Do not believe the conspiracy hype. This actually happened… and may still be happening in new and scary ways.

I usually avoid posting things straight from the VA but their list this morning of things in history caught my attention.

Specifically, that today marks the 60^th Anniversary of the CIA’s program to control the minds of Americans and other groups.

I used to think the MK Ultra thing was just a cookie conspiracy theory until I stumbled across hearing into the CIA by former Senator Church. The Committee on Human Resources held the hearing. NY Times posted a PDF of the hearing notes.

It is an interesting read for those with some time on their hands. The documents are extremely long.

This impacts veterans because military members were targeted for experimentation in these programs and others like it.

For many veterans, they were unable to get access to disability benefits because the experiments on their bodies were considered classified information.

Therefore, to reveal the information about what experiments were conducted would have been a security breach.

Many veterans are still caught behind the veil of secrecy and prevented from receiving medical care. Vietnam Veterans of America has a pending lawsuit with the VA and DoD to get access to files still classified that are necessary to award proper disability benefits.

The suit aims to release the veterans from their gag order of secrecy.

For those interested in this and other “important” events that happened this weekend, I have included the list I get from the VA every weekend.

Let me know if you would like me to start posting this on a regular basis.

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From the VA:

• 1613 – Samuel Argall captures Native American princess Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia to ransom her for some English prisoners held by her father. She is brought to Henricus as hostage.
• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: American forces are surprised in the Battle of Bound Brook, New Jersey.
• 1796 – The first elephant ever seen in the United States arrives from India.
• 1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gives Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in Parliament.
• 1849 – Hungary becomes a republic.
• 1861 – American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederate forces.
• 1868 – The Abyssinian War ends as British and Indian troops capture Maqdala.
• 1873 – The Colfax Massacre takes place.
• 1902 – James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
• 1909 – The Turkish military reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
• 1919 – The establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.
• 1919 – Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British troops massacre at least 379 unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, India. At least 1200 are wounded.
• 1919 – Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, for speaking out against the draft during World War I.
• 1941 – Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed.
• 1943 – World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government in exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
• 1943 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson‘s birth.
• 1944 – Diplomatic relations between New Zealand and the Soviet Union are established.
• 1945 – World War II: German troops kill more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen, Germany.
• 1945 – World War II: Soviet and Bulgarian forces capture Vienna, Austria.
• 1948 – The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.
• 1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program MKULTRA.
• 1958 – During the Cold War, American Van Cliburn wins the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
• 1960 – The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system.
• 1964 – At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
• 1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.
• 1972 – The Universal Postal Union decides to recognize the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative, effectively expelling the Republic of China administering Taiwan.
• 1972 – Vietnam War: The Battle of An Lộc begins.
• 1974 – Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft) launches the United States’ first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.
• 1975 – Bus massacre in Lebanon: An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the P.F.L. of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
• 1976 – The United States Treasury Department reintroduces the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson‘s 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration.
• 1987 – Portugal and the People’s Republic of China sign an agreement in which Macau would be returned to China in 1999.
• 1992 – The Great Chicago Flood.
• 1997 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.