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Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote to his 77.7 million Twitter followers on Monday that he was challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin to single combat and wagering Ukraine.

The man who allegedly purchased the assault rifle Kyle Rittenhouse used during an August 2020 protest in Kenosha, Wis., agreed to plead no contest to a non-criminal citation of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and will have two felony counts dismissed as part of the agreement. Dominick Black, 20, had faced two felony charges of delivering a dangerous weapon to a minor, resulting in death. But Black's attorney and assistant district attorney Thomas Binger reached a proposed plea agreement, which Binger filed on Friday, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

He intentionally fired into the air, but his political rival, the sitting Vice-President Aaron Burr, took deadly aim and fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel JULY 11, 1804. Alexander Hamilton was born in the British West Indies on the Island of Nevis, either in the year 1755 or 1757, and grew up on the Island of St. Croix. Just a few years earlier, in 1751, 19-year-old George Washington had accompanied his older half-brother Lawrence on a trip to the not too distant Island of Barbados. Since Alexander Hamilton's parents were not legally married, he was not permitted to attend...

Washington (CNN)Capitol Hill is no stranger to partisan clashes, but on Thursday, the East Lawn saw a different kind of battle: a snowball fight. Sens. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, and Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, ventured outside Thursday morning for a "snowball duel." The stakes: Loser would have to buy pizza for the winner's staff. Booker announced he lost the duel to Flake. "With great ignominy I have to announce I lost the snowball fight 3 to 2," he wrote. "I'm buying the pizza for his office . . . . I neglected to tell him though that I am definitely sending...

A U.S. senator was caught Tuesday on a 'hot mic,' telling a colleague that a congressman who had challenged her to a duel over her health care positions is 'fat' and 'unattractive.' Maine Sen. Susan Collins was one of three Republican women in the upper chamber of Congress last week who held up a GOP-led package that would have repealed and replaced the Obamacare law. Rep. Blake Farenthold, a fellow Republican from Texas, told a radio host that if she were 'a guy from south Texas, I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.' At the...

Are we close to seeing a return of formal dueling at ten paces in Oregon in the next few years? That’s the fun interpretation when you see a headline such as this one in the Associated Press. “Oregon voters may decide to toss constitutional ban on duels.” I’m not immune to the occasion fit of pining for the colonial days, but that sounds a tad bit extreme even to me. But as with most such stories, it turns out to be (mostly) clickbait to the great disappointment of many, I’m sure. Should ongoing discussions in Salem materialize, voters would...

<p>Republican Maine Gov. Paul LePage left an expletive-filled voicemail for a state lawmaker who called his recent comments about drug dealers racist, the Portland Press Herald reports.</p> <p>LePage called the lawmaker a “socialist cocksucker” and later said he would like to have an armed duel.</p>

It’s hard to determine which is more surprising: the British aching to send troops and materiel to aid the Confederacy during the Civil War or that the first “Special Relationship” was between the U.S. and Russia against the British. Both of these facts are true and for the latter negating the former, we can thank one Cassius Marcellus Clay. Clay was more than just a namesake for the greatest boxer of all time. He was also a politician, representative, officer in the Mexican War and Civil War, abolitionist, and ambassador with a pedigree in badassery. This man once frightened an...

Reflections on the anniversary of America’s most tragic duel… Early in the morning of July 11, 1804, the Vice President and the former Secretary of the Treasury stood on the Plain of Weehawken – a wild land in New Jersey, where the laws were different from civilized New York, across the water – and they had their interview, like many a pair had before them, on that “field of honor.” There was a time in American history when every product of our education system (yes - public, private, and homeschooled alike!) knew the participants in our most famous duel. Children...

Lovers of vivid political language will miss Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who announced his retirement last week. Senator Reid is infamous for his searing, pointed comments about conservatives – and his regular “walk-backs” of those outbursts. But the loquacious Senator Schumer, who is widely expected to succeed Reid as Democratic leader, has developed his own brand of bombast that relies less on Reid’s personal taunts and more on sweeping indictments of his opponents’ purported political sins. Schumer, who served 18 years in the House before joining the Senate in 1999, is fond of labeling Republicans “out of...

Sen. Chuck Schumer says tea party members "hate immigrants," and blames congressional Republicans' fear of their hard-right members for preventing passage of a Senate immigration bill last year. (SNIP) "Why doesn't he? Because the tea party, these 80 to 100 folks from the hard right, none from New York, say they hate immigration, they hate immigrants.

HARRISBURG – A tractor-trailer driver faces charges after police say he forced a driver into the median in a road rage incident on Friday. State Police at Harrisburg charged Stepan Brezden, 42, of Willowbrook, Illinois, with one count of reckless driving and one count of driving on roadways laned for traffic after a road rage incident on Interstate 81 south near Lemoyne. Police said Brezden was driving his tractor-trailer erratically while “engrossed in a bout of road rage” with another driver. During the incident, police said Brezden forced the driver, a 22-year-old Mechanicsburg woman, into the center median of the...

Henpecked traveling salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver) wants only to get to his next sales meeting in time to save an account. Unfortunately for him, his life becomes a lot more complicated - and dangerous - when he makes the mistake of passing the wrong truck in the California hills. What follows is a tense, scary thriller centered around the ultimate in "Road Rage."

The Time Abraham Lincoln and a Political Rival Almost Dueled on an Island Exactly 170 years ago today, the Mississippi River levee in Alton, Illinois, was crammed full of spectators awaiting the results of a highly anticipated duel — a smackdown between Abraham Lincoln and political rival James Shields. Only one man could emerge victorious. Onlookers held their breath in suspense as they spotted a boat approaching with a blood-soaked body draped over the bow. It had all started where so many skirmishes do: the Illinois state legislature. Though at the time Lincoln was a Whig and Shields was a...

How to Win a Three-Way Gunfight Truels are things guaranteed to make any Western fifty percent better — by adding a third person to a duel. Each person can choose his or her target, and the worst person might very well be the winner — provided they play it smart. Learn how to win yourself a truel, gunslinger-style. Game theorists have thought about the problem of duels for a long time. As much as the Old West was depicted as a lawless place where anything might happen, it was also known for hanging its criminals high — which meant that...

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are sharpening their jabs for a debate showdown tomorrow, their last face-to-face confrontation before the increasingly tight GOP presidential primaries in Arizona and Michigan next Tuesday. Debates have marked a turning point at several junctures in the topsy-turvy 2012 Republican race, and the debate will be Romney’s best chance to blunt Santorum’s rapid rise. For Santorum, it’s a golden opportunity to solidify his standing as the leading conservative candidate in the race and build on momentum carrying his campaign forward since wins Feb. 7 in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. The CNN-sponsored debate in...

White House debt-ceiling negotiations have collapsed into a public relations duel, as each political coalition tries to harness the public’s simultaneous fears of defaults and runaway budgets. Obama administration officials want swing voters to pressure Republicans to agree to a tax increase in advance of the 2012 elections. Republicans want swing voters to pressure Democrats to accept budget cuts. White House officials believe that they have a winning hand. Republicans, meanwhile, view themselves as better positioned in the current debt ceiling fight than they were in the mid-1990s budget showdowns with President Bill Clinton. “That’s really the nub of it...

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...

Video 1 (runs 9:29): Steven Spielberg reflects on his early work in television as a freelance director for such shows as Night Gallery, Marcus Welby, M.D., Columbo, and for his first made for TV movie Duel starring Dennis Weaver. Spielberg's talent was evident from the get-go. Video 2 (runs 9:26):Richard Matheson talks about his inspiration for writing the novelette, Duel, working on the script for the movie, and his thoughts about Spielberg's final product. Even though I was just a kid in the 70's, I sure do miss some of those shows from the era.

As dawn was breaking over the heights of Weehawken, New Jersey on July 11, two boats rowed across from Manhattan Island (such interviews as they planned were illegal in New York). The first to arrive was the Vice President and his second; twenty minutes later, the other boat brought the former Secretary of the Treasury and his second. Once they had dispensed with the formalities, two of the most prominent men in America faced each other and fired. Struck in the abdomen, General Alexander Hamilton lay on the ground, to die in agony the following day. This indispensable founding father...