Random News and Notes 27 August

On this date:

• 1626 – The Danes are crushed by the Catholic League in Germany, marking the end of Danish intervention in European wars.
• 1776 – The Americans are defeated by the British at the Battle of Long Island, New York.
• 1793 – Maximilien Robespierre is elected to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, France.
• 1813 – The Allies defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Dresden.
• 1861 – Union troops make an amphibious landing at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
• 1881 – New York state’s Pure Food Law goes into effect to prevent “the adulteration of food or drugs.”
• 1894 – The United States congress passes an income tax law as part of a general tariff act, but it is found unconstitutional.
• 1910 – Thomas Edison demonstrates the first “talking” pictures–using a phonograph–in his New Jersey laboratory.
• 1912 – Edgar Rice Burrough‘s Tarzan of the Apes first appears in a magazine.
• 1916 – The Kingdom of Romania officially declared war on Austria-Hungary and entered World War I on the side of the Allied Powers. Italy declares war on Germany on the same day.
• 1928 – Fifteen nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, outlawing war and calling for the settlement of disputes through arbitration. Forty-seven other countries eventually sign the pact.
• 1941 – The Prime Minister of Japan, Fumimaro Konoye, issues an invitation for a meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt.
• 1945 – B-29 Superfortress bombers begin to drop supplies into Allied prisoner of war camps in China.
• 1979 – Lord Louis Mountbatten is killed by an Irish terrorist bomb in his sail boat in Sligo, Ireland. The Provisional IRA – a more radical offshoot – thought the killing of a high ranking Brit would hasten the departure of the British from Northern Ireland. One man, Thomas McMahon,  an IRA bomb-maker, was arrested on the day of the attack. He was convicted of murder in November 1979 and sentenced to life in prison.
• 1991 – Moldavia declares independence from USSR.
• 2008 – Democrats nominate Barack Obama for president, first African American nominated by a major political party for the office of President of the United States.

We start today’s news in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes. Yesterday Secretary of War presented medals to three Marines who had been present at the Abbey Gate fiasco. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth awarded the Bronze Star Medal with “V” device for valor to Lance Corporal Jordan Houston and Gunny Sgt. Jonathan Eby. Hegseth awarded Cpl. Michael Gretzon the Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal with “V” device. All three were upgrades that were made as part of the Abbey Gate review process.

All three served in the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines during the operation when the blast went off. The unit had arrived in Kabul on Aug. 14, 2021, to do security at the airport for evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies. All three have separated from the service.

Ok, I have real problems with this next story. Police in Oviedo, Florida, installed fake Flock Safety license plate readers along Lockwood Boulevard after real ones were vandalized in late July and early August 2026. On August 20, 24-year-old local resident Evan Meyer cut down and smashed a decoy using pruning shears, leading to his arrest on felony charges of attempted grand theft, criminal mischief over $1,000, and damaging electronic equipment.

It seems one of the Oviedo cops 3-d printed the cameras and the total cost of the fakes was “almost nothing”. How they charged homie with what they did is beyond me. As a non-lawyer, it seems the charges won’t stand. It gets worse. The town council was planning on ending the use of ALPR cameras.

I have real, constitutionally based issues with ALPR cameras like flock. Shite like this only makes me mistrust both the cops that (mis)use them and the companies behind the systems even more.

We zoom over to the Dark Continent for our next story. A massive, well organized theft ring stole nearly 6 miles of track from an active rail line in South Africa. The thefts yielded just $120,000 in scrap but paralyzed freight and passenger movement, threatening jobs at a local rail depot.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

A black South African labor leader, I misremember the name at the moment, in a public speech something to the effect that love them or hate them the Afrikaners but they left us a functioning state.

The Puddle Pirates managed to nab some 7,250 pounds of cocaine worth $54.5 million in the waters off Puerto Rico. On August 22, the Coast Guard intercepted the boat with help from Customs and Border Protection air support. They later destroyed the vessel as a navigation hazard.

All 5 people aboard were arrested. Well Done Coasties. . .

Ratko Mladić, Bosnian Serb army commander during the 1992-95 Bosnian War, has died in prison. Mladić was convicted in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, including the Srebrenica massacre.

Your editor spent a goodly amount of time in the former Yugoslav republics around that time. I can quite confidently say that there were no good guys in those conflicts, only less bad guys. Mladić was one of the worst. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Translation: I’m so preoccupied with the bicycle in front that I can’t even focus on driving.