Hello, Headliners!  Today’s birthday belongs to composer and guitarist Frank Zappa. Among the other Headlines Du Jour of yesteryear:

• 69 – The Roman Senate declares Vespasian as Roman emperor, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors.
• 1620 – Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.




• 1826 – American settlers in Nacogdoches, Mexican Texas, declare their independence, starting the Fredonian Rebellion.
• 1861 – Medal of Honor: Public Resolution 82, containing a provision for a Navy Medal of Valor, is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln.
• 1913 – Arthur Wynne‘s “word-cross”, the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.




• 1919 – American anarchist Emma Goldman is deported to Russia.
• 1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world’s first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.
• 1951 – Libya became an independent country.
• 1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to another celestial body by humans.




• 1969 – The United Nations adopts the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
• 1988 – A bomb explodes on board Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, killing 270.
• 1995 – The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.
• 2012 – The world was predicted to end on December 21, 2012 according to some calendars.




• 2012 – The Walt Disney Company completed its acquisition of Lucasfilm and of the Star Wars franchise.

Here is today’s Headlines Du Jour:

THE TORTURE REPORT:

TODAY’S PROTESTS:

IN LGBT NEWS:

GUNS, GUNS, GUNS:

TODAY IN RELIGION:

MORE EXCITING EPISODES OF COPS GONE WILD:

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

FREE THE WEED!!!

ANTI-SOCIAL NETWORKS:

IN INNER SPACE:

IN OUTER SPACE:

Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
Steam-Powered Word-0-Matic, and your rest stop on the Information
Highway. Use our valuable bandwidth to post your news comments in
today’s open thread.