Here are ten historical events that took place on April 16th, listed in chronological order:
- 73 AD: The Roman fortress of Masada falls to the Roman army, ending the siege.
- 1457: The Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed with movable type in the West, is completed.
- 1746: The Battle of Culloden, the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745, takes place in Scotland. It results in a decisive victory for the British government forces.
- 1862: During the American Civil War, the Battle of Fort Pillow occurs in Tennessee, with Confederate forces capturing the fort and killing many African American Union soldiers after they surrender.
- 1917: Vladimir Lenin returns to Petrograd, Russia, from exile, marking the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution.
- 1943: Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the hallucinogenic effects of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide).
- 1947: The cargo ship SS Grandcamp explodes in the harbor of Texas City, Texas, resulting in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history and causing extensive damage and casualties.
- 1963: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writes his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response to a public statement by eight white Alabama clergymen criticizing his nonviolent protests and civil rights activism.
- 1990: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) mistakenly targets the wrong person in a car bomb attack in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, killing seven construction workers.
- 2007: A gunman opens fire at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, resulting in 32 deaths in what becomes one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history.
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I have a question, Sir Sage.
Why would the Romans attack their own fort ? Sounds Pythonesque 😄
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Mike you are a gem! So, to clarify, the Romans did not attack their own fort; they besieged and conquered Masada, a fortress held by Jewish rebels, in their campaign to quell the Jewish revolt. Thank you for pointing out the error.
I too am a self confessed pedant. I like things to be right and many have criticised me for it rather than see the errors of their own ways in highlighting mine!
Ah, the joys of pedantry! There’s nothing quite like the rush of correcting someone’s misplaced apostrophe or pointing out the subtle nuances of grammar rules at a dinner party. It’s like being a linguistic superhero, swooping in to save the day from the clutches of misplaced modifiers and dangling participles. With each meticulously crafted correction, we pedants revel in the satisfaction of knowing that language is being preserved one meticulously placed comma at a time. So, here’s to the pedants of the world: may your red pens never run dry, and may your corrections be met with the appreciation they truly deserve (even if it’s begrudgingly given). After all, someone’s got to keep the Oxford comma alive and kicking!
And as for Python … can I recommend the olympic hide and seek sketch, or my all time favourite ….”Is this the right room for an argument ….”!
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I can report that all nits have been picked, Sir ! 😁
Thank you for your kind response and the spirit in which it was made.
I’m against capital punishment but I think one should be able to smack a corporal for putting an apostrophe in before every ess – just in case.
I can’t recall seeing the Olympic Hide and Seek sketch but if you’ll count to ten, I’ll start looking.
On another flashback to childhood, I remembered a wonderfully absurdist insult “Arr, your mother wears army boots and your father drives a pickle truck !”
I have a barely-contained desire to launch that one during a grindingly tedious meeting at work. Perhaps framed as a rhetorical question “Is it true that ~ ”
Last point – it’s 05.30 and I just realised I’ve spent half an hour crafting this reply. No wonder my partner gets the shits when she finds me goofing off ! She has one clip on constant rotation “What have you been doing for the last x hours ?”.
I have one reply “I don’t know, but it was more fun than (insert domestic drudgery here).”
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Here’s a treat for you …..
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simply divine comedy 👍👍👍👍🤣
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