Bizarro Files: 31 March 2010

Numerous American states observe César Chávez Day today -- among them Texas, where racist members of the right-wing Christian Taliban have taken over the state board of education and want any mention of Chavez removed from the public school curriculum. It's also Freedom Day in Malta, Thomas Mundy Peterson Day in New Jersey and Transfer Day in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Manliest Damn Thing You'll Read All Day: Nine members of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 351 at Tokyo International Airport on this day in 1970. Terrorism isn't manly, and it's never to be encouraged, but you have to at least admire their style: In addition to carrying a bomb, these guys also had samurai swords. Any moron can strap on a bomb -- but to carry a goddamn samurai sword, well, that's putting you at a whole 'nother level right there, yes indeed.

The Pre-Historic Manliest Damn Thing You'll Read All Day: The journal Nature reported this day in 1994 the discovery in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.

Weak-Ass Thing of the Day (first in an occasional series): The Motion Pictures Production Code took effect this day in 1930, setting strict -- and lame -- guidelines on how movies in America could depict sex, crime, religion and violence for the next 38 years.

Today's noteworthy birthdays include French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes  (1596-1650); Austrian composer Joseph Haydn (1732-1809); American boxer Jack Johnson (1878-1946); Mexican diplomat, writer and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz (1914-1998); American labor activist César Chávez (1927-1993); trumpeter and band leader Herb Alpert (born 1935); actor Christopher Walken (born 1943); former vice president, rightful 2000 U.S. presidential election winner and Nobel laureate Al Gore (born 1948); Scottish-born Australian guitarist Angus Young (of AC/DC, born 1955); American comic book writer Steven T. Seagle (1965); television host and possible future celebrity crush profilee Samantha Brown (born 1969); Spanish film director Alejandro Amenábar (born 1972); singer-songwriter and occasional Mental Nomad Podcast artist Lennon Murphy (born 1982); and celebrity crush Jessica Szohr (born 1985).

Deaths on this date include English writer John Donne (1572-1631); English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727); English author Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855); German-born diarist Anne Frank (1929-1945); American athlete Jesse Owens (1913-1980); actor Brandon Lee (1965-1993); and Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state who was at the center of a right-to-die case that showed the hypocrisy of "small government" Republicans and who had, for all practical purposes, died years earlier, as her autopsy later revealed.

Shit happens. This shit happened on this date:

Queen Isabella delivered the infamous Alhambra decree this day in 1492, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity on threat of death.

The Eiffel Tower was dedicated in Paris, France, this day in 1889. (The Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tenn., came a bit later.)

The first UNIVAC I computer was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau this day in 1951. Whether Republicans of that era ran around like damn fools screaming fascism isn't mentioned by Wikipedia, though there were reactionaries almost as stupid as Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin living then, so maybe.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama -- or Tenzin Gyatso to his homies -- crossed the Tibetan border into India and was granted political asylum this day in 1959.

Netscape released its browser's base code under an open-source license agreement this day in 1998. Project Mozilla eventually spun off into the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox browser, and Netscape ceased to be some time ago.

No. 1 Songs on This Day are not listed here, so stop squinting. I'll resume that feature next time. Wave hi to Lennon (at right), then buy something in the ad space, if it catches your eye -- I need your help to keep these podcasts going, because I'll be out of work in a couple of weeks. Thanks. (There's also a Paypal button at left if you'd rather make a donation.)

Source for stuff I didn't just make up: Just Wikipedia this time. Writing this entry on deadline.