PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR AUGUST 21

On this dark night in the year 31,430 BC, the last living Neanderthal hides in a cave while a Cro-magnon hunting party waits outside, screaming and hurling rocks, gathering up their courage to go in after him. The Neanderthal, who's just watched these same blood-thirsty killers butcher his entire family, realizes his situation is hopeless. Alone in the cold, damp darkness, he tilts back his head and howls one last time at a moon he will never see again.

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On this day in 1770, James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.

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On this day in 1831, Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion.

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On this day in 1863, Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by Confederate guerrillas Quantrill's Raiders in the Lawrence Massacre.

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On this day in 1888, the first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs, the grandfather of writer William S Burroughs of Naked Lunch infamy.

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On this day in 1911, some crazy Italian by the name of Vincenzo Peruggia strolls into Paris' Louvre museum, walks up to Leonardo Davinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, takes it down from the wall, slips it under his coat, then brazenly walks right out the door with it. Two and a half years later, Peruggia is apprehended after trying to sell the priceless treasure to an Italian art dealer. This a fine, illustrative example of the old physiological dictum stating that testicular volume one carries around in one's pants is usually inversely proportionate to the amount of grey matter one has in one's skull.

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On this day in 1945, physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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On this day in 1961, Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit, "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes.

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On this day in 1986, carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range.

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On this day in 1992, the Ruby Ridge Standoff in Idaho commences

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It will be on this day in 2017 that the next total solar eclipse will be visible from North America. Chaos will probably already have ensued by then.... Addendum 2023 - Chaos ensued, but we survived it