July 24

1866 - Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.

The long road to recovery began...Unfortunately the Civil War still scars America, and its legacy is felt in much of what we are and do as a country - good and bad.

1847 - Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived at the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

The Latter Day Saints found a home, and had to do much fighting (politically and militarily) to keep it...I admit I know next to nothing about the Mormon religion, but it is one of the fastest growing in the world.

1929 - President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy.

Hoover was a good man, but a terrible president...The Depression hadn’t started by this time, but his hopes for this Utopian pact were pathetic.

Within ten years the world realized the joke they were playing on themselves expecting peace through weakness, and learned this lesson to the tune of over 40,000,000 deaths in WWII...What’s even more crazy is the world returned to such ridiculous thinking after this war as well.

1990 - Iraq, accusing Kuwait of conspiring to harm its economy through oil overproduction, massed tens of thousands of troops, and hundreds of tanks, along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.

Saddam was preparing his excuse to invade Kuwait...He learned well from his Nazi and Soviet heroes.