Illuminati-R-Us

It was a flippant remark but I meant more on a political level than militarily. Mongols within and without, business interests rather than tanks.

Two hours to the weekend here, you must be well into yours.

Good news from Austria, for a change: 1774, Empress Maria Theresia institutes compulsory schooling (6 years).

Thirty years ago today, the first episode of The Simpsons aired in the US.

Connaisseurs tell me seasons three through eight were the best, but they mostly still like it in the way you still feel comfortable being close to a school buddy you had a good time with. I have to believe them, because I never watched a single full episode. Maybe it's the dubbing, but the whole shrieky-hysterical voices thing turns me off. And that includes Homer.

I'm always slightly surprised it is still going, I haven't watched one in about 15 years.

Interesting watching the bits from before it was an actual show, segments on the Tracey Ullman show.
It was a bit different, the drawings were more raw & stark I guess.
But it ran there for 3 seasons, so Arneb, I wonder if those statements about 'seasons 3 through 8' are considering the Ullman shorts as the first 3 seasons?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qppYb0zwrm8

Also of note, Groening's 'Life in Hell' which was the cartoon strip that Simpsons was originally going to be based on, before Groening decided to go with new characters.

I didn't even know there was this pre-Simpsons story. As I said, I am not particularly into it.

The Wikipedia artiucle says that the first bits appeared in the Tracey Ullman show in 1987, so I guess 1989 was the first airing of season 1, episode 1.

47 years ago today: The end of the end of the beginning - Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first wave of crewed human Lunar exploration.

I wonder, and I doubt, if any Moonwalker will yet live to congratulate their successors. They're all pushing 90 by now, the four who are left.
Aldrin, b. Jan 1930
Scott, June 1932
Schmitt, June 1935
Duke, October 1935

These are the last, a third of the entire contingent. There are also 8 surviving crew members of moonbound missions Apollo 8 and 10 through 17 who did not land: Bormann, Lovell, Stafford, Collins, Worden, Anders, Haise and Mattingly, born between 1928 and 1936.

Unlikely indeed since China is talking about the 2030s at the earliest and I don't thin India has any concrete plans.

On this day in 1981, the Penlee lifeboat was lost with all hands in mountainous seas trying to rescue the crew of a bulk tanker. As a result of this the RNLI changed their launch procedures taking the decision out of the hands of the coxwains since they would always go regardless of the danger and sometimes they had to be protected from themselves.

I missed Gene Cernan's death, almost 3 years ago now. I don't know why but I always liked him.

January 1st, 45 BC - The Julian calendar takes effect for the first time.

January 6th, 1066 – Following the death of Edward the Confessor on the previous day, the Witan meets to confirm Harold Godwinson as the new King of England; Harold is crowned the same day, sparking a succession crisis that will eventually lead to the Norman conquest of England.

A hundred years ago on Jan 10, the Treaty of Versailles took effect. It wasn't a good day.

40 years ago today in Karlsruhe, West Germany the German Green Party was founded by, well, a number of groups. They ranged from blood-and-soil post-Nazi nationalists via Conserve Creation conservatives to groups who wanted to make sexual acts between children and adults legal (yes, really). But the main groups were staunch Socialists and Communists together with somewhat leftist anti-nuclear power and anti-arms race tree hugger Euroweasels.

The party saw its first Bundestag representation in 1983, the first State Government participation in 1985 (Minister for the Environment Joseph "Joschka" Fischer), its near annihilation in the post-reunification election of 1990, its first Federal Government participation in 1998 (Foreign Affairs Minister and Vice Chancellopr Joseph "Joschka" Fischer), in a coalition with the Social Democrats, and its first State Prime Minister in 2011. The Greens are the only party founded after the formative phase of the Federal Republic to have that kind of success, and, arguably, the only one that turned into a truly democratic party after a colourful first few years. They are now considering to declare their aspirations to the Chancellorship for the upcoming 2021 general election.

