Random News and Notes 15 August

On this date:

• 1057 – At the Battle of Lumphanan, King Macbeth of Scotland is slain by Malcolm Canmore, whose father, King Duncan I, was murdered by Macbeth 17 years earlier.
• 1261 – Constantinople falls to Michael VIII of Nicea and his army.
• 1598 – Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, leads an Irish force to victory over the British at Battle of Yellow Ford.
• 1760 – Frederick II defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Liegnitz.
• 1864 – The Confederate raider Tallahassee captures six Federal ships off New England.
• 1899 – Henry Ford resigns his position as chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company’s main plant in order to concentrate on automobile production.
• 1912 – The Panama Canal opens to traffic.

• 1935 – American comedian and “cowboy philosopher” Will Rogers dies in an airplane accident, along with American aviation pioneer Wiley Post.
• 1944 – American, British and French forces land on the southern coast of France, between Toulon and Cannes, in Operation Dragoon.
• 1945 – Gasoline and fuel oil rationing ends in the United States.
• 1947 – The Indian Independence Bill, which carves the two independent nations of India and Pakistan out of the former Mogul Empire, comes into force.
• 1950 – Two U.S. divisions are badly mauled by the North Korean Army at the Battle of the Bowling Alley in South Korea, which rages on for five more days.
• 1969 – The Woodstock music festival opens.
• 1971 –  President Richard Nixon announces a 90-day freeze on wages and prices in an attempt to halt rapid inflation.

We start todays news in Petersburg, Virginia where there was an early morning shooting on the VSU campus. The shooting that injured 5 happened around 1:28 a.m. on Boisseau Street near the Quad Annexes on the HBCU campus. Officers found the victims outside the halls; one remains in critical condition while the others have non-life-threatening injuries and were taken to hospitals. Chesterfield County Police is leading the investigation with VSU Police, ATF, and Hanover County Sheriff’s Office.

As of now, the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made.

WhyNot already mentioned this in a comment elsewhere, but there was a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in the East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia. The province is made up of the lesser Sunda islands and part of Timur. The epicenter was near Flores, the largest island in the Sundas. The quake killed at least 38 people, injured others, and prompted thousands to evacuate to higher ground amid collapsed structures and damaged ports in areas like Maumere. Tsunami warnings were issued but later lifted with no significant waves detected, though aftershocks continue as rescue teams assess the damage.

There have been a seemingly unusually high amount of strong – 6.5 magnitude and higher – quakes this year with at least 11 of 7.0 or higher..

Excuse the spanish in the graphic, this was the best one available. Anyway, it seems the ring of fire is especially active this year.

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I debated about including this one, but decided that if I saw it you do too.

It seems that Indians still consume cow urine. It also seems that scammers are adulterating said wee with effusions from other animals like water buffalo and goats. In Uttar Pradesh the problem is so bad they are testing urine for purity.

God help me, I wish this wasn’t true.

This one may not interest some of you, but it caught my attention and as the Editor, well . . .

Jason Arday was – until very recently – a professor at Cambridge University. He was the youngest black professor on campus and specialized in the sociology of education with a focus on race, inequality, and neurodiversity. He was also a serial fabulist and plagiarist. A couple of weeks ago, signs that very little of what he claimed biographically was true. Around the same time, it came out that he lifted entire sections of his thesis and other writings directly from other peoples works. When I say lifted, I mean the sections included the grammatical and transcription errors from the original source. The post below covers most of his claims. Normally I’d quote the rest of the post, but honestly, it’s way too long. If you want to see the claims this DEI hire extraordinaire made, click through.

Anyway, Arday resigned earlier this week when the weight of his lies and academic theft became unsupportable. Then yesterday he was found dead in London, presumably by his own hand, though the peelers aren’t saying. I expect the story to be spun to place the blame on anyone but the people responsible for it; Jason Arday and the academics that ignored the obvious.