Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Some events and anniversaries around Lunar New Year 2024 – Valentine's Day/Lent – late winter/early spring

Some links, notes, florilegium



Amphibians out on roads:  roadsendnaturalist.com/2024/01/28/celebration-of-life/ and   roadsendnaturalist.com/2024/02/13/theyre-at-it-again/

In Atlanta, GA  stopcop.city

ccrjustice.org/supporting-movement-stop-cop-city

2/6 prisoners striking– freealabamamovement.wordpress.com

Congressional action  secure.rightsanddissent.org/a/702-secret-session

Red Day Sale at Verso Books February 13-18 – www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/roses-are-red-and-so-am-i-red-day-sale  Lenin, etc.

The 14th Amendement  peaceandplanetnews.org/persons-and-constitutional-rights/

peaceandplanetnews.org/for-gods-sake-joe-what-the-hell-are-you-doing/

www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-torture

Canadian Palestine and Rafah protests  cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/MS5411.HTM#1

Electronic Intifada today; Sinn Fein reference  www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-y3CdR3Uw

Marianne Williamson out 2/7/2024 and 1/10/2020, she endorsed Bernie Sanders 2/23/20 in TX

counterinformation.wordpress.com/2024/02/14/dhs-secretary-mayorkas-personally-declined-presidential-candidate-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-request-for-secret-service-protection/

Raleigh CC meeting disrupted, ended 2/13 over Palestine; Durham CC in a week?


public.substack.com/p/cia-had-foreign-allies-spy-on-trump

The FBI and Duke  www.dukechronicle.com/article/2024/02/duke-university-a-look-back-on-a-century-of-activism-duke-centennial-archives-protests-strikes

A Hulu ad against Gaza? – www.workers.org/2024/02/76888/  ADC on an ad on CBS

www.globalresearch.ca/bombshell-treasury-dept-admits-targeting-maga-finances-without-due-process/5849240

"Authoritarian" Nikki Haley in SC – affront the veterans = should not be in the White House and no driving  it is hard to vote in NC without a DL or other ID...  www.ncsbe.gov/voting/voter-id  NPR's Steve Inskeep brings up her foreign policy experience, versus Trump, which is a negative point.

2013 to today; Amanpour and Co., really  usrussiaaccord.org/acura-viewpoint-james-w-carden-the-disinformation-complex-and-us-foreign-policy/

events.worldbeyondwar.org/

Cuba; Sign by 2/23  acere.org/revisit_us_cuba_policy/

Twitter + other EFF articles  SF, CA spying:  www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/save-your-twitter-account

New Comprehensive Plan, Durham UDO Rewrite event 2/22 6-7pm:  us02web.zoom.us/j/87549148351#success


A Durham ceasefire resolution vote 2/12 (no?), and in Denver, CO– robertjprince.net/2024/02/12/palestine-tet-104-denver-colorado-to-vote-on-a-ceasefire-proclamation-today-monday-february-12-2024/  And note, in Somalilandrobertjprince.net/2024/02/12/red-sea-tensions-increase/



Watch out for amphibians on roads:  roadsendnaturalist.com/2024/01/28/celebration-of-life/    

An old forest in the Bronx, NYC:  www.atlasobscura.com/places/thain-family-forest

UNAC petition for an anti-war activist targeted in Germany:   durhamspark.blogspot.com/2023/12/unac-drop-charges-against-war-critic.html  

Honduras/JOH actionsactionnetwork.org/letters/take-action-demand-that-congress-investigate-us-complicity-in-the-rise-of-a-narco-state-in-honduras-following-the-2009-coup-detat 

actionnetwork.org/forms/organizational-sign-on-demand-that-congress-investigate-us-complicity-in-the-rise-of-a-narco-state-in-honduras-following-the-2009-coup-detat 

In Canadaafgj.salsalabs.org/2024HondurasCANAction/index.html  

www.hondurasnow.org/category/campaigns/narco-trial-campaign/ – "JOH" on trial in New York February 12th, not on the 5th?

In prisonwww.workers.org/2024/02/76705/

City of Durham surveys, road work schedules www.durhamnc.gov/5099/Roadway-Resurfacing-Projects-in-2024

I missed this earlier Afton, Warren County anti-PCB dump protests from around 1978; an exhibit was 8/18 – 12/22/02022 at UNC:  library.unc.edu/2022/08/we-birthed-the-movement/



www.rsn.org/001/georgia-police-and-fbi-conduct-swatstyle-raids-on-cop-city-activists-homes.html

Arrested 2/5 – www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/02/11/free-samaher-esmail/

www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/02/11/under-attack-for-solidarity-with-palestine-nyc-students-are-fighting-back/

Merle Ratner  www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/02/10/anti-war-activist-merle-ratner-mourned-in-vietnam/ and vietnamwar.nyhistory.org/oral-histories/259/

itself.blog/2024/02/11/the-information-environment-toward-a-deeper-enshittification-thesis/

Anti-China Tucker Carlson, and the CIA?  www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/02/11/putin-debunks-tucker-carlsons-warmongering-anti-china-propaganda-mocks-his-cia-ties/

braveneweurope.com/geoffrey-roberts-ignorance-is-not-bliss-ten-egregious-historical-mis-analogies-of-the-russo-ukrainian-war

thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/02/11/going-the-last-mile/

VI Lenin in film diario-octubre.com/2024/02/11/en-el-dia-mundial-del-cine/

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13067751/Outrage-Biden-administration-admits-surveilling-Americans-private-financial-transactions-words-like-MAGA-Trump-Kamala-wake-Jan-6-riots-people-buying-BIBLES-watchlist.html

Facebook censorship  ? theintercept.com/2024/02/08/facebook-instagram-censor-zionist-israel/

? justthenews.com/government/security/navy-removes-third-commander-duty-year

? www.rt.com/news/592251-epstein-new-photo-released/

? www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13013261/PETER-HITCHENS-death-blackouts-brainless-march-war.html


counterinformation.wordpress.com/2024/02/09/israel-is-losing-this-war/

DEA plot geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/02/05/us-dea-spy-venezuela-mexico-bolivia/

counterinformation.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/study-finds-media-giants-new-york-times-cnn-and-fox-news-pushing-for-us-war-in-yemen/

informationclearinghouse.blog/2024/02/08/breaking-yemeni-houthi-official-statement/13/

fair.org/home/at-northwestern-u-distributing-a-parody-paper-gets-you-threatened-with-prison/

newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/syncretic-past

On Gantz   newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/false-alternative

On Hezbollah  newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/asymmetries

counterinformation.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/biden-administration-is-silent-as-former-pakistani-prime-minister-is-sentenced-to-10-years-for-revealing-how-the-u-s-pushed-for-his-removal/


informationclearinghouse.blog/2024/02/07/no-evidence-of-unrwa-hamas-allegations/11/ 

www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/08/the-dangers-of-complicity-the-us-courts-gaza-andgenocide/

www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/08/why-the-us-is-the-warring-state-in-israel/

www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/08/biden-netanyahu-and-the-voices-in-the-rubble/ 

www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/07/breaching-the-iron-wall-how-palestinians-crushed-jabotinskys-century-old-ideas/ 

www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/05/tomorrow-belongs-to-palestine/

On RIMPAC 2024  www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/08/cancel-rimpac-2024-stop-the-u-s-war-machine-from-hawaiʻi-to-palestine-to-the-philippines/

www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/08/war-against-working-people-war-against-the-world/

The CIA, "Vault 7," Joshua Schulte sentenced 2/1  www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/07/unaccountable-hackers-the-cia-vengeance-and-joshua-schulte/ and rightsdissent.substack.com/p/what-the-vault-7-source-sentence


2/10 NPR:  Trapped Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, 6, killed, with others, rescuers www.commondreams.org/news/hind-rajab ); the BBC played her emergency call, but not NPR?  Dual nationals trapped; parents of someone working on Perseverance.


2/9:  Was no one punished for rioting in Florida to help George W Bush win office in 2000, etc., but xyz about Donald Trump now?

NPR:  1,4-dioxane free in Pittsboro 2/9; HRA:  Burlington Tarheel Missile Plant cleanup to begin next week – made Nike missiles ; flooding = not a stormwater violation?

DPS worker/staff walk-ins 2/7 and no classes 2/9 and 12.  2/5 7 schools were closed.

February 7th:  "Tucker Carlson is a propagandist, not a serious journalist," so he shouldn't interview Putin (give him a "platform," to sow dissent on Biden's war in Ukraine) says former (and always?) UK spook Christopher Steele, unlike some imprisoned Voice of America journalist and the WSJ guy, and the BBC'always anti-Russian and anti-Soviet Steve Rosenberg; Putin is "an indicted war criminal" (unlike Biden and Netanyahu) and China 'must' have told him to stop threatening that 'all options are on the table' (which no one prominent ever seems to say to a US president in public).  Others have called for an EU travel ban against Carlson or US arrest.  Carlson's hacked emails put out by the 'lovely' NSA and Co.?  'Unbelieveable' that they praised propagandists Rosenberg, NPR's Steve Inskeep, and Vice/NPR Todd Zwilick (?) on 1A 2/9 – they would put Putin in his place...

February 5th – Is McDonald's boycotting Russia?  Apparently people in the Middle East are boycotting McDonald's.

Whatever the retiring head of the NSA says about domestic spying, etc must be true; and journalists took their cellphones into a center for phone tapping (and even submitted to  fingerprinting there?)?  "Fact check" or ignore whatever Trump supporters, Putin, etc. say, and believe spooks and repeat people who want war with Yemen, Iran, or Russia.


www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/06/why-the-us-is-reimposing-sanctions-on-venezuela/ 

www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/06/the-confessions-of-thomas-friedman/

Targeting Dearborn, MI over Palestine?


newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/unlearning-machines

mronline.org/2024/01/20/the-eye-of-the-master-a-social-history-of-artificial-intelligence-book-review/


"The [UK] government have branded the demos ‘hate marches’ and introduced legislation to criminalize the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. They’ve also launched a crackdown on smaller fringe groups. The Muslim outfit Hizb ut-Tahrir has been labelled a terrorist organization – which obviously it isn’t, although we might disagree with it on most issues [Hizb ut-Tahrir banned by the UK 1/19, banned in Russia, etc., but but not here]. Police have also arrested members of a small Maoist organization called the CPGB-ML [which one?], raided their houses and confiscated their literature. People in the Muslim community are being told that their children can’t talk about Palestine in school, otherwise they’ll be reported under the Prevent legislation. There is a real effort, from different sections of the establishment, to present pro-Palestine activists as Hamas supporters or antisemites. But despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail and the Metropolitan Police, they only ever manage to find about half a dozen people at each march who they can claim are carrying questionable placards." – newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/ukania-and-palestine  


www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/05/is-a-new-korean-war-in-the-offing/

www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-ouster-of-imran-khan – 2/8 election

Moving nuclear weapons  www.commondreams.org/news/us-nuclear-weapons-uk

www.commondreams.org/news/israel-jenin-hospital

www.commondreams.org/news/israel-executions

www.commondreams.org/news/israel-home-destruction

Two on Nancy Pelosiwww.commondreams.org/news/ceasefire-2667108639

www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/29/smearing-ceasefire-protesters-pelosi-combines-devotion-to-israel-with-cold-war-mania/


www.commondreams.org/news/youth-fight-back-as-biden-doj-seeks-to-derail-historic-climate-case

? – www.commondreams.org/news/eu-farmers-biodiversity

? – www.commondreams.org/opinion/billionaires-cannot-save-journalism

Note? – mronline.org/2024/01/30/the-churning-of-the-global-order/

mronline.org/2024/01/31/swarming-the-u-s-in-west-asia-until-it-folds/

mronline.org/2024/01/23/chip-wars-breaking-the-siege/

mronline.org/2024/01/30/citgo-a-multi-billion-dollar-heist/


Trotskyist? – mronline.org/2024/01/30/lenins-last-testament/ 

Trotskyist? – roape.net/2024/01/21/learning-from-lenin-today/

The Real Story BBC February 2nd? 3rd? Questionable? – mronline.org/2024/01/09/in-xi-jinpings-china-is-chairman-mao-back/

www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/02/05/karl-marxs-debt-to-people-of-african-descent/


www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/05/diagnosing-warming-winter-syndrome/

In CT? – www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/05/any-way-you-look-at-it-you-lose/

consortiumnews.com/2024/01/31/russiagate-gaza/

The Elbit 6 – consortiumnews.com/2024/01/30/long-retrial-wait-for-uks-elbit-six/

consortiumnews.com/2024/02/01/us-judge-rejects-us-complicity-case-on-technical-grounds/

consortiumnews.com/2024/01/25/legal-bullying-aims-to-silence-campus-critics-of-israel/

MH17 – consortiumnews.com/2024/02/01/icj-rules-against-ukraine-v-russia-on-terrorism-mh17/ 


Heard on The World January 31st? A discoverer?  'virtually impossible to use CRISPR unethically' (on humans), because of alleged regulations, complexity (?!?), etc. – but using it to engineer domestic and wild plants and animals out in the environment for whatever reason is just fine?  Maybe it was on Amanpour – moving and "editing" genes through genetic engineering = traditional crop selection...  


2/7 – Transgenic indeterminate purple cherry tomatoes will be sold to home gardeners precisely because people are finding out that GMOs allow more pesticide use in agriculture.  Monarchs?  The purple cherry tomatoes have color from snapdragons, not very related plants.  Unintended consequences – for example, what if buckeye butterflies, which eat snapdragons or related plants as caterpillars, get confused and lay eggs on these plants, though their caterpillars probably can't eat tomatoes?  Non-native tropical milkweed might pose a similar problem for monarch butterflies without being GMOs.

 www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/30/mattole-river-salmon-welcoming-celebration-2023/


consortiumnews.com/2024/01/31/russiagate-gaza/

Palestine, Lenin – www.workers.org/2024/01/76468/

informationclearinghouse.blog/2024/01/31/stupid-macho-u-s-electioneering-will-push-biden-into-doomed-war/13/

orbooks.com/

UChicago's Bruce Cumings interview, Korea – apjjf.org/2024/1/Kim-Cumings.html 


Crime and social policy in Ecuador:  newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/chaos-in-ecuador   

Baluchistan, Iran, and Pakistan:  newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/the-baluchistan-imbroglio   

WEB Du Bois as a Jeffersonian newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/marx-or-jefferson


The calendar in January:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2024/01/some-events-and-anniversaries-around.html

This was in addition to the much longer December 1st calendar post:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2023/12/some-events-and-anniversaries-in-late.html and the shorter December 8th:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2023/12/additional-events-and-anniversaries-in.html ,  December 14th:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2023/12/more-events-and-anniversaries-in-early.html  and December 31st posts:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2023/12/some-unac-and-adc-statements-and-.html 


The calendar in November 2022:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2022/11/events-and-anniversaries-around-years.html   Late winter 2023:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2023/02/some-events-and-anniversaries-in-late.html



In December two emaciated sperm whales found dead in NC; 92 cetaceans a year, very few of them "whales?" 10 or 10%?  biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/north-atlantic-right-whale-calf-member-of-critically-endangered-species-likely-to-die-from-vessel-strike-injuries-2024-01-10/ 


A police officer in Boxtel, Netherlands followed a "balloon" for miles, to find that it was a pigeon dropping  FT439.  An alleged Chinese spy pigeon in India was just a homing/racing pigeon, from ? It was unceremoniously released at the beginning of February 2024.  An alleged spy whale in Scandinavia and a cat in London, UK.  


– A new book on the Soviet space program  nss.org/book-review-cosmonaut-a-cultural-history/


ncnewsline.com/2024/01/05/coal-ash-more-hazardous-than-previously-known-epa-says-could-alter-chapel-hill-cleanup-plan/


hawriver.org/public-statement-major-changes-to-the-proposed-mvp-southgate-route-would-exclude-alamance-and-much-of-rockingham/



Astronomy / Stargazing



According to the February issue of Astronomy magazine, asteroid 4 Vesta is in Taurus, by zeta Tauri, at the southern horn tip, the other being El Nath, by Auriga, in early January, visible with binoculars.  The Crab Nebula is nearby.  Zeta Tauri was called Tien Kwan, the Gate of Heaven (in China?) and related to the Babylonian Shur-narkabti-sha-shuutuu.  Halley's Comet was first seen nearby on a return in August 1835.  There was a nova in Auriga near El Nath January 24, 1892:  Star Names:  Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen, introduction dated February 16, 1899.  Asteroid 37 Fides (discovered October 5, 1855 by Karl Theodor Robert Luther, April 16, 1822 in Świdnica, Poland  – February 15, 1900 Düsseldorf, Germanywas near El Nath.  A NYC or Chicago skyscraper-sized asteroid passed by the Earth February 2nd.  


Some quite dim comets are 'up;' Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks north of Pegasus has a proneness to fluctuate in brightness by the night and could reach magnitude 4.5 in April.  It is approaching for the spring and summer of 2024 and might be the source of the very weak K-Draconid meteors here in December and meteor showers that hit VenusComet 144P/Kushida is in Taurus, C/2021 S3 (PanSTARS) is near Antares in Scorpius the Scorpion, and Comet 62P/Tsuchinshan, discovered January 1, 1965 at Nanjing's Purple Mountain, or Tsuchinshan, Observatory is in Virgo.  Zodiacal light, if very dark, so not here, and a few meteors, no major showers, around now.  Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) as the best comet of 2023, at magnitude 2.5? – I'm not sure that I ever heard of it.


Uranus, potentially visible without optical aids, is in Aries near (and approaching?) very bright Jupiter, also in Aries, while Neptune is close to the south of the Circlet of Pisces.  A new study, using old Voyager photos, claims that Uranus and Neptune are both very pale bluish-white, not green and blue respectively?  Saturn is in Aquarius (?) in the evening, relatively near the star Fomalhaut, in position and brilliancein the evening.  Saturn was about two degreesouth of the waxing Moon and about six degrees high in the sky on February 10th, from 12 degrees on the 1st, and will be in superior conjunction with the Sun at 4pm on the 28th, and up in the morning a month later.  The Moon was new February 9th at 5:59pm, amnd will be at first quarter on the 16th at 10:01am and full on the 24th at 7:30am.  Mars is a rising morning star and will be near sinking Venus February 22nd.  Mercury is alssinking in the morning sky, to superior conjunction with the Sun at 4am on the 28th.  Mars will reach opposition and be bright in a year.  


Scorpius, Ursa Major, Arcturus (the fourth brightesstar in the night sky, in Bootes), Hercules, Draco, and Vega (fifth brightest) in Lyra the Lyre, Cygnus the Swan, Aquila the Eagle, and Opiuchus, are high or even in the wesin the morning now.


I recently came across a quote claiming that light pollution has been a worse problem for religion than philosophical argument.


Upcoming star parties and Astronomy Month (May? Spring Astronomy Day May 18th; NC Science Fest events in April?) and two Astronomy Days (May 18th and October 12th) events in Jamestown, NCFrench Camp, M(May 8-11)Scout Key, Florida (February 5-11), Fort Davis, TX (April 5-9, during the solar eclipse); Aquilla, TX, Gardner, CO (June 5-9); more than one in Pennsylvania (June 6-9, etc); Suffern, NY (April 20-21); Grand Canyon, AZ (June 1-8); Valentine, NE (July 28-August 2); Oroville, WA (July 30-August 3); Indian Trail Spring, OR (July 30-August 4) Springfield, VT (August 1-4), Spruce Knob, WV (August 30-September 3)  London, UK and across the world are listed at is.gd/star_parties  


The Northern Hemisphere's spring equinox will be March 19th at 11:06pm EDT (off because of DT?:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox )  


A giant sunspot, AR3576, – spaceweather.com



Palestine



A protest every Sunday, or most, at 2 or 3pm at Raleigh's Moore Square?


A Durham CC ceasefire resolution 2/12? 


Demanding a ceasefire resolution – send a letter to Wake County's Deborah Ross at:  actionnetwork.org/letters/email-to-deborah-ross/  Green Michael Dublin is running for her US Congress 2nd District seat.


ifamericansknew.org/about_us/action.html


johnlennonreturns.com/ 


The Sinn Fein Bookshop and maybe Sambar Trading (both addresses listed on the right) have had a lot of Palestine or Arab solidarity related gear, long before the current war:  www.sinnfeinbookshop.com/ and sambartrading.com/



Elections 



State political buttons are apparently a potentially lucrative trend with the presidential campaigns this year, starting with Marianne Williamson's state bird pins, or have I been missing this every four years?  shop.marianne2024.com/  


A January 2nd press release from the North Carolina State Board of Elections regarding the 2024 presidential preference primary March 5th – 10 Libertarians, 7 Republicans, and one Democrat are listed, while the Green Party and No Labels will nominate at their conventions.  The Constitution Party is not mentioned.  The other candidates will have to petition for ballot access:   www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2023/12/19/state-board-approves-presidential-primary-candidates


Jill Stein just won in KS, the first Green Party presidential primary, but no primary in NC.  Schedule?


Democratic Party presidential primaries January 23rd in NH (without Biden), February 3rd in SC (NPR covered it like they were Biden campaign staff, and was there even a choice of candidates?  Why vote on the presidential ticket?  February 5th NPR's fundraiser began, and they said how fact-based, balanced, and inclusive they are.)February 6th in NV (Apparently Marianne Williamson, but not Dean Phillips, was on the ballot) , February 27th in MI; March 5th Super Tuesday includes NC and many other(protest instead of voting on the presidential ticket, because the current ballot in NC has only one of the candidates, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr?), and the process ends June 8th:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries  The Florida Democratic Party apparently doesn't even want to have a primary.


The Republican Party presidential primaries are somewhat different:  January 15th Iowa caucus (NPR covered Nikki Haley so much afterward and then not, maybe not even around the 23rd)January 23rd NH primary, February 8th NV primary and caucus and Virgin Islands caucus, February 24th SC, February 27th MI primary, March 2-4, etc; March 5th Super Tuesday includes NC, and the process ends June 4th:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries 




EVENTS




Art Deco:  Defining an Era – January 27-April 21 in SC:  www.brookgreen.org/events/art-deco-defining-era-0 


The only Triangle or NC weather prognosticating groundhog left is in Garner?  But there are armadilloes– triangleonthecheap.com/groundhog-day-garner/ 


Astronomy Days February 3-4:  triangleonthecheap.com/astronomy-days-north-carolina-museum-natural-sciences/ 


Wikipedia editing event 11am-1pm February 3rd at the Chapel Hill Public Library?


An annuapowwow at the NCSSM in Durham; February 3rd 12-5pm triangleonthecheap.com/powwow-north-carolina-school-of-science-and-mathematics/


The annuaNew Year sale at Verso Bookends February 4th at 11:59pm ET:  www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/xxx-1  Verso means the left page of a book, versus recto.


NLG ICJ webinar February 5 930pm usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtfuuvpj8iE9MVgRHjMRv_d90O0LqNX5f1#/registration


February 6th in SC:  www.brookgreen.org/events/red-wolves-smoky-mountains-bill-landry-and-lynn-hodges  


Native coastal plants talk and giveaway February 7th 10am in Morehead City, free but registration at:  www.eventbrite.com/e/2024-master-gardener-speaker-event-tickets-789473635897


calendar.unc.edu/event/davis_library_40th_anniversary in the Davis Library Atrium at UNC, Wednesday 7th February 3-5pm R #Davis40


Guantanamo protest days of action February 7th and March 6th. 


There will be a Durham Unified Development Ordinance Open House February 8th 11:30am-1:30pm at 2000 South Alston:  engagedurham.com/211/Get-Involved 


 Lunar New Year events in the Triangle:  triangleonthecheap.com/lunar-new-year-triangle/ 


Kami-Con will be February 9 – 11 in Birmingham, Alabama:  www.kamicon.net/star 


A powwow February 9 – 11 in Hollywood Floridacalendar.powwows.com/events/seminole-tribal-fair-and-pow-wow/ 


The NC Botanical Garden's Darwin Day Lecture 2024 will be Monday, February 12th 7-8pm – "Using science-fiction depictions to learn real-world evolution concepts" with Mohamed Noor, a professor of biology, interim vice provost at Duke, and a consultant for Star Trek series:   reg.learningstream.com/reg/event_page.aspx?ek=0005-0014-e26d3b3d83b74d57b1592ecafa675cba


There will be events for Saving Our Savannas: Stories of the Longleaf Pine over the next five months.


The Lunar New Year will be Saturday, February 10th in 2024.


Webinar South Africa vs Israel:  The International Coalition Against Genocide, February 11th at 11am EST


VFP webinar climate change – 2/13 PM, 2nd Tuesdays every month


Spring Lights Out for migrating birds March 15-May 31 Wake Audubon meeting talk February 13th 7:30-9pm:  us02web.zoom.us/j/83137865298#success


BAJ meeting 2/13 –


    "7:30 PM Tuesday February 13
  at Community Church of Chapel Hill
              106 Purefoy Rd
  Balance & Accuracy in Journalism 
                        program:
Matthew Hoh and Ray McGovern 
return to our podium, bringing documentary video 
of their Veterans For Peace delegation 
           to Israel/Palestine

   What do we need to know 
   as we evaluate events in Gaza?
   Is there anything to learn about occupation,
   from both sides of the experience?

Our two speakers are known at home and abroad for their interviews
analyzing current issues. Ray’s position at CIA placed him
at the heart of US international affairs for decades… continuing
now as cofounder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Matt’s occupation experience as Marine captain in Iraq and as 
State Department officer in Afghanistan illuminate his insights.

Both are interviewed each week on the Youtube program
“Judging Freedom,” a program with 250,000 subscribers.
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
              Fertile online flow of connected matters….

Jeff Halper founded Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
decades ago and has written extensively on efforts for peaceful coexistence.
He lays out how and why the erasure of Palestinian existence leads Israel
and the world to the current extreme.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-9i29t1Od8

Dave Zirin’s Edge of Sports previews manipulative 7 million dollar Superbowl ad.

Insightful Gabor Mate' + sons Aaron and Daniel on Gaza Besieged, Jews Divided, respectful discourse

Dr. Norman Finkelstein's insights and warnings 
continue to remind and inform. His 76 minute talk 
on the history of the Gaza strip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWjdxWQ3Smo
finds parallels between the October 7 attack and the 1831 
Nat Turner slave uprising in Virginia.

Global issues journalist PEPE ESCOBAR’s depth and delight
brighten this interview by Danny Haiphong….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "


2/14 – Paperhand Puppet Intervention at the DPAC


2/15 to 3/2 – NC early voting before 3/5 – www.ncsbe.gov/voting/voter-id  

Katsucon 2024 February 16 – 18 in National Harbor, Maryland, near Washington, DC:  www.katsucon.org/ 


AK in the Crosshairs – 2/16-17 – www.akhopecongress.org/symposium


Water Walk – 2/17 all day Eden, NC; Dan River and Lower Saur Town site 7directionsofservice.com/water-walk-2024 


Defeat the Deep State – at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC February 17th:  defeatthedeepstate.org/


HRA Stream Restoration in Durham February 17th 10am-12pm:  docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSePFv0Q4BNSHoRWAFL6uLr-jL3SH7PNi1OKz-Pl76lxdn7JtQ/viewform


2/17  Early Women Botanists  northcarolinanativeplantsociety.wildapricot.org/event-5563860


February 19th PM  Dissenters:  Students Say No to the Military-Industrial Complex (a WIRN webinar)


There will be a HRA State of the Haw presentation at the Chapel Hill Public Library February 21st 6-7pm; RSVP at:  docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfM9XlIlRvM0AZonEKRlzWuXt6J_nZ4DIr5akPTzWve4-aHFQ/viewform  There will be a stream restoration in Durham February 17th 10am-12pm:  docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSePFv0Q4BNSHoRWAFL6uLr-jL3SH7PNi1OKz-Pl76lxdn7JtQ/viewform 


Some upcoming events at the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies that might be of interest, though probably rightist where political; a war-related event February 21st:  jewishstudies.unc.edu/events/upcomingevents/


The fourth annual February 23-24:  hatterasonmymind.com/HVCA/WaterfowlFestival/


Hands Off Uhuru online events on government repression, Leonard Peltier, etc. February 6, 13, 17, and 24.


The annual National Invasive Species Awareness Week will be February 26-March 3:  www.nisaw.org 


February 28th 7-8:30pm Durham's Carolina Theatre Studio Ghibli FilSeries showing of My Neighbor Totoro


VFP webinar nuclear weapons, climate change – 2/29 7PM


MoraMarch on Raleigh and to the Polls March 2nd in NC, ~31 states, in DC in June 21-23:  ppc-nc.org/ and www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/ 


Guantanamo day of action March 6th. 


Banzaicon will be March 8 – 10 in ColumbiaSouth Carolina.  What of Nashicon [ended after 2020:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NashiCon ?]?


10th annual ncartmuseum.org/artinbloom/


[March 16th 12-3pm:  triangleonthecheap.com/holi-festival-morrisville/ ]


March 16 – 23 Durham and Orange County creek weeks [and in Chatham County, Raleigh, Carrboro, etc.] [NC-wide:  www.deq.nc.gov/about/divisions/water-resources/water-resources-public-information/water-education-programs/water-education-and-outreach/nc-creek-week-network ]


[ www.enoriver.org/features/guided-hike-series/ ]


March 16th  34th annual HRA Clean-Up-A-Thon


The annual NC Big Sweep in March?


[From Friends of Bolin Creek:


Wilson Park/Adams Tract Creek Exploring

12:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Wilson Park, 110 Williams St, Carrboro, NC 27510

Join Carrboro staff and volunteers to explore Bolin Creek. Learn about this local waterway and the species that call it home. Dress for a messy good time! USGS and Urban Sustainability Solutions, Inc will host tables with information on how to protect our local waterways.


Gardeners and Bolin Creek Lovers!

March 16 & 23, 2024

9:00 am - 2:00 pm

Meet at Amber Court Cul-de-sac in Carrboro

Please join us to help plant native plants on an eroding hillside above Bolin Creek


Bentonville Battlefield (Civil War) 159th reenactment 3/16 10am-4pm, other events 6/22, 10/26, December 7th in 2024, in Four Oaks:  historicsites.nc.gov/upcoming-events/bentonville-battlefield


[From an aflcionc.org/ update:  


March 18: Duke Law panel about Union Organizing at Amazon RDU

March 18: Durham City workers rally for $25/hour at 6:30p (more info)

March 25-31: National Farmworker Awareness Week

March 26: President Biden and Vice President Harris in Raleigh

March 31: Last day to see Signs of the Times exhibit at NC Museum of History

April 17: Triangle "Labor Spring" event at UNC Chapel Hill

April 28: Workers’ Memorial Day

May 1: May Day

May 11: Letter Carriers’ Food Drive (Stamp Out Hunger)

May 14: 3rd Annual Carolinas Shoot for a Cure fundraiser for the March of Dimes



[From BAJ:


                      7:30pm Tue March 19
        Balance & Accuracy in Journalism
                               hosts
                      SCOTT RITTER
                    and his analysis
                                on
              UKRAINE, GAZA & NUKES
                              at the
Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist 
              106 Purefoy Road, Chapel Hill

                  Former intelligence officer Scott Ritter 
 joins us with up-to-the-minute insights on two ongoing wars.

Unlike the military figures who go onto the boards of arms manufacturers, 
Scott Ritter’s task observing Soviet nuclear weapons destruction and 
his official search of Iraq for what turned out to be fictional “weapons of mass destruction” 
sent him on a path of truth-telling that has kept him engaged in 
major national and international controversies.

Ritter will share insights on the Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza wars.  
Bring your questions for the Q/A following his talk at 106 Purefoy Road, 
at the Community Church of Chapel Hill, for the monthly 
Balance & Accuracy in Journalism (BAJ) program.  

Admission is free but donations gratefully accepted.  

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine intelligence officer who served in the Soviet Union, 
implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf 
during the Gulf War, where he played a critical role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. 
From 1991 until 1998, Ritter served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, 
leading the search for Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. 
Mr. Ritter was a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. 
    His most recent book, 
Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union
is his ninth book and can be purchased at the event.

                       Info: [ ]
                    for Balance & Accuracy in Journalism

            Just over 20 years ago some of us heard Scott Ritter 
            deliver the Great Decisions lecture at UNC, 
            exposing fraudulent claims about Iraq, 
            His report to Congress and the public was blocked.
In the current political climate, would he be invited to speak on campus ?
              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Discussion of the wars has broken through with significant insights
at many independent media.  One surprisingly thoughtful series is the
Youtube program Judging Freedom conducted by former Fox News
interviewer Judge Andrew Napolitano, with guests including Ray McGovern,
Matthew Hoh, Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, Col. McGregor, Jeffrey Sachs, 
John Mearsheimer, Karen Kwiatkowski, and Aaron Mate’.
Democracy Now, weekdays, is available live online from 8-9am and any time later.
WCOM LPFM Carrboro offers Alternative RadioMaking Contact, and Counterspin.
Useful Idiots features Katie Halper and Aaron Mate’ with lively interviews plus
on Monday a sarcastic review of the Sunday talk programs, “Which we watch 
so you don’t have to!” Empire Files with Abby Martin is insightful, as is international
content on Breakthrough News with Rania Khalek and Eugene Puryear.
For text with occasional video, Yves Smith’s NakedCapitalism.com offers
"Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power."
And weekly, long, rambling discussions between Scott Ritter and Jeff Norman
include questions from viewers:  Searching Ask the Inspector delivers various 
clips from programs.

Send me your favorites to [ ] and I’ll try and fit them 
into our BAJ info sheet which is also available by email, for live links.   
            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"


[March 20-April 14 in DC:  nationalcherryblossomfestival.org ]


World Water Day at Chapel Hill's Umstead Park 12-4pm March 23rd [WILPF, etc.].


[March 23rd, 9am-12pm:  meetup.com/helpcleanjordanlake ]


3/23-29 Sacred Peace Walk in Nevada nevadadesertexperience.org/spw-about/


The NC Pilgrimage?? [March 25, 27, 29:  www.facebook.com/events/243111982128379 ]


[RFK Jr VP March 26th:  www.kennedy24.com/vp-announcement ]


The annual Triad Anime Con will be March 29 – 31 in Winston-Salem, NC [and www.animeboston.com ]


The African-American Legacy in Gardening and Horticulture Symposium March 30th:


Hayti Heritage Center
804 Old Fayetteville Street, Durham NC 27701
March 30, 2024, 10 a.m.
Free and Open to the Public



Signs of the Times protest exhibit at the NC Museum of History until March 31st:  www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/exhibits/signs-times


International Dark Sky Week 4/2-8/2024


UNAC anti-war conference April 5-7th in Saint Paul, Minnesota (see earlier post)


[NCBG spring lecture 4/7:  reg.learningstream.com/reg/event_page.aspx?ek=0005-0014-3f9d6261c9c24912bab722e18f7fb486 ]


eclipsesoundscapes.org citizen science project for the solar eclipse April 8, 2024. 


April 13th 8:30am-12:30pm – 3rd annuarunsignup.com/Race/NC/Graham/HawRiverIslandRamble and 6K.


The 22nd annual ClydeFEST will be April 14th 12-5pmwww.chathamartscouncil.org/clydefest-2024/


[Taxes are due April 15thwww.irs.gov/newsroom/2024-tax-filing-season-starts-as-irs-begins-accepting-tax-returns-today-taxpayer-help-expands-this-year-with-more-in-person-hours-better-service-improved-tools ]


4/27  Eden, NC 2nd annual powwow calendar.powwows.com/events/annual-youth-pow-wow-eden-nc/


4/27 – peacewalk2024.org


[4/28 the park West Point on the Eno at 50:  www.enoriver.org/events-on-the-eno/ ]

  

The 20th annuaSpring Shakori Hill Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance will be May 2-5 in Pittsboro, Chatham County, NC:  www.shakorihillsgrassroots.org/tickets


The People's Conference for Palestine  May 24th-26th


[Animazement May 24th-26th in downtown Raleigh:  www.animazement.com ]


Ocrafolk, Ocracoke, NC  June 7-9th


6/14-15 the 301 Endless Yard Sale on 100 miles of US 301 Roanoke Rapids to Dunn:  www.johnstoncountync.org/event/301-endless-yard-sale/64/


7/6-7 in DC  nonatoyespeace.org


7/15 RNC to 8/19 DNC – www.poorpeoplesarmymarch.com


September 6th 10th annual international folfestival in Greensboro, NC?




LIBRARY BOOKSALES:




The Friends of the Durham Library's Books Among Friends is in the Shoppes of Hope Va
lley3825 South Roxboro Road, #131, zipcode 27713.  There are satellite sales at each library.  For more information and the Friends membership form, see:  fodlnc.org/book-sales/   Their online store is at:  shopfodlnc.org   A Pop-Up CD Sale February 24th 11am-3pm at the Main Library.


The Friends of the Chapel Hill Public Library has an online store at:  friendschpl.org/online-book-store and there will be in-person sales April 12 – 14, August 23  25, and December 6  8 in 2024:   friendschpl.org/FCHPLevents


The Friends of the Chatham County Library will have an in-person sale April 11 – 13 in 2024:  www.friendsccl.org/  and they now have an online store, at:  friendsccl.org/Store


The Friends of the Lee County Libraries has sales at libraries:  library.leecountync.gov/friends


There is supposed to be a sale every Monday 2-4pm at the Warren County Memorial Library:  www.wcmlibrary.org/friends-of-the-library-book-sale/


Granville County:  granville.lib.nc.us/friends-of-the-library/ and www.facebook.com/FriendsOfTheGranvillePublicLibrarySystem/


Person County:  www.personcountync.gov/departments-services/departments-i-z/library/friends-of-the-library-1603  


Vance:  www.facebook.com/friendsperrymemoriallibrary/  


Moore County:  www.facebook.com/moorecountylibrary/


Caswell:  www.caswellcountync.gov/blog/categories/library-programs


Alamance County:  www.facebook.com/AlamanceLibraries , www.alamance-nc.com/library


The Friends of the High Point Library:  www.highpointnc.gov/927/Friends and www.facebook.com/HighPointPublicLibrary/


Forsyth:  www.facebook.com/groups/105298719513537 , www.forsyth.cc/library/   www.facebook.com/FCPublicLibrary ,  www.facebook.com/GSOLibrary  , library.greensboro-nc.gov


See also Book Sale Finder:  www.booksalefinder.com/NC.html




PLANT / GARDEN  SALES




UNC-Charlotte Botanical Gardens – February 10 and 12:  gardens.charlotte.edu/valentines-orchid-sale-and-raffle/


[The Durham seed libraries?]


[From the NCNPS:


"Going Native Gardens 

2024 Plant Sale Schedule

Hosted at Wild Bird and Garden

3501 Oleander Drive

Wilmington, NC 28403

March 16

April 20

May 4, 18

June 1, 15

September 7, 21 (NHC Native Plant Festival)

October 5, 19

November 2

Time: 10:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.


Hosted at Poplar Grove

10200 Hwy 17

Wilmington, NC 28411

April 6, 9:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m.

April 7, 10:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m."




CALENDAR




There is uncertainty about how Aztec and Gregorian calendars should line up; the occasion of of Atemoztli (Descent of Water; not a month?) might have been December 26-January 14th or November 29-December 18th:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_calendar ; in The Aztecs (1992) Richard F Townsend gives the dates December 11-30th.  The following month is Tititl (Stretching); Townsend giveDecember 31-January 19; Wikipedia has January 15-February 3 or December 19-January 7.  Next is Izcalli Huauhquiltamalcualiztli (Growth / Eating of TamaleStuffed with Greens); Townsend giveJanuary 20-February 8 and Wikipedia February 4-23 or January 8-27Nemontemi (Useless Days)Townsend giveFebruary 9-13 and Wikipedia February 24-28 or January 28-February 1; Atlcaualo Cuauhitleua (Ceasing of Water / Raising of Trees); Townsend giveFebruary 14-March 5 and Wikipedia March 1-20 or February 2-21; Tlacaxipehualiztli (Flaying of Men); Townsend gives March 6-25 and Wikipedia March 21-April 9 February 22-March 13.


"In the year 22, of the 3rd month of winter, sixth hour of the day" the first "circle of fire" is supposed to have been seen by ancient Egyptian "scribes of the House of Life."  Days later more were seen by Pharaoh Thutmose III (in power 1504-1450 BCE) and his army:  Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982 and UFO Exist, by Paris Flammonde, 1976.  Really an ancient Egyptian document?


September 24, 1235 a "General Yoritsume" and his army saw unusualights in Japan – is this supposed to be Kujō Yoritsune (九条 頼経) Fujiwara no Yoritsune (藤原 頼経) February 12, 1218 – September 1, 1256, in power 1226–1244? – Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982.


October 27, 1180 an object compared to an airborne "'earthenware vessel'" was seen in or near "Kii province" in Japan (in southern Honshu, now part of Wakayama and Mie prefectures; includes the Kii Peninsula?) Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982.

 

Meteorites hit houses in Wethersfield, Connecticut twice over 11 years – April 8, 1971 and November 8, 1982; the first was sold to the Smithsonian and the second is in Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History:  news.yale.edu/2023/09/11/meteor-shower-more-1800-meteorites-land-yales-peabody-museum  


The Peabody also has a softbalsize fragment that hit a house in Park Forest, Illinois March 26, 2003.  In all more than 40 pounds/18kg fell, one piece 6.6pound/3kg.  At least two houses and a fire station were hit.  It is thought to have been up to 7000kg before going through the atmosphere and at least 900kg afterward.  Also now in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and maybe Adler Planetarium:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Forest_(meteorite)


Some others:  the Ivuna meteorite landed in Mbeya, Tanzania, sister city of Tifariti, Western Sahara (mentioned under the SADR in February below)December 16, 1938; Sutter's Mill, CA around 7:51PT April 22, 2012, with very ancient impact nanodiamonds; Alais, France March 15, 1806 around 17:00; May 14, 1864 Orgueil, France; September 28, 1969 around 10:58am; Murchison, Victoria, Australia; the Tonk meteorite (also called the Chhabra or Jhalrapatan meteorite) fell in Tonk, India January 22, 1911 around noon, adding up to 7.7g 0.27oz; Elbogen, Czech Republic around 14:00 in Loket; Ensisheim, now in France 280pounds/127kg November 7, 1492, in a meter-deep hole, reportedly heard at least one hundred miles away; Golden, BC, Canada October 3, 2012 around 11:30pm PT:  www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/meteorite-crashes-into-womans-bedroom-golden-bc-1.6207904 ; www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55013725 early August 2020 in Sumatra;  August 14, 1992 in Mbale, Uganda, after 12:40 UTC; a  3g/0.11oz fragment hit a young boy's head, but he was okay:  ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994Metic..29..246J/abstract or onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1945-5100.1994.tb00678.x ; May 18 1988 Torino, Italy:  onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1945-5100.1989.tb00938.x


October 17, 2012 the Novato meteorite fragmented over northern CA around 19:44PT:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novato_meteoriteFlensburg, Germany 2019; Marília, BraziOctober 5, 1971:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADlia_(meteorite)


A meteorite landed on a back porch in Bloomington, Illinois in the summer of 1938:    web.archive.org/web/20201020093606/ and www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=5076


September 29, 1938 – a meteorite in Benld, Illinoihit a car parked in a garage:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benld,_Illinois and web.archive.org/web/20180601054919/http://meteorites.wustl.edu/illinois_meteorites.htm


Fragments of the Příbram meteorite April 7, 1959 east of Příbram in the Czech Republic, the first fireball filmed with multiple cameras on approach?  In the National Museum in Prague:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C5%99%C3%ADbram_meteorite


L'Aigle, France in April 26, 1803. The Neuschwanstein meteorite landed near Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, near Austria April 6, 2002, and had been tracked by the European Fireball Network, the first in Germany and the world's fourth:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_(meteorite)  Österplana 065 (Öst 65), dug up after hundreds of millions of year(from Ordovician deposits), in the rich Thorsberg Quarry in Sweden, June 26, 2011:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96sterplana_065


December 3, 1980 Kaidun, Yemen, from Phobos?; February 12, 1947 10:30am Sikhote-Alin, in eastern Russia; a stamp in 1957, by an eyewitness:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhote-Alin_meteorite ; February 8, 1969 Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico; February 1, 1938 Aztec, NM; July 9, 1929 Bald Mountain, NC (which one?)January 15, 1796 in Bila Tserkva, Kyiv, Ukraine and June 30, 1908 in Kaharlyk and September 2, 1955 in Zvonkov; March 25, 1843 Bishopville, SC; July 9, 2001 Bukhara, Uzbekistan; May 14, 1874 Castalia, NC (Nash County?)January 30, 1810 Caswell County, NC; July 1, 1933 Cherokee Springs, SC; May 24, 1892 Cross Roads, NC (which one?); April 9, 1919 Cumberland Falls, KY (an aubrite?) (known for  moonbows); December 4, 1934 Farmville, NC (the renamed Coalglen, in Chatham County or the Farmville in Pitt County?)December 26, 1934 Fayetteville, AR; Ju1y 18, 1889 Ferguson, NC (which one?)April 21, 1913 Moore County, NC; October 31, 1849 Monroe, NC (in Union or Warren county?); 2016 in Mount Blanco, TX and Osceola, FL; September 23, 2003 New Orleans, LA; February 18, 1948 Norton County, KS; June 4, 1828 Richmond, VA; June 30, 1903 Rich Mountain, NC (which one?); June 20, 1919 Saint Mary's County, MD; after 21:54 on February 28, 2021 Winchcombe; 2013 Wolcott, CT.  April 1, 1921 Sharps, VA; February 2, 1922 Baldwyn, Mississippi; September 20, 1950 Murray, KY.


Listed at:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite_fall  and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_air_burst and  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite_fall_statistics 


December 21, 1876 the Great Meteor; February 9, 1913 the Great Meteor Processionen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_procession ; Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. ; and 1982 UFO Exist, by Paris Flammonde, 1976.


January 21st at 00:33 UTC about one meter Apollo asteroid 2024 BX1 came down and exploded (?) near Berlin.  It had been discovered, aSar2736under three hourearlier, in Hungary.  Pieces were found January 26th, February 1, etc. south of Ribbeck, Germany?  A rare aubrite type, like April 9, 1919 in Cumberland Falls, KY; there are only 11 specimens (?), from Mercury? – www.atlasobscura.com/articles/meteorite-germanyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_BX1en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrite


Apollo asteroid 2023 CX1 or Sar2667 came down February 13, 2023 at 2:59 UTC over Normandy, Francediscovered under 7 hourearlier, in Hungary; meteorite found February 15th at 15:47 UTC:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_CX1


Apollo asteroid 2018 LA, or ZLAF9B2, came down June 2, 2018 around 16:44 UTC around Botswana-South Africa; discovered around 8:22 UTC in Arizona; the first piece found June 23rd, Motopi Pan:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_LA


Apollo asteroid 2014 AA January 1-2, 2014, found in Arizona, hit the Atlantic Ocean far east of Trinidad and Tobago: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_AA 


Apollo asteroid 2022 EB5 , or Sar2593, found in Hungary March 11, 2022; hit the Arctic Ocean southwest of Jan Mayen:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_EB5


Apollo asteroid 2019 MO, or A10eoM1, was detected and then landed south of Puerto Rico June 22, 2019 at 21:25 UTC (like a June epsilon Ophiuchid meteor?):  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_MO


January 22, 2018 – Did A106fgF hit the Southern Hemisphere or not?  


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_prediction#List_of_successfully_predicted_asteroid_impacts


A ghost or other entity was reported in Hythe, Kent, UK November 16, 1963, etc., and Sheerness comes up again, FT439 article.


The first of several reports of something in orbit before Sputnik was November 17, 1956 – a captured meteor?  Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982.  And in--


November 14-17, 1974 a crash and entity reported in Bald Mountain, WA, near Chehalis  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


Short-lived soviets in Alsace-Lorraine, at the time part of Germany, were put down by the French November 22, 1918?


An iron meteorite landed in Mazapil (small deer in Nahuatl, mazatl/deer plus pilli/small?  Traditional homeland of the Chichimec Guachichiles) in Zacatecas, in northern Mexico not far from Texas November 27, 1885, during the Andromedid meteor shower (stemming from Biela's Cometdiscovered February 27, 1826), but the meteorite and the Andromedids are now thought to be unrelated.


"The father of meteoritics" German physicist Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni November 30, 1756 – April 3,1827

 

A brief blue light effect seen from a ship, the MV Trevean, on a windy day "under low cloudin the middle of the Atlantic Ocean December 1, 1959:  Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982


According to the 2023 Harris' Farmer's Almanac, President James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) declared the Monroe Doctrine in his 7th ? annual message to Congress, December 2, 1823.


The pivotal decisive Battle of Austerlitz was December 2, 1805, during the Napoleonic WarsAusterlitz is now in the Czech Republic.


Early on April 16, 2013 several people cut communication cables and then carefully shot up 17 transformers at PG and E's Metcalf substation in Coyote, near San Jose, California, but there wasn't much power loss:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack  In August and October of that year one man attacked electrical equipment in central Arkansas.  In March and April 1975 a guarded PG and E substation was bombed twice by the NWLF, or so they claimed.  December 31st that year the George Jackson Brigade bombed a substation in Seattle.  In 2016 a man shot at a substation in Utah and had plans for further attacks. November 11, 2022 a Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative substation in Jones County, NC was vandalized, knocking out power for over 12,000 people.  In late November 2023 (?) there were at least six attacks in the Pacific Northwest, two with guns.  The morning of December 25th four substations were attacked around Tacoma, knocking out the power to more than 14,000 people.  Two men were arrested January 3rd, but apparently did it only as part of a plan for burglaries.  There were alsattacks on electrical infrastructure in Brazil around January 8, 2023.  A man was arrested on suspicion that he bombed PG and E transformers in December and January 2022-23? –  abc7news.com/san-jose-explosives-pge-transformers-blown-up-peter-karasev-arrest-sj-man-arrested-in/12910094/ , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid_security_in_the_United_States


Dave Otto, co-founder of Friends of Bolin Creek in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, a personal acquaintance, passed away December 4, 2023.


A Hindu rightist mob destroyed the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India December 6, 1992, triggering inter-communal violence; the Ram Mandir temple to Rama, under construction, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the BJP January 22, 2024. 


Former Durham County Commissioner Becky Heron, in office December 6, 1982  August 1, 2011, passed away January 23, 2014 (born in 1927):  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-moment-of-silence-for-becky-heron.html and www.northeastcreek.org/wordpress/remembering-becky-heron-1927-2014/ 


December 7, 1905, around 10:15am, off Brazil's Parahiba Rivermattbille.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-most-puzzling-sea-serpent.html , mattbille.blogspot.com/2017/12/anniversary-strangest-of-sea-serpents.htmlwww.strangemag.com/definitiveseaserpent.html (all same author)



Hezbollah leader Imad Fayez Mughniyeh was born December 7, 1962 (Tayr Dibba, near Tyre, in Lebanon) and assassinated by Israel and the US around 23:00 February 12, 2008 in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, using a car bomb:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imad_Mughniyeh


Reichsbürger monarchist coup plot was allegedly foiled December 7, 2022 in Germany.  In April 2017 rightist soldiers in Germany's special forces were charged with planning to assassinate several politicians in a Day X plot.


The New Madrid, Missouri earthquakes were December 16, 1811 and January 23rd and February 7th in 1812, under the Great Comet of 1811 (discovered March 25, 1811 and to return around 4785 CE:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Comet_of_1811 ) and around when the first steamboat plied the Mississippi basin en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_(steamboat)Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) patented February 11, 1809 – National Day Calendar).  Also around the War of 1812, the French invasion of Russia (it was called "Napoleon's Comet"), and the failed Eight Trigrams uprising of 1813 (癸酉之變) in China.  It was used as a sign by Shawnee chief Tecumseh (born March 9, 1768; "Shooting Star" or "CelestiaPanther Lying in Wait" (?) – www.nps.gov/people/tecumseh.htm) on a diplomatic mission in Alabama nps.gov/articles/choctaw-warriors-consider-alliances.htm ).  Wikipedia puts the birth of the Shawnee ProphetTenskwatawa ("Open Door") in January 1775:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenskwatawa and www.nps.gov/people/tenskwatawa.htm  , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawnee , www.native-languages.org/shawnee.htm 



December 20, 1620 the Pilgrim landing at the future Plymouth, MA – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


Spanish prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco (March 4, 1904 – died after a massive ETA carbombing December 20, 1973, called 'Spain's first astronaut')



The Communist Party of the Philippines was founded December 26, 1968, according to Wikipedia, and the CPP's armed wing, the New People's Army, was founded March 29, 1969.  Copying Alliance! at a UPS Store I heard that the guerilla army has been referred to as "No Postal Address."  I don't know if that is true or what it amount to.  The US Socialist Unity Party hails the Philippine Revolution on the 55th anniversary of the CPP; "From Palestine to the Philippines stop the US war machine!:"  www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/12/30/statement-on-the-55th-anniversary-of-the-communist-party-of-the-philippines/



"Big birds" or "un pajarissimo" (=?) were reportedly seen in San Benito, at the southern tip of Texas, around 5:15am on December 28, 1975, and in nearby Harlingen January 1, 1976, etc.   Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.  Something to look for in coastal south Texas besides the star Canopus, wildlife from the tropics, and a glimpse of Mexico over the Rio Grande or a trip across the border.  Togiak and Manokotak, AK in October 2002, FT439, etc.



Large catlike animals:  start December 29, 1953 Bladenboro; 1913 Troy, Montgomery County; March 1916, eastern Chatham Countysanter; January 1899 around Mebane, Alamance County; May 1903 brief escape in Raleigh; March 6, 1913? Rutherford College; summer 1909 Bentonville?; January 1909 Wilmington, New Hanover County; etc. Two melanistic (?) tigers escaped in Portsmouth, VA 9/27/1884?  A black tiger in Sampson County, before March 1885; April 19, 1885 in Greensville County, VA; January 15, 1885 the Black River in Pender County; a young tiger in southern Pender County January 1, 1879. 


In the water:  May 20, 2004 Normie sighting in Lake Norman?  January 1896 near Currituck Lighthouse; May 30, 1903 SS Tresco; March 14, 1886, Currituck a dead cow shark; a dead True's beaked whale found in 1913 (?), the type specimen (?), on Bird Island Shoal in Beaufort Inlet (?); around 1705; summer 1890 and 1889; winter 1887 SS Eureka July 1902; March 1942 – Monsters of North Carolina:  Mysterious Creatures in the Tar Heel State, by John Hairr, 2013. 


December 1959 a python killed near Roanoke, VAJanuary 23, 1978 Loxahatchee, Florida west of West Palm Beach, a maned lion (a map shows "Lion Country" nearby, a zoo)February 20, 1985 around 7:45pm and 9:45pm, an unknown lion outside the Fort Worth Zoo in TX; March 1, 1941; a maned (?) large cat in western New Brunswick – Mysterious America:  The Revised Edition, by Loren Coleman, 2001 and Curious Encounters:  Phantom Trains, Spooky Spots, and Other Mysterious Wondersby Coleman, August 1985, January 1986, Faber and Faber, Inc.


To add?  Eno the Emu in Durham one summer recently; a Jordan Lake alligator before that; mountain lions reported in Durham and Orange counties; and the tomato-eating catfish at a farm on NC 64 in Wake County? 



French painter and member of the Paris Commune Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (June 10, 1819 – December 31, 1877), blamed for the May 16, 1871 destruction of Paris' Vendôme Column:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Courbet and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_Vend%C3%B4me

 

Australian anti-war journalist John Pilger passed away December 31, 2023.  He was born October 9, 1939 in Bondi, New South Wales, near Sydney.  His website:  johnpilger.com/


Dim Comet 62P/Tsuchinshan is currently in Virgo, and was discovered January 1, 1965 at Nanjing's Purple Mountain, or Tsuchinshan, Observatory.



Muhammad XII of the Emirate of Granada surrendered January 2, 1492, ending the Reconquest of what is now Spain from Muslim rulers, just before the seizure of a Spanish empire in the New Word.  There were two rebellions of the Alpujarras around December 18, 1499 to April 1501 and December 24, 1568 to March 1571.


Deputy Chair of the Hamas Political Bureau and a founder of the al Qassam Brigades, Saleh al-Arouri (صالح العاروريSalah al-Arouri or Salih al-Aruri; August 19, 1966 – January 2, 2024), was assassinated with six others around 5:41pm in Beirut's Dahieh neighborhood, one day before the anniversary of the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, which Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah was to address January 3rd or 4th.


The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, founded in mid-1991, are named for Izz ad-Din Abd al-Qadar ibn Mustafa ibn Yusuf ibn Muhammad al-Qassam (عز الدين بن عبد القادر بن مصطفى بن يوسف بن محمد القسام / Izz ad-Dīn ibn Abd al-Qāder ibn Mustafa ibn Yūsuf ibn Muhammad al-Qassām; 1881 or December 19, 1882 – November 20, 1935). 


Jacques-Louis David (August 30, 1748 – December 29, 1825). 


The Grace Line cargo and passenger ship SS Santa Clara reportedly hit a large animal 118 miles east of Cape Lookout, NC, just in the east edge of the Gulf StreamDecember 30, 1947 around 11:55amMonsters of North Carolina:  Mysterious Creatures in the Tar Heel State, by John Hairr, 2013 and cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/sssantaclara/  I thought I once read that two men claimed that a third was taken from their boat by a sea monster off NC sometime in the 20th century, and that no one was charged with a crime, but I haven't relocated the reference.  Under the Kremlin legend???  


January 3, 1861 Delaware did not secede:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Secession  It had joined the US government December 7, 1787, the first state to do so, but was 12th to ratify the previous constitution, February 1, 1779, followed by Maryland, February 2, 1781:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_admission_to_the_Union , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware


Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Mikhailovich Chisov, navigator on a Soviet Ilyushin Il-4 bomber, free fell about 23,000 feet from his stricken aircraft in January 1942 and survived, landing on a snow-covered slope (?):  www.futilitycloset.com/2023/09/18/four-mile-fall/ and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov  See also Juliane Margaret Beate Koepcke, who fell about 10,000 feet December 24, 1971 after lightning hit her Lockheed Electra flight over forested Amazonian Peru (?),  American Alan Eugene Magee, a gunner on a B-17 bomber, fell about 22,000 feet, on to a train station's glass roof, in Saint-Nazaire, France January 3, 1943.  Vesna Vulović, from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, fell about 33,3300 feet from a DC-9 over Srbská KameniceCzechoslovakia after a still unsolved terrorist bombing.  Briton Nicholas Stephen Alkemade, a tail gunner on an Avro Lancaster bomber, fell about 18,000 feet east of Schmallenberg, Germany on March 24, 1944, reportedly impressing his German captors.


China's Chang'e 4 was the first spacecraft to carry out a soft landing on the lunar far side and deployed a rover, Yutu-2.  Besides scientific instruments, the lander also carried the Lunar Micro Ecosystem experiment.  The mission was launched December 7, 2018 and the landing was January 3, 2019.   This mission was the first time the US and Chinese space programs were allowed to cooperate, following the April 2011 Wolf Amendment.  Cooperation is probably even less likely with Obama's "Pivot to Asia" and the Trump-Biden warmongering. 


The Gulf War Did Not Take Place La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard (July 27, 1929 – March 6, 2007) was published in Libération and The Guardian newspapers in a series, January 4, February 6, and March 29 in 1991.  Referred to in:  www.workers.org/2024/02/76700/



The Khmer Rouge declared their state of Democratic Kampuchea with the proclamation of a new constitution January 5, 1976.


The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon was founded at a conference of Eastern European countries held in Moscow January 5-8, 1949; Comecon eventually involved countries around the world; for example Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam were full members and Finland, Iraq, Mexico, Nicaragua, Ethiopia and South Yemen were observers. 


Larsen, a wild lioness in central Kenya isupposed to have seized and adopted a baby beisa oryx December 24, 2001 to January 6, 2002, but then it was killed by a male lion.  She might have adopted another oryx February 14th.  Mysterious rashes broke out in Uschools in early 2002.  More recent cases of mass ailments in schools around the world, among CIA cadre, etc. – Fortean Times 439 Christmas 2023.


The anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica was first broadcast January 6th or 7th to April 21st in 2011.  I thought it was originally broadcast as Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, and it is in the mahou shoujo, or magical girl, genre.  It was airing when the Great East Japan/Tōhoku/ Sendai Earthquake happened March 11th and I think someone was quoted or mentioned in an ANN article, joking or not, about being able to go face death working in the Fukushima cleanup after having seen the end, or maybe they regretted not having seen the end first:  www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=12120 and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puella_Magi_Madoka_Magica 


January 6th I-5 in Seattle, WA was closed by protesters for Palestine?


The Battle of New Orleans was January 8, 1815, at the end of the War of 1812 (June 18, 1812 – February 17, 1815)


Mountaineer, explorer, and author Fanny Bullock Workman (January 8, 1859 – January 22, 1925) 


British theoretical physicist Stephen William Hawking was born January 8, 1942 and passed away March 14, 2018.


January 8th the Mebane City Council approved a proposed Buc-ees in Alamance County in an 8 hour meeting:  hawriver.org/buc-ees-hearing-in-mebane-ends-in-approval/ , it would supposedly be the largest gas station in the world; one was proposed in Orange County at one point; a petition and more information at:  hawriver.org/proposal-of-buc-ees-in-mebane-draws-considerable-opposition/   


Carrie Chapman Catt (Carrie Clinton Lane), January 9, 1859 – March 9, 1947


Mississippi seceded January 9, 1861:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Secession ; it had become the 20th state December 10, 1817; it rejoined the Union February 23, 1870; Mississippi adopted a new flag January 11, 2021:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi



Florida joined the Union, March 3, 1845, seceded January 10, 1861, and rejoined the Union June 25, 1868.  It had been named April 2, 1513.  The first known Christian marriage in the territory of the lower 48 of the future US is supposed to have been a mixed race marriage in Florida in 1565:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida


John Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887 – January 20, 1962) 


Journalist Herbert Lionel Matthews, author of the 1975 book Revolution in Cuba and other works, was born January 10, 1900 in Manhattan, NYC and passed away July 30, 1977.  He met with guerrilla Fidel Castro February 17, 1957, etc.


Oil was struck at the Spindletop oil field, near Beaumont, Texas, at the very southeast corner of the state, January 10, 1901, setting off a gusher that spewed oil for 9 days.  The find broke the semi-monopoly of Standard Oil  apparentlTexas had anti-truslaws and populissentiment back then  and the find made oil a common fuel in the USA, one of top oil-producing countries, and led to our "oil addiction" today.   This wasn't the beginning of the oil industry in the state.  Canada's first gusher was the Shaw Gusher January 16, 1862 in OiSprings, Ontario:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindletop and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowout_(well_drilling) 


The Bremen Soviet Republic/Bremen Council Republic in Germany was declared January 10, 1919 and was toppled February 2nd, but it had apparently begun November 14, 1918:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremen_Soviet_Republic 


The Mechelen Incident, in which German war plans were accidentally captured by the Belgians, began January 10, 1940:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechelen_incident 


It was reported on the local morning TV news January 10, 2024 that a new individual jaguar had been recorded in Arizona for the first time since something like before 2016 or further back?   biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/southern-arizona-jaguar-video-confirms-new-cat-2024-01-05/ 


Conservationist Aldo Leopold was born January 11, 1887 in Burlington, Iowa.  He is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac, published posthumously in 1949.  He passed away April 21, 1948.  For more information, see:  www.aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold/        



Following US calls for full-spectrum dominance, including in space, and missile shields, China used a missile to destroy one of its old weather satellites January 11, 2007.  The newer Dong Neng-3 missile, possibly an anti-satellite weapon, was tested February 5, 2008, etc.?  More recently Russia and India have also tested anti-satellite weapons.  The USSR and the USA a
lso worked on such weapons throughout the Cold War, and the first successful interception seems to have been by the USSR in February 1970.  The US tested anti-satellite missiles fired from a modified F-15 fighter in 1984-85.  Claims about Russia 2/14/2024.


Warfare in space could produce debris that would prevent human use of space long-term and anti-ballistic missile weapons make a nuclear war more likely.  One country would think that it had an edge and could escape retaliation by using nuclear weapons first, so other countries would be more likely to use their weapons, under the idea of 'use them or lose them.'  


Chengdu J-20 Chinese fighter jet ( 歼-20, Jiān-Èrlíng), also known as Mighty Dragon (威龙, Wēilóng) first flight 1/11/2011, in service 3/9/2017:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20  The Shenyang FC-31 Gyrfalcon (鹘鹰, Gǔ yīng, or Snowy Owl雪鸮) also known as the J-31or J-35 – first flight 10/31/2012:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_FC-31  Add:


From NC STN – Many Guantanamo vigil photos:  ncstn.org/content/2024/01/10/shame-22-years-of-guantanamo/ 


1/12/1899 Chatham County lynching; the others have September datesen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_County,_North_Carolina


Villa San Rafael (?), Calama, northern Chile, in the Atacama Desert,reported strange entity January 12, 2002? – FT439 Christmas 2023 issue  The area had been captured by Chile February 14, 1879 and Bolivia declared war March 1st?  Ultimately Bolivia lost its access to the ocean in the War of the Pacific, which also involed Peru, April 5th.  Peace between Chile and Peru October 20, 1883 and between Chile and Bolivia April 4, 1884, October 20, 1904, etc.


German naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian passed away January 13, 1717 in Amsterdam.  She had been born April 2, 1647 in Frankfort, at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire.


January 15, 2022 Malik Faisal Akram, an allegedly mentally ill native-born British citizen of Pakistani ethnicity, held four people hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, near Fort Worth, seeking Siddiqui's release.  He also falsely claimed to have a bomb.  Akram released one hostage and the rest safely escaped later, after which an FBI Hostage Rescue Team entered the building and killed Akram.  His two teenage sons and two men were arrested in the UK.


January 15th it was reported that Geoffry Patterson was removed from command of the nuclear-powered guided missile submarine USS Georgia, one of four, carrying up to 154 Tomahawk missiles and used in special operations, without explanation, other than "loss of confidence in his ability to command:  www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12966403/Navy-fires-nuclear-submarine-captain-loss-confidence-ability-command-investigation-launched.html  More above.


The most recent war in Mali began January 16, 2012:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_War 


The new GLSDF was tested  over the Gulf of Mexico January 16th and sent to Ukraine first of all, in early February? 


Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790).


January 17, 1771, or December 5, 1770 to April 1. 1771, Chatham County, NC was created?   www.chathamcountync.gov/our-community/learn-more-about-chatham-county


Queen Lili'uokalani of Hawaii was overthrown January 17, 1893 with the involvement of the US (though President Grover Cleveland was apparently against the overthrow), creating the Republic of Hawaii, which was annexed as a US territory in 1898.  Hawaii did not become a state until 1959, apparently because territorial status benefitted capitalist interests.  There was a brief pro-monarchy uprising in January 1895.  The US lease of Pearl Harbor as a naval base had begun January 20, 1887 and that year King Kalakāua was forced to accept a constitution limiting the monarchy and empowering Americans and Europeans over native Hawaiians, Asians, and those with less than a certain amount of income or wealth.     


January 17, 1966 US aircraft collided during midair refueling over Francoist Spain, releasing four nuclear bombs, and the conventional explosives in two of the bombs went off, scattering plutonium over the countryside; the plutonium was recovered for Spain's covert nuclear weapons program.


January 17, 1977 French mercenaries under Bob Denard attempted to overthrow the People's Republic of Benin or the Popular Republic of Benin (around November 30, 1975 to March 1, 1990) under President Mathieu Kérékou.


Japan'Great Hanshin Earthquake was January 17, 1995 near the city of Kobe, in Hyōgo Prefecture.

Over ColoniaBoston Harbor, in Massachusetts, UFOs and voices were reported in March 1639 and again January 18, 1644 and over the following two week– from Jim Brandon'Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, 1978; reportedly mentioned in Governor John Winthrop'Journal, etc.


In the Battle of Hayes Pond/Battle of Maxton Field/Maxton Riot Lumbee Indians chased off the KKK the night of January 18, 1958 in Robeson County, NC.


According to the 2023 Old Farmer's Almanac, a 0.66-pound meteorite hit a medical office in Lorton, Virginia January 18, 2010; the location in Fairfax County had a Nike Ajax anti-aircraft missile site 1955-73; also:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorton,_Virginia 2/8/1945, 4/14/1955 Fort Meade en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-3_Nike_Ajax


Venezuelan protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, or Tortuguita, washot to death at "Cop City" in Atlanta January 18, 2023.  There were protests afterward, January 20-22, and a march January 21st in downtown Atlanta, with damage to buildings and a police car was burned.   Ongoing in GA.


Saturnino Paredes Macedo, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Peru (Marxist-Leninist) (with José Sotomayor, and Abimael Guzmán, according to the Wikipedia entry), was born January 19, 1921 in Ancash, on the northern coast:  pcpml.com/2021/01/20/viva-el-centenario-del-natalicio-del-dr-saturnino-paredes-macedo/.  The PCP(M-L) itself was founded in January 1964, splitting from the Peruvian Communist Party (according to Wikipedia, while the party's website traces its origin to October 28, 1928 and Mariátegui); the PCP(M-L) is a member of the ICMLPO.


Novelist and writer Patricia Highsmith was born January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas and passed away February 4, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland.  She is also noted for her personal diaries or journals.


Hizb ut-Tahrir was banned by the UK 1/19/2024, banned in Russia, etc., but but not here.


The traditional Aquarius period is January 20th to February 18th, though apparently it should be February 17th to March 13th, if based on the Sun's actual position against the stars.  People differ on when the famous Age of Aquarius should begin,  but it is likely very far off.  


A bus went haywire at The Dalles HS in OR January 20, 1971; earthquakes, brown ash, black clouds, but no volcanic eruption (?) January 8, 1867 around Crater Lake/Fort Klamath; Maryhill, WA Stonehenge monument – Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978. 


January 20-21, 2006 the River Thames WhaleWilly, a female northern bottlenose whale, a beaked whale of the deep sea, in the UK'River Thames.


The first known case of the novel coronavirus in the USA was detected January 20, 2020; it was known to be passing from person to person in the US by the 30th and people were dying in the US by that February.  A US public health emergency was declared January 31st and WHO had issued an international warning the day before.


Iran launched itSoraya or Sorayya satellite January 20th; this is supposed to be a record high launch:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaem_100 , the rocket.


Sydney Parkinson (~1745 – January 26, 1771):  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Parkinson 


French king Louis XVI (citizen Louis Capet), was executed by guillotine January 21, 1793.

A squareish lunar halo was reportedly seen January 21, 1913 from the RMS Balmoral Castle off of equatorial Africa? – Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982.


Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet statesman Vladimir Ilyich Lenin passed away 100 years ago, January 21, 1924:  redphoenixnews.com/2024/01/21/appeal-for-the-commemoration-of-the-100th-anniversary-of-lenins-death/ and www.workers.org/videos-j21/ and diario-octubre.com/2024/02/11/en-el-dia-mundial-del-cine/  Verso Books marks the centenary of VI Lenin's death with several releases by or about Lenin and his thought:  www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/thinking-with-lenin-on-the-centenary-of-his-death


A unit of DPRK special forces attempted to storm the ROK's Blue House and assassinate authoritarian president Park Chung-hee January 21, 1968.  About a decade later the director of the ROK's Korean Central Intelligence Agency assassinated Park, October 26, 1979.


The Vietnam War Battle of Khe Sanh began January 21, 1968 and lasted until July 9th.


The DPRK seized the spy ship USS Pueblo in or near its coastal waters around January 21, 1968.


The Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision was handed by the Supreme Court down January 21, 2010; for example see:  www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/21/another-date-that-will-live-in-infamy-10-years-after-citizens-united/ 


Crimean amateur astronomer Gennadiy Vladimirovich Borisov, discoverer of the first known interstellar comet, discovered the small asteroid 2023 BU January 21, 2023, just days before it passed by the Earth at an altitude below that of geosynchronous satellites, on the 27th.  It is thought that it would have broken up 30 km in the air, if it had hit the Earth, but the small asteroid that jolted Chelyabinsk, Russia February 15, 2013 exploded at that height.



Around January 21st the Ukrainian military shelled a market in the seceded eastern city of Donetsk, killing and wounding many civilians, according to Russian media, which our mainstream media wants people to reflexively ignore.  February 4th (?) in Lisichansk, Lugansk  a bakery.


An exceptionally large NATO exercise targeting "Russia and the terror groups" began in Europe in late January 2024 and will continue into May?  redphoenixnews.com/2024/01/26/nato-is-waging-war-in-europe-in-a-front-from-finland-to-romania-for-the-next-4-months/


During the Anglo-Zulu War (January 11  July 4 in 1879) the British lost the first major engagement, at Isandlwana, or Isandhlwana, January 22nd.  I saw part of a movie set during this war; maybe it was Zulu, about the Battle of Rorke's Drift, January 22-23:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rorke%27s_Drift , and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Zulu_War


Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci was born January 22, 1891.  He was a leader of the Communist Party of Italy, founded January 21, 1921 and is well-known for works such as the Prison Notebooks, written while he was imprisoned by Italy's Fascist government.  Prison conditions resulted in his death April 7, 1937.  Some of his works are online at:  www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/index.htm 


peasant uprising began in western El Salvador January 22, 1932 but it was quickly defeated.  Afterward the government killed tens of thousands of alleged communists and Indians.



The first Boeing 747 jetliner went into regular service with Pan Am (Pan American World Airlines) January 22, 1970, flying between New York and London.  This iconic humpbacked passenger jet was the original "jumbo jet" and the first wide-body airliner.  It was still being produced until recently (?), but the cost of initial development almost destroyed Boeing.  A prototype first flew February 9, 1969.  Apparently at the time it was thought that supersonic airliners would soon make the 747 obsolete, except as a cargo carrier.   


Ethnic Albanian unrest in (North) Macedonia January 22 to August 13, 2001:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_insurgency_in_Macedonia


Evo Morales became president of Bolivia January 22, 2006 and was elected to two more terms, until he was toppled in a violent US-backed coup and received asylum in Mexico, November 12, 2019.  An unelected rightist and anti-Indian government temporarily ruled Bolivia.  The security forces refused to protect the elected government, but violently repressed and killed Morales supporters.  Morales' party returned to power in the next election.


French painter Alexandre Cabanel (September 281823 – January 23, 1889).

420356 Praamizus, a large object beyond Neptune, was discovered January 23, 2012 and is named for a major ancient Lithuanian deity. 


Around January 23, 2024 many Israeli soldiers were killed in the vicinity of Khan Younis, Gaza, Palestine.


Supposed to be the first Abkhazian female pilot, and a veteran of WWII, Meri Hafizovna Avidzba was born January 24, 1917 and passed away April 12, 1986. 


Around midnight on January 24, 1961 a B-52 from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base disintegrated in the air near Goldsboro, releasing two thermonuclear bombs.  One bomb parachuted down, but the other ploughed into the ground, breaking into pieces, some estimated to have gone up to 180 feet underground.  In one of the bombs every switch necessary for a nuclear explosion was on, save one.  Reportedly the explosive yield wouldn't not have been as powerful as the designed yield, much greater than the atomic bombs used on Japanese cities; instead only the first fission-based part of the bomb would have gone off, and not the second fusion-based component.  Parts of the buried bomb were recovered, but much of the bomb, including uranium and plutonium, is still buried, on land now owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, and the groundwater is occasionally tested for radioactivity.  In Eureka, three miles north of the bomb site, there is a relatively new state historical marker titled "Nuclear Mishap."  Of the 8 person crew, 3 were killed, and this is the only time someone is known to have bailed out of the top hatch of a B-52 bomber without using an ejection seat.  There was a demonstration at the Federal building in Raleigh in a recent year related to this near miss and the new UN anti-nuclear weapon treaty.


There is an eye-opening list of military nuclear accidents at:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents  , in some instances potentially risking WWIII.  Among other accidents around this time of year, February 13, 1950 a USAF B-36 Peacemaker bomber jettisoned a simulated but still radioactive bomb, a dirty bomb, in British Columbia, Canada; January 31, 1958 a USAF B-47 carrying an armed nuclear bomb crashed and burned in Morocco; February 5, 1958 a nuclear bomb was jettisoned and lost in the ocean off Georgia; February 28, 1958 at a USAF base in the UK a B-47 ejected its external fuel tanks, setting a parked and manned B-47 carrying a nuclear bomb on fire for 16 hours, and the incident was kept secret for decades; January 18, 1959 a parked F-100 Super Sabre fighter carrying a nuclear bomb burned at an undisclosed US base in the Pacific; January 13, 1964 a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons broke up over Pennsylvania; January 17, 1966 a collision during midair refueling in Francoist Spain released four nuclear bombs, and the conventional explosives in two of the bombs went off, scattering plutonium over the countryside; January 21, 1968 a B-52 carrying four bombs crashed near the Thule Air Base in Greenland, where an explosion could have been confused with a nuclear attack, and the crash caused a nuclear weapons scandal in Denmark, the colonial power.


January 24, 1978 Kosmos 954, a malfunctioning nuclear-powered Soviet naval surveillance satellite disintegrated over Canada, requiring clean up of radioactive debris; the USSR paid restitution, though only half of what Canada asked for.  Another malfunctioning nuclear-powered satellite, Kosmos 1402, fell to Earth January 23rd and February 7th early in 1983, but completely burned up or sank into the ocean.

The first Apple Macintosh PC, renamed the Macintosh 128K, came out January 24, 1984, following the "1984Super Bowl XVIII ad January 22nd, but it was far from being the first personal computer:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer ]


The UN's International Day of Education is January 24th:  www.un.org/en/observances/education-day


January 24th it was announced that a wastewater treatment plant in Burlington had detected a 545 micrograms per liter/release of 1,4 dioxane, ultimately thought to be from Apollo Chemical, through the plant and into the Haw River.  According to the HRA "the water quality standard is 0.35ug/L.  People in Pittsboro were told not to drink the town's tapwater and were offered an alternative water supply at the Chatham Marketplace.  A sedimentation violation was reported by the HRA at a Triangle Brick Company site – a current site or at their former claypit in Durham, now the 55-Hopson construction site, which might be audible for miles when the wind is right?  I need to go see what they've done, and I'm sure there has been a great deal of silt runoff.


Tu BiShvat (ט״ו בִּשְׁבָט‎) Rosh HaShanah La'Ilanot (ראש השנה לאילנות‎), literally "New Year of the Trees," an Earth Day and Israel's Arbor Day? January 24-25 in 2024 February 12-13 in 2025 1-2 in 2026en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_BiShvat


UFO was reportedly seen in Denison, Texas around January 25, 1878.  John Martin, a farmer from the Dallas area was hunting and described seeing a "large orange [initially the size of?] object;'" a report from another newspaper was reprinted in the Denison Daily News on the 25th and it had happened earlier, maybe on the 24th; this supposed to be the first time a UFO was likened to a "saucer;" the term "flying saucer" was coined by the media in 1947, though in that cas"saucer" referred to the motion not the shape –  Phenomenon:  Forty Years of Flying Saucers, edited by John Spencer and Hilary Evans, 1988 – Amazon makes such 'older' books difficult to find without the exact title, "forty" not 40, etc.; also Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982 and UFO Exist, by Paris Flammonde, 1976 Denison, by the northern border with Oklahoma, is the birthplace of Dwight D Eisenhower (October 14, 1890) and Jim Hightower (January 11, 1943).


The United Mine Workers of America was founded January 25, 1890:  marion-polk-yamhillsolidarity.blogspot.com/2024/01/today-in-union-history-founding-of.html and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Mine_Workers_of_America 


There were UFO reports in Durham January 25 and 27 (?) in 1954, according to Durham journalist and history writer Jim Wise, in his book Durham Tales:  the morris street maple, the plastic cow, the durham day that was and more.


Hundreds of dead and dying or injured ducks of various kinds – canvasbacks, redheads, scaups – were found in Saint Mary's City, Maryland January 25, 1969; it was as if they had run into something or been near an explosion – Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978 and Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982.  A site of early religious toleration, Saint Mary's City was officiallfounded March 25, 1634.  The Maryland Toleration Act/Act Concerning Religion was passed April 21, 1649, but it failed later.


Pakistani Mir Aimal Kansi carried out a shooting attack outside the CIA'Langley, Virginia headquarters January 25, 1993, killing two and wounding three CIA employees.  Kansi was born in Quetta February 10 or October 22 in 1964 and was executed November 14, 2002 at Virginia's Greensville Correctional Center, near Jarratt.  See also:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_headquarters_shooting and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_political_violence_in_Washington,_D.C. 


The joint military (through an organization related to SDIand NASA Clementine mission to the Moon was launched January 25, 1994 from Vandenberg AFB in CA.  March 5, 1998 there was an announcement about the detection of frozen water that could be mined, and now we have the crewed (and now delayed) Artemis program and a new space race:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clementine_(spacecraft).  On Here and Now January 10th:  NASA "scrapped" its lunar expertise decades ago, and now the news about Artemis and the recent private lunar mission.  


January 25, 1995 a scientific rocket was launched from Norway to study the aurora borealis and Russia thought it could be a nuclear missile and prepared to launch a nuclear counterattack, marking the first and only time that a nuclear power is known to have activated its "nuclear football" and prepared to fire off its weapons, though nuclear war almost began during the Cuban Missile Crisis as well.


The demonstrations that ultimately led to the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak began January 25, 2011 (Egypt's National Police Day); Mubarak withdrew from office February 11th.  As in the revolution in Tunisia, several people set themselves on fire in protest, starting January 18th.   


The Brumadinho mining dam disaster in Brazil waJanuary 25, 2019.


January's Full Moon was on the 25th, briefly visible in the evening through clouds here; it was very cold and dry the week before and then warm, overcast, and sprinkling, with some fog at night; few animals came out out of dormancy though.  I haven't heard any frogs calling yet, though some salamanders and other amphibians might breed now in North Carolina and it has been very sunny and cool mild.  It can snow appreciably in March and frost in April.  I haven't seen any snow this winter, but also few or no anoles, frogs, or moths.  Around Imbolc, Groundhog Day, and Risshun it did feelike the beginning of spring, though cool.  Is any Hepatica flowering?  The New Moon was February 9th.  A flock of red-winged blackbirds, not the first this winter, was nearby on January 25th, and a thrush and robin that came by might have been with them.  Sapsuckers have been around for months but only started taping a nearby red maple in late January and then quickly left.  Myrtle warblerskinglets, titmice, etc. sometimes try to join in.  Doves are appearing again and what might be a pair of downy woodpeckers.  Juncos appeared some, but are rarely around now, maybe due to climate change.  Unfamiliar sparrows were with the common white-throated sparrowearlier in January.  The cattail seeds have mostly drifted away.


Louisiana became the 18th state April 30, 1812 and seceded January 26, 1861:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana


Well-known Trotskyist blogger, founder (?) of the Marxmail listserve, and subject of a comic book autobiography drawn by Harvey Pekar, Louis Proyect, passed away in his sleep August 25, 2021 due to long-standing illness.  According to the announcement on his blog he was born January 26, 1945.  Some memorial articles were posted at counterpunch.org, a site that frequently carried his articles. 


International Zebra Day is also supposed to be in late January.


Astronauts Day, January 26th in 2024, commemorates deaths in the US space program, many of which happened in late January and early February, and is on the last Friday of January each year.  According to Wikipedia, one way to commemorate is by placing a lit candle in your window and thinking of those who died for the space program and re-committing to achieve a personal goal.

 
Bengali rebel Titumir / Syed Mir Nisar Ali (January 27, 1782 – November 19, 1831) 


John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin, April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851)

The Siege of Leningrad by German and allied Finnish forces during WW2 lasted from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944, killing well over a million Soviet citizens, civilians and military personnel. consortiumnews.com/2024/01/26/an-anniversary-the-west-would-rather-forget/ 



The Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the USSR January 27, 1945 and January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It is being used to support Israel's war this year.


The Outer Space Treaty was created January 27, 1967 and came into effect October 10th that year.


The French diesel-electric submarine Minerve disappeared January 27, 1968 in the Gulf of Lion, south of Toulon, France; its remains were found July 21, 2019.  The Israeli diesel-electric submarine Dakar disappeared after January 25, 1968 in the eastern Mediterranean; an emergency buoy was found February 9, 1969 in Khan Yunis, Gaza; the lost submarine was found May 24, 1999 between Crete and Cyprus.  Egyptian sources claim that the frigate Assyout sank the submarine.  The Soviet diesel-electric ballistic missile submarine K-129 was lost around March 8, 1968 in the Pacific; in the summer of 1974 the CIA used the Hughes Glomar Explorer, allegedly picking up what are now being called "polymetallic nodules," to raise pieces of the K-129, risking a nuclear explosion when a missilwas dropped underwater.   The nuclear-powered USS Scorpion was lost after May 21, 1968 near the Azores:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Minerve_(S647)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Dakaren.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)  


The Vietnam War ended January 27, 1973, from the US point of view, with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords between the US, the Republic of Vietnam, what was then called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government, but fighting continued in divided Vietnam. 


Elected Nigerien president Mahamane Ousmane (born January 19, 1950, in the city of Zinder) was overthrown in a coup January 27, 1996.


Robert Parry (June 24, 1949 – January 27, 2018):  consortiumnews.com/2024/01/27/remembering-robert-parry-who-died-6-yrs-ago-today/


Xiomara Castro was sworn in as president of Honduras January 27, 2022, with the US vice president and other international representatives in attendance, and even a reporter from NPR.  There as little mention on NPR of relevant issues such as the 2009 coup against Castro's husband, Manuel Zelaya which led to the government whose corruption and poor record was later openly criticized on NPR.  The Obama administration's support for the coup is rarely if ever mentioned.  There is talk of mending fences to address the "root causes" of the mass migration from Central America, with no mention of even the possibility of working with Nicaragua, and talk of whether Honduras will continue to diplomatically recognize Taiwan, in the continuing US campaign against China.  The US government's friendliness seemed very surprising.


José Martí, one of the leaders of the movement for Cuban independence from Spain and the USA, was born January 28, 1853 and died in the Battle of Dos Ríos against the Spanish military, May 19, 1895.  The US later entered what became Spanish-American War and gained control of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico.  This is often seen as the beginning of US imperialism, though the  seizure of Hawaii, idea of Manifest Destiny, and the Monroe Doctrine predate the War.  


The Franco-Prussian War was July 19, 1870 to January 28, 1871.

   
January 28, 1964 near Erfurt a MiG-19 downed a T-39 Sabreliner that had gone into the GDR for some reason; navigation error and the radio failed at the same time?  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_T-39_shootdown_incident


Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed and the seven crewmembers killed, on live TV, January 28, 1986 shortly after liftoff, due to the failure of an O-ring on one of the solid rocket boosters.  

Therewas  a livestreamed PSL 2024 presidential campaign event January 28th at 2pm ET:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgWWGm8U1Nw 


A man (Hiroshi Uchida, 内田洋claiming to be Satoshi Kirishima (桐島聡) was arrested at a hospital in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan January 25th, according to NPR and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asia_Anti-Japan_Armed_Front ; check the Throw Out Your Bookblog on the Japanesleft and radicals.  He was born January 9, 1954 in Kannabe, Fukayasu DistrictHiroshima Prefecture and passed away January 28 or 29, 2024.  Wanted over actions by the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front (東アジア反日武装戦線Higashi Ajia Hannichi Busō Sensen, EAAJAF); allegedly a member of the Scorpion/Sasori, and found through the Wolf Celin 1975, when he went underground en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kirishima


Over 100 and possibly a few hundred Shoshone men, women, and children were killed in the Bear River Massacre on bitterly cold January 29, 1863 near what is now Preston, Idaho.  There was a battle, but many Shoshone were killed, others captured, and much of their property destroyed or seized, while only a few Federal soldiers were killed or wounded.


According to the book Weird Carolinas, a man at a farm in Conway, SC claimed to have seen and fired a pistol at a UFO late on January 29, 1953; the UFO fled upward at a high speed.


There was a Weather Underground bombing at the State Department January 29, 1975.


During the night on January 29, 2001 someone used a commandeered bulldozer to destroy the Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial, near the Museum of Life and Science in Durham.  A few days later the memorial's US flag was stolen.  Except for the granite base, the memorial had to be rebuilt from scratch, and was re-dedicated that November.  No suspects were arrested.  The memorial had first been dedicated August 8, 1992.  For more information see:  docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/195/


Russian fighter jet Sukhoi Su-57 (RussianСухой Су-57) – first flight 1/29/2010, in service 12/25/2020:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-57  

The Obama administration used a drone to kill US citizen and alleged al Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki September 30, 2011 in Yemen, the first such assassination of a citizen.  October 14th that year they killed his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, also an American citizen and not known to be involved in terrorism.  Allegedly the military had been trying to kill someone else, not present at the time.  January 29, 2019 Anwar al-Awlaki's 8-year-old daughter Nawar (Nora) al-Awlaki, another US citizen, was killed during a US-UAE raid in the Yakla area of Yemen, and took two hours to die from a bullet wound.  According to the Wikipedia article, more non-combatants (25) were killed than al Qaida members (14), including a three-month-old and other children and a pregnant woman.  Along with the noncombatant casualties than 120 livestock were killed and over 12 buildings damaged in the poor and wartorn country.  US government lost one soldier and an Osprey aircraft:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Yakla , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Nawar_al-Awlaki , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki


Manitoba Pageant January 1960; July 1873 basis of Incident at Hawk's Hill, by Allan Wesley Eckert (January 30, 1931 – July 7, 2011):  www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/pageant/05/boybadgerhole.shtml and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Hawk%27s_Hill and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_W._Eckert


Irish labor leader James Larkin (January 28, 1874 – January 30, 1947).


UK soldiers carried out Bloody Sunday or the Bogside Massacre January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland.


The first US national marine sanctuary was established January 30, 1975, to protect the wreck of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, off of Cape Hatteras.


British naturalist and author Gerald Malcolm Durrell was born January 7, 1925 and passed away January 30, 1995. 

The Baia Mare cyanide spill in Romania was January 30, 2000.


Battle of George Square  in Glasgow, Scotland, UK January 31, 1919 


Launched April 4, 1919 in Bath, Maine; January 31, 1921  the ship Caroll A Deering mystery off Cape Hatteras, NC.


The Tet Offensive in Vietnam against US and ARVN forces began January 31, 1968 (see:  michaelharrison.org.uk/2017/02/31st-january-1968-tet-offensive-vietnam/ )


The Battle of Hue or Siege of Hue, part of the Tet Offensive and one of the longest and costliest battles during the Vietnam War, was January 31 - March 1, 1968; at the time the city of Hue was at the north end of the southern Republic of Vietnam.



The last Boeing 747 was built December 6, 2022 and delivered to Atlas Air January 31, 2023.


Allen Dallen Nease (February 1, 1914 – September 1984)


Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin February 1, 1931 – April 23, 2007.


Imbolc is February 1st, as is Saint Brigid's Day, also associated with Ireland.  St. Brigid might represent a Christianization of the Celtic deity Brigid.


October 14, 1924 the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast was created within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and February 11 (1st?), 1926 it became the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, still part of the RSFSR.  Presumably this is when Bishkek was renamed for Mikhail Frunze.  The Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was created as a constituent republic of the USSR when the "Stalin Constitution" was adopted, December 5, 1936. 


Three dead from a "sweet-smelling gas" February 1, 1944 in Coatesville PA; the UK's Springheel Jack reported, for example, Feb 20? 1838 in Old Ford, UK 8:45pm; before April 28 1877 two of them were reportedly in Aldershot, UK; Mineral Point, WI "Vampire" entity end of March 1981, before the attempt to assassinate Reagan on the 30th – Mysterious America:  The Revised Edition, by Loren Coleman, 2001.

Explorer 1, the USA's first satellite, was launched February l, 1958.


Nguyen Van Lem or Bay Lop, an officer of the National Liberation Front, was captured during the Tet Offensive February 1st in what was known as Saigon at the time and summarily executed by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, leader of the South Vietnamese National Police, shown in a famous image captured by NBC and the Associated Press.  Loan later took refuge in the USA, living near Washington, DC.


Eddie Hatcher and Timothy Jacobs seized the office of The Robesonian newspaper, in Robeson County, NC, with hostages, February 1, 1988, seeking to expose corruption. 


David Glenn Lewis of Dumas, in the Texas Panhandle, was killed, apparently in a hit and run crash, late on February 1, 1993 in Moxee, Washington, near Yakima, under strange circumstances.  His body wasn't identified until 2004.


Sam Marcy, founder of the Workers World Party, passed away February l, 1998.  The WWP posts selected works at:  www.workers.org/marcy/cd/  There was a 25th death anniversary event Sunday, February 5th in 2023 at 2pm EST, "Global Class War: Lesson from Sam Marcy for Workers Struggles Today." The related Socialist Unity Party posted this February 8th:  www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/02/08/socialist-unity-party-honors-sam-marcy/  I didn't see anything from PSL.  WWP and related parties have been called "anti-revisionist," despite coming from a Trotskyist background.


Space Shuttle Columbia, the first space shuttle orbiter sent into space, was destroyed during reentry February 1, 2003, 20 years ago, due to damage from insulating foam that came off of the large brown external tank during launch.  The seven-member crew was killed.  Debris from the Columbia landed in East Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana.  NASA management might have been able to prevent the loss, but did not allow a search for damage while Columbia was in space.



Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was closest to the Earth February 1st in 2023; perihelion was January 12th.


February 2nd is Groundhog DayCandlemas (Groundhog Day evolved from a Candlemas tradition), and World Wetlands Day.


Taíno leader Hatuey fought the Spanish conquistadores in Hispaniola and Cuba, but was burned at the stake February 2, 1512 near what is now Bayamo, Cuba (also near where one of Cuba's 19th century wars for independence began).  Before he was killed, a priest is supposed to have asked Hatuey if he would become a Christian and go to heaven, and he asked if the Spanish went to heaven.  Hearing the inevitable answer he said he would rather go to hell where the Spaniards and their cruelty would be absent.  He has been honored as a Hero of the Republic of Cuba.  


John Warner Barber (February 2, 1798 – June 22, 1885).


The Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo was signed February 2, 1848, ending the Mexican-American War and ceding a large part of Mexico to the USA, though I imagine that much of this territory was still controlled by Indian groups, who might have been living there for hundreds or thousands of years, and was only controlled to a limited extent by the Mexican government.


Bolshevik Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze was born February 2, 1885 in what is now Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.  He was a military leader during the Russian Civil War, operating in Central Asia and Ukraine, was an ambassador to Turkey, a member of the CPSU's Central Committee and Politburo, and chair of the Revolutionary Military Council.  He passed away during a surgical operation October 31, 1925 in Moscow and was honored with burial in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.  Many things were named for him: Bishkek was called Frunze from 1926 to February 5, 1991, the pre-WWII battleship Poltava was renamed for him January 7, 1926,  the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, etc.; and he is honored with a place in Turkey's Republic Monument in Taksim Square, Istanbul, as is Semyon Ivanovich Aralov, an ambassador born December 18, 1880.


A "'bright light'" wareportedly seen in Lyons, Wayne County, New York December 9, 1891, January 5, 1892, February 2, February 29, March 27, April 23  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


The Fort Fisher Hermit, Robert E Harrill, was born February 2, 1893 in Shelby, NC.  He is officially supposed to have died of a heart attack June 3, 1972, but appears to have been murdered, possibly to remove an obstacle for "development."


Germany's 6th Army, occupying Stalingrad, surrendered February 2, 1943.  The Battle of Stalingrad was August 23, 1942 to February 2, 1943, with pockets of resistance afterwards, and was a major turning point in WWII;  February 23, 1943 was marked as Red Army Day in the UK, while today media in the USA and UK often give the public the impression that WWII was mainly a victory won by the Americans and British (or even Ukraine apart from the USSR as a whole), though much or most of the fighting in Europe was on the Eastern front and it has been argued that Japan surrendered in the end because the Soviets entered the Pacific War, not because of the horror of the Allies' nuclear warfare.  See:  redphoenixnews.com/2023/02/02/the-battle-of-stalingrad-and-the-german-soviet-non-aggression-pact-of-1939/


Hundreds of people, including Chief of Police James Alford and Captain Harold Bryan, reportedly heard unusuasounds coming from (three?) clouds that passed over Jacksonville, Florida and disappeared when they reached the Atlantic February 2, 1969.  Similar noisy clouds appeared in Miami a week afterward.  Further west in Florida, near the capital, Tallahasseesmoke and light marked the "Wakulla Volcano" or the Great Florida Mystery (see:  wakullavolcano.vashti.net/home.html and www.volcanocafe.org/lurking-in-the-swamp-the-florida-volcano/ ).  Another place to visit (even by walking, to Florida, the OBX, along the Cape Fear River, WNC, or somewhere), in the Appalachicola National Forest, five miles from a line between Medart and Sumatra, in Wakulla and Liberty counties?  In early 1888 a 200-pound limestone boulder isupposed to have fallen in nearby Middleburg and was put on view at Jacksonville's Sub-Tropical Exposition  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978. 
 

World Wetlands Day is February 2nd, marking the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands February 2, 1971 in Ramsar, Iran   www.worldwetlandsday.org/


Iran's first home-made satellite, Omid (Persian for hope), a research and telecommunications satellite, was launched February 2, 2009.  It weighed about 60 pounds and was a 16" cube. 


February 2, 1974 – the F-16's first flight.


February 2, 2014 – the Dan River Coal Ash Spill in Eden, Rockingham County, NC, to VA, and back to NC.


Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard's 2020 presidential campaign kicked off with an event February 2, 2019 in Hawaii.  She appeared to be running as a left Democrat and was attacked as if she were against the USA's international brigandage and aggression, but then issues came out, like her disappointing vote for a pro-Israel bill in Congress, etc and finally Gabbard endorsed Biden when she dropped out of the race March 19, 2020.  Bernie Sanders' appeal has also declined over the years.


The shortest solar eclipse between 2000 BCE and 3000 CE was February 3, 919 CE, at 2.5 seconds.


Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (Betsy Graeme) (February 3, 1737 – February 23, 1801)


The Communist Party of Vietnam was founded through the merging of a few groups February 3-7, 1930 in Kowloon, Hong Kong.


Author Michael Craig Ruppert (February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014, allegedly by suicide):  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ruppert 


Operation Bongo II, an FAA (human) experiment looking at the impact of sonic boomon the people and buildings of Oklahoma City, began February 3, 1964.  Air Force F-104, B-58, F-101, and F-106 aircraft broke the sound barrier over OKC 1,253 times over six months according to Wikipedia:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests


Aafia Siddiqui was convicted February 3, 2010 and sentenced to 86 years of Federal imprisonmen and is held in Fort Worth's Federal Medical Center, Carswell.  She was born March 2, 1972 in Karachi, Pakistan.  


2/4/2021 – US to get out of Yemen?? Getting back in now:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden#First_100_days



East Palestine, Ohio February 3, 2023 – the Norfolk Southern train derailment.


February 3, 2023 it was announced that Rachel Martin would be leaving NPR's Morning Edition after this week or the 6th, but is remaining with NPR, including Up Next.  The show had some staff turnover.  Spirituality interviews Sundays at pm in 2023.


2/3/2024 A Sinn Fein or nationalist First Minister for the first time in Northern Ireland, UK.


According to Wikipedia Japanese Setsubun (節分) is February 3rd in 2024 and was February 3rd in 2023.  Risshun (立春) is February 4th:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setsubun  Relatively mild?


"Big Bill" Haywood, a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and at one time a leader of the Socialist Party of America, was born February 4, 1869 in Salt Lake City.  He was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 and in 1921 sought refuge in the USSR, where he died May 18, 1928.  Half of his ashes are in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis and the other half in the Haymarket Martyr's Monument in Chicago.   




Astronomer Clyde William Tombaugh was born February 4, 1906 in Streator, Illinois and discovered Pluto February 18, 1930.  He passed away January 17, 1997 in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Some of his ashes are onboard NASA's New Horizons probe, which flew by Pluto in 2015.  The "Heart of Pluto," imaged in unprecedented detail by that mission, has been officially named the Tombaugh Regio.  

 
Rosa Parks was born February 4, 1913 in Tuskgee, Alabama.

Workers at the Monaghan Lunatic Asylum, now called Saint Davnet'Hospital, declared the first of several Irish soviets, January 29 – February 4, 1919:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_soviets and redphoenixnews.com/2024/01/24/psychiatric-hospital-uprising-the-first-irish-soviet/   


The Yalta Conference between Churchill, FDR, and Stalin met February 4 - 11, 1945 in Yalta, Crimea on the USSR's Black Sea coast.



Hugo Chavez's Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200, founded December 17, 1982, attempted to overthrow Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez February 4-5, 1992.  There was a second attempt at a military coup November 27th.


World Cancer Day is February 4th.

Russia'Znamya-2 space mirror experiment, originally a solar sail experiment, launched October 27, 1992 on Progress M-15, was successfully deployed near the Mir space station February 4, 1993.  The 20-meter mirror created a five kilometer wide spot lit as if by the light of a full Moon, racing at 8 kilometers a second from the south of France to western Russia.  I wonder if anyone was upset by this gigantic light trespass, or was everything prearranged?  I remember that a Russian orbital mirror was covered in Durham's Herald-Sun newspaper at the time.  The satellite was deorbited and burned up over Canada after a few hours.  


February 5, 1999 Znamya-2.5, 25 meters wide and designed to illuminate an area 7 kilometers wide with light equal to five to 10 full Moons, was deployed but damaged before much could be done.  A Znamya-3 60 to 70 meters wide had been planned, but wasn't built In a limited way maybe Znamya was going too far, though these were just experiments.


Novelist and writer Patricia Highsmith was born January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas and passed away February 4, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland.  She is also noted for her personal diaries or journals.


2/4/1999 Guinean Amadou Diallou was killed by the NYPD


The advanced F-22's first kill was a lost Chinese research "airship"/weather balloon or a sinister Chinese spy balloon, violating US sovereignty, until it was shot down at great expense as it was leaving US territory off of South Carolina February 4th (near Hainan, China January 15, 2023, the Aleutians in AK January 28th, over Canada January 30th, Idaho January 31st, seen from an airliner, near Billings, Montana February 1st; NORAD supposedly knew about it for days before February 2nd).  The US media portrays it as China accidentally or intentionally derailing an attempt to cool US-China tensions, but it could be asked whether a faction in the US government created an incident to worsen relations.  I heard recently that a military official expects the US war with China to start in 2025, and earlier testimony to Congress predicted war by something like 2028, rather than decades from now.  Consider the comments at:  www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/02/chinese-spy-balloon-over-the-us-an-aerospace-expert-explains-how-the-balloons-work-and-what-they-can-see.html   First aircraft shot down over the USA after WWII and the highest air-to air ever, supposedly??  February 2 Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela; February 9-10 Beaufort Sea, AK; February 11 Yukon; February 11-12 Lake Huron; February 12 Shandong; February 14 Romania and Moldova; February 16 Shijiazhuang Zhengding International Airport in Hebei; February 19 northeast of Hawaii; April-May over HI, going towards Mexico, but these UFOs stopped being news:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-altitude_object_events_in_2023


2/4/2024 – Facebook 20th anniversary? – BBC


2/4/2024 –  Lisichansk or Lysychansk, Lugansk bakery bombed by Ukraine?


Bernardino de Sahagún, OFM (~1499 – February 5, 1590).


February 5, 1958 the Tybee Bomb (nuclear) was lost in Georgia.


February 5, 2003 Colin Powell spoke before the UN Security Council, claiming that Iraq had mobile biological weapon labs and was developing nuclear weapons, helping pave the way for the war the US and UK launched in late March.  During press conferences by Powell and John Negroponte a tapestry copy of Pablo Picasso's Guernica hanging in the UN headquarters was covered with a blue curtain, allegedly just for the aesthetics of TV broadcasts.  


The ancient Mediterranean Punic Wars were symbolically concluded by the mayors of Rome and Carthage February 5, 1985.


American revolutionary Harry Haywood was born February 6, 1898 in South Omaha, Nebraska.  He was a leader of the CPUSA, but clashed with the revisionist leadership during the Khrushchev era.  He was a leader in the Comintern during the 20's and wrote Negro Liberation (1948), arguing that the Black Belt was an oppressed nation with the right to self-determination.  After leaving the CPUSA, he was a leader of the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party and later the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).  He is known for Black Bolshevik:  Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (1978), available from Red Star Publishers.  He fought in WWI, the Spanish Civil War, and WWII, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery after his death January 4, 1985. 


Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004); attempted assassination in March 1981


The Seattle General Strike began February 6  11th, 1919:  www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/08/the-seattle-general-strike-a-100-year-legacy/


Cuban revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos, the Hero of Yaguajay, was born February 6, 1932 and is thought to have died in plane crash over the ocean October 28, 1959.  Cuba's Order of Cienfuegos award is named for him. 

A few large snakes – February 6, 1957, a ball python along a road to Burlington, in Alamance County; January 20, 1902 along Town Creek in Salisbury;  April 1880 in Burgaw, Pender County – Monsters of North Carolina:  Mysterious Creatures in the Tar Heel State, by John Hairr, 2013. 


February 6 1973 – The Custer, SD Chamber of Commerce and courthouse burned over lack of prosecution after an Indian was killed – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


Novelist Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812.


Disgruntled former IRS accountant Robert W Pickett shot at the White House, with George W Bush inside, February 7, 2001; Pickett was shot and arrested.


Biden's 2022 State of the Union Address was February 7th.

The Durham City Council approved 55-Hopson around now in 2022 the final, second (?) hearing was February 7th, and many acres of mass grading soon began; surveying and some clearing began prior to the approval.  The public comment period for the related extension of Hopson Road to Grandale ended February 22nd in 2022, and it was revealed that the extension of Grandale Road in Chatham County is also being planned.  It was reported that bobcats, coyotes, maybe otters, turkeys, woodcocks, wood ducks, migratory waterfowl, bald eagles, prothonotary warblers, red-headed woodpeckers, many roosting black and turkey vultures, nesting great blue herons, maybe nesting nightjars, ancient bowfin, a summer roar of green treefrogs (?) and other herptofauna, a high density of fireflies, many wildflower, etc. live in the 'rural' and partially protected area along Northeast Creek, but will these all remain after what the members of the City Council and road planners approved is finished?  The new elementary school nearby to the west, by a very large power substation and the Tobacco Trail, was finished recently and maybe, hopefully, the possible pink ladyslipper orchids, white vetch, nesting nightjars, and an abandoned beaver pond with alders and frequented by nesting indigo buntings were mostly left alone.  Add Ellis Road area dates, north of RTP?


Emanuel Swedenborg (born Emanuel Swedberg; February 8, 1688 – March 29, 1772).


Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905).


Abraham H Galloway was born as a slave in Smithville (today's Southport), NC February 8, 1837, but escaped in 1857.  He was involved in the Civil War, rewriting the NC constitution, and was a state senator 1868-1869.  He passed away September 1. 1870 in Wilmington due to fever and jaundice.


The CSA was founded February 8, 1861, but not in VA.


Albanian revolutionary Nexhmije Xhuglini was born February 8, 1921 in Bitolj, today part of Macedonia.  She fought as a partisan in the war to liberate Albania from Italian and German occupation during WWII and served in leading positions in the Party of Labor of Albania, the Democratic Front, the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, the Albanian Women's League, the National Assembly of Albania, and other bodies during her political career.  She was imprisoned for 5 years after the counterrevolution.  Apparently she was arrested on December 10, 1991, Human Rights Day, and charged with embezzlement, sentenced in January 1993, and released in January 1997.  She was married to PLA First Secretary Enver Hoxha and she is supposed to have been the oldest living member of the PLA leadership before passing away February 26, 2020.  For more information on the Kombinat (Factory) cemetery in Tirana where the the Hoxhas rest (Enver Hoxha had been buried in the National Martyrs' Cemetery, but was disinterred by the counterrevolutionaires) see:   michaelharrison.org.uk/2021/12/nexhmije-and-enver-together-in-kombinat/ See also:  michaelharrison.org.uk/2021/02/february-the-8th-2021-the-centenary-of-the-birth-of-nexhmije-xhuglini-hoxha/   For some of her works see:  november8ph.ca/catalogue/ etc. www.mltranslations.org/Albania/index.htm , ml-review.ca/aml/index/subject.html and ml-today.com/?s=nexhmije  


February 8, 1928 Camden, New Jersey and summer 1972 Elberton, Georgia 'sky lines'summer 1970 Caldwell, NJ shooting of a kind, without projectiles being found Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


Philippine revolutionary Jose Maria Canlas Sison (Joma) (February 8, 1939 – December 16, 2022).


The Charonne Massacre was February 8, 1962 at a Paris Metro station, where the police killed nine trade unionists demonstrating against a French terrorist group during the Algerian War.  


The Orangeburg Massacre was February 8, 1968 at South Carolina State University, killing 3 and injuring 27.

 

The Battle of Saltley Gate was February 8, 1972:  michaelharrison.org.uk/2021/02/10th-february-1972-victory-at-the-battle-of-saltley-gate/


February 8, 1974 the last crew left Skylab and it came down beginning 7/11/1979.


William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841):  www.nps.gov/people/william-henry-harrison.htm  


According to Wikipediathe first and only time a submarine has sunk another submarine while both were underwater happened February 9, 1945, when British HMS Venturer sank U-864 off Norway.  U-864 was carrying jet engine and missile guidance system components, as well as mercury, to aid German ally Japan. 


The first test flight of a Boeing 747 was February 9, 1969 in Washington state (?).  


Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (June 15, 1914 – February 9, 1984)


The first confirmed discovery of extrasolar and pulsar planets, around pulsar PSR B1257+12was announced January 9, 1992 (found at Arecibo in Puerto Rico February 9, 1990 ?):  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12  And a comet?  exoplanet.eu/catalog/psr_1257_12_d--236/  Another pulsar planet May 30, 1993 and the first around two stars and in a globular cluster of stars:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1620%E2%88%9226_b   The firsplanet around a main-sequence star waannounced October 6, 1995:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51_Pegasi_b   Multiple planets around a main-sequence star in a multi-star system, Upsilon Andromedae, in 1999:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upsilon_Andromedae  The discovery of a planet around Proxima Centauri, only about 4 light years away, but not visible from here, waannounced August 24, 2016:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b   A planet orbiting two stars was announced/discovered September 15, 2011:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-16b   About 5,576 extrasolar planets have been found (by January 1, 2024, according to Wikipedia).


The New Moon, good for unhindered stargazing, was February 9th.  February'First Quarter Moon will be February 16th.


In February 1220 – the Mongols took Otrar, now ruins in Kazakhstanthen besieged and burned Bukhara, and later took Samarkand, both ancient cities now lie in Uzbekistan


Hernán Cortés, disobeying the governor, set sail from Cuba February 10, 1519 on the expedition that would result in the defeat of the Aztecs and the colonization of Mexico.  


Playwright Bertolt Brecht was born February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. 


The Catalonia Offensive, December 23, 1938 to February 10, 1939, during the Spanish Civil War, July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939. 


Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 collided February 9, 2009; February 13th sonic booms in KY:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision  (note en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford )


The evening of February 10, 2015 Craig Stephen Hicks shot and killed Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha in Finley Forest Condominiums (Summerwalk Circle) at the eastern edge of Chapel Hill along NC 54.


World Pulses Day, devoted to important food plants such as kidney beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, broad beans, and lentils, is February 10th.  The UN General Assembly declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses:  www.un.org/en/observances/international-days-and-weeks 


The Lunar New Year will be Saturday, February 10th in 2024 and January 29th in 2025, and was January 22 in 2023.  A yang and wood year of the Dragon (one character for dragon, ) from February 10, 2024 to January 28, 2025:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_astrology ?  So dragons feature in Japanese 2024 New Year (正月Shō-gatsu) cards or nenga (年賀状nen-ga-jō) in January:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_New_Year  The Lantern Festival is on day 15 of the (Lunar) New Year.  2025 will be a yin wood Snake (year.  I happen to be eating the dried American persimmons (there might still be a few left to collect on the trees, and I should have collected more around December-January) and traditional Georgian or Western New Year regional foods around the Lunar New Year, or hope to.  For New Year postcard images, search X/Twitter.com for nenga, 辰, etc. and there is:  www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2024-01-04/happy-new-year-from-the-anime-world-enter-the-dragon-part-xii/.206136 (ANN, posts I-XII, editoriallliberal).  This rightist pornographic website ilikely to be offensive and NSFW, but the images in this 2024 New Year post are mostly tamewww.sankakucomplex.com/2024/01/02/dragon-girls-all-the-rage-for-year-of-the-dragon/  [Anthropomorphizing China's J-20 fighter, as K-On!'s Mio Akiyama, above under 1/11 + some actual photos:  www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/01/25/chengdu-j-20-stealth-plane-akiyama-mio/ ]



The Civil War Battle of Wilmington was February 11-22, 1865, resulting in the Federal capture of the vital port, as the War was ending.


Nuclear physicist Leo Szilard was born February 11, 1898 in Budapest, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Kosaburo Eto (江藤 小三郎Etō Kosaburō, 20 April 1946 in Sage Prefecture – 11 February 1969 by burning, in front of the National Diet in Tokyo, Japan):  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosaburo_Eto


Very similar to Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, 27-year-old Moroccan street vendor Nourredine Adnane set himself on fire February 11, 2011, following threats of suicide, protesting the seizure of his goods and humiliation in Palmero, Sicily, in Italy.  Earlier on January 21st an unnamed 65-year-old man died a few days after setting himself on fire in Samtah, Jizan, Saudi Arabia, reportedly a first in Saudi Arabia (according to Wikipedia), and possibly over the barriers to becoming a Saudi national. 

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is February 11th:  www.un.org/en/observances/international-days-and-weeks


Hezbollah leader Imad Fayez Mughniyeh (عماد فايز مغنية‎; December 7, 1962 – February 12, 2008)


World Radio Day is February 13th:  www.un.org/en/observances/international-days-and-weeks


Charles Darwin was born 215 years ago, February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, UK.  There are Darwin Day events, such as at the NCBG, around his birthday. 


British and American bombers targeted Dresden, capital of the German state of Saxony, February 13 - 15, 1945 with high-explosive and incendiary bombs, causing a firestorm and killing up to 25,000 people.  Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the bombing as a POW. 




Panamanian leader Omar Efraín Torrijos Herrera (February 13, 1929 – July 31, 1981, an assassination by the US?) 


The Nepalese Civil War began February 13, 1996.


Umatilla of OR bison hunting rights in MT and Yellowstone honored after 100 years, 2/13/20111855 treaty with them and the Cayuse and Walla Walla– National Day Calendar website.


Valentine's Day (and Ash Wednesday this year; Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras is the day before?  Into Lent?is Wednesday, February 14th, and is controversial from a left or nationalist point of view in some countries, and from a right or religious point of view elsewhere, according to Wikipedia.  Apparently the 14th day of each month has romantic allusions in the ROK, and April 14th is Black Day, for people who didn't have a valentine.


A trailing yellow 'Forsythia' or winter jasmine (?) down the street has been blooming and I noticed one yellow daffodil here by 2/14/2024.  Missing more at UNC, trees, Camellias, lenten roses/hellebores, etc.?  Singing towhees, cardinals, RW blackbirds, WT sparrows, doves, Carolina wrens, etc often paired up, and often from a while ago.




The Polish-Soviet War began February 14, 1919 and ended in October 1920.  The March 18, 1921 Peace of Riga agreement established the Soviet-Polish border that held during the interwar period.    


Maurice Audin, an ethnic French member of the Algerian Communist Party and a mathematics assistant at the University of Algiers, was born February 14, 1932.  The French Army seized him at his apartment June 11, 1957, during Algeria's war for independence, and then used his home as a trap for others.  He was taken elsewhere and tortured to death, something French President Macron acknowledged in September 2018.  This was not an isolated case. 


The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held February 14-25, 1956 and Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" was February 25th. 


The Trotskyist World Socialist Web Site, published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, began February 14, 1998.  


Allegedly to prevent the potential of injuries from a toxic hydrazine leak on a malfunctioning surveillance satellite, the US Navy was ordered to destroy it with an anti-ballistic missile on February 14, 2008.  This also conveniently allowed the USA to test a space weapon.


The Day of Rage in Bahrain  February 14, 2011.


Vasant Panchami (वसन्तपञ्चमीVasantapañcamī), also rendered Vasanta Panchami and Saraswati Puja  February 14, 2024 and January 26, 2023


Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei was born February 15, 1564 in Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence.


New Jersey abolished slavery, gradually, February 15, 1804, yet slavery still existed there in 1865:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_New_Jersey


It was reported that what seemed to be pieces of flesh, liver, brain, and blood fell from a red cloud February 15, 1850 on the farm of Thomas Clarkson, 13 miles from Clinton, Sampson County, NC. The material fell across a span of 250-300 yards. The Clarkson children had been playing about 100 yards from the house and saw the shower, crying out “Mother, there is meat falling!” A scent or smell of blood was reported and a red liquid was dripping from the foliage. Samples are supposed to have been examined with a microscope in Fayetteville and confirmed to be flesh and blood. This was reported in the March 8, 1850 issue of the North Carolinian March 8, 1850, apparently not available online, but the incident is covered in Jerome Clark's Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America and covered briefly in Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States and in the book Weird Carolinias.


It is unclear if the site was actually in Sampson County. Clark says that the location 13 miles southeast of Clinton – which might be somewhere in the next county over, unless the south end of sort of heart-shaped Sampson County is meant. I think Weird Carolinias says that the location was 13 miles southwest, but that could be inaccurate. That book also has quote comparing the red cloud to a “wind cloud” – a dustdevil or other cloud of dust?


A similar shower of flesh and blood from a red cloud was reported at a farm on Spring Creek, near Bairds Mills (near Lebanon), in Wilson County, Tennessee in August 1841 and along the Pamunkey River in Hanover County, Virginia on Good Friday 1850 (see below). The sky was clear when hundreds of pounds of thinly sliced meat edged with “fine black bristles” was supposed to have fallen over two acres in Los Nietos, California, in the Los Angeles area, August 1, 1869.


Karl Theodor Robert Luther, April 16, 1822 in Świdnica, Poland  – February 15, 1900 Düsseldorf, Germany).


Susan B. Anthony (Susan Anthony), February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906.


Following an explosion, the USS Maine sank in Havana, Cuba February 15, 1898, killing 260 crew members.  The explosion was probably accidental, but became a spark for the Spanish-American War later that spring.  Military construction on Great Gull Island, New York during this war was a factor in the extinction of the Gull Island vole, discovered by science and then exterminated in a few months.  In 1962 the US military proposed various terrorist acts to justify war with Cuba (Operation Northwoods), including blowing up a US ship in Guantánamo Bay.


There were massive anti-war demonstrations globally February 15, 2003, against the US government's plan to attack and occupy Iraq, during the "War on Terror."  


small asteroid exploded near Chelyabinsk, Russia February 15, 2013.  The vastly larger Tunguska event over Siberia was June 30, 1908


World Pangolin Day is February 15th (the third Saturday of the month):  www.pangolins.org/world-pangolin-day/

Korean statesman Kim Jong Il was born February 16, 1941, when Korea was a colony of Japan, and passed away December 17, 2011 in Pyongyang, capital of resolutely independent DPR Korea, though the struggle for independence from Japan and the first battles with Uimperialism were led by his father, Kim ISungsome of his works and other documents are online at:  www.marxists.org/archive/kim-jong-il/index.htm , november8ph.ca/catalogue/ , michaelharrison.org.uk/the-democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea/ , and might be available in print at UNC's DaviLibrary.


Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi (عباس الموسوي; October 26 1952 – killed by Israel, using the then new US Apache helicopter, February 16 1992 with hiwife and son, age five, and four more).

 

February 17, 1864 Confederate submarine Hunley sank the USS Housatonic outside of Charleston Harbor using a spar torpedo (a pole tipped with an explosive), becoming the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, though the Hunley was not underwater during the attack.  It was not meant to be a suicide mission, but the eight volunteers operating the Hunley were killed, possibly instantaneously.  Five crew members were killed on the USS Housatonic.  The Hunley was raised in 2000 and can be seen at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston.  There was a movie about it on TNT.  Apparently there were other Confederate submarines, and a Federal submarine was lost off Cape Hatteras.  A submarine was even deployed in the Revolutionary War, but it was unsuccessful.   

 

Robert Kenneth Preston, a private in the Army, stole a Bell UH-1B Iroquois (Huey) helicopter from Tipton Field, near Fort Meade, Maryland, and joyrode around Washington, before landing on the White House's South Lawn February 17, 1974. There was a hail of bullets from the Secret Service, but Preston was only lightly wounded. Preston was court-martialed and sentenced to a year in prison, with time served, and fined $2400 dollars.



China invaded Vietnam February 17, 1979 in retaliation for Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia ( Democratic Kampuchea at the time) to topple the Khmer Rouge government.  China, the USA, Thailand, and other countries supported the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam, which was an ally of the USSR.  The war ended by March 16, 1979, but there was sporadic fighting afterward, such as in May-June 1981, April 1984, and a naval battle over Johnston South Reef in the Spratly Islands March 14, 1988.  Relations later improved and agreement was reached on the land border between Vietnam and China, while the US government seeks to exploit disagreements over ocean boundaries.  Reactions from Enver Hoxha november8ph.ca/2023/02/17/the-chinese-leadership-headed-by-deng-xiaoping-have-launched-a-military-attack-on-vietnam/ ) and Fidel Castro november8ph.ca/2023/02/17/speech-at-the-national-event-of-solidarity-with-vietnam-and-condemnation-of-chinese-aggression/ ).

90482 Orcuslarge object beyond Neptune, with a moon, Vanth, was discovered February 17, 2004 and is named for a chthonic Etruscan/Roman deity en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcus , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanth )


Republic of Kosovo / Kosova declared independence February 17, 2008. 


The Great Backyard Bird Count begins.?
  

Clyde W Tombaugh discovered Pluto February 18, 1930 and it was announced March 13th.  Pluto was considered the 9th planet, but the International Astronomical Union now classifies it as a dwarf planet (the largest yet discovered) and the first member of the Kuiper Belt to be discovered.  Some researchers argue that the IAU decision was wrong on scientific grounds.  Pluto orbits so far from out that it has not orbited completely around the Sun even once since 1930.  A year on Pluto is equal to almost 250 of Earth's years.  

Georgian Bolshevik Sergo Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze October 24, 1886 in Ghoresha, now in the western central area of the Republic of Georgia – February 18, 1937 in Moscow, interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. 


President Ford signed Executive Order 11905 February 18, 1976, among other things banning "political assassination."  Similar executive orders were signed by Carter on January 24, 1978 and by Reagan on December 4, 1981.


February 18, 2010 Andrew Joseph Stack III crashed a Piper Dakota small airplane into an IRS office in the 4-story Echelon complex in Austin, Texas. IRS Revenue Officer Group Manager Vernon Hunter was killed and 13 others were injured, two with critical injuries. Stack also burned his house in North Austin before the attack.


Traditionally the Pisces period is February 19th – March 20th, followed by Aries.


Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born February 19, 1473.


Swedish naturalist Daniel Carlsson (Charles) Solander (February 19, 1733 – May 13, 1782).


Abkhazia became a treaty republic within (?) the Georgian SSR December 16, 1921 (or in March?) and an autonomousoviet socialist republic within the Georgian SSR February 19, 1931. 


Soviet astronomer Klim Ivanovych Churyumov was born February 19, 1937 and passed away October 14, 2016.


The WWII Battle of Iwo Jima was February 19  March 26, 1945. 


Under Khrushchev Crimea and nearby areas was transferred from Russia to Ukraine within the USSR February 19, 1954, but there have been questions about the legality.


Construction of the Soviet space station Mir (Peace or World in Russian) began February 19, 1986.  Until 2010 the record for longest continuous human presence in space was the habitation of Mir and some individual cosmonauts spent at least a year on the station.  Mir was retired and deorbited into the South Pacific in late March 2001.


Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping passed away February 19, 1997.  He had been born August 22, 1904.  His predecessor, Hua Guofeng, was born February 16, 1921 and passed away August 20, 2008. 


February 12, 1733 the colony of Georgia was founded, initially without slavery.  Georgia ratified the US Constitution January 2, 1788.  Georgia seceded January 19, 1861 and was the last state brought back in; a new flag February 19, 2003 yet I saw the previous one flying in the greater Atlanta area in fall 2018?  Many stateseem to have lacked flaguntil the second half of the 19th century.  Utah will adopt a new flag March 9, 2024 and MN May 11th:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_U.S._states_and_territories


The Rage Against the War Machine anti-war demonstration in DC waFebruary 19, 2023 and there will be a sequel February 17, 2024.


Angelina Emily Grimké Weld (February 20, 1805 – October 26, 1879)


February 20-21 – Julian Assange hearing in the UK relating to whether he can be extradited to the US; RFK Jr condemned the US effort recently.  


According to the website Prisoner Solidarity, political prisoner Tsutomu Shirosaki might be released from prison in Japan February 20, 2027:  prisonersolidarity.com/prisoner/tsutomu-shiros


Hungarian revolutionary Béla Kun (Béla Kohn) was born February 20, 1886 in a Transylvanian village that was part of Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time and is now in Romania.  Some of his writings are posted at:  www.marxists.org/archive/kun-bela/index.htm and otheraspect.org/bela-kun-and-hungarian-soviet-republic/


The First Franco-Dahomean War, one of two, was February 20 to October 4 in 1890, in what inow Benin (formerly called Dahomey, after a powerful Fon or Aja state there, the "Black Sparta," or Mexico?), between Togo and Nigeria in West Africa.  The second war was July 4, 1892 to January 15, 1894.  In 1860 the Clotilda bought slaves captured by Dahomey and transported them to Mobile; importing slaves from abroad had long been illegal.  There istill king of Dahomey, who has a role in the Vodun religion, etc.


Frederick Douglass passed away February 20, 1895 in Washington, DC.


The World Day of Social Justice is February 20th:  www.un.org/en/observances/international-days-and-weeks


February 21st is also Red Books Day, according to the People's Forum in New York City.  This is the 175th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto:  peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/21/red-books-day-2023-fight-the-rise-of-the-right-read-a-red-book/


The last known Carolina parakeet died February 21, 1918 at the Cincinnati Zoo, apparently in the same place where the last captive passenger pigeon, Martha, died September 1, 1914.  He was named Incas and died months after his mate Lady Jane.  The last known wild bird was killed in Okeechobee County, Florida in 1904, though sightings were reported in southern Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp in 1937 and in swamps near the Santee River in South Carolina in 1938.  Of course the Santee was dammed the next year.  It would seem like Carolina parakeets could be cloned with DNA from preserved specimens.     


Jeffrey "Jeff" M Shaara, author of the Gettysburg novel Killer Angels, was born February 21, 1952 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but grew up in Tallahassee, Florida.


A chapter of the Deacons for Defense and Justice was founded February 21, 1965 in Bogalusa, Louisiana


Two Israeli F-4 Phantom II fighter jets shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 February 21, 1973 over part of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula occupied by Israel, killing 108 people, with 5 survivors.

Bob Sheldon, founder of the former leftist Internationalist Books in Chapel Hill, was killed the evening of February 21, 1991, and the case remains unsolved.  The police concluded that this happened during a robbery, but others called it a political murder.   


Florida professor Sami al-Arian (born January 14, 1958 in Kuwait) was indicted February 21, 2003; his case brings to mind what Nancy Pelosi advocates doing in winter 2024).


2/21-22/2014  US-EU-backed Maidan coup completed, in power, in Ukraine? –  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych


2/21/2024  the 125th anniversary of Vicksburg NMP


February 22, 1966 Kosmos 110 was launched.


February 22, 1974 Samuel Joseph Byck attempted to hijack an airliner at the Baltimore/Washington International Airport for a 9/11-like attack, to kill President Nixon. Byck killed a police officer and a pilot, but was wounded and then killed himself while the DC-9 was still on the ground. Byck was born January 30, 1930 in South Philadelphia.


2/22/1976 a UFO report in Great Falls and 11/17/1975 in Whitefish, MT – Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978. 


Nature author Hal Borland (Harold Glen Borland) passed away February 22, 1978.


The Merriespruit tailings dam disaster in South Africa was the night of February 22, 1994.


English official and noted diarist Samuel Pepys was born February 23, 1633 in London, and passed away May 26, 1703 in nearby Clapham, Surrey.


According to Wikipedia, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the first agreement to lease Guantánamo Bay from Cuba February 23, 1903.  This was one of the demands of the Platt Amendment giving the US control of Cuba in exchange for ending the direct military occupation that followed the Spanish-American War.  The Platt Amendment was added to Cuba's constitution verbatim December 25, 1901 and the same demands were included in a treaty signed May 22, 1903.  Today the US government attempts to hide some of its crimes, such as extrajudicial detention and torture, by carrying them out on stolen Cuban territory. 


Red Army Day/Soviet Army and Navy Day is February 23rd.  It was replaced by Defender of the Fatherland Day in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, South Ossetia, Tajikistan, Transnistria, and Turkmenistan, also on the 23rd, while in Kazakhstan it is May 7th, around WWII Victory Day. 
 

February 23, 1942 a Japanese submarine shelled a Bankline Oil Company refinery in Goleta, California, not far north of Santa Barbara, and the great and deadly phantom L.A. air raid was early on February 25th:  Alien Agenda:  Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us by Jim Marrs, 1997


February 23rd to December 9 in 1969 – the UNC – Chapel Hill Food Workers Strike, an on-going issue at UNC.


Great horned owllay eggs around late December to March here, and incubation takes about a month.  They usually occupy nests built by hawks, crows, or ospreys, and sometimeshare bald eagles nest with the owners.  February 23, 1992 great horned owls were found nesting on a platform built for ospreys at (in?) the North Pond of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the coast of North Carolina near Roanoke Island  Birds of the Carolinas:  Second Edition, 2006.  Pea Island isouth of Oregon Inlet and is no longer a separate barrier island, connecting to much larger HatteraIsland, though any new inlets opened by storms are closed artificially.  The area might be vanishing beneath the water, possibly in part because the natural movement of sand has been interfered with, along with climate change, but Highway 12 has not been relocated.  ~2/13 NC 12 flooding there, from the west?  Large ponds or lagoons take up much of the sandy Island'interior (I think the freshwater floats on saltwater), with few trees in my memory, compared to a place like the very wide and even hilly area around Cape Hatteras, with marshesswamps, and deep forest.  Pea Island is relatively narrow, but apparently surrounded by a much wider area of very shallow water in Pamlico Sound, potentially habitat for stingrays.  The Refuge was created around May 17, 1937.  I heard one or more barred owls here for the first time in weeks January 7, 2024 in the afternoon and again in early February and on the 6th, etc.?; barred owls also nest in the winter, usually in tree hollows, but they sometimes occupy hawk or crow nests.  I heard one or more hawk(red-shouldered?) one day recently and one wasitting on a low branch across the street after having been disturbed by the mail February 5th.  Turkey and black vultures frequently overhead  Bluebirds have been around and the sapsuckerleft in January?


British naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, February 24, 1743 – June 19, 1820.


The Revolutionary War Battle of Haw River was February 24, 1781 in what is now Alamance County, NC.


An explosion and a broken meteorite fell in Tombstone, Arizona on February 24, 1897  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


Apparently the Zweiss planetarium projector, of which there is or was one in use at UNC'Morehead Planetarium, was first unveiled at Munich's Deutsches Museum October 21, 1923.  The projector had first been proposed February 24, 1914.  The Deutsches Museum had opened November 12, 1906:  spacewatchtower.blogspot.com/2023/10/centennial-projection-planetarium.html 


Russia entered the civil war in Ukraine February 24, 2022, though pro-Russian forces had occupied the Crimean Peninsula in late February 2014 and it was later annexed by Russia.  This followed the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government by pro-US forces.  Under Khrushchev Crimea and nearby areas was transferred from Russia to Ukraine, both Soviet republics at the time, February 19, 1954, but there have been questions about the legality.


William Z Foster, the CPUSA's General Secretary between 1945 and 1957, was born February 25, 1881.


I now have more location information and hope to write it up for this 140th anniversary year, though not necessarily here:


It was reported that a shower of blood fell from a cloudless sky in the middle of the day on February 25, 1884 in New Hope Township, on the central eastern edge of Chatham County, NC. The Weekly Raleigh Register specifies that the location was near “the old stage road between Pittsboro and Raleigh, in the fork of New Hope Creek [River] and Haw River,” near “Cyprett's bridge over New Hope.” An 1870 map of Chatham County (available at UNC's Wilson Library and the Chatham County Historical Association sells copies www.chathamhistory.org/Sys/Store/Products/267580 ) shows an unnamed bridge over the New Hope River just upstream from White Oak Creek, on the very north edge of squareish New Hope Township. UNC chemistry professor Francis Preston Venable's account says that the site was “about a quarter of a mile from the Raleigh and Pittsboro road.” The soil was described as sandy, which might indicate that it was near a waterway. The book Weird Carolinas puts the location near Parkers Creek, something like a mile east of the current Mount Gilead Church (this seems to be their website: mountgileadbaptist.org/ ), which is on Mount Gilead Church Road by Red Hill, which would seem to put the location of the blood fall on private land west of Big Woods Road. I thought it might be in the gameland around the Jordan Lake reservoir or underwater, and maybe a bit further south.


The unnamed wife of Kit Lasater, a black tenant farmer on land owned by Silas Beckwith, was outside her home, near a plowed field, and saw something red fall and heard rain, but the shower had already ended by the time she looked up. The wind was calm; Venable thought that there might have been a slight breeze from the south or southwest. Many people came to see the wonder. An SA Holleman visited the location the next morning and said that a rectangular area about 50 by 70 feet had been hit by drops the size of a small pea to the size of a man's finger, the larger drops having coagulated while the smaller ones had been absorbed by the soil. The Chatham Record said the area was about 60' around while the Weekly Raleigh Register said it was an area of 25 – 30 square yards. A Dr Robinson who lived nearby studied the material and thought that it really was blood and said that it smelled like blood. Dr Venable, a future UNC president and namesake of UNC's old chemistry building, and buried on the campus ( www.ncpedia.org/biography/venable-francis-preston ), analyzed samples and concluded that the material was blood, though the samples had been gathered and delivered by third parties. Venable visited the site himself, but not until almost three weeks later, after “several heavy rains.” He still found one or two stains on a fence and interviewed Mrs Lasater.


Several years ago I was unable to locate any Lasaters who could talk about the incident (Lassiter is probably a much more common name, and I tried contacting Lassiters as well) and no Beckwiths. In 1870 there was a Lasater's Crossroads north of White Oak Creek, around where NC 751 is today, in Williams Township, and a few individual Lasater homesteads are shown on the 1870 map. Silas Beckwith is supposed to have lived February 19, 1815 – August 16, 1882, in which case he wasn't alive when this happened and maybe that is why the Lasaters were living there ( www.findagrave.com/memorial/9556160/silas-beckwith ). There was an SM (Sire Manly?) Beckwith who lived November 1, 1841 to April 21, 1907 ( www.findagrave.com/memorial/9556158/sire-manly-beckwith ). These graves are supposed to be in the Beckwith or Council Family Cemetery, in New Hope Township, on the south side of Highway 64, today's Pittsboro to Raleigh Road, a tenth of a mile west of John Horton Road (SR 1745), east of Jordan Lake and Wilsonville, at the intersection of 64 and Farrington Road: cemeterycensus.com/nc/chat/cem370.htm and www.findagrave.com/cemetery/1994787/beckwith-cemetery  I've been by these places many times without knowing that Silas Beckwith was buried right there beside 64, and I've been in the area east of Mount Gilead Church.  


All of the newspaper accounts referenced by the NCpedia ( www.ncpedia.org/chatham-blood-shower-1884 ) have been digitized and are available at: www.digitalnc.org/newspapers/#advsearch in addition to an article on page 3 of the March 6, 1884 edition of the Chatham Record. Dr Venable's report, published in the Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society (1883 – 1884 Volume 1), is online at: dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/jncas/id/999 and was reprinted in some of the newspaper accounts above. There are also accounts in Jerome Clark's Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North AmericaWeird Carolinas, and on the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources' blog: www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2016/02/25/chatham-county-blood-shower


Also in the area there is an abandoned underground government communications facility, built for World War III, near the end of the Cold War. Maybe it is on Big Hole Road, west of Jordan Lake, off of Big Woods Road. There was an article in the News and Observer a few years ago.


The new Marc Basnight Bridge over Oregon Inlet opened February 25, 2019, replacing the 2 1/2-mile long Herbert C Bonner Bridge, which had been built by November or December 1963.  I think the SELC wanted a much longer bridge, going around collapsing Pea Island.  Oregon Inlet, between Bodie and Pea/Hatteras "islands," was created by a hurricane and found by the sidewheeship OregonSeptember 7, 1846   The North Carolina Gazetteer:  A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places and Their History:  Second Edition, 2010


The WWII UFO-related Battle of LoAngeleor the Great LoAngeles Air Raid was early on February 24  25, 1942, and caused a few deaths and property damage.


February 25, 2019 the International Court of Justice made a non-binding determination that the UK had illegally separated the Chagos Archipelago from what was then its colony of Mauritius in the western Indian Ocean:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia  and  www.bbc.com/news/uk-47358602  The Chagossians were driven from their homes, such as by killing their pets, not allowing people who left for medical treatment back in, limiting vital imports, etc.  The UK gave the islands to the US for military use, such as the base on Diego Garcia, from which the US can carry out its adventures in the Middle East and possibly carry out torture and rendition as well; the US also dumped waste.  In 2010 the UK tried to maintain its control by declaring the ocean around the islands a marine reserve.  Supposedly the UK will return the islands someday, when they are no longer needed by the military, similar to the declaration that the nuclear powers will disarm, at some undetermined time in the future.  The UK has been losing its case in international bodies and began negotiating with Mauritius November 3, 2022, though apparently the UK and Mauritius have agreed that the UK and US military base on Diego Garcia will remain in operation.


The Biden administration's first bombing of targets in partially-occupied Syria, following the precedents set by Obama and Trump, was February 25, 2021.  Unlike Russia, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah the USA, Turkey, Israel, etc. are operating in Syria without the authorization of the internationally recognized government.


Graham, NC town commissioner and constable Wyatt Outlaw was killed February 26, 1870.  After state senator John W Stephens was killed May 21st in Caswell County Governor William Holden declared Alamance and Caswell counties insurrectionary and the Kirk-Holden War against the KKK began, with actions in places such as Yanceyville, Caswell Co. and in Pittsboro, Chatham Co., which the KKK apparently intended to seize.  The state of insurrection was declared over by November, but the newly Democrat-dominated legislature impeached Governor Holden in December 1870.  Tennessee Unionist Colonel George Washington Kirk, who led the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry or Kirk's Raiders during the Civil War, commanded the militia fighting the KKK forces.  


Robert Franklin Williams, born February 26, 1925 in Monroe, North Carolina, was president of the local NAACP chapter and formed the NRA-affiliated Black Armed Guard.  He wrote Negroes with Guns (1962).  He spent some time in Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and China.  He died October 15, 1996 in Baldwin, Michigan.
 

February 26, 1946 radio in Helsinki, Finland referred to "inordinate meteor activity" far north, the first officiareference to the "ghost rockets?"  Later reported as far south as Tangier, Italy, Greece, and India:  Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982. 


The Buffalo Creek Flood mining disaster in West Virginia waFebruary 26, 1972.


The night of February 26 - 27, 1991 the US, British, Canadian, and French forces intercepted Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait, creating the famous Highway of Death.  A few years ago the videogame Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare was condemned for having a "Highway of Death," created by a Russian attack on fleeing civilians in fictional Urzikstan.  Wikipedia also mentions that players can use white phosphorus as a weapon, illegally.  As we know from the mainstream "Western" media, the US only violates the rules of war inadvertently and intermittently, unlike Russia and other countries the US government (joined by the "free" and "independent" media) has problems with. 


The World Trade Center bombing was February 26, 1993, 30 years ago.


Asian elephant Lin Wang (林旺, Lín Wàng, ㄌ一ㄣˊ ㄨㄤˋ, January 18, 1917 in Myanmar? – February 26, 2003 in Taipei, Taiwan) served in the Imperial Japanese and ROC armies, from at least 1943 to around 1954:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Wang


Trayvon Martin, born February 5, 1995, was killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida February 26, 2012.

Albanian revolutionary Nexhmije Xhuglini Hoxha was born February 8, 1921 in Bitolj, today part of recently renamed North Macedonia, formerly a Yugoslav republic and having a significant ethnic Albanian minority (see above and previous calendars).  She passed away February 26, 2020 at age 99.  Some of her memoirs are translated at:  ml-review.ca/aml/index/subject.html and some short writings are posted at www.mltranslations.org/Albania/index.htm  She has a daughter Pranvera; two sons, Sokol and Ilir (born March 31, 1949 and also imprisoned for years after the counterrevolution); and several grandchildren. 


Some left statements and generally scathing and similar articles from the "Western" mainstream media, especially those from the US:



ml-today.com/?s=nexhmije



theredphoenixapl.org/2020/02/26/a-bright-red-star-has-joined-the-heavens/ 



revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv25n1/NHObituary.pdf


www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/world/europe/nexhmije-hoxha-dead.html



www.reuters.com/article/us-albania-hoxha-idUSKCN20K30K



www.france24.com/en/20200226-nexhmije-hoxha-widow-of-albania-s-communist-tyrant-dies-aged-99 


www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/26/nexhmije-hoxha-widow-of-albanias-dictator-dies-aged-99



www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/02/nexhmije-hoxha-obituary



livre.fnac.com/a2422752/Fahri-Balliu-La-femme-du-diable-Nexhmije-Hoxha-veuve-du-dictateur-albanais-Enver-Hoxha


Translated statement from the War Veterans Association of the NLA (posted on the For a People's Democracy Facebook group: 
www.facebook.com/groups/312850322214080/ ; there is also an untranslated announcement from Ilir Hoxha there): 



"WAR VETERANS ASSOCIATION OF THE NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY



Died comrade Nexhmije Hoxha


A young girl born in Saint Naum (Bitola), raised in Dibra, married in Gjirokastra, with a more sensational life in Tirana, where she supported the Gervalla family, left behind one [major] Nationwide Works, testament to be realized from generations of dedication for National Unity ...

Glory!


War Veterans Association of the National Liberation Army


Fazli Veliu, Chairman
Tetova, February, 2020"


(I assume the Gervalla family refers to brothers Jusuf and Bardhosh Gervalla, Kosovar Albanian activists assassinated in West Germany January 18, 1982, and Tetova is a city in Macedonia with a large ethnic Albanian population.)




2/26/2024  The 105th anniverary of Grand Canyon NP



2/26/2024The Revolutionary War Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge was February 27, 1776 in Pender County, near Wilmington; there is supposed to be an annual reenactment. 


The discovery of Biela's Comet, the third comet found to be periodic, is attributed to Wilhelm von Biela, February 27, 1826, but it had been recorded March 8, 1772, etc.  In 1845-1846 it was found to have split in two.  Long before the theory that a comet or asteroid hit the Earth about 65 million years ago, Ignatius L. Donnelly theorized in 1883 that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, etc. had been set off by Biela's Comet.  It is a source of the Andromedid meteor shower, which was expected to be stronger than usual in December 2023:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biela%27s_Comet


The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was declared February 27, 1976 in Bir Lehlou, part of Western Sahara held by the Polisario Front.  Tifariti replaced Bir Lehlou as the provisional capital of the SADR on this day in 2008.


The Venezuelan Caracazo protests and riots began February 27, 1989 in Guarenas and lasted until March 8th.


International Polar Bear Day is around February 27th ( polarbearsinternational.org/get-involved/international-polar-bear-day ).


February 27, 2012 WikiLeaks began releasing leaked internal emails from the Austin, Texas-based private intelligence company Stratfor, titled the Global Intelligence Files.


The Hanoi Summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, their second, was February 27-28, 2019.


Apparently the only Antonov An-225 Mriya in existence, a gigantic Soviet cargo plane built in Ukraine in the 80's  to transport Buran, the Soviet space shuttle, was destroyed at Antonov Airport near the Ukrainian capital by February 27, 2022.  This one and only An-225 was still in use and is supposed to have been the heaviest aircraft ever and had the widest wingspan of any aircraft in operation, and was the first Soviet aircraft with a Ukrainian name.  An article from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum plays up Ukrainian nationalism in service to US imperialism in competition with Russian imperialism, but according to the Wikipedia entry the plane's pilot blamed management for not following advice from NATO about relocating the aircraft to Germany.  There are plans to build a new An-225 or restore this one (with what funding?).




A tribute to the recently released Ana Belen Monte(born February 28, 1957; accused of giving Cuba information about secret US Army base in ESalvador, which was attacked by the FMNL March 31, 1987, during the civil war; she was imprisoned September 21, 2001-January 6, 2023 and is now in Puerto Rico):  groups.io/g/cubanews/topic/103239943


The Colonial Drug Store sit-in – 2/28/1960, memorialized 2/28/2020:  chapelhillhistory.org/civil-rights/the-chapel-hill-nine/


The US government attack on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas began February 28, 1993, 30 years, and the siege came to a fiery end April 19th.


The Kosova War was February 28, 1998 to June 11, 1999; NATO began bombing Yugoslavia at 19:00 UTC March 24th:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War  


The elected government of Haiti was toppled February 28, 2004, with the involvement of the USA, Canada, and France.  Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide says US special forces forcible flew him to exile in the Central African Republic as paramilitaries approached the capital.  This was the second coup to overthrow Aristide and there were several assassination attempts. 


The Iranian Space Agency was created February 28, 2004.



After March 1983 it looked like the city of Rancho Palos Verdes (in Los Angeles County, California) had (intentionally?) killed off the last population of the Palos Verde blue butterfly (a subspecies of the more abundant silvery blue), but in 1994 another population was discovered, though it differed from the others in having an additional larval foodplant.  A  conservation program was started.  The Palos Verde blue was classified as endangered July 2, 1980.  Rancho Palos Verde was charged with violating the Endangered Species Act in 1987, but the case was dismissed because at the time only a person could be charged with this crime (this error was fixed in 1988). 


www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/esa_works/profile_pages/PalosVerdesBlueButterfly.html


www.urbanwildlands.org/pvb.html www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Glaucopsyche-lygdamus terranealife.com/rediscovering-palos-verdes-blue-butterfly/ butterflywebsite.com/endangered-butterflies.cfm



The Xerces blue was driven to extinction by military construction near San Francisco in 1943.  The species is remembered in the name of the Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation group ( www.xerces.org ).  The Xerces and Palos Verde blues are in the same genus and their caterpillars eat some of the same plant species.  Militarism today contributes to climate change and other problems, threatening to kill off many species this century, even if some endangered species, such as the St. Francis' satyr butterfly and the red-cockaded woodpecker in North Carolina, have unwittingly been temporarily sheltered on military bases.  Rare wildlife has also found shelter along militarized borders (an academic who was, I think, in Boise, ID wrote about this), such as inside the DMZ across Korea.  In 2020 supposedly "liberal" or "progressive" Democratic Party-ruled California was allowing a fish, the delta smelt, to go extinct due to human actions (see for example:  www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/24/will-the-extinction-of-delta-smelt-be-governor-gavin-newsoms-environmental-legacy/ ).



German botanist and painter 
Catharina Helena Dörrien was born March 1, 1717.


Korea's March 1st Movement for the end of Japanese colonial rule began March 1, 1919 with a reading of the Korean Declaration of Independence in Seoul, and was brutally suppressed.  See:  koryogroup.com/blog/the-march-1st-movement



The 
Mongolian People's Revolution of 1921 began March 1st. 



Castle Bravo, the USA's biggest nuclear weapon test and the fifth largest ever, was March 1, 1954 in the Bikini Atoll, today part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.  It was a test of a new type of fusion-based hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb, more powerful than the fission-based atom bombs dropped on Japan.  The US tested the first hydrogen bomb at a nearby atoll in 1952, escalating the arms race that could lead to human extinction.  The Castle Bravo test was much more powerful than the physicists expected and radioactive fallout fell on several islands, a US Navy ship, and on up to 100 fishing boats outside of the area that had previously been announced as dangerous, including the Japanese bonito fishing ship Daigo Fukuryū Maru.  Its 23 crewmen contracted radiation sickness and one died September 23rd, though not directly from radiation sickness, and this caused a an international incident.  The fallout also sickened nearby islanders and US military personnel, and blanketed the world in smaller amounts.  Bikini was left contaminated, though there is an effort at remediation.  The atoll's original inhabitants were shuffled around to different islands and at one point were left starving to death.  Testing destroyed some of the small islands, but there is rich marine life there today.  A quote in In a Dark Time might refer to a test at Bikini Atoll.   


March 1 is Remembrance Day (Nuclear Victims' Day and Nuclear Survivors' Day) in the Marshall Islands, remembering those impacted by US nuclear tests, conducted when the islands were under direct US control (today there is a "free association" agreement and dependence on the US).


The Comintern, the third international organization of revolutionary communist and socialist parties and organizations, was founded during a congress held in Moscow March 2  6, 1919, with 34 groups participating.


Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev March 2, 1931 – August 30, 2022



A prototype 
Concorde supersonic airliner first took to the air March 2, 1969.



The Battle of Zhenbao or Damansky Island, part of a long border dispute between China and the USSR, was March 2-17, 1969. 


Aafia Siddiqui was born March 2, 1972 in Karachi, Pakistan.  She was convicted February 3, 2010 and sentenced to 86 years of Federal imprisonment and is held [n Fort Worth's Federal Medical Center, Carswell.  


The Loveland, OH frogman or troll wareportedly seen by a police officer March 3, 1972 at 1am on Riverside Road, and another sighting by a police officer waaround March 17th.  Later one or both officers claimed that it was a non-native iguana (what was the weather like?) and that their accounts had been twisted, but other people reported unusuasightings in the general region, for example August 21, 1955 in Evansville, IN and in Kentucky.  A festival is held anyway?  – Curious Encounters:  Phantom Trains, Spooky Spots, and Other Mysterious Wondersby Loren Coleman, August 1985, January 1986, Faber and Faber, Inc., etc.


March 2, 1978 Vladimír Remek became the first person in space not from the USSR or USA and he is the only cosmonaut from Czechoslovakia, called the CSSR at the time.  He represented his country ethnically, having a Czech mother and a Slovak father, and is considered the first astronaut from the EU.  Through the Interkosmos program, he was part of the Soyuz 28 mission March 2 - 10, 1978 to the USSR's Salyut 6 space station.  He represented the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia in the European Parliament 2004 - 2013 and was appointed Czech ambassador to Russia in January 2014.  Asteroid 2552 Remek is named after him.  


March 2nd is Tree Planting Day in DPR Korea.  This is similar to Arbor Day and Earth Day and was instituted by Kim Jong Il.  For more information see:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbor_Day#Korea  nsnbc.me/2013/03/02/tree-planting-day-in-the-dpr-korea-embodies-socialist-and-traditional-asian-cultural-values

National Reading Day is March 2nd or the closest school day to that date, marking Dr Seuss' (Theodor Seuss "Ted" Geisel's) birth in 1904, and was started in 1997 by the National Education Association.




Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered March 2, 2022; perihelion was January 12, 2023.


The traditional celebration HinamatsuriDoll Festival, or Girls' Day (apparently once known as the Peach Festival) is March 3rd in Japan.


It was reported that “half a wagonload of pieces of fresh meat, sliced into thin strips, some of it quite bloody” fell from a clear sky over an area 300' by 150' (there are other figures) on the farm of Allan Crouch in Olympia Springs, Bath County, in northeast Kentucky, on March 3, 1876. Mrs Couch witnessed the fall while outside making soap. This is referenced in Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States , Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America and Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982It was reported that a similar fall of meat, said to resemble and taste like beef, fell from a clear sky near Gastonia, in Gaston County, NC November 11, 1876 (from Unnatural Phenomena; many things have been reported to have fallen near Charlotte), and something like meat fell in California's Santa Clara County/San Jose area, near San Francisco in June 1869, etc.


spooklight reportedly took up residence on Jackson Road, off of US 13 and Turlington Road (?), near Norfolk and Suffolk, VA [3/5/1951  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978].



March 7, 1911, around 8am, it became very dark in Louisville, KentuckyDecember 2, 1904 around 10am in Memphis, TN; March 19, 1886 around 3pm in Oshkosh, WI; August 19, 1763 mid-AM in London, UK; Hammonton/Folsom Swamp area of NJ December 5, 1931, a 'phantom plane crash?'  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.  In March, during the Dust Bowl era, an anthropogenic dust storm from the Midwest even reached DC.


March 7 1972 in Gordon, NE 1000 American Indians marched over the killing of Raymond Little Thunder – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


March 8, 1468 – "a dark object," making a noise, went west from Mount Kasuga, Japan at midnight:  Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982. More?




March 10, 1956 a B-47 with nuclear components was lost over the Mediterranean.


Ukrainian by ethnicity but born in Siberia  Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko September 24, 1911 – March 10, 1985.


March 11, 1958 a 26-kiloton Mark 6 nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped 15,000 feet from a B-47 Stratojet over Mars Bluff, Florence County, in northeastern SC, west of the Great Pee Dee River.  The bomb's 7,600 pounds of conventional high explosives went off near a house, gouging out a crater around 75 feet wide and 35 feet deep and injuring 6 people; the plutonium core had remained on the aircraft, so there wanot a nuclear explosion.  The CSS Pee Dee, a Macon-class gunboat (sailed and powered?), was reportedllaunched at the nearby Mars Bluff Naval Yard in January 1865 and scuttled March 15th or February 18th that year; December 21, 2010 it was announced that the site had been found and the Pee Dee's three cannons were recovered in 2015:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Bluff,_South_Carolina , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_weapon_loss_incident , www.flocomuseum.org/featured-objects/mars-bluff-bomb/ , www.roadsideamerica.com/story/24951#google_vignetteweb.archive.org/web/20131113035209/http://dixiehistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2009/06/mars-bluff-and-css-pee-dee.html , and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Peedee


The Hi-Tek Incident Trần Trường incident (Vụ Trần Trường or Sự kiện Trần TrườngJanuary 17 to March 11 in 1999 in Orange County, CA


US president Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901), related to Wm. Henry Harrison.


The Revolutionary War Battle of Guildford Courthouse was March 15, 1781, in what is now Greensboro, a major city and the county seat of Guildford County, North Carolina; British forces under Lieutenant General CharleCornwallis (December 31, 1738 – October 5, 1805) won a Pyrrhic victory over Continental forces under Major General Nathanael Greene.


President James Madison March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836


March 16, 1962 – Kosmos 1/Sputnik 11 was launched.


US president Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) 


Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) September 26, 1774 – March 18, 1845


Eastern Clean Monday is March 18th or February 12th in 2024 and March 3rd in 2025:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Monday


The Northern Hemisphere'spring equinox will be March 19th at 11:06pm EDT (time off because of DT?:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox ) in 2024


Plutarch made the first known description of the solar corona during a solar eclipse March 20, 71 CE.


Asteroid 2003 EH1 might be a source of the Quadrantid meteor shower; there is a theory that a related celestial body caused a deadly rain of rocks in Qingyang, China sometime in the lunar month between March 21 and April 19, 1490 (exactly the Aries period in the West):  amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/  , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(196256)_2003_EH1 , and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingyang_event   


March 22, 1622 VA Indians following Opechancanough rose up against the English colonist– This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832)


3/22/1971 550pm "A large 'smoking' object plunged into the bay" in Monterey, CAWeird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


The Great Flood of 1913 in Ohio, etc. was March 23-26.


Melita Stedman Norwood (Sirnis; March 25, 1912 – June 2, 2005):   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melita_Norwood


March 25, 1966 a boom and ice fall in San Mateo, CA  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


The historic Chatham County Courthouse burned March 25, 2010.


December 14, 1981 Israel's Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law, applying Israeli laws to the Golan Heights, Syrian and disputed Lebanese territory occupied by Israel.  This was seen as annexation and condemned even by the Reagan administration, demonstrating how much more pro-Zionist the US government has become.  The Trump administration recognized this annexation March 25, 2019.  Moving the embassy to Jerusalem May 14, 2018 might have been recognition of Israel's claim to all of the city and a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 478.  The Biden administration hasn't reversed what Trump did, but condemns Russia.  In addition several Palestinians claim that the site of the embassy includes land that was stolen from them, and the US government knows this and some of these claimants are US citizens.  One March in a recent year the USAF might have first conducted military exercises with Israel over the occupied West Bank, another form of recognition of Israeli annexation of foreign territory by force, within the USA's "norms" and 'rules-based international order.'


Earth Hour will be March 23rd in 2024 and March 29th in 2025 National Dark-Sky Week is supposed to be held annually the week of the New Moon in April, and highlights light pollution and stargazing. 


The Civil War Battle of Glorietta Pass was March 26 – 28, 1862 in northern New Mexico Territory, near Sante Fe.  The site is considered endangered today.


Green rain in Dayton, OH March 26, 1948, green snow in Dana, CA in early 4/1953?  Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.



Anthony Frederick Blunt (September 26, 1907 – March 26, 1983):  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Blunt


Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult were found dead March 26, 1997 in Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego, having committed mass suicide so that their souls could board aspacecraft they believed to be following Comet Hale-Bopp, a very bright comet at the time.  Comet Hyakutake was bright the March before, though I think my memory wants to say that Hale-Bopp was first and that I saw both, without optical aids.   


The "Saudi Coalition," materially supported by the US, intervened in the Yemeni Civil War March 26, 2015, fighting the Ansar Allah (Houthi) coalition (termed Operation Decisive Storm).  See also:  cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/MS5302.HTM#4  US ending in 2021??


Russian revolutionary Sergei Kirov was born March 27, 1886 in what is now Kirov Oblast.  He was assassinated December 1, 1934. 



Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim (Károly Manheim, March 27, 1893 – January 91947) 


US president John Tyler (March 29, 1790 – January 18, 1862) 

March 29, 1835 Treaty of New Echota, GA with the Cherokee – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


The partial solar eclipse closest to total, the diameter of the Moon appearing to be 0.99985 of the Sun's, was March 30, 1578 BCE.  


The March 30, 1856 Treaty of Paris ended the 19th century Crimean War (humiliating Russia, the first time a great power was disarmed after a war?) but now there ia new one.  Timothy, a UK Royal Navy Greek tortoise, was found during the War, in 1854, and lived from about 1844 to April 3, 2004.


The Civil War Battle/Skirmish of Stanwix Station was March 30, 1862 at the southwest corner of Arizona, somewhat close to Yuma.  



Activist Norman David Mayer (March 31, 1916 – December 9, 1982), claiming to have explosives, threatened to blow up the Washington Monument December 8, 1982, over nuclear weapons; he was shot and killed.



March 30th is Land Day in Palestine.


The attempted assassination of President Reagan was March 30, 1981.


Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai was born March 31, 1872.  See also:  www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/index.htm , neodemocracy.blogspot.com/search/label/Kolontai , michaelharrison.org.uk/2022/03/writings-of-the-soviet-leadership/ , and redstarpublishers.org/  See also the March 8, 2023 posts.



A US-backed military coup in Brazil beginning March 31, 1964 installed a brutal military government that lasted until 1985, praised by former rightist president Jair Bolsonaro.



According to Wikipedia, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), known as the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada for electoral purposes, to separate it from the unrelated Communist Party of Canada, was founded March 31, 1970.  On the 53rd anniversary:  cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/MS5304.HTM#1   Some music from the CPCML is online at:  www.youtube.com/channel/UCGM05kHPxsmToUjm-sSZefg


March 31st is the International Transgender Day of Visibilitydeclared in 2009 and officially proclaimed by Biden in 2021, and Cesar Chavez Day (March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993), proclaimed nationally in 2014 by Obama, at the end of Farmworker Awareness Week:  saf-unite.org/national-farmworker-awareness-week/


It was reported that slices of meat fell from a cloud near Cloverlea (Clover Lea? Not Clover leaf), on the south bank of the Pamunkey River, close to Richmond (?), in Hanover County, Virginia, on land belonging to Dr GW Bassett, a medical doctor, on Good Friday, 1850. The brief mention in Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States (page 175) says that the cloud was red. In Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America it is said that several men observed a small cloud going northeast to southwest overhead and fragments of flesh and liver fell over a span of 5 yards. Bassett and another person picked up 15 – 20 samples, some of which weighed an ounce, the next morning. The samples were preserved in alcohol and one was sent to a doctor in Richmond. This Dr Bassett seems to be the George Washington Bassett (August 23, 1800 – August 25, 1878) buried in Old Church, Hanover County – www.findagrave.com/memorial/6446088/george-washington-bassett 



By Easter Sunday 1987 every known California condor had been captured, for a captive breeding program.  The birds were de-loused, apparently exterminating the California condor louse Colpocephalum californici , discovered in 1963, destroying the information that could have been gained from studying them and possibly causing future problems for the condors, when they get new parasites, the ecological niche now being vacant.  Insights into human evolution have come through the study of our parasites, also going extinct, just through better hygiene or through active extermination campaigns, though some are generalists and could live without feeding on us.  I feel like there isome tension or problematic questions that public health workers and officials ignore.  The BBC often reminds me of it.  Apparently when the first nuclear bomb was detonated there was some acknowledgement of the magnitude of what the Manhattan Project had done or achieved.  More examples at:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation-induced_extinction 



The Hainan Incident, George W Bush's first foreign policy crisis, was April 1, 2001, and resulted in the destruction of a Chinese PLA Navy J-8II fighter and the presumed death of pilot Lt Cmdr Wang Wei and the capture of the offending US Navy EP-3 ARIES and its 24 crew members when they landed at a Chinese base. The EP-3 was shipped back to the US in pieces and rebuilt.  EP-3's and military aircraft from other countries apparently came very close January 29 and November 5, 2018 over the Black Sea, July 19, 2019 near Venezuela, etc, in each case the US claiming to be the innocent party, operating over international waters.



The US Capitol Car Attack was April 2, 2021. 


There were many UFO reports in Lumberton, NC April 3-5, 1975, according to the book Weird Carolinas.  



April 4-6, 1975 Robeson County (above) + five more counties in NC; five NC countieon the 3rd; June 6, 1975 Greensboro, NC UFO landing; Jan-Feb 1973 Cherokee (county?), SC; Jan 24, 1963 Lexington, Kentucky; Feb 10, 1975 Staten Island NY; Jan 6, 1974 Orange County, FL; 4/30/1962 from an X-15 rocketplane; Jan 16, 1958 Trindade Island, Brazil; March 9, 1957 Jacksonville, FL; Dec 29, 1952 off Honshu in Japan; around Japan December 1952 to January 1953, etc.; Jan 29, 1952 from Maine to Virginia; Feb 24-25 in 1893 around 10pm North China Sea Caroline; December 20, 1893 VA to SC; during January 1910 in Chattanooga, TN; Jan 12, 1947 PR meteor? The January 1944 Amazing Stories magazine? Dec 2, 1896 Pacific Grove, north of San Francisco, in CA; April 10, 1897 Chicago; Dec 22 (?), 1909 Worcester, MA; December 22nd Marlboro, the 23rd in Boston, MA; Loss of the Star Tiger Jan 29, 1948, the Star Ariel Jan 17, 1949; July 28, 1946 – censoring ghost rocket information in Sweden; dates of red rains page 181-182; from UFO Exist, by Paris Flammonde, 1976. 



The Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was deployed April 3, 2021, operated between April 19th of that year and January 18th this year, and the mission waended January 25th:   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) 


The Weather-connected May 19th Communist Organization bombed an Israeli Aircraft Industries  Building April 5, 1984.


The war in Bosnia was around April 6, 1992 to December 14, 1995; February 28, 1994 air combat by NATO and its first bombing, ever, was April 10-11th:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War


mystery airship, a period UFO, with a searchlight, reportedly travelled rapidly (but airships aren't noted for their speed today) over WilmingtonNorth Carolina April 8, 1897, according to the book Weird Carolinas.



There will be a total solar eclipse across much of North America April 8th in 2024, a sequel to the Great American Eclipse of August 21, 2017, and the last easy opportunity to see one for a while.


Interstate budesegregation 7/16/1944, 4/9/1947, 4/12, 8/1/1952:  chapelhillhistory.org/places/journey-of-reconciliation/  A page on the Peace and Justice Plaza as well.


Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will again be close to the Sun April 9, 2028.


The Brightleaf (Mall? Square?) District gas explosion around 10:06-7am April 10, 2019 on North Duke Street in Durham; two killed, 25 injured, and that south or east-facing decades old mural of an Aztec warrior or knight seems to be gone, for whatever reason (see a previous post):  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Durham_gas_explosion


April 14, 1614 the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


The Civil War Battle of Picacho Pass was April 15, 1862 in south-central Arizona near Tucson.  Modern Southern Arizona was claimed as US New Mexico Territory/Confederate Arizona Territory(apparently the first official appearance of "Arizona").  The very south part, below the Gila and Rio Grande rivershad been bought from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase, effective June 8, 1854


The Civil War Battle of New Hope Creek, a skirmish or raid in the Leigh Farm Park and Farrington Road area, now divided by I-40, along the Durham-Orange county line, was April 14, 1865.  There has been a lot of residential building along Farrington in that area in recent years.  The Battle of Morrisville, southeast of what is now Durham, was April 13 - 15.  


The RMS Titanic sank April 15, 1912.


USPS employee Douglas Hughes flew an ultralight gyrocopter from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to the west lawn of the US Capitol April 15, 2015, in a non-violent protest against Congress' corruption and dysfunction. 



Basque ETA – July 31, 1959  April 16/May 2 in 2018


The Battle of Dan-no-ura (壇ノ浦の戦いDan-no-ura no tatakaiApril 25 or March 24, 1185 in Japan.


Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (April 26, 1798 – August 13, 1863).


April 26, 1832 to 9/30/32 Black Hawk War April; April 1837 Sabine, LA Indians; May 5, 1836 to 9/30/1837 Creeks in AL – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


Fanny Weston Bixby Spencer (November 6, 1879  April 30, 1930), one of the first female police officers in the US, January 1, 1908, in Long Beach, California, and she was on the left politically.


Brood XIX of bright red-eyed, black, and orange 13-year periodical cicadas (I would prefer to use 'periodic') came up in Durham and across much of the eastern Uin 1998 and 2011, and will return at the end of April  early May towards June in 2024.  I thought I heard one that came out too early in May 2023.  Brood XIV of 17-year periodical cicadas will emerge in the Appalachians and west in 2025 [and Brood XIII in the Chicago area in 2024]:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodical_cicadas 


Napoleon Bonaparte (originallNapoleone di BuonaparteAugust 15, 1769 – May 5, 1821).


There was a Weather Underground bombing at the National Guard Association of the United States May 10, 1970.


January 10, 1951 close to Dusseldorf – a deadly fall of ice Ball lightning onboard an airliner March 19, 1963; May 10, 1928 horizontal waterspout?; ice fall May 11, 1894 in Vicksburg, MS; May 28, 1881 in Worcester, periwinkles:  Mysteries of the Unexplained, by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1982.


James Connolly (Séamas Ó ConghaileJune 5, 1868 – May 12, 1916).


Comet 96P/Machholz and others might also be sources of the Quadrantid meteor shower; Machholz last approached the Sun January 31, 2023 and will approach again on May 12, 2028;it was discovered May 12, 1986:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/96P/Machholz


May 14, 1877 to 10/1 – the Nez Perce War  This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974


There was a bombing at the Pentagon May 19, 1972, claimed by the Weather Underground


The La Paz Incident, May 20, 1863 near the southwest corner of Arizona, somewhat close to Yuma, was one of the westernmost acts of violence during the US Civil War, between a recently released Confederate sympathizer from California and apparently unarmed Usoldiers


5/22/1884 9pm and 12pm 5/23?  "flinty" rocks fell in Bismarck, ND – Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


Jean-Paul Marat (May 24, 1743 – July 13, 1793)


May 24, 1607 the landing at Jamestown, VA – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


MiG-19 – first flight, May 24 1952; shot down a B-47 bomber over the Arctic (claimed to be outside of a national territory) 7/1/60; a MiG-19 was accidentally shot down, with Gary Powers' Lockheed U-2, over Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, in the USSR 5/1/1960.  The CIA had his wife committed for a time:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers


Coal Glen mine disaster in Chatham County in May 27, 1925


The squat, white-painted brick Ocracoke Lighthouse, funded May 7, 1822 and first lit August 15, 1824, was transferred to the NPS June 7, 1999, and had been the local HQ beginning in 1955www.nps.gov/caha/planyourvisit/ols.htm and web.archive.org/web/20170923034550/ and www.uscg.mil/history/weblighthouses/LHNC.asp


Brian William Haw (January 7, 1949  June 18, 2011) began camping on, or maybe "occupying," Parliament Square in London June 2, 2001 as an anti-war protest.



The on going anti-nuclear White House Peace Vigil began June 3, 1981, started by William Thomas Hallenbeck Jr (March 20, 1947  January 23, 2009).  There was a vigil against the sanctions on Iraq and then the "War on Terror," etc. for years in Durham and Chapel Hill and shorter anti-war vigils at Durham's Brightleaf Square and in Raleigh, but I think they have all ended.  There was also an anti-torture vigil on Highway 70 in Johnston County.  There might be a new vigil, over the war on Palestine, at Moore Square in Raleigh Sundays around 2 or 3pm.


Apparently there is an early account of a UFO crashing to earth in Maxsouthwest Nebraska, June 6, 1884:  www.ufocasebook.com/nebraskaroswell.html 


End of the Alcatraz occupation was June 11, 1971 – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


June 14-July 22, 1866 Austro-Prussian War en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Prussian_War


June 14, 1971  the Chicago Indian Village – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


The Congressional BasebalShooting was June 14, 2017.


The Battle of Waterloo was June 18, 1815, ending the Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon's power; Waterloo is now in Belgium.  First Napoleon had been exiled to nearby Elba, but now he was sent to far away Saint Helena, and died there. 


The Northern Hemisphere'summer solstice will be June 20th in 2024.


An explosion 12 miles above Pittsburgh, PA 6/24/1938? Weird America:  A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States, by Jim Brandon, 1978.


In July 1882 two roaring clouds of locusts are reported to have converged near the Reese River in central Nevada (?). Dead locusts and drops of water are supposed to have rained down. Locusts, dead for some reason, covered more than 100 acres six inches to 3 feet deep in less than 15 minutes. The masses of dead grasshoppers attracted “thousands of crows and buzzards.” This comes from Jerome Clark's book Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America, drawing from an article, “ A Hopper Cloudburst,” in the July 16, 1882 Daily Nevada State Journal.


The species of grasshopper isn't identified in the account, if this really happened, but maybe they were Rocky Mountain locusts, which once gathered in vast and amazing or terrifying swarms over much of what is now the central USA, but they are now probably extinct. The settlers wanted to get rid of the grasshoppers, but if the species is extinct, it was probably an unintended consequence of settlement/colonization in the Rockies. A wading bird, the Eskimo curlew, might have gone extinct with the locust. The bounty of the land could go to the locusts and other forms of life, as it had for probably millions of years, or to capitalist agriculture. How did the locust interact with native subsistence agriculture and food systems? The UN and international technocrats might want to repeat this history on other continents. Have they looked for alternatives?  In the East, Americans couldn't coexist with Carolina parakeets, large animals of many kinds, etc., though we now ask poorer countries to preserve their wildlife and forests.



It was reported that, during a thunderstorm the evening of July 7 (?), 1885, “just after the flash of lightning and crash of thunder which made every one believe for an instant that he had been struck,” “a beautiful as well as awe inspiring scene was presented to the gaze of those so fortunate to be upon the street at the time” – “a ball of fire, resembling a meteor” rapidly crossed the sky east to west over Bismarck (?), North Dakota “produc[ing] a whizzing, sizzling sound, and thr[owing] off numerous sparks in its flight.” The sight “fill[ed] the startled spectator with feelings of terror” as the object raced down. ” With terrific force the glaring missile, hurled from some planetary wreck or produced by some freak of electricity, struck the Missouri River about a quarter of a mile below the landing, the gurgle and momentary roar of the aggravated waters being plainly heard on west Main Street.” This comes from an article, “An Electric Ball,” in the the Bismarck Daily Tribune July 8, 1885, reprinted in Jerome Clark's Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America.


July 8, 1608 Quebec was founded – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


July 9, 1969 Princeton, Maine Passamaquoddy road closure – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


Two pilots reported a UFO a short distance south of High Point, NC July 11, 1947 at 7:20pm, according to the book Weird Carolinas.  There was an Orange County report in the Daily Tar Heel several years ago, I think in the summer, but I will have to look for it.  Many interesting reports are probably not publicized at the time or mentioned in published works.  A UFO reportedly hovered over a Duke Power substation in Mount Airy, NC for nearly 45 minutes very early in the morning one day in August 1968.  There is another report, from Copeland, NC, October 19, 1973.  I think of the Carolinas as not very rich in UFO reports compared to other states, but Weird Carolinas claimed that there have been nearly 3000 reports, and that there could be ten times more unreported sightings.


July 27, 1585 landing at Roanoke Island "Virginia," now in NC – This Country Was Ours:  A Documentary History of the American Indian, by Virgil J Vogel, 1974.


Ken Burns' The Civil War was first aired on PBS September 23 – 27, 1990; it was aired September 7– 11, 2015 for its 25th anniversary and the 150th anniversary of the War.

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