THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

May 24

1844 - Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the message, "What hath God wrought!" from Washington to Baltimore as he formally opened America's first telegraph line.

The world shrank greatly with this simple sentence...Anytime information transfer is sped up the world gets smaller, and Morse set off a shrinking which brought the knowledge of the world within a fingertip's reach 150-years later.


1337 - French King Philip VI announced the confiscation of Gascony from England.

This event provided the spark which started the Hundred Year's War.

Those wondering what claim the English had to any part of France must remember William the Conqueror was a Norman prince and as such ruled both Normandy and England...The English kings who succeeded William kept the claim to Normandy (and other parts of France), which was unacceptable to the French and ultimately untenable for the English monarchs.

1543 - Nicolaus Copernicus published 'De Revolutionibus':  His theory of a sun-centered solar system.

Amazingly, he was pretty close to correct, but wasn’t acknowledged as so in his lifetime - or anywhere near his lifetime...Sadly, he died shortly after this publication.


1607 - Captain Christopher Newport and 105 followers founded the colony of Jamestown at the mouth of the James River on the coast of Virginia. They left England with 144 members - 39 died on the trip across the Atlantic.

The English previously attempted other colonies, but Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in the New World to survive.


1764 - Boston lawyer James Otis denounced "taxation without representation" and called for the colonies to unite in demonstrating their opposition to Britain’s new tax measures.

A battle-cry was born, and the Colonials were awakening to an impossible-possibility:  Overthrowing the world's superpower of the time - Great Britain.


Sadly, Americans have found 'taxation with representation' isn't much better - except those who are sucking from the taxpayer teat, that is.  They love taxation, and demand more; ever more for their never ending 'rights' to freebies.
 

1965 - A federal law authorizing the postal interception of communist propaganda was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Huh?? You ask why? The Liberal Court didn’t want their, and their friends, mail 'intercepted'...That's my take on the ruling, anyway.


1980 - Iran rejected a call by the World Court to release the American hostages.

Instead of razing Tehran, or at least sending a surgical strike to kill many Iranian leaders, our pansy leader (Jimmy Carter) sat on his thumbs and allowed the Ayatollah to continue his game...A game the current mullahs play to this day - a much more deadly game with nuclear power.


1990 - Two members of the militant environmental group Earth First! were injured when a pipe bomb exploded in their car in Oakland, California.

It's terrible these people were injured...Would have been better if they had died.


2001 - Vermont Senator James Jeffords quit the Republican Party and became an Independent, giving Democrats control of the Senate.

Congratulations to the (D)’s...They controlled the Senate for a whole year before it was reclaimed by the (R)’s.


2002 - The Moscow Treaty:  U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty which called for each nation to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 2,200 (from 6000) within 10-years. However, at Bush's insistence, the removed warheads may be put in storage instead of destroyed.

I seriously doubt either party lived up the terms of this deal.

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