The History of the Weather Forecast

A tragedy on 25 October 1859 lead one man in Great Britain to create the idea of predicting the weather. On 1 August 1861 The Times (of London) published the world's first forecast.

630 people drowned in the Irish Sea in one night. ⛵💀

A British man studied the data afterwards. And invented something that every single person on earth uses every single day.

On 25 October 1859 the Royal Charter was hit by a hurricane off Anglesey. 450 people died. That same… pic.twitter.com/AKIY12DBRN

— Proudofus.uk (@ProudofusUK) March 31, 2026

This is a link to the Proud Of Us UK video 630 People Drowned In One Night. One British Man Made Sure It Never Happened Again. 🇬🇧 over on YouTube

What happened to Great Britain?

The Horror of a Post-Christian World

The Other McCain on Friedrich Nietzsche vs. Robert E. Lee

This is a complicated read, and no mistake. It covers a lot of ground, including - tangentially - why college students are so easily indoctrinated.

One of the benefits of being a bad student is that, by the time I began to take the world of ideas seriously, I was already an adult, with a job, a wife, three kids and a mortgage. It was in the early 1990s, when I was on the staff of the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, that I began haunting the local used book store, snapping up old volumes at 50 cents or a dollar each, pursuing an autodidactic course of remediation, to fill in the gaps in my knowledge that had by then become apparent to me.

I think you will find it an interesting read.

Remembering Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick passed away 16 July 2023 at the age of 59 from Cancer. The Wiki lists him as a "computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker."

From The Drive we get a story about hacking. This Man Was Gifted His Dream Car by the Notorious Hacker He Put in Prison

It’ll help if you know the name Kevin Mitnick. He was a hacker-turned-security consultant who, later in life, helped shape the modern white-hat. Just how prototypical was Mitnick? He put himself on the proverbial map in 1979 by dialing into a software company’s server and copying its forthcoming operating system release in its entirety. Imagine convincing a Microsoft server to cough over an early copy of Windows 12 using little more than a phone number.

Click thru for the details of how Mitnick got caught trying to hack/social engineer his way into Novell in the 1990s.

In the end, Shawn Nunley caught him. Mitnick was convicted and sent to prison.

When he got out, Mitnick contacted Nunley to apologize. Their bury-the-hatchet moment was even immortalized by Wired, and they went on to become good friends.

Mitnick went on to found a couple of White Hat hacking/consulting firms. He became quite successful.

When Mitnick passed from pancreatic cancer in 2023, he left Nunley a gift—enough to buy his dream car, a 911 Carrera 4 GTS.

An interesting story.

12 July 1979 - The Disco Demolition

Quite a day in Chicago History. Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park - Chicago History Museum

OK, so the story is from a couple of years ago.

July 2024 marks 45 years since the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” promotional event at a July 12, 1979, Chicago White Sox twilight doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers that erupted into chaos. To encourage attendance, the White Sox hosted WLUP 97.9 rock DJ Steve Dahl, who was known for mocking disco and had been fired from a previous radio job when the station switched from rock to disco. They asked fans to bring a disco record to the ballpark in exchange for 98-cent admission, and those LPs were to be gathered and then blown up in a controlled explosion between games.

It was a great success and a great failure.

The stadium was full of people who didn't care about baseball. When Dahl blew up the records it damaged the field. The WLUP fans invaded the field. The White Sox ended up forfeiting the 2nd game of double header.

Disco, which was already declining in popularity by 1979, went on to influence house music, EDM, Europop, new wave, dance-punk, and hip-hop and has seen revivals in the 21st century.

Hat tip to EBL: Disco Inferno. Click thru for a musical interlude, and a brief video of the night in question.

Graham 'Totenkopf' Platner Ends Campaign

The Maine Democrat, with the now-covered, SS tattoo, has terminated his campaign. Springtime for Platner ends - Don Surber

His tattoo from 1930s Germany didn't disqualify him in the eyes of Democrats. The early report of a sexual harassment didn't disqualify him in the eyes of Democrats. But they are abandoning him now.

Also on Monday, Senator Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland said, “I don’t know [Graham Platner] but I’m supporting Democrats. We need Democrats in office. We need Democrats in office to fight back against Donald Trump.”

What a refreshingly honest answer about Democrat ethics. They have none. It is all about power.

As for the tattoo: Totenkopf is a compound German word meaning "Death's Head." The particular tattoo that Platner was sporting is, if I'm reading it correctly, the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf, which was used between 1939 and 1945 in the the Waffen-SS. If you don't know what that means, you should study more about World War II.

Nothing clarifies one’s position on genocide quite like a Nazi tattoo.

Anyway, he started falling in the polls. There is apparently (I really don't care that much about Maine politics - I may have it wrong) more than one allegation of inappropriate and/or illegal activity. I can't tell you which, as I don't really care. It was interesting to me that the Democrats were willing to overlook a tie to the Waffen-SS. The party of tolerance, and inclusion willing to overlook a symbol of the Schutzstaffel, or the SS.

The SS as a whole was declared a criminal organization by the Allied Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946. [Ref. Britannica]

But then the Democrats as a whole seem, to me anyway, to be completely at ease with antisemitism these days. (Hat tip to Wombat-socho: In The Mailbox: 07.08.26 (Afternoon Edition)

Killdozer - 4 June 2004

I almost missed it.

A lot has been written about Marvin Heemeyer, but mostly the picture painted has been by the people who he believed had done him wrong.

The embedded video below, is long at an hour and 16 minutes. This one is 20 minutes from Unsubscribe Clips, and an interview with Lore Lodge.

This is the Lore Lodge video You Were Lied To About Killdozer

The History of June as Gay Pride Month

I'm recycling posts. That's OK. My writing was better 20 years ago. This post is originally from June, of 2006. I lifted it (almost) wholesale from the The now offline original Archives. You'll get over it. (Not to be confused with the newer Archives you can find in the sidebar)

History is different from the current state of things. A lot of gay folks are sort of over it. Pride from 40 years ago, was very different from today. I will get to some of them later in the month.

---

Gay Pride is typically celebrated in June. This dates back to the early morning of June 28th, 1969, and a few days in that week, when a bunch of New York's Finest bit off a bit more than they could chew. While several organizations were around before 1969, the start of the movement to secure Gay civil rights is usually marked by the Stonewall riots.

All you straight folks out there have no idea of gay history. I even had a protracted argument one day, with someone who was generally well educated and aware of political reality, that there were no gay bars before the 1980s. There were. They were underground, and even maintaining a low profile was no guarantee that police wouldn't show up.

The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in The Village neighborhood of New York. Since gay bars had been basically illegal before 1966, it was not uncommon for gay bars to be mafia run. Stonewall was reputed to be mafia run.

Prior to 1966 it was illegal for a bartender to serve a drink to 3 or more homosexuals. So of course, this being the 60s, a "sip in" was staged. The NY liquor board later stated that the rules never had been what the rules actually were, so gay bars started to proliferate after 66.

The police still took delight in harassing gays, lesbians and transgendered at every turn after 66. On June 27, 1969, a Friday night, they decided to raid the Stonewall Inn. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and the following Wednesday riots were the result of that raid.

Take a look at the desperate criminals arrested by police at a 1962 Halloween Party.

New York must have been VERY safe in 1962, if this is how police were spending their time on Halloween. Or maybe the cops were just a bunch of bigoted idiots back then.

When police would raid a bar, they would arrest anyone "in clothes usually reserved for the other gender." Drag queens and lesbians in butch attire. Sometimes they would simply arrest everyone in the bar. Often they would publish the names of those arrested in the paper.

As they were forcing a lesbian into a squad car on that Friday night in June, she struggled. The crowd decided she had the right idea, and attacked. There were 400 "onlookers" and 8 police, so the police retreated and barricaded themselves in the bar. Since resisting was not to be condoned the cops grabbed the first person they could and dragged him into the bar and beat him. That person was heterosexual folk singer Dave van Ronk, who had come from a straight club down the block to see what the commotion was all about. (Van Ronk was later charged with assaulting police.) A parking meter was uprooted and turned into a battering ram. Someone tried to set fire to the bar with the police inside. Eventually more police arrived and dispersed the crowd. The two following nights, and the next Wednesday saw more of the same, and galvanized the Gay Community.

The first Gay Pride parade took place the following year, in commemoration of the riots.

The Battle of Midway

Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway took place. That was 4–7 June 1942. It was supposed to be another Japanese sneak attack, with the goal of sucking in the American aircraft carriers, so that Japanese can destroy America air power in the Pacific. In reality the Americans had broken the Japanese code, and knew what was going on. So they reversed the ambush.

