Daily history

Good morning,




Quote of the day:

“Michael Jackson looks great for the age of 44 but frankly, I think he has had some work done.”

                                        Jimmy Fallon



A few days earlier a 43 year old man named Wayne Ridge got into an argument with someone staying at the Sunset Inn motel near Gaffney, South Carolina. The Sunset is famous for “short term” use, if you get my drift. The motel manager came out and told Ridge to get off the property. Ridge did leave but returned about 2 hours later in the company of his 17 year old son Randall. They began pounding on the door of the man the elder Ridge had an argument with earlier. I a moment of stupidity, the man opened the door. Wayne and Randall grabbed the man and drug him out on the lawn and began stabbing and hacking on him with knives. At the moment the pounding began the office manger called the cops and when they arrived the Ridges were still on the property. The Ridges were arrested and the man was taken to the hospital to be sewn up with non life threatening injuries. This is not the first time that Wayne Ridge has been in an encounter with the cops at the Sunset Inn. Back in 2008 Wayne had picked up a “working girl” that was in the restaurant next door to the Sunset Inn, the restaurant was Mister Waffle. Working girls on I-85 in the Gaffney area do not have much to work with. Anyway, Wayne got an argument with the girl and commenced to beat on her. Fortunately for the girl, there was a cop inside Mister Waffle and he came out and tried to break it up. Wayne wanted to fight and on this occasion, the cop put Wayne in the hospital with help of pepper spray and a five cell cast aluminum flashlight. Wayne is a great example for his kid, isn’t he? Wayne got bail in the amount of $50,000 and Randall got $25,000, what a wonderful family.



Here is yet another adventure out my hunting and fishing memory album. I was in the Air Force based at Greenville AFB, Mississippi. Greenville is right on the Mississippi River and a lot of barge traffic stops there. At times the river changes course and leaves part of the river in its old river bed. These bodies of water are known as oxbow lakes. I decided to go fishing in one of these lakes north of town and headed to a fish camp located on the lake where I could rent a boat and motor. The lake was contained on the east side by a levee. The fish camp was on the levee and the road to the camp was on the top of the levee. There came a torrential rainstorm on the way to the camp and I had to pull over to the side of the road and wait it out. The rain finally let up and I pulled up on the levee and headed north. I got within sight of the camp but in one spot there was a rush of water crossing the levee from the lake over into a swamp that would have made the Okefenokee proud. I stopped and thought about it for a while then decided that I could make it if I went slowly. I got about half way across and my car, a ’51 Ford’, started sliding to the right and eventually rolled up on its right side and slide down into the swamp and wedged against a tree. It was a struggle to get the driver side door open and hold it open long enough to get out but I was successful. I crawled across the car and slid into the swamp where there was a lot of strong weeds and pulled myself up onto the levee. I really did not know what to do at this point. I figured that the fish camp had a phone so I walked over there and called a wrecker service to come and get my car out of that swamp. The wrecker said that it would be a couple of hours before he could get there. I asked him where he was going to take the car and he told me. I wrote the address down and talked with the camp manager and told him my problem. He said that after he closed he would take me out to the main road where I could get a cab. That left me with at least five hours to kill so I did the honorable thing, I went fishing.



This date in history January 24



1781    On this date the combined cavalry forces of the Virginian Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee and South Carolinian Brigadier General Francis “The Swamp Fox” Marion descended upon a 200 man British encampment near Georgetown, South Carolina. Henry Lee was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia and was the father of CSA General Robert E. Lee. Francis Marion was born on a plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina. Marion had been given command of the South Carolina Militia while the commander, Thomas “The Gamecock” Sumter, was recovering from a severe wound. The raid came as a complete surprise to the British and the Patriots were able to capture a large portion on the encampment including several officers and the camp commander. A month later “Light-Horse Harry” Lee was able to destroy another British unit on the banks of the Haw River in North Carolina. Lee’s unit was able to close in on the British without opposition this was because the uniforms worn by the Patriots were very similar to those worn by the British cavalry unit of the infamous Colonel Banastre Tarleton. When the Patriots were within sight of the British they waved greeting to them and kept it up until they were within striking distance. After this is was nothing short of a slaughter. The British commander, Colonel John Pyle, lost three fingers and the sight of one eye during the attack but was able to escape by jumping into a nearby pond and hiding in the reeds. To this day that body of water is known as “Pyle’s Pond”.



1956    Earlier a 14 year old black kid from Chicago named Emmett Till was visiting his great-uncle on his farm near Money, Mississippi. He bragged to the locals there that he had a white girlfriend in Chicago and was challenged to see if he could get one there in Mississippi. Emmett was the typical teenager and accepted the challenge. He went into the local convenience store and made a pass at a married white woman working there. A couple of days later the woman’s husband came home from a business trip and was told of what happened with Emmett. So J.W. Milam and his cousin Roy Bryant go to Emmett’s great-uncle’s farm and kidnap Emmett. I don’t have to tell you what happened next. They beat Emmett to death with their pistols; Milam and Bryant took Emmett’s corpse to the crest of the Tallahatchie Bridge, wrapped barbed wire around Emmett’s neck and the other end to a heavy cotton gin fan and threw them both off the bridge. The corpse was eventually discovered and Milam and Bryant were arrested and went to trial for murder. They were acquitted because the defense lawyer was able to convince the jury that the corpse was so decomposed that the true identification could not be determined. The prosecution produced a ring that was found on the corpse that was known to be owned by Emmett. The defense blew it off as being stolen. Anyway, because of the law of double jeopardy Milam and Bryant, knowing they could not be tried again, on this date sold their description of the murder of Emmett to Look magazine for $4,000. Emmett’s mother retrieved his corpse back to Chicago and in her anger held an open casket funeral that was attended by over 5,000 people. No other attempts to bring Milam and Bryant to justice but they both died of cancer a few years later. God works in mysterious ways.



1848    Earlier a Swiss emigrant to the United States named John Sutter had acquired 7,000 acres in Mexico owned California if he would swear allegiance to Mexico and keep those pesky European settlers at bay. The land was in the Sacramento Valley east of San Francisco. Sutter had ideas of creating a type of commune on his lands. He determined that in order to build housing he would need a saw mill so he hired a man named James Marshall to build one. The main water source in that area was the American River and Marshall decided to build his water powered saw mill on the south fork of the American River. He began digging to deepen the creek and in the diggings he kept seeing flashes of light off some of the flakes therein. On this date he gathered up some of the flakes and took them to Sutter who immediately took them to an assayer who told Sutter that it was indeed gold. Sutter tried to keep this discovery a secret and succeeded for a while but eventually the word leaked out and in 1849 the largest gold rush in history was under way. Sutter did not have to worry about the Mexicans any longer because Mexico ceded all its lands in California to the United States as a result of the US victory in the Mexican War. You would think that this would make Sutter very happy but by 1852 his thoughts of a commune had gone down the toilet and the oncoming gold seekers trampled his gardens and slaughtered his farm animals for food. He spent the last years of his life petitioning the US government to recompense him for his losses at the hand of the miners. He did not get anything.



1943    On this date the commander of the German 6th Army, General Frederick von Paulus, entreated Hitler to allow his army to surrender. Hitler refused. Earlier Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa which was the attempt to conquer Russia. There were three armies that departed Germany on this mission. Paulus was the commander of the central army whose main target was the capture of the city of Stalingrad. Upon arrival at the gates of Stalingrad he ran across a nut he could not crack so he surrounded the city and established a siege in an attempt to starve the people of Stalingrad into submission. In spite of millions starving to death, the city did not fall. Eventually the Russian army got on its feet and attacked Paulus’ army at its weakest point, the Romanian detachment. After breaking through here, the Russians swarmed around the Germans and encircled them cutting off their supplies. After the Russians had overrun his last airfield, Paulus knew the end was near especially since the descent of the worst winter in fifty years. A few days after the loss of this airfield, Paulus surrendered his army to the Russians, Adolph Hitler be damned. The Russians, remembering the people that starved to death in Stalingrad, accepted the surrender and gathered up the 500,000 half starved, half frozen Germans and sent them to prison camps. Of those that were captured, only 16,000 ever lived to see Germany again. Paulus was tried at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, but was released and spent his last days in East Berlin.



Quotable quotes:



“I go to see my doctor and tell him that when I get up in the morning I look in the mirror and begin to throw up. The doctor said that he did not know what was causing the nausea but my eyesight was perfect.” Rodney Dangerfield



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.