Illuminati-R-Us

I'll leave that one for Lianachan, since my lot were as likely to be on the government side as the Jacobite side.

It may be of little significance , but 1001 years ago today, the city of Burtscheid, which is today a burrough of Aachen, was first mentioned in a written document. My old Aachen hospital was in that burrough, and I am fond of the memory.

Oh, and happy 150th, Gregoriy Jefimovich Rasputin.

I missed this yesterday, but 14 years ago on January 20th I smoked my last cigarette.

Lance wrote:I missed this yesterday, but 14 years ago on January 20th I smoked my last cigarette.

Wow. Was that because the prospect of a second Bush term distressed you so much, or inspired you so much?

I think my last cigarette was quite a bit more recent than that, but my lifetime total is pretty low.

Nothing to do with Bush. I was inspired by watching Cyndi's brother in law slowly decline and eventually die from emphysema. It didn't seem pleasant.

Wise decision, and well done.

Very possibly the single best decision of you life. Relationship decisions not included, of coursed.

22 January -

1901, R.I.P. Queen Victoria
1963 Traty of the Elysée signed by Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle - the beginning of the Franco-German friendship. After all we've heard about the wars the two of us, this treaty is nothing short of a miracle. Emanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are trying to up it today, with the Treaty of Aachen, which is received in the typical style of today's crazy times.

27 January, 1945 - The Red Army marches into Auschwitz concentration camp. The Soviet soldiers had all seen terrible things, and maybe some of them had done terrible things. But what they saw, by all acoounts, blew away what they thought humans could do to each other.

28 January, 1997 - A totally insignificant German medical dude is given a magna cum laude for his totally insignificant doctoral thesis. On that same day and a few km away, a totally insignificant baby is born in an uncomplicated delivery, his niece. She will be his godchild and can still make him squishy inside 22 years and three own kids later.

Which is all absolfuckinglutely totally insignificant in the grand scheme of things, so

1887 - Construction of the Eiffel Towe starts (finished 31 March, 1889)
1897- First successful run of a Diesel engine:
1958 - Patent for the Lego brick filed
1986 - The Challenger disaster-

Here are a few that I find interesting for purely subjective and personal reasons:

1881 - Theodor Billroth performs the first partial gastric resection in a patient with gastric cancer.

1964 - One of my favourite films, Dr. Strangelove, premiers in the U.S.

1989 - The first election that I took part in, for the West Berlin Chamber of Deputies - the last one before re-unification. The outcome was quite a surprise. The smaller party in the governing centre-right coalition failed to gain 5 % of the vote and thus was not represented in the Abgeordnetenhaus. That gave the Social Democrat candidate, Walter Momper, the opportunity to form a coalition with the "Alternative Liste", which at the time was a pretty radical leftist incarnation of the Green Party. I dare say I was instrumental in that regime change. If you wonder why two years earlier, at 18 years, I did not take part in the Bundestag election of 1987, I must remind you that we West Berliners weren't allowed to, since we were still governed by three Allied City Commanders, and we were not full citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Momper's government had a high profile due to the dramatic events of 1989, which absolutely no-one foresaw in January of that year. However, in the subsequent election in unified Berlin, in 1991, order was restored, and the former Governing Mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen, and his CDU party, were restored to their rightful place in power.

Arneb wrote:28 January, 1997 - A totally insignificant German medical dude is given a magna cum laude for his totally insignificant doctoral thesis. On that same day and a few km away, a totally insignificant baby is born in an uncomplicated delivery, his niece. She will be his godchild and can still make him squishy inside 22 years and three own kids later.

You save lives Doc, nothing insignificant about that.

Arneb wrote: If you wonder why two years earlier, at 18 years, I did not take part in the Bundestag election of 1987, I must remind you that we West Berliners weren't allowed to, since we were still governed by three Allied City Commanders, and we were not full citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany.

I didn't know that.

