03/29/21 is Piano Day

Today is day 88 of the Gregorian Calendar year, Pungenday, Discord 15, 3187 YOLD And let us not forget 13.0.8.7.0 mlc (the Mayan Long Count)

Piano means "quiet", so inside voices, please.

Lt. Calley: Calley was putatively convicted of murder and sentenced to life, but neither thing is true. He only served a day or two of his original sentence, after which he was sentenced to a short period of house arrest, most of which he spent out and about pursuing various appeals and such. Like the astonishlngly few US troops tried for war crimes, atrocities and the like, Calley was really tried for getting caught flagrante delecto, essentially, for stupidity. If and only if one does something heinous and not only gets caught, but gets caught in circumstances that pretty much force the US to hold some sort of show trial, then one will be tried for the offense of putting the US in that position, otherwise such trials never occur. FWIW, everybody under him got off because "following orders" which almost always carries the day in US tribunals even though it was definitively held at Nuremberg that it is not a valid defense. Of course, the Exceptional US is an exception to all of the Nuremberg rules, including the one that says that the absolute unquestionably worst war crime is to start an unprovoked war, literally our forte' as a nation. Vietnam, like Iraq, Laos, Cambodia, Argentina 1 and 2 and innumerable invasions throughout South America, Africa and the Pacific was unprovoked, but nobody involved in bringing it about was ever tried for anything. So Lt. Calley was, though a perpetrator of a truly horrific atrocity, essentially a fall guy for a whole war and for a president who ordered the carpet bombing of civilian residential and shopping areas as well as outlying villages, killing over 2,300 and destroying over 5400 houses plus shops, clinics, schools, hospitals, temples, theaters and more in but one single named operation. Terence Hill Do yourself an enormous favor and watch My Name is Nobody starring Terence Hill and Henry Fonda, and then delve into the Trinity films, also starring Hill. On this day in history:

1549 – The city of Salvador da Bahia was founded. 1632 – Treaty of Saint-Germain was signed 1806 – Construction of the Great National Pike was authorized 1847 – US forces took Veracruz after a siege. 1849 – The United Kingdom annexed the Punjab. 1857 – Sepoy Mangal Pandey mutinied, leading to the Indian Rebellion of 1857 1867 – Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act 1871 – Royal Albert Hall was opened by Queen Victoria. 1886 – John Pemberton made the first batch of Coca-Cola 1927 – Sunbeam 1000hp broke the land speed record at Daytona Beach 1941 – The North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement went into effect 1941 – The Battle of Cape Matapan ended 1942 – The Bombing of Lübeck, the first successful RAF bombing of a German city. 1945 – The last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England 1945 – The German 4th Army was nearly destroyed by the Red Army. 1946 – Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México was founded. 1947 – Malagasy Uprising against French colonial rule in Madagascar. 1957 – The New York, Ontario and Western Railway mades its final run, 1961 – The Twenty-third Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, 1971 – Lieutenant William Calley was convicted of premeditated murder in the My Lai Massacre: and sentenced to life in prison, which, of course, he never served, serving at most 2 days of it. He did wind up serving 3 years of wink-wink, nudge-nudge, "house arrest" most of which he spent out and about working on appeals and such. 1973 – The last United States combat soldiers left South Vietnam. 1973 – Covert US bombing in Laos allegedly ended 1974 – NASA's Mariner 10 became the first space probe to fly by Mercury. 1974 – The Terracotta Army was discovered in Shaanxi province, China. 2004 – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined NATO as full members. 2014 – The first legal same-sex marriages in England and Wales were performed. 2017 – PM Theresa May invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union, formally starting Brexit

“Capital does not participate where no profit can be made. Humanity is not quoted on the stock exchange.”

~~ Wilhelm Liebknecht

1826 – Wilhelm Liebknecht, journalist and politician 1869 – Aleš Hrdlicka, anthropologist and scholar 1873 – Tullio Levi-Civita, mathematician and academic 1888 – Enea Bossi, Sr., engineer 1896 – Wilhelm Ackermann, mathematician 1907 – Braguinha, singer, songwriter, and producer 1909 – Moon Mullican, singer, songwriter, and pianist

1916 – Peter Geach, philosopher and academic 1918 – Pearl Bailey, actress and singer 1923 – Betty Binns Fletcher, lawyer and judge 1923 – Bob Haymes, singer, songwriter, and actor 1927 – John Vane, pharmacologist and academic, 1928 – Vincent Gigante, businessman 1929 – Sheila Kitzinger, activist, author, and academic 1929 – Richard Lewontin, biologist, geneticist, and academic 1936 – Richard Rodney Bennett, composer and educator 1939 – Terence Hill, actor, director, and producer 1940 – Ray Davis, bass singer 1940 – Astrud Gilberto, singer and songwriter 1941 – Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., astrophysicist and astronomer 1943 – Vangelis, keyboard player and songwriter 1943 – Chad Allan, singer, songwriter ,and guitarist 1944 – Terry Jacks, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1944 – Lynne Segal, feminist academic and activist 1945 – Speedy Keen, singer, songwriter, keyboard player, and producer 1946 – Billy Thorpe, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1946 – Segun Bucknor, musician and journalist 1947 – Robert Gordon, singer and actor 1947 – Bobby Kimball, singer and songwriter 1949 – Dave Greenfield, musician 1951 – William Clarke, harmonica player 1956 – Patty Donahue, singer 1959 – Perry Farrell, singer, songwriter 1969 – Shinichi Mochizuki, mathematician

Died this day in:

“Let's go and get drunk on light again - it has the power to console.”

~~ Georges Seurat

1772 – Emanuel Swedenborg, astronomer, philosopher, and theologian 1891 – Georges Seurat, painter 1948 – Harry Price, parapsychologist and author 1982 – Carl Orff, composer and educator 1999 – Joe Williams, jazz singer 2001 – John Lewis, pianist and composer 2003 – Carlo Urbani, physician and microbiologist 2004 – Lise de Baissac, SOE agent and war hero 2004 – Joel Feinberg, philosopher and academic 2014 – Ruth A. M. Schmidt, geologist and paleontologist 2017 – Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov, physicist

Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such: Piano Day National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day Smoke and Mirrors Day National Vietnam War Veterans Day (United States of America) Day of the Young Combatant (Chile) Festival of Smoke and Mirrors

Music goes here, iirc, well, With apologies ;-)

Piano Day

Moon Mullican

Pearl Bailey

Bob Haymes

Ray Davis

Astrud Gilberto