Daily history

Good morning,




Quote of the day:

“Have you noticed that all the people in favor of birth control are already born?
                                     Benny Hill

Jaci, make sure you read the fourth paragraph.

To those of you that use AVG virus protection
on your computer will be glad to know that the
headquarters for AVG is in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Early Sunday morning four people were shot in a parking lot across the street from “Club Ice” on Lady Street in Columbia, South Carolina. None of them were killed. The police have not arrested anyone yet. This area of Columbia is known as “The Vista” and is essentially an entertainment center primarily occupied by a younger crowd. This is not the first instance of things like this happening. Something like this would never have happened when I was in my twenties and thirties. I wonder what the hell has happened to our morality. Is there no fear of retribution? Is the “Gansta” image admired to the point they want to emulate it? Down in Jay, Florida a 19 year old boy was having a bonfire party at his house and two whites and two blacks in their 30's crashed the party and were asked to leave but refused. The 19 year old and one of the black men got into a yelling match with a little pushing and shoving. The four got back into their truck and was on their way out driving down dirt road when the 19 year old retrieved a rifle from his truck and squeezed off about five rounds one of which struck one of the black men in the back seat killing him. The 19 year old said that he heard and saw gunfire coming from the other truck and fired in self defense. It sounds like a racial issue to me.

All I have to say is if someone came to my house uninvited and refused to leave, they would take him/her out on a gurney and I would just take whatever heat that came. I would have to assume they did not have my welfare in mind and were looking to kill and rob me. What would make anyone think they could go to someone’s house during a party uninvited and not expect a negative reaction? Maybe they were looking for free barbeque...maybe.

16 year old Ryan Emory was being carried in an ambulance from a Greenville hospital to a psychiatric ward in Columbia. The paramedics had him strapped onto a gurney. Somehow Ryan got the restraints loose, jumped up, ran by a paramedic and opened the back door and jumped out. They were on I-85, y’all, one of the heaviest traveled arteries on the east coast. The paramedic retrieved Ryan and treated him for extensive injuries. They took him to the closest hospital where he was found DOA. What kind of demons were running around that young man’s mind? I found out what demon was in Ryan's mind, he was autistic. A recent survey determined that 25% of the parents of autistic children believe that innoculations and vaccinations are the cause of Autism and so do I. There is no question that vaccinations and innoculations have eliminated a variety of diseases such as Polio, Smallpox, Measles, etc. but at what cost? Are we to expect an autistic child once in a while as collateral damage?

Yet another winter storm warning has been issued for my area for Tuesday. March 2. My immediate area is expecting a mixture of rain and snow all day Tuesday. About 30 to 40 miles north in the North Carolina Mountains they are looking for 3 to 6 inches of snow and bitterly cold nights afterward. This has been the fifth week in a row that a weather warning of some type has been issued for my area. After this coming storm passes they are predicting low temperatures in low to mid twenties for the next five days. My brother and I are anxious to go fishing but the water temperature in the lakes we fish are in the mid 40’s and the bass are reluctant to bite when the water temperature is that cold. This sounds like weather in Marble Falls, Texas doesn’t it? But to paraphrase Mark Twain, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”

Darden Restaurants Corporation has announced that they are launching a “Go Green” campaign for all their new restaurants and will start a retrofit on their old ones. Darden owns the Red Lobster, Olive Garden and Longhorn chains of restaurants. The next eight restaurants will use specifications that will make them “LEED” certified. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”. They will design things like LED lighting that will use only 7 watts of power but produce the light of a 75 watt light bulb. The LED light will also last 50,000 hours while a 75 watt bulb has to be changed two or three times a year. They will design the buildings to have more natural light and will capture the heat given off by the cooler/freezers and the air conditioning and use it to help heat water and various other energy saving designs and systems. The president of Darden said that they want their restaurants to last 30 years untouched and this is the way to go.

This reminds me of an engineering job I was involved with in Theodore, Alabama. The client was Huls, a German owned company. They made an additive that went into automobile paint that blocked UV rays making the paint non-fading. They called us in to the start-up meeting and plainly stated that they wanted this plant to last 20 year untouched meaning there would not be anything like cutting corners or substitutes and they would be looking for any sort of thing like that. That is just the opposite of the way American manufacturers operate. They want their plants up and producing product on a deadline date, come hell or high water. They wanted to start making money as soon as they could. On one occasion our engineers told the project manager that one the pumps they had specified was too small for what they wanted it to do. They said that the pump would overheat and shut down after a short period of operating. The project manager went to the client, DuPont in this case, and told them the problem and said that ordering a new pump would push back the start-up date. The DuPont representative said hell no, do what you can to keep the pump cool. So the answer was to hook up a garden hose and run water over the pump 24 hours a day. It worked but the pump will last only half of its usual lifetime. But that did not matter. The project manager and the DuPont representative would get big bonuses if the project started up on schedule and under budget. Delaying the start-up date and the extra expense of a new pump would have taken money out of their pocket…God forbid. By the way, The plant was producing R-12 automobile air conditioner refrigerant and was converting to R-22 as if that mattered.

This date in history March 2

1776   Finally all the hard work and sacrifices made by our ancestors is paying off. With all the military battles fought by Nathaniel Greene and Benedict Arnold in capturing the British artillery pieces in Fort Ticonderoga, General Henry Knox bringing them back to Boston undetected and General John Thomas getting those bad boys up on Dorchester Ridge that ended up staring down the throats of the hated British led by Sir Charles Howe, Howe had no choice but board his ships and sail his young ass and his army up to the safety of Nova Scotia. The siege of Boston by the British was over. Brigadier John Thomas was rewarded with another star on his shoulder for his actions here and he became Major General John Thomas. Thomas was assigned to replace General Richard Montgomery who was killed at the Battle of Quebec while fighting alongside Brigadier General Benedict Arnold. Even with the addition of General Thomas, it was found that Quebec could not be taken and the Continental army began retreat back into New York. During this retreat General Thomas, a physician by trade, fell ill and died of smallpox on June 2. A terrific loss for the Continental army, but we eventually prevailed.

1836    On this date the state of Texas declared its independence from Mexico. A group of hard-assed Texans arrive on the Washington-on-the-Brazos and declare David Burnet as provisional Governor and Sam Houston as commander-in-chief of all military forces. Importantly, they adopted a constitution that allowed the institution of slavery which had not been allowed by the Mexicans. During this time Mexican General Santa Anna had the Alamo church in San Antonio surrounded with 2,000 of his troops against 237 Patriots. Earlier in 1821 after Mexico won their independence from Spain, Moses Austin had petitioned the Mexican government to allow him to bring 300 families to settle sparsely populated lands on the Brazos River. The Mexicans agreed as long as the settlers were Catholic. Moses Austin died soon after this and the cause was taken up by his son Stephen A. Austin. Austin brought in mostly southern states Protestants because they knew how to run plantations. More and more Americans flooded the land and soon had the resident Mexicans outnumbered. In 1830 the Mexican Government took steps to prevent the hordes of honkies headed their way. All of this sounds familiar except in reverse, doesn’t it? Anyway, Austin pled for statehood in the Mexican Federation but was imprisoned for it because he told his settlers to declare themselves a Mexican state anyway. He was released in 1835. In 1834 Santa Anna had told the people in Gonzales, Texas to relinquish the cannon that had been given to them by Santa Anna as protection from the wild-eyed Comanche. The hard-asses in Gonzales sent a message back “Come and get it”. The Mexican’s came and was defeated; this was considered the first battle for Texas Independence. So in 1835 Santa Anna amassed a large force south of the Rio Grande and an invasion appeared to be on the horizon and Sam Houston ordered the Alamo abandoned. Colonel James Bowie saw that all the artillery in the Alamo could not be moved before Santa Anna arrived and requested permission to stay and that would give Sam Houston more time to raise an army large enough to combat Santa Anna. Bowie was joined by a small cavalry under the command of Colonel William Travis bringing the total count to about 140 men. One week later they were joined by the frontiersman Davy Crockett and his entourage bringing the total to about 155. On February 23 Santa Anna and his 2,000 troops set siege to the Alamo. During the chaos a few men from Gonzales broke through and joined with the rest and brought the total up to 237. On March 5th Santa Anna ordered an all out assault with no quarter. In about an hour it was over and all the Patriots men were killed in savage hand to hand combat. There were a few women and children allowed to leave. Six weeks later Sam Houston surprised Santa Anna and his army near the town of San Jacinto and those Texans herded the Mexicans into waist deep water in a swamp and killed them wholesale. Santa Anna was captured and brought before Sam Houston and Houston told him that his life would be spared but he had better take what was left of his army and get his young ass back across the Rio Grande and don’t ever come back. The Mexican dictator had to acknowledge the independence of Texas. Texas petitioned to be annexed into the United States but Mexico and anti-slavery forces opposed it. So Texas rocked along there as an independent nation for 10 years with Sam Houston as President of the Republic of Texas. In 1845 Texas was admitted to the Union and soon thereafter the Mexican War with the United States erupted.

1807    The United States passed a law forbidding the importation of slaves to the United States or its possessions. The first slaves arrived at Jamestown in 1619 but the greatest majority of imports were European indenture servants. They were far more numerous than the blacks from Africa. However, after 1680 the flow of indentured servants dropped drastically and the influx of blacks from Africa increased dramatically. By the end of the Revolutionary War the British had imported an estimated 3 million slaves not counting the French and the Dutch. After the Revolutionary War the industrial north felt no longer a need for slaves and sought legislation to abolish slavery. So in 1807, The United States Congress passed a law that forbade the further import of slaves. The agrarian South still felt the need for slaves but felt that they had enough slaves that they could be self-sustaining. Any slave that could prove that he was brought to the Colonies after 1806 has the choice of returning to Africa or re-locating to Canada.

Born today:

1810    Pope Leo XIII. He said “It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, or writing or worship as if these were so many gifts given by nature to man.” I had to read this statement over and over again to make sure that I copied it right from the text. Pope Leo XIII has since gone on to his reward.

1876    Pope Pius XII. He said “One Galileo in a thousand years is enough.” Ya’ll know the story about Galileo and Copernicus deducing about the same time that the earth circled the sun rather than vice versa. This was not what the Catholic Church believed and Galileo was threatened with torture if he did not recant. They reached a compromise and Galileo was exiled for the rest of his life. It took the Catholic Church 300 years to admit Galileo was right and the church was wrong. That is what Pope Pius XII is talking about. That is also why we need to keep religion out of classrooms.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow