Howdy, Headliners. Today’s birthday belongs to Riley B. King, better known as Blues guitarist B.B. King. He’s seen more than a few Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:
- 1620 – Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony) set sail on the Mayflower.
- 1812 – The Fire of Moscow begins shortly after midnight and destroys three quarters of the city days later.
- 1880 – The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York. The Sun is the nation’s oldest, continuously-independent college daily.
- 1893 – Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma.
- 1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded.
- 1919 – The American Legion is incorporated.
- 1941 – World War II: Concerned that Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, is about to ally his petroleum-rich empire with Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union invade Iran in late August and force the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
- 1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.
- 1971 – Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
- 1992 – The trial of the deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega ends in the United States with a 40 year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering.
- 1992 – Black Wednesday: the pound sterling is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the German mark.
- 1994 – The British government lifts the broadcasting ban imposed against members of Sinn Féin and Irish paramilitary groups in 1988.
- 2007 – Mercenaries working for Blackwater Worldwide allegedly shoot and kill 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad; all criminal charges against them are later dismissed, sparking outrage in the Arab world.
Let’s get to today’s Headlines Du Jour:
SO GLAD WE’RE LIVING IN A POST-RACIAL SOCIETY:
FREE THE WEED!!!
TODAY IN RELIGION:
FOX “NEWS” IN THE NEWS AGAIN:
IN INNER SPACE:
IN OUTER SPACE:
Science says the universe could be
a hologram, a computer program, a
black hole or a bubble—and there
are ways to check
a hologram, a computer program, a
black hole or a bubble—and there
are ways to check
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