On this date in 1497, the Pope excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola for non approved thinking regarding. Principally, Savonarola had 2 main idees fixee; the destruction of secular art and culture (the so-called bonfire of the vanities), and the elimination of clerical corruption, despotism and the exploitation of the poor. We can only guess which pissed off the Pope the most.

On this date in 1551 Thomas Kyd was arrested and tortured for suspected libel. A search of his digs failed to find any evidence of such but did lead to the discovery of some religious wrongthink having to do with the so-called "Arian Heresy" which he broke down and disclosed belonged to his former roomie, Christopher Marlowe who was accordingly arrested and shortly thereafter died at the hands of government agents.

On this day in 1926, the semi-rigid Airship Norge became the first vessel to fly over the North Pole. (The next vessel to transit the pole was the US Navy submarine Nautilus on August 3, 1958.) The Norge was also the first aircraft to fly a polar route from Norway to Alaska. It's crew and passengers may have been the first humans to reach the pole, insofar as the Cook, Peary, and Byrd expeditions' successes in that regard are all disputed.1941, Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first working, programmable, fully automatic computer. It was not truly Turing complete but was able to mimic Turing completeness. It lacked the ability to fork programs, but could theoretically emulate the effect by running all possible effects one after the other. Exactly 76 years to the day later a massive global ransomeware attack would infect 400,000 computers (see below).

On this day in 2008 900 ICE agents raided the Agriprocessors, Inc., kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, and arrested 398 employees. 300 of the employees were convicted of document fraud and did time before being deported. None of the owners or management were convicted of any of the child labor and immigration related charges with which they were charged. One was convicted of bank fraud and other charges related to financial irregularities, but his sentence was subsequently commuted. The entire affair, especially who got busted for what and with what results makes interesting reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postville_raid

On this day in 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack hit over 400,000 computers worldwide. This worm only attacked computers running Micro$oft Windoze because it was based on an exploit named EternalBlue which had been developed by the US Government's NSA for reasons only known to the NSA and which only applied to Windoze machines. (This should not be confused with other attacks based on this exploit like the one in June of 2017). The exploit had been leaked back in April of 2017 and Micro$oft had developed a patch or patches to stop it, but for various reasons great numbers of Windoze users could not or did not install the patches.

On this day in history:

1364 – The oldest university in Poland, Jagiellonian University, was founded

1497 – Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola for wrongthink

1551 – The oldest university in the Americas, National University of San Marcos, was is founded in Lima, Peru.

1593 – Playwright Thomas Kyd was arrested and tortured by the Privy Council for libel and wrongthink

1743 – Maria Theresa of Austria was crowned Queen of Bohemia after defeating Charles VII

1780 – During the Revolutionary War, Charleston, South Carolina was taken by British forces.

1846 – The Donner Party of colonial settlers departed Independence, Missouri, for California

1870 – The Manitoba Act was given the Royal Assent, allowing Manitoba to become a province of Canada

1926 – The Italian-built airship Norge became the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.

1926 – The 1926 United Kingdom general strike ended

1933 – The Agricultural Adjustment Act, was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1933 – President Roosevelt signed legislation creating the Federal Emergency Relief Administration

1937 – The Duke and Duchess of York were crowned as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom

1941 – Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first working, programmable, fully automatic computer

1949 – Cold War: The Soviet Union lifted its blockade of Berlin

1965 – The Soviet spacecraft Luna 5 crashed on the Moon.

1975 – Democratic Kampuchea naval forces captured the SS Mayaguez.

1998 – Four students were shot at Trisakti University, leading to widespread riots and the fall of Suharto.

