On this day in history, three items of particular interest.
- 1863 – Pickett’s Charge, a futile Confederate infantry assault against Union Army positions, occurred during the final and bloodiest day of fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg, marking a turning point in the American Civil War.
- 1940 – Second World War: The British Navy attacked the French fleet, fearing that the ships would fall into German hands after the armistice between those two nations.
- 1970 – The Troubles: The British Army imposed the Falls Curfew on Belfast, Northern Ireland, which only resulted in greater Irish republican resistance.
All of these were attacks on people who were either countrymen or allies. None of them had the desired effect.
On to the reads!
- Rigged. Forced into debt. Worked past exhaustion. Left with nothing (USA Today)
- The slow death of the electric guitar (Washington Post)
- Trump, Russia and a shadowy business partnership (Bloomberg View)
- China’s all-seeing surveillance state is reading its citizens’ faces (Wall Street Journal)
- Are you a self-interrupter? (Nautilus)
- Power causes brain damage: Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people — that were essential to their rise (The Atlantic)
- How Stephen Miller rode white rage from Duke’s campus to Trump’s West Wing (Vanity Fair)
- Penn Station Is New York’s Commuter Hell, and It’s About to Get Worse (Bloomberg)
- Officials struggle to convince Trump that Russia remains a threat (CNN)
- How Apple’s iPhone changed the world: 10 years in 10 charts (Recode)
- Thirteen Ways to Instantly Become Better at Grilling (Bloomberg)
- Nike Thought It Didn’t Need Amazon — Then the Ground Shifted (Wall Street Journal)
- Away from the NFL spotlight, financial ruin drove Clinton Portis to the brink of murder (Sports Illustrated)