Well, a lot of interesting stuff happened today! We start in 871, when Alfred The Great (btw the only British monarch with that nickname) goes off with his West Saxon army to fight Vikings from the Danelaw. The Danelaw is a part of England controlled by the Danes. So the Danish Laws are in effect there. Hence "the Danelaw". We'll assume Alfred wins, since he is after all called "the Great".
It's 1297, and we have a sneaky little fellow along the French Riviera. A knight named François Grimaldi dresses up a monk, and leads his men into a fortress. They capture it, and thus assume control of The Rock of Monaco. The Grimaldis still control the Rock of Monaco today, though they're half American thanks to Princess Grace.
In 1814, we took a little trip. Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans, and we caught the bloody British near the town of New Orleans.... But not until January 8 of 1815. Which is kind of ironic, since the no-longer-accurately-titled War of 1812 ended on Christmas Eve of 1814, if I recall correctly. At any rate, nobody in New Orleans knew that until it was too late. It's probably a darn good thing that Jackson won, as there's a strong argument to be made that, if they'd won and taken the City, the British would have been disinclined to give it back. Sorta like Gibraltar, it's an incredibly important bottleneck for a major area. Without free navigation of the Mississippi River, it's questionable if the US could have turned into anything approaching what it did. Some people have argued quite persuasively that it's the most strategically important city in all of the US, even today. The location, that is. The city itself is still a dump, but what of that? At any rate, even though the war was already over, and ended (officially) in a draw, the fact that the US won a land battle- finally- is a nice boost to the national self-esteem. Remember, it wasn't that long before that the British captured and burned Washington D.C. with hardly a fight. So any victory was sweet.
In 1835 we have a fascinating and depressingly unique moment in US history. The national debt reached Zero dollars. That's 0, nought, nil, nada, nothing. By comparison, the morons in D.C now have saddled us with a debt of over 15 TRILLION frigging dollars. That's an amount that has basically no chance of ever being paid off... EVER. And yet they want to add even more to it. For no good reason. Sigh. Oh, and here's an interesting little factoid. Remember the previous bit about the Battle of New Orleans? Well guess who was the president in 1835? Why it's that self-same Andrew Jackson! One could come to a conclusion about him, but that might make the current occupant unhappy, and God knows I could then disappear as a terrorist. So I won't.
We roll on to 1918, and President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" that he intends to shove down the throats of the Europeans when WWI ends (soon). He probably should have added a Fifteenth Point of "screw up everything so that everyone in Europe is so pissed off that we'll have to fight an even bigger and bloodier war a generation down the road", but I guess that would have been too wordy.
In 1964, President LBJ declares that he's starting a "war on poverty" to go with his "War on North Vietnam". Combine the two, and remember the whole thing about the national debt? But don't worry- he assured people that it would pay itself off several times over. Sound familiar?
Moving on, in 2002 President George W. Bush signs into law the "No child left behind" act. Hey, care to take a wild stab at guessing how that impacted the National Debt? I'll give you a clue: the same way every other thing the federal government does to "improve the quality of life" for the American people. But don't worry- when the government takes over health care in a year or two, it'll actually cause the debt to go down. Promise!
In 2005, the USS San Francisco, a submarine, rams full speed into an underwater mountain near Guam. One man is killed. And I'm guessing the career of the boat's commander didn't survive either. My question is how the Hell a nuclear sub in the early 21st century can miss a mountain standing in its path. They didn't have radar, sonar or anything else?
And finally, it was just a year ago in 2011 that a nutjob went off and shot a bunch of people in Arizona, including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It was of course Sarah Palin's fault, since she's a conservative. Sure, she had nothing to do with it in any way, but it's still her responsibility because the guy was obviously a conservative acting under Palin's orders! Until it turned out that he's just insane, and, insofar as he had any political beliefs they tended towards the Left, at which point everything disappeared down the proverbial rabbit hole. Except when it's convenient for people to hint that it's Palin's fault, but not say so explicitly since it's so obviously untrue.
Sorry. Feeling especially cynical today.
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