2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrived in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro

2003 – The Riyadh compound bombings in Saudi Arabia, carried out by al-Qaeda, killed 39 people

2008 – ICE conducted its largest-ever raid of a workplace at a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa

2015 – A routine train derailment in Philadelphia, United States, killed eight people and injures more than 200
**

2017 – The WannaCry ransomware attack hit over 400,000 computers worldwide

** There were 1,350 train derailments in the US in 2015, that's about 3.7 per day, hence "routine".

Some people who were born on this day:

The future ain't what it used to be

~~ Yogi Berra

1590 – Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
1739 – Johann Baptist Wanhal, organist and composer
1754 – Franz Anton Hoffmeister, composer and publisher
1755 – Giovanni Battista Viotti, violinist and composer
1803 – Justus von Liebig, chemist and academic
1812 – Edward Lear, poet and illustrator
1814 – Adolf von Henselt, pianist and composer
1820 – Florence Nightingale, nurse, social reformer, and statistician
1828 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet and painter
1842 – Jules Massenet, composer
1845 – Gabriel Fauré, pianist, composer, and educator
1874 – Clemens von Pirquet, pediatrician and immunologist
1895 – William Giauque, chemist and academic
1895 – Jiddu Krishnamurti, philosopher and author
1907 – Leslie Charteris, author and screenwriter
1910 – Dorothy Hodgkin, biochemist, crystallographer, and academic,
1921 – Farley Mowat, environmentalist and author
1925 – Yogi Berra, Highly quotable New York Yankee catcher
1928 – Burt Bacharach, singer, songwriter, pianist, and producer
1936 – Frank Stella, painter and sculptor
1937 – George Carlin, comedian, actor, and author
1940 – Norman Whitfield, songwriter and producer
1942 – Ian Dury, English singer and songwriter
1945 – Ian McLagan, keyboard player and songwriter
1948 – Steve Winwood, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist
1950 – Billy Squier, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1962 – Brett Gurewitz, guitarist and songwriter
1977 – Maryam Mirzakhani, mathematician

Some people who died on this day:

When questions of ‘class’ interests are eliminated from public controversy a victory is thereby gained for the possessing, conservative class, whose only hope of security lies in such elimination.

~~ James Connolly

1634 – George Chapman, translator, poet, and playwright (Chapman's Homer)
1700 – John Dryden, English poet, playwright, and critic
1748 – Thomas Lowndes, English astronomer and academic
1784 – Abraham Trembley, Swiss zoologist and academic
1856 – Jacques Philippe Marie Binet, French mathematician, physicist, and astronomer
1876 – Georgi Benkovski, Bulgarian activist
1878 – Anselme Payen, French chemist and academic
1884 – Bedřich Smetana, Czech composer and educator
1916 – James Connolly, Irish socialist and resistance leader executed by the British
1925 – Amy Lowell, American poet and critic
1931 – Eugène Ysaÿe, Belgian violinist, composer, and conductor
1944 – Max Brand, American journalist and author
1944 – Arthur Quiller-Couch, English author, poet, and critic
1957 – Alfonso de Portago, Spanish bobsledder and racing driver
1957 – Erich von Stroheim, Austrian-American actor, director, and producer
1967 – John Masefield, English poet and author
1970 – Nelly Sachs, German poet and playwright,
1999 – Saul Steinberg, Romanian-American illustrator
2001 – Perry Como, American singer and television host
2001 – Alexei Tupolev, Russian engineer, designed the Tupolev Tu-144
2008 – Irena Sendler, Polish nurse and humanitarian
2009 – Antonio Vega, Spanish singer-songwriter and guitarist
2024 – David Sanborn, American saxophonist

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

International Nurses Day
National Women's Check-Up Day
Limerick Day
International Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Day
International Fibromyalgia Awareness Day
International Awareness Day for Chronic Immunological and Neurological Diseases

Today's Tunes

Johann Baptist Wanha

Franz Anton Hoffmeister

Giovanni Battista Viotti

Adolf von Henselt

Jules Massenet

Gabriel Fauré

Burt Bacharach

Norman Whitfield

Ian Dury

Ian McLagan

Steve Winwood

Billy Squier

Bedřich Smetana

James Connolly

Eugène Ysaÿe

Perry Como

Antonio Vega

David Sanborn

Bonus Winwood

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, Girolamo Savonarola, Thomas Kyd, Norge, Z3, Agriprocessors, WannaCry, Steve Winwood