May 16

1703 - Russian Tsar Peter the Great founded Petersburg.

Peter's creation truly was a feat of amazing proportions:  Built on what was formerly a swampy mess; with what amounted to mostly unskilled slave laborers using the most basic tools imaginable - blood, sweat and tears...Oh, and the number of laborers who died in the city's construction is uncounted, but is estimated to be upwards of 100,000 - which is why it is often called the 'city built on bones.'

That said, St. Petersburg is one of Europe’s great cities - also called the 'Paris of the North,' and the site of one of history’s most awesome battles: The Battle of Leningrad...The city's name was changed to Petrograd in 1914, then Leningrad in honor of Communist leader Vladimir Lenin, and was renamed St. Petersburg after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Hopefully it remains St. Petersburg for the rest of history.

1804 - The French Senate declared Napoleon Bonaparte emperor.

The French Senate? What a joke...Napoleon may as well have declared himself emperor. Which he more or less did.

1868 - The U.S. Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson after taking its first ballot on one of eleven articles of impeachment against him.

This is the closest any U.S. President ever came to being thrown out on his ass.

I hope you understand the difference between 'impeachment' and 'conviction,' and don’t make the mistake of thinking Nixon was impeached or Clinton convicted.

1918 - The Sedition Act was passed, defining as criminal the direct advocacy of treason and criticism of the U.S. government, conscription, or the American Flag.

I can think of thousands of Liberal Jackasses who should be arrested for being seditious bastards.

1927 - Whitney v. California: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state has the power to punish those who abuse their rights to speech "by utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to incite crime, disturb the public peace, or endanger the foundations of organized government and threaten its overthrow."

Again, I can think of thousands of Liberal Jackasses.

1943 - Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto ended after 30-days of fighting, and German troops destroyed the city’s main synagogue:  WWII.

This was a battle doomed to fail from the very beginning, but one well worth fighting...They would have died either way, so they may as well have taken a few Germans with them.

1988 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled police can search discarded garbage without a search warrant.

How ridiculous it had to come to the Supremes to have to determine 'trash' was fair game for the police...If criminals want to preserve the privacy of their trash they shouldn’t throw it away.

Even more ridiculous is some ACLU(seless) lawyer defended criminals rights to their garbage.