The Pledge of Allegiance was written by, of course, a Socialist. But the good kind! Francis Bellamy was a late-19th century Baptist Utopian Socialist, not a Stalinist or one of those white kids with dreadlocks. Naturally his Pledge was different from the one we know: it doesn't mention God! Luckily Congress fixed that in 1954, adding the words "under God" right in the middle, disrupting the flow of the whole thing. The Commie-hating clergyman responsible for adding God to our pledge just died!

Australian-American screen actor Heath Ledger is dead. Ledger was an Oscar-nominated leading man with an admirable career both artistically and at the box office—he may currently be seen in 2007's art-house sleeper I'm Not There and he'll soon be opening across the nation as the iconic Joker, the lead villain in next chapter in the Batman film franchise. He died in Manhattan. He was 28.

"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did." [USA Today: Pilot of plane that dropped Hiroshima bomb dies]