Daily history

Good morning,





Quote of the day:


“If you had the choice of saving a drowning man or take a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and aperture setting would you use?”


Paul Harvey






Recently the South Carolina branch of the NAACP held a rally on the north lawn of the state capitol grounds in Columbia. There is a life size statue there. The leaders of said rally chose to build a blind around this statue where it could not be seen by the crowd that was going to assemble for a variety of speeches. After all was said and done and the blind removed, the press discovered that they had built a blind around a statue of George Washington. As you might suspect, the press jumped all over that and asked the rally leaders about it. The leaders lamely replied that they did not want to “offend” anyone. Who in hell would be offended by a likeness of the Father of our Nation? This great man gave a huge chunk of his life and health to gain independence for this gigantic experiment in freedom that includes you and me. The only reasonable conclusion I can come to is that the rally organizers did not know who George Washington was. But that is not logical because if they did not know who he was they would not care if anyone saw him. Or they did indeed know who he was and did not want to “offend” others by acknowledging the contribution this white man had made to the development of this nation. In any event, this disrespect of one of the most dedicated Patriots this nation has ever known by the South Carolina NAACP shows a lack of class and character. It sure changes my attitude about this organization. Patriotism and love of country is light years more important than political speeches by those representing about 28% of the state’s population. People that know me will tell you that I am no bigot, but after this display by those with no class, I think I know who the racists are. It is regrettable that I feel I must arrive at this conclusion but I can think of no other logical one.






This date in history February 15






1776    On this date the Royal Governor of Canada from his headquarters in Halifax has sent a letter to the British authorities in London that a traitorous bunch in Cumberland, Nova Scotia has sent an invitation to Patriot General George Washington inviting him to attack Nova Scotia and they would join in. The letter said that the people of Nova Scotia were fed up with being under the heel of King George III also. What really had them pissed off was that England was using Canada and Nova Scotia in particular as a dumping ground for a trash pile of humanity that England had no other place to put them. When the jails in England, Scotland and Ireland became full, they would send the overflow into exile in Nova Scotia. Not only that, any slaves that ran away from their owners and sought asylum with the British, they would send them to Nova Scotia. Also there were a considerable number of blacks that fought with the British as a member of the army and the Loyalists (Those Americans that stayed loyal to the King) that knew they had to get out of town when the Patriots prevailed. All of these people went to Nova Scotia. The blacks that fought with the British had a choice of a piece of land in Nova Scotia or receive free passage back to Africa. Many of these went to Africa and were instrumental in the establishment of Freetown, Liberia, a new nation. Anyway, it appeared that the locals in Nova Scotia were fed the hell up with all of the aliens and were looking to form their own nation like the United States and that is why they contacted Washington. George had his hands full with the British army here in the United States and could not pursue the invitation. But it just goes to show you that the dumping of aliens causes extreme tensions with the natives. Does that sound familiar?






1835    Alexander Stewart Webb was born in New York City. His Grandfather fought at Bunker Hill for the Patriots and his father was US minister to Brazil during the Civil War. Alexander attended West Point and graduated in 1855 13th in a class of 43. He taught mathematics at West Point and Florida before the outbreak of the Civil War. After the outbreak of the war he was sent to Fort Pickens, Florida. He did not stay long before he was called back to Washington and given command of an artillery battalion protecting the capitol. Webb’s first taste of combat came at the Second Battle of Manassas where he and his troops tasted defeat for the first time. The next major engagement he was in was the last day of the Battle of the Seven Days, the infamous encounter at Malvern Hill. In this battle Webb and his troops were victorious against the Confederates. They won this particular skirmish at Malvern Hill but the victory of the Battle of Seven Days went to Robert E. Lee but it was accredited to Webb that his artillery skills prevented the total annihilation of the US army by Confederate artillery. In spite of his obvious military skills he was passed over for promotion several times because of his association with General George B. McClellan who was fired by President Lincoln and that left Webb in limbo as a Colonel. Even some of his students at West Point became a General before him. He was finally promoted to Brigadier General and had command of a brigade in the center of the Union lines at Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge. At the zenith of the charge the 5th and 7th North Carolina crashed through the Union lines and were close to opening a breach that would have allowed the rest of the 13,000 screaming Confederates to pass through to the rear of the Union lines where General J.E.B. Stuart and has stalwart cavalry awaited. Had these two forces been allowed to join up the US army would have been destroyed and perhaps a different history of these United States would have been written. But when the battle at the front line reached a critical point, General Webb personally led his brigade in a ferocious counter-attack and blunted the Confederate advance and drove them back across the line of attack and back across the field separating the two armies. For this action, Alexander Stewart Webb was awarded the Medal of Honor. He wasn’t done yet. He was at the savage battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse and received a terrible head wound. I took him eight months to recover. When he came back to duty he was made an aide to US General George Meade and eventually went back to West Point as an instructor. He was made president of City College of New York and he died in Riverdale New York in 1911. There is a statue of General Webb at the spot where his brigade was gathered during Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.






1933    The President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt and the Mayor of Chicago Anton Cermak are walking together during a visit to Miami. All of a sudden a man named Giuseppe Zangara runs up and opens fire at Roosevelt and misses him but kills Mayor Cermak. Zangara is brought to trial on March 2, convicted and sentenced to death. On March 20 Zangara met his maker medium rare after an encounter with the electric chair. Keep this in mind when thinking of monster serial killers like Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling who spent 13 and 14 years and longer in prison before being executed. What’s up with that?






1942    One of the worst defeats in the history of British military culminates on this date. The British army was driven off the southern end of the Malay Peninsula by the Japanese General Yamashita and his 25th Army. The retreating British had a chance to delay the Japanese advance by dynamiting a causeway across a large inlet behind them on their way to Singapore, but the destruction was not complete and the Japanese were able to re-build in a matter of days and surrounded and began a siege around that great city. The British commander General Percival held out as long as he could but he ran out of water, food and ammunition and so he surrendered the city. There were over 130,000 allies captured in this disaster of which only a very small percentage ever saw their homes again.






1996    On this date during gut-wrenching storm off the south coast of Wales, the oil tanker Sea Empress ran aground and is holed and leaks 70,000 tons of crude oil. The Russia crew fought valiantly to secure the ship and stop the leak but to no avail. Sea going tugs came and got some lines on the Sea Empress. For a few minutes the Sea Empress was off the rocks but a critical rope broke and she went back onto the shoal. By then the ship was seriously listing and the crew was taken off by helicopter. There was no human fatalities but thousands of seabirds died in the slimy mess. All the British Coast guard could do was drop detergents and dispersants. The associated beaches nearby were still in a stage of recovery 10 years later.






Born today:






1368    Germanic Emperor Sigismund. He said “I am a Roman Emperor and am above grