Remember, remember the fifth of November. Today is Guy Fawkes day, and people across the UK would have been celebrating the foiling of the plot to destroy the Palace of Westminster in 1605. Here in California, this celebration of an early success against terrorists went unnoticed by most people.

To put that date into context, it is two years before the first English settlement in North America (Jamestown, Virginia, founded by Captain John Smith in 1607).