The 2021 A to Z mashup part two on the fly

 

Well, despite all currently ongoing disasters, I'm back to try and post the back half of my A to Z mashup- and actually got ambitious enough to lift the badge from Arlee Bird at his blog, which is a major step today!  See right now, Misty is at the hospital and we are awaiting results, and I decided to do Laurie's taxes while awaiting word...  I'll let you all know what we find out later.  Anyway, let's pick this up where we left off.

 

L on April 16- Peace on the Lakes

In 1818, the Rush-Bagot Treaty de-militarized Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes. Apparently, both the USA and Britain had had enough of beating each other silly for 13 of the last 43 years. 

M on April 17- A fine can of Worms

Which is where the trial of Martin Luther started in 1521- gee, 500 years ago this year!  They asked him if he was ready to take anything he said back that had disrupted the clergy of Europe or hurt the poor, corrupt Pope Leo X.  He asked for a day to pray about it.  Next day, he told the Wormers to go fish.

N on April 18th- Not like Almond Joy...

Negros were first considered 3/5ths of a person for tax purposes in 1783 in an attempt at compromise by Congress under the Articles of Confederation- also 1/2, or even 3/4ths.  In the end, this Congress shot it down, but James Madison- who had the idea in the first place- stuck it into the Constitution.

O on April 19th- Funny how it took that long....

In 1926, Mae West wrote and produced a play called Sex.  Panned by the critics, it nonetheless became a hit.  However, it suddenly became obscene after 375 performances and 325,000 paying customers, "including members of the police department and their wives, judges of the criminal courts, and seven members of the district attorney's staff."  Mae got ten days in a workhouse and a $500 fine.

"And, more popular!  Don't forget that part..."

P on April 20th- Girls get better mileage

In 2008's Indy Japan 300, everyone was trying to play the fuel mileage game for the last 50 laps.  But it was Danica Patrick who played it best, passing the all-but-empty Helio Castroneves with 2 laps to go and hanging on to become the first female to win a top level open wheel race.

Q on April 21- Happy Birthday to you!

On this day in 1926, the future King George VI of England received a bouncing baby girl he named Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, better known to us as Queen Elizabeth II.  No surprise she's still alive and kicking at 95; her Mom lived to 101 and an aunt to 102!

R on April 22- Play Ball!

The first true MLB Baseball game was played in 1876- with the Red Stockings of Boston (not the same as the current Bosox, but actually the linear descendants of the Atlanta Braves) winning in Philadelphia against the Athletics (Not the same as the Philadelphia-Kansas City- Oakland A's of today- this team had a crappy season, bagged the last road trip of the year, and got expelled) by an error strewn final of 6-5.  Winning pitcher was Joe Borden, who had just 28 games left in a 36-game baseball career; loser Lon Knight would pick up 10 of the Athletics' 14 wins and 22 of their 45 losses, which pretty much put paid to his career as well.

S on April 23- Smashdown

Soyuz I, launched in 1967, was a Politburo-inspired deathtrap from which Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov both tried to save each other from.  Komorov "won" the battle, and after the known defects (that the Politburo ignored to go for the media buzz) had not only crippled the I's mission and scrubbed that of the II which was supposed to link up with it, Komorov tried to land the beast but the parachute failed to open (with some thoughts that a last minute application of heat sealer glued it shut), the capsule made an approximately 154 mph dent in the landing field.  Good for Gagarin: the Hero of the Soviet Union was banned from any further space flights, so he didn't get killed as well.  Bad on Yuri: less than a year later he was killed crashing a MIG-15 on a test flight.

T on April 24- Someday, we'll be in a movie over this

Some 1,000 years after the fact, Eratosthenes of Cyrene- the same guy who just missed the circumference of the earth by about a percent and a half-  pegs the fall of Troy to this date in what we now call 1183 BC.  Give or take 70 years, if he stayed on the same error.

U on April 25- Long time to hold one's breath...

The USS Triton nuclear sub completes a circumnavigation of the globe underwater, following the above water path took by Ferdinand Magellan and his survivors, in 1960.  This crew managed the feat in 60 days, 21 hours. Or, roughly 18 times as fast as the elder expedition's two weeks shy of three years.

V on April 26- ...or, "Both were filled with gas"

Paul von Hindenburg became the first popularly elected President of Germany in 1925.  His two terms would last till his death in 1934.  His accomplishments were much like the zeppelin named for him, a picture of ponderous stateliness and power, until at the end they burst into flames and crashed.

W on April 27- The next reason to toss the UN

Kurt Waldheim, a two term (and almost a third) Secretary General of the UN and current President of Austria, was told by the US State Department in 1987 that they had (through the OSI) enough evidence of him being involved in holocaust-level atrocities that he was persona not grata in the USA, the first active head of state to earn that dubious distinction.  What actual level he was involved to is debatable; what his case really did was tie three entities that should have known better- the Mossad, Austria, and the Catholic Church- to the suspicions of helping former Nazis.

X on April 28- As in, "X him off"

Muhammad Ali was stripped of his titles in 1967 (actually the next day) for refusing to step forward at his draft induction today.  Three years later, a 5-year prison term was thrown out by the Supreme Court because the Draft Board had failed to come up with a good reason to refuse him conscientious objector status.  

Y on April 29- "...you know – can we all get along?"

 

Today in 1992, the officers in the Rodney King beatdown were acquitted, leading to the riots, and Rodney trying to stop the riots two days later with a statement that started with that quote.  In light of the lack of precautions at the start of this, which led to 63 dead in 6 days, the curfews in Minnesota this week seem a damn good idea.

And finally, (Whew!) Z on April 30- How not to throw a revolution

1671 saw the culmination of was was known as the "Magnates' Plot".  Essentially, the story goes:  The Ottomans were trying to extend their gains in the areas of Hungary and Croatia, but a combined force from Germany, France, the Habsburg lands (AKA Austria), and what was left of Hungary beat the Turks.  However, the War of the Spanish Succession- a largely Habsburg/Bourbon war- was brewing and Emperor of Germany Leopold (AKA Archduke of Austria) gave the Turks basically a status quo ante Treaty and promised to pay a small fortune for a 20-year truce.  Obviously, Hungary and Croatia felt fed to the dogs, and were willing to go to great lengths to kick the Habsburgs out for their treachery.  In Croatia, this was led by the provincial Ban (AKA Governor), Nikola Zrinski, his brother Petar, and Petar's Brother-In-Law.  Nikola was supposedly killed by a wild boar during a hunt, just after a bid to get the Croatian army to revolt fell through.  Petar and his co-conspirators then made the rounds of Europe trying to get someone, anyone, to help them get Hungary-Croatia a better deal.  This, unwisely, involved going to the Ottoman Sultan, promising allegiance for semi-autonomy and the removal of the Habsburgs.  The Sultan told Leopold... and Leopold let them off.  Finally, they came to Leopold seeking pardon- but not until they had tried to fight a war of pamphlets, including suggestions that the Emperor be harmed.

Final results:  2,000 nobles arrested, with many including Petar Zrinsky on April 30, 1671, executed; any self government in Hungary and Croatia lost; 41 Protestant pastors agitating against the Catholic Emperor executed, 800 churches closed, and 600,000 forced conversions to Catholicism; a new, more effective, Hungarian terrorist group called the Kurac, whose successes, after the bought and paid for armistice collapsed, caused a massive Ottoman invasion that was just stopped at Vienna by Poland's Jan Sobieski in 1688.  Nice job, everyone.