On this day: Saddam Hussein is born, Benito Mussolini is executed

Encyclopædia Britannica reports that today is the birthday of Ṣaddām Ḥussein, executed deposed-President of Iraq, and the anniversary of the execution of Benito Mussolini, dictator and self-styled “Il Duce” of fascist Italy.

Nice juxtaposition, there.

To complete the oddness, it is also the day that CBS broadcast the images of the illegal treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American armed forces “at the Abu Ghraib prison in U.S.-occupied Iraq, initiating a national debate on torture and the Geneva Conventions”; and the anniversary of the end of American occupation of Japan following that nation’s surrender at the end of World War II.

Dictators, torture and occupation are the themes of the day, it seems.

On a personal note, it is also the day when Capt. William Bligh and eighteen of his men were set adrift by Fletcher Christian, a distant relative.