Author: James Wesley Rawles

On June 25th, 1530, German Protestant princes forced Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (pictured) to hear their Confession of Faith — a statement of Lutheran theology, now known as The Augsburg Confession. — On June 25th, 1798, the US Congress passed the Alien Act, allowing the president to deport dangerous aliens. — June 25th, 1876: Native American forces led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeated the U.S. Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in a bloody battle near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River. The Battle of Little Bighorn–also called Custer’s Last Stand – marked the most …

On June 24, 1374, a sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion. There is now conjecture that this strange outbreak was caused by rye bread contaminated with ergot fungus — a mycotoxin. — June 24th is the birthday of rifle-toting abolitionist pastor Henry Ward Beecher. (Born 1813, died March 8, 1887.) He and his adherents from his church smuggled so many Sharps rifles to Bleeding Kansas that the Sharps rifles picked up the nickname Beecher’s Bibles. The Infogalactic …

On June 23, 930, the world’s oldest parliament, the Icelandic Parliament — the Alþingi — was established. — To reiterate and expand on my note posted yesterday: My e-mail inbox has been full of queries from readers about the USAF bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear weapons development sites. Folks want to know if this might mean WW3. For some articles on that topic, see our June 19th Odds ‘n Sods column.  There could indeed be some escalation.  There is certainly the risk of an Iranian sub-critical  “dirty bomb” being detonated, most likely at an American container seaport. And there is …

On June 22, 1476, the army of Charles the Bold invaded Switzerland. Their first engagement was the Battle of Morat which was fought about 30 kilometers from Bern. The successive Burgundian invasions were successfully repelled by the pike tactics of the well-trained and organized Swiss militias. — June 22, 1633: Galileo Galilei was coerced by Pope Gregory XV to recant his belief in heliocentrism–that the Earth orbits the Sun. The Vatican did not concede that it was wrong until October 31, 1992. — And on June 22, 1848, the Barnburners (an anti-slavery party) nominated Martin Van Buren for President. — …