Fifty-six years ago today, the world stopped with three cracks of a rifle from the 6th floor of the Texas school book depository. I am not very tolerant of the myriad of conspiracy theories surrounding the events of the day, but that said, there is one particular aspect of the Kennedy assassination that still resonates with me today.

After years of working as hard as he could, Johannes Kepler finally figured out the orbits of planets and established his three laws of planetary motion. Nine days after he finally figured it all out, the Thirty-Years War broke out. While most of us are familiar with the death and destruction caused by the two World Wars of the 20th century, we are less familiar with death of upwards of twelve million people over the course of the war from 1618-1648. Europe was ravaged as farmers literally watched their ploughshares beaten into swords. The final spasm of the so-called "Dark Ages" or the beginning of the modern era of European history, whichever way you choose to look at it, boiled down to one thing...