On this day in 927, King Æthelstan of England secures a pledge from Constantine II of Scotland that the latter will not ally with the Vikings, beginning the process of unifying Great Britain. This is considered the closest thing that England has to a foundation date.
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On this day in 1543, England's King Henry VIII marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace.
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On this day in 1580, the first ever Slavic language Bible - the Ostrog Bible - is published. Early editions had to be corrected, however, when it was discovered that some wise-acre monk switched the Last Supper menu from bread and wine to pierogies and vodka.
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On this day in 1859, tired of having to look into his wife's spotty, un-tweezed face while he's making love to her, yet unwilling to forego his nightly sampling of the fleshy entitlements that were his husbandly due,William Goodale of Massachusetts patents a machine that manufactures paper bags by the hundreds. Problem solved!
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On this day in 1892, a hidden lake bursts out of a glacier on the side of Mont Blanc, flooding the valley below and killing around 200 villagers and holidaymakers in Saint Gervais. I think Steely Dan may have written a song about this, but I can't be sure.
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On this day in 1960, the first Etch A Sketch goes on sale. Childhood frustration ensues.
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On this day in 1962, the Rolling Stones perform their first ever concert, at the Marquee Club in London, England, United Kingdom.
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On this day in 1963, the first victim in the Moors murders - 16-year-old Pauline Reade - disappears on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton, England, .
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On this day in 1971 the Australian Aboriginal Flag is flown for the first time. It's quite handsome. (See Above)
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On this day in the year 1979, America's growing hatred for that dreaded phenomena known as disco reaches its inevitable zenith with the Disco Demolition Riot at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Organized by disc jockey Steve Dahl of WLUP-FM, the derby degenerated into chaos during the second game of a double-header, with overenthusiastic disco-haters taking to the fields and lighting a bonfire behind the pitcher's mound… all in the name of despising disco!
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On this day in 1985, doctors discover a cancerous growth in President Ronald Reagan's lower intestine. After excising the tumor, doctors immerse it in a tub full of nutrient-rich spinal fluid and store it in a hermetically sealed hyperbaric chamber under intensely high pressure. When they crack open the chamber 666 days later, Dan Quayle steps out of there, his empty eyes glowing red with otherworldly evil. The rest, as they say, is history.
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On this day in 2002, the Superior Court of Ontario orders the Canadian province of Ontario to recognize same-sex marriages, at which point regular old different-sex marriages suddenly died a horrible, wheezing death. Thanks a lot, gaylords!
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On this day in 2007, US Army Apache helicopters perform airstrikes in Baghdad, Iraq. Highly disturbing footage from the cockpit is later leaked to the Internet. Here it is, but be warned... it is not very nice, especially if you have trouble accepting that Americans are frequently the Bad Guys...
On this day in 1152, King Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine, an incredibly fascinating world-historic person in her own right.
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On this day in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate, which kind of flies in the face of the ideals behind the entire Revolutionary Project, but whatever.
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On this day in 1896, a mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II on the day of his 28th birthday results in the deaths of... hold on, can this be right? 1,389 people?! Sheez, that must have been some serious-ass panicking!
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On this day in 1910, the Earth passes through the tail of Halley's Comet. Despite many contemporaneous prophecies to the contrary, life as we know it does not cease to exist right then and there.
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On this day in 1927, 45 second-to-sixth graders are killed and 58 more are wounded when a huge cache of explosives planted by anti-tax activist Andrew Kehoe explodes beneath a school in Bath, Michigan. It took Kehoe a year to plan his atrocity, and months to pack the school full of explosives which he then detonated remotely, herding his victims for maximum carnage, before blowing up his own shrapnel-packed car with himself inside it. He even issued a number of vague threats before doing the dirty deed, but nobody caught on.
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On this day in 1944, the Soviet Union exiles more than 200,000 Tartars from Crimea because they were collaborating with the Nazis. And to think… the only thing the USA did with their Nazi collaborators - Preznit Dubya's grand-daddy being chief among them - was give them a slap on the wrist and hand their descendants the keys to the White House. It's kind of funny, in an utterly fucking disgusting kind of way.
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On this day in 1974, India becomes the sixth nation in world history to explode an atomic bomb... not counting Atlantis.
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On this day in 1980, Mount Saint Helens erupts, gushing forth billions of gallons of volcanic ash, killing between 57 and 65 people (depending who you ask) and blasting away a huge chunk of the mountainside.
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On this day in 1995, a crystal-meth-addicted, half-psychotic, authority-hating Army vet named Shawn Nelson steals an M60 Patton Tank from a National Guard base in San Diego and goes on a rampage, destroying cars, fire hydrants and other property before being gunned down by police after getting stuck on a median.
Serge Kernbach, a scientist at the Research Centre of Advanced Robotics and Environmental Science in Stuttgart, Germany, claims that recently de-classified Soviet documents prove that, from 1917 to 2003, roughly 1 billion dollars was spent researching "mind-controlling weaponry to compete with similar programs being undertaken in the US." Particularly worthy of attention is the following excerpt:
The paper also outlines how the Soviets developed "cerpan", a device that could generate and store high-frequency electromagnetic radiation, and the usage of this energy to affect other objects. The paper said that if the generator was designed properly, it would be able to accumulate bioenergy from all living things - animals, plants, humans - and then release it outside.
Could this "cerpan" be the Soviet equivalent to - or represent a parallel discovery of - the much-maligned concept of orgoneenergy that was said to have been discovered by Wilhelm Reich in the USA during the same time period?
