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Almanac for Aug. 13, 2026

Today is Thursday, Aug. 13, the 225th day of 2026. There are 140 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 13, 1961, on what would become known as Barbed Wire Sunday, East Germany sealed the border between Berlin's eastern and western sectors before building a wall that would divide the city for the next 28 years. Also on this date: In 1521, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez captured Tenochtitlan (teh-natch-teet-LAHN'), present-day Mexico City, from the Aztecs. In 1792, French revolutionaries arrested and imprisoned King Louis XVI; he would be executed by guillotine the ...

Don’t malign the U.S. economy

The United States of America may be the greatest place for functionally illiterate people to live in all of human history. An eye-popping column in the Financial Times the other day noted how people in the U.S. with very low literacy make about as much per hour as the average worker in the ...

Summertime political reruns

When I was younger, so much younger than today (credit The Beatles for that lyric from “Help”), television networks would rerun programs that had originally been broadcast the previous fall and spring. A few still do, like “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy,” but those are syndicated ...

Almanac for Aug. 12, 2026

Today in History: August 12, Charlottesville car attack By The Associated Press undefined Today is Wednesday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2026. There are 141 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 12, 2017, a driver sped into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.) Also on this ...

Almanac for Aug. 11, 2026

Today in History: August 11, Alcatraz takes first federal prisoners By The Associated Press undefined Today is Tuesday, Aug. 11, the 223rd day of 2026. There are 142 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 11, 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at Alcatraz Island, a former military prison, in San Francisco Bay; the island would be home to more than 1,500 prisoners over the next three decades, including gangsters Al Capone and James "Whitey" Bulger, before closing in 1963. Also on this date: In 1919, Germany's Weimar Constitution was signed by President ...

The Long Rise of the New Democratic Party

Can I claim to have predicted, way back in 1988, the result of Michigan's fiercely contested Democratic primary for U.S. senator this week? The developments that have made Abdul El-Sayed — who lost the 2018 gubernatorial primary to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) by 20 percentage points — ...