1950: Four-month-old kitten, scales the Matter in 3 days

[underpants]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17393#18


August 18
Things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school

1227: Death of Ghengis Khan.

1587: Virginia Dare becoms the first English child born in America, Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Four years later, a ship bringing supplies arrives only to find no colony. The settlers, including Virginia Dare, had vanished. No trace is ever found of the lost colony.

1591: The Governor of the Roanoke Island colony returns from England to find an empty fort and the word "Croatan."

1634: Burning of Urbain Grandier for witchcraft.

1686: Cassini, the astronomer whose name 411 years later would be attached to a payload of deadly plutonium, reports seeing a satellite orbiting Venus.

1812: Lady Ludd "leads" Corn Market riot of women and boys, Leeds, England.

1862: Sioux Indians, riled by a government failure to deliver promised goods, massacre over 350 whites. The whites' response: a mass hanging of 38 Indians at Mankato, Minnesota, the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

1919: Anti-Cigarette League of America founded, Chicago, Illinois.

1920: Ratification of 19th Amendment in U.S., extending right to vote to women.

1947: Naval torpedo and mine factory explodes at Cadiz, Spain, killing 300.

1950: Four-month-old kitten, following a climbing party, scales the Matterhorn in three days.

1958: Vladimir Nabokov's highly publicized Lolita is published in the United States to widespread demands for censorship.

1962: Five arrested attempting to disrupt launching of Polaris submarine, Groton, Connecticut.

1963: James Meredith, the first African-American to attend the University of Mississippi, is the first to graduate. His enrollment in the university a year earlier was met with deadly riots, and he subsequently attended class under heavily-armed guard.

1965: The first major U.S. ground operation of the Vietnam War begins with Operation Starlite Starbright, on the Van Tuong Peninsula, south of Chu Lai.

1966: "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" begins. Mao summons Red Guards to Beijing. One million arrive in paramilitary fashion to hear Lin Piao explain the big character poster "Bombard the Headquarters."

1969: Pres. Nixon nominates Clement Haynsworth, Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. Haynsworth was widely criticized as a segregationist, but he failed to win Congressional approval only after it was revealed he bought 1,000 shares of Brunswick Corp. stock after he voted on a decision affecting the company, but before the decision was announced.

1977: Steve Biko, leading student apartheid resister, arrested. He is later murdered while in custody. Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

1980: Alabama Creek regain ownership of "Hickory Grounds," headquarters of the entire Creek Nation before forced removal of all tribes from the Southeast U.S. in 1830s.

1982: Thirteen members of 7th International Nonviolent March deported from Spain after climbing over gate from Gibraltar in their return after having crossed the "closed" border.

1989: In retaliation for the Colombian government's increased activity against local drug traffickers, Luis Carlos Galan, the ruling party's presidential hopeful, is assassinated. In the following year two more presidential candidates are murdered.

1991: Eight senior Soviet officials, opposed to sweeping reforms of recent years, stage a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. He is detained, troops are sent to Moscow, Leningrad, and the Baltics. But the conspirators fail to arrest the popularly elected President of the Russian Republic, Boris Yeltsin, who rallied the opposition.

[begin_within]

1. I want to read about that kitten.

[underpants]

2. I googled "kitten Matterhorn"

http://rulingcatsanddogs.com/facts-cat-record-breakers.htm

Nothing but small mentions. I see no details. :shrug:

[begin_within]

3. OK thanks

[Bill McBlueState]

4. deadly plutonium?

Not to miss the point of the post, but "Cassini, the astronomer whose name 411 years later would be attached to a payload of deadly plutonium..." is a pretty damn stupid way to describe the Cassini probe.