Author: James Wesley Rawles

March 2, 1965: The Sound of Music, a film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play, premiered; the movie, which was based on the real-life story of the Trapp family of Austria, was a commercial success and won an Oscar for best picture. On March 2nd, 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico. Today is coincidentally also the birthday of Sam Houston. Today is also the birthday of Moe Berg, an American baseball player and clandestine agent. (He died in 1972.) His biography The Catcher Was a Spy is fascinating reading. And this is the birthday of libertarian economist …

Today is the 70th birthday of filmmaker Ron Howard, who first achieved fame as a child actor in The Andy Griffith Show and later became an Academy Award-winning director. — March 1st is the birthday of actor and former WW2 commando David Niven. His full name was James David Graham Niven. (1910-1983.) — And today is the birthday of the late singer, songwriter, and cowboy poet Allen Wayne Damron. Damron was quite the Texan, through and through. (Born 1939, died August 13, 2005, in Terlingua, Texas.) — Here is an interesting North Carolina property listing at SurvivalRealty: Private and Remote …

Happy Leap Year Day! We all get this extra day once every four years, to keep the calendar in sync with the Earth’s 365-and-a-quarter day orbit. My personal tradition for leap year days is to contact friends and distant relatives with whom I’ve been out of touch for at least three years. Pictured above, in Holland: Crossing a flooded field with leaping poles. (“Met de polsstok door ondergelopen akker“.) — On February 29, 2020 a new, democratic constitution was adopted by the National Assembly elected by Czech and Slovak leaders, furthering the consolidation of the two states into Czechoslovakia. — …

On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad became the first steam-operated railway in the United States to be chartered as a common carrier of freight and passengers. — William Ewart Fairbairn (28 February 1885 – 20 June 1960) was a British soldier and police officer. He developed hand-to-hand combat methods for the Shanghai Police during the interwar period, as well as for the Allied special forces during World War II. He created his own fighting system known as Defendu. Notably, this included innovative pistol shooting techniques and the development of the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife. — February 28th is …

On February 27th, 1933, the German Reichstag (parliament) building caught fire, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship. More recently, the terms “Reichstag Fire” and “False Flag Event” have both come into use to describe triggering events covertly used to shift public opinion and shape government policies. On February 27th, 1900 — Felix Hoffman patented acetylsalicylic acid, better known as aspirin. February 27th, 1902 Harry ‘Breaker’ Harbord Morant was executed in Pretoria. On this day in 2010, a magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck Chile, causing widespread damage and triggering a tsunami that devastated coastal areas; it was the most …