It was a decisive battle in the Pacific War.

One of the people who distinguished himself during the battle was Jack "Dusty" Kleiss.

This is The Fat Electrician's video America's Greatest Dive Bomber - Dusty Kleiss. It is an hour-long video, but the Fat Electrician manages to make history interesting. And you might learn something. (It will only hurt for a minute.) You get a bit of background on Kleiss, an overview of the Battle of Midway, and Dusty's part in the battle.

Ibogaine in the News

From The Other McCain - Fear and Loathing at Mar-a-Lago? Freaky Friday Flashback to ‘Big Ed’ Muskie

Hunter S. Thompson brought up Ibogaine in relation to the 1972 Campaign of Ed Muskie.

For reasons that were never adequately explained at the time, and which seem ridiculous in hindsight, the media pundits and Democratic Party power brokers decided in advance of the 1972 campaign that Muskie was the front-runner, the man to beat. Thompson had other ideas.

Strange coincidence that Thompson, working for Rolling Stone, was covering George McGovern at the start of the campaign.

The very idea of Rolling Stone sending a correspondent to cover the presidential campaign was weird, at the time, and Thompson’s eccentricities were notorious enough that his hunch about McGovern’s chances didn’t get much credit from other reporters on the campaign trail, and yet in the end he was vindicated — especially in regard to his contempt for the “mainstream” consensus front-runner Ed Muskie.

That is (some of) the background. Click thru for more and the news from today.

There is apparently some use of Ibogaine to treat PTSD. Whether it actually works or not is the issue. The Other McCain has the details.

Where are the 300 Spartans?

Actually, I think that might have been a completely different war. (College was a long time ago.)

pic.twitter.com/THRDb2DOou

— Alex Sakalis (@alexsakalis) March 2, 2026

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

14 February 1929 in Chicago. Inside The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, History’s Bloodiest Mob Hit.

There had been an ongoing gang war between the Irish/German Northside gang run by George "Bugs" Moran, and the Southside gang run by Al "Scarface" Capone. The final straw seems to have been Moran putting a $50,000 price on Capone's head.

On Feb. 14, 1929, Frank Gusenberg was rushed to a Chicago hospital with 14 gunshot wounds. But when the police asked who shot him, he had a surprising answer: “No one shot me.”

Gusenberg, a well-known local gangster, was either determined to adhere to the criminals’ code of silence or terrified of whoever he knew to be behind the attack. Three hours later, he was dead.

But of course he was shot, and it would become clear who was behind the shooting.

Around 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 14, 1929, four men approached Moran’s warehouse at 2122 North Clark Street. Two were dressed as police officers. The other two looked like well-dressed civilians, in suits and ties, while the driver wore an expensive chinchilla and a gray fedora. They were there on business — but not the kind of business that usually unfolded in broad daylight.

Seven members of George "Bugs" Malone's North Side Gang were shot by those 4. They were lined up against the wall, and shot execution style.

So many of Moran's top men died in the Massacre that he lost the ability to control his gang's territory. And Capone would be jailed in 1931, but not for the massacre. It is officially an unsolved crime. It was also the last confrontation between the two Chicago mobsters.

The garage at 2122 N. Clark Street in Chicago was torn down in the 1960s. Today the spot is a parking lot. (Or it was several years back.) Some of the bricks from the building were saved before the demolition. The photo above, from WikiMedia Commons, is of one such brick, which is at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C. Click the image for a larger view, and more information.

Of course Capone's imprisonment didn't mark the end of The Outfit. I know it was active in the 1980s and 1990s - there were FBI operations designed to combat it. Operation Gambat, Operation Greylord and Operation Family Secrets come to mind. (Do you need me to Google that for you?)

A side note: There was discussion earlier in the month, either on social media, or in the comments to one blog post somewhere, about how Prohibition wasn't a particularly bad idea. It was. Prohibition gave the mobs, like Capone's Outfit from the South Side of Chicago, and Malone's North Side Gang, a real, steady income, providing whisky to the speakeasies. Not to mention that it expanded federal law enforcement, and made the casual ignoring of the law something that a lot of people did, at least from time to time.

The Day The Music Died

A lot of people have heard the Don McLean song, "American Pie," from 1971, but I'm always amazed by the fact that they don't know what he's talking about.

On 3 February 1959 Richie Valens, J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, together with pilot Roger Peterson. They were leaving Clear Lake, Iowa, after playing a gig, on their way to Moorhead, Minnesota. The conditions on the tour busses were horrible, so Holly chartered a plane. Shortly after takeoff Peterson lost control of the plane and crashed killing all 4 on board.

This is "American Pie" by Don McLean. It was the title song to his 1971 album.

Jefferson Davis versus Tim Walz

Who was worse? Please Stop Slandering Jefferson Davis : The Other McCain

In recent days, various of my conservative friends have thought it amusing to compare Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to Jefferson Davis. The intent is to compare Walz’s opposition to federal immigration enforcement to the Confederate president’s defense of Southern independence. They mean this as a joke, see? “States’ Rights, LOL!”

One of these is clearly worse than the other. Click thru for the reasoning.

When a Cop Shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond the Left Ignored It

It didn't fit the narrative. When Mohammed Shot Justine | Frontpage Mag

When Somalia-born Minneapolis cop killed the woman who called 911.

People, the Left anyway, would like to forget. It was in 2017, long enough ago that the population can't be bothered to remember.

The Australian woman, soon to be married, called 911 to report a sexual assault in a nearby alley. Officer Noor claimed he saw a blond woman in a pink shirt raise her arm and bang on the car, so he fired through the window to protect the life of his partner Matthew Harrity. There was no body-cam footage and Noor refused to speak with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehensions (BCA).

Go read the whole thing. (Hat tip to Small Dead Animals)

James Howard: The One Man Air Force

Let's start with an article from We Are The Mighty. The ‘One Man Air Force’ took on dozens of enemy fighters even after his guns ran dry

James Howard started his World War II combat career before the United States ever entered the war. He would end the war with a Medal of Honor and the nickname: the “One Man Air Force.” He was a naval aviator who flew with the Flying Tigers, then joined the Army Air Forces, where he became an ace in two different aircraft in two different theaters. He would eventually retire as a Brigadier General—quite an impressive bucket list.

James Howard had been a pilot in the US Navy. But he left to join the Flying Tigers to fight in China before America joined the war. He as going to rejoin the navy, but a bureaucrat, pissed off by his stint in the Flying Tigers, pissed off Howard in turn. So he joined the US Army Air Corps as a captain.

By January of 1944 he had been promoted to major.

On the day of the fight in question, which was January 11th, Howard had been separated from his unit, when he encountered a formation of bombers being attacked by German interceptors and fighters. He was alone. He attacked.

When asked about the decision to face that many planes, he answered...

I seen my duty and I done it.

This is a video about James Howard's flight on 11 January 1944. The Flying Killer That Made the Luftwaffe Look Like a Joke

The Battle of Lanzerath Ridge

The opening volley of The Battle of the Bulge.

First Lt. Lyle Joseph Bouck, Jr. was commanding the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon attached to the 394th Infantry Regiment of the 99th division. It was the most decorated platoon for a single action in US Army history. 22 men, 18 of Bouck's platoon, and 4 artillery forward observers held up the German offensive for nearly 20 hours. They literally held off hundreds of German soldiers, giving allied forces time to respond to the German Offensive that would later be called the Battle of the Bulge.

On the morning of December 16, 1944 – the first day of the Battle of the Bulge – Bouck’s platoon was in a defensive position, manning observation posts along the right flank of the 99th Infantry Division. They came under heavy fire from the advancing German 6th Panzer Army, later engaging in a 10-hour firefight.

In what later became known as the Battle of Lanzerath Ridge, Bouck knew how important it was to defend the Allied position, given its location along a road to Losheim Gap. He rallied his men together, along with four Forward Artillery Observers from Battery C, Field Artillery, and throughout the firefight moved along their position, despite exposing himself to enemy fire.

This is the WW2 Tales video The 20 Hours 18 American Soldiers Stopped Germany's Entire SS Panzer Army

In 1969, John Eisenhower, son of the former president and himself a military historian of note, published The Bitter Woods, a comprehensive account of the Battle of the Bulge. He included a detailed chapter on Lanzerath, calling it one of the most remarkable small unit actions of the war, but full official recognition was still years away.

The video is 50 minutes long. I cannot embed the video here, but click thru.

Operation Watch am Rhine

Tuesday morning 16 Decemberat 5:30 AM local time, in Bastogne, Belgium, bells will ring, as they do every year. These mark the start of one of the costliest battles in World War II.

Operation Watch am Rhine. The Ardennes Offensive. The Battle of the Bulge. It ran from 16 December 1944 through 25 January 1945.

This is how the National World War Two museum in New Orleans sums up The Battle of the Bulge.

On December 16, 1944, the German army launched a massive offensive in the Ardennes Forest. The Battle of the Bulge would be the largest engagement ever fought by the US Army—and ultimately hasten the end of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

It gave rise to some things like The Malmedy Massacre, in which eighty-four American POWs were murdered by the German SS.

This is the WW2 Tales video Germans Mocked Americans Trapped At Bastogne — Then Patton's Tanks Broke Through The Snow. It is 45 minutes long, so plan accordingly. I can't embed videos from WW2 Tales, but that link will get you there, and the video is less interesting than the audio in any case.

Winston Churchill addressing Parliament in January 1945 declared, "This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever famous American victory." Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery admitted, "The Americans at Bastogne wrote one of the finest chapters in military history. Their stand will be remembered as long as men honor courage."

Vincent Sparansa was an American paratroop who brought beer from the local brewery to wounded soldier in Bastogne. The town brewery created Airborne Beer in his honor. Vincent visited the town many times. His last visit was in 2019; he was 96 years old. He gave the following toast

To the boys who didn't come home, to the people who never forgot, to freedom.

For more on the Battle of Bulge from the view point of German Logistical nightmares, see Modern Warfare is Logistical Problem.

This Doesn't Seem Like Justice

It seems like preferential treatment. Retired judge gets probation for stealing nearly $250,000 from elderly Tuskegee Airman - CWB Chicago

A former Cook County judge who stole large sums of money from an elderly friend who served as a Tuskegee Airman received a probationary sentence on Friday.

Patricia Martin, 66, received four years of probation after pleading guilty to theft of $100,000 to $500,000, according to court records. The judge also ordered her to pay $122,763.73 in restitution and comply with standard probation conditions that include random drug testing.

So if she stole "nearly" 250,000 dollars, why did she only have to return about half? It also seems like that is a large enough amount of money to steal from a war hero that some jail time would have been appropriate.

But then the legal system takes care of its own.

Because Martin previously served as a Cook County judge, her case was assigned to McHenry County Judge Tiffany Davis. Wilkerson died in 2023, one day before his 97th birthday. Martin was disbarred the same year.

Chicago and Cook County courts: Putting the Criminal in "Criminal Justcice System" for decades now.

If you aren't familiar with the Tuskegee Airmen, I can recommend a TV Movie by that name. The trailer is at this link. An interesting story from WWII. There was also a Hollywood movie on the same subject, but I never saw it.

Voyager 1 Closest Approach to Saturn: 12 November 1980

I remember this particular episode in history. I was in college, and most people didn't care about the mission, until the images started coming back. I wanted to go into science at that point in my life, and I found this fascinating. This article from NASA was from 2020. 40 Years Ago: Voyager 1 Explores Saturn - NASA

No one cared about the 40th anniversary, I'm not sure why I think anyone will care about 45.

The Voyager program was a result of taking advantage of a chance to use the Grand Tour. It was a chance to study the planets that comes infrequently.

The concept of the Grand Tour began in 1964, when Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noted that an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune that would occur in the late 1970s would enable a single spacecraft to visit all of the outer planets by using gravity assists. The particular alignment occurs once every 175 years.

It is amazing that we were able to do so much with 1970s technology. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still sending some data back to JPL, though they won't last much longer.

I can't find a reference for the time of closest approach. I suppose it doesn't matter all that much after 45 years.

The article linked at the top includes a couple of great photos, including the one below.

The image below was taken on 13 November 1980. There are two moons in the photo, with Tethys being at the top, and the moon Dione below.

SS Edmund Fitzgerald - Lost 10 November 1975

While on the surface this is a Musical Interlude, this is really a post about the state of shipping in the US.

It isn't great, considering how important it is to the economy.

Instead of trying to think of something clever to say, I will just refer you to Sal Mercogliano and his What's Going on With Shipping? video Why the Great Lakes Matter | 50 Years Since the Loss of SS Edmund Fitzgerald. It is a 16 minute, or so, video. And he links to a couple of documentaries on the ship.

And since this is masquerading as a musical interlude...

This song is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot from his 1976 album Summertime Dream.