Hello, Headliners! Today is the birthday of Soul singer Curtis Mayfield. Among the Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:

• 1539 – Hernando de Soto claims Florida for Spain.




• 1608 – Samuel de Champlain completes his third voyage to New France at Tadoussac, Quebec.




• 1621 – The Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherland.
• 1839 – In Humen, China, Lin Tse-hsü destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a casus belli to open hostilities, resulting in the First Opium War.
• 1885 – In the last military engagement fought on Canadian soil, the Cree leader, Big Bear, escapes the North-West Mounted Police.




• 1888 – The poem “Casey at the Bat“, by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, is published in the San Francisco Examiner.




• 1889 – The transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway is completed.




• 1889 – The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles (23 km) between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.
• 1937 – The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson.
• 1943 – In Los Angeles, California, white U.S. Navy sailors and Marines clash with Latino youths in the Zoot Suit Riots.
• 1965 – The launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew. Ed White, a crew member, performs the first American spacewalk.




• 1968 – Valerie Solanas, the author of SCUM Manifesto, attempts to assassinate Andy Warhol by shooting him three times.
• 1979 – A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 3,000,000 barrels (480,000 m3) of oil to be spilled into the waters, the second-worst accidental oil spill ever recorded.




• 1989 – The government of China sends troops to force protesters out of Tiananmen Square after seven weeks of occupation.
• 2013 – The trial of United States Army private Bradley Manning (later known as Chelsea Manning) for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks begins in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Let’s get right to today’s Headlines Du Jour:

Don’t teach this history either!

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

GOP STANDS FOR “GOT OUR PTERODACTYL”

ANTI-SOCIAL NETWORKS:

GUNS, GUNS, GUNS:

TODAY’S PRANK:

FOX “NEWS” IN THE NEWS AGAIN:

LAURA INGRAHAM IN THE NEWS AGAIN:

THE TARANTULA IN THE NEWS AGAIN:

ABLOW JOB IN THE NEWS AGAIN:

JUAN WILLIAMS IN THE NEWS AGAIN:

BOB BECKEL IN THE NEWS AGAIN:

IN OUTER SPACE:

VIDEO DU JOUR:

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