Random News and Notes 30 July
On this date in 1864 Union troops detonated some 4 tons of black powder in a mineshaft they had dug under the Confederate lines at Petersburg Virginia. The explosion created a massive crater 170 feet long, 120 feet wide, and 30 feet deep, killing hundreds of Confederate defenders. That was the last thing that went the Union’s way. A last minute switch swapped out a specially trained black unit for untrained white ones.
Instead of advancing along the edges of the crater, the white troops charged directly into the crater where some 4000 of them were slaughtered by the Confederate troops. General US Grant later called the engagement the “saddest affair I have ever witnessed,” and the siege of Petersburg dragged on for another eight months
The USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese sub on this date in 1945. She sunk in only 12 minutes. The Indy had been on a secret mission to deliver parts for the Hiroshima bomb. Walt wrote an excellent piece about her a couple of years ago.
Out of 1,195 crew members on board, roughly 300 went down with the ship and the rest entered the water, leading to severe dehydration, exposure, and shark attacks while only 316 surivived.
We start the news on a sad note. One of the last surviving Rosie the Riveters has died. Jeanne Gibson, a welder at Todd Pacific Shipyards in 1944, passed away on July 29, 2026, at age 100. After the war, she earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, taught elementary school for 30 years, and volunteered at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, sharing her stories on ‘Rosie Fridays.’
In 2024, she received the Congressional Gold Medal, and just weeks before her death, the park honored her with a Wall of Honor banner. Pacific Historic Parks remembered her as family who encouraged young girls that no dream was too big.
Ceuta is a Spanish exclave on the coast of mainland Africa. The landward side is surrounded by Morocco. The city is now being overrun by military aged muslim men from the Sahel. Around 1,500 migrants arrived in the exclave over the past week, averaging 300 per day by swimming from Morocco, straining facilities in the city of 84,000 residents. Ceuta’s president Juan Jesús Vivas called it an absolute humanitarian emergency and urged Madrid to declare a national crisis with more security and Moroccan coordination.
The current regime in Spain, headed by communist Pedro Sanchez, is an open borders nightmare.
A Canadian national of Chinese origin, working in IT at NATO’s SHAPE headquarters in Mons, was charged with espionage and belonging to a criminal organization after authorities searched her home and workplace. Despite a 2019 fraud finding for submitting duplicate job applications, Biwei Zhang received security clearance for the role following vetting by CSIS, RCMP, and Global Affairs Canada.
As someone who has been the victim of err through the security clearance vetting process multiple times, I can tell you that any anomaly will end your clearances. To have a fraud finding of the sort she had should have disqualified her completely.
A multi-agency immigration raid in South Carolina netted 48 illegals and the plant manager and HR director. The operation, dubbed Operation Ghost Story, targeted Burnstein Von Seelen Precision Casting as part of a probe into fake IDs that started in fall 2024. ICE held 48 workers for immigration violations.
The plant manager Christopher Douglas Ramey and HR coordinator Sandy Lynn Willis face state charges of criminal conspiracy, identity fraud, and forgery over $10,000. Four others were indicted for producing or selling false documents, marking a push to hold employers accountable alongside workers.