Oh yes, until 1990, both our Personal Identity Card and the passport bore the adjective "behelfsmäßig", which can be translated as "auxiliary", but also as "makeshift". The Berlin Chamber of Deputies elected the West Berlin contingent of Bundestag MPs, who had the right to speak, but, crucially, not to vote.

On the plus side, West Berliners couldn't be conscripted into the Bundeswehr either, so West Berlin was draft dodgers' paradise - you only had to change your residential adress to one in West Berlin, and it was no mudcreeping for you 'nmore.

Heid the Ba wrote:

Arneb wrote:28 January, 1997 - A totally insignificant German medical dude is given a magna cum laude for his totally insignificant doctoral thesis. On that same day and a few km away, a totally insignificant baby is born in an uncomplicated delivery, his niece. She will be his godchild and can still make him squishy inside 22 years and three own kids later.

You save lives Doc, nothing insignificant about that.

That's very gracious, but honestly, they could still manage with one less over here.

Arneb wrote:That's very gracious, but honestly, they could still manage with one less over here.

The world could have also gotten by with one less Mother Theresa or Ghandi too, but we are better for them having been here.

Arneb wrote:Oh yes, until 1990, both our Personal Identity Card and the passport bore the adjective "behelfsmäßig", which can be translated as "auxiliary", but also as "makeshift". The Berlin Chamber of Deputies elected the West Berlin contingent of Bundestag MPs, who had the right to speak, but, crucially, not to vote.

On the plus side, West Berliners couldn't be conscripted into the Bundeswehr either, so West Berlin was draft dodgers' paradise - you only had to change your residential adress to one in West Berlin, and it was no mudcreeping for you 'nmore.

So while Our Brave Lads of the Berlin Brigade were braced to take on the might of the Red Army you lot were sitting with your feet up, having a beer and chasing girls? Maybe it is time for Brexit!

Yes, that's precisely how it went. Be honest, what would you rather have when they threw a Tsar Bomba on you, a joint and a girl or a uniform, a rifle and a bayonet?

6 Feb 1919 In the National Theatre at Weimar, a National Assembly elected in Germany's first free, fair, equal and secret election comes together for the first time in order to write a Republican constitution.

Another one: 70 years later, Chris Gueffry is the last man killed in an escape attempt at the Berlin Wall. He was hit by several rounds after abamdoning the attempt and trying to give himself up.

He'd turn 50 this year.

On this day in 2018, Arneb posted about the death of the singer Falco some 20 years prior.

It is absolutely appalling that I missed this one, but I absolutely must ask the biard’s indulgence to let me wind the clock back a few days.

On February 3rd, 1959, the Day the Music Died, Buddy Holly, Ricky Valenzuela, the Big Bopper, and a pilot flying beyond his abilities, took a dive into a snow-covered field in Iowa, leaving the world a much sadder place.

30 years ago, Ayatollah Ruholla Chomeini issues a fatwa calling (and setting a prize) for the death of Salmam Rushdie, for his book The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie has survived the threat to this day, while Chomeini ihas been an ex-Ayatollah for quite some time now.

A little late. But on 19 February, 1923, the US Supreme Court ruled that Hindus (i.e South Asians) were not eligible for citizenship, even though many had served in the US Army in World War I. The plaintiffs had made the mistake that claiming that they were Aryans (which they undoubtedly were, on a much firmer definition than others would claim a decade later) would get them accepted, but no. It would be 23 years later when the US Congress ruled that non-whites who had served in the US Army (but only those who had) could qualify for citizenship.

Service means citizenship. Would you like to know more?

I suppose Richard already knows all about it, lawyer that he is. But me, yes, yes I would like to no more.

A propos the European-ISIS-POWs and how we should or should not let them back into the country, some of our more right-wing politicians are reminding us of a provision in the Grundgesetz which stipulates that serving in another state's military without the express permision to do so from the Federal Government is one of the very few circumstances under which a German citizen can be stripped of his or her citizenship. So yes, it makes sense that service means citizenship. Apparently it is one of the reasons that the Legion d'Étrangers never runs out of applicants: You become a Frenchman after five years of service.