1916: Margaret Sanger opens first birth control clinic in Brooklyn
Big day for genocide as notorious eugenicist Margaret Sanger launched her predecessor to planned parenthood. Millions of babies died due to Margaret Sanger’s legacy, and she is still celebrated – in 2023 – for her work on reducing minority populations by murdering their children.
In less horrifying firsts, Brigham Young University was founded in Provo, Utah in 1875, and in 1923, John Harwood patented a self-winding watch, changing personal timekeeping for gentlemen everywhere. In 1985, Intel introduced the 32-bit 80386 microcomputer chip, and finally, in 2019, the first “plant-powered selfie” was taken at the London Zoo.
1926: Troop ship sinks in Yangtze River, killing 1,200
This disaster was one in a series of conflicts between the British and the Chinese in 1926, but what I found most interesting about this story was that on the same day in the same year, 1,200 people were killed in two separate conflicts – this one, and the coup in Afghanistan by Mohammed Nadir Khan, which also killed 1,200.
There were also several natural disasters on this day, with 40,000 dying in the 1942 Cyclone in Bay of Bengal, south of Calcutta. In 1987, 23 died in the Great Storm of 1987 in London, and 18 died in 2013’s Typhoon Wipha in Japan while three died in Hurricane Ophelia in Ireland in 2017. In 2022, the death toll reached 600 in Nigeria’s worst flooding in decades.
Also in Death and Destruction:
2013: 21 people are killed after a minibus hits a land mine in Nawa, Syria
2013: 49 people are killed after Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashes in the Mekong River
2017: Daphne Caruana Galizia killed in a suspicious car bomb in Malta
2018: China defends Uighur detention camps as “vocational education and training”
2020: French teacher Samuel Paty beheaded by18 year-old Islamist in Paris
1946: 10 Nazi leaders hanged as war criminals after Nuremberg war trials
While it’s arguable that there wasn’t enough accountability for Nazi crimes against humanity during WWII, there were 10 Nazis hanged for their war crimes on this day in 1946. From The Guardian:
“Hermann Göring last night died by his own hand. Two and a quarter hours before he was to be executed he took poison under the eyes of the American security guard watching him every moment through the grating in the door of his cell. Without the guard noticing any unusual movement, Göring…slipped a phial of cyanide of potassium into his mouth and crushed it with his teeth. He thus used the same type of poison and phial adopted by Heinrich Himmler, who committed suicide 17 months ago. While Göring was lying in the prison morgue, the 10 other Nazi leaders sentenced to death with him were hanged in the bomb-blasted gymnasium of the prison, its dirty walls lit up by 10 blazing lights in the ceiling. The 10 Nazis were hanged one after the other in one hour and 34 minutes.”
Also on this day, in 1775, Portland, Maine was burned by the British. In 1861 the Confederacy began selling postage stamps, and in 1863 Ulysses S. Grant assumed command of the Union forces in the west.
In 1940, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. became the first African American General in the US.Years later in 1995, the Million Man March took place in Washington, D.C., with reportedly 830,000 African Americans in attendance.
Back in 1945, the UN established their Food and Agriculture Organization. Has globalist involvement in our food supply benefited humanity?
In 1953, Fidel Castro was sentenced to 15 years in Havana, and a few years later in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis began when JFK was shown photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Eight years later in 1970, Pierre Trudeau – Justin’s so-called father – invoked the Canadian War Measures Act in response to the “October Crisis” – the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act in Canadian history.
Finally in government, the US government shut down on this day in 1986, and it ended its 16-day shutdown on this day in 2013. When they talk about “unprecedented shutdowns,” remind them that our government does this, like, all the time.
1987: Baby Jessica Rescued!
Jessica McClures’ ordeal and heroic rescue was a formative moment for 80s kids, as it shaped our culture and instilled a healthy fear of wells, at least for me. She was rescued 58 hours after falling 22' into a well.
Other moments on this day shaping our culture include the publishing of Charlotte Brontë's, "Jane Eyre" in 1847 and the premiere of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" in 1913. Disney was founded in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, and in 1950, the first edition of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" was released. Additional moments in culture include:
1925: Texas School Board prohibited teaching of evolution.
1967: Joean Baez and 123 other anti-draft protesters arrested in Oakland.
1972: Rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival break up
1973: Henry Kissinger – Negotiating Vietnam ceasefire that later failed
1986: Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and poet – first African to receive in Literature
1998: Pinochet was arrested in London.
2017: Neutron Star Collision Study Shows Gold in Them There Stars
The collision occurred two months prior, on August 17, but the study issued on this day in 2017 framed the collision as the first cosmic event seen in gravitational waves and light. According to MIT:
“New research suggests binary neutron stars are a likely cosmic source for the gold, platinum, and other heavy metals we see today. Most elements lighter than iron are forged in the cores of stars. A star's white-hot center fuels the fusion of protons, squeezing them together to build progressively heavier elements.”
In other space news, in 1963 the US military launched two secret satellites from Cape Canaveral. Not a great secret, since we all know about it. In 1969, after 80 orbits, the Russian Soyuz 6 returned to earth, with the capsule landing in Kazakhstan.
Finally, in 1985, the Challenger vehicle moved to the launch pad for the STS 61A mission. STS-61-A was the ninth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger and the last successful before the disaster the following year.
Birthdays
1758: Noah Webster (Webster's Dictionary)
1841: Itō Hirobumi (Samurai, First Prime Minister of Japan)
1854: Oscar Wilde (Playwright and novelist)
1886: David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel)
1946: Suzanne Somers (Actress)
Death Days
1793: Marie Antoinette (Queen of France)
1849: George Washington Williams (African American Historian)
1959: George Marshall (Secretary of State; Marshall Plan)
1981: Moyshe Dayan (Bond Villain?)
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Almost spit coffee on this one:
2018: China defends Uighur detention camps as “vocational education and training”