Unholy Days of Obfuscation:
Days of Infamy
(As Well As Those Upon Which Just Deserts Were Served)
Compiled by Gregory J. Rosmaita
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list of accesskeys defined for this document
January
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
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, is formally adopted as the national anthem of
the United States of America.
- For the record, i would prefer to hear Woody Guthrie's
This
Land Is Your Land, when the "national anthem" of the united
states of america is played.)
February 19
- 1972:
- Lee Morgan
bleeds to death between sets at Slug's, a New York City jazz club,
after being shot by his common law wife, Helen More, who was judged
to be insane at the time of the shooting... Morgan was only 34
years old at the time of his death, but -- fortunately for the rest
of us -- had been prolifically recording as a leader and a featured
sideman since he was eighteen years old, leaving behind a rich
legacy of some of the greatest trumpet playing, composing and
arranging in jazz history...
March
March 2
- 1941:
- Charlie Christian dies of tuberculosis, aged 24.
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
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.
- 1968:
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis,
Tennessee
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
April 9
- 1553:
- death of Rabelais
April 17
- 1987:
- on a Good Friday, just as Carlton Barrett
arrived at his Kingston home and began walking across his yard to his front
door, a gunman stepped up behind him and shot him twice in the head. He was
pronounced dead on arrival at a Kingston hospital, aged 36.
May
May 9
- 1919:
- James Reese
Europe fatally stabbed in the neck by a disgruntled drummer.
May 11
- 1981:
- Robert Nesta ("Bob") Marley is pronounced dead at Cedars of Lebanon
Hospital in Miami, Florida, after he became ill on a flight from Germany
to Jamaica, where Marley hoped to spend his
final days. Marley had ended up in Miami
after an emergency landing, caused by his acute illness. Bob Marley was 36 years old at the time of his death
from the spread of an aggressive melanoma to his lungs
and brain.
May 14
- 1801:
- Tripoli becomes the first state to declare war on the United
States, by chopping down the U.S.'
consulate's flagpole.
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
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.
July 19
- 1692
- Five women are hung for witchcraft in Salem,
Massachusetts, as part of the Salem Witch
Trials.
August
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 7
- 1888:
- Theophilus Van Kannel, of Philadelphia, is granted US patent 387,571 for
a "Storm-Door Structure". The patent drawings filed show a
three-partition revolving door. In 1889, the Franklin Institute of
Philadelphia awarded the "John Scott Legacy Medal" to Van Kannel for
his contribution to society. Blind people, those in wheelchairs and scooters,
and many others for whom a revolving door isn't a convenience, but an
obstacle, have been cursing his name (or would, if they knew it) ever
since.
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 12
- 1898
- Stanford Dole (uncle of the fruit
magnate) signs an act ceeding the sovereignty Republic of Hawaii's to the U.S.A.
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
August 15
- 1096:
- the date set by Pope Urban II for the commencement of what, in retrospect, would become known as the First_Crusade.
August 27
- 410:
- Sack of Rome by the Visigoths.
September
September 7
- 1908:
- The first recorded collision between an airplane and a bird... unlike
most such collisions, this one was intentional -- Wilbur Wright chased the
bird down.
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)
September 11
- 1987:
- Peter Tosh murdered at his home in Kingston, Jamaica
in what police report as a roberry.
September 15
- 1983:
- Prince Far I, born Michael James
Williams, in Spanish Town, Jamaica, is shot at home in Kingston, Jamaica, and dies
in the course of what police term a roberry.
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.
October 21
- 1931:
- Robert "Barbecue
Bob" Hicks dies of pneumonia at the age of 29.
October 31
- 1926:
- Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis
- 1941:
- after fourteen years of drilling, the defacement of the Black Hills, better known as Mount Rushmore, is completed
November
November 10
- 1931:
- British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin states on the floor of the House of Commons:
I think it is well, also, for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can prevent him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.
November 13
- 1916:
- After volunteering for the Royal Fusiliers at
the age of 43, in 1914, Saki (H.H. Munro), is
shot by a German sniper while sheltering in a shell crater, near Beaumont-Hamel, France
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
December 13
- 2006:
- the baiji,
or Chinese river dolphin, is pronounced extinct.
December 22
- 1985:
- D. Boon dies in an automotive accident.
December 24
- 1954:
- for those few who recognize his name, Johnny Ace is best known
for losing a game of russian roulette while he awaited his turn on stage at a Christmas Eve
concert... According to eye-witness Big Mama
Thornton's written statement, Ace had been playing with the revolver, but not playing
russian roulette. According to Thornton, Ace pointed the gun at his
girlfriend and another woman who were sitting nearby, but did not fire. He
then pointed the gun toward himself. The gun went off, fatally shooting him
in the side of the head, ending what might have been a transcendant
career...
- 1890
- 500 members of the Seventh Calvary of the United States Army (along with four Hotchkiss guns)
exacts a rather belated revenge for the
annihilation of Custer and his men at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, by surrounding and slaughtering
a peaceful gathering of the Lakota,
comprised mostly of women and children, to perform the Ghost Dance
at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Of the American casualties, most came from friendly fire, for the Seventh Calvary had encircled the
assembled Lakota before openning fire upon them from every angle. More
than 200 Lakota -- mostly old men, women, and children -- lay dead when
the firing stopped, and an estimated 150 are believed to have perished
from hypothermia during their attempts to escape and hide from the
7th Calvary.
- In most American history text books -- or, at
least, the ones in use when i was in primary and high school -- this
date marked the end of the Indian Wars, better described as the application
of the tactic of total war pioneered by Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan in
the American Civil War, to the ethnic cleansing
of the indigenous peoples of the lower
forty-eight
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 December 19, 2009