Octopodial Chrome

Four hundred years ago today the first permanent English colony was started at Jamestown in Virginia. That settlement was the seed which grew into a mighty republic stretching from one ocean to the next; a republic whose system of government has been used as a model by many, many others (arguably, even Great Britain took some ideas back from her child…). In a very real sense, today is America’s four hundredth birthday. Happy birthday!

Oh, and the Mayflower didn’t land in Massachusetts until 13½ years later. Nyaah nyaah nyaah:-)

The Telegraph report on a little-known tale: the post-war massacre of Germans in Europe. Something like a million soldiers and two million civilians were murdered; nearly every woman and girl in Russian-controlled territory was raped; a quarter-million Sudetenlanders were simply slaughtered.