Daily history

Good morning,



Quote of the day:


“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what your heard is not what I meant.”

                                      Robert McCloskey

This sounds like a conversation with my third ex-wife.


Turn the dogs loose and break out your weapons, Lindsay Lohan is back on the streets after 14 days in the joint. She is looking at a court ordered three month stay in rehab, however.


Recently a group of Canadian archaeologists discovered the wreckage of the HMS Investigator in Mercy Bay. The ship was tasked by the British Government with locating the fabled Northwest Passage which was a sea passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans through North America. This passage is possible but not with a wooden ship like the Investigator that began the search in 1850. The commander of the Investigator, Sir John Franklin, was blocked by sea ice on his first attempt and wintered in Mercy Bay. The next summer he tried again and was blocked by sea ice once again and sailed back into Mercy Bay and awaited rescue. The rescue came in the form of HMS Resolute in 1853 and the Investigator was abandoned. The archaeologist found the ship in superb condition due to the cold water. They also found the corpses of three sailors. Out of respect to the dead, the ship will not be raised.


I could hardly restrain myself when I saw President Obama speaking about the so-called “Arizona law” he said “The United States cannot allow an individual in power (Governor of Arizona) to declare themselves anti-immigrant just to make a name for themselves…”. Hey Barak, what about the 66% of Americans who agree with the Arizona law as written? Are all of us trying to make a name for ourselves? You are so out of touch with mainstream America it is scary….and I mean scary. Everything you think about is related to your collapsing political career.


On July 25 an 18 year old boy from Clover, South Carolina left home on his motorcycle headed to work in Gastonia, North Carolina which is about 20 miles. He would stay over in Gastonia if he worked late. He did not come home for several days and he did not show up for work on July 25. An extensive search did not find this young man…until three days ago. A North Carolina Highway Patrolman detected a faint trail off the side of US 321 and followed it to find the young man and his motorcycle. The boy was dead. The boy had evidently lost control and went through a patch of woods for considerable distance before striking several trees. He was wearing a helmet but it was torn off by one of the trees and he suffered a fatal head injury.



Monday BP attempted to seal the runaway gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. The plan is for them to “slant drill” down into the plugged well about 8,000 feet below the ocean bottom and start pumping heavy mud and then cement to seal it permanently. BP began slowly pumping mud into the Deepwater Horizon oil well at 3:15p Tuesday afternoon.  It worked and they started pumping cement Thursday morning.


On Monday the President announced that a major withdrawal from Iraq will begin at the end of this month. I will make a bet with anyone that we will see the great majority of those troops in Afghanistan soon after their withdrawal from Iraq.



This date in history August 5



1981    On this date President Ronald Reagan fired about 11,600 air traffic controllers that had gone on strike earlier. I was one of them. The roots of the strike began about three years earlier when our Union President went out and contacted Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, the ex-governor of California, and told him that we the 16,000 members of the Air traffic controller’s union would campaign to get him elected if he would just promised to do one thing. The union had tried to get the retirement system for air traffic controllers changed because the stress wore heavily on their ability as they aged. The Union had spent millions of dollars literally bribing the right Senators and Representatives to get a bill introduced that would change the retirement system for air traffic controllers. All was asked of Reagan was that he not interfere or veto the bill once it is introduced as part of the next contract. According to our Union President Reagan agreed to this. Reagan came to office in 1980 and the next year our contract came up for renewal. We were excited that a change in the retirement was on the horizon. Reagan came out and said “Here is $43,000,000 dollars, do with it what you want, and that is all you are getting for your contract.” Money was not an issue as far as we were concerned; we wanted a change in the retirement plan. But when we threatened a strike President Reagan pointed to the $43,000.000 and said something how greedy we were in typical political bullshit. He did not even mention the retirement change. Even if we had wanted a pay raise, $43,000,000 divided among 16,000 people for the length of the contract which was three years would have meant a raise of about 53 cents an hour. That made it a matter of honor, so we sent on strike and was fired. It probably saved my life getting out of that business because counting my time in the Air Force I had been doing it for 25 years and I was pretty much worn out anyway. But all of this just goes to show you that any politician will lie and betray and then point to the other person as the villain just to make himself appear the good guy, Ronald Reagan included, may he not rest in peace.



