Random News and Notes 19 July

On this date in:

• 64 – Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Well, Rome did burn. Nero on the other hand was 40 miles away in Antium and allowed his palaces in Rome to be used as shelters. Additionally, the fiddle did not exist at that time.
• 1545 – The Mary Rose – English King Henry VIII’s flagship – capsizes and sinks in the Solent off Portsmouth. Much of what we know about period warfare comes from the well preserved cargoes of the ship.
• 1553 – After only nine days as the monarch of England, Lady Jane Grey is deposed in favor of her cousin Mary.
• 1814 – Samuel Colt is born in Hartford Connecticut. God made some men tall and some men short. Sam Colt made all men equal.
• 1848 – The first US Women’s Rights convention is held in Seneca Falls New York.
• 1870 – Napoleon III’s France declared war on Prussia. The resulting war would be a debacle for the French with German forces marching on the streets of Paris in less than a year.
• 1943 – The US Army Air Corps bombs Rome for the first time. More than 150 B-17 and 112 B-24 bombers hit rail yards and bridges around the city.

We start the news with yet another wildlife related story. Video has surfaced showing a woman’s encounter with a well known brown bear in Katmai national park. The video shows the unnamed hiker following perfect protocol: moving sideways 12 to 15 feet off the path and holding still as the famous Bear 909—known for her blonde floppy ears—and her spring cubs continue on. Bear 909, a regular at the park during July’s peak salmon runs, is habituated to people as are most of the other bears at the Brooks Falls area of Katmai.

Habituated does not mean tame. Had the woman or those with her turned and run, especially the child that was with them, it would have triggered the prey response in 909. I personally would have backed off a bit further, as it seems they were only a few yards away from the trail and the bears. Everything else was good though.

The strikes against the regime in Iran escalated yesterday in response to the killing of at least 2 US service members at a base in Jordan. An Iranian ballistic missile impacted the base killing the pair. There is a third trooper missing.

According to CENTCOM, US forces successfully hit Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities, and missile and drone storage sites to continue degrading Iranian military capabilities. American military assets also targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces that launched attacks against U.S. service members in Jordan on July 17.

It’s time to take the gloves off and end this regime.

Ontario Premier and brother to a crackhead Doug Ford made some statements about the wildfires burning uncontrolled in his province. I understand he is a proud Canadian, but the verbal diarrhea he puked up is just disgusting. One of his comments was about the use of Canadian firebombers during the LA fires last year. He held it up as some sort of a talisman that absolves him and the rest of Canada’s culpability for the fires in Ontario. Here’s the problem with that; the Canadian companies and municipalities that own those aircraft charged more than double their usual rate per sortie. CALFIRE got so irritated, they stopped using Canadair firefighting aircraft altogether.

There is a new World Record for the men’s mile. 28-year-old Scot Josh Kerr smashed the previous record – Hicham El Guerrouj’s 1999 mark of 3:43.13 – by nearly half a second. Kerr ran a 3:42:66 or an average of 16.2 mph.

In 1954, Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile, a barrier people once argued was the limit of human physiology. Put Bannister’s race on the track next to Kerr’s today, and Kerr finishes while Bannister is still 110 meters back, coming off the final bend.