In 1626, on this day Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland aboard the See Meeuw.

Nieuw-Nederland foundedover the course of the next three centuries, Nieuw-Nederland would develop side-by-side with the United States. The two nations had grown up alongside one another as Europeans colonized North America. The English threatened to eliminate the Dutch from their holdings of New Amsterdam when four frigates occupied the harbor. Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, after considering ceding the land in hopes of retaking it, decided to head off a Second Anglo-Dutch War and refused. After firing on the city, the frigates were rebuffed and returned to England empty-handed.

Since that time, New Amsterdam quickly expanded. Jews ousted from Brazil as Portugal retook Dutch conquests flooded into the city, and immigrants from all over the world were accepted. The economy flourished as pelts were harvested from the upper Hudson and established shipping. When the twin states of New England and Great Virginia declared independence from Britain, the Dutch granted support first financially and then through its impressive navy. When Napoleon conquered the Netherlands in Europe, Neiu Nederlands announced its own independence.A new article by Jeff Provine

Relations between Neiu Nederlanders and Americans were amicable. They were particularly close with New England due to ties in shipping and manufacturing, although relations were at times strained while the United States to the south determining water rights of Lake Erie. When New England broke off trade with the US over slavery, the Nederlanders maintained a lucrative neutrality. The sudden surge of trade brought about a new golden age, which led to a great deal of corruption that responded in a powerful Progressive Movement, headed by the young Theodoor van Rosevelt.

Rosevelt was part of the wealthy and politically influential family that had begun with Claes Maartenszen van Rosevelt, who purchased a large farm on Manhattan Island that would translate into enormous wealth as the city grew. Theodoor was born in 1858 and struggled through his childhood suffering from asthma. He overcame the disease by determination and exercise with seeming limitless energy, features that would define his life. After his education, Theodoor traveled extensively to the American West as well as Dutch holdings in the Caribbean and South America. He returned and entered civil service, soon becoming Director of the Navy where he built a canal through Panama and led the Great White Fleet on its tour around the world. By 1910, he was elected President.

When war erupted in Europe, Rosevelt hoped to join quickly and use the impressive New Dutch fleet, but business was too good trading through the neutral Netherlands. Despite his extensive campaigning, it wasn't until the Americans threatened Germany that he finally gained the agreement of shipping interests who disapproved of attacks by uboats. In 1917, unrestricted submarine warfare resumed, and a joint declaration of war was announced. Thanks to Rosevelt's anticipation, New Dutch troops joined the front almost immediately.

In 2012, on this day the blockbuster movie Marvel's The Avengers premiered worldwide with Johnny Depp the surprise casting choice for the role of Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist with a mechanical suit of armor.

Premiere of Marvel's The Avengers
by Ed & Andrew BeaneInsurance issues had forced Robert Downey, Jr. to forced to withdraw and an opportunity was created for Depp to reportray Stark in a more eccentric caricature.

But the negative consequence of this choice was that he was unavailable for the shooting of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Film makers Rob Marshall and Jerry Bruckheimer turned to British actor Russell Brand who redefined the role of Captain Jack Sparrow.

In 1872, on this day the twenty-ninth President of the United States, Alexander M. Palmer was born in White Haven, Pennsylvania.

Alexander M. Palmer
29th President of the United StatesHe rose to national prominence serving as the fiftieth Attorney General, winning a great deal of public support for the organization of a series of high profile raids on Galleanist anarchists. And within the Justice Department he established a General Intelligence Division that soon became a storehouse of information about radicals in America.

But he exercised his own judgement in rejecting GID's flimsy evidence of plans for an attempted overthrow of the U.S. government on May Day 1920. Instead he fired the hot-headed and unbalanced principal officer J. Edgar Hoover. Fate intervened when President Wilson was assassinated less than six weeks after he resigned the office to seek the Democratic nomination.

With the country in turmoil, his staunch law enforcement credentials enabled him to defeat his main party rival James Cox. And he persuaded his other chief opponent William McAdoo to serve as his running mate. This pairing provided the regional balance to the ticket that defeated Warren Harding in the General election.

In 1982, on this day the Argentinian Air Force operating outside the Total Exclusion Zone accidentally shot down a USAF Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, one of the aerial refueling military aircraft provided on loan to the British Government for the duration of the Falklands Conflict.

Blushes of the Loaner Arranger
By Ed and Matthew DattilloThe arrangement of the loaners was the result of a compromise in the transatlantic alliance, because the original request was for aircraft carriers of the US Navy. To ensure that refusal did not offend, President Reagan observed that such a requisition was practically infeasible because the Royal Navy simply did not have the trained servicemen to operate the carriers. Ironically, the ARA fleet command vessel General Belgrano was the reconditioned USS Phoenix (CL-46), an ageing light cruiser which had survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was even now being operated by Argentine sailors.

The truth was that the Organization of American States (OAS) was head-quartered in Washington minutes away from the White House where Reagan was speaking on the hot phone to Thatcher. During these critical years of the Cold War, the United States simply could not afford to take the risk of such unilateral action and be stigmatized as an imperialist bullyclub in the eyes of the South American nations.

In the event, the transatlanic alliance was deeply humiliated anyway. With defeat looming, Thatcher threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in the South Atlantic, and Reagan was forced to tell her to stand down. The "Falklands Factor" cost the Conservatives the 1983 election, and Michael Foot was elected on a unilateral nuclear disarmament platform. One of his earliest decisions was to close the American nuclear base at Greenham Common.

The only real victor of the Falklands Conflict was the President of Argentina, the "Iron Lady" Eva Perón.

In 1991, on this day the forty-first President of the United States, George H.W. Bush was transferred by helicopter to Bethesda Naval Hospital after experiencing a shortness of breath, chest tightness, and a general feeling of fatigue while jogging at Camp David.

A Heartbeat AwayPhysicians immediately detected a rapid irregular heartbeat leading to a diagnosis that Bush was suffering from atrial fibrillation due to hyperthyroidism. When the prescription of digitalis, procainamide, and Coumadin failed to arrest the arrhythmia, an electrical shock was administered. Tragically, Bush went into cardiac arrest during this cardioversion, dying only minutes later.

Under the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Dan Quayle was already the acting president. And now a different kind of shock was about to reverberate across the nation.

In 2010, the Cowboy movie genre was transformed with the movie premiere of the retro blaxploitation blockbuster "The Doc" starring the new King of Cool, African American actor Barry Obama.

Big F*#cking DealSeven years had passed since the release of the last great movie, Cowboy Dick Cheney's final film "The Bush Brothers Ride Again".

"The Doc" arrives in town with imaginative plans to dispense medicine to the people of Jackson, Wyoming.

But it does not take long for resistance to be demonstrated by the townsfolk as the movie zooms in on the whites-only Cowboy image.

And in an early sign that his good intentions will be distrusted, the bigoted Sherrif Joe Biden dismissed "The Doc" with the barbed complement that he is "the first articulate, bright and clean black doctor" in Wyoming.

But at the climax of the movie, "The Doc" saves the Sherrif's life, forcing Biden to reluctantly admit his medicine is a "Big F*#cking Deal".
Watch Joe Biden's Gaffe

In 1898, on this day Democrat Senator Golda Meyerson was born in Kiev.

Sen Golda Meyerson (D-WI)She would later note in her autobiography that her earliest memories were of her father Moshe Mabovitch, a carpenter boarding up the front door in response to rumors of an imminent pogrom. He left to find work in New York City in 1903, the rest of the family moved to Pinsk to join her mother's family. She had two sisters, Sheyna and Tzipke, as well as five other siblings who died in childhood. She was especially close to Sheyna. In 1905, Moshe moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in search of higher-paying work and found employment in the workshops of the local railroad yard. The following year, he had saved up enough money to bring his family to the United States.

At fourteen, she studied at North Division High School and worked part-time. Her mother wanted her to leave school and marry, but she rebelled. She bought a train ticket to Denver, Colorado, and went to live with her married sister, Sheyna Korngold. The Korngolds held intellectual evenings at their home, where Meir was exposed to debates on Zionism, literature, women's suffrage, trade unionism, and more. In her autobiography, she wrote: "To the extent that my own future convictions were shaped and given form... those talk-filled nights in Denver played a considerable role". In Denver, she also met Morris Meyerson, a sign painter, whom she later married on December 24, 1917. Despute many marital difficulties, the couple remained in Milwaukee where Golda eventually went into politics. In 1946 she saw off challenges from Robert LaFolette Jr. and Joseph McCarthy to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. Two years later her husband would be tragically killed during the brief attempt to establish a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.

During her tenure in the House, Golda would emerge as a key national advocate of the Jewish refugees who had settled in four locations in Alaska (Baranof Island and the Mat-Su Valley. Skagway, Petersburg and Seward) as a result of the 1940 Slattery Report. Just two weeks after Kristallnacht, the United States Department of the Interior under Secretary Harold L. Ickes had proposed the use of Alaska as a "haven for Jewish refugees from Germany and other areas in Europe where the Jews are subjected to oppressive restrictions". In recognition of the powerful support of this lonely voice in American politics, Meyerson had been chosen to represent the United States at the opening of the "Safety Pin", a tall building erected for the 1977 World Fair held in Sitka and a source of pride for its inhabitants. This event was marred by protests from the native Tlingit Alaska Natives partly as a result of the controversy when Meyerson had commented that "There is no such thing as a Tlingit Alaskan people"¹, a bold statement intended to emphasise their integration rather than independence.

At the time of her death, representatives had been unable to persuade the US Government to extend statehood beyond the fifty year lifespan set down by Ickes with reversion of territory due to occur in 1992. Anti-semitic cynics in the House had labelled the failure of her campaign as "The Fall of the Third Temple".
This article is a part of the Sitka thread.

In 1861, President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy met with Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge of the City of London that Friday and arrived at a mutual defense agreement.

The Scrooge ContributionScrooge's terms were set out admirably. The precision left no doubts in the minds of Davis' Cabinet that their new republic would get the support of the United Kingdom, Even better, the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, had initiated the approach to the South and sent to Richmond his "gray eminence" and master banker.

Even so, the term required for Britiain's support of the South was a condition the South had never thought of making a factor of its struggle for independence. Over first discussion of the matter, Vice President Stephens and four members of the Confederate Cabinet (Toombs, Mallory, Memminger and Reagan) advised against it.

"If our survival as a nation came about at such a price to the Union we have left", said Toombs "we would be forever stand condemned before our erstwhile countrymen".

"Mr. Toombs", said Jefferson Davis. "we shall have to meet many challenges in the coming war, and not a few of the advantages we shall seek will bring severe criticism from the North. It is better that our Southern States have the North's condemnation of our agreements with allies than that the South do without such necessary aid".

The commotion raised in Parliament was considerable when news of the Scrooge Assignment was debated on the floor of the Commons. "Sensible men know the Scrooge Proposal is nothing but piracy, plain and simple", wrote Charles Francis Adams, the American Minister to the Court of St. James. "Its theft from the common fund of our Great Republic is justified on no reason or moral obligation. It is the bald assertion that England gets California if the confederate states get their independence".

In 1813, on this day as Napoleon reflected on how yesterday's battle at Lutzen had been an indecisive tactical victory when he needed another Austerlitz to end this war before Austria entered it, he kept coming back to Ney's inept handling of his corps. He had allowed himself to be surprised by the allied attack. Ney had been one of the few heroes of the retreat from Moscow. Napoleon had given him a large corps to command as a reward. It now seemed clear that Ney was still too shattered from the previous winter's fighting to be trusted with such a command. Ney was still popular with the army so he was bumped to command of a division de marche of Young Guards which while a nominal demotion would not have been seen as such by the army.

Napoleon's Command Change by Scott PalterThis is turn forced Napoleon to confront his complex feelings towards Nicholas Davout, probably his best marshal, but under a cloud since the later stages of the retreat from Moscow. Napoleon had dumped Davout on a secondary command at Hamburg. Now needs must and he summoned him back to the main army. Davout was at best a difficult personality but his actions at Austerlitz, Auerstadt and Wagram had repeatedly worked to Napoleon's advantage.

His command change paid off at Bautzen on the 20th. Had Ney been in command of the flanking column he might well have been distracted by the initial clashes and lost focus on the main mission, which was to surround and capture the Allied army before it could retreat behind its superior cavalry. Instead Davout ruthlessly left a corps to mask and fight the Russo-Prussian flank guards while leading the rest of his force to victory. He punched clear around the Allied armies to complete the encirclement at Hochkirch Meanwhile Ney's climatic assault under cover of the Grand Battery shattered the Allied front. A substantial portion of the Allied cavalry got away. The two monarchs, their courts, the infantry, the artillery, the baggage train and all their supplies were captured.

This effectively ended this stage of the war. Alexander I ransomed himself at the cost of abandoning all the Russian territorial gains of 1812-13 including the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. He also returned his French and allied prisoners. His higher nobility showed their distaste for both Alexander's crusade into Central Europe and its expensive failure by deposing and assassinating him during the Christmas festivities in St. Petersburg. His brother Nicholas assumed the throne and was quite content to remove Russia from European affairs as long as the French did not further trouble his realm.

The Prussian monarch died in captivity and his realm was split between the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Westphalia. The city of Berlin was made a principality with Ney as nominal monarch. A similar principality was created at Danzig for Davout.

Left with no continental allies the British chose to end an endless war. They used Wellington's victory at Vittoria to end the war on a note of triumph before a massive new round of French reinforcements could turn the tide back. Napoleon was content to wash his hands of his Spanish ulcer. Spain was partitioned with the French keeping an expanded Catalonia and Aragon. Europe's peace was frigid but it was peace.

In 2009, on this day former U.S. President and football star Jack Kemp died at the age of 73, after suffering from cancer, his spokeswoman announced.

Legacy of a Bleeding Heart Convervative by Eric LippsHe was a tax-cutting Republican who described himself as a "bleeding-heart conservative".

He represented western New York for nine terms in Congress, then ran for President in 1988, defeating Democrat Richard Gephardt to succeed President Gary Hart, after Hart's bid to win his party?s nomination for a second term collapsed amid the Donna Rice scandal.

In office, his greatest success was Operation Desert Wind, the Kuwait intervention following Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's attempted military conquest of that country. Immediately after Desert Wind, his popularity stood at 91 percent in the Harris and Gallup polls.

Unfortunately, his domestic policies would bring those numbers crashing to earth. A long-time advocate of the gold standard, President Kemp would use his post-Desert Wind clout to push through Congress a measure legalizing private ownership of gold and authorizing limited gold coinage. However, the Sinclair scandal, in which wealthy Connecticut investor James Sinclair exploited fears of war in the wake of the overthrow of Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev by military hard-0liners to run the price of gold to unprecedented heights after first purchasing huge amounts of the metal with the aid of an international syndicate, would tarnish Kemp badly. Sinclair had been a prominent Kemp backer in 1988, and critics would suggest (though never prove) that the President had made a deal with the goldbug in exchange for his support. It would not help that another of the President's favorite ideas, the "urban enterprise zones" he had induced Congress to authorize as an alternative to welfare, proved far less effective than Kemp had promised. By 1992, he would be struggling to hold onto his office.

It was a struggle he would lose. That November, Georgia senator Sam Nunn would defeat President Kemp at the polls.

In 1994, the ex-President would run for the U.S. Senate, defeating three-term incumbent Daniel Patrick Moynihan in one of the closest senatorial races in U.S. history. He was re-elected in 2000 and again in 2006.

His spokeswoman Bona Park said he died at his home in Washington.

Political colleagues of both parties paid tribute to him, with fellow ex-President Edward M. Kennedy, himself diagnosed with terminal cancer, calling him "one of the nation's most distinguished public servants".

Former President John McCain said: "Jack will be remembered for his significant contributions to the Reagan revolution and his steadfast dedication to conservative principles during his long and distinguished career in public service".

His greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1978, when his argument for sharp tax cuts to promote economic growth became Republican party policy, which has endured to this day.

In 1568, on this day Mary, Queen of Scots escaped from Loch Leven Castle, a remote fortress located in the middle of a body of fresh water in Perth and Kinross.

Happy Endings Part 22:
The Escape from Loch Leven CastleHaving the wit to do as her ancestress Eleanor of Aquitaine did [1] she dyed her hair and wearing a false beard and moustache travelled across England "in drag". Disguised as a French nobleman she made it to France.

And so in mid-May, she walked into the Royal Palace in France, big as life and having crossed England in disguise.

In 1863, on this day the incomparable Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Fortunately for the Cause, he recovered from a minor flesh wound and was able to return to service just eight days later. An installment of the Federal's Lost Cause thread.

Federal Lost Cause Part 1: General Jackson injured at ChancellorsvilleWhen Jackson said that he feared that he would lose his left arm, Commander-in-Chief Robert E. Lee replied that he had feared he would lose his right one. Because ever since had been a Brigade Commander at Bull Run, Lee's forces had been energized by Jackson's inspired leadership. Now a Corps Commander, Jackson was no longer expected to put himself in the front line, and the incident at Chancellorsville was a reminder of his intrinsic value to the Confederacy.

And his dogged independence of rigorous thought stood him outside the traditional chain of command. Alongside Longstreet, he argued against a battle at Gettysburg, instead advocating an assault on Baltimore. Yet the main significance of his survival was his command of forces at the Battle of North Anna. He had the discipline to follow Lee's plan when the Commander-in-Chief was laid low with an intestinal infection. The result was an eve of election field victory that swung the electorate firmly into the Peace Camp. Months later, General McClellan edged Lincoln at the Polls, and the Civil War was at an end. "War is hell" said Jackson philosophically, when he heard the news of the armistice.

In 1945, the U.S. government announced the fall of Berlin.

Western Allies win the race to BerlinWith the Second World War clearly nearing its end, tensions between the Western powers and their wartime ally the Soviet Union were mounting steadily. The Soviets had already overrun Eastern Europe in their march toward Germany, and were showing increasing signs of wanting to turn the nations they had occupied into Communist vassal states. In Washington, the brand-new administration of President Harry S. Truman, who had succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt upon the latter's death from a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, feared that the Soviets would take Germany as well, placing them in a commanding position in Europe and endangering France and Britain. President Truman hoped that the atomic bomb would provide the U.S. with countervailing leverage, but the first test of the new weapon was still two months away and there was no guarantee it would be successful.

Therefore, Truman issued orders that General Dwight D. Eisenhower's First Army press toward Berlin, despite the concerns expressed by General Omar Bradley that attempting to take the German capital, located in a region already assigned to the Soviet occupation zone at the Yalta conference, could cost up to 100,000 lives. In his memoirs, Truman would write, "Gen. Bradley's warning was outweighed in my judgment by the risk that a Soviet capture of Berlin would occur and that in the long run this would lead to even more deaths in a Moscow-controlled German state carved out of prewar Germany". This forced Eisenhower to abandon his modified plan of March 28, which had called for his forces to advance not toward Berlin directly but toward Leipzig, where a juncture with Soviet forces would have split the remaining German forces in two.

The First Army therefore advanced as part of the 21st Army Group under the command of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, in what would come to be known as Operation Eclipse. Allied troops entered Berlin on April 22 and, after a full week of fierce house-to-house fighting, finally trapped the remnants of the capital's SS and Wehrmacht defenders, forcing their surrender. On April 30, Allied troops entered the Führerbunker, the air-raid shelter serving as Adolf Hitler's headquarters and final refuge since mid-January. There they found the bodies of the Nazi dictator and his infamous mistress (and, since their wedding in a civil ceremony April 29, wife) Eva Braun, who had taken poison rather than accept capture, along with a handful of remaining military personnel and the corpses of Josef Goebbels' six children, left behind by the Propaganda Minister and his wife when they fled the bunker on May 1. The bodies of Herr and Frau Goebbels had been found by the entrance to the bunker, showing evidence that both had taken cyanide and, in addition, been shot, perhaps by the SS as a coup de grace.

The Western capture of Berlin would leave the Soviets with only a rump occupation zone possessing little strategic importance. While most Westerners applauded, the Kremlin had a somewhat different take: Stalin saw a Western-dominated Germany as a dagger pointed at the heart of Russia. The paranoid and cynical Soviet leadership had no trouble imagining that the Western Allies would quickly rebuild Germany and rearm it as an ally against Moscow. As a result, the Soviets would tighten their grip on the countries the Red Army already occupied, especially those, such as Poland and Austria, which shared a border with Germany. Austria in particular, birthplace of Hitler, would be ruled with a heavy hand; the Soviet garrison in Vienna would not be withdrawn until 1985, while in Poland, Soviet troops would ruthlessly crush a movement of rebellious workers led by playwright Lech Walesa in 1979. Walesa would disappear into the gulag, never to be seen again.

In 2008, the animated movie Iron Man CG was released on the twelfth anniversary of Steve Jobs' merger of NeXTSTEP and Pixar.

