the book "Born Free" by Joy Adamson released starring Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers

  • 1967 1967 NFL Draft: Michigan State defensive end Bubba Smith first pick by Baltimore Colts

Historic Event

1967 JFK's body moved from temporary grave to a permanent memorial

  • 1968 CBS TV suspends Radio Free Europe free advertising because RFE doesn't make it clear it is sponsored by the CIA
  • 1969 Barbara Jo Rubin becomes first female jockey to win at Aqueduct Racetrack, NYC aboard 2-year-old bay Bravy Galaxy at 13 to 1
  • 1969 West Indies cricket batsman Seymour Nurse scores career high 258 in his last Test innings in 3rd Test win over NZ at Christchurch
  • 1971 South Vietnamese troops flee Laos
  • 1972 NBA's Cincinnati Royals, plagued by poor home attendance, announce they are moving franchise to Kansas City
  • 1972 Two IRA members shot dead by British soldiers in the Bogside area of Derry

Historic Event

1973 Future US senator John McCain is released after spending over five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp

  • 1973 Liam Cosgrave appointed president of Ireland
  • 1976 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
  • 1978 Marines terminate Moluccan action in Province house (1 dead)
  • 1978 NFL permanently adds 7th official (side judge)
  • 1979 Hawker Siddeley Trident plane crashes into a factory near Beijing, China, killing at least 200
  • 1980 Ice Dance Championship at Dortmund West Germany won by Regoczy & Sallay
  • 1980 Ice Pairs Championship at Dortmund won by Cherkasova & Shakhrai (USSR)
  • 1980 Polish airliner crash kills all 87 aboard (22 are US amateur boxers)
  • 1980 Worlds Ladies' Figure Skating Champ in Dortmund won by Anett Potzsch
  • 1981 NCAA St Joseph's upsets top seed DePaul 49-48
  • 1982 Sidath Wettimuny scores Sri Lanka's 1st Test Cricket century
  • 1983 OPEC cut oil prices for 1st time in 23 years
  • 1984 Challenger moves to Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (Florida), for mating of STS 41-C mission

Assassination Attempt

1984 Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast

  • 1985 Michael Secrest (US) completes 24-hr ride of 516 miles, 427 yards
  • 1986 European Space Agency's Giotto flies by Halley's Comet (605 km)

Sports History

1987 NY Met Darryl Strawberry charges Red Sox pitcher Al Nipper during spring training exhibition game, causes bench clearing brawl

  • 1987 Providence, with Billy Donovan's 25 points, beats Austin Peay 90-87
  • 1987 Skier Piotr Fijas jumps record 194m
  • 1987 Worlds Ladies' Figure Skating Champ in Cincinnati won by Katarina Witt
  • 1991 Emir of Kuwait returns to Kuwait City, after the Iraqis leave
  • 1991 English Court of Appeal frees "Birmingham 6" who had been unjustly sentenced in August 1975 to life imprisonment
  • 1991 Ice Dance Championship at Munich won by Isabel & Phil Duchesnay (FRA)
  • 1991 Ice Pairs Championship at Munich won by N Mishkutenok & A Dmitriev

Music Concert

1991 The Dave Matthews Band perform their first show as part of a benefit for the Middle East Children's Alliance

Farm Aid Concert

1992 Farm Aid V held in Irving, Texas; performers include Willie NelsonJohn MellencampNeil Young, Arlo Guthrie, Asleep At The Wheel, Kentucky Headhunters, Texas Tornadoes, Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman, Paul Simon, and Mary Chapin Carpenter [1]

  • 1992 Soviet newspaper "Pravda" suspends publication
  • 1993 "Face Value" closes at Cort Theater NYC after * performances
  • 1993 "Saint Joan" closes at Lyceum Theater NYC after 49 performances
  • 1993 14th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Seton Hall beats Syracuse, 103-70
  • 1993 3,000th performance of "Nunsense"
  • 1993 34th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats LSU, 82-65
  • 1993 40th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: Georgia Tech beats #1 North Carolina, 77-75

Theatrical Finale

1993 Herb Gardner's stage drama "Conversations with My Father", starring Judd Hirsch and Tony Shalhoub, closes at Royale Theatre, NYC after 462 performances and a Tony Award

  • 1993 Johan Koss skates world record 5km (6:36.57)
  • 1993 Ricky Ponting hits twin tons for Tasmania aged 18 years 84 days
  • 1993 Worlds Ladies' Figure Skating Championship in Prague won by Ukrainian Oksana Baiul
  • 1994 Mexican banker and billionaire Alfredo Harp Helu kidnapped
  • 1994 Soyuz TM-21 launches with V Dezyurov, G Strekalov & N Thagard
  • 1994 Timeline of Linux development: Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released
  • 1995 1st time 13 people in space
  • 1996 Australia beat West Indies by 5 runs in amazing cricket World Cup semi
  • 1996 Crufts show at NEC Birmingham, (1995 winner, Joshua, an Irish setter)
  • 1997 68 year old Gordie Howe signs AHL contract with Syracuse Crunch
  • 1997 Iranian military plane crashes, killing 80
  • 1997 Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson wins 67th James E Sullivan Award
  • 1997 The Chinese city of Chongqing (formerly Chunking) is upgraded to a centrally administered municipality
  • 2003 Start of weekend of protests against war in Iraq that are attended by millions
  • 2004 45th SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Florida, 89-73
  • 2004 51st ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: Maryland beats #5 Duke, 95-87

Hall of Fame

2005 20th Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees: Buddy Guy; The O'Jays; The Pretenders; Percy Sledge; U2; Frank Barsalona; and Seymour Stein

  • 2005 Cedar Revolution, where over a million Lebanese march in the streets of Beirut to demonstrate against the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, and against the government, following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Film & TV History

2006 Mike Wallace retires from US news program "60 Minutes" after 37 years

  • 2009 Canterbury winger Hazem El Masri becomes highest point scorer in Australian Rugby League history; 33rd minute penalty in Bulldogs' 34-12 win over Manly at ANZ Stadium, Sydney takes him to 2,178; Andrew Johns, 2,176
  • 2010 51st SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Mississippi State, 75-74 (OT)
  • 2010 57th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #4 Duke beats Georgia Tech, 65-61
  • 2013 25 people are killed and 50 are wounded by a series of car bombings in Baghdad, Iraq
  • 2013 7 people are killed after gunmen storm a bar in Cancun, Mexico

Historic Event

2013 Xi Jinping named the new President of the People's Republic of China

  • 2015 36th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Villanova beats Xavier, 69-52
  • 2015 62nd ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: Notre Dame beats North Carolina, 90-82
  • 2016 Marco Rubio announces he is dropping out of the Republican presidential nomination race
  • 2016 NASA releases data showing February 2016 warmest month ever recorded globally - 1.35C above the long-term average

Historic Event

2016 President Putin orders Russian troops out of Syria

  • 2017 European Court of Justice rules companies can ban staff from wearing religious symbols, including headscarves
  • 2017 World's oldest golf club Muirfield in Scotland, votes to admit women as members for 1st time in 273 years

Election of Interest

2018 Angela Merkel sworn in for fourth term as German Chancellor, head of a coalition government, 171 days after the general election

  • 2018 Brazilian human rights politician Marielle Franco is murdered in Rio, prompting mass protests

Historic Event

2018 NASA twin study finds that Scott Kelly is no longer identical to his twin brother after one year in space, 7% of his genes altered

  • 2018 UK announces it will expel 23 Russian diplomats after Russian-made nerve agent used on former spy in UK
  • 2018 US students across American commemorate Florida high school shooting with mass walkouts across the country
  • 2018 World Happiness Report names Finland as world's happiest country and Burundi the unhappiest
  • 2019 California officially free of drought for the first time in more than 7 years (Dec 2011)
  • 2019 Former US Democratic representative Beto O'Rourke announces he is running for president
  • 2019 Google announces its employee Emma Haruka Iwao has broken the world record for calculating pi, to 31.4 trillion digits, on pi day using Google Cloud
  • 2019 Tropical Cyclone Idai comes ashore in Mozambique, killing at least 417 people, and Malawi killing at least 56, after causing widespread flooding

Historic Event

2019 US Senate passes resolution overturning President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration

  • 221 Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declares himself Emperor of Shu-Han, claiming legitimate succession to the Han Dynasty
  • 493 Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths, murders King Odoacer of Italy with his sword at a banquet in Ravenna
  • 933 Battle of Riade: German King Henry I beats Magyars
  • 1311 Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeats Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.
  • 1360 French attack English south coast, raiding Winchelsea
  • 1382 Conservative "Popolo Grasso" regain power in Florence, Italy
  • 1391 Anti-Semite monk in Seville, Spain stirs up people to attack Jews
  • 1526 French Dauphin Francis and his brother Henry exchanged as hostages for their father Francis I, beginning four years of captivity in Spain under Treaty of Madrid
  • 1529 Second Diet of Speyer convenes, condemns and attempts to reverse 1526 Diet of Speyers relaxation of ban on Luther's teachings); official protest to attempted reversal on 25 April creates the term "Protestantism"
  • 1560 Failed assault on royal palace in Amboise, France
  • 1562 General Francois de Guise enters Paris

Historic Event

1580 Spanish King Philip II puts 25,000 gold coins on head of Prince William of Orange

  • 1729 Sister St Stanislas Hachard, 1st American nun, takes her vows in New Orleans
  • 1744 French King Louis XV declares war on Britain

Historic Event

1778 Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island discovered by Captain James Cook

Battle of Interest

1781 Battle of Guilford Court House; British troops under Cornwallis defeat American forces but their heavy losses led to ceding of territory and a strategic loss

Historic Event

1783 In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'etat never takes place.

  • 1812 1st Russian settlement in California at Russian River
  • 1820 Maine admitted as 23rd state of the Union
  • 1827 University of Toronto is chartered
  • 1848 A revolution breaks out in Hungary. The Habsburg rulers are compelled to meet the demands of the Reform party.
  • 1855 Louisiana establishes 1st health board to regulate quarantine
  • 1862 General John Hunt Morgan begins 4 days of raids near Gallatin, Tennessee
  • 1864 Red River Campaign-Union forces reach Alexandria, Louisiana
  • 1867 Michigan becomes 1st state to tax property to support a university
  • 1869 With 10 salaried players, Cincinnati Red Stockings become baseball's first professional team
  • 1875 1st US cardinal (John McCloskey) invested
  • 1877 Australian batsman Charles Bannerman completes first Test century in cricket history in 1st Test v England in Melbourne; retires hurt on 165 the following day
  • 1877 Cricket's inaugural Test match commences as Australia plays England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground; Australia wins by 45 runs in 4 days
  • 1885 1st performance of Caesar Franck's "Lesson Djinns"
  • 1887 1st salaried fish & game warden (William Alden Smith in Michigan)
  • 1889 6 US & German warships sunk by a typhoon in Apia harbour, Samoa, 200 die
  • 1892 1st escalator patented by inventor Jesse W Reno (NYC)
  • 1892 New York State unveils automatic ballot booth (voting machine)
  • 1897 1st indoor fly casting tournament opens, at Madison Square Garden

Historic Event

1906 Britons Henry Rolls, Charles Royce and Claude Johnson formalize their existing partnership as Rolls Royce Ltd

  • 1907 Finland is 1st European country to give women the right to vote

Sports History

1912 Legendary pitcher Cy Young retires from baseball with 511-315 win-loss record

  • 1913 Cleveland establishes 1st small claims court
  • 1916 Dutch merchant ship Tubantia torpedoed by German submarine & sinks in North Sea
  • 1916 General Pershing and 15,000 troops chase Pancho Villa into Mexico
  • 1916 University of Ghent taken under Dutch control

Historic Event

1917 Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar abdicates and nominates his brother Grand Duke Michael to succeed him [OS Mar 2]

