Daily history

Good morning,




Quote of the day:

“Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious, both are disappointed.”

                                         Oscar Wilde

I guess all of you know that the state of Arizona has clamped down on illegal aliens, especially Latinos from Mexico and other Central American countries. The Governor of Arizona stated that the state is fed up with the Mexican drug cartels setting up shop in Arizona along with a rash of faked auto crashes on their freeways and law suits being filed by illegal aliens for injuries along with kidnappings. I don’t know what the problem is. If an American goes to any other foreign country he/she must produce a Passport or a work Visa as proof of citizenship. The damned Latinos don’t want to do that. Is it fair that American must have proof of citizenship and they do not? It is federal law that anyone entering this country MUST have proof of citizenship…deal with it and quit you freaking whining. If you don’t, you must expect legal retribution…better still stay your bloodsucking ass out of my country.

Up in Obama’s home town of Chicago there were 138 homicides last week. Over in Iraq/Afghanistan there were 116 American soldiers killed last week. There is something wrong with that picture.

Over the weekend a blistering cold front stomped across the southeast kicking off thunderstorms and tornadoes. The hardest hit was the area of Yazoo City, Mississippi. I have been to Yazoo City and it is on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Here in an interesting fact or two about this town. In addition to being a regular stop for CSA General Nathan Bedford, one of the CSA ironclad ships was build but not quit finished in Memphis. The Union came close to capturing Memphis so the Confederate Navy moved the ironclad into Yazoo Creek, near Yazoo City to complete construction. The ship was finally completed and set sail downstream to attack the Union Navy that was bombarding the city of Vicksburg, Ms. The ship was very successful and passed through the Union flotilla virtually untouched and inflicting heavy damage. Unfortunately, the ship accidentally ran aground and was destroyed to keep it out of Union hands.

Recently a good friend of mine fell off of her porch and fell head first onto a concrete walkway. Apparently she hit head first on her right forehead and then fell on her left arm. She was unconscious for a period of time and when she was able to get up she went to bed. As most of y’all know, a severe head injury should be looked at immediately because a skull fracture, concussion or a blood clot could result. She went to her doctor the next day who immediately sent her to the hospital for an MRI. A serious injury was not found but the result was two black eyes and a black and blue and very sore left arm. She is a very lucky person. Keep all this in mind if you have an accident resulting in a head injury.

That oil well off the coast of Louisiana that exploded a few days ago is leaking about four semi-trailer loads of crude a day in spite of the BOP (blowout preventer). The BOPs that I have seen is actually three valves in one. The valves are “knife gate” types. This means that when a surge in pressure is detected or the valve is manually activated, three sheets of thick steel one on top the other slam across the opening sealing it. Apparently, all of the valves did not close and some of the crude is leaking by. The BOP is over a mile deep at the point where the drill pipe enters the ocean bottom. They are trying to send robot dive machines down to close the BOP manually. We shall see.

This date in history April 27

4977BC    It is on this is the date that German mathematician/astronomer Johann Kepler named as the date the Universe came into being. It was Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus that promoted the idea that it was the planets orbiting the sun rather that the Earth being the center of the Universe as taught by the all powerful Catholic Church. Kepler was correct in determining that the sun was the center of the “universe” but he was wrong in supposing the earth was created on April 27, 4977BC. Anyone can go out into their backyard and pick up a rock that is a million years old without a whole lot of trouble. Kepler was fortunate in that he was able to study with another genius astronomer in Nicholas Copernicus. Kepler also came up with laws of motion one of which is that the orbits of the planets are ellipses and tend to speed up when closest to the sun and slow down as the travel away from the sun. Another law was that ratio to how long a planet takes to orbit the sun as to its distance from the sun. Kepler was able to continue his research unhindered because he joined the brilliant Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague. Brahe died and left all of his writings and notes about observations Brahe had made with the naked eye. Kepler became the chief astronomer for Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Kepler and Copernicus had been communicating with Galileo and found that Galileo had improved upon a telescope and Galileo had sent them instructions on how to make one of their own and indeed Kepler had a telescope made for him. Galileo was forced to recant any teaching about the earth orbiting the sun because the Pope did not see it that way and promised Galileo a life of torture if he didn’t recant. After the telescope a light came on in the mind of Kepler. It was Kepler that described in detail the operation of the human eye. Kepler died in Regensburg, Germany in 1630. Then 13 years later the sun rose over the scientific and mathematical community with the birth of Isaac Newton. Newton utilized many of Kepler’s theories in defining his own laws of motion that are still in use to this day. Even though Kepler made gigantic contributions to the scientific world, he was wrong about the age of the earth. Since the universally accepted beginning of the universe is the so-called “Big Bang” theory, Kepler was only off by a mere 13.7 billion years.

