July 2nd in History.. An Interesting Day

Its Tuesday.. Just two days before all the celebrations for the Fourth of July.

Interestingly, it is today the 2nd of July when the Continental Congress adopted a resolution severing ties with Great Britain and King George III.   Its just the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not approved until July 4.

Not too much to write about in finance news..

The big 'scare' piece of course is the Congress could not agree to keep student loan rates at 3.4% by July 1st so now they're going to spike starting next year to 6.8% for borrowers...

'Oh No.. What to do?!'

Of course, many of these silly articles forget to mention that since government makes the rules, they also fudge deadlines and manipulate time.  

So expect something passed, it will be retro-active and every new borrower can still pay their precious 3.4% interest to have the privilege to attend and party and cheer on their football teams on Saturdays.

The student loan racket is far too profitable for too many Big Boys to ever allow increased interest rates to deter borrowing..  Plus Dems & Reps like pretending they are working together and for you, their constituents...

And of course the 6-8% annual increases in tuition, room & board, and other misc. expenses will still keep occurring...  Its probably the only business in America at this moment that practices a form of hyperinflation and yet everyone willingly spends..

Anyways, we promised to keep things light this week..

So thanks to Wikipedia, we thought we'd share some interesting events which occurred on this day in History so you can share with your friends and they can go "Ohh.."

    1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.

~ Robert Fulton patented the first ever steamboat around 1800 so its interesting that the engine itself was patented a little over a hundred years prior

    1777 – Vermont becomes the first American territory to abolish slavery.

~ The first nation to abolish slavery was Iceland in 1117

    1839 – Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué take over the slave ship Amistad.

~ Steven Spielberg made a movie about this in 1997..

    1881 – Charles J. Guiteau shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President James Garfield, who eventually dies from an infection on September 19.

~ The sad part is, if you mention the name 'Garfield' to people today, they'd think you were talking about the cartoon cat...

The last of the log cabin Presidents; served as Major General in War Between the States, served as Pres. for only 200 days before dying.. his killer was a deranged political office seeker

  1890 – The U.S. Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

~ One of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress;

Ironically Teddy Roosevelt, the one who pushed its enactment had to break his own law in 1907 as a means of ending the financial Panic of 1907 caused as all panics, recessions and depressions, by Deeply greedy sociopathic bankers and professional Investors.

Click the link below to read on it and why the Fed was created:

http://ants-and-grasshoppers.blogspot.com/2012/06/panic-of-1907-ie-why-fed-reserve-was.html

  1897 – Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London.

~  It took another 93 years for Satellite radio to be invented by Martine Rothblatt, the founder and CEO Sirius Satellite Radio on 1990

  1917 – The East St. Louis Riots end.

~  . It was the worst incidence of labor-related violence in 20th-century American history..  Between 40 to 200 people died...

  1934 – The Night of the Long Knives ends with the death of Ernst Röhm.

~ This was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders

  1937 – Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan are last heard from over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first equatorial round-the-world flight.

  1962 – The first Wal-Mart store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas.

~ Say what you will about Wal-Mart today, and yes its really gone downhill but to think what it is now vs 51 years ago..  Amazing..

  1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places.

  1976 – Fall of the Republic of Vietnam; Communist North Vietnam declares their union to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

~ All those American lives lost.. the Hundreds of Billions wasted on that little nothing of a nation..  All so LBJ then Nixon wouldn't have that legacy of being the first President to lose a war.

Hmm.. that's not the way to end on a positive.. Um...

Wendy's founder Dave Thomas (1922),  Stock car driver Richard Petty (1937) and actress Lindsay Lohan (1986) are all born today...

And if that's not worth celebrating, we don't know what is...