  • 1919 American Legion forms (Paris)
  • 1922 1st southern radio station begins (WSB, Atlanta Georgia)
  • 1922 France, which up until now has insisted on currency for all WWI reparation payments from Germany, now accepts raw materials as payment
  • 1922 Sultan Faud crowned King of Egypt, England recognizes Egypt
  • 1926 Belgium's "black monday", franc falls
  • 1930 1st seaplane glider flown at Port Washington, NY
  • 1930 1st streamlined submarine of US navy, USS Nautilus, launched
  • 1933 NAACP begins coordinated attack on segregation & discrimination
  • 1934 US Information Service opens

Cricket History

1935 Brilliant batsman George Headley steers West Indies to an innings victory over England in 4th cricket Test at Kingston, Jamaica with a patient, unbeaten 270

  • 1937 1st state contraceptive clinic opens in Raleigh, North Carolina
  • 1937 First American blood bank in a hospital is opened at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois

Historic Event

1939 Reneging on his pledge in the Munich Agreement, Adolf Hitler and Germany occupy and annex Czechoslovakia

  • 1941 Blizzard in North Dakota kills 151 people
  • 1943 Allied reconnaissance flight over Java
  • 1943 Red Army evacuates Kharkov
  • 1944 Italian town of Cassino destroyed by Allied bombing
  • 1945 As a symbol of wartime baseball, Bert Shepard (one-legged WWII veteran) begins a successful tryout as a pitcher for the Washington Senators
  • 1945 Billboard publishes its 1st album chart (King Cole Trio is #1)
  • 1945 Catholic University of Nijmegen reopens

Agreement of Interest

1946 British Prime Minister Clement Attlee agrees with India's right to independence

  • 1947 John Lee appointed 1st black commissioned officer in US Navy
  • 1948 WCAU TV channel 10 in Philadelphia, PA (CBS) begins broadcasting

Knighthood

1949 Cricket's master batsman Don Bradman receives his knighthood from the Governor-General of Australia, the Rt Hon. WJ McKell at the investiture in Queen’s Hall, Parliament House, Melbourne

  • 1949 WICU TV channel 12 in Erie, PA (NBC) begins broadcasting
  • 1949 WLWD (now WDTN) TV channel 2 in Dayton, OH (NBC) begins broadcasting
  • 1950 Gian Carlo Menotti's Pulitzer Prize winning opera "The Consul" opens at Barrymore Theater, NYC; runs for 269 performances
  • 1950 NYC hires Dr Wallace E Howell as its official "rainmaker"
  • 1951 Persia nationalizes Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
  • 1951 UN forces recapture Seoul, the fourth and final time the city changes hands in the Korean War
  • 1952 "2 in the Aisle" closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 276 performances
  • 1952 Greatest 24-hr rainfall begins: 187 cm at La Reunion, Indian Ocean

Golf Tournament

1953 LPGA Titleholders Championship Women's Golf, Augusta CC: Patty Berg wins her 5th Titleholders title by 9 strokes from Betsy Rawls

  • 1953 West Germany loses in soccer to Netherlands, 2-1
  • 1954 WSJV TV channel 28 in Elkhart-South Bend, IN (ABC) begins broadcasting
  • 1955 Dutch 2nd Chamber requires TV licenses
  • 1955 US Air Force unveils self-guided missile
  • 1955 WLEX TV channel 18 in Lexington, KY (NBC) begins broadcasting
  • 1956 "My Fair Lady" opens at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC for 2,715 performances
  • 1958 "Body Beautiful" musical closes at Broadway Theater NYC after 60 performances
  • 1958 England retains the Five Nations Rugby Championship with a 3-3 draw against Scotland at Murrayfield, Edinburgh; England’s 16th FN title
  • 1958 KULR TV channel 8 in Billings, MT (NBC/ABC/CBS) begins broadcasting

Sports History

1958 Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati Royals scores a NBA midwest region-record 56-point game

  • 1958 Royals basketball star Maurice Stokes collapses during a playoff game with encephalitis; He goes into a coma & is permanently disabled
  • 1958 USSR performs atmospheric nuclear test in Ground Zero, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan (of 36 total for 1958)
  • 1959 LPGA Titleholders Championship Women's Golf, Augusta CC: Louise Suggs wins her 4th Titleholders title by 1 stroke from Betsy Rawls
  • 1959 Robert Foster sets record by staying underwater 13 m 42.5 s
  • 1959 WILX TV channel 10 in Lansing, MI (NBC) begins broadcasting
  • 1960 Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve, also known as John D. Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, established as 1st underwater park, off the coast of Florida
  • 1961 South Africa withdraws from British Commonwealth
  • 1962 Donald Jackson of Canada is 1st to land a triple lutz ice skate jump
  • 1962 Five research groups announce the discovery of anti-matter
  • 1962 KATU TV channel 2 in Portland, OR (ABC) begins broadcasting

Music Premiere

1962 Richard Rodgers' musical drama "No Strings", starring Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley, opens at the 54th Street Theatre (later transferring to the Broadhurst), New York; runs for 580 performances and wins 3 Tony Awards

  • 1963 WFAN TV channel 14 in Washington, D.C. (IND) begins broadcasting
  • 1964 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
  • 1965 T.G.I. Friday's 1st restaurant opens in NYC
  • 1965 WMFE TV channel 24 in Orlando, FL (PBS) begins broadcasting
  • 1966 Racial riots erupt in the Watts section of Los Angeles, California
  • 1967 Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT)-headquarter moves from France to Brunssum, Netherlands
  • 1967 Marshal Arturo da Costa e Silva sworn in as President of Brazil
  • 1967 WSJK TV channel 2 in Sneedville/Knoxville, Tennessee (PBS) 1st broadcast
  • 1968 Bob Beamon sets indoor long jump record (27'2-3/4")

Historic Event

1968 British Foreign Secretary George Brown resigns after having a drunken row with Prime Minister Harold Wilson

  • 1968 Diocese of Rome announces that it "deplored the concept", but wouldn't prohibit rock & roll masses at Church of San Lessio Falconieri

