the countdown begins

After some fits and starts and shuffling about, we're on:

Defense date: April 4, 2011.

In 1581, Francis Drake was knighted for completing a circumnavigation of the world. In 1851 Napoleon abdicated for the first time. It marks Senegal's independence in 1960. In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and NASA launched Apollo 6. Twenty years later, Evan Mecham was convicted in his impeachment trial and removed from office as Governor of Arizona. (I remember that one.) In 2002, The Angolan government and UNITA rebels signed a peace treaty ending the Angolan Civil War. It's also the feast day of Saint Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 4 April 636), considered, as the historian Montalembert put it, "le dernier savant du monde ancien," or the last scholar of the ancient world.

I think I can handle that.