Random News and Notes 1 October

On this date:

• 331 BC – Alexander the Great decisively shatters King Darius III’s Persian army at Gaugamela (Arbela), in a tactical masterstroke that leaves him master of the Persian Empire.
• 1273 – Rudolf of Hapsburg is elected Holy Roman Emperor in Germany.
• 1791 – In Paris, the National Legislative Assembly holds its first meeting.
• 1839 – The British government decides to send a punitive naval expedition to China. It is the beginning of the Opium wars.
• 1878 – General Lew Wallace is sworn in as governor of New Mexico Territory. He went on to deal with the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and write Ben-Hur. His Civil War heroics earned him the moniker Savior of Cincinnati.
• 1890 – Yosemite National Park is dedicated in California.
• 1903 – The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Americans, 7-3, in the first professional baseball World Series game.
• 1908 – The Ford Model T, the first car for millions of Americans, hits the market. Over 15 million Model Ts are eventually sold, all of them black.
• 1942 – The German Army grinds to a complete halt within the city of Stalingrad.
• 1944 – The U.S. First Army begins the siege Aachen, Germany.
• 1946 – Eleven Nazi war criminals are sentenced to be hanged at Nuremberg trials—Hermann Goring, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachin von Ribbentrop, Fritz Saukel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.

• 1947 – First flight of F-86 Sabre jet fighter, which would win fame in the Korean War.
• 1949 – Mao Zedong establishes the People’s Republic of China.
• 1957 – ”In God We Trust” appears on US paper currency as an act to distinguish the US from the officially atheist USSR; the motto had appeared on coins at various times since 1864.
• 1958 – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) replaces the 43-year-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in the US.
• 1960 – Nigeria becomes independent from the UK.
• 1961 – The Federal Republic of Cameroon is formed by the merger of East and West Cameroon.
• 1962 – The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson debuts; Carson will remain The Tonight Show host until 1992.
• 1964 – Japanese “bullet trains” (Shinkansen) begin high-speed rail transit between Tokyo and Osaka.
• 1971 – Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida, the second of Disney’s “Magic Kingdoms.”
• 1974 – Five Nixon aides–Kenneth Parkinson, Robert Mardian, Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell–go on trial for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation.
• 1975 – Legendary boxing match: Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in the “Thrilla in Manila.”

• 1979 – US returns sovereignty of the Panama Canal to Panama.
• 1982 – First compact disc player, released by Sony.
• 1988 – Having forced the resignation of Soviet leader Andrei Gromyko, Mikhail Gorbachev names himself head of the Supreme Soviet.
• 1991 – Siege of Dubrovnik begins in the Croatian War of Independence.
• 2017 – A gunman opens fire on a crowd attending the final night of a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring more than 800.

We start the news in Tennessee where there was supposed to be an execution last night. Christa Pike was – after some legal wrangling that included SCOTUS – set to be executed by lethal injection for the 1995 kidnapping, torture and murder of of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Well, the execution was botched. Pike was given two doses of phenobarbital, a drug that in the doses involved typically causes cardiac arrest and death within minutes of being administered. For whatever reason, both doses failed to end Pike. She was removed from the death chamber by emergency services and is reportedly still alive.

This is the second botched execution in Tennessee this year. The same team was responsible for both. What comes next is unclear.

It should not take 30+ years to carry out a death sentence.

A Nap town woman is looking at a pair of felonies because she had main character syndrome. Tamara Staten, 21, faces felony charges of intimidation and pointing a firearm after an incident back on July 16 at Once Upon a Child in Indianapolis. Employees asked her to stop her child from playing on a motorized toy but she grew irate, poked one in the face, threatened a fight, and pulled a gun from her purse.

As of this writing, Staten is still on the loose, but has active warrants for her arrest over this incident.

Sorry, I am drawing down on someone doing that, and pulling the trigger if they even think about pointing the gun at me. Better – far better – to be judged by 12 and so forth.

Crybaby Adam Kinzinger may actually have something to cry about. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating him for trades he made on the prediction market Kalshi, tied to his pardon by former President Joe Biden. Kinzinger, who represented Illinois’ 16th Congressional District until 2023, reportedly said he placed wagers on whether he would receive a presidential pardon, and a separate wager on whether Biden would issue preemptive pardons before leaving office in 2025.

Kinzinger is claiming he is innocent.

The “trades” – they are bets, but cannot be called that and remain in the quasi-legal space they occupy – look bad even if they were legal. Kinzinger is a dope, and deserves everything he gets.

Yesterday was a big day in GWOT history. The last U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from Iraq on Sept. 30, vacating bases including Erbil Air Base and formally ending Operation Inherent Resolve, the Pentagon and CENTCOM confirmed. Iraqi security forces, including the Kurdish Peshmerga, will now assume primary responsibility for counter‑ISIS operations while Washington pledges targeted training and intelligence support.

The shift marks the first time in 25 years that there have not been troops in Afghanistan or Iraq.