Daily history

Good Morning,


Quote of the day:

“A man is as wise as the wisdom of his time, and as ignorant as its ignorance.”

                                   Henry David Thoreau

It has happened again. Down in Lee County, South Carolina a family had a pet pit bull and had decided to go on a trip. They asked their next door neighbors, a couple in their 60’s, to feed and look after the dog while they were gone. They had been neighbors for several years. The neighbors went to feed the dog together on one occasion and the dog attacked them both. The woman was killed and the man was seriously injured. This is not the first attack of these animals in South Carolina; there have been a number of them. It is obvious that the centuries of breeding for fighting have not left them. Make no mistake, y’all; they are dangerous, very dangerous.

Over in Spartanburg, South Carolina at a dress shop designed for formal wear, the security cameras caught a young lady stuffing a formal dress into her purse. The manger did not see it until the thief had left. The cops were called and eventually by looking at the film and receiving a tip, they figured out who it was. It was a high school girl that wanted a dress for the prom and neither she nor her family had the money to buy one. When questioned by the cops she said that she wore the dress to the prom and then mailed it back to the dress shop. The police intercepted the dress at the post office and brought it back to the dress shop. No charges have been filed as of yet. I have mixed emotions about this as I suspect all of you do.

Down near Pendleton, South Carolina a woman was driving in a country road and looked down at her cell phone and when she looked back up she was in the oncoming lane and hit a van head on. The van veered off the road and hit a tree killing the driver even though he was strapped in. His fiancé was in the passenger seat and was injured though not fatally. The woman that was distracted by her cell phone was also injured but not fatally. This woman is looking at years of legal and civil suits against her. Is it worth it to get or make a phone call while driving? Get a damned Blue Tooth or let the cell phone alone while underway.

I read that Rodeo Austin, Texas was about to get under way with a “Cowboy Breakfast” Friday morning. If that is anything the one I had in Pendleton, Oregon it will keep those people sated for a couple of days.

I had gotten discharged from the Air Force in Tacoma, Washington after a tour in Alaska. A friend from Sarasota, Florida and I were in a cab going from McChord Air Force base to the Seattle-Tacoma airport to fly home. On the way we saw a ’53 Chevy for sale on the side of the road and instantly decided to buy the car and drive home. We stopped the cab and went in and bought that car for $500. We decided that we were going to drive south to Los Angeles and cross the US via the southern route. We got to the vicinity of Portland, Oregon and had a choice to make. Turn east there or go another 500 mile before we could turn east again. We turned east and followed the breathtaking Columbia River Gorge. We stopped in Pendleton, Oregon. The next morning we found out that one of the largest rodeos in the world was underway, it was known as the Pendleton Roundup. We checked out of the motel and stopped at a restaurant across the street from the rodeo arena for breakfast. I ordered sausage and eggs with biscuits and coffee. They brought it out and it was on a big platter with a slab of sausage that covered the bottom of the platter with three eggs on top. The two biscuits were about the size of a saucer and 1 ½” thick. The coffee was really strong but I diluted it with a lot of cream which brought some stares from the guys with cowboy hats on. It was by far the best breakfast I have ever had before or since. It took my friend and I nine days to cross the country because we stopped at every interesting looking bar and site along the way. It was a hell of an adventure. I will tell y’all more later.

This date in history March 6

1857    On this date the United States Supreme Court hands down one of the most infamous decisions ever made in the history of jurisprudence. It seems that a US Army doctor had a slave name Dred Scott that traveled with him on his various military assignments. Two of these assignments were in state of Illinois and the Territory of Wisconsin. These two were “free” states by what was called “popular sovereignty”. Popular sovereignty meant that before a state or a territory could become part of the United States they had a vote of the residents to whether they wanted to be a “free” state or a “slave” state. Both Illinois and Wisconsin had voted to be Free states. Dred Scot sued that since he had lived as a resident of both states he should be granted his freedom. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the United States Constitution did not recognize Negroes as human beings and therefore Dred Scot would remain the property of the US Army officer, popular sovereignty not withstanding and on top of that there were many free blacks already living in Illinois and Wisconsin. Well, all this did was throw fuel to the fire of secession and Civil War which erupted 4 years later. The Supreme Court had been stacked with five southerners along with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney being a supporter of slavery. This decision threw a big monkey wrench into the Republican Party whose only reason for its existence was the abolition of slavery. About this time Kansas and its next door neighbor Missouri entered the Union with Kansas being a free state and Missouri being a slave state. Everyone knew that trouble would be a-brewing there pretty soon. They were right.

1951    The espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg begins on this day. Julius and Ethel were nuclear scientists at the Los Alamos nuclear Laboratory where out atomic bombs were formulated. During the “Red Scare” days where the US government feared that there was a communist saboteur/spy behind every tree, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were fired for being Communists as indeed Julius was. Anyway, Julius and Ethel in their anger got together with a machinist in the laboratory name David Greenglass and recruited him to be a “mule” smuggling atomic secrets out of the Laboratory and sell them to the Russians. The Rosenbergs had already made the deal with the Russians through a Russian named Martin Sobell. Greenglass in turn hired a man named Harry Gold to make the actual exchange of the secrets for the money. The trial lasted nearly a month and ended with all four being convicted. The Rosenbergs got the death penalty even though they could not be accused of treason because we were not at war with the Russians. Sobell got thirty years and Greenglass got fifteen. Soon after all of this Russia detonated its first nuclear device and acknowledged that they had constructed the weapon with information partially provided by the Rosenbergs. The Rosenbergs were offered life in prison if they would confess; they did not and fulfilled their destiny with a visit to “Old Sparky” and they went to meet their maker extra crispy.

1475    On this date one of the greatest creative geniuses in history is born. Michelangelo Buanorrati is born in the small Italian town of Caprese. His father was a minor government official and had close ties with the powerful Italian Medici family. The Medici family was famous sponsors of the arts, especially in Florence. Michelangelo became an artist’s apprentice at the age of 13. He spent two years in the Medici palace studying sculpture under the master sculptor Bertoldo de Giovanni and also studied the Medici family collection of other Italian sculptures. He eventually grew into the genius that we all recognized today. His first major creation was the sculpture “Pieta” in marble showing a dead Jesus lying across the lap of his mother Mary. This work was commissioned by the French ambassador to the Holy See, Michelangelo was 24 years old. But I guess his most famous works were the statue of David and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Both of which were commissioned by Pope Julius II. There is little question that painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was by far the most difficult. Not only did he have to paint lying on his back, he had to had to paint his creations in the correct proportions on a curved surface, no easy trick. The majority of the Sistine Chapel was a dome. Michelangelo was very prodigious in anything he attempted, be it painting, sculpture, sketches or drawings. It would repetitive for me to list all of this great artist’s works. Just suffice it to say there has never been anyone like him before or since. He was a man for all the ages. What is eerie is that he, Leonardo da Vinci and the artist Rafael all lived at the same time in the same city (Florence) at one time or another. Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 89 leaving a trail of works of art that probably will never be equaled in history. The world is a worse place without him.

1987    On this date the car ferry “Herald of Free Enterprise” was preparing to leave Zeebruge, Belgium (been there) for a cross channel trip to Dover, England. The fairly large vessel was loaded with 543 people, 84 cars and 36 trucks. It had been the practice in the past for the ferry to back away from the dock with the front clamshell doors still open and would closed them as it was turning around to head out to sea. The ferry normally would take on an inconsequential amount of water in this process. But on this day, the crewman that was responsible for closing the clamshell doors was asleep, I SAID ASLEEP, YA’LL. Well, when the ferry got turned around and was headed out to sea, the water pressure on the doors was so heavy that they could not close and soon the bilge and lower deck was flooded and when everybody on board went to one side to see what the hell was happening, the ship rolled upside down trapping all that were on the lower decks and throwing those on the upper decks into the sea. In all 186 people were drowned even if they were less than 100 yards from land. It took marine rescuers four days for them to retrieve all the bodies that were trapped under the ship. The ships company was found guilty “top to bottom with sloppiness”. As you might expect, new safety regulations were written for ferry operations. You know, closing the barn door after the horse escapes.

Born today:

1906    Polish writer Stanislaw Lec. He said “Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?” I wonder if Jeffrey Dahmer did.

1936    Washington mayor Marion Barry, Jr. He said “I am going to provide you with a copulation of answers to several questions.” It is compilation Marion, compilation for crying out loud. Marion is a tent short of a campsite anyway.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.