Daily history

Good morning,




Quote of the day:

“The other day I stumbled upon a case of bourbon. I stumbled for several days afterward.”

W.C. Fields



Last Monday night at about 11:45p three men walk into a Pizza Hut located near the intersection of Independence Blvd. and Idlewild Road in Charlotte, NC. When they came in they produced two handguns and declared that this was a robbery and inexplicably they began beating on one of the employees. Suddenly another employee came out from the back with a hogleg of his own and shot and killed two of the robbers. The third robber was able to escape which resulted in an all night search with dogs and helicopters with no results. It is believed that the third robber was wounded and will eventually have to seek medical help. No charges have yet been filed against the gun-toting employee and it is unlikely that there will be. From what I understand, if the robbers had just demanded money and left the shooter would have been in a bit of trouble. But when they start beating someone that means that there is an eminent risk of life and whatever action necessary is allowed.



Due to strictly enforced protection from poachers, the big game count in Uganda, Africa has increased by double digit percentages in the last decade. It proves that the immediate killing of invaders intent on doing harm has an effect. When Uganda is mentioned I cannot help but think of the previous dictator Idi Amin and his capture of about 30 Israelis and holding them as hostages many years ago. The Israeli military snuck into the airport at Entebbe, Uganda in a C-130 and rescued all of them. It cost the Israelis two deaths but Amin was kicked out by a military coup soon thereafter, with the assistance of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and the CIA.



This is going to be hard to believe but the insurance giant Blue Cross/ Blue Shield of North Carolina has stated that they will refund $156 million to their subscribers because of the Medical Reform Act. They had these funds in reserve but said they are no longer needed. They also stated that the planned increase in premiums of 7% for the year 2012 would be decreased to 5.4%. They also said they would no longer provide health insurance to an individual child or juvenile. The reason for this is that the advent of not being able to reject insurance coverage because of a “pre-existing illness”, it seems that some parents that do not have insurance at all find out that their child has a serious illness will go out and buy an individual policy for the child knowing it cannot be rejected. Those days are over.



Several days ago over in the small town of Chester, SC there was an argument in Club 54. The argument escalated into a gunfight in which two men were shot. A man named Dennis Chalk tried to take the wounded, one of which was his cousin, to the Chester Hospital which was walking distance from the club. At least three men followed Dennis and gunned him down in the breezeway leading to the emergency room. All three have been captured and are incarcerated even though there may have been as many as five involved. The cops are confident that they have the shooter. This was not the first act of senseless violence in Chester and the citizens had been raising hell with law enforcement to do something. Law enforcement in Chester admits that they have a gang problem. This last murder got the Chester police and the SCHP off their ass on the screws are being tightened. Who would have ever thought that a gang would set up shop in a town as small as Chester?



This date in history October 1



1908    The first model T Ford automobile is introduced. After months of struggling with trying to invent a car that is cheap and reliable, Henry Ford and his engineering staff finally arrived with design number 20 which was the model T for the 20th letter of the alphabet. Ford was able to control the cost of the car by controlling the cost of the material needed and a production assembly line which was unknown up until that time. He also controlled the cost by having the car in one color only and that being black. The downside of Henry was that he hired Harry Bennett as his “Personnel Director”. Harry’s assignment was to suppress any attempts at unionization and complaints from the employees. Harry did this by hiring a bunch of thugs and named them the “militia” and when union organizers came anywhere near his plant and a crowd of his workers gathered Harry would send out the “militia” to break it up by beating the shit out of anyone that resisted leaving. Henry Ford II came to be president of Ford, the first thing he did was fire Bennett.



1958    On this day the Kraft Television Theatre is discontinued. The weekly show began in 1947 and was a program with comedy or dramatic plays and a different cast for every show. Among those that were actors in these plays were Grace Kelly, James Dean and Paul Newman among others. Later on Richard Boone had his own TV show that had a different play every week but with the same repertoire of actors and actresses. I made it a point to watch this show every week as there were some dynamite plays and/or performances. The problem was that Boone had hired renowned playwright Clifford Odets to write the plays and one day Clifford dropped dead and so did the show. Isn’t there something about eggs and a basket?



1864    Confederate spy Rose Greenhow drowns off Cape Hatteras N.C. When the civil war broke out Rose was living in Washington, D.C. and being a Confederate sympathizer quickly became a spy for the Confederacy. Rose had a lot of parties at her house and invited politicians and military men for the soul purpose of gathering information. After the war CSA Gen. Beauregard testified that the reason he was able to rout the Union army at 1st Manassas was that Rose had forwarded him information about Union Gen. McDowell’s plans for troop movements. Bye the way, Gen. Beauregard and R. E. Lee were past superintendants at West Point. The US was able to track down Rose as being a spy and put her under house arrest but this didn’t stop Rose so they put her in prison. After a while in prison she was released but was exiled to the southern states. She then went to England and France and stayed 2 years trying to gather support for the Confederacy. She was aboard a British blockade runner on the way home when the ship was intercepted by a Union warship and forced onto a shallow shoal where the ship floundered. Rose demanded to board a small boat that was ferrying passengers to the beach. The boat capsized in the rough surf and Rose went to the bottom like an anvil and drowned because she was carrying $2,000 in gold on her person. Her body washed up on the beach the next day. Rose was buried with honors in Wilmington, N.C.



1944 Homosexual prisoners at Buchenwald, a German concentration camp are being castrated as an experiment. This wasn’t the only medical experiment tried at these dens of horror. Prisoners were intentionally given typhus, typhoid and smallpox among other diseases to see if test vaccines would work. The worst animal there was the camp commandant’s wife Ilsa Koch. It seems that Ilsa had a penchant for lampshades and gloves made of tattooed human skin. After the war Ilsa was tried and sentenced to life. After 16 years in prison she hangs herself. I wonder where she is today.



1890    Yosemite National Park is founded. The Park was named for the battle cry of the local Indians and that being “Yo-che-ma-te” meaning “There are killers among us”. The local honkies didn’t pay any attention to all of this and continued to rape the land as they saw fit as usual. It wasn’t until naturalist John Muir testifying in congress that the locals were running sheep on the land and the sheep were no more that four legged locusts that the US got serious about the stewardship of this magnificent Park and formed a group to oversee it and that being the US Park Service. Bye the way, cows bite off grass, sheep pull it up by the roots. Locusts indeed.



Born today:

1799    US Senator Rufus Choate. He said “Happy is he that has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading.” Reading opens up an ocean of adventure for the reader. For me it is like eating a piece of strawberry cheesecake.



1889    US religious leader Ralph Sockman. He said “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” See above.



1935    English actress Julie Andrews. When speaking of gossip columnist Joyce Haber she said “She needs open heart surgery, they should go in through her feet.”



1963    US baseball player Mark McGuire. He said “I mean
its unheard of for someone to hit 70 home runs, so I’m somewhat in awe of myself right now.” Hey Mark, it ain’t any mystery to me and I am not in awe. Everybody including the Pope knows you pumped yourself up with illegal steroids and human growth hormones. What a damned scam you ran on everybody. You disgust me.



1964    US baseball player Roberto Kelly. When asked about changing his name to Bobby he said, “It is permanent, for now.” Roberto/Bobby, shut the hell up.



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow