April 13

1960 - France became the world's fourth nuclear power, with an atom bomb test in the Sahara Desert.

Welcome to the club, France. This definitely put them in the realm of being a world power again...Lets just hope they don't hand them over to the Krauts when they come rolling in again.  Nor to the Islamists, who will out-breed them over time.

1775 - Lord Fredrick North extended the 'New England Restraining Act' to South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, forbidding trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland.

I’m sure you can imagine the Colonist’s opinion of this declaration...They were mad as Hell, and getting ready for a fight.

1970 - Apollo 13 announced, "Houston, we've had a problem.” It was four-fifths of the way to the moon, and crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.

There is no way these astronauts should have been able to return home...Those who proposed the route around the moon - alternative circumlunar option - were genius, and the astronauts who pulled it off had balls of steel.

Commander Lovell, Pilot Swigert, Pilot Haise and NASA performed a miracle plotting and performing their return, which most predicted would end horrifically...Such is the American spirit, and the skill of our brilliant space program.

That said, we must never forget space isn’t man’s home, and even though it is the last stop in America’s Manifest Destiny it's a place filled with limitless peril as well as possibilities...That is, if we - as a nation - still have the guts the men who performed this miracle did.

Sadly, I'm not sure we do.