75 years ago today, off the Pommeranian coast, three torpedoes issued from a Soviet submarine (S-13) sank the Wilhelm Gustloff, a former cruise ship sequestered by the Germany Navy as a troop transport ship. Built for some 1,500 passengers and crew, she was carrying c. 10,000 crew, troops, and civilian refugees from East Prussia trying to flee the onslaught of the Red Army. At that time, East Prussia had already been cut off from the rest of the Reich, so that the Baltic route was the only way to escape.

Around 1,200 occupants, amazingly, were saved, in freezing waters, and lived to tell the story. The attack was not a war crime: The Wilhelm Gustloff, being a troop transporter, was clearly a military vessel, and thus, a fair target. With around 9,000 fatalities, the sinking is to this day the largest shipping disaster in all of human history.

The attack occurred on the 12th anniversary of the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor. For the occasion, he gave a radio speech, blathering on about the Endsieg, the fantastic achievements of himself and his government, about the Creator (and Providence) garuanteeing victory for the German people if only they stuck together strongly enough, etc. Several survivors of the attack on the Gustloff report having listened to the speech during the evening. It was to be his last radio appearance.

I didn't know the name of the ship but I was aware of the sinking. To be at sea and think you had escaped the worst only to have that happen . . .

75 years ago, the end of the Ardennes offensive - the last episode of WWII in which the German Army gained ground (it had started in December), at the cost of 68,000 casualties versus the Allies' 87,000.

Yep, the last great folly by Hitler. The casualties are slightly misleading, the Allied casualties were higher but they were mainly the second line units and depleted formations which were put there as it was a quiet sector, the German losses were to the last of the good panzer formations which meant they were burnt out needlessly and not available on the Ostfront.

Being German, and seeing 8 May, 1945 as the day of liberation, I can only say Hitler's incompetence helped shorten the war, and, presumably, German lives. The Nazi nightmare was what it was, but I prefer this Universe to one where the Americans tried Fat Man on the Führerbunker.

The were good reasons for not using it on Berlin, but I suspect the reason Japan got two and Germany none had a lot to do with race.

Arneb wrote:Being German, and seeing 8 May, 1945 as the day of liberation

Or 9 May, a day with another significance in the СССР and/or Russia.

Most definitely! My West Berlin experience is certainly influencing me here; but even the staunchest Atlanticist would be hard-pressed not to admit that the 44 years that followed May 9 in the East weren't at least a notch up from what came before. As in, no bombs, no industrial annihilation of people, no millions of sons and husbands coming back in body bags or lying in far-away soil, a turn for the better re. the hunger. And that isn't even saying one nice word on the GDR or the CCCP.

31st January 1920 - 100 years to the day before they drag Scots out of the EU against their will, the British deploy troops and tanks to the streets of Glasgow in the Battle of George Square. Rule Britannia.

It was the bleak end-time of WWII 75 years ago, but one can't help being relieved that on Feb. 3, 1945, Roland Freisler, Chariman of the so-called People's Court ("Volksgerichtshof") perished in an Allied air raid on Berlin. Roland Freisler, like Bormann, Heydrich, or Eichmann, belonged to the second tier of Nazi hierarchy: He was one of those that put the directions from above into actual, cruel, ruthless practice. Being a judge didn't prevent him from yelling and shrieking around his courtroom, everything you wouldn't expect from a senior man of the law. It was probably good luck that he was killed by bombs - the Allied prosecutors might have had a hard time getting him to the gallows, as he just "executed the law". We were better off without him.

Also, the last German troops in Belgium capitulated on that day. So good day over there, too.

75 years ago, the bombings of Dresden began, with four raids over three days. The death toll is today estimated at around 25,000.

It should be a day of humility and quiet remebrance. Of grief about the storm Germany sowed and the hurricane Germany reaped. Instead, our modern neo-Nazis shriek about a crime against humanity, against Germany, against innocent Germans - always ready to sow the next storm, and reap the final, devastating hurricane.

It is to Britains honour that there is a lot of discomfort about this part of the war. WW I and II are generally told as heroic stories of endurance, stoicism, and fighting spirit for the good cause. Rightly so, mostly. To accept that there are blemishes doesn't invalidate the heroicism, and it doesn't validate the German aggression that started it all.