Hello there, Headliners. Today’s birthday belongs to Noël Coward. Among the Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:

• 1497 – Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope, the point where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.
• 1653 – English Interregnum: The Protectorate – Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.





• 1707 – Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan.
• 1773 – American Revolution: Boston Tea Party – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.





• 1826 – Benjamin W. Edwards rides into Mexican-controlled Nacogdoches, Texas, and declares himself ruler of the Republic of Fredonia.
• 1903 – Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel in Bombay first opens its doors to the guests.







• 1937 – Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe attempt to escape from the American federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay; neither is ever seen again.
• 1942 – The Holocaust: Schutzstaffel chief Heinrich Himmler orders that Roma candidates for extermination be deported to Auschwitz.
• 1947 – William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor.
• 1965 – Vietnam War: General William Westmoreland sends U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara a request for 243,000 more men by the end of 1966.




• 1968 – Second Vatican Council: Official revocation of the Edict of Expulsion of Jews from Spain.
• 1978 – Cleveland, Ohio, becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression.
• 1985 – Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of New York’s Gambino crime family

Here is today’s Headlines Du Jour:

THE TORTURE REPORT:

MORE EXCITING EPISODES OF COPS GONE WILD:

SO GLAD WE’RE LIVING IN A POST-RACIAL SOCIETY:

CLIMATE CHANGE:

FREE THE WEED!!!

IN INNER SPACE:

IN OUTER SPACE:

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