On this day in 1763, the Touro Synagogue is dedicated in Newport, Rhode Island. It is the first synagogue in what will become the United States.
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On this day in 1823, during a State of the Union message, US President James Monroe proclaims American neutrality in future European conflicts, and warns European powers not to interfere in the Americas. This is what will come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine.
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On this day in 1845, in a State of the Union message, US President James K. Polk proposes that the United States should aggressively expand into the West. This is what will come to be known as Manifest Destiny.
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On this day in 1851, French President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte overthrows the Second Republic. One year later, he becomes Emperor of the French as Napoleon III. It is from Karl Marx’s excellent essay, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, written one year later, that we get the phrase: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
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On this day in 1859, militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16th raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
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On this day in 1867, at Tremont Temple in Boston, British author Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States.
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On this day in 1942, during the Manhattan Project, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
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On this day, in 1952, a Colorado television station runs the first ever publicly televised footage of a woman giving birth. Couch potatoes all over the state are shocked to learn that the so-called "miracle of life" is actually a bloody, grotesque spasm of screaming agony, gushing fluids and cunt-splitting horror.
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On this day in 1968, President Nixon appoints Henry Kissinger to the post of Security Advisor. Chaos ensues.
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On this day in 1980, 4 US nuns and churchwomen, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel, are murdered by a right-wing, CIA-backed military death squad.
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On this day in 1982, at the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart.
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On this day in 1983, at the Comdex electronics trade show in Las Vegas, the so-called Windows War begins in earnest as over a dozen software companies - including VisiCorp, Apple and Microsoft - demonstrate some kind of mouse-based, window-centered user/computer interface technology. Despite taking longest and achieving the least impressive results, Admiral Gates and his Microsoft army ultimately win the Windows War by using "war of attrition" tactics.
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On this day in 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is shot and killed in Medellín.
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On this day in 2001, the assholes behind that Dubya-backing “Big Money” Texas energy conglomerate Enron file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection... the swine.
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