Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

"If you don't like something change it: If you can't change it, change the way you think about it."

                                Mary Englebriet

There has been a cold front passage sometime in the night. The wind is from the north-northwest at a pretty stiff gait. There are low scudding clouds and the Sound is restless. The morning temperature is 61 and we are looking for a high of 75.

Sunday night at 9:00p EST the Fox network is going to air an expose' of who Barak Obama really is. The Obama administration has been sniping at Fox for several weeks now calling it "not a news gatherer but a political opinion distributor." I guess this is Fox's way of retaliation. They are used to a phrase that politicians lived by and it was "Don't argue with someone that buys ink by the barrel." They mean newspapers and magazines. The Obama administration has chosen to take on a section of the media that can spread their message around the world in a microsecond. We shall see.

Clemson city councilwoman Elouise James has been suspended. It seems that Mrs. James' daughter had absconded with some money and was told that she would not be jailed if she gave the money back. Evidently the daughter had spent most of the money. So Mrs. James chose to tell everyone that her daughter had cancer and produced a statement from the Cancer Centers of America saying so. The statement was later identified as a forgery. Elouise then chose to wrangle power of attorney over her mother's house and instituted a reverse mortgage and used the money to pay restitution fees for her daughter. Now it looks like Elouise will be going to jail for exploitation of a vulnerable adult (her mother), forgery and obstruction of justice. The Clemson city council said that Elouise would stay suspended until she is either acquitted of goes to the joint.

Speaking of Clemson, the mighty Clemson Tiger football team displaying their enormous courage and bravery played the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers Saturday afternoon. What??? You have never heard of Coastal Carolina??? Well, it a small college near Conway, South Carolina that has a population of a major high school and has had a football program for only 6 years. Clemson is looking for a high ranking in the national picture and a possible Heisman for their star running back C.J. Spillers. Playing teams like that you aren't.

The mighty University of South Carolina Gamecocks lost to the Tennessee Volunteers. The did it the old fashioned way, turnovers. At least 14 of Tenessee's 31 points came as a result of turnovers. They can't win doing that crap. It ain't going to get any easier. They have Arkansas, Florida and Clemson coming up.

Here is an interesting bit of college football trivia. Four year ago both Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes, a Shelby, NC native, were on a recruiting visit to the University of Georgia. After talking with Tim and watching him practice Spikes said "I am going where he's going." Wise choice Brandon.

A couple of days ago 17 year old Denzel Wright charged into a Waffle House north of Pensacola, jumped on a table carrying an AK-47 and demanded money. It is not clear if Denzel actually got any cash but soon after he left running, the police had arrived and sent a police dog after him. The dog caught up with him followed closely by the cops. Denzel wanted to fight even with the dog chewing on his ankle. So the police did the honorable thing, they popped him across the mouth with a five cell flashlight. That took the fight out of Denzel . Denzel was booked for armed robbery, fat lip and all.

As you may or may not know, contractor that work on military installations must has a background check before they are allowed on the base. The Pensacola Naval Air Station is carrying that one step further. Any cabdriver that drives on the base must have a background check also. The Navy will not allow any convicted felons or anyone convicted of a sex crime on base driving a cab. The cabdrivers are raising hell. The owner of Yellow Car here has said that that ruling will cost him about 15% of his business. Out of 300 applications to be able to drive on the base, 14 cabdrivers were rejected. I guess it is the US Navy's position that "We are happy you have paid your debt to society now get off my property."

Good news:

Local people near a small creek in New Jersey could not believe their eyes when they saw a manatee in the creek near an outflow pipe. It is not unusual for manatees to travel up the east coast as far as Massachusetts in the summertime but they are usually back in the more tropical waters by the end of August. They named the 1,100 pound manatee Ilya. The local wild life people were called and it was determined that water in the creek was 57 degrees and it took 68 degree water for the manatee to survive so they knew they had to get Ilya back down south. A couple of wildlife officers and several volunteers were able to get Ilya into a net and lifted him out. They kept Ilya covered in wet blankets and fed him all the lettuce he could eat while they arranged for transportation to warmer climes. The eventually got Ilya aboard a Coast Guard C-130 and flew him to Miami where he was put into a warm water holding tank. They will observe Ilya for a few weeks making sure there are no signs of stress and then he will be released into Biscayne Bay and freedom.

This date in history November 1

1512    Earlier in the year 1475 a genius was born in Caprese, Italy. His father was a minor city official and at an early age his family moved Florence, Italy. At the age of 13 Michelangelo was apprenticed out to a local artist. It soon became obvious that this young man was an artist with skills rarely seen. He was taken under the wing of the powerful art patron Lorenzo de Medici and delivered the breathtaking sculptures of “The Pieta” and “David” which stunned the art world, especially the Pope. Michelangelo was called to Rome and was commissioned to several works of art for the Vatican. Eventually in 1508 the Pope commissioned him to paint the history of the Christian world in a series of frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The ceiling was curved and between a series of buttresses making the design and perspective very difficult, not to mention that the painting had to be done by Michelangelo while lying on his back. His workmen built scaffolding up as close as they could to the ceiling but in some places they had to bore holes in the ceiling and drop platforms down. In most of these cases Michelangelo incorporated the holes into the scene he was painting. Four years later on this date, the Sistine Chapel was opened to the public. The visitors were stunned with the beauty and magnitude of this gigantic accomplishment. It is the same today.

1765    Earlier Great Britain had fought two wars trying to keep control of what was then called the English colonies or present day United States. First it was the French and Indian War that lasted about 7 years and then there was Pontiac’s Rebellion that lasted two more years. These years of conflict had put Great Britain in a big need of cash. They had already added a “Sugar Tax” to the colonists to try to recoup some of their expenses. The “Sugar Tax” essentially was buried in tax on molasses which the men colonists used to make Rum which was an essential part of their lives and they were not going to do without it. England was still in need of even more cash to pay the English soldiers and mercenaries they had stationed in the colonies so they came up with a “Stamp Act” which was enacted on this date. What this abomination did was tax each and every document in the colonies including newspapers. Well, since there was no rum involved the colonists, men especially raised almighty hell. They threatened the tax collectors, burned their houses down among other things. The tax collectors finally said “to hell with it” and stopped trying to collect. The Stamp Act was the beginning of the colonists complaining about “taxation without representation” which was the prelude to the Revolutionary War. With the failure of the Stamp Act, England still was hurting for money so they instituted the “Tea Tax”. It was then that those wild and crazy guys, The Sons of Liberty emptied three British ships of their tea into Boston harbor later called the “Boston Tea Party”. England was not pleased and we all know what happened next.

1952    For reasons known only to the United States military industrial complex, on this date the United States detonated history’s first thermonuclear device on the island/atoll of Eniwetok in the central Pacific. The United States military felt it was necessary to develop the most powerful nuclear weapon as soon as possible after the Russians detonated a bomb similar to the Hiroshima device in 1948. The father of the Hiroshima bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer and several other nuclear physicists plead with the United States to not pursue the development of thermonuclear weapons because all it would do is initiate an arms race because the Russians would soon follow suit, and they were right. The Eniwetok device was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. There is no telling what is out there today. I read about the device known as “Bravo” that was detonated in the Bikini atoll, also in the central Pacific that had a “yield” of 50 megatons (50 millions of tons) of TNT. Think about that ya’ll, the Hiroshima bomb had a “yield” of kilotons (hundreds of tons) of TNT. Everyone should keep in mind the devastation that can be inflicted by what has been called “A scorpion in a bottle”. Once it is out, look out.

1924    Earlier William Tilghman was born in a small town in Iowa in 1854. He was a rather rambunctious youth and moved west at the age of 16. He fell in with a group of bad-asses who began stealing horses from the Indians. That proved to be a bad move by having the Indians on your ass. Billy decided that being chased by the Indians was not a smooth move so he gave up rustling and moved to Dodge City, Kansas where he briefly was a deputy marshal before buying a saloon. He was arrested twice for alleged train robbery and rustling but the charges did not stick. Slowly but surely he became one of the most trusted and respected lawmen in America. He was universally known as “Uncle Billy”. He was especially intolerant of people that took the law into their own hands including lynch mobs and broke up more than one mob and saw to the prosecution of the mob leaders. I read a story about him going to a cabin way back in the wilderness where four bank robbers were holed up. He was alone and attacked the cabin single handed and after a roaring gunfight was able to bring in all the robbers to jail by himself. “Uncle Billy” was a hell of a lawman. He finally moved to Oklahoma City and became a state legislator and at times a deputy sheriff. He never retired; it seemed that “Uncle Billy” loved his profession. He accepted a job as city marshal in Cromwell, Okla. and was killed trying to arrest a drunken prohibition agent. Let me repeat that, he was killed trying to arrest a drunken prohibition officer.

1950    A few weeks before President Harry Truman and family had moved out of the White House and into Blair House just a few doors away. The White House had been closed for re-modeling. On this day Harry and Bess were up on the second floor of the Blair House and heard a commotion down on the front steps including gunshots. After things had settled down Harry goes down to find out what happened. It seems that two assassins had tried to break into the house looking for Harry. One of the assassins was killed and one secret service agent was killed also. The two assassins were Puerto Rican nationalist bent on killing Truman even though Harry was an advocate of Puerto Rican autonomy but apparently these guys wanted Puerto Rico to become a separate nation even though the people of Puerto Rico had voted twice to maintain a commonwealth status with the United States. When Harry was asked about it he said: “Presidents have to expect events like that.” The surviving assassin was tried, convicted and sentenced to death but good old Harry in an act of kindness commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.

Born today:

1860    US Senator (Pa) Boies Penrose. He said “Public Service is the last refuge of the incompetent.” This guy was a US Senator so he must know what he is talking about.

1955    US lecturer Dale Carnegie. He said “Any fool can complain, criticize and condemn, and most do.”

1886    German writer Hermann Broch. He said “The world has always gone on the road to madness to travel a tiny bit on the road to reason.”

1944    US songwriter Kinky Freidman. He said “I even tried being a Baptist once, until I found out they did not hold them under long enough.”

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow