January 19 in history

The British spend this date doing what the British were so good at: taking land for their own use. In 1788 for instance, ships of The First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay. That's in Australia. The First Fleet was a group of ships taking convicts there for resettlement. I guess that worked out for them.

And speaking of things, it was a mere 18 years later that they occupied the Cape of Good Hope. That's South Africa. And it's a nice place to control if you want to keep an eye on anyone sailing between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Or if you want the resources of South Africa. However, it's a bad thing if you care about the Boers who were already there, or the Zulus who were there before the Boers.

In 1862, General George Thomas started his run of success in the Civil War. He fought and won the Battle of Mill Springs, in Old Kaintuck. It turns out to be the first Union victory in a long war. In the case of Thomas, it's the first time he commands an army independently, and as the War progresses, we'll see that giving him command of an army turns out to be a good way to win a battle. As we talked about last month with Nashville, he never lost a battle when he was in command. And not many generals can make that claim.

In 1981, Iranian officials and US officials sign an agreement to release all the remaining hostages that were taken from the US embassy, in what was a blatant and unquestionable act of war by Iran. Of course, the fact that Reagan was about to be inaugurated president, and was far, far less of a weenie than Carter, had nothing to do with it.

And in 1983, Apple Computer released announced a new device called a "Lisa" It was a personal computer type thing, and featured the then unknown devices known as a "mouse" and a GUI or graphical user interface. It turns out that the device was named after Steve Jobs' daughter, though there are also claims that the name meant something else and was later credited to Lisa Jobs. However some people don't really care. Guess which group I fall into?

And once again that's about it.

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