Unholy Days of Obfuscation:
Days of Infamy
(As Well As Those Upon Which Just Deserts Were Served)
Compiled by Gregory J. Rosmaita
January 1
- 1934:
- Nazi Germany
passes the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring".
January 11
- 1569:
- First recorded lottery in England.
January 24
January 24 is the most depressing day of the
year
, according to British psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall - a psychologist in
the Department of Lifelong Learning
at Cardiff University, Wales,
who specializes in seasonal disorders. Dr.
Arnall derived this date from a formula he created that takes into account
numerous feelings to devise peoples' lowest point. The model is:
[W + (D-d)] x TQ /
M x NA
The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt,
(d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit
attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.
- 1935:
- first canned beer offered for sale by the Krueger Brewing Company
February 3
- 1690
- First paper currency issued in the English colonies of North America.
- 1913
- Federal Income Tax approved by the Congress of the United States
- 1931
- Francis Scott
Key's hyper-patriotic (and after the first verse, unreadable and
unsingable) poem The Star Spangled Banner, set to the music of a popular
British anthem -- the official song of an association of British amatuer
musicians named the Anacreontic Society
-- entitled To Anacreon in Heaven, formally
adopted as the national anthem of the
United States of America.
March 18
- 1543:
-
Hernand de Soto observes the first recorded flood in America when he views
the Mississippi River overflowing its banks.
- 1818
- The U.S. Congress approves the first
pensions for government service
- 1959
-
U.S. President Dwight
D. Eisenhower signs the Hawai'i statehood bill
April 4
- 1841:
- 31 days after delivering the longest Presidential Inaugural Address ever --
completely from memory, without either hat or coat on a
bitterly cold day -- William Henry Harrison becomes the first sitting President
to die in office. The cause of Harrison's
death is pneumonia, contracted while delivering his inauguration address
hatless and coatless, a gesture intended to prove to the nation --
despite being, at the age of 69, the oldest President yet elected -- his vigor and stamina, as well as his
mental and physical fitness for the office to which he had been
elected.
- After Harrison's death, a minor
Constitutional crisis arose, in which the Whig faction of Congress attempted to set-up a Whig interim
government, which would wield executive power until a new election
could be held, in which the Whigs expected to prevail. The reason
for the Whigs' fear of Harrison's Vice-President, John Tyler
assuming the presidency sprang from the fact that Tyler was a southern Democrat. Under Tyler's tenure as
President, the movement to extend slavery west of the Mississippi gained a powerful advocate in the White House.
Tyler, a native Virginian and slaveholder,
most tangibly demonstrated his support for the spread of slavery
through his last act in office: the annexation of the Republic of
Texas as a slave-holding state.
- To put Tyler's politics into perspective,
he was the only former President not only to vigorously advocate that
his native state, Virginia, seccede from the United States, he also served in the provisional
Confederate Congress until his death, on January 18, 1862,
shortly before he was to be sworn-in as a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.
April 6
- 1588
-
Thomas Hobbes,
author of Leviathan, begins his nasty, brutish, and
(not at all) short life.
- 1895
-
Oscar Wilde
arrested for crimes against nature
May 18
- 1974:
- With the phrase,
The Buddha is smiling...
;, India's armed forces
alerted the country's civilian government that it had joined the
nuclear club;, having completed its
first successful test of a
nuclear
device
May 19
- 1953:
- a 32-kiloton nuclear device, code named,
Short Harry was detonated
at a Nevada test site. Unexpectedly, the wind shifted, causing the
radioactive fallout to drift downwind, over populated areas -- in
particular, the town of St. George, Utah.
Although the Atomic Energy Commission used radio broadcasts to calmly
warn residents of neighboring Utah that a test had gone awry, leading to
drifting fallout cloud, advising them to
stay in their houses
for at least 2 hours
, most residents of the area were out-of-doors
with their livestock at the time of the broadcasts, and in any event,
there was little they could do for themselves, whilst the government did
nothing to assist them. Within two years of the test, several farmers
and much of the livestock living downwind of the
blast in the area around the Utah town of St.
George, contracted cancer and died. Not surprisingly, residents of the
area affected by Short Harry refer to the
nuclear device as Dirty Harry
June 1
- 1855:
-
American "adventurer" William Walker, after failing in his attempt to seize Baja California,
temporarily conquers Nicaragua. Despite leading a mercenary army comprised of less than 60
men, Walker not only managed to gain control of
the country, but was promptly "elected" its president. (The
then-president of the United States, Franklin Pierce,
promptly recognized Walker's government --
practically the sole head-of-state to do so.) One of Walker's first official acts as president of Nicaragua was to
re-legalize chattel slavery.
Ironically, Walker was eventually forced out of
Nicaragua by a rival mercenary army -- one financially supported by
railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius
Vanderbilt. In 1860, after invading Honduras, again with an
eye towards establishing a slave-holding Anglo-ruled "republic",
Walker and his men were captured by the British navy and
executed by firing squad.
June 25
- 1218
-
The world is well-rid of Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester
but not before he plays a leading part in the sacking of Constantinople,
during the Fourth Crusade's
slight detour through Byzantium,
and in seizing the possessions of Ramon (a.k.a. Raymond or Reymundi) VI,
Viscount of Toulouse, for the French crown (in specific,
Phillip II (a.k.a. Phillip Augustus),) whilst
serving as military commander of the Albingensian
Crusade, the only crusade the Catholic Church ever declared against "heretics".
July
July 1
- 1916:
- beginning of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916
July 10
- 1584
- William the Silent becomes the first head of state to be assassinated
by use of a handgun.
July 12
- 1916:
- the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 are declared over; the final
score? sharks: 5, humans: at least a dozen, in Jersey waters alone.
Sticklers for detail will point out that the sharks only scored 4, if
one only counts deaths, and it should be noted (in mammalian solidarity)
that -- according to Wikipedia --
several dolphins
were also brutalized
July 16
- 1945:
-
At the top-secret location code named Trinity;
man prooves that he can destroy himself -- and most of the other
life forms that co-occupy the planet -- when he opens yet another
Pandora's box
with the first (not to mention the first successful) test of an
atomic weapon: a plutonium bomb, to be precise.
August 6
- 1945:
- A major portion of the Japanese city of Hiroshima is vaporized by the dropping of the first atomic bomb
from the Enola Gay,
piloted by American serviceman, Paul Tibbets.
August 9
- 1945:
-
A second Japanese city -- Nagasaki -- is devestated by an American atomic device: the
plutonium bomb.known as Fat Boy. Three days
later, Emperor Hirohito decides to surrender, provided his own
position and honor are preserved, three days later, Hirohito makes his decision known to the nation in a radio
broadcast on August 14, 1945.
August 13
- 1521
- Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City) falls to
conquistador Hernán
Cortés, and the vast indigenous army attracked to his party as a
means of unburdening themselves of the Aztec Empire
September
September 8
- 1642
-
In Duxbury, Massachusetts, a 17
year old indentured servant named Thomas Granger,
becomes the first minor executed in the future United States. Granger's
crime? Beastiality. In accordance with Levitical law -- in
particular, Leviticus xx.15 in the King James version of the
bible -- not only was Granger executed, but before he was hung, he was
forced to watch the objects of his affection --
a mare, a cow, 2 goats, 5 sheep, 2 calves, and a turkey -- be executed
before his own execution. (You can find out what Granger's neighbors were up to by reading Sexual Misconduct in Plymouth Colony)
October
October 3
- 1283:
-
Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the last free ruler of medieval Wales, has the dubious
distinction of being the first person to be executed for the newly
defined crime of high treason against Edward I of England, for having the affrontery to continue the
resistance to the English conquest of Wales, begun by his uncle and predecessor,
Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, known in English history as
"Llywelyn the Last". Dafydd was publicly executed accordance with the new code of
law promulgated by Edward I -- the same body of law which eventually allowed for
the peaceful, bountiful medieval England of the Plantagenates described by Chaucer, but which, for
Dafydd meant: hanging, unto the point
of unconciousness; whereupon he was cut down and revived by dunking in
cold water, symbolizing his rejection by the elements of air
and water; disembowelment, not only a symbolic rejection by the earth, but an
excruciatingly painful process during which, under the hands of a skillful
executioner, the disembowelee remains conscious; and finally, the coup de grâce, drawing and
quartering, with the resultant pieces burnt, symbolizing the traitor's
rejection by the final element, fire.
- 1952:
-
The United Kingdom
successfully tests its first nuclear weapon.
October 9
- 2006:
- North Korea announces that it has successfully detonated
a nuclear device in an underground test, thereby joining the true axis of evil,
the international nuclear club.
October 15
- 2006:
- CBGB, the cradle of punk, new wave
and other alternative and innovative sounds, closes its doors for the last time.
November
November 18
- 1978
-
the odious expression, drinking the kool-aid
entered the english lexicon when 909 people die in the Jonestown (Guyana) Massacre; incidently, Jim Jones didn't
drink the kool aid - he died from a shot
to the head.
December
An accesskey has been defined for each month in the year. In an attempt
at mnemonics, i have assigned numeric accesskeys to the first nine
months of the calendar (1 equals January through 9 equals September),
then used the first letter of the remaining months as the accesskeys for
October through December.
- 1 = January
- 2 = February
- 3 = March
- 4 = April
- 5 = May
- 6 = June
- 7 = July
- 8 = August
- 9 = September
- O = October
- N = November
- D = December
- L = List of accesskeys (this list)
- T = Terminal Index
created April 2, 1999
last updated July 20, 2008