Random News and Notes 8 September

On this date:

• 1504 – Michelangelo’s 13-foot marble statue of David is unveiled in Florence, Italy.
• 1529 – The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman re-enters Budapest and establishes John Zapolya as the puppet king of Hungary.
• 1565 – Spanish explorers found St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.
• 1628 – John Endecott arrives with colonists at Salem, Massachusetts, where he will become the governor.
• 1644 – The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam surrenders to the British fleet that sails into its harbor. Five years later, the British change the name to New York.
• 1755 – British forces under William Johnson defeat the French and the Indians at the Battle of Lake George.
• 1760 – The French surrender the city of Montreal to the British.
• 1776 – Captain Nathan Hale of the 19th Regiment of the Continental Army volunteers to spy on the British on Long Island. He would be captured and executed layer in the month.
• 1781 – The Battle of Eutaw Springs begins
• 1845 – A French column surrenders at Sidi Brahim in the Algerian War.
• 1863 – Confederate Lieutenant Dick Dowling thwarts a Union naval landing at Sabine Pass, northeast of Galveston, Texas.
• 1903 – Between 30,000 and 50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children are massacred in Monastir by Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.
• 1915 – Germany begins a new offensive in Argonne on the Western Front.
• 1915 – A German Zeppelin commanded by Heinrich Mathy, one of the great airship commanders of World War I, hits Aldersgate in central London, killing 22 people and causing £500,000 worth of damage.
• 1921 – Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., is named the first Miss America.

• 1935 – Senator Huey Long of Louisiana is shot to death in the state capitol, allegedly by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, Jr.
• 1941 – The siege of Leningrad begins.
• 1943 – The Italian Surrender is announced by SHAEF commander General Dwight Eisenhower.
• 1944 – Germany’s V-2 offensive against England begins.
• 1945 – Korea is partitioned by the Soviet Union and the United States.
• 1955 – The United States, Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Thailand sign the mutual defense treaty that established the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
• 1960 – President Dwight Eisenhower dedicates NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
• 1966 – Star Trek premieres.
• 1971 – The Kennedy Center opens in Washington, DC with a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.
• 1974 – President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard M. Nixon for any crimes arising from the Watergate scandal he may have committed while in office.
• 1991 – Macedonian Independence Day; voters overwhelmingly approve referendum to form the Republic of Macedonia, independent of Yugoslavia.
• 1994 – USAir Flight 427 crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 people aboard; subsequent investigation leads to changes in manufacturing practices and pilot training.
• 2022 – Queen Elizabeth II, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, dies at the age of 96, in her home at Balmoral.

We start today’s news on the French Riviera where thieves have made off with € 9 m worth of art. Two thieves broke into the Auguste Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera and stole four paintings by the artist. The alarm went off at around 6 a.m., and police arrived just minutes later. The robbery was caught on camera, with the men seen removing the paintings and cutting them out of their frames. The stolen works were Portrait of Madame Pichon (1895), Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano (1910), Coco Lisant (1905), and Jeune femme au puits (1886).

During their escape, the thieves abandoned two of the four paintings, which were later recovered. The other two remain missing. It is not yet known which specific works were left behind.

This is the second high-profile museum robbery in the past year. A portion of the French Crown Jewels were stolen from the Louvre in Paris last October. While some of the perpetrators in that case have been caught, it is unclear if any of the items stolen have been recovered.

ICE has spun up a CDL hotline so you can report suspected illegals.

Report CDL fraud here: 866-357-2423.

Hurricane Lowell passed just to the west of the Hawaiian island of Kauai overnight. The storm lashed the island with gusts of up to 95 mph and dropped up to a foot of rain. Nearly every home on the Island is without electricity.

Tropical storm warnings are still up for most of the Archipelago and flooding rains are expected through Wednesday. There is no word on casualties yet.

I have avoided covering the Lindsay Clancy case in this space like the plague. I cordially dislike true crime coverage in all its manifestations. This note however. . .

Lindsay Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, appealed to President Trump for a pardon. I realize he is throwing every and anything against the wall to see if something will stick, but really? This is a state matter and even if Trump were inclined to act – which is doubtful, he’s called the case “horrible” publicly – , he couldn’t.

Clancy, 36, faces charges for strangling her three young children—Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan—in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4, 2026, after the jury deadlocked.