Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

“Are you serious?”

Lindsay Lohan speaking to the judge that sentenced her to 90 days in the joint for violating her probation on a DUI charge.

I found an interesting tidbit of information about where we live. There is an animal that roams the central and southern plains of North America called the pronghorn antelope. This critter has the eyes of an eagle and can run 40 MPH for miles. They normally are found on treeless and brushless areas so they can keep an eye out for predators. The problem here is that there are no predators that prey on them. That being the case, why did they evolve such great speed and eyesight? We have to go back about 12,000 years to find the answer. Before this time period there was a North American cheetah that preyed upon the antelope and therefore the evolution of the present day pronghorn. As y’all may surmise the North American cheetah is now extinct but the pronghorn did not reverse their evolution. Mother Nature is really mysterious sometimes.

At the risk of going against my personal rule of staying away from religion and arousing plethora of different opinions, I am going to report what I read about what a Charlotte newspaper reporter said about his visit with the Charlotte Society of Atheists and Agnostics.

Recently this society put a billboard on Billy Graham Parkway showing the phrase “one nation under God” with the “under God” struck through and another phrase saying “one nation indivisible” under it. This phrase was how it was written originally and “under God” was added in the 1950’s. The sign was vandalized over night, as you might suspect. The society holds a monthly meeting of about 70 people at a neighborhood tavern and you can guess that is main topic of conversation. Even though it is not enforced, there is a section of the North Carolina Constitution that says “a person that does not believe in God cannot hold public office”. That is a clear violation of the United States Constitution and the society points this out. At their meetings the society wears name tags with just their first names on them knowing if their full names were known they would be subject to prejudicial treatment by their bosses or fellow workers at their places of employment or even in their neighborhoods. They say that they as a group nationwide deserves acknowledgement stating that statistics show that there are as many people that are either atheists or agnostics in America as there is Mormons, Jews or Muslims. I personally have no sympathy. I believe that what you believe along those lines is an intensely personal one and is not for display. I will say this: Many people say that this is a “Christian” nation but that is not what some of our founding fathers believed including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Ben Franklin. They were attendees of Joseph Priestley’s Unitarian church in Philadelphia. Priestly believed that there is a God but did not believe that Jesus Christ was supernatural. That makes them Deists, not “Christian”. A Christian by definition is a follower of Jesus Christ. Not only that, there were Jews that were founders of this great nation. That is all I have to say about that.

A senior PLO official has reported that President Obama has sent a letter of warning to PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas stating that if he did not sit down with Israel for peace talks soon US/ Palestinian relations would suffer. Obama has been leaning hard on Abbas to have face to face talks but nothing has happened.

Last Friday Michael Green was released from prison down in Texas. He was convicted of a rape that he did not commit but his case was reopened after DNA evidence indicated his innocence. The problem with this is that Greene spent 27 years in prison. He was 17 at the time he was convicted and is now 44 years old. He was asked what kept him alive all those years and he said that he fed himself on anger. When asked what he was going to do now and he said “start living again”.

Early Saturday morning 25 year old Zavier Davis held up a Wendy’s restaurant on Park Road in Charlotte, NC. The Charlotte police were called about the robbery and showed up very quickly. Officer Oliver Payne was waiting at the back door when Davis came running out with gun in hand. Davis apparently raised his gun but Officer Payne was quicker and shot Davis in the hind leg. Davis went down like a sack of potatoes and was arrested and sent to the hospital with a non-life threatening wound. Here is the interesting part. From November 2001 to March of 2005 this jackass was convicted of 27 felonies and 13 misdemeanors mainly for robbing fast food places, breaking into cars and trespassing. Why isn’t he in prison for good? What happened to the “Three Strike Law”? This usually means that after the third felony, it is life without parole. Maybe North Carolina does not have such a law. What a shame.

This date in history August 3

1958    Earlier in 1948 a US navy advocate of nuclear power, Captain Hyman Rickover, took command of the nuclear powered submarine program for the US Navy. The keel for the first nuclear submarine was laid by President Harry Truman in the ship building yards at Groton, Connecticut. Finally, in 1954 First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across the bow of America’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. This submarine could stay submerged for months undetected. The nuclear power plant needed no air nor water and only a very small amount of nuclear fuel. The principal was simple. The power plant was simply used to convert water into steam and the steam was directed through a turbine which turned the propeller and provided power and water to the crew. The water that was used to make the steam was captured, condensed and reheated in a continuous circuit. The Nautilus went through strenuous sea trials and proved to be all that she was advertised. The US Navy was very interested in the quickest route from Europe to the Orient without going through the Panama Canal. A few days earlier the Nautilus, commanded by Captain William Anderson, had departed Hawaii on “Operation Northwest Passage”. The Nautilus surfaced only once in the Bering sea to do a radar check and then submerged and went under the Arctic Ocean ice pack, by the north pole and surfaced between Sptizbergen and Greenland on August 5. This time was a hell of a lot better that the time it took to go through the Panama Canal. Captain Anderson was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Eisenhower. After 500,000 miles at sea, the Nautilus was decommissioned and is now a museum attraction at Groton, Connecticut.

1492    On this date Christopher Columbus departed Palos, Spain with three ships headed for “The Orient and the Spice Islands”. The ships were the Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina. In spite of popular legend, the academia of that era in Europe knew that the earth was a sphere; the only problem was they had seriously underestimated the circumference. They had estimated that the Earth was 7,000 mile in circumference rather than the actual 24,000 miles. The reason for this error is that they did not know the Pacific Ocean existed. When Columbus sighted land on October 12, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, he thought he was in the orient. When he sighted Cuba he though it was China and he thought Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) might be mainland Japan. In all Columbus made four trips to the New World but died before realizing what he had discovered would later make Spain the most powerful nation on earth and that was because of the looted Maya, Inca and Aztec gold and silver brought home by Spanish conquistadors.

1911    Roger Casement was knighted by British King George V for his service to the realm. Then for reasons known only to Roger, he began to support the Irish Catholics in their sometime violent attempt to gain independence from England. Roger was raised in an arena of Presbyterians loyal to the king for all of his life. No one knows what changed his mind but he was eventually captured and sentenced to death as a traitor and hanged on the lawn of the infamous Tower of London. It was pretty common that English royalty frequently were beheaded or hanged in the 15th and 16th century, but not in this time period.

Born today:

1905    US writer and “Gray Panthers” advocate Maggie Kuhn. Her advice for staying young was “Keep up learning and sex until rigor mortis.” Maggie was a horny old girl for the great majority of her 90 years on the planet.

1940    US actor Martin Sheen. He said “I guess I am a “cliff-hanging” Catholic. I do not believe in God, but I believe that Mary was his mother.” Martin that is brilliant, if not full of self-serving logic.

Died today:

1924    Polish writer Joseph Conrad. He said “It is not necessary to look for a supernatural source of evil. Mankind is very capable of every wickedness.” Joseph Conrad was a brilliant writer.

1954    French writer Sidoni-Colette. She said “If I cannot have too much candy, then I will do without.” I think I might have been married to this girl.

1964    US writer Flannery O’Connor. She said “When in Rome, do as you did in Milledgeville, Georgia.” This is true southern belle, ya’ll.

1966    US stand up comedian Lenny Bruce. He said “If Jesus had been executed 20 years ago; little Catholic children would be wearing a little electric chair around their necks instead of a cross.” Lenny was dragged off stage and jailed more than once because the various city councils thought he was obscene even though there was a paying audience there, a glaring violation of Lenny’s 1st Amendment Rights.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.