AUGUST 24th

Good morning,


We have a new subscriber down in the land of Mark Sanford, that's right, she is from Columbia, SC. Her name is DaVida and she is good friends with my number 2 girl. Welcome aboard, DaVida.

Sometimes when I go out to eat (which is often) I use the amount of the check as a date in history and I see if I can place an event in history with that year. For Sunday lunch my tab was $12.84. That makes it the year 1284 and I could not remember anything that happened in that year so I came home and looked it up. In the year 1284 in Hamelin, Germany, the fabled Pied Piper came through and lured all the children away with tunes on his pipe (flute). He did this because 10 years earlier the town had been overrun with rats and the towns citizens had hired the Pied Piper to rid the town of these abominable creatures. He allegedly used his pipe to lure all the rats away from town and into a nearby river where they all drowned. When the Piper came back to collect his fee, the good citizens of Hamelin blew him off and did not pay. The Pied Piper warned the citizenry of the possible consequences but they just laughed it off. So 10 years later he shows up and begins dancing through town playing a merry tune and the children follow, never to be seen again. I sounds like a fairy tale with a moral to never Welsh on your debts. But three different sources say that this event with the children is authentic, the deal with the rats is not confirmed, however. Who really knows where the truth lies?

Good news:

A New Zealand ecologist from Hamilton was in a boat checking Wellington harbor for alien plant life when his wedding ring slipped from his finger and disappeared into the depths. He immediately threw an unattached anchor over the side to help him find the ring later. He promised his wife that he would find the ring. 6 months later he he was back in Wellington and went diving for the ring in 30 meters of water without success. Then another 6 months and again he went diving and again was unsuccessful. Finally 16 months after losing the ring he went diving again and was about out of air and prayed for divine intervention. Suddenly he saw the anchor and a few centimeters away was the ring. He now has the nickname "Lord of the Ring".

Greenpatch Grime:

A few days ago a woman went into the Hot Spot convenience store near Easley, SC. She walked up to the cashier and demanded money and suggested that she had a pistol in her purse. The clerk complied and the woman walked out, got into a white SUV (thought to be stolen) and left. This past Sunday she was arrested and jailed for armed robbery. It is no wonder that she was caught. She looked like someone somewhere between Dick Butkus and Hulk Hogan. She was eazy to spot.

In yesterday's lesson I mentioned where a 12 year old boy was found shot in the upper torso and eventually perished. At about the same time of this event, three blocks away a car was found that had collided with a telephone pole. The driver was seriously wounded including a gunshot wound. Sunday afternoon 19 year old Jonathon Gibson was arrested for shooting driver in the wrecked car. The police will not say if the two incidents are related but I don't see how they cannot be.

Yesterday a group of five were standing on a breakwater on the Maine coast watching hurricane Bill pass by. A rogue wave over twenty feet high came in and swept all of them into the raging sea. Two of them were rescued, the other three are still missing and presumed dead. Big storms are impersonal, they will take anyone.

There was not much more gore on this past weekend except for game the Carolina Panthers played. They looked like Larry, Curly and Moe out there.

There is no further news about Governor Sanford's visit from the Argentine diplomat. If some shows up I will advise.


THIS DATE IN HISTORY....AUGUST 24th

 79AD On this date the Roman elite in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples were just sitting down to lunch or a late breakfast. Most of the houses in these cities were vacation homes to the Roman rich. Then a stupendous explosion shakes the very ground on which they were sitting/standing. It was the eruption of the centuries old extinct volcano Mount Vesuvius. A cloud of white hot ash and rock shot 20,000 feet into the atmosphere and lava and mud slid down the side of the volcano in torrents. The people in the cities did not have a chance. The dust and rocks in the atmosphere began raining down burning people to death or mixed with the poison gasses that accompanied the mud and lava and asphyxiated them. The ash and rock mixed with the lava and mud forming a sort of concrete and buried thousands of them under 10 to 15 feet which cooled into a solidified mass. A Roman General name Pliny the Elder was in command of a Roman fleet that was on patrol in the Bay of Naples when this great event occurred. Pliny saw with disbelief swarms of people swimming out into the bay to escape the enormous heat but the raining ash was still hot enough to burn and people were screaming for death in their agony. Pliny ordered some of his ships to go and try to rescue them but they returned after a short while saying the ash was so hot that it was setting their ships on fire. Pliny just could not stand aside and watch so he ordered his boat into the maelstrom and went to the sides of the ash flow and tried to comfort those that had escaped. Pliny got a whiff of the toxic gasses and collapsed and died. His nephew Pliny the Younger, aged 17, was on the opposite side of the bay and chronicled what he saw and gave it to the Roman historian Tactius. The two cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were eventually forgotten until a farmer digging a grape vineyard and the ground collapsed into the courtyard of a buried mansion. From then on archaeologists and paleontologists descended on the area and nearly the entire towns have been excavated giving us a snapshot of what life was like in those ill-fated cities.

1572 The king of France was King Charles IX but the real control was in the hands of his mother Catherine de Medici. Catherine went down in history as one of the most manipulative and ruthless person who ever lived. She and he son Charles were supposed to be Catholic but she would persuade Charles to dance with whoever held sway at a given time be it the Pope or the French Huguenots which were protestant. In this particular point in time the leader of the Huguenots Admiral Garpard de Coligny held sway with King Charles and good old Catherine saw the Admiral as a threat and ordered his murder. On this day, Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the assassins found the Admiral and killed him. For some reason the Catholics got their bloodlust aroused and they began killing the Huguenots wholesale all across France in spite of King Charles ordering them to stop. They stopped alright, after killing over 70,000 of them. This event was known since and The Saint Bartholomew Day Massacre. Catherine may have felt more secure after this but France suffered because all the surviving Huguenots moved away taking their money with them.

1814 Earlier during the War of 1812. the British army under the command of General Robert Ross flanks and defeats the Patriot Militia at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland. This victory for the British left the road to Washington undefended. On this date the British army marches into Washington unopposed and begin burning everything in sight. The British were pissed off because the Patriot army had burned the British consulate in Canada for no apparent reason. During the Battle of Bladensburg president James Madison went to the battle site and took command of one of the artillery batteries. This is the only time that a sitting American president engaged in combat. Before he left he told his wife Dolly that she would have to evacuate soon and to take only those things that were important. She took the portrait of George Washington with which we are all familiar. I guess it was that important because later that night the British burned the White House to the ground. But the redcoats ran up against US General Andrew Jackson and company near Chalmette, Louisiana who sent them running away with their asses in hand. But the war was over before this fight but the communications were so slow that Jackson knew nothing about the British surrender.

Born today:

1884 US Writer James Earl Biggers. He said “When the jig is up, there no need for any further dancing.”

1894 Welsh writer Jean Rhys. She said “Reading make immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but most importantly, it finds homes for us everywhere.” It does that for me.

1898 US writer Malcolm Crowley. He said “They tell you that you’ll lose your mind when you get older. What they don’t tell you is that you won’t miss it much.” Did you say something, Malcolm?

1929 PLO leader Yasser Arafat. He said “Choose your friends carefully, your enemies will choose you.” Especially ex-wives and girl friends.

1957 English writer Stephan Fry. He said “Once you have seen an infant do a backward summersault you will realize what clothing is for.” What a thought.

Died today:

1953 US writer Kate Wiggin. She said “Every child born into this world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility.” That is except those monstrous brats that scream and yell running down the aisles of a library or a restaurant. They are the spawn of the loins of Beelzebub.

1957 English writer Ronald Knox. He said “It is a shame that modern civilization has chosen not to believe in the devil, when he is the only explanation for it all.” You notice that Ronald put the devil as masculine. See the next paragraph.

2004 Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Ross. She said “Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and believe that everything in life has a purpose.” Hey Elisabeth, what about my third ex-wife?

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow