Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

After seeing a demonstration of a flamethrower he said “Where does the bayonet go?”

                    Colonel Chester “Chesty” Puller USMC

Evidently the Colonel thought that burning the enemy into a chittlin’ was not good enough.

There will be no lesson on Sunday.

Our crack state legislators here in South Carolina spent all of one day discussing introducing a bill that would require illegal aliens to register with the state tax agency and pay a $50 fee. If the alien could not produce proof of paying this fee they went to jail. I had to read this item several time over trying to grasp the logic of that thought. The illegal alien is exactly that…illegal. He/she is breaking the law and is deserving of retribution. I see no difference in a person sticking up a convenience store and a person entering this country illegally. They are both breaking the law. The legislators eventually ditched that proposal and decided they would sculpt another bill using the latest Arizona illegal alien law as a guide. They finally came to their senses….I think.

The Greenville, SC city cops generated a “sting” operation Wednesday night and arrested five hookers. They ranged in age from 19 to 45. They also ranged in beauty from acceptable to an armadillo mutant.

The oil leak off the coast of Louisiana has not abated. It is continuing to gush at a rate of 42,000 gallons a day. Some crude oil has reached the salt marshes near the mouth of the Mississippi River posing a five star disaster to the wildlife in that very fragile area. Nesting shorebirds, otters and various amphibians and alligators would be killed wholesale, not to mention the lucrative shrimp and oyster industries in the marshes and estuaries from the mouth of the Mississippi eastward to Tampa. It would put thousands of seamen out of business. The crews trying to contain the oil are gathering the crude in large pools and lighting it off. That will help but they will have to stop that leak sooner or later, preferably sooner. According to statistics, this leak is approaching the volume lost in the Exxon Valdes disaster. The difference here is that the Exxon Valdes was holed in Prince William Sound and the crude reached the shoreline in just a day or two. This oil leak is in a much larger area and the crews will have a much larger space and more time to deal with it. However, there is a low pressure area and associated stormy weather approaching and a strong onshore wind would be likely. It is an ecological disaster in the making. The US Air Force has sent two C-130’s to Mississippi that will be used to spray dispersants onto the oil spill…Maybe that will help.

Down in a central Texas animal rescue unit a miniature Dachshund delivered four puppies and then she unfortunately died leaving the pups is bad way. The workers in the unit were at a loss as to what to do with them. Then they remembered Beatrix, a tabby cat that had just given birth to six kittens. They did not know if Beatrix would accept the pups but they put them in the box with her and the kittens. Apparently, Beatrix did not discriminate and immediately pulled the pups over to her and began cleaning them and then allowed them to nurse along with the kittens. That was two weeks ago and it looks like the puppies will make it thanks to Beatrix.

This date in history May 1

1863    On this date began the first day of the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia. It was in this battle that the superior battle savvy of CSA Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson became known to the world. The Union army in that area known as the Army of the Potomac and had been through several commanders and all had their asses handed to them by CSA General R.E. Lee. The newest one was US General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Hooker relieved US General Ambrose Burnside after the disastrous Fredericksburg winter campaign where Burnside lost 14,000 to Lee’s 5,000. Now was the best chance the Union army ever had. The Army of the Potomac numbered 133,000 and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia numbered 60,000. The Confederate corps under the command of CSA General James Longstreet was on detached duty to the south. Hooker’s plan was a good one. He was going to pin down the Confederates that were dug in on the flat plain of the Rappahannock River and then head upstream with a substantial number of troops, cross the river and attack Lee from the rear. Lee surmised that Hooker had this in mind and detached most of his troops and headed upstream to meet Hooker’s flanking attack leaving CSA General Jubal Early and his corps dug in on the flat plain. Lee and Hooker met just north of the Wilderness and a battle ensued. Hooker was baffled to think that Lee had correctly guessed his strategy, and even though he had Lee outnumbered more than two to one, he chose to dig in and set up a defensive perimeter. Lee jumped at this chance to take the initiative and take it he did. Lee split his army yet again and sent Stonewall Jackson and 25,000 troops around the right flank of the Union defenses and about 5:00am, rabbits, deer and other wildlife boiled out of the woods behind the Union lines followed closely by Stonewall Jackson’s cavalry and howling infantry. The Union infantry were gathered around their campfires making dinner and we caught completely by surprise and tumbled eastward in a headlong retreat. This action fragmented the Union infantry and the Confederates were able to isolate and crush them piecemeal. After a couple of days of this ass-whipping they and General Hooker were heading their young asses back to Washington in a total rout. It was in this battle and the Shenandoah Valley campaign that made “Stonewall” Jackson is a legend in the annuls of military history. Military historians call Lee’s action in this encounter as “the perfect battle”. This evening Stonewall Jackson was out scouting to find out where the Union positions ended up. He was shot by a Confederate soldier by accident. The wound cost him his left arm but it did not appear to be life threatening. They were wrong. Jackson developed pneumonia and died 10 days later. It was a terrible blow to the Confederate army.

1960    On this date in this year I was in the United States Air Force stationed at Eielson AFB, Alaska. Eielson was an intelligence gathering and cold weather testing base, meaning there was a lot of spy planes that passed through there like RB-47’s, RB-66’s, RB-58’s, and an occasional U-2. I found out later that the U-2’s were capable of flying at or above 70,000 feet and the CIA believed that the Russians had no fighters or missiles that could reach that altitude so they would send U-2’s on over flights of Russia taking precision photos along the way. On one particular night, the klaxon began blasting and SAC intelligence officers ran up in the control tower with me and we spent the night together. The story was that the Russians had something interesting going on near the Bering Straits and our military wanted photos. This particular night they chose to send out an RB-47 and a KC-135 tanker. Neither plane got off the ground because the fuel was contaminated. To this day I think it was sabotage and so did the SAC officers. Speaking of U-2’s, later on one of them departed Karachi, Pakistan and was on his way to Buda, Norway, but it might have been vice-versa but in any event Russia is in the middle of that flight path. This spy flight U-2 was shot down in Russia with CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers aboard. The CIA was not worried, the said that there was no part of the plane that was identifiable as American and the pilot was suppose to commit suicide with a cyanide tablet that was aboard the aircraft, therefore President Eisenhower said it was a weather recon aircraft that had gotten off course. Little did President Ike know that the pilot had not taken the poison but was alive and in the hands of the Russians, parachute and a large chunk of the aircraft included. Well, after this Ike had to admit it was indeed a spy flight and the relationship with the Russians hit an all time low. Powers was a prisoner for two years then he was swapped for master Russian spy Rudolph Abel. It seems that Abel had been spying for Russia on United States while on the ground and not aloft. Spying is spying.

1852    On this date Martha Jane Canary is born in Princeton, Missouri. Martha Jane became a legend in the old west by claiming to be the lover of Colonel George A. Custer and had indeed bore him a child. The history of the west and Custer in particular showed that this was a bullshit story. But she was indeed part of an expedition into the so-called sacred hills of South Dakota, better known as the Black Hills which the Cheyenne held sacred. It was there that she gained the nickname of Calamity Jane. She was probably just a laundress, but she was there. Eventually she ended up in one of the most famous towns of the old west, Deadwood South Dakota. It was there that she claimed that she was the lover of Wild Bill Hickock who was indeed a temporary resident of Deadwood but there is no evidence that she and Wild Bill ever got together. Eventually she told her tales so many times that she began to believe them herself. Jane eventually let the booze soak into her brain and she was found hiring her self out in a black brothel in a town called Horr, Montana. She was offered help but she said that she wanted to be left alone and “wanted to go to hell by her own path.” A few months later she was found dead in Terry, Wyoming. She was 51 years old.

1898    A few months before the US battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor for reasons unknown. A naval investigation showed it was caused by a mine no matter whose it was but that was probably not the real reason. In any case, a series of events led to the United States and Spain declaring war on each other. At the same time US Commodore George Dewey was tasked by US President William McKinley with the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the Pacific. Dewey found the Spanish fleet anchored in Manila Bay in the Philippines. Dewey had all the ships in his fleet to extinguish their lights and on this night they sneaked into the harbor and deployed. At the crack of dawn Commodore Dewey issued the famous order to the commander of his flagship the USS Olympia saying “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” And Gridley indeed opened fire and 10 of the Spanish vessels were sunk in their moorings from which the Spanish navy never recovered. The Spanish-American War was over in short order after this fiasco.

Born today:

1918 TV host Jack Paar. He said “Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.” Si senor.

1922    US writer Joseph Heller. He said “Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include phlegm and tooth decay as his divine system of creation?” Joe Heller wrote the famous book “Catch 22”.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow