History & Comment for April 16, 2025

A look at historical and current events on this day, comment and humor so dry it would make a camel thirsty. 

Transcript

This is History and Comment for Wednesday the 16th of April, 2025

About the year 1457 BC.   Egyptian forces engage Syrian forces in the Northern portion of the modern nation of Israel in what is claimed to be the oldest battle recorded in written history.    The event is recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphics.   During the time of the Pharoahs, Egypts influence extended much further North than we consider in modern times.   The date would put it very close to the time of the exodus from Egypt.   Could it be a weaken of the local population for eventual conquest by the Hebrews?  That is speculation, but it is interesting to see how events we have historical records of mesh with the Bibilcal narrative.   

The site and battle are known as Megido.  The Hebrew term is Har Megido or Mountain of Megido.    Say that again Har Megido.   It is the same origin for the prophetic last battle we known are Armageddon.   Which is prophesied to occur on the same ground.   

Late in the First Century AD.   Jewish interest are hold up at Masasa in Southern Israel.    On this day it falls to the Roman Army.   The Jews had consistently resisted Roman authority and Rome was getting very tired of it.   Masada is considered the last stand of the Roman – Jewish War.   This was in the year 73 or maybe 74.  Jerusalem had been burnt to the ground in the year 70.

This is the anniversary of the 1746 Battle of Culloden that ended the last Jacobite uprising in Scotland and in a way, England.  It also put an end to the Stuart claim to the British throne.  While it is viewed as a independence movement in Scotland it was really much more than that.     It was lead by the 24 year old, Bonnie Prince Charlie.   Now before you dismiss him on the ground of his age or fancy name.   His given name was even more flamboyant and verbose.  He was the Grandson of King James the seventh of Scotland and  2nd of England.    Bonnie Prince Charlie had a very strong claim to the throne.   Much stronger in fact than the sitting King George II, who was more German than British.    The fact is George and several monarchs prior, dating back to Charles the second, Bonnie Prince Charlies grandfather. Were protestant and while Charles and his line down to the Prince were Catholic.   The population and powers that controlled the King did not want a Catholic Monarchy.    Had the Bonnie Prince renounced the Catholic religion,  there was a decent change he could have taken back the throne.  He did not and the House of Stuart ended and the Hanovarian crown will rule,   until the 20th Century, when Queen Victoria dies in 1901.    We are getting off in the weeds but the Hanovarian monarchs were strongly German and Victoria’s husband even more so.    In fact it was anti-German sentiments during WW I that lead to changing the name to Windsor, in order mask the German connections.  

In a move to limit Naval battles in the interior. The United States in the aftermath of the War of 1812, agreed with Great Britian to remove nearly all of the naval ship and cannon from the Great Lakes in 1818.   With the end of that particular war, relations between the two countries has been extremely amicable.  This extended to the formation of Canada half a century later. 

In discussing the Civil War and Slavery the Emancipation Proclamation gets tons of press, but in fact it was hardly worth the paper it was written on in terms of ending slavery.   It only addressed  the institution in regions hostile to the United States.   It did not address the issue in slave states that remained loyal to the United States.     Go read it for yourselves if you doubt me. 

On this day in 1862,  nine months before the famous proclaimation,  Congrees passes an act to free slave in the District of Columbia. It further sets aside funds to essential purchase them.    Almost 3200 individuals.    But it still was not clear sailing. Some had escaped from Maryland and their was a fugitive slave law in place for two more years.   

Dodge City lawman, gambler, fight promoter and newspaper columnist Bat Masterson was a classic old west character.    In Fact Masterson might be more true to the legend of Watt Earp than was Earp.   The two worked together in Dodge City, Kansas.     Masterson was born in 1853 in Quebec.  On this day in 1881, he participates in his last gun fight at the age of 27.    He will spend the next 4 decades in more peaceful pursuits.  Many of those living in New York City.   

Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly and airplane across the English Channel in 1912.    There was a lot of bias against women’s abilities.   Now certainly there are some physical limits,   the bell curves of men’s and women’s physical abilities are largely different.    That is a simple fact.    But there are a wide range of skills they can handle quite well.   But were limited do to social norms.   Flying an airplane was one.  

Swiss Chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers that the research drug LSD, has hallucinogenic effects in 1943.  He was a legitimate research chemist and trying to synthesis and isolate compounds to function as a respiratory and circulatory stimulant. He accidently ingested a trace amount of found the effect interesting. Three days later he intentionally took what he felt was a small dose and experienced the first LSD trip.    

Fidel Castro in a broadcast speech announces he is a Marxist and that Cube is going to adopt communism.    This is in 1961.  

In 2007, a Virginia Tech Senior undergraduate student arms himself and kills 32 people and injures another 17.   The shooter had a long history of mental issues and social issues in school.   This was well-known to his High School but due to privacy laws this information was not transferred to Virginia Tech.  This included a fixation with the Columbine High School Shooting and an interest in recreating it.   When tracked to his apartment he committed Suicide.  That solved the criminal case at hand.  The bigger question is when does public safety trump privacy rights.    This is a very difficult question.   We might extend it to vaccines and that has a different bias.     During the recent covid pandemic the bias tilted towards public safety.   IN the 1980s when AIDS was in the news the bias was towards privacy and many of those actions have become standards practice.   

It is not a far leap to the next story.     In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection does not violate the Eighth amendmenst restriction on cruel and unusual punishment.    I have to wonder why it is reported to be ver humane in applied to your pet, but not when applied to a violent criminal.    I have stated clearly that there is a place for capital punishment but most folks recoil from the application.    That most likely indicates a sense of decency and respect for human life, that is a good thing.     Where I find problems with our system is a person where it is abundantly clear they are guilty,  is allowed to sit of death row for two decades.   There are a few cases with death row inmates have been cleared on charges when new evidence comes to life, so we need to observe a degree of caution.   The old west method where a sentence was carried out in a days or so seems rash,  so does years of litigation.   Ideally, we would live in a world where people could abide by ten simple rules that were in fact reduced to two.   Love God and Love your Neighbor.   But we cannot.   Still there are vast swaths of human society that consider those rules to be repressive.   

Which brings up the recent stabbing and death of a High School track runner.   That case is getting more bazaar by the day.    I have not heard what the evidence is but there was an arrest almost immediately.      And it was instantly a racial incident. Both sides are claiming model students and placing blame on the other.   I doubt that is quite the case.    I wonder why you bring a knife to a track meet for one?

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