1864    US Admiral David Farragut had been tasked with the capture of Mobile Bay and the city of Mobile, Alabama. On this day he arranged his ships in two columns out in the Gulf of Mexico and then turned into the mouth of Mobile Bay. The Confederates had a well armed fort on either side of the entrance to the bay. They were Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines. Farragut sent four ironclad ships to lead the way. When the two forts opened fire, one of Farragut’s ironclads “The Tecumseh” went to the bottom within minutes. The ships behind began to run around in confusion until Admiral Farragut supposedly signaled “Damn the torpedoes (artillery), full speed ahead” and the ships fell back into line and kept going into the bay. Farragut’s quote during this battle is suspect at best, but the US Navy succeeded in capturing Mobile Bay and the city of Mobile, Alabama. The US fleet did not escape totally unscathed except for the “Tecumseh”, several US ships were destroyed or ran aground but the victory was Farragut’s.



1936    Earlier in this year, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was grilled by a congressional committee and was criticized because he had never made an arrest himself. Well, old Edgar had an ego the size of Montana and he went on a mission to arrest a well known criminal personally. The agency had already captured or killed some on the most famous criminals in American history like John Dillinger, “Machine Gun” Kelly, “Ma” Barker and her sons so Hoover decided it would be Alvin Karpis. He was number one on the FBI most wanted list. Alvin’s prime game was kidnapping and collecting a ransom but he was not above assault and battery and even murder. Hoover sent a task force to locate the elusive Alvin. They used every thing at their disposal including letting other criminals out of jail if they would give them information on Alvin, or making outright bribes. They tracked Alvin through a series of “safe” houses which was mostly whorehouses in Illinois and Arkansas. Finally they were able to track Alvin down to a whorehouse in New Orleans. The task force surrounded the house and waited for Hoover to arrive. Hoover arrived and hid in an alley while the agents took Alvin down and made sure he was unarmed and then that scion of bravery, J. Edgar Hoover steps out and makes the arrest and puts on the handcuffs while the newspapers were there in force to take photos at Hoover’s behest. On this date Alvin Karpis steps foot in Alcatraz and there he is to stay until 1969 when he is paroled and deported to Canada. He died there 10 years later.



1953    On this date ex-Texas Ranger Ira Aten dies at his home in Burlingame, California at the age of 89. At the age of 13 Ira and his family had moved to a farm in the central Texas town of Round Rock. This was on the outer edge of the western frontier at the time and Ira had to learn the law of the west first hand. His father was a Methodist minister and attended to the burial of more than one outlaw that was killed by vigilante groups. He became very handy with his fists, hand guns and was a crack shot with a rifle. At the age of 20 he joined the Texas Rangers and was assigned a territory on the Rio Grande River where much cattle rustling happened headed both north and south. He got into several gunfights but always came away unhurt. He was then sent to the west Texas frontier that was considered to be more peaceful. While there he met up with an outlaw named Judd Roberts and tried to arrest him but Roberts wanted to fight so Aten shot Roberts in the gun hand but Roberts escaped. Aten met up with Roberts again and tried to arrest him but Roberts again wanted to fight so Aten shot him in the leg but Roberts escaped anyway. Finally, Aten meets Roberts a third time and did not try to arrest him; he put a bullet into Roberts’s sternum killing him instantly. Aten finally got out of law enforcement and became a supervisor on the enormous XIT Texas ranch. Even then he had to deal with cattle rustlers. He finally moved to Burlingame with his five children and lived out the rest of his days in serenity. He was one of the last to have lived in the legendary “wild west”.



Born today:



1961 US comic writer Liz Winstead. When speaking of Jerry Lewis she said “The train of bitterness stopped at his station years ago.”



Died today:



1895 German philosopher Frederick Engels. He said “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory”.



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow