Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

"Life is the whim of several billion cells that decided to be you for a while."

                                 Author unknown

Well it appears that I have survived the orgy of food, drink and Christmas music for another year. I am presently fortifying myself in anticipation of next weekend's avalanche of even more food and drink and wall-to-wall football. I sure am glad that I am not working.

In the last few days I said something that turned out to be hurtful to someone else. In retrospect I wish I had never uttered those words because cultivating amiable relationships is much more desired than making an enemy or causing a tense atmosphere. As I have said before, you cannot un-ring a bell so I am going to just have to deal with the backflow.

Back in 2006 an employee of a nearby Wal-Mart fondled a 13 year old girl while she was shopping. The girl's parents raised almighty hell with the local store and the corporate office in Bentonville, Arkansas. It seems that the employee was a registered sex offender which left Wal-Mart with very little ground to stand on. But with their battery of lawyers doing a lot of dancing they delayed a decision until last week. Just before a trial was to begin, Wal-Mart settled with the family for an undisclosed amount. The result of all of this was that Wal-Mart stiffened their background checks of potential employees, especially watching out for creeps.

Our two crack US Senators from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, have sworn to their constituents that the proposed health care bill recently approved by the US Senate is by no means a done deal. A committee from the Senate and one from the House will have to get together and hammer out the differences between the two versions. One of the major snags is determining who pays for voluntary abortions. That lights a religious fire with the Catholics who frown on abortion under any circumstance. They do not want their tax money to be used for that purpose. Both Graham and DeMint do say that some of the money spent on present day health care will be reduced because the indigent will no longer use hospital emergency rooms for non-emergency situations as they do now. I was witness to this situation not long ago. My nephew got hit in the face by a screaming baseball which spread his nose all over his face. While sitting in the emergency room, a lady came in and sat down beside my brother who who could not see any visible problem with her and asked why was she there. She said that she had "pink eye". It was then that all of us realized that there are people out there that use emergency rooms as their family doctor. The question is what happens to those that are in a real emergency. It is not a pretty picture.

A couple of days ago a Pensacola woman stole some stuff from a Wal-Mart close to I-10. She jumped in her car and was soon hauling ass westbound on I-10. The Pensacola Sheriff's deputies who were soon joined by some state troopers in close pursuit. The state troopers radioed ahead to the Baldwin County Alabama Sheriff's Department and described the thief's car and asked for the deployment of spike strips to stop this broad. The Deputies complied and sure enough the thief ran across the strips which blew out the two front tires and she coasted to a stop. The only problem is that the thief was going so fast that the string used to withdraw the strips was broken and the strips nailed three more cars before the deputies could dash out and retrieve the strips. Who makes reparation for the tires that were blown accidentally? Would it be the thief, Baldwin County or the variety of Florida cops in pursuit? Interesting to contemplate.

For a brief period I became a friend with a man on Facebook at the recommendation of another friend. This guy would scour the media looking for "politically incorrect" cartoons and construct some of his own and post them on Facebook. The bad part of the deal was that you "must" send in a positive comment on the cartoons and if you didn't, he would delete you from his friends list. To me that is extortion. Reading, including cartoons, is entertainment not a college classroom assignment like he is trying to orchestrate. It was either that or he has to have reinforcement to prop up his ego. I dropped out.

Good news:

Recently Nevada Energy signed an agreement to use a United Technology's system on the desert near Tonapah to generate electricity. This is a system I have never hear of but the principal is obvious. The system uses sunlight to heat up molten salt and coils full of water are circulated through the amalgam producing steam which is used in a steam turbine turning a dynamo. The best part is that the molten salt can be stored and it will preserve the temperature high enough to produce steam for an extended period. This would make up for the days with rain or clouds. The first unit will be able to serve 75,000 homes with an addition to follow that will service another 30,000.

This date in history December 26

2004    On this date at 8:06a Indonesian time a large slip in the earth’s crust occurred when a continental plate southwest of the Indonesian archipelago, dropped about 15 feet for a length of about 50 miles. This event generated an enormous amount of energy that spread rapidly throughout the Indian Ocean and displayed itself as one of the most devastating series of tsunamis or tidal waves in recorded history. The hardest hit was several different beaches in Thailand which was just a short distance north and east of the tectonic event. Then the waves traveled across the Indian Ocean and came ashore on the east coast of India and Bangladesh and traveled on to the east coast of Africa to a lesser extent. There were many home movies made at the resorts in Thailand and it was scary to watch as the water on the beaches retreat to the horizon and then come storming back with a vengeance in three or four waves. I have a mental image a little kid on the beach after the water had disappeared and then when the tsunami arrived it washed that kid inland like a rag doll. She did not survive. I fact there was in the vicinity of 350,000 deaths attributed to these tsunamis world wide. We will never know exactly because the small villages up and down the coast that simply disappeared. One strange thing was the people on the beaches in Thailand saw their dogs, cats and even goats and cattle run for high ground even before the water retreated. They knew what was going on.

1908    On this date the first black American Jack Johnson wins the World Heavyweight boxing title by knocking out Canadian Tommy Burns in 14 rounds near Sydney Australia. Johnson held the title until 1915 and was hated and reviled by boxing fans in the United States because he did not fit in the typical “Jim Crow” image Americans had of the back man. Johnson drove fancy cars and wore fancy clothes and had a white wife, flashed gold teeth and had several overlapping affairs with different women, all white, which further inflamed the prejudiced. Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas in 1878. He dropped of the school in the fifth grade and began working on the docks in Galveston. Not long thereafter he began his career as a boxer. In those days boxing was divided into black and white divisions and Johnson became the “Black Heavyweight Champion” on 1903. In 1904 Johnson issued a challenge to the White Heavyweight Champion, Jim Jefferies. Jefferies was not interested. It was not until 1908 that White Heavyweight Champion Tommie Burns granted Johnson the match in Australia which Johnson won. It wasn’t long before the sports reporters began writing about a “Great White Hope” to get the Heavyweight Championship back into white hands. Johnson was one of the best defensive boxers in history. He was also a devastating slugger when the opportunity presented itself. In 1910 Jim Jefferies agreed to come out of retirement and challenge Johnson. Johnson was the only boxer that Jefferies ever faced that knocked him off his feet. In the 15th round Jefferies’ corner threw in the towel and it was all over. Johnson faced several challengers and defeated them all. In 1912 Johnson was convicted of transporting an unmarried woman across state lines for “immoral purposes”. This law was implemented to stop prostitution and white slavery not to stop a night club owner and World Champion from taking his white secretary out for a weekend tryst. This was clearly an instance of law enforcement using the law for their own prejudicial purposes. Johnson was released pending an appeal. Johnson decided to get the hell out of Dodge and fled to Europe where he lived in exile for seven years and continued to defend his title in Europe and he became a very rich man. In 1915 he fought Jess Willard in Havana and was defeated. Some thought that he had thrown the match hoping the charges against him would be dropped. He returned to the United States into the waiting arm of U.S. Marshals. He did a year of hard time in a prison in Kansas then he was released he tried boxing again but he had lost a step and was not effective. His fortune went away and he ended up working in carnival side shows. He died in an automobile accident in 1945. He was 67 years old. I don’t know what lesson we can learn from this man’s life except “Don’t flaunt it and take the money and run.”

1861    Earlier Confederate States of America representatives James Mason and John Slidell had boarded the British mail ship Trent for a trip to England to try to gain support for the Confederacy from the British. The ship was stopped in the Bahamas by the United States warship U.S.S. San Jacinto and Mason and Slidell were taken off and sent to Boston. British authorities raised almighty hell for this act which was nothing short of piracy. They sent a message to Abe Lincoln to release Mason and Slidell immediately and issue a letter of apology to Great Britain or risk war yet again with the England. Abe ignored this warning for a while but when England sent 11,000 combat troops to Canada Abe got the message. Abe knew he could not fight the Confederacy and Great Britain simultaneously and succeed at either one. Abe demurred and ordered the release of Mason and Slidell. This event proved two things. It showed Abe the animosity that England had for the United States and to what ends he would go to avoid a war with them at this point in time.

1609    On this date Count Gyorgy Thurzo pays a visit to the castle of Countess Elizabeth Bathory in Hungary. He was sent there by the King Matthias of Hungary. The King had been getting reports from some titled people in the area of the Countess’ castle had some young girls had been showing up missing and he sent Thurzo to look in to it. What Thurzo found was a genuine chamber of horrors. The good Countess got off on torturing young girls for days and then killing them in the most demented ways. This girl believed that the drinking of human blood, especially young girls, would keep her youthful appearance. She was not above biting a chunk out her victims either. She would drive needles under her victim’s fingernail and toenails. On one occasion she made one of her victims cook a piece of her own flesh and serve it to the Countess. Finally she would coat he victims with honey and stake them out on the lawn and leave them to the ants and bees. She had much of staff scouring the countryside looking for young girls to bring to the Countess for her fun and games. Count Thurzo was stunned at what he found and executed over 80 people but he could not execute the Countess because she was of royalty. So he imprisoned her in a room in the castle that had only tiny slits for air and food. She survived for three years but was found dead. I wonder what happened with her body waste. I am going to let that alone.

1820    Previously a man named Moses Austin had opened a lead mine in what is now Missouri. He did well for about ten years but the ravages of the War of 1812 bankrupted him. He then decided to take advantage of his good relationship with the Spanish. On this date he meets with Spanish officials in San Antonio and asked for permission to bring 300 families into Spanish territory and establish a settlement. Initially the Spanish refused but after further persuasion by Austin they agreed to grant 200,000 acres for this settlement. Delighted, Austin went back into the United States and began recruiting families to his settlement which was in the lower reaches of the Colorado and Brazos rivers. Unfortunately, Moses died before he could get back to his proposed settlement so his son Stephan F. Austin stepped in and continued fulfillment of his fathers dream. The first settlers arrived in December of 1821 and within a decade the settlement numbered 25,000 people. As you might suspect, the settlers had no love for the Spanish and in 1836 they became part of the Republic of Texas and eventually one of these United States. By the way, the settlement is now the Texas state capitol of Austin.

1944    On this date tank units of General George Patton’s 3rd Army break through the German army encirclement of the Belgian city of Bastogne. This city was a major objective of the German Army when they launched a surprise assault out of the Ardennes Forest that later became know as the Battle of the Bulge. The city was defended by 18,000 Americans mostly of the 101st Airborne. During the encirclement the troops defending Bastogne eventually ran very nearly out of food water and ammunition at the same time. They also were ill-dressed for the bitterly cold weather. After the breaking of the siege the long hard task of pushing the Germans back to where they came from began. Patton pulled off one of the greatest maneuvers in military history. His army was driving east toward Germany 100 mile south of Bastogne when the German assault began out of the Ardennes. Patton was able to turn his army 90 degrees to the left and attack the German encirclement of Bastogne. That was an amazing feat considering the logistics involved making that happen. In spite of the brilliance of Patton in rescuing the 101st many of those proud paratroopers said “We did not need to be f----k---g rescued”. By the way, if I am not mistaken, the leader of the tank column that broke through to the city was Colonel Creighton Abrams, later to become a four star General.

Born today:

1792    English mathematician Charles Babbage. He said “Errors committed because of inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.”

1893    Chinese leader Mao-Tse Tung. He said “When awakening a sleeping tiger, use a long stick.” When disappointing a woman on PMS, use an even longer one.

1930    Us writer Frank Hubbard. He said “It will be interesting to see how long the meek hold onto the Earth after they inherit it.” Me too.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow