Random News and Notes 20 August

On this date:

• 1619 – The first group of twenty Africans is brought to Jamestown, Virginia.
• 1667 – John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.
• 1741 – Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering, commissioned by Peter the Great of Russia to find land connecting Asia and North America, discovers America.
• 1794 – American General “Mad Anthony” Wayne defeats the Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in the Northwest territory, ending Indian resistance in the area.
• 1804 – Sergeant Charles Floyd dies three months into the voyage of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, becoming the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during the journey.
• 1847 – General Winfield Scott wins the Battle of Churubusco on his drive to Mexico City.
• 1908 – The American Great White Fleet arrives in Sydney, Australia, to a warm welcome.

• 1913 – 700 feet above Buc, France, parachutist Adolphe Pegoud becomes the first person to jump from an airplane and land safely.
• 1914 – Russia wins an early victory over Germany at Gumbinnen.
• 1940 – After a previous machine gun attack failed, exiled Russian Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City, with an alpine ax to the back of the head.
• 1940 – Radar is used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain.
• 1940 – In a speech to Parliament, Winston Churchill makes his famous homage to the Royal Air Force: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

• 1941 – Hitler authorizes development of the V-2 missile.
• 1944 – United States and British forces close the pincers on German units in the Falaise-Argentan pocket in France. Some 10,000 Germans were killed and more than 40,000 captured.
• 1944 – Soviet forces launch Second Jassy-Kishinev Offensive, an offensive in northeastern Romania in which they ultimately surround the invading German Sixth Army.
• 1953 – USSR publicly acknowledges it tested a hydrogen bomb eight days earlier.
• 1960 – USSR recovers 2 dogs, Belka and Strelka, the first animals to be launched into orbit and returned alive (Sputnik 5).
• 1968 – Some 650,000 Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia to quell reformers there.
• 1971 – The Cambodian military launches a series of operations against the Khmer Rouge.
• 1974 – Newly sworn in President Gerald Ford names Nelson Rockefeller his VP.
• 1978 – NASA launches the Viking 1 probe. It provides the first high resolution images and mapping of Mars.
• 1982 – A multinational force including 800 US Marines lands in Beirut, Lebanon, to oversee Palestinian withdrawal during the Lebanese Civil War.
• 1986 – Part-time mail carrier Patrick Sherrill shoots 20 fellow workers killing 14 at Edmond Okla., the first mass shooting by an individual in an office environment in the US. His actions give rise to the phrase “going postal,” for sudden violent outbursts.
• 1989 – Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their parents, Jose and Kitty, to death in the den of the family’s Beverly Hills, California, home.
• 1991 – After an attempted coup in the Soviet Union, Estonia declares independence from the USSR.
• 1994 – Miracle, the Sacred White Buffalo, born on Heider Farm near Janesville, Wisc. The first white (not albino) buffalo born since 1933, she was a important religious symbol for many US and Canadian Indian tribes.

We start the news with a warning from a bunch of federal agencies regarding Iranian hackers. The FBI, CISA, NSA, Department of Energy, and EPA issued an urgent advisory on August 19, 2026, about ongoing attacks targeting Siemens S7 series programmable logic controllers in water, energy, manufacturing, chemical, and food sectors. Attackers deploy AI-generated tools disguised as monitoring software to access systems, collect data, and position for future sabotage like equipment damage or safety risks.

Recent incidents hit water facilities in states including Georgia, Minnesota, and Michigan, with operators locked out and pump pressures altered; experts link patterns to Iranian-affiliated actors. Agencies urge operators to segment networks, restrict internet access, monitor anomalies, and follow CISA guidance.

I really have issues with this one. This guidance is not new. As far as I am concerned, these PLCs should be air-gapped in the traditional sense – no direct connection to the internet. There are no truly good reasons for a PLC in a water treatment plant to be connected to the internet.

I have – short of something big and breaking – avoided covering the conflict in the Gulf here. It’s too complex a topic for the quick update format I use for this space. Today is going to be an exception. It is being reported that Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. The US Navy has been shepherding commercial vessels through the southern route, the one that traverses Omani waters. The traffic, while less than half the pre-war volume, has continued for at least the past two months.

The U.S. military established a protected southern shipping corridor near Oman, allowing 15-20 tankers nightly to transport about 10 million barrels of oil per day—half the pre-war volume. This route along Omani waters operates separately from Iran’s northern lanes, with officials stating, ‘The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be a nuisance, but they don’t control the strait. We do.’

This will be interesting. The IRGC, and lets be clear that particular band of 12er retards are running the show at the moment, are not going to take this well. While I don’t buy into the whole the US is running out of missiles psyop, it is true that the facilities needed to reload the Burke, Tico and Virginia class vessels in Bahrain have been damaged. Reloading now requires a trip to Djibouti or Diego Garcia.

There are a couple of notes from the MVAP sports desk today. The first is one I meant to cover yesterday. The Seattle Mariners were one run from the World Series last year. They took the eventual AL rep Bluejays to 7 games and lost that one 4-3. Well, they lost to the Milwaukee Brewers Tuesday night 22-0. The loss tied for the worst shutout run differential since 1900.

I feel compelled as a Yankees fan to point out that they won 102 games in 2004.

The second sports story comes to us from Williamsport PA, the home of the Little League World Series. The 2026 LLWS kicked off in that sleepy little burg in Central PA yesterday. There are already a couple of good storylines developing. First is Kinley Rasmus, a pitcher for the Phenix City AL team. She tossed 6 scoreless frames giving up one hit. Yes, she. Kinley is the daughter of former big leaguer Cory Rasmus and niece of Colby Rasmus.

The other big story is that degenerates are gambling on the games. The governing body for Little League issued a statement about it:

I just don’t get it.