The infamous Scopes trial concluded with John Scopes being found guilty of violating the Butler Act, and being ordered to pay $100.00.
The Great Syrian Revolt started in reaction to the French High Commissioner of the Levant, Gen. Maurice Sarrail, ordering the arrest of nine Syrian delegates and their deportation to Palmyra.
The Soviet Union adopted the metric system, that being the only good thing the Communists ever achieved in the country.
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The hatred of science continues.
Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published.
The press was covering the Skopes trial, and lampooning the characters in it.
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Apr 7, 2025 6:50 AM MT
I'm all for rewilding, but Dire Wolves have been extinct for 10,000 years and preyed, in their day, on megafauna. Presumably any return of the Ice Age species will be limited to captivity. . at least for now.
I'm not so sure about this.
Notable, the company that cloned them back into existence says they have not, so far, shown any dog like behavior, which is perhaps not too surprising given their evolutionary history, which is debated. Some classify the large canine as Canis dirus dirus, a species in the canine family that shares a distant canine ancestor, Canis chihliensis, with wolves and dogs, with the wolf, canis lupus, being the direct descendant of that species with the dire wolf has an intervening one. Others proposed that dire wolf has essentially the same linage, but is sufficiently separate such that it deserves its own genus, and should be classified as aenocyon dirus. Frankly the cloning effort would suggest that those who disfavor a separate genus are correct, as a domestic dog hosted the puppies as embryos.
Dire wolves, it should be noted, were absolutely huge, which makes sense as they killed megafauna.
So the question, I suppose, is now what?
The HMS Challenger dropped a weighted rope 27,000 feet into the ocean, discovering the Marianas Trench.
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The Andrew Sisters song Rum and Coca Cola hit the No. 1 position on the Billboard charts. It was a song I recall as my Quebecois mother liked it.
This song was in the nature of cute at the time, but frankly it's about as accidentally imperialist as possible.
When I was 19 years old, which was the drinking age at the time, this was the first mixed drink I ever ordered in a bar, for the reason it was the only one I'd ever heard of. I was out on the town with a group of my high school friends.
In my view, it's awful. I can't stand rum. Frankly, I wish I was like one of my close friends and never developed a taste for alcohol at all. I do like beer.
The SAS launched Operation Cold Comfort in Italy.
German scientists evacuated the Peenemünde Army Research Center.
One of my (Canadian) cousins lives on Peenemünde today. He's a scientist. Much of the Western world outside of the United States is still keen on science, including our recent allies, and or enemies. Now that J.D. Vance has indicated that we intend to crawl in a hole and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist, science stands a chance again.
Scopes monkey trials anyone? American being second rate hick nation anyone?
Speaking of Canadians, who entered World War Two in 1939 when the US was still pretending that it could live on a seperate planet, Canadian troops reached the Rhine along a ten mile front.
They were all volunteers.
If I seem bitter, well yes I'm bitter that a Baby Boomer who is morally reprehensible and a South African whose sorry ass should be kicked back to Johannesburg are wrecking the nation, well yes I am.
And, if he's so nifty, why isn't that South African (who, I'll note, emigrated to Canada and incidnetally didn't have to serve in the, mostly black, South African Army as a result) making piles of cash, and producing piles of children, there?
US troops, who were not all volunteers, launched attacks from Luxembourg and near Saarbrucken.
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Dutch resistance fighter Gabrielle Widner died in Königsberg/Neumark concentration camp from starvation. Unusually, she was a Seventh Day Adventist.
The Italian battleship Conte di Cavour and the unfinished Impero were sunk in Trieste harbor by the RAF.
The British landed at Ru-Ya sought of Myebon, Burma.
The U.S. Navy's Task Force 58 hit Tokyo and Yokohama. That the Japanese home island are fatally exposed is now evident.
Pre invasion bombardments continued at Iwo Jima. Counter battery fire damaged several US ships, including the USS Tennessee.
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Today In Wyoming's History: July 2: 1874 7th Cavalry left Ft. Abraham Lincoln to scout the Black Hills.
The 7th Cavalry, with a number of native scouts, left Ft. Abraham Lincoln bound for the Black Hills in what is recalled as the Black Hills Expedition.
The expedition was economic in part, in that it was to look for gold in the Black Hills, and military in part, in that it was to look for suitable fort locations. Its organization was as follows:
The table of organization for the 7th Cavalry for the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 was as follows.[15]
Field and staff officers:
Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, 7th Cavalry.
Lt. Colonel Frederick D. Grant, 4th Cavalry and acting aide
Major George A. Forsyth, 9th Cavalry commander
First Lieutenant James Calhoun, 7th Cavalry adjutant
First Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith, quartermaster
Second Lieutenant George D. Wallace, commander of Indian scouts
Cavalry companies
Company A - Captain Myles Moylan and Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum
Company B - First Lieutenant Benjamin H. Hodgson
Company C - Captain Verling Hart and Second Lieutenant Henry M. Harrington
Company E - First Lieutenant Thomas M. McDougall
Company F - Captain George W. Yates
Company G - First Lieutenant Donald McIntosh
Company H - Captain Frederick W. Benteen and First Lieutenant Francis M. Gibson
Company K - Captain Owen Hale and First Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey
Company L - First Lieutenant Thomas W. Custer
Company M - Captain Thomas French and First Lieutenant Edward Gustave Mathey
Medical staff
Dr. John W. Williams, chief medical officer
Dr. S. J. Allen, Jr. assistant surgeon
Dr. A. C. Bergen, assistant surgeon
Engineering
Captain William Ludlow, chief engineer
W. H. Wood, civilian assistant
Mining detachment
Horatio Nelson Ross
William McKay
Scientist
George Bird Grinnell
Newton Horace Winchell
A. B. Donaldson
Luther North
Photographer
William H. Illingworth
Correspondents
William E. Curtis, Chicago Inter-Ocean
Samuel J. Barrows, New York Tribune
Sygurd Wiśniowski, New Ulm Herald
Nathan H. Knappen, Bismarck Tribune
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Thomas Aquinus died on this day in 1274. He was a proponent of the major Catholic school of thought, natural theology, and the father of a school of thought known as Thomism after him.
French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced his government's decision to implement the Tout-nucléaire ("Total Nuclear") plan for all electricity in France. The goal was to accomplish this by 2000. The goals were mostly met.
The US could easily do this, but it would require a scientifically educated public that wasn't easily swayed by raving BS, an overall problem that confronts the US on every level currently.
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Kamala Harris says when she talks to parents on the campaign trail, one of their top concerns is that their daughters won't have access to abortion in college
Charlie Spiering, summarizing a recent Kamal Harris interview.
I come from a sufficiently well-educated family such that my grandmother, Agnes, on my mother's side, had attended and graduated from university.
If you consider that she was born in 1891, that's quite the feat.
Now, I'll admit that my father was the first one to attend university on his side of the family, but his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, had all been successful businessmen at a time at which you didn't need a college education to be one, or even a high school education for that matter. My father's father, who I never met, was universally regarded by those who knew him as extremely smart.
Indeed, I once was stopped on the sidewalk by an elderly lawyer who knew my father and his father, who asked about the family. My son must have been in high school at the time, and the odd question "is he extremely smart. . . " like all of the members of the family.
I often, frankly, feel that I'm on the bottom end of the family intelligence pool compared to my own father and my kids.
No real college parents anywhere have, as one of their top concerns, that their daughters won't be able to commit infanticide, unless they've drunk so deeply of the left wing Kool-Aid they're perusing brochures from The Young Pioneers.
Democratic campaigns for the Oval Office, or Democratic campaigns in general, are not smart.
They're about as dumb as can be.
From 1914 until 1980 the Democrats were masters at coalition building. The party kept hardhat workers, urban Irish Catholics, Hispanics, and the entire South together, which was frankly quite a feat. It supported unions and working class families, and generally was pretty pro farmer. It had a left wing, but it also had a conservative one as well. Starting in 1968, when it embraced American battlefield defeat to a degree, and then in 1973, when it took the bloody abortionist hand, it took a turn toward the left, and as it did that, it dumped democracy like a hot rock in favor of an imagined Platonic body of robed elders who would tell the people what to do, and they'd like it.
Absolutely everything about the current Democratic message is wrong, including some things that shouldn't be regarded as wrong, but which are in the current political atmosphere. One thing that's definitely wrong is the concept that infanticide is a winning ticket. It isn't. The Democrats have read single issue matters on ballots here incorrectly. Maybe in that'st the only thing on a ballot, you get the voters only concerned about that to come out. Otherwise, people aren't going to vote that way.
Moreover, if Harris is really being told this by the parents of college women, it's because she's talking to the most liberal parents imaginable, and they're going to say crap like that no matter what. Moreover, the college educated are largely voting for Biden already. Biden/Harris need to get votes that they don't already have. The college educated have largely already left the GOP.
What's left of the electorate that is in the GOP is made up of the working class, small business owners (some college educated), and residents of rural regions (including quite a few well-educated ones in those areas). They don't believe "diversity is strength", they aren't interested in tolerating non "Judeo-Christian" religions, or gender mutilation, and they feel that their lives and livelihoods are threatened by out of control illegal immigration. They love their regions, but they're largely incapable of believing in climate change in spite of the evidence. They quit listening to scientist and social scientist of all types because they were lied to about some things, and therefore don't believe any of it. They listen to Evangelical pastors who tell them what they want to hear, and who make their massive departures from Christian doctrine irrelevant by not mentioning them (ever hear any of them criticize Trump for living in an adulterous relationship, which by conventional Christianity he is? Or of an Evangelical Church refusing to marry two people who have been married before?)
When I first started practicing law, a firm partner, a true Christian gentleman, told me about litigation that "this isn't a nice game". It isn't. Politics is even less so, and you have to be smart about it.
There's 0 reason that the Biden/Harris ticket needs to mention abortion at all. Where that's been an issue, they had no role in it. And they're driving Democrats away right now who are Catholic, which includes the Hispanic voters they imagine they'll be gaining. And their absolute incompetence on the border is in fact a good reason to vote against them. A competent ticket would shut up on abortion and would make a very serious effort on the border.
Obama, it might be noted, had a very controlled border. And while he was President before Dobbs, he didn't say much about abortion either.
He won twice.
Pointing out that more IRS agents punishes the wealthy, not the middle class, would help too. Pointing out that Trump has been a personally immoral man, might as well. Pointing out that he was the one who surrendered to the Taliban would as well.
And parking Harris somewhere would be a good idea, if not dumping her entirely.
And that's where you have to say thing that re uncomfortable.
Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for President in 1928. He would have won, but he was Catholic. Yes, that meant a lot of the electorate was bigoted, but it also meant that the Democrats weren't smart in running him.
They would be now, but Smith wouldn't be a Democrat any longer. He'd likely be an independent. He wasn't willing to compromise on his Catholicism, like Joe Biden has, and he wasn't a liar of any kind either.
Kamala Harris is like Al Smith in one fashion. She reminds bigoted voters who they hate. She's a lawyer (regular people hate lawyers), she's the child of two immigrants (MAGA people don't like immigrants), one of whom was Indian and the other Jamaican, making her a "person of color" (a lot of MAGA people really don't like people of color, let alone immigrant people of color), she's married to an entertainment lawyer (oh, oh) who is Jewish (again, MAGA people like Israel, but Jews. . . ) and the children of the couple are from his first marriage, meaning she has low parent street cred.
Are any of those items a reason not to vote for Harris? Absolutely not. Her policies are a reason not to vote for Harris. But will some MAGA people vote for Trump for these reasons? You bet they will, and in a race this close, in a handful of states that matter, that's a problem.
I don't know who would be a better VP candidate. Amy Klobuchar strikes me as one who would be better in every fashion. If you could find an American Christian Levantine politician (and there definitely are some) they'd be absolutely perfect, particularly if the choice was a woman. But what I am saying is that in a race with democracy itself on the ticket, choosing to go with a candidate this old for President, and a VP who is so disliked, is just dumb. And emphasizing the aspects of your campaign that the populist right hates, even if they do so wrongly on some of them, and the nervous middle aren't comfortable with, isn't very smart either. Having the disliked person, even if the dislike is immoral, who people fear might end up President isn't very smart, either.
This isn't a nice game. Sometimes choices have to be made in the candidates and the strategy that aren't very palatable. A lot of Republicans will do what Cynthia Lummis admitted to doing in 2016 as to Trump, and "hold her nose and vote". The Democrats should hold their noses and make some smart choices.
But they will not.
Sigh. . .
FWIW, this article refers to James P. Owen’s "Cowboy Code of Ethics" that the legislature enshrined into law, even though it wasn't written by cowboys, or even by Wyomingites.
This is what happens when you leave the doors open.
The first residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a government constructed town dedicated to the Manhattan Project, arrived.
