It's Interesting Times Day!

And interesting things are happening.



On this date, all sorts of interesting - and usually tragic - things happened. Among which, the following:

1529 - At the Second Diet of Speyer, a group of rulers and independent cities protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, beginning the Protestant movement along with a series of religious wars that continue to this day here and there.

1775 - The Battle of Lexington and Concord begins the American Revolutionary War.

1861 - Baltimore riot of 1861, a pro-Secession mob attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.

1933 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the abandonment of the gold standard.

1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins.

1961 - End of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

1993 - Eighty-one people are slaughtered by fire, gas and gunfire by forces of the Federal Government at the end of the siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas.

1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168.

In this country, April 19 is called Patriot's Day and is used to commemorate the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which kicked off the shooting phase of the American Revolution. It has been so for all my life, as far as I remember. But according to these idiots, people who consider themselves "patriots" should cease to do so. They claim to believe that people such as the brave souls attending the "Restore the Constitution" rally in Virginia are just right-wing militia crazies, insensitively celebrating the Oklahoma City bombing. Suggesting that the principles bled for by the patriots at Lexington and Concord ought to be restored and lived up to has somehow become the act of scary "extremists."

I got two bits of news for you, ladies.

First - The date of the Murrah building bombing is only not a coincidence if the date of the Branch Davidian massacre isn't. And if it isn't that would be on the heads of FBI goons, not the people at those rallies.

Second - The people at those rallies aren't the extremists. They're just good, brave people who still believe in the political process. The real extremists stayed home, because they don't.

You better pray those good people get their way. You better pray you never meet the real extremists. Because that would be a very interesting day.