1941

The Genbaku-Domu (Atomic Bomb Dome) in Hiroshima.

Eleven years ’fore I was born
The sound of aircraft split the morn
Awakening a sleeping giant
Who set about crushing an evil tyrant.

No: Make that tyrants. There were two
That eventually received their due,
With Reich and Empire crushed at last.
On Seven December, that die was cast.

And thus to tyrants I would warn,
“You fuck with the bull, you get the horn.”

Today is the sixty-eighth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an attack that propelled the United States into World War II. One could say that, not only was it (as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pronounced it) a day that would live in infamy, it was a day that had a profound impact on the shape of the world in which we live.

In other, unrelated news, today is Tom Waits’s sixtieth birthday. Happy birthday, Tom!