Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

"Even thought storms and gales abound in many places, when I am with my family and friends it is blue skies, calm winds and no precipitation."

                                     Al Campbell

The weather here in paradise is cool nights an pleasant afternoons with temperatures in the low to mid 70's. The skies are crystal clear, the wind is from the northeast at about 15 MPH. The sun is so bright the reflection off the sugar white sands hurts your eyes. I will miss this vision when I go back to the real world.

A skeleton was found last week off a dusty road in Shelby, NC. It was later identified as that of Randolph "Bubba" Savage. Unfortunately Bubba had dementia and had a penchant for taking long walks and not being able to find his way home. A man searching for scrap metal found a human skull in a trash pile. It seems that Bubba found out that his mother had died down in Gaffney, SC and decided to go to her funeral. It is at least 50 miles from Shelby to Gaffney. There is no way of telling what happened to Bubba after he walked out of his house in November of 2004.

Over in Mobile, Alabama a disturbance at the "Soul House Lounge" left three people shot and one with a head injury. It seems that a 41 year old man and two others tried to get in the lounge at about 3:30a and the owner refused, he was trying to close up. One of the men hit the owner over the head with a beer bottle and it was then a melee broke out. The report did not say who was the trigger man but all three that were trying to get in suffered gunshot wounds in addition to a head wound on the owner. I think the owner had gun in hand when he tried to stop them and opened up when he was hit with the beer bottle. That sounds reasonable to me. All but one have been declared as going to survive. The medicos refuse to talk about the survivability of one of the four.

Also down in Mobile Willie Mae Bonham is desperate to find out what happened the her neice 18 year old Mercedes Johnson. Apparently, Mrs. Bonham is raising Mercedes. The last thing anyone saw of Mercedes was her walking out of the Club Atlantis with a relative early Sunday morning a week ago. After that she disappeared. A few days earlier Mercedes had told Mrs. Bonham that someone was trying to "kill her". The funny part is that the police are asking for help from the public in finding Mercedes. What about the relative that walked out of the Club Atlantis with her, for crying out loud?

Good news:

Back in 1961 a group of so-called "Freedom Riders" pulled into a hot bed of KKK activity in Rock Hill, South Carolina. One of the riders was a black man named John Lewis of Georgia who chose to go into the bus station waiting room marked "White Only". Lewis was immediately attacked and was carried out of there a bloody pulp. One of the leaders of the attack was Elwin Wilson. Last year Wilson went from Rock Hill to Washington and sought out now US Representative John Lewis (D) Georgia, and offered a face-to-face apology for that attack. The apology was immediately accepted. Both Lewis and Wilson recieved a "Common Ground Award". The Common Ground Organization honors those seeking peace and attempts at dissolving prejudice. Wilson said "If just one person loses the hatred in his heart, then it all worth it. After all in the end we will all end up in the same place." Lewis and Wilson had dinner together that night.

This date in history November 2

1862    Major General John C. Fremont is relieved of command of the Western Department of the Union Army on this date. Fremont was an interesting character. He was born in Savannah, Georgia and raised in Charleston, South Carolina and attended the College of Charleston. He was kicked out of school because of “idleness and lack of attention” but he excelled in mathematics and secured a position with the US Navy teaching mathematics. He was the illegitimate son of prominent Virginia socialite Janice Whiting who got knocked up by a French teacher from Norfolk, Virginia named Jean Fremon. It was later on the John changed his name by adding a “t” and a comma over the “e” in his last name. John joined the Union army in 1838 but made a great career move by marrying Jesse Benton. Jesse was the daughter of powerful Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton. As a result of his father-in-law’s influence, John was assigned three different expeditions of discovery. He started by mapping the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers that had been explored earlier by the Lewis and Clark expedition but they did not map the area like Fremont did. The next two were in the American west which he also mapped and proved to be of incalculable help to the pioneers that followed. It is believed that he was the first honky to lay eyes on Lake Tahoe but he did not do it alone; he had guidance from mountain men like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. Fremont was superb cartographer but his expertise in combat was suspect. At the outbreak of the Civil War, again with his father-in-laws influence, he was named commander of the Union Army Western Department based in Saint Louis, Missouri. Soon thereafter a Union army commanded by US General Nathaniel Lyons ran up against a CSA army commanded by CSA General Sterling Price at the place called Wilson’s Creek. It was a massacre, y’all. The Union army was cut to pieces, including General Lyons. That Union army fled into the four winds in a complete rout. General Fremont was assailed for not providing Lyons assistance. Fremont was stung by this criticism and fought back by declaring martial law and chose to free the slaves in the state of Missouri. This act was way more than he had authority for. Not only that, it put A. Lincoln and the Republicans between a rock and a hard place. There were four slave holding states that had not seceded and they were Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. When Fremont freed the slaves in Missouri, he really pissed off the slave owners that had voted not to secede into thinking that maybe they really should secede and join the Confederacy. When Fremont’s actions in Missouri reached Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland the fires of secession were again kindled. Lincoln knew he had to do something so he requested Fremont to rescind his order. Fremont refused and that forced Lincoln to relieve him of command and Lincoln rescinded the order himself. They really did not know what to do with Fremont so they gave him command of a small army and sent him to a safe location, or so they thought, in West Virginia near the Shenandoah Valley. Soon after his arrival in West Virginia, the US army sent three separate armies, including Fremont, into the Shenandoah Valley to kick CSA General Thomas J.”Stonewall” Jackson and his army out of the valley. There is an upside to this for Fremont. He was included in the details of one of the greatest military actions ever documented when Stonewall Jackson defeated and routed not only Fremont but the other two armies as well. But it took an enormous amount of grit, endurance and determination by Stonewall’s troops and well as his unquestioned military genius. After having his ass handed to him by Jackson, Fremont retired from military service. In 1864 he was approached to challenge A. Lincoln for the Republican nominee for president but he declined. After the war he became the territorial governor of Arizona. He died in 1890 in New York. Fremont delivered some of the most important information ever discovered to this country. He was just did not have a military mind.

1982    At the beginning of Russia’s disastrous war in Afghanistan, the worst disaster of that entire debacle occurred. There was a long truck convoy coming from Russia into Afghanistan carrying troops, fuel and other tools of war. The convoy had to traverse the Salang tunnel near the border town on Hairotum, Afghanistan. This tunnel was at an elevation of 11,000 feet, was 1.7 miles long, 24 feet high and 17 feet wide. After the trucks were about half way through, a truck load of troops rear ended a tanker truck full of diesel fuel and an explosion and fire erupted. The Russians, thinking that they were under attack, put guards on each end of the tunnel and would not let anyone out. The fire quickly spread and ate up most of the oxygen and the oxygen was replaced by carbon monoxide from the fire and the still running trucks. To make matters worse, the tunnel ventilation system was out of order. After the Russians figured out what had happened, they began pulling the trucks out of the tunnel but it was too little too late. Over 3,000 bodies were found. Due to the tight-lipped Russians who rarely tell the general public about negative news, we may never know the true bottom line in this disaster.

Quotable quotes:

“I stumbled across a case of bourbon and went on stumbling for several days thereafter.”

                                   W.C. Fields

 That sounds like Jack Daniels to me.

“I exercise strong self-control. I never drink anything stronger that gin before breakfast”. Me neither.

                                     W.C. Fields

“If I had all the money I have spent on drink, I would spend it on drink.” Me too.              Vivian Stanshall

“I drink too much. The last urine sample I gave had an olive in it.” Rodney Dangerfield

“When I was in grammar school, I was so fat that I was chosen to play Bethlehem in the school nativity.” Jo Brand.

“When someone calls me fat, I don’t get mad I just turn the other chin.” Jo Brand

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow