Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day

“I am not going to spend the later years of my life as a hermit so I can spend an extra two years in the geriatric ward.”

                                     George Carlin

The General Assembly of South Carolina has passed a law that allows the hunting of wild pigs and coyotes at night. I do not ever remember this area of the country having problems with coyotes but evidently they have become a nuisance as have the pigs. It has been reported that there is a large population of coyotes living very near the Greenville Downtown airport. It seems that the two main runways are built on large embankments and the coyotes dig into the side and make a den. They are very smart and efficient hunters, including family pets. They also are subject to rabies and will attack humans if they think they are in danger. The wild pigs are another story. I used to deer hunt in swamps down on the Carolina coast and wild pigs were common. It seems that hunters from other parts of the state have been trapping wild boars and sows and moving them into private hunting preserves to give the owners prey to hunt. The problem with that is a wild sow can deliver a litter of 10 to 15 piglets twice a year. Assume that you place 5 sows in one area. You do the math on how many wild pigs you could have in a very short period of time. They also become menacing but it isn’t their fault, it is those supposed great hunters. In the swamps the pigs have bear, bobcat, panthers and even packs of bear dogs that run them down and kill them. That is not true elsewhere in the state. You mess with Mother Nature nothing ever good comes from it.

Several years ago immigrants to Australia brought rabbits with them to provide them with food in the future. You guessed it. The only predators in Australia are the canine Dingoes. As you can suppose the rabbits were able to easily out breed the Dingoes and soon the Australian could not plant anything and expect the rabbits to leave them alone and they were infested with rabbits. It took several years of hunting and poisoning to get a handle on that problem.

I don’t know if y’all knew it or not but President Obama has appointed an “oil spill czar” to oversee the clean-up on the Gulf coast. Now we yet another bureaucracy because this “czar” will have to hire a staff to deal with the EPA, Department of the Interior, BP, Transocean, Halliburton, thousands of pissed off fishermen and even thousands more that depend on the tourist industry in that area like hotels, motels, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, etc. What a freaking nightmare.

I hope I do not step on anyone’s toes here but I thought that the angry statement by Pope Benedict that the Catholic Church is “autonomous” and should have been included in the investigation of the Belgian archbishop and other members of the Belgian Catholic hierarchy including the opening of one of the dead Bishops crypt looking for evidence was incredulous. Since when does the Catholic Church have the authority to trump civil crime investigations? If that is the case then the Southern Baptist Convention should have been included in the investigation of Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker. There have been many, many other non-Catholic criminal men and women of the cloth that were tried, convicted and sentenced without the inclusion of their church’s input. What started the investigation into the Belgian Catholic hierarchy was one of the Belgian bishops resigned after he confessed that he had been sexually abusing young boys for many years. A crime is committed by criminals, regardless of church affiliation.

I received some very depressing news. One of the finest seafood restaurants in the world named simply The Fish House in Pensacola, Florida has sadly stated that there will be no more Apalachicola oysters. They said that after what they have on ice is gone they will not be able to get anymore for the immediate future. It seems that the oystermen in the Apalachicola area can make a lot more money by leasing their boats to BP for the clean-up effort. This means that when I go down there in October there is a chance that only Texas and east coast oysters will be available. But if they get the leak stopped, and there is no pollution in St. George’s Bay in Apalachicola, the oystermen may begin harvesting oysters again. I certainly hope so. But if not, the “shrimp and grits a’ya ya” will still be available at the Fish House.

This date in history June 29

1776    The South Carolina representative to the Continental Congress, Edward Rutledge, sends a letter to John Jay of New York expressing his misgivings about independence from Great Britain. Both he and John Jay were ambivalent on this issue. It is understandable since both Edward and his brother John were educated in England with both becoming lawyers and members of the Continental Congress. Both were very successful with their Charleston, South Carolina clientele and they lived across the street from each other. Finally, Edward relented and did sign the Declaration of Independence being the youngest signer at the age of 27.

1993    On this date a knife-wielding man broke into the Allentown, Pennsylvania home of Denise Sam-Cali and tried to rape her. A struggle ensued but the rapist succeeded in raping Denise on the front lawn. He then stabbed Denise trying to kill her but she fought him off and the rapist ran away. This courageous woman would play a big role in the resolution of this crime. On the 9th of July a 15 year old girl is abducted and her body was found by a reservoir stabbed 22 times. She had been raped also. On the 15th of July a five year old girl was abducted and raped and the attacker unsuccessfully tried to strangle her. Then on the 19th of July the house of Denise Sam-Cali was broken into while she was away. The police decided to set a trap and staked out Sam-Cali’s house and left a window enticingly open. On July 30 a man crawled into the open window and was greeted by a policeman and a gunfight ensued. The intruder crashed his way out through another window and fled. A few hours later, career criminal Harvey Robinson staggers into a hospital with two gunshot wounds. While waiting he was recognized by a policeman and Harvey fled with the cop in close pursuit. The cops ran Harvey down and arrested him. He went to trial and was easily convicted due to the DNA evidence that they retrieved from Denise Sam-Cali’s clothing. Denise had carefully laid aside her underclothing she had on during the rape just for this eventuality. Harvey got the death penalty. I wish I could designate the type of death to be given to animals like this. If I could, I promise you crimes of this sort would drop precipitously.

1941    On June 22, a German army of 3,000,000 soldiers, thousands of tanks and aircraft crossed into Russia as Operation Barbarossa began. It was Hitler’s intention to subdue Russia in spite of signing a peace agreement with Joseph Stalin less than a year before. One week after beginning this operation, July 29, the Germans were at the door steps of Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. During the previous week the Germans had captured the Ukrainian city of Lvov and slaughtered thousands and sent thousand to German slave labor camps. Those that were not killed or enslaved blamed the Jews for all of this and began killing the Jews in the streets. What’s up with that? Anyway, the Germans thought that if they were able to quickly overcome the Russian army, the populous would side with them since Stalin was an acknowledged monster. It didn’t happen. The Russian army was much larger than the German intelligence had supposed and the Russian people chose the lesser of two evils and stuck with Stalin and dug in their heels and resisted bitterly. This decision cost the lives of 6,000,000 civilians. Eventually “General Winter” shows up in mid-October and the German offensive ground to a halt. Because of the bitter cold, and the German soldiers having no winter clothing, the army was decimated. The very same thing happened about 130 years before when a short Corsican name Bonaparte tried to do the same thing as the Germans with the same results. The German army command believed they could wrap this operation up by early September and winter clothing was not necessary. They had severely miscalculated the resolve of the Russians and paid a terrible price for it. Eventually the Russian army got on its feet and crushed the attacking Germans and sent them fleeing back toward Germany with the Russian army hot on their heels. When the Russians entered Germany, they had no problem with slaughtering any air-breather they ran across in retribution. What goes around…

1613    The Globe theatre in London burned down. This was where William Shakespeare debuted most of his plays. The first indoor theatre in London was built by William Burbage in 1576. Before that, plays were enacted on street corners, taverns and on the lawns of houses. After Burbage’s lease ran out Shakespeare’s company, “Lord Chamberlain’s Men” disassembled the theatre and used the timbers to build the Globe. While I was in London in 2004 I saw a replica of the Globe on the banks of the Thames that was dwarfed by the gigantic Tate Art Museum next door. Also dwarfed was a replica of the English ship “Golden Hind” that was commanded by Sir Francis Drake who, though not being the first, sailed his ship around the world. The honor of the first circumnavigation of the globe belongs to Ferdinand Magellan about 45 years earlier. By the way, a “Hind” is a type of European male deer or stag.

1943    President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a letter to J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the lead scientist on the “Manhattan Project” or the project to invent a nuclear weapon before the Germans did during WWII. The military branch of the project was led by Army General Leslie Groves. It seems that General Groves, being a military man, was very tense about security on such a secret project as this and set up the laboratories for the scientist in the middle of a New Mexico desert near the town of Alamogordo so it could be easily be made ultra-secret without attracting a lot of attention. The scientists were not really pleased with the living quarters and the extra tight security which resulted in friction between Oppenheimer and Groves. Roosevelt was trying to stroke Oppenheimer so he would not bolt and run taking the other scientists with him. The letter succeeded and two years later early one July morning, a bright flash lingered over the New Mexico desert when a nuclear device known as Trinity is detonated ushering in the nuclear age whether you liked it or not.

Births and deaths:

1921    The mother of Winston, Lady Jennie Churchill died. She said “Even if you are a Princess or the richest woman in the world, you can be nothing greater than a lady.”

Hey Jennie, have you ever been to “Richard’s”, a biker bar near Mount Pleasant, SC? There are lots of "ladies" there, y'all, maybe a little skank too.

2002    American singer Rosemary Clooney died. She said “No matter how great a man is, the size of his funeral depends on the weather.” That thought brings me back to reality.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow