Returning to this "This Day in History" series after a four-month lay-off, if even for a day:
August 25: this day in history (from Wikipedia)
1609 – "Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers." Why is Galileo considered a hero? He went against the scientific consensus of the day. Those who do that today are marginalized as crazies and quacks.
1883 – "France and Viet Nam sign the Treaty of Huế, recognizing a French protectorate over Annam and Tonkin." How enlightened of the French!
1950 – "President Harry Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike." Today Truman is viewed as a "great" or "near-great" President, because historians like Presidents who act like dictators.
Notable quotes
"To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."
- Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990)
"In my experience of fights and fighting, it is invariably the aggressor who keeps getting everything wrong."
- Martin Amis (born 25 August 1949)
"Things that I grew up with stay with me. You start a certain way, and then you spend your whole life trying to find a certain simplicity that you had. It's less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way."
- Tim Burton (born August 25, 1958)
Song of the Day
Happy 60th birthday, Elvis Costello!
James Leroy Wilson's one-man magazine.
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