1805    For the past few years a powerful leader in the North African country of Tripoli had been sending raiders out of his ports to prey upon American merchant ships crossing the Mediterranean. US President Thomas Jefferson got a belly full of this and tasked a company of the recently formed US Marines to put a stop to it. An American mercenary named William Eaton was put in charge and formed up a company of Marines and a few Berber tribesmen and landed about 500 miles east of Tripolania (in present day Libya), as it was called then. Eaton led the small force to Tripolania and sent in the Marines under the command of Lieutenant Pressley O’Bannon to take care of business. And take care they did. The Marines attacked from the southeast in two columns and two US gun ships in the Mediterranean, the USS Argus and the USS Hornet, open fire from the north. It was all over but the shouting in very short order when the Tripolania leader, Hemet Karamanli, had his ass handed to him by the Marines. Karmanli was so impressed with the bravery of Lieutenant O’Bannon that he presented him with a fancy-schmantsy sword that every Marine sword to this day is modeled after. It was from this expedition that the phrase “to the shores of Tripoli” appears in the Marine Corp Hymn. By the way, the frequency of attacks on American shipping in the Mediterranean dropped precipitously.

1865    Just a few days after the end of the Civil War one of the worst marine disasters in history occurs. The steamboat Sultana had departed New Orleans headed for Cairo, Illinois via the Mississippi River. The Captain of the ship was offered money per person by the US Army to take Union soldiers that were in the south at the end of the war, especially those poor souls that endured the Andersonville Prison, back up north an let them off in Cairo. The Captain saw dollar signs and began loading more and more soldiers aboard his vessel at each stop. After a while he was more than doubly overloaded. His chief mechanic came and told the Captain that the steam boiler had a leak in the plating and they needed to stop, bleed off the steam and make repairs. The Captain could not see anything but dollar signs and ordered a temporary repair and he continued up the river. The temporary repair was made and on they went with about 2,100 people aboard on a boat made for 1,100 passengers and crew. Just above Memphis the Sultana’s boiler explodes and all but 400 are either scalded to death in the steam or drown in the swift river which was just under flood stage after heavy rains. Nearly all of the victims were Union soldiers from Andersonville prison.

1521    Earlier the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan had departed Spain in the search for a westward passage to the Molucca, or Spice Islands. He sailed south to West Africa, crossed over to South America and began searching for a passage west. He searched several South American rivers to no avail and finally he found a passage near the tip of South America that is named for him to this day, the Straights of Magellan. It took 38 days to make passage but Magellan wept when he sailed out onto the broad Pacific knowing he had succeeded. His first stop was Guam and just in the nick of time because the crews of the remaining two ships were near starvation. From there he sailed to the Philippines just 400 miles from the Moluccas. While in the Philippines he met with a friendly tribesman that requested his help in suppressing another nearby village that had been raiding his village. Magellan foolishly agreed. So the raiders appeared and Magellan took a poison dart in the leg and was dead in a matter of hours. Here he was, had sailed ¾ of the way around the world and is killed by a poison dart. Anyway, his navigator took command and sailed to the Moluccas, loaded spices to the gunnels, and sailed across the Indian Ocean, around the tip of Africa and back to Spain. This was one of the most important expeditions ever undertaken. It was too bad that Magellan was not there to accept the accolades.

Born today:

1822    US General Ulysses Grant. He said “I only know two tunes, one is ‘Yankee Doodle’ and the other one isn’t.” Grant was successful because he knew he could win a war of attrition, the other generals before him did not realize this.

1896    US baseball Hall of Fame inductee Rogers Hornsby. He said “I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball I want somebody else to go chase it.” Me too.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow