Tuesday, April 30, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 30


On this day in 1945, in an underground bunker, Adolf Hitler first poisons his wife, Eva Braun, then blows his own brains out with a pistol. Also, today is Walpurgisnacht, or Germany's Witch's Sabbath. Just a friendly reminder to all you devil-worshipers planning to gather in wooded glades in order to offer blood-sacrifices to Wotan the Horned One... stay alive, don't drink and drive!

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On this day in 1966, a former carnival barker by the name of Anton LaVey shaves his head, buys an abandoned insane asylum in San Francisco and converts it into the Church of Satan. Later he would declare: “The Satanic Age started in 1966. That’s when God was proclaimed dead, the Sexual Freedom League came into prominence, and the hippies developed into a free sex culture.” Nothing quite so fun as pulling the squares’ legs, eh, Anton?

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On this day in 1973, President Richard Nixon announces the resignation of top aides Haldeman, Ehrlichman and other co-conspirators, in what was the first in a series of pathetic attempts to offer up scapegoats in lieu of the big enchilada, himself, who would last another year in the White House, despite everything.

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On this day in 1975, Communist forces gain control of Saigon and the Vietnam War formally comes to an end with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh.

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On this day in 1980, upon the abdication of her mother, Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard becomes Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. 29 years later, on this day in 2009, seven people are killed and seventeen injured at a Queen's Day parade in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, when a cuckoo-bird by the name of Karst Tates rams his tiny little Euro-car through the parade route, killing six and mortally injuring himself. Flash forward another four years to this very day, and Queen Beatrix is, herself, abdicating the throne and handing it over to her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, who will be the Netherlands’ first king in 123 years.

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On this day in 1993, deranged tennis fanatic Günter Parche runs onto the court and stabs Monica Seles in the back during a quarterfinal match of the Citizen Cup in Hamburg, Germany.

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On this day in 2004, American media groups release graphic photos of American soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.


Monday, April 29, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 29



On this day in 1945, the German army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies. Meanwhile, in Germany, the Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops.

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After refusing induction into the United States Army over religious objections, world champion heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali is stripped of his title on this day in 1967.

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On this day in 1992, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King, riots break out in Los Angeles, California. Over the next three days 53 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.

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On this day in 2004, Preznit Dubya testifies before the 9/11 Commission, but only after they agree to his three conditions. First, that the hearing be closed and unrecorded take and place in the Oval Office; second, that they not require him to be sworn in (which, seeing as he was planning to lie, would leave him open to future charges of perjury); and third, that creepy veep Dick Cheney be allowed to hold his hand throughout the grueling ordeal. Fucking pathetic.


Sunday, April 28, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 28


On this day in 1192, two hashshashin ambush and stab to death the Frankish Crusader Conrad of Montferrat, who had just been elected King of Jerusalem three days prior. Although his murderers belong to the ostensibly Islamic Nizari Ismaili cult, historians believe that they were most likely in the employ of jealous rival Crusaders. It’s all rather complicated.

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On this day in 1945, Benito Mussolini and his mistress are shot dead by Italian partisans. Their bloating, fly-blown corpses were left hanging upside-down from the rafters of a gas station for days. The old ladies of Milan were all impressed by the fact that Il Duce's corpse remained suspended even after that of his mistress had fallen, succumbing to a gruesome combination of gravity and decay. By comparison, the old ladies agreed that Mussolini was very well hung, indeed.

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On this day in 1947, explorer/scientist/adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, along with five crew mates, sets out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki – a ship made using only “prehistoric technology” – to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. Interestingly, the latest theories backed up by DNA testing seem to back Heyerdahl’s thesis only a little bit, and contradict him in other spots.

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On this day in 1994, former CIA counter-intelligence officer and analyst Aldrich Ames pleads guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later, Russia. His betrayals led to the exposure (and often the liquidation) of more agents working behind the Iron Curtain than those of any other spy in US history, with possible exception of Robert Hanssen.

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On this day in 1996, Australian Martin Bryant goes on a shooting rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 people and seriously injuring 21 more. Giving rise to a number of conspiracy theories about “gun grabbers” by many right wing commentators, the Port Arthur Massacre was Australia’s Sandy Hook, just as Sandy Hook was America’s Dunblane, and Dunblane was Scotland’s… um… Port Arthur Massacre? Yeah, I guess that works. And so it’s all come full circle. It’s the Circle of Death!


Saturday, April 27, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 27



On this day in 1667, a blind and impoverished John Milton sells the copyright to his prose magnum opus Paradise Lost… for £10.

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On this day in 1813, during the War of 1812, US troops capture the capital of Upper Canada in the Battle of York, in present day Toronto.

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On this day in 1865, only two weeks after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and one day after the killing of his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, the worst maritime disaster in the history of the United States takes place when a boiler on the steamboat paddlewheeler SS Sultana explodes and she sinks on the Mississippi, killing 1,700 of her 2,400 passengers. The Sultana’s official carrying capacity was only 376, and most of the dead were Union survivors of the Andersonville and Cahaba Confederate war prisons.

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On this day in 1950, the Group Areas Act is formally passed in South Africa, segregating the races in an official policy of Apartheid.

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On this day in 1981, Xerox introduces the computer mouse. Kinda cute, isn't it?

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On this day in 1997, disgruntled gay man Andrew Cunanan begins his "Homogeddon" murder spree that will culminate with the July murder of multi-millionaire fashion designer - and former trick - Gianni Versace.

Friday, April 26, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 26




On this day in 1937, the Nazis test the bombing capabilities of their newly inaugurated Luftwaffe air force on the tiny Spanish town of Guernica, with Generalisimo Francisco Franco's consent. For three hours, German planes poured bombs on the town in what was history's first ever bombing of purely civilian targets, a tactic that would later be enthusiastically adopted by both sides of the conflict, at the ultimate cost of millions of innocent lives. The attack inspired Picasso to paint his great masterpiece, Guernica.

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On this day in 1962, roughly three days after being launched, NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft - which was designed to transmit pictures of the lunar surface, to rough-land a seismometer capsule on the Moon, to collect gamma-ray data, and to study the potential radar reflectivity of the lunar surface - fails to do ANY of those things after a computer malfunction causes it to crash into the dark side of the Moon.

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On this day in 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union melts down, killing 31 and irradiating hundreds of thousands more. It was, and still remains, the single worst nuclear accident in history, with a legacy that is just... it's... it's beyond words, is what it is.


Thursday, April 25, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 25


On this day in 1983, mere months after President Ronald Reagan famously likened the USSR to an "evil empire," Soviet leader Yuri Andropov replies to a personal letter from American fifth-grader Samantha Smith. In response to Smith's question about nuclear war, Andropov wrote:
"Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are endeavoring and doing everything so that there will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at all on earth. This is the wish of everyone in the Soviet Union. I vow that we will never, but never, be the first to use nuclear weapons against any country.” 
Andropov ended his letter by inviting Smith and her family to Moscow for a visit. She accepted, and for a while, Samantha Smith was getting O.J.-level media attention. They were calling her: "America's youngest ambassador!" They were talking about a sea change in American-Soviet relations.

Within the span of two years, both Yuri Andropov and Samantha Smith would be dead. The former was felled by a fierce kidney infection, and the latter was torn to shreds in a small plane crash. Two voices for peace, conveniently silenced, leaving the military industrial complex safe to go on churning out five hundred dollar hammers, thousand-dollar toilet seats and billion-dollar stealth bombers.

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On this day in 1933, the United States drops the gold standard. Ever since then, the economy has been built upon the illusion of fiat currency and the “promise” of future debt. Judging by the mortgaged house you live in, the leased vehicle you drive, the mass-manufactured food and the mass media stimulation devices you use to stuff your face and brain, thereby numbing your psychic agony, I suppose it all worked out for the best!

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On this day in the year 1792, the art of punishment collides head-on with the cutting edge of technology as the guillotine is first used in the execution of a criminal. The lucky footnote? Highway bandit Nicolas Pelletier.

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On this day in 1953, scientists first identify DNA, the words formed by the genetic alphabet of life. Kinda looks like one of the corridors from the Discovery in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, doesn't it?




Wednesday, April 24, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 24


On this day in 1479 BC, upon the death of his father Thutmoses II, and at the tender age of three years old, Thutmose III begins co-ruling Egypt with his stepmother, Hatshepsut. The two co-rule Egypt for twenty-two years, until Hatshepsut’s death, after which he would go on to reign, alone, as the sixth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, for another thirty-two years. Generally considered to be one of the greatest rulers of the Ancient World, Thutmoses III led numerous highly successful military operations to expand Egypt’s territory and influence, as well as its art and monumental architecture.

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On this day in 1184 BC, the simultaneously historical/mythological city of Troy falls to an invasion led by the revenge-driven – and also quasi-mythical – King Agamemnon. So, just to put things in perspective, the head in the photograph at the top of today’s column dates from nearly half a millennium before the events described in the Greek Epic Cycle, or more specifically, in Homer’s Iliad. Sometimes, history can be pretty fucking cool.

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On this day in 1915, two hundred and fifty Armenian intellectuals and community leaders are arrested in Istanbul, marking the opening salvo of what would eventually degenerate into one of the worst genocides of a century pretty much jam-fucking-packed with genocides. Sometimes, history isn’t very cool at all.

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On this day in 1955, representatives from twenty-nine African, Asian and Middle Eastern nations get together for the final day of the Bandung Conference, held in Bandung, Indonesia. At the time, the nations represented – Egypt, China, Indonesia, India, Iraq and others – all had yet to take sides in the Cold War, and for the most part they wanted to keep it that way, believing the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union had little to do with them. Instead, they hoped to focus on economic development, improving health care, and ensuring better crop yields for their farmers. They also called for an end to South African apartheid and the nuclear arms race, which was gathering steam at the time. American reaction was not encouraging, to say the least. They refused to send an observer to the meetings, despite being invited to do so. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles reiterated the government's Dubya-esque policy of equating neutrality with aggression. The end result? Economic, political and even covert military retaliation, all of which caused increases in nationalism, anti-Americanism and/or radical Muslim fundamentalism in almost every nation represented at the conference. Many of these nations have yet to recover.

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On this day in 1990, during the thirty-fifth Space Shuttle mission, the Hubble Space Telescope is packed aboard the Discovery, then launched into outer space and successfully positioned into its current low-Earth orbit, from whence it has been providing us with mind-blowing deep-space porn ever since. Sadly, the Hubble is scheduled to go out of commission this year some time, and its replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, won’t be launched until 2018, at the earliest. Considering the economic state of the world, and without a working Space Shuttle to ferry it up there, your humble correspondent is starting to worry that the Hubble might not ever be replaced. All you science-lovers out there keep your metatarsals and metacarpals crossed.

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On this day in 2005, for the first time ever, a cloned dog is born in South Korea. It's creator, the controversial Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, names it Snuppy. This might not seem like such a big deal, considering Dolly the sheep was cloned almost nine years earlier. However, according to Wikipedia, despite scientists being able to clone everything from cats, cows, horses, mice, mules, pigs, rabbits and rats, they were having trouble cloning dogs “due to the problematic task of maturing a canine ovum in an artificial environment.” Who knew?

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 23


On this day in 1985, the Coca-Cola Company changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response was originally mixed, but soon became overwhelmingly negative, forcing Coca-Cola to revert to the original formula in less than 3 months… or did they? Coke’s sudden about-face on New Coke led to a number of conspiracy theories to help explain how one of the world’s biggest companies could make such a huge blunder. The three most popular theories are as follows: 

1. The company WANTED the new formula to fail, knowing consumers would cause a storm of controversy and demand the original formula’s return.

2. The change provided cover for the removal of coca derivatives from the product, in order to placate the Drug Enforcement Administration, which was trying to eradicate the cocaine-producing plant worldwide.

3. It was a double-switcheroo, concocted to cover the change from sugar-sweetened Coke to less expensive high fructose corn syrup.

Seeing as Coke did switch to HFCS when the brought back the “original” recipe, and seeing as the U.S. sugar trade association took out full-page ads letting consumers know about this switch when it happened, I’d say that this is one conspiracy theory that we can safely assume to be conspiracy fact. This, despite the fact that Coke’s CEO at the time replied to these theories by saying: "We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart.”

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Speaking of “new formulas”, it was on this day in 1984 that researcher Robert Gallo of the US National Cancer Institute “found” HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. Soon thereafter, researcher Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in France filed a lawsuit claiming he discovered AIDS first, and that Gallo had stolen the virus after it was sent to his lab for study. Anyway, if you’re one of those blinded-by-the-Enlightenment “skeptics” who refuses to even consider the possibility that the AIDS epidemic is a man-made bioweapon created for the most sinister of all imaginable purposes, I suggest you read this eye-opening editorial… just for starters, anyway.


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On this day in 2005, the first ever YouTube video is uploaded, titled "Me at the zoo".

Monday, April 22, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 22

Senator McCarthy and Trump's Mentor, the unctuously evil Roy Cohn

On this day in the year 1864, Congress passes the Coinage Act, which mandates that, from that day forward, all United States currency should be inscribed with the motto: "In God We Trust." Which God, exactly, is a matter still up for debate.

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On this day in the year 1912, the first issue of Pravda, the voice of the Bolsheviks in the soon-to-be Soviet Union, is published in Saint Petersburg. Seeing as this was in pre-revolutionary Russia, the tone of discourse and the level of philosophical rhetoric was pretty elevated. The comics section, however, was just sad.

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On this day in the year 1954, live television coverage of witness testimony during the Congressional Army-McCarthy Hearings begins...as does the Red Scare, in earnest.

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On this day in the year 1970, the first ever Earth Day is celebrated... by PAGANS!!!

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On this day in the year 2000, absolutely nobody is hurt when 6-year-old Elián González is rescued from the clutches of his celebrity-craving relatives' home in Miami, Florida, after a lightning raid by federal agents... those SAVAGES!


Sunday, April 21, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 21




On this day in 753 BC, those bitch-tit-sucking twins Romulus and Remus found Rome. "Empire" ensues.

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On this day in 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés lands in Veracruz, on the east coast of Mexico, where he is greeted by the large native population. Things go about as well for those poor devils as yer old pal Jerky suspects it will go for us when the aliens – or extra-dimensional Archons, or whatever the fuck they really are – finally decide to stop pussyfooting around and initiate contact with someone other than gasoline-huffing NyQuil addicts from Squalor, East Virginia.

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On this day in 1863, in Persia, the founder of the Baha'i faith – Bahaullah – declares his mission as "He Whom God shall make Manifest". Baha'i is an interesting faith, with an interesting history. I'm not suggesting it was created by shadowy elites as a more progressive, rational alternative to the "religions of the book" that emerged from Antiquity. However, if a shadowy elite wanted to create a more progressive, rational alternative to the "religions of the book" in order to control the masses... that faith would most certainly look an awful lot like Baha'i.

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On this day in 1934, the "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail. In 1999, the photo is purportedly revealed to be a “fake” and a “hoax”. However, many serious questions remain about this supposed “debunking”. For instance, how would the hoaxers have known to make their “fake” monster look exactly like so many other photographs of lake monsters that would follow in their footsteps?

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On this day in 1966, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as "Grounation Day". Jamaica's Rasta believers considered Selassie - traditionally seen as a descendant of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon - to be the prophesied Second Coming of Christ... the Messiah. They still do. But during his first visit to Jamaica, over a hundred thousand Rasta descended on the airport, smoking "spliffs" and "chalices", creating both a cloud of marijuana smoke and a human crush so dense that Selassie refused to de-plane. Eventually Rasta representatives climbed aboard to meet with Selassie, then emerged and instructed the crowds to be respectful and move back, which they did. The rest of his visit went smoothly.

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On this day in the year 1986, intrepid sleuth Geraldo Rivera cracks open Al Capone's vault on national TV and finds ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, forever cementing the nation’s opinion of him as a first-class boob.

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On this day in 1994, astronomer Alexander Wolszczan announces the first ever discovery of extra-solar planets. As of early 2013, astronomers have catalogued over 800 such planets, including a few potentially earth-like ones.



Saturday, April 20, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 20




On this day in 1939Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany. Six years later, in 1945, Hitler makes his final trip to the surface of the Fuhrerbunker in order to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. After returning underground, he would never resurface alive.

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On this day in 1914, the Colorado National Guard and a goon squad hired by the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company march on a tent colony of striking miners and their families. Before the night was through, nineteen people – including eleven children – would be killed in an event that would come to be known as the Ludlow Massacre.

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On this day in 1939, jazz singer Billie Holiday records what many people consider to be the first Civil Rights song, Strange Fruit. Give it a listen; it’s real good.

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On this day in 1968, English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which he takes a giant crap all over the UK’s surging non-White population. Give it a listen; it’s real bad.

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On this day in 1998, the left-wing German terrorist group Red Army Faction, also known as Baader-Meinhof, announces its dissolution after 28 years. Seeing as most of the terrorist attacks attributed to them (and many other left-wing European groups) were actually committed under the aegis of Gladio, a clandestine fascist remnant, they needn't really have bothered. This documentary is a good starting point if you want to understand the truth about the evolution of Western Civilization in the latter half of the 20th century.

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On this day in 1999, psycho-teens Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold live out the revenge fantasy dreams of Doom-playing teenage gun-nut Rammstein fans everywhere when they go on a record-breaking rampage at Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado. They left 13 dead and two dozen seriously wounded in their wake, before turning their guns on themselves. But they had even bigger plans. According to police reports at the time, Eric and Dylan wanted to – get this – hijack a couple jumbo jets, fly them to New York city, and crash them into skyscrapers. Perhaps if they had achieved their goal, 9/11 wouldn't have happened, seeing as no suicide-hijacker worth his salt wants to be thought of as a rip-off artist.

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On this day in 2010, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil well explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last for six freaking months. Here is a rundown of all the conspiracy theories that have grown up around this generation-staining ecological holocaust.


Friday, April 19, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 19


On this day in 1961, the clandestine invasion of Cuba ends in spectacular failure when JFK refuses to lend air support to the unapproved covert military action kicked off by CIA-trained Cuban ex-pats who land at the rocky cliffs at Cuba's Bay of Pigs.

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On this day in 1971, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to die for his role in the Tate/LaBianca murders, which serve as an unofficial demarcation zone for the 1960's.

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On this day in 1985, the FBI surrounds the compound of the radical Christian identity group known as The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, in Arkansas. The siege ends quickly, without bloodshed, as negotiators succeed in convincing the groups leaders to lay down their arms and come out peacefully. Eight years later, after studying the strategies engaged in during the CSAL standoff, the FBI chose this date to put an end the standoff in Waco. This time, as detailed in the next entry, things don’t go exactly as planned...

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On this day in 1993, the FBI puts their plan to end the standoff at David Koresh's Branch Davidian Compound into action. At 5:59 in the morning, via megaphone, Koresh and his followers are told that they are under arrest, and to come out peacefully. They are also once again warned to stay out of a central tower where the insertion of tear gas is slated to begin. The previous night's reaction to these warnings was to hold children up to the windows, as well as signs that read: "Flames Await." At 6:02, two FBI combat engineering vehicles begin inserting gas into the compound. At 6:04, the Davidians start shooting. At 7:30, a CEV breaches the front side of the building on the first floor, injecting more gas. At 9:30, another CEV begins enlarging the opening in the front of the building, and a third CEV breaches the rear of the building, creating openings from which the FBI hoped cult-members would escape. At seven minutes past noon, the Davidians are seen starting fires throughout the compound. At 12:12, negotiators get on the phone and ask Koresh to lead the Davidians out to safety. Nine Davidians flee the compound, and are arrested without incident. Ten minutes later, the sound of gunfire can be heard coming from the compound. At 12:41, fire-trucks begin pumping water on the now rapidly-burning buildings. By mid-afternoon, it was confirmed… 86 corpses, including over a dozen children, lay dead under the rubble of the compound. After 20 years of studying this tragedy, during which time your humble correspondent has read and watched documentation from every conceivable viewpoint - including but not limited to the documentaries The Rules of Engagement and A New Revelation - I have come to believe the following: After 51 days of begging for it, those members of the Branch Davidian Cult remaining in the compound finally managed to succeed in their bid for collective "suicide by cop", making themselves martyrs and heroes to right-wingers and religious fundamentalists in the process. Which brings us to our next entry...

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In the early morning of 1995, enraged by the conflagration at Waco two years earlier, Timothy McVeigh drives a rented Ryder truck up to the north side of the A.P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At 9:02, a huge fuel-bomb in the back of the truck detonates, collapsing the north face of the building, and snuffing out the lives of 168 unsuspecting souls, including many children who had just been dropped off at the building's daycare center. Once again, a huge volume of "alternative journalism" has risen around this event, some of it good, but much of it not. Regardless, serious and substantial questions do remain about what really happened in the days and weeks before, during and after this Satanic conflagration. Most of the popular conspiracy theories center on the federal government's foreknowledge of and even participation in the bombing. Ironically, your humble correspondent finds the more persuasive arguments to be on the other side of the fence, by which I mean probably a lot more Christian identity extremists were involved than we have been led to believe.

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On this day in 2011, after 45 years in charge, Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba's central committee.

Thursday, April 18, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 18


On this day in 1831, The University of Alabama is founded. Degrees are offered in a wide variety of disciplines including plantation management and cousin-fucking.

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On this day in 1857, "The Spirits Book" by Allan Kardec is published, marking the birth of Spiritualism in France.

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On this day in 1912, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

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On this day in 1924, Simon & Schuster publishes the first crossword puzzle book.

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On this day in 1930, the BBC reports that no news has taken place on that day, followed by some piano music and a return to that weird old-timey music like they play at the end of The Shining.

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On this day in 1958, a United States federal court rules that American poet Ezra Pound should be released from St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital, the asylum where he'd been held since the end of World War II for making pro-Fascist broadcasts on behalf of Mussolini, among other insults to The Powers That Be. Prior to the First World War and for a short while after it, Pound had been one of the most - if not the single most - influential Western intellectual in the Modern tradition. He helped usher in the careers of everybody from T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. Blaming the meat grinder slaughter of World War I on international capitalism and usury, he devoted his life to seeking out a more equitable monetary system and finding an alternative, more mystical view of life. He thought he'd found the latter in Fascist Italy. He was wrong, with tragic results.

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On this day in 1980, the Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President. The Zimbabwean dollar replaces the Rhodesian dollar as the official currency. And they all lived happily ever after.

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On this day in 1983, a suicide bomber detonates a delivery van packed with 2000 lbs of explosives outside the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people, mostly embassy and CIA staff. It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and the use of suicide bombing increased afterwards, culminating in the extremely destructive attacks on the U.S. Marine and French Paratrooper barracks in Beirut on October 23 of the same year, in which 299 French and American soldiers lost their lives.

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On this day in 1996, in Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shell the United Nations compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

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On this day in 2014, sixteen people are killed in an avalanche on Mount Everest. They probably shouldn't have been there anyway.



Wednesday, April 17, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 17


On this day in 1397, Geoffrey Chaucer begins telling his Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) as the start of the book's pilgrimage to Canterbury.

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On this day in 1897, the Aurora, Texas, UFO incident allegedly takes place. It's pretty freaking interesting, to tell you the truth.

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On this day in 1907, the Ellis Island immigration center processes 11,747 people, more than on any other day.

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On this day in 1937, Daffy Duck's first appearance, in Porky's Duck Hunt.


On this day in 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrenders to Germany during World War II. And yet we don’t make any “surrender-monkey” jokes about Yugoslavians the way we do about the French. Why is that, do you think?

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On this day in 1961, in a massive covert operation that remains, at best, poorly understood, one thousand four hundred CIA-funded Cuban exiles (most likely trained by Bush Crime Family capo di tuti capi George Herbert "Poppy" Walker Bush) land in the Bay of Pigs, ostensibly in an abortive attempt to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Depending on which version of reality you believe - the officially approved version or one of the myriad competing alternative versions - this failed coup either led directly to JFK's assassination by Castro supporter Lee Harvey Oswald, or it led indirectly to his assassination by the CIA as revenge for JFK's refusal to be forced into providing air support for a military action the Executive branch had no part in planning. Personally, yer old pal Jerky considers Bay of Pigs to be a veritable Rosetta Stone for parapolitical theorists.

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On this day in 1969, Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan is found guilty of assassinating presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy. Just as in the assassination of his brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, serious doubts and troubling questions remain.

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On this day in 1975, the Khmer Rouge captures the Cambodian capital city Phnom Penh and government forces surrender, ending that nation’s civil war, and kicking off one of the century’s bloodiest genocides.
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On this day in 1986, IBM announces it will commence the manufacture of the first ever computers using the megabit memory chip, which is capable of storing more than one million bits of electronic data, thereby bringing us out of the age of ascii nudes, which led directly to the era of masturbation-worthy computer porn.

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On this day in 2013, an incredibly powerful explosion occurs at a fertilizer plant in the city of West, Texas, killing 15 and injuring 160, thus proving once and for all the old adage "Everything is KABOOM-er in Texas."

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 16

On this day in the year 73 AD, the Jewish fortress of Masada falls to the Romans after several months of siege... or not. The only thing we really know for sure about this legendary siege and the site on which it is located is that the remains found there - which were given a state funeral with full military honors by the Israeli government in 1982 - mostly consisted of (ahem) pig bones.
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On this day in 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman accidentally ingests a small amount of the chemical byproduct known as LSD-25 while working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, thereby discovering its psychoactive properties. Since then, it's been a long strange trip through Nazi/CIA mind-control experiments, the offices of National Review Magazine, and really bad "jam" music.

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Despite the fact that George Orwell had used the term Cold War to describe the simmering tensions between Western and Soviet bloc nations on two previous occasions, popular convention has it that the financier, presidential advisor and One World Government proponent Bernard Baruch coined the term on this day in 1947, in a speech given in South Carolina. Google "The Baruch Plan" for some startling and revelatory reading.

125.Baruch

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On this day in 2007, the deadliest killing spree in modern American history takes place at Virginia Tech, when an apocalyptically awkward South Korean student by the name of Seung-Hui Cho -- or was it someone else? -- guns down 32 and injures another 23 before turning the gun on himself. The fact that his sister works for McNeil/Veritas, a company with deep ties to the American intelligence apparatus, is of no interest whatsoever. And the fact that he went to high school with another "deranged lone nut-job" assassin is just one of those crazy coincidences that so often pop up in events of this nature.


Monday, April 15, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 15


On this day in 1896, the first Olympic Games of the Modern Era come to a close in Athens, Greece, with a relatively simple closing ceremony. First-place winners didn't win gold medals, but silver ones creepily stamped with the big, staring face of Greek pagan deity Zeus. Second-place winners got copper medals. Third-place got a handshake and a signed, autographed picture of His Royal Majesty Lord Jack Fucking Squat.

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On this day in 1955, milkshake-machine salesman Ray Kroc opens the doors to his first franchise of a McDonald's Brothers restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. The McDonald's restaurant chain dates its founding to this day.

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On this day in 1989, protesters begin gathering in Tienanmen Square in the People's Republic of China to commemorate the death of the recently ousted and publicly humiliated General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was relatively liberal and reform-minded by Chinese standards. The protests would grow and intensify until June 4, at which point all Hell broke loose.

***
And now for some birthday announcements:

On April 15, in 1452, Renaissance painter, sculptor, engineer, scientist, mathematician, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, inventor, musician and all-around super-genius Leonardo da Vinci is born. Seventeen years later, in the Punjab, Nanak Dev is born. He will go on to found the Sikh religion and be its first Guru. The dictionary is born on this day in 1755, when Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is first published in London. The General Electric Company is founded on this day in 1892, and since corporations have the same rights as human beings nowadays, I guess it's only fitting that this event be listed as a birthday. In 1920, psychiatrist and humanist Thomas Szasz is born. He later emerges as one of the most eloquent voices speaking out against the mis-use and abuse of science, reason and medicine as a tool for social control. The road atlas was born on this day on 1924, when Rand McNally publishes the first book of its kind. In 1942, Bush Crime Family crony Kenny-Boy Lay is born... Enron ensues. And, finally, on this day in 1970, exactly nine months after his parents consummate their wedding vows while bathed in the flickering glow of a Niagara Falls motel room TV set reporting the stupendous news that two human beings were actually walking on the goddamn Moon... yer old pal Jerky is born.

Sunday, April 14, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 14


On this day in 1846, the Donner Party loads up its wagons in Springfield, Illinois, and begins the long trek west, for California. In Colorado, they get caught in a box canyon during a freak early winter storm. Cannibalism ensues.

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On this day in 1865, at roughly 10 PM, President Abraham Lincoln is shot once in the back of the head by popular stage actor, ardent secessionist and Confederate Secret Service agent John Wilkes Booth. Booth was part of a conspiracy of Confederate sympathizers who plotted the simultaneous assassinations of President Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Booth was the sole co-conspirator to succeed in carrying out his part in the plot. Although Seward was brutally slashed by Lewis Powell, he survived. George Atzerodt, VP Johnson's would-be assassin, lost his nerve and didn't even try. After shooting Lincoln, Booth beat a hasty retreat, but authorities caught up with him just before dawn on April 26. After a brief stand-off, the barn in which Booth was hiding was set on fire, then he was shot in the neck by Sergeant Boston Corbett, contrary to explicit orders that Booth be taken alive. Rumors persist to this day that the man Corbett shot was not Booth. Some believe Lincoln's assassin lived to a ripe old age under an assumed identity in Mexico. By mid-summer of 1865, eight of Booth's co-conspirators were found guilty of taking part in the assassination plot, and 4 were hanged by the neck until dead.

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On this day in 1912, at 11:40 PM, the RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The ship sinks the following morning, killing 1,517. It is the sinking that launched a great many conspiracy theories involving everything from an insurance scam switcheroo to the forced passage of the Federal Reserve Act... and one phenomenally successful (if somewhat sappy) Hollywood movies.

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On this day in 2002, two days after a CIA-backed businessman's coup is overturned by an outraged citizenry, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez makes a triumphant and bloodless return to office. It would take another decade before the CIA would succeed in their attempts to remove Chavez from office again - this time, doing so in such a manner that precluded any odds-defying return to power.

***

On this day in 2003, ten years ago to the day, the Human Genome Project announces that it has completed sequencing 99% of the human genome to an accuracy of 99.99%. Let the custom-built New World Order genocide pandemics begin!



Saturday, April 13, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 13


On this day in the year 1953 - in a development that was a direct outgrowth of the American Establishment’s disastrous decision to recruit the elite of the Nazi scientific and intelligence communities in order to prevent the Soviets from scooping them up to use against us in the then-brewing Cold War - CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program MKULTRA. According to a recently declassified CIA document from May 5th, 1955, MKULTRA was devoted to the discovery of the following materials and methods: 
1. Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public. 
2. Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception. 
3. Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol. 
4. Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
5. Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.
6. Materials which will render the indication of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness. 
7. Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called "brainwashing". 
8. Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use. 
9. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use. 
10. Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc. 
11. Substances which will produce "pure" euphoria with no subsequent let-down. 
12. Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced. 
13. A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning. 
14. Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts. 
15. Substances which will promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.
16. A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis. 
17. A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a man to perform any physical activity whatever.

Friday, April 12, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 12


On this day in 1638, the Roman Catholic legal body known as the Inquisition begins its trial of Galileo Galilei. The famed scientist and astronomer was charged on suspicion of heresy, and was ultimately found “vehemently suspect” of holding the opinion that - contrary to Holy Scripture - the Sun, and not the Earth, is at the center of the Universe. By the end of his trial, Galileo was sentenced to imprisonment “at the pleasure of the Inquisition”… and a great deal of pleasure did the religious authorities of the day derive from their victory over that arrogant upstart, the Scientific Method, you can be sure. Galileo’s works were gathered up and destroyed, and further publications were forbidden. He was held under house arrest for the rest of his natural life, during which time he wrote one of his most important works: Two New Sciences. Fortunately, Galileo was allowed a certain degree of freedom during this time, and was allowed to have visitors. Two of these visitors were the world-historic philosophers Thomas “Leviathan” Hobbes and Rene “Cogito Ergo Sum” Descartes.

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On this day in 1861, the first shot of the American Civil War is fired by a Confederate soldier in the general direction of Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. By the time the last shot of the war is fired, more Americans will have died in that conflict than in World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict and Vietnam… COMBINED. It was a goddamn bloodbath.

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On this day in 1945, at 3:35 in the afternoon, during the fourth month of his fourth term in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63. His vice president, Harry Truman, assumes the Presidency later that same day.

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On this day in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight. From agrarian peasant feudalism to the loftiest heights of scientific achievement in a mere three generations? Way to go, you communist Rooskie bastards!

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On this day in 1968, the Skull Valley Sheep Kill takes place. A rancher came upon a startling scene when he went to check on his herds of sheep. Six thousand of the fluffy white creatures, which had been grazing peaceably on a piece of property in Utah, all mysteriously and simultaneously dropped dead for some reason. That reason most likely had something to do with their neighbors, the military’s Dugway Proving Ground, where locals had always suspected chemical weapons were tested, despite the government’s absolute and implacable silence on the issue. In fact, government silence on the topic was so complete and so long-lasting that it wasn’t until three decades after the incident that a Defense Department report was made public, revealing that of course the animals were killed by a leak of deadly VX nerve gas, and of course the military knew all about it, for fuck’s sake.

***

On this day in 1994, the first massive commercial Usenet SPAM message is posted by the husband-and-wife lawyer team of Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel. The couple splash their “Green Card Lottery” SPAM across a grand total of 5,500 Usenet discussion groups, pissing off everyone from Trekkies to Furries to the 7 dedicated members of the alt.binaries.images.sex.fetish.erotica.Gillian-Anderson-head-on-other-womens-bodies newsgroup. And yet… it worked! In a 1994 interview, Canter & Siegel claim to have gained a thousand new clients and earned over a hundred thousand dollars with an ad that cost pennies! Insert your own Christian Bale "Good for you!” sound effect here.

Thursday, April 11, 2024

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR APRIL 11


On this day in the year 1775, for the last time on European soil, an individual found guilty of the crime of witchcraft is killed in an official, state-sanctioned execution, in Germany.

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On this day in 1868, shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrenders Edo Castle to Imperial forces, marking the end of Japan's Shogun era and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. This development came about partly because, after American Commodore Matthew Perry showed up in Japan accompanied by an impressive fleet of technologically advanced warships, Japanese elites collectively freaked out. They hatched a plan to get rid of the samurai class and the feudal, agrarian system over which they presided and replace it with a more forward-thinking oligarchy, headed up by a hereditary figurehead, the aforementioned Emperor Meiji. In less than half a century, the combination of rapid cultural change, techno-fetishism, the sublimation of a disgruntled samurai remnant and increasingly obsessive Emperor worship would lead to some of the most unfortunate chapters in the history of all mankind.

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On this day in 1876, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks is first organized. They remain one of the leading fraternal orders in the United States, with over one million dues-paying members.

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On this day in 1941, the Nazis take over Germany's most popular Jewish weekly newspaper. The abrupt change in editorial tone proves unpopular with subscribers. Sales plummet.

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On this day in 1951, less than four months after its theft from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist university students, the Stone of Scone is discovered hidden beneath the altar of Arbroath Abbey in Scotland. The origins of the so-called "Stone of Destiny", which played a minor role in the recent film The King's Speech, is shrouded in mystery. Some claim that it dates back to Antiquity, or even that it is the legendary "Stone of Jacob", the rock upon which the biblical patriarch was resting his head when he was delivered a "divine revelation" from Jehovah, as detailed in the Book of Genesis. But it's probably just a rock.

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On this day in 1961, the trial of fugitive Nazi technocrat Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem. After World War II, Eichmann had fled to Argentina under an assumed name, where he worked for Mercedes-Benz until he was identified, located, then kidnapped by the Mossad, who brought him to Israel to stand trial for his central role in organizing the Holocaust. He was found guilty and hanged in 1962, the only person ever to be executed in Israel based on the findings of a civilian court.

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On this day 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into existence, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing to individuals based on their race. At the time, pondering the effect this might have on voters in the formerly Democratic-leaning South, Johnson is said to have said: "We've lost them for a generation." It turns out he was way too optimistic.

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This day in 2001 saw the ignominious conclusion to the Hainan Island Incident, the first real crisis of Preznit Dubya's heart-breaking White House career. On April Fools Day, an American spy plane had to make an emergency landing on a Chinese island after being bumped out of the sky by a Chinese fighter jet. It was on this day, ten days later, that the 24 American crew members were released by the Chinese government, but not before the White House issued a groveling apology, which they preferred to characterize as "an expression of regret and sorrow" over the death of the Chinese driver... I mean pilot. A coincidence of note is that the American aircraft was a Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft, and the incident took place while the sun was in the Zodiac House of Aries. Aries is ruled by the planet Mars, God of War.

***

And, finally -- last but definitely not least -- on this day in 2002, an attempted coup d'état takes place in Venezuela, resulting in the temporary ouster of President Hugo Chávez. If you relied on Western media to inform you about those infuriating, exasperating, incredibly inspiring days, then you have no idea what happened. I strongly urge you to give your undivided attention to the documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It's one of the most important documents ever produced in terms of its revelations about the the true nature, focus and direction of American policy towards Latin America. Just find it and watch it. From beginning to end. I'm serious. It will infuriate you, and you will never forget the lesson it teaches.