JUNE 26th - Do You Need a Hug?

You ever find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time? Like if you’re shopping and you walk down the junk food aisle for some scrumdiddlyumptious treats, only to be blocked by two amateur shoppers holding a side-by-side conversation about their cats with their carts blocking your path to the sweet, sweet processed carbs your belly is gurgling for. They’re just standing there, oblivious to your cravings, chatting away without a care in the world about how Mr. Mittens keeps pooping in the pantry. (Well don’t put the freaking litter box in there.) That’s the wrong place, wrong time. But really it’s only a mild inconvenience. You just have to walk your lazy butt around the other aisle and pick up your Funyuns® on the other side of the inconsiderate cat-talking shoppers. It might tick you off a bit, but if it ruins your day you probably have some anger issues that you should get checked out. Maybe you need a hug? Because you see, on this day in 1807, lightning struck a gunpowder plant in Luxembourg killing approximately 300 people. Read that again. Lightning. Hit a gunpowder factory. That’s ridiculous. If I were writing a B Movie and wanted to pull some deus-ex-machina to get my hero out from under the thumb of the underground world of mafia-ninjas--that killed his family and are after him to finish the job--by eviscerating said underground mafia-ninjas, I still wouldn’t put them in a gunpowder factory and make lightning strike it. Too farfetched. But apparently lightning strikes earth 8 to 9 million times a day so maybe it’s not that far-fetched. Still the odds of lightning striking the one factory that effectively morphs into a bomb after the strike seems pretty damn unlikely to me. That’s the ultimate case of wrong place, wrong time. In fact they ought to call being in the wrong place at the wrong time being at the Luxembourg Gunpowder Plant. If a bar fight breaks out and in the ensuing melee you get hit by a bottle that busts your nose open and somebody asks what happened to you, you could simply say, “Got caught at the Luxembourg Gunpowder Plant, man.” Not that it helps out those poor bastards caught in that factory in 1807, but it’s something. And next time you get inconveniently stuck behind two inconsiderate mouthbreathers who are talking about their cats, just remember that you could have been alive 200 years ago working in a gunpowder plant in Germany when it was struck by lightning. You should thank your lucky stars that your Luxembourg Gunpowder Plant was not THE Luxembourg Gunpowder Plant. Cause if it were, you’d be dead. And I don’t want you to be dead. I like you. You read my blog. Do you still need a hug?

This day has been Marked.

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