Random News and Notes 22 September

On this Date:

• 1656 – The General Provincial Court in session at Patuxent, Maryland, impanels the first all-woman jury in the Colonies to hear evidence against Judith Catchpole, who is accused of murdering her child. The jury acquits her after hearing her defense of never having been pregnant.
• 1711 – The Tuscarora Indian War begins with a massacre of settlers in North Carolina, following white encroachment that included the enslaving of Indian children.
• 1776 – American Captain Nathan Hale is hanged as a spy by the British in New York City; his last words are reputed to have been, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”
• 1789 – Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov drive the Turkish army under Yusuf Pasha from the Rymnik River, upsetting the Turkish invasion of Russia.
• 1828 – Shaka, founder of the Zulu Kingdom of southern Africa, is murdered by his two half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, after Shaka’s mental illness threatened to destroy the Zulu tribe.
• 1862 – President Abraham Lincoln issues a proclamation calling for all slaves within the rebel states to be freed on January 1, a political move that helps keep the British from intervening on the side of the South.
• 1864 – Union General Philip Sheridan defeats Confederate General Jubal Early‘s troops at the Battle of Fisher’s Hill in Virginia.
• 1893 – Bicycle makers Charles and Frank Duryea show off the first American automobile produced for sale to the public by taking it on a maiden run through the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts.

• 1906 – Race riots in Atlanta, Georgia leave 21 people dead.
• 1914 – The German cruiser Emden shells Madras, India, destroying 346,000 gallons of fuel and killing only five civilians.
• 1914 – German U-9 submarine sinks three British cruisers, the Aboukir, the Hogue and the Cressy, in just over one hour. The one-sided battle, during which 1,400 British sailors lost their lives, alerted the British to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine.
• 1918 – General Allenby leads the British army against the Turks, taking Haifa and Nazareth
• 1919 – President Woodrow Wilson abandons his national tour to support the League of Nations when he suffers a case of nervous exhaustion.
• 1945 – Gen. George S. Patton tells reporters that he does not see the need for “this denazification thing” and compares the controversy over Nazism to a “Democratic and Republican election fight.”
• 1947 – A Douglas C-54 Skymaster makes the first automatic pilot flight over the Atlantic.
• 1961 – President John Kennedy signs a congressional act establishing the Peace Corps.
• 1969 – Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants becomes the first baseball player since Babe Ruth to hit 600 home runs.
• 1970 – President Richard M. Nixon signs a bill giving the District of Columbia representation in the U.S. Congress.
• 1971 – Captain Ernest Medina is acquitted of all charges relating to the My Lai Massacre. His unit, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade (Light) of the 23rd (Americal) Division, was charged with the murder of over 200 Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets that made up Son My village in Son Tinh District in Quang Ngai Province in the coastal lowlands of I Corps Tactical Zone. Of the 13 charged, only one man was convicted, Lt. William Calley.
• 1975 – Sara Jane Moore attempts to assassinate President Gerald Ford, the second attempt on his life in less than three weeks.
• 1980 – Long-standing border disputes and political turmoil in Iran prompt Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to launch an invasion of Iran’s oil-producing province of Khuzestan.
• 1985 – The first Farm Aid concert is held in Champaign Illinois.

We start the news on the Left coast where Stanford University just got caught AI race swapping students in an ad. The dining ad used AI to edit a real photo of three students, removing sophomore Billy Ramirez and replacing him with a Black woman while making the others thinner with tweaked facial features. Ramirez, who recognized himself in the original shot taken by a university photographer, first laughed at a friend’s side-by-side comparison but then grew upset over the unconsented edits to his identity. He told The Stanford Review he felt baffled, silenced, and erased from a representation meant to include him.

Honestly, making the Asian chick cuter is worse. Or funnier depending on your perspective.

The Pentagon has just announced a new test for officers looking to make the move from O-6 to O-7. The new Joint Warfighter Evaluation targets colonels and Navy captains vying for one-star ranks, using AI wargames, simulations, and in-person exercises to test their ability to fight and adapt in joint operations. Each military branch developed its own version.

The new test will be used on promotion boards starting in fiscal year 2027 alongside existing reports.

This could be a good idea. It could also be a giant charlie foxtrot.

We talked a bit about the Greenland deal a few days ago. Well, some details have come out about what the US plans are. So far it looks like two bases are being spun up. One, at Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland, is an old Cold War base that is being rehabbed. The other will be a new facility at Mestersvig in the east of the island.

This will bring – for now anyway – the number of US bases in Greenland to three. Thule err Pituffik is the current base there.

A USAF F-16 has gone down in Germany. The crash happened Tuesday afternoon around 2:30 p.m. local time as the jet approached Spangdahlem Air Base’s runway in the Eifel region. The pilot ejected safely using the seat and is receiving medical care for injuries, with no other harm reported.

According to local reports, the pilot was attempting to land when the incident occurred. This is the second incident involving a US F-16 in the past week. Last Thursday, a Texas ANG Falcon went down in michigan. Two other nations had major mishaps with the Fighting Falcon in the past few months. A Greek F-16 belly-landed and caught fire at Zakynthos Airport on July 9, 2026 and a Turkish Air Force F-16 crashed during a training flight near Çiftlikköy, Yalova Province.