Can it be? Is it really over?

Barack embraced his historical moment with incredible grace and eloquence. And as much as the pundits would like to say otherwise, I think Hillary realizes that it's over - just give her a few days.

Today in History -

The Freemasons were officially founded in London on June 4, 1717.

The Freemasons are not a secret society of assassins. They do not have Cesar Borgia's head preserved in an urn. They were not responsible for the French Revolution. They did not kidnap Anastasia Romanov. They are not in control of the Hale-Bopp comet. They did not invent horseradish.

They were masters of masonry, however, and they ushered in a golden age of making things out of rocks.

Freemasons first appeared in England and Scotland in the 1300s, not long after the first appearance of the Loch Ness monster but well before the advent of crop circles. Most laborers of the era were villains and therefore prohibited from travel; since most stone masonry projects (such as cathedrals, churches, and big piles of rocks) required specialized training and large numbers of workers, however, stone masons were permitted to travel freely. They became known as freemasons; their curious lunchboxes came to be known as mason jars.

Whenever the freemasons arrived in town to start work on a new project, they set up a common area where they could meet one another, receive their pay, get food, train apprentices, rest, and get roaring drunk. These came to be known as lodges.

As the centuries passed, the freemasons did less and less work with rocks and more and more drinking at lodges. Today, the freemasons are a friendly social organization with a secret handshake, and are therefore believed to be responsible for selling out the governments of the world to an invading extraterrestrial army.



June 4, 1783 -
The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).




June 4, 1798
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, Venetian adventurer and author, dies in relative obscurity as the librarian of Count Waldstein of Bohemia. The Count often ignored him at meals and failed to introduce him to important visiting guests. More over Casanova, the testy outsider, was thoroughly disliked by most of the other inhabitants of the Castle of Dux. Casanova’s only friends seemed to be his fox terriers. In despair, Casanova considered suicide, but instead decided that he must live on to record his memoirs, which he did until his death.



His main book Histoire de ma vie (History of My Life), part autobiography and part memoir, is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. His last words are said to have been “I have lived as a philosopher and I die as a Christian”



June 4, 1989 -
Tiananmen Square protests were ended in the typical manner of a totalitarian regime - with the People's Liberation Army soldiers and tanks. Unofficial tallies of the dead reach 3,000. Make sure you have your tickets for the Olympics.




And so it goes.