Tuesday, October 30, 2007 – Jeez, Louise. Just when you get a good rhythm going, one of the local cable monopoly’s amplifiers goes blooey, and fries your modem, and then fries the replacement modem they give you, and you can’t get online for days. Ah, well, we’re back. Here are some items from Page Sixteen:

1995—Quebec votes not to secede, but just barely.

1990—For the first time since the Ice Age, England and the European mainland are connected; this time by chunnel.

1990—“Amazing Joe” Burrus, an escape artist, fails to escape from an acrylic coffin after it’s covered with tons of wet cement.

1972—In Chicago, 45 die in a rail accident.

1967—Martin Luther King is arrested in Birmingham, Ala.

1961—The Soviet Union air-drops a 58-megaton hydrogen bomb, creating the largest explosion in human history.

1950—Puerto Ricans rebel against U.S. rule.

1948—In Donora, Penn., smog kills 20 and sickens 6,000.

1945—The U.S. government ends shoe rationing.

1938—Martians land at Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, according to a radio play.

1838—A mob led by three Missouri Militia captains attacks a colony of Mormons at Huan’s Mill, killing most of them.

1831—Rebel slave leader Nat Turner is arrested in Virginia.

1501—Party guests compete for prizes by competitively coupling with 50 naked whores collecting chestnuts strewn on the palazzo apostolico of Pope Alexander VI.