Random News and Notes 11 August

On this date:

• 991 – Danes under Olaf Tryggvason kill Ealdorman Byrhtnoth and defeat the Saxons at Maldon. The Battle is immortalized in an anonymous 325-line Old English poem, the text celebrates fierce loyalty, duty, and military honor despite the tragic loss. English King Æthered the Unræd paid the Danish invaders 10,000 pounds of silver to go away.
• 1792 – The first revolutionary commune was founded in Paris. Jacobin and sans culottes (working class people) took over the Hôtel de Ville, replacing the moderate city government with a “revolutionary Commune”.
• 1856 – A band of rampaging settlers in California kill four Yokut Indians. The settlers had heard unproven rumors of Yokut atrocities.
• 1862 – President Abraham Lincoln appoints Union General Henry Halleck to the position of general in chief of the Union Army. He would hold that position until 1864 when he was replaced by Ulysses Grant.
• 1864 – Confederate General Jubal Early pulls out of Winchester, Virginia, as Union General Philip Sheridan approaches the city. Wary of his new foe, Early moved away to avoid an immediate conflict.
• 1906 – In France, Eugene Lauste receives the first patent for a talking film.
• 1912 – Moroccan Sultan Mulai Hafid abdicates his throne in the face of internal dissent.
• 1916 – The Russian army takes Stanislau, Poland, from the Germans.
• 1919 – The Weimar Constitution is adopted in Germany.
• 1929 – The Babe – George Herman Ruth – hits his 500th home run. he would go on to hit 714 in his career.
• 1934 – A group of federal prisoners classified as “most dangerous” arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay, on August 11, 1934. The convicts—the first civilian prisoners to be housed in the new high-security penitentiary—joined a few dozen military prisoners left over from the island’s days as a U.S. military prison.

• 1941 – Soviet bombers raid Berlin for the first time but cause little damage.
• 1942 – The German submarine U-73 attacks a Malta-bound British convoy and sinks HMS Eagle, one of the world’s first aircraft carriers.
• 1943 – German forces begin a six-day evacuation of the Italian island of Sicily, having been beaten back by the Allies, who invaded the island in July.
• 1944 – German troops abandon Florence, Italy, as Allied troops close in on the historic city.
• 1952 – Prince Hussein is proclaimed the king of Jordan after his father, King Talal, is declared unfit to rule by the Jordanian Parliament on grounds of mental illness.
• 1965 – The Watts riots begin. The proximate cause was a DWI arrest of a black driver and by the time the riots ended 5 days later, there were 34 dead, 1,032 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested and $40 million worth of property destroyed.
• 1972 – The final U.S. ground combat unit (the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry) departed South Vietnam.
• 1988 – Al Qaeda formed at a meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan.

We kick off the news today in Myrtle Beach where an American 737 had to make an emergency landing. American Airlines Flight 1760, a Boeing 737-80, bound for Charlotte suffered a bird strike on the left engine. The pilot declared an emergency and landed back at Myrtle Beach International safely.

Video from passengers shows what looks to be an engine fire. There are no reports of injuries among the 181 passengers.

A student police officer with the Greater Manchester Police, faces charges of oral rape, kidnap, strangulation, sexual assault, phone theft, and dangerous driving from an off-duty incident on August 8. Officers tracked his personal car, leading to a pursuit near Snaith in West Yorkshire. Why am I telling you about this? Guess.

Mohammed Hassan. I know, shocker. the 23 year old Hassan is being held in custody, suspended from duty, and is set to appear in Manchester Magistrates’ Court on August 11.

<Insert Mr Chippy video here>

Buckle up for this one. DefCon is an annual hacker convention that is held in Las Vegas. This year’s just concluded. And some dummy decided it would be a good idea to try out something learned there while on a f*cking airplane home Delta Flight DL591 from Las Vegas to Atlanta faced a mid-air Wi-Fi scare when crew reported passengers jamming the official network and broadcasting a rogue one named ‘Delta WiFi Fast.’ The scam WiFi was set up to scrape user credentials and logins. The flight crew notified authorities of the incident while still in the air.

Authorities were waiting when the jet landed at Hartsfield – Jackson. According to reports at least one person was led away in cuffs.

Let me be serious for a second. I have little sympathy for anyone caught doing cybercrimes in general, but whoever pulled this stunt deserves everything they are going to get and more. If you are dumb enough to pull this crap in a sealed metal tube with limited egress, you deserve to be Bubba’s plaything in prison.

We have a sad update about the Columbia Earthquake. At least 132 people have died and 570 have been injured, with numbers likely to rise as rescuers search rubble at sites including a hospital and airport.

Aid is already pouring into the region with the US pledging $15 million for the immediate search and rescue efforts.