Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

“We tend to forget that happiness does not come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”

                                  Frederick Koening

Back in October of ’09 a good time was being had by all at Sharkey’s bar in the Five Points area of Columbia, SC. Keep in mind that the Five Points “entertainment center” is a series of bars of all types and demeanors. The bad part is that it is within walking distance of the University of South Carolina and many of the students wander down there and get a snoot full for the first time. The down side of this is that the cops that patrol this area are very jaded and downright intolerant. Anyway, on this one particular night the bartender called that cops about a loud and boisterous customer. By the time the cops arrived, the alleged bad guy was over a block away accompanied by his friend who is an attorney from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The cops immediately and roughly grabbed the alleged bad guy and cuffed him. His attorney friend asked the cops why his friend was being arrested several times never receiving an answer. The attorney persisted and finally the cops cuffed and arrested the attorney. When the attorney asked why he was being arrested he was told “Because you are asking questions.” The attorney and his friend spent 14 hours in the Columbia drunk tank. During their stay the attorney witnessed another inmate commit suicide in the cell by hanging himself. The cops filed a report stating that the attorney had physically interfered with an arrest claiming he grabbed one of the officer’s arm while they were cuffing his friend. The attorney filed a false arrest law suit and immediately subpoenaed the security tapes from Sharkey’s outside camera’s showing that the attorney did not touch anyone and that asking why someone is being arrested is within one’s right’s. This case has been turned over to SLED by the chief of police in Columbia who wants another opinion. SLED is the enforcement arm of the state’s Attorney General. It doesn’t look good for the Columbia Police that patrol Five Points. You give some people a little power they come on like Tarzan. When I read this scenario the image of a police cruiser with the words “to protect and serve” emblazoned on the side came to mind.

Last week in Asheville, North Carolina a coalition of different law enforcement agencies raided a known hotspot of Latino gangs and illegal immigrants and arrested 25 people. This past weekend there was a demonstration at the jail by about 20 people with signs complaining about “racial profiling”. They were not doing “racial profiling”, they were arresting lawbreakers. There is little question that gangs of any schism suck the blood of the residents and illegal immigrants are exactly that…illegal. The protesters said they want Asheville to become a “sanctuary city” meaning that as long as a person is productive, paying taxes and peaceful they should be let alone regardless of their social attachments or immigration status. I can assure you that these protesters are not native to Asheville and are here only to continue to suck our blood. I have a better idea. Make Guadalajara, Mexico your “Sanctuary City” and get your bloodsucking ass out of my country. Using their logic it would be OK for Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy to live in Asheville unmolested as long as they kept their noses clean. Who the hell do you think you are?

One of the people that were killed in the plane crash that snuffed out the life of the Polish president a couple of days ago was an artist named Wojcieck Seweryn. This man designed a memorial that was erected in a mostly Polish Catholic Church graveyard near Chicago. The memorial is dedicated to the 4,500 Polish officers that were massacred and buried in the Katyn Forest by the invading German army in 1940, only later on it was found that it was not the Germans, it was the Russians. One of the members of my social circle here in Greenville has both of her parents buried in this cemetery near Chicago. This woman is simply brilliant and a gifted leader in the political arena. We are fortunate to have her with us in these troubling times.

Down in Pensacola, Florida there was a 74 year old mail carrier named Vincent Davalt. He lived with his 90 year old mother in a quiet neighborhood with manicured lawns and shrubbery. This past Saturday he did not answer his phone for most of the day so members of his family went to investigate. The found Vincent stabbed to death. The police have withheld any of the details. All of Vincent’s neighbors said that he was a very quiet and humble man that always waved at those passing by. The chief “person of interest” is a 33 year old man that has spent two jail terms for attacks with violence. Vincent knew him, it is his grandson Kurtlin.

This date in history April 13

1997    On this date the son of a black US Green Beret Sergeant father and a Thai national mother wins his first golf tournament as a professional and does it in great fashion. Eldrick “Tiger” Woods won the vaunted Masters Golf Tournament by 12 strokes over the nearest competitor with a total score of 18 under par for the tournament. Tiger had just graduated from Stanford a few months before where he won the US Amateur title several times. What stunned everyone were his soaring drives of 320 yards or more on a regular basis and his aggressive short game. His father and his mother had divorced years earlier but both were there to greet him at the entrance to the scorer’s tent. It was a touching scene when Tiger and his father embraced with tears flowing from each. Tiger was 21 years old, the youngest to ever win the Masters. The day he turned professional, he signed a $40 million endorsement deal with American Express followed shortly by similar deals with Nike and Buick among others not to mention his winnings on the golf course. Tiger has won four green jackets at the Masters and he is only 31 years old. He has won the grand slam of golf (Masters, US Open, British Open, and the PGA Championship) more than once. There is no questions that if he stays healthy he will end up being the greatest golfer to ever swing a club and he is close to that now. He has only Jack Nicklaus’ overall record to overcome to stand alone in the record books. How much money is this man going to make in his lifetime? It boggles the mind.

