Daily History

Good morning.


Quote of the day:

"Moving on is easy, it is what you have to leave behind that is hard."

                                       Dave Mustains

The jury is still out in the Judge and sexual pervert extraordinaire Herman Thomas over in Mobile. It is better that 50/50 that he will do hard time mostly for the "abuse of power" charge. Being in prison with the criminals he sent there will be tough.

I guess all of y'all know of the debacle with that Northwest flight from San Diego to Minneapolis. The aircraft overflew the airport by 150 miles before returning and landing safely. As being an air traffic controller for 25 years, I can tell you the from the time the plane took off there was radio chatter on the different frequencies he would have been directed to listen to and at times, respond to. Every commercial aircraft in America is being watched and controlled by FAA radar facilities across the country from the time they take off until they land. As the aircraft approaches within about 50 miles of his destination, he would have been instructed to descend and slow down and then control would have been handed off to the air traffic control facility at the destination airport where even more detailed instructions would be give to keep a smooth and safe flow going in and out . There has been suppositions that the pilots of the A-320 Airbus fell asleep. I don't see how that is possible with all the crosstalk the pilots hear and must respond to. Had the pilots taken off their headsets and then fell asleep it would be possible, not likely, but possible. If I would have been an involved air traffic controller I would have assumed it was a hijacking. One of the flight attendents banged on the cockpit door and asked when are they supposed to give landing information to the passengers to get ready for landing. This alerted the pilots that something wasn't right. Those pilot are are in deep doodoo.

President Obama has declared a national emergency in relation to the outbreak of swine flu. Over 1,000 Americans have died from this disease so far. This declaration allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to cut back on the red tape and streamline procedures so the ill can get treatment much more quickly.

An enormous gasoline tank farm fire has erupted on the north coast of Puerto Rico. There was an expolosion Thursday afternoon and the firefighters are no where near having it under control as of 10:00p last night. This fire may end up being the worst of its kind in history both for the money lost and the damage to the environment. The smoke from the fire is so extensive that it can be seen on weather satellite radar. Do I smell a terrorist attack?

Back on October 7 Tommy Poole of Foley, Alabama had signed on as a deckhand on the Miss Sharlotte a grouper/red snapper fishing boat. The Miss Sharlotte was commanded by Captain Mike Holman of Bon Secour, Alabama. When the boat was about 18 miles south of Louisiana an altercation between Poole and Holman occured in the wheel house and Poole stabbed Holman 8 time killing him. Poole was able to contact the Coast Guard and he and the Captain were lifted off. The city of Foley has filed the intention to seek an indictment for murder against Poole. I am a bit foggy as to who has juristiction of a murder at sea but I have to assume the Foley DA knows what he is doing.

Football notes:

Alabama beat Tennessee by 2 points 12-10. The Alabama offense scored only 13 points against South Carolina last week. That means their offense is averaging 12 1/2 points a game. If they deserve to be number one or number two with that kind of performance then I deserve to be an astronaut. There is no question that the Crimson Tide is way overrated.

As much as it pains me I must commend Clemson for the overtime victory over the number 10 ranked Miami Hurricanes by a score of 30-27. By the way you Tiger fans, what happened to Willie Korn and all that hype about him? Clemson is 4-3 now.

The mighty University of South Carolina Gamecocks beat the living daylights out of the Vanderbilt Commodores 14-10. The Cocks are 6-2 now.

Good News:

Delta airlines flight attendent Robin Schmidt has came up with an unusual scheme. After she makes the speech about stowing your luggage, connecting a your seat belt, etc. she produces a journal with blank pages but the name of a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan on the outside. The journals are passed out among the passengers with the request that you write a note of encouragement and maybe a joke or two but to steer clear of politics. At the end of the flight she gathers all the journals and sends them to the soldiers once a month. She is also sponsoring an "adoption" system whereby you establish direct coorespondence with an individual soldier and you send him notes and letters and a "Care" package" once in a while. What the soldiers want most is toiletries, non-perishable foods such a crackers, Slim Jims and jerky. To get a soldiers name and address Robin can be contacted at robin@hotmail.com. I am going to get a soldiers name and include him/her in my lesson blog site and send a "Care" package once in a while. It is time for us to do something patriotic.

This date in history October 25

1994    On this date a Union, South Carolina woman named Susan Smith called the Union County Sheriff’s department and reports that her car with her two small boys Michael and Alex aboard had been carjacked by a black man, leaving her at a convenience store and driving away. In very short order, with the help of several other law enforcement offices including the FBI, there was a dragnet thrown around that area of South Carolina and an intensive search began. Nothing was found and after nine weeks the sheriff of Union County held a news conference and reported that Susan had confessed to killing those two boys by driving the car into nearby John D. Long Lake with the kids strapped into their car seats. This event came as a culmination of her tumultuous on and off marriage whereby both Susan and her husband had participated in several affairs each. Finally Susan found the man of her dreams but he did not want children and Susan saw fit to fix that problem permanently. It apparently never crossed that bitch’s mind to file for divorce and surrender custody. Susan was tried and convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. While in prison she was disciplined several times for having sex with the inmates and/or the guards. Her husband wrote a book about his experiences during this ordeal and stated that he could not live a comfortable life while Susan was alive and wished that the court had seen fit to execute her. With animals like this we need to resort back to medieval methods of dispensing justice.

1415    Two months earlier Henry V of England and an army of 11,000 had sailed across the English Channel and laid siege to the city Harfleur, France. After five weeks Harfleur fell. During the five week siege Henry had lost half of his army to disease and combat casualties. So Henry decides to head north to the French port of Calais and meet up his navy that was coming to pick up him and his army and take them back home. About half way to Calais he meets up with a French army of 20,000 near the town of Agincourt. Henry chooses to array his troops in a fairly small field that was bordered by forests. This would prevent any large scale maneuvering by the French. At 11:00a the battle was joined. The French knights in their newly designed heavy armor began an attack toward the English across a muddy field. The English responded with a barrage of arrows from their newly designed long bows that had a range of 250 yards. The French knights were so densely packed that many could not even raise their arms and the knights in the rear kept pushing. Even though they were in armor, the English had designed a type of an arrowhead that could penetrate it and launched wave after wave of the deadly missiles into the French ranks. Soon the French knights were just a mass of confused humanity slipping, sliding and dying in the mud. It was then that Henry ordered his lightly armored bowmen to lay down their bows and take up pikes, swords and axes and he led the rest of the 5,500 man army into the ranks of the French and took care of business. The slaughter was fantastic. The French lost 6,000 troops in that one afternoon while the English suffered only 400 killed. After this resounding victory, Henry was declared heir to the French throne but it was for naught because he died of a fever two years later near Paris. Henry V’s victory at Agincourt went down as one of the greatest military victories in history.

1929    Two years earlier the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, had petitioned to have control of the naval oil reserves at the Elk Hill in California and Teapot Dome in Wyoming transferred to his department. The naval oil reserves are set aside for the US navy to use in case of a war. The transfer did indeed take place and soon thereafter Secretary Fall accepted a $100,000 bribe from the president of Pan-American Petroleum to allow them to drill in the Elk Hill reserve and $300,000 to allow Mammoth Oil to drill at Teapot Dome. This deception was discovered and on this date Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was arrested. Fall was tried and convicted and was imprisoned. This was the first time that a sitting cabinet member was jailed, and hopefully it will not be the last.

1853    On this date US Army Captain John Gunnison and his survey crew of 35 were set upon by a war party of Piute Indians near Sevier Lake, Utah. The survey crew was trying to find a route for a railroad to get to the west coast. Seven members of the survey team were killed including Gunnison. His second officer, Lt. Edward Beckwith assumed command and continued the survey and did indeed find three possible routes. Beckwith and his survey party made it back to Saint Louis and reported their findings which went a long way toward the completion of a trans-continental railroad.

1944    On this date the largest naval battle ever fought began in the Philippines at a place named Leyte Gulf. It was also the first time the Japanese had used Kamikaze aircraft attacks. The Japanese had not been able to stem the western advance of the US navy using traditional means so they decided to us untraditional means. They asked for volunteers to dive their bomb laden aircraft into US navy ships, aircraft carriers in particular. They had swarms of volunteers and on this day the pilot of a Japanese Zero aircraft crashed his plane into the escort carrier St. Lo and it was on the bottom in 20 minutes. This was the very first attack of this kind. In all the Kamikaze sank 34 ships and damaged many more in this battle. Even though this carnage was phenomenal, the worst was yet to come at Okinawa. But that is another story. In all there were 1,321 Kamikaze aircraft used in WWII.

Births and deaths:

1944    US political consultant James Carville is born. After being asked about Paula Jones alleging sexual harassment by Bill Clinton he said “You drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and you never know what you will find.”

1940    US basketball legend Bobby Knight is born. When asked about a courtside conversation with one of his players he said “I told him to take a photo of his testicles so he would have something to remember them by if he ever took another shot like the last one.”

1989    US writer Mary McCarthy dies. She said “We must not force sex to do the work of love nor love do the work of sex.” You mean there is a difference?

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.