Music History

1968 LIFE magazine calls Jimi Hendrix "most spectacular guitarist in the world"

  • 1968 Uprising in South Yemen
  • 1968 US Mint stops buying & selling gold
  • 1969 US Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigns
  • 1969 Violent Chinese-Russian border dispute leaves 100s dead
  • 1970 Expo '70 opens in Osaka, Japan
  • 1970 Gary Geld & Peter Udell's "Purlie" opens at Broadway Theater NYC for 689 performances
  • 1971 Chatrooms make their debut on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet
  • 1972 Danish airliner hit mountain in Sheikdom of Oman killing 112
  • 1972 NASA selects 3 part configuration for Space Shuttle
  • 1972 Two British soldiers killed when attempting to defuse a bomb in Belfast; an RUC officer is also killed in an IRA attack in Coalisland, County Tyrone
  • 1974 Brazilian president Garastazu Médici resigns
  • 1975 "That's the Way of the World" 6th studio album by Earth, Wind & Fire is released (Billboard Album of the Year 1975)
  • 1975 Bundy victim Julie Cunningham disappears from Vail, Colorado
  • 1975 Jevgeni Kulikov skates world record 500m (37.99 sec)
  • 1975 Wales trounce Ireland, 32-4 at the National Stadium, Cardiff to clinch their 18th Five Nations Rugby Championship
  • 1976 Failed coup in Niger
  • 1977 "Eight is Enough" premieres on ABC-TV
  • 1977 TV comedy "Three's Company" starring John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt premieres on ABC
  • 1977 US House of Representatives begins 90 day test of televising its sessions
  • 1978 -21] operation Litani: Israeli offensive in South Lebanon
  • 1978 A's trade Vida Blue to Giants for 7 players & $390,000
  • 1978 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
  • 1979 Apparat releases Newdos + 2.1 for Radio Shack's TRS-80
  • 1979 Sarfraz takes 9-86 at MCG as Australia lose 7-5 to lose the Test
  • 1980 England beats Scotland, 30-18 at Murrayfield, Edinburgh to claim it's 18th outright Five Nations Rugby Championship, 8th Grand Slam and 15th Triple Crown
  • 1981 "Broadway Follies" opens/closes at Nederlander Theater NYC
  • 1981 Suriname failed coup under sgt-mjr Wilfred Hawker
  • 1982 Actress Theresa Saladana, stabbed repeatedly by obsessed fan
  • 1982 KGB-AM in San Diego CA changes call letters to KCNN (now KPOP)
  • 1982 Nicaragua suspends their citizens rights for 30 days
  • 1983 Karnataka beat Bombay on 1st innings to win cricket Ranji Trophy
  • 1984 Tanzania adopts constitution
  • 1985 The first Internet domain name, symbolics.com is registered
  • 1985 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
  • 1986 Funeral services held for murdered Swedish PM Olaf Palme
  • 1986 Scotland (10-9 v Ireland) and France (29-10 v England) win their final round matches to share the Five Nations Rugby Championship with 3-1 records
  • 1987 "Starlight Express" opens at Gershwin Theater in NYC for 761 performances
  • 1987 "Sweet Charity" closes at Minskoff Theater NYC after 368 performances
  • 1987 Last day in Test cricket for Larry Gomes & Joel Garner
  • 1987 NZ beat WI by 5 wickets in Jeremy Coney's last Test Cricket
  • 1987 US Davis Cup team loses to Paraguay
  • 1988 Eugene Marino of Atlanta appointed 1st African American archbishop
  • 1988 NASA reports accelerated breakdown of ozone layer by CFK
  • 1988 NFL's St Louis Cardinals officially move to Phoenix
  • 1989 "Les Miserables" opens at Royal Alexandra Theatre Toronto
  • 1989 NY Rangers retire goalie Eddie Giacomin's #1 uniform
  • 1989 US Department of Veterans Affairs officially established as a Cabinet position
  • 1990 Fernando Collor de Mello sworn in as President of Brazil
  • 1991 Sergei Bubka pole vaults world record 6.14m (20 feet 1 3/4)
  • 1991 Territories of Amapa & Roraima become states in Brazil
  • 1992 13th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Syracuse beats Georgetown, 56-54
  • 1992 33rd SEC Men's Basketball Tournament: Kentucky beats Alabama, 80-54
  • 1992 39th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: #1 Duke beats #20 North Carolina, 94-74
  • 1992 UN officially embarks on its largest peacekeeping operation
  • 1993 In a landmark case, Mohamed Tabet, police commissioner of Casablanca, is convicted of sexually abusing over 1,500 women and sentenced to death
  • 1993 Vinod Kambli scores 227 v Zimbabwe, his 2nd consecutive Test 200
  • 1994 Experts from AL certify the Cleveland Indians Jacobs Field is properly lit
  • 1997 France beats Scotland, 47-20 at Parc des Princes, Paris to claim an 11th outright Five Nations Rugby Championship and 5th Triple Crown; fly-half Christophe Lamaison lands 6 penalties and 3 conversions
  • 1997 Pitts Penguins' Joe Mullen, is 1st American to score 500 NHL goals
  • 1998 An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran

Music History

1998 Revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb's "Cabaret", starring Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson, opens at Club Expo Theater, NYC; runs for 2,377 performances and wins 4 Tony Awards

  • 2001 The world's largest oil rig, located off Brazil and operated by Petrobras, suffers three explosions
  • 2003 24th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Pittsburgh beats Connecticut, 74-56

Historic Event

2003 Hu Jintao becomes President of the People's Republic of China

Hall of Fame

2004 19th Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees: Jackson Browne; The Dells; George Harrison; Prince; Bob Seger; Traffic; ZZ Top; and Jann Wenner

  • 2004 Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed
  • 2006 18th Commonwealth Games open in Melbourne, Australia
  • 2008 29th Big East Men's Basketball Tournament: Pittsburgh beats Georgetown, 74-65