The Battle of Wickham Anchorage on Vangunu concluded in an American victory.
The island today retains a small population of subsistence farmers.
Head of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach engaged in an argument with Adloph Hitler over ending the war, which he urged. The 36-year-old German Army veteran remained in his position, but Hitler would never speak to him again.
Schirach was born to a father who was a retired German cavalryman and a mother who was an American expatriate. Indeed, three out of four of his grandparents were Americans, and he learned to speak English at home prior to learning to speak German, which he did not until age 6.
He was head of the Hitler Youth early on, but did serve as an infantryman early in World War Two, winning the Iron Cross. He then served as Gauleiter of Vienna and was associated with the deportation of the city's Jewish population. He'd be sentenced as a war criminal for that following the war, being released in 1966. He died in 1974 at age 67. His wife, who had been the daughter of Hitler's photographer, divorced him while he was in prison.
Schirach serves as a disturbing example of a German who did not come from Nazi oriented roots, but who was corrupted into it as a very young man.
Stage Door Canteen, with a huge ensemble cast, was released.
I've never seen it, but it seems to be well regarded, or perhaps fondly recalled.
On Twitter I saw a photo somebody posted of a sign in Washington D.C., in a hallway, which said "There are two genders, male and female, trust the science", praising it.
And I agree with the statement.
Knowing the underlying politics of the person who posted it, somebody replied: "But we shouldn’t trust science on Covid and vaccines, correct?!"
An excellent point.
The science goes where it goes, it cares not about right and left, and people caring about the science have not the option to ignore that.
The Warner Brothers Company incorporated, formed by the four brothers Wonsal, Jewish immigrants from Poland, and in Jack's case Canada, who anglicized their last name, as was typical at the time.
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The first of five Hawaiian biological surveys known as the Tanager Expedition commenced. They were named after the USS Tanager, a minesweeper, which was used in the effort.
The Tanager was later assigned to the Philippines and was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 4, 1942.
Hitler told the Chicago Tribune that he didn't intend to march on Berlin and overthrow the German government.
The guest, early on, makes a comment about the beginning of the 20th Century, end of the 19th, and mentions "archeology was new". I thought I'd misheard that, but he mentioned it again, and added sociology.
He explained it, but it really hit me.
Archeology, and sociology, in fact, were new. Many academic disciplines were.
Indeed, that's something we haven't looked at here before. People talk all the time about the decline of the classic liberal education (at a time that very few people attended university), but when did modern disciplines really appear?
Indeed, that's part of what make a century ago, +, more like now, than prior to now. Educational disciplines, based on the scientific method in part, really began to expand.
So, we can take, for example, and find the University of Wyoming recognizable at the time of its founding in 1886.
But would Princeton, as it is now, be recognizable in 1786?
And interesting also how this effected everything, in this case, the Church's look at its liturgy.
But also, everything, really, about everything, for good and ill.
The first use of the revolutionary VT fuse in combat occurred when the USS Helena shot down a Japanese dive bomber with a projectile equipped with the fuse.
Designed for surface-to-air and ground to ground use, the VT used radar to detonate when close to the target. The Navy's use came first, as it was feared that the fuse would fall into enemy hands if used in ground combat. Amazingly, use by ground forces of the joint British-American fuse would not come until late 1944 when it was deployed during the Battle of the Bulge. There was some reluctance to use it even then, but its revolutionary features were never discovered by the Germans or Japanese.
The fuse is widely used today.
Gen. Kenneth Walker led a heavy bomber raid on Rabaul to hit Japanese shipping, the presence of which the US was aware of due to decoding of Japanese radio transmissions. Eight Japanese merchant ships and two destroyers were hit during the raid by B-17s and B-24s. Gen. Walker's aircraft, in which he was riding as an observer, was brought down by Japanese antiaircraft fire, and he was killed.
Walker was 44 years old at the time of his death. Born in New Mexico, he grew up in Denver, Colorado in a home maintained by his mother, as his father left the family. He attended a variety of schools in Denver. He entered the Army during World War One and was commissioned as an airman in 1918.
The Department of Agriculture ordered that 30% of all butter production be reserved for the Armed Forces.
George Washington Carver, prominent American scientist and African American, died at approximately age 78.
The Red Army continued to advance in the Caucasus. British paratroopers and commandos took the high ground near Mateur, Tunisia. Free French forces advanced in southern Libya.