1777    On this date British General Lord Charles Cornwallis commanding a 4,000 man combined unit of British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries attack the 500 man unit of Continentals commanded by Major General Benjamin Lincoln at Bound Brook, New Jersey. The British attacked in four columns designed by the commander of the Hessians, Captain Johann Ewald Lieb Jaeger, a superior military strategist. General Lincoln had no choice but to retreat and lost most of his artillery pieces to Cornwallis who took them back to their main encampment at New Brunswick. George Washington believed in the strategic location of Bound Brook and sent Continental General Nathaniel Greene to re-occupy the town. Later on Washington changed his mind and decided that he would had a better defensible position atop the Watchung Mountains in north central New Jersey and re-established an encampment there. Continental General Henry Knox and several other Patriot Generals were impressed with the Hessian Commander Johann Ewald Lieb Jaeger and after the end of the Revolutionary War he was invited by Knox to attend West Point. He declined and ended up writing several books on military strategy including “A Treatise on Partisan Warfare” which was more or less a book on how to conduct guerilla operations. The book was highly praised by the best military leader of that time the Prussian, Frederick the Great.

1990    In 1939 the German army invaded Poland from the west and Russia invaded Poland from the east in the spring of 1940. During the Russian invasion, they gathered up over 4,500 Polish military officers and moved them to the Katyn Forest and for reasons known only to them, massacred them all and buried them in a common grave. Later the Germans overran the Katyn Forest and drove the Russians out. The mass grave was discovered and everyone assumed it was the Germans that had committed yet another atrocity. The German army vehemently denied participation in this massacre. On this date, as a part of Glasnost Russian Premier Gorbachev admitted that it was the Russian Army that had committed the massacre at Katyn Forest, not the Germans. Since the end of World War II the relationship between the Polish Government and the new German government had been strained because the Germans refused to admit culpability for the Katyn Forest affair. After this admission, diplomacy between these two governments became more tolerable and relationship with the Russians became tense and remains so to this day.

1360    Ever since William the Conqueror, A Viking owning a huge part of France, became the King of England in 1066, every subsequent English King that was a blood kin ancestor of William felt that he had a right to the French throne and several invasions from England to France ensued. The reign of King Edward III of England was no different. A few months before he had crossed the English Channel and landed at Calais in wintertime and began plundering the countryside. The French army chose to go behind almost impenetrable defenses and let Edward have his way and then maybe he would go home which was/is typical of the French. Anyway, on this date the mother of all thunderstorms shows up over Chartres, France where Edward’s troops were camped out on open ground. A hailstorm developed and over 1,000 of Edward’s infantry and cavalry were killed by the hailstones. They do not describe that size of the hailstones but they must have been of biblical dimensions. The largest one ever recorded in the US was one in Nebraska that was the size of a volleyball. Anyway, Edward’s advisors said that it was sign from God that he was not pleased that Edward was in France. Edward agreed and ordered his army back to Calais and they got their young asses back to England. Then the French Army came crawling out from behind their embrasures and bade Edward a grateful farewell. But that was not the end to this struggle; the final battle was in 1453. Greed knows no limits.

1866    Robert Leroy Parker was born in Beaver, Utah Territory to Mormon parents. Leroy’s parents wanted him to become a minister badly but Leroy decided to become bad instead. He met up with a neighbor name Bill Cassidy who taught him the ways of the gun and Leroy departed on a life of crime. After doing 15 months in a Laramie, Wyoming jail for rustling, he decided to organize gang and organize one he did and it became known at the “Wild Bunch” and he became known as “Butch Cassidy” in honor of his first mentor. He joined with Harry Longabough, better known as “The Sundance Kid” because of the number of time he had been in the Sundance jail, are legendary. There are many tales I could tell you about this gang but I will leave that to all of you to find out for yourselves. It was reported the Butch and Sundance were killed in a shootout with the Bolivian Army in an town named San Vicente but family members of the both of them say they saw them years after the shootout. It is an enduring enigma.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow