Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 1975. A murdered king and evacuations.
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by his nephew, Prince Faisal bin Musaid.
The motivation for the murder by the US educated prince has never been determined.
The Tin-Ngai Campaign ended with NVA/VC forces in full control of Quảng Tin and Quảng Ngai Provinces. Da Nang as the only major city in I Corps still held by the South Vietnamese and it was effectively surrounded.
The U.S Air Force organized an airlift to evacuate 10,000 people a day from Da Nang,
Hué's remaining defenders were evacuated by sea.
All of the events above I can recall, particularly the events surrounding the disaster at Da Nang.
The day prior, the ARVN had successfully held an NVA armored attack back at Chơn Thành Camp, destroying 7 T-54s with antitank rockets, recoilless rifles and RVNAF airstrikes.
Linda Ronstadt released her cover of the Everly Brothers' 1960 song "When Will I Be Loved".
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Monday, March 24, 1975. Huế falls to the NVA.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Friday, March 19, 1875. The execution of Tiburcio Vásquez.
Legendary Californio bandido Tiburcio Vásquez was executed at age 39.
The March 1875 Southeast tornado outbreak struck the Southern United States producing no less than 19 tornadoes.
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Saturday, March 13, 1875. Sheep.
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Thursday, March 12, 1925. Passing of Sun Yat-sen. British rejection of the Geneva Protocol.
Sun Yat-sen died at age 58.
The British government rejected the Geneva Protocol on the basis that the lack of US participating in the League of Nations rendered the Protocol unenforceable.
It's interesting that while the US had competent leadership at the time, as opposed to the rampaging buffoons who govern it now, the isolationist mallogic was strong at the time, helping to doom the world to a Second World War.
The Nazi stand in Großdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft disbanded in favor of the Nazis, with its populist members folding right back in.
Yes, populists. The Nazi Party was a populist right wing party.
Retired General W. R. E. Murphy, Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, launched overnight raids on all of the brothels ("Kip-Houses") in the Irish capital signalling the end of the tolerance of prostitution.
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Wednesday, March 11, 1925. Private manufacture of arms.
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Sunday, March 5, 1775. The Boston Massacre.
In Boston, a young wigmaker's apprentice began a pestering British sentry about an allegedly unpaid barber bill, although the bill was paid in fact and the officer produced a receipt. Applying a universal rule about harassing people with guns being a bad idea, sort of like at Kent State many years later, a British soldier tired of the event and butted the kid was his musket.
A crowed soon gathered, somebody yelled "Fire", perhaps because Church Bells were ringing which was a fire alarm, and the troops fired their muskets, killing five. This is also reminiscent of Kent State.
The troops went on to be defended in a trial by John Adams.
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Friday, March 3, 1775. A British ship.
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Sunday, February 1, 1925. Balto, the future King Zog, wild party in Laramie.
The final leg of the serum run began with Gunnar Kaasen setting out with lead dog Balto. The Norwegian born Kaasen is the only musher who became famous due to the event.
The story made the first page of the Tribune:
A party in Laramie had apparently gotten out of control.
Ahmed Zog became the first President of Albania. He'd later be its first king. . . sort of a cautionary tale there.
Irish President W. T. Cosgrave appealed to the United States for food aid as the country's potato crop had been severely reduced due to excess rain.
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Saturday, January 31, 1925. Leonhard Seppala and Togo.
Friday, January 31, 2025
Wednesday, January 31, 1945. Fifty miles from Berlin.
Battery B, 616th Field Artillery Battalion, 10th Mountain Division.
The Red Army closed to within fifty miles of Berlin.
The Battle for Kapelsche Veer ended in a victory for the Canadian Army.
The Waffen SS murdered over 160 Polish POWs at Podgaje. The Polish troops were members of the Communist Polish People's Army.
The Battle of Hill 170 ended in a victory for the British and Indian Armies.
The 11th Airborne was landed, by sea, near Nasugbu without opposition.
The execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik, about which there's been much handwringing, was carried out. He had been convicted of desertion and is the only US soldier to be executed for the same since the Civil War. Desertion was becoming a problem in the U.S. Army, contrary to the way we'd like to remember the war (draft dodging was as well), and he was made an example of.
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Thursday, January 30, 1945. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Monday, January 25, 1875. The Pinkertons raid the James home.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Friday, January 16, 1925. Leadbelly released from prison and some Italians got to vote a lot.
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Huddie Ledbetter, aka "Lead Belly", was granted a full pardon by Texas Governor Pat Morris Neff Neff for having served the minimum seven years of his prison sentence for the 1918 killing of Will Stafford, a relative of his, in a fight over a woman.
It was a least his second period of incarceration, with his first being in 1915 for carrying a handgun, something that would not be a crime now.
While in prison for homicide, he'd be stubbled in the neck by another inmate, resulting in a permanent scar.
The pardon came about due to Ledbetter writing the Governor and seeking the same, and the Governor visiting him more than once in prison.
Ledbetter would return to prison in 1930 for attempted homicide and 1939 for assault.
Perhaps not a pacific man, he was the greatest American folk musician and one of the greatest blue musicians of all time. He was personally responsible for the survival of the twelve string guitar. He was principally a bluesman, but the blues had not quite stabilized into its form at the time, and not all of his music fits the genera. Indeed, this so much the case that at least one of his songs that is typically preformed as a blue piece, The Midnight Special, was not performed quite that way by Leadbelly. He became known to the general public due to John Lomax's recordings of him in 1933, at which time he was again in prison.
Leadbelly was born in Louisiana in 1888 or 1889, and died of Lou Gehrigs disease in 1946 at age 61 or 62. He took to music early and learned to paly the mandolin, accordion, guitar, harmonica, Jew’s harp, piano, and organ, with his principal instructor's being his uncles, Bob and Terrell Ledbetter.
His songs are widely preformed to this day, and once were part of the American music canon taught to school children. Interestingly enough, he's associated with the first recorded use of the word "woke", in a spoken item after a song in which he stated; "So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there—best stay woke, keep their eyes open."
Italy passed a bill giving double votes to academians, professors, those with diplomas, knights, military officers, those with any military decorations, officeholders, certain business personnel, all those paying a direct tax of 100 lira or more, and fathers of at least five children, triple votes to members of the royal family, members of high nobility, cardinals, highly decorated war veterans, high officeholders, or anyone who met three conditions for double votes.
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Thursday, January 15, 1925. Trotsky gets canned, Ross addresses the legislature.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Monday, January 12, 1925. Ordering Thompsons.
The North Side Gang attempted a drive by assassination of Al Capone, with the would be killers armed with Thompson submachine guns.
Capone was inside a nearby restaurant at the time, conducting business, and only his bodyguard was wounded. The event did cause him to order Thompsons himself, which were not restricted from purchase in any fashion at the time.
These would have been the M1921 Thompson, not the M1928 Thompson that is more familiar to most people, although telling the difference between the two at a glance is difficult. They were extremely expensive.
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Sunday, January 11, 1925. Jargon of the Juveniles, Times Signal, Zanesville.
Wednesday, January 12, 1825. A type of justice arrives for the first time.
For the first time in U.S. history, a European American was hung for his role in the organized killing of a Native American when James Hudson was hanged in Madison County, Indiana.
The killings had occurred in that county on March 22, 1825, and were previously noted here on their anniversary, where we stated:
Monday, March 22, 1824. The Fall Creek Massacre
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Sunday, January 9, 1825. The "Corrupt Bargain".
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Friday, December 13, 2024
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 67th Edition. So you say you want a revolution?
The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats
Hanauer is a very wealth man.
Hanauer concluded his article with:
My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three
generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.
Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.
I suspect we're past that point now. We've elected a plutocrat who promised to be sort of what Franklin Roosevelt actually was, "a traitor to his class".
He won't be.
I suspect the rage will amplify.
So, what am I talking about?
I've never had any problems with my health insurance. People complain about their health insurance a lot, however.
I'm noting that here as the public reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, has been shocking. I've seen people I know and respect actually rejoice at his killing, and that reaction has been extremely widespread. I even saw somebody who is associated sort of with the insurance industry rejoice at the murder. Moreover, one of the most right wing people I know, who voted for Trump twice, made a positive comment about the killing.
Let that sink in. Far right, voted for Trump twice, and expressing some sympathy with the killer.
We find ourselves, at the same time that populists elected a childish billionaire who started nominating his billionaire buddies to government positions, in a situation in which a large section of the American population, including no doubt many of the people who voted the overaged rich child into office, pretty much cheering a terroristic assassination of a health insurance company CEO.
That it was an assassination, there can be no doubt. Expended shell casings were labeled "delay", "defend" and "depose", showing both a familiarity with civil litigation and the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.
What's that tell us?
Well it tells us in part that the social fabric in this country is a lot more ripped than we even began to imagine.
And it also tells us people attempting to read the populist weather vein might be reading it wrong. The rage might not be as fully right wing as imagined, as now we have Americans cheering the killing of an industry figure, something that Trump/Musk and his cronies love. That's its populist, however, there can be no doubt.
I can't recall things like this happening in the US, the targeted assassination of industry figures, since the 1920s, when it was a feature of real radicalism. We're entering a very bad space.
It suggest, however, that in spite of what Trump/Musk imagine, the country might actually be ready for some real economic reform as it received in the 1930s. Assassination is not tolerable, but it would appear some aspects of corporate capitalism may not be so much any longer either.
Indeed, the same right wing fellow I mentioned above proposed that all health insurance companies should be forced to be 100% policy holder owned, a highly distributist suggestion.
It is, I'd note, worth noting that plenty of current Trump backers from the far right are noting that the killer, Luigi Mangione, is from a well to do family. He is. This is supposed to tell us that this was a deluded left winger.
Deluded, no doubt. Left winter, maybe. But it's also worth noting that before Trump was the populist darling, Bernie Sanders was. Tulsi Gabbard, one time Democrat and now Trump nominee for security chief, was a Sanders supporter before she supported Trump.
Joseph Goebbels was a Communist before he was a Nazi.
The point of this? Well, just because Mangione was from a well to do family, who no doubt supported none of this, doesn't mean that he became a populist assassin as he was radicalized by the left. He personally may have been. We don't know. He may be just a nut.
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Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Tuesday, December 8, 1874.. The James Gang robs a train.
Thursday, December 5, 2024
Tuesday, December 5, 1944. The Royal Navy in the Greek Civil War.
The Royal Navy shelled Greek communist positions near Piraeus.
The Red Army took Szigetvár and Vukovar, Hungary.
Canadians took Ravenna, Italy.
The Liberty ship Antoine Saugrain was sunk by Japanese aircraft in Leyte Gulf. And on the ground:
Today in World War II History—December 5, 1939 & 1944: US launches final offensive on Leyte in the Philippines, driving into the Ormoc Valley. Victory ship SS Red Oak Victory is commissioned into the US Navy
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