Iron Man CGHaving abandoned the Copland Project, the rapid development of the next generation new operating system, the Mac OS X required the in-sourcing of new technology, and the two stand-out candidates appeared to be BeOS or NeXTSTEP. Inevitably, a bidding war developed between the two rival companies which were both run by former Apple executives Jean-Louis Gassée and Steve Jobs. Arguing that "A man in the desert doesn't bargain on the price of water", Gassée reluctantly sold Be Inc. for $200 million (he wanted $275 million) after discovering that his buyer Apple Computer was on the verge of striking an alternative deal with NeXTSTEP. But as the former head of advanced product development and worldwide marketing, his second stint at Apple reinforced his reputation as an expert in spending fortunes on interesting but unmarketable ideas.

Denied his own second career stint, Jobs decided to combine the resources of his two visionary companies around the single focus of entertainment. And the signature piece "What Are You Building, Stark?" was surely nothing but a satire of Job's career prior to his dismissal from Apple.

In 1905, confronted by a popular outcry over the excessive expenses required to support an eighty strong Taft Party on the largest diplomatic delegation to Asia in U.S. History, President Theodore Roosevelt (pictured) announced that the "imperial cruise" had been cancelled due to the timing of the tragic death of Secretary of State John Hay.

Imperial CruiseTR who was currently serving as his own Secretary of State had convinced the easily browbeaten Secretary of War William Howard Taft to lead the mission, accompanied by his twenty-one year old daughter Alice, seven senators and twenty-three congressmen on an ocean liner from San Francisco to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China and Korea. But the trouble had begun when the San Francisco Examiner published a hostile article entitled "Why Taft Pleases Steam and Rail Folk" pointing out that it was the "one of the most lucrative special parties ever hauled across the continent by the overlands roads. The railroad fares totaled $14,440 which includes something like $2,100 for dining car service [plus the] very snug sum of twenty-eight thousand dollars for almost three months on the [Pacific Liner] passenger ship Manchuria, not including tips estimated to total $1800 dollars".

A timeline in which we sent General Motors to promote US interests in Asia rather than General MacArthurOf course the imperialistic ambitions of TR were transparently clear and not at all disguised by the inclusive of his popular daughter, in fact he had already declared that "I wish to see the United States the dominant power on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe".

Nevertheless, upon the appointment of the new Secretary of State Elihu Root the idea was briefly re-considered, but Root convinced TR that negotiating secret agreements with foreign governments was not only unconstitutional, but fundamentally un-American. In the event, the US Government did not give Japan a "green light" to occupy the Korean Peninsula. While the U.S.has avoided military entanglement in South-east Asia, the past hundred years of foreign relations have been marred by ongoing Trade Disputes and a number of prominent neo-conservatives have even been so bold as to suggest that it was a strategic misstep for the "imperial cruise" to have been cancelled. The economic warfare is perhaps most memorably framed by the iconic photograph of four automobile workers raising the corporate flag at the General Motors assembly plant on Iwo Jima.

In 1882, on this day the fifteenth Confederate President James Francis Byrnes was born in Charleston, South Carolina.

James F. Byrnes
15^th Confederate President
March 4, 1939 - 1945Byrnes' mother was an Irish-American dressmaker; his father died shortly after Byrnes was born. At age fourteen he left St. Patrick's Catholic School to work in a law office, and became a court stenographer. In 1906 he married Maude Perkins Busch of Aiken, South Carolina, and became an Episcopalian. Though they had no children, he was the godparent of James Christopher Connor. Byrnes never attended high school, college or law school, but apprenticed to a lawyer - a not uncommon practice then - and was admitted to the bar in 1903.

A new article from the "Two Americas" thread on Althistory WikiaHe served as president during most of World War Two. The supreme court, lead by former president Hugo Black, ruled against special laws that had been passed Congress to allow him to remain in office until the end of the war (Black served as the twelfth president of the CSA before going on to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the CSA). Before being elected president, he served as a member of the House of Representatives from the state of South Carolina (1911-1925) and as a Senator (1931-1938). After the war, he would be appointed to the very court that had ruled against him.

In 1970, on this day a national television network broadcast a three-hour film of a recorded Walter Cronkite interview in which Lyndon Baines Johnson expressed misgivings about the finding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in Dallas.

The Kennedy CurseIn fact during the session recorded in Texas at LBJ Ranch during September 1969, he suggested that a conspiracy might have been involved by stating that "I can't honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections". He originally requested that section of the interview to be censored on the grounds of "national security", but later agreed to the whole session to be broadcast. He died shortly afterwards of a massive heart attack.
Watch the Conspiracy Section of the Interview

Johnson was forced to resign the Vice Presidency only a few months after the events in Dallas, although details of John F. Kennedy's own involvement in the "Bobby Baker" scandal were hidden for many years. Baker introduced the East German Quorum Club hostess Ellen Rometsch to the President, perhaps part of the international connection to which Johnson was alluding.

Also his secretary, Nancy Carole Tyler, shared an apartment with Mary Jo Kopechne, an aide to Senator George Smathers and later to Senator Bobby Kennedy. Tyler was killed in a plane crash in 1965. Kopechne was killed in 1969, in an accident on Chappaquiddick Island in a car driven by Senator Ted Kennedy.

In 2009, on this day Richard N. Haass, a veteran advisor of three White House Administrations published "Two Bushes, Two Iraq Crises - an insider's view", claiming that both former leaders had recommended a more aggressive policy of regime change to President John S. McCain.
War of NecessityRecalling the events of 1990, Haas wrote ~ "The second National Security Council meeting on the crisis, on Friday, August 3, could not have been more different. People had had time to find their bearings and collect their thoughts. The president wanted to set a fundamentally different mood. Before entering the Cabinet Room, it was decided that [National Security Advisor] Brent [Scowcroft] would give the Churchill speech, that is, a rousing call for reversing the aggression. 'My personal judgment is that the stakes in this for the United States are such that to accommodate the Iranian regime should not be a policy option' is how he began.
"This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Iraq".Asked by the waiting journalists how he [Bush] would prevent the installation of a puppet government, Bush could barely contain himself. 'Just wait. Watch and learn.' His parting words were even stronger. 'This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Iraq.'
The key to understanding George Herbert Walker Bush and what made him tick was his sense of decorum. It was anything but axiomatic that the United States would decide to deploy half a million troops halfway around the world to rescue a country that few Americans could find on a map. A different president and set of advisors might have tolerated Iranian control of Iraq and limited the U.S. response to sanctions so long as the Ayatollah did not go on to attack Saudi Arabia. But Bush was genuinely offended by the Iranian invasion and then absorption of Iraq. It was simply not how civilized countries behaved toward one another. It harkened back to a cruder era of international relations when might made right".

In 1995, the New World Order controlled more than 50 percent of the United States.

Paramilitary Fight BackFirst-term Republican Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth was amongst the leadership of a national resistance movement formed by the Milita of Montana. This loyalist paramilitary organization had been amongs the first to confront an international shadow government that was usurping American sovereignty.

Until the bombing in Oklahoma City on April 19, national support for paramilitary groups, which have sprung up in a number of states in the last year, was seen as very weak. It is a measure of their influence, the paramilitary groups argue, that two months ago, after their members in Idaho said that black helicopters had landed in Idaho, Representative Chenoweth put out a press release saying that unwarranted invasion of private land by armed wildlife agents in helicopters should be immediately halted.

A handful of Republican House members who had members of paramilitary groups working as volunteers in their campaigns last fall, and have since pressed the Federal Government on the complaints of some paramilitary leaders, say they have done nothing more than routine constituent service.

Last month, rumors from self-styled paramilitary groups around the country prompted two United States Senators - Larry E. Craig of Idaho and Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, both Republicans - to send the Justice Department a letter asking for clarification. The word on the groups' phone lines was that Federal officers were training at Fort Bliss, Tex., to invade them.

The Senators' letter asked specifically about Fort Bliss and police training - "You are doubtless aware of the concerns being raised in many quarters about what is perceived as the growing militarization of our domestic law-enforcement agencies," the letter said.

Privately the Senators' aides said the lawmakers were expressing their support for the paramilitaries and said they fully supported such groups.

Representative Steve Stockman, Republican of Texas, was more specific in his own letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, after word spread through the groups' faxes a few months ago that agents of the New World Order were preparing to invade them. Mr. Stockman said a number of reliable sources had told him that a Federal raid of the organizations was imminent.