Saturday, September 27, 2008

It's all over except for the spin

The first debate is over and we can see two dramatically different world views. Next up - the VP debates: the battle of views- one from across the aisle, the other across the Russian border where any moment the evil grinning Putin may rear his ugly KGB head.

Here's your Today in History:

Today is the 103 year anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein's paper "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", introducing the equation E=MC2. Before this E equaled just about anything you wanted it to equal. Just think what the atomic bomb would have been like if E = banana peels or dog turds.

September 27, 1854 -
The wooden steamship Arctic sinks in foggy weather after colliding with the iron bow of the Vesta. When Captain Luce orders women and children into the lifeboats, the crewmen rebel and take the boats for themselves. Of 435 on board, only 85 survive -- and none of them women or children. It is the first major ocean liner disaster in the Atlantic. The "Artic" disaster shattered high Victorian notions of how men were supposed to respond under duress.

September 27, 1934 -
Wilford Brimley's birthday, huzzah!



September 27, 1954 - The nationwide debut of Tonight! (The Tonight Show) hosted by Steve Allen on NBC. Bedtime was never the same.



September 27, 1959 -
Typhoon Vera, otherwise known as the Isewan Typhoon, kills 4,464 people on the Japanese island of Honshu and injures 40,000 more. 1.5 million are made homeless.

September 27, 1964 -


The Warren Commission issued its final report, concluding that president Kennedy had been assassinated and was probably dead.



September 27, 1967 -
Seventeen people are killed in Tijuana, most of them children, when the neurotoxic insecticide methyl parathion is accidentally mixed into bread. Over three hundred others required medical treatment. I'm guessing this is not the way Wonder Bread wanted to built young bodies.

September 27, 1996 -


In Afghanistan, the Taliban capture the capital city Kabul after driving out President Burhanuddin Rabbani and executing former leader Mohammad Najibullah.

And so it goes.

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