Upper Volta

Burkina Faso gained full independence from France on August 5, 1960, as Upper Volta.  It changed its name to Burkina Faso in 1984.

Ludlow Massacre

The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War.  Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people were killed, including miners' wives and children.

Cassini map

The Cassini Map or Academy's Map is the first topographic and geometric map made of the Kingdom of France as a whole. It was compiled by the Cassini family, mainly César-François Cassini (Cassini III) and his son Jean-Dominique Cassini (Cassini IV) in the 1700s.  The map was, for the time, a real innovation and a decisive technical advance. It is the first map to be based on a geodesic triangulation. Four generations of the Cassini carried out the work, taking more than 6 decades to complete.  Poor Cassini IV was imprisoned by the National Assembly for being royalist, but they still availed themselves of his map.

Amish beards

The distinctive Amish chinbeard comes from a command in Leviticus 19:27, but the lack of mustache is probably derived from an intention to avoid association with the military connotations of a mustache prevalent in British and German armies of the late 19th century.

Jacques Clément

Jacques Clément was a Jacobin friar who assassinated Henry III of France in 1589 by stabbing him.  He did this in retaliation for Henry III's ordering the killing of Henri I, the Duke of Guise, by his bodyguard, the Forty-Five.

Battle Of Lundy's Lane

The Battle of Lundy's Lane was the bloodiest battle of the War of 1813.  It took place a mile west of Niagara Falls in 1814.  Neither side won a decisive victory, but the Americans' advance into Canada was and they had to retreat to Ft. Erie.  The American general Winfield Scott was wounded.  There is a memorial in Drummond Hill Cemetery, Ontario.

White Night Riots

The White Night riots were a series of clashes that occurred between gay activists and citizens and the violent, homophobic San Francisco police.  After the lenient sentence given to Dan White for the assassination of Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone, gay activists marched to city hall and repulsed police trying to repel them, eventually burning several squad cars.  In retaliation and against their chief's orders, SF police went to the Castro district and attacked civilians there.

Twinkie Defense

The "Twinkie Defense" was first used by Dan White, the murderer of San Francisco politician Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone, suggesting that his diet of Coke and junk food was a symptom and evidence of his depression, which implied his irrational mind at the time, despite his clear premeditation of the attacks.  Later this phrase was used to imply a defense of a sugar high that causes irrational actions, bot stands as a symptom of depressed thinking.  White was sentenced to eight years and later killed himself.

War Of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession lasted from 1701 to 1714.  It arose out of the disputed succession to the throne of Spain following the death of the childless Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs. The war was primarily a struggle to determine whether the vast possessions of the Spanish Empire should pass to the House of Bourbon or to the House of Habsburg, both of which had dynastic claims, or whether they should be partitioned to preserve the balance of power in Europe.  Philip of Anjou, he grandson of Louis XIV, the king of France, was the Bourbon claimant. England, Holland, the Holy Roman Empire and Prussia decided to support Archduke Charles, the younger son of the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I.

Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus.  This occurred nine months before the Rosa Parks case, but Colvin's wasn't widely publicized because she was an unmarried pregnant teen.  She was one of four plaintiffs in Browder vs. Gayle, which which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional.

The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

On December 15, 1933, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed.  It repealed the 18th Amendment, ending Prohibition.  Now everyone (21 and over) can drink!

Hangul

Hangul is the name of the Korean script. Its name literally means "great script."  There are 24 nbasic letters.  The consonant characters are formed with curved or angled lines. The vowels are composed of vertical or horizontal straight lines together with short lines on either side of the main line.  Hangul was created in 1443 CE by King Sejong the Great.

Gerboise Bleue

Gerboise Bleue (blue jerboa) is the codename for the first French nuclear test, conducted in 1960 in French Algeria.   General Pierre Marie Gallois was instrumental in the endeavor, and earned the nickname of père de la bombe A ("father of the A-bomb").  

Emblem book

An emblem book is a book of emblems (symbolic, allegorical, or representational pictures) with accompanying text, usually poetic.  Francis Quarles was a 17th century English poet best known for his book Emblems, which was on Scriptural scenes.

Crystal Palace

The Crystal Palace was an iron and glass structure built in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first of the World's Fairs.  Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet long, with an interior height of 128 feet, and was three times the size of St Paul's Cathedral.  There is a football club, Crystal Palace F.C., in South London, that takes tts name from the structure.  The structure was destroyed on November 30, 1936, by a fire that began as a small office fire.

Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1990.  German reunification was finalized in 1991.  More than 100 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall over the course of its 28-year history.

Democritus

Democritus was known as "the laughing philosopher" because he advised being cheerful.  He taught that there are smallest indivisible bodies from which everything else is composed, and that these move about in an infinite void.  The atomists held that there are smallest indivisible bodies from which everything else is composed, and that these move about in an infinite void.

Aubrey holes

The thing I learned today is that Aubrey holes, named after a 17th-century antiquarian, are 56 cremation pits that line the inside ring of Stonehenge. It is possible that their placement was used for astronomic calculations.

The first St. Patrick's Day parade

The thing I learned today is that the first St. Patrick's Day parade in America was held in Boston, 1737. It was organized by the Charitable Irish Society of Boston.

The Securitate

The thing I learned today is that the Securitate (from Department of State Security, or DSS) was the brutal secret police of Communist Romania from 1948 to 1991.