Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the Day:

“Love is not looking for the right person but creating the right relationship. It is not about how much love you have in the beginning but how much love you build til the end."

                                         Jamus

Those ten “missionaries” from a splinter group religion in Idaho were arrested at the Haiti/Dominican border with a busload of undocumented supposed “orphans” and were arrested. A Dominican “attorney” name Jorge Puello took up their case and was attempting to navigate the group through the Haitian legal system. A Haitian judge was just days from releasing the missionaries but delayed a few days to do research on Puello. The judge found that Puello was indeed NOT a registered attorney in the Dominican Republic and not only that; he was not an attorney at all. This raised a red flag to the judge because of the possibility of child-trafficking. When Puello’s photo showed up in El Salvador newspapers it proved to be a spot on match of a known child trafficker named Jorge Orellana in that country, Central America and the rest of the Caribbean. Interpol has a warrant out for this man for women abuse and child trafficking and illegal immigration. Puello denies any of these allegations but the Haitian judge promises a fingerprint test. There are a lot of jackals out there, y’all. We shall see.

Here in the days of global warming, the North Carolina Wildlife Authority has asked help from the gigantic Georgia Aquarium. It seems that the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Carolina has dropped to less than 50 degrees stranding many Loggerhead turtles. Since the turtles are cold blooded and are not equipped for a cold environment, their ability to swim is severely hampered. The wildlife authority of North Carolina began gathering the loggerheads and transporting them to an area of quarantine after which they will be housed in the Georgia aquarium until the waters off the coast warms up. We are under the influence of an El Nino, also. By the way, our crack meteorologists here in the Greenville-Spartanburg are predicting yet another winter blast is on the way to our area this coming week. Yippee.

A couple of days ago 42 year old Amy Bishop, a biology professor at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, was in a meeting with several members of the biology department when she whips out a hog leg and kills three of them including the head of the department. No one really knows what precipitated that attack except that she was denied tenure a few weeks earlier. This means that her “teaching contract” with the university would not be renewed at the end of the present semester, in other words she was being fired. I guess that would be enough impetus to kill for some people. She is being charged with capital murder which brings the death penalty as a possibility. There are lots of crazies out there, y’all.

This date in history February 15

1776    On this date the Royal Governor of Canada from his headquarters in Halifax has sent a letter to the British authorities in London that a traitorous bunch in Cumberland, Nova Scotia has sent an invitation to Patriot General George Washington inviting him to attack Nova Scotia with their help. The letter said that the people of Nova Scotia were fed up with being under the heel of King George III also. What really had them pissed off was that England was using Canada and Nova Scotia in particular as a dumping ground for a trash pile of humanity that England had no other place to put them. When the jails in England, Scotland and Ireland became full, they would send the overflow into exile in Nova Scotia. Not only that, any slaves that ran away from their owners and sought asylum with the British, they would send them to Nova Scotia. Also there were a considerable number of blacks that fought with the British as a member of the army and the Loyalists (Those Americans that stayed loyal to the King) that knew they had to get out of town when the Patriots prevailed. All of these people went to Nova Scotia. The blacks that fought with the British had a choice of a piece of land in Nova Scotia or receive free passage back to Africa. Many of these went to Africa and were instrumental in the establishment of Freetown, Liberia, a new nation. Anyway, it appeared that the locals in Nova Scotia were fed the hell up with all of the aliens and were looking to form their own nation like the United States and that is why they contacted Washington. George had his hands full with the British army here in the United States and could not pursue the invitation. But it just goes to show you that the dumping of aliens causes extreme tensions with the natives. Does that sound familiar?

1835    Alexander Stewart Webb was born in New York City. His Grandfather fought at Bunker Hill for the Patriots and his father was US minister to Brazil during the Civil War. Alexander attended West Point and graduated in 1855 13th in a class of 43. He taught mathematics at West Point and Florida before the outbreak of the Civil War. After the outbreak of the war he was sent to Fort Pickens, Florida. He did not stay long before he was called back to Washington and given command of an artillery battalion protecting the capitol. Webb’s first taste of combat came at the Second Battle of Manassas where he and his troops tasted defeat for the first time. The next major engagement he was in was the last day of the Battle of the Seven Days, the infamous encounter at Malvern Hill. In this battle Webb and his troops were victorious against the Confederates. They won this particular skirmish at Malvern Hill but the victory of the Battle of Seven Days went to Robert E. Lee but it was accredited to Webb that his artillery skills prevented the total annihilation of the US army by Confederate artillery. In spite of his obvious military skills he was passed over for promotion several times because of his association with General George B. McClellan who was fired by President Lincoln and that left Webb in limbo as a Colonel. Even some of his students at West Point became a General before him. He was finally promoted to Brigadier General and had command of a brigade in the center of the Union lines at Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge. At the zenith of the charge the 5th and 7th North Carolina crashed through the Union lines and were close to opening a breach that would have allowed the rest of the 13,000 screaming Confederates to pass through to the rear of the Union lines where General J.E.B. Stuart and has stalwart cavalry awaited. Had these two forces been allowed to join up the US army would have been destroyed and perhaps a different history of these United States would have been written. But when the battle at the front line reached a critical point, General Webb personally led his brigade in a ferocious counter-attack and blunted the Confederate advance and drove them back across the line of attack and back across the field separating the two armies. For this action, Alexander Stewart Webb was awarded the Medal of Honor. He wasn’t done yet. He was at the savage battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse and received a terrible head wound. I took him eight months to recover. When he came back to duty he was made an aide to US General George Meade and eventually went back to West Point as an instructor. He was made president of City College of New York and he died in Riverdale New York in 1911. There is a statue of General Webb at the spot where his brigade was gathered during Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.

1933    The President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt and the Mayor of Chicago Anton Cermak are walking together during a visit to Miami. All of a sudden a man named Giuseppe Zangara runs up and opens fire at Roosevelt and misses him but kills Mayor Cermak. Zangara is brought to trial on March 2, convicted and sentenced to death. On March 20 Zangara met his maker medium rare after an encounter with the electric chair. Keep this in mind when thinking of monster serial killers like Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling who spent 13 and 14 years and longer in prison before being executed. What’s up with that?

1942    One of the worst defeats in the history of British military culminates on this date. The British army was driven off the southern end of the Malay Peninsula by the Japanese General Yamashita and his 25th Army. The retreating British had a chance to delay the Japanese advance by dynamiting a causeway across a large inlet behind them on their way to Singapore, but the destruction was not complete and the Japanese were able to re-build in a matter of days and surrounded and began a siege around that great city. The British commander General Percival held out as long as he could but he ran out of water, food and ammunition and so he surrendered the city. There were over 130,000 allies captured in this disaster of which only a very small percentage ever saw their homes again.

1996    On this date during gut-wrenching storm off the south coast of Wales, the oil tanker Sea Empress runs aground and is holed and leaks 70,000 tons of crude oil. The Russia crew fought valiantly to secure the ship and stop the leak but to no avail. Sea going tugs came and got some lines on the Sea Empress. For a few minutes the Sea Empress was off the rocks but a critical rope broke and she went back onto the shoal. By then the ship was seriously listing and the crew was taken off by helicopter. There was no human fatalities but thousands of seabirds died in the slimy mess. All the British Coast guard could do was drop detergents and dispersants. The associated beaches nearby were still in a stage of recovery 10 years later.

Born today:

1368    Germanic Emperor Sigismund. He said “I am a Roman Emperor and am above grammar.” Siggy, shut the hell up.

1564    Astrophysicist Galileo. He said “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who had endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego its use.” This came as a result of a squabble with the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church wanted Galileo to teach want the Pope said instead of what he had discovered. The church prevailed under the threat of torture. I am going to repeat that. The church prevailed under the threat of torture.

1748    English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. He said “As to the evils of censorship, it is impossible to measure because there seems to be no end to it.” That is one of the main reasons for the establishment of the United States.

1912    English writer George Mikes. He said “British humor resembles the Loch Ness monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither one exists.”

1964    American comic Chris Farley. He paraphrased the famous quote by Erasmus who said “In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.” Chris Farley said “In the land of skunks, the man with half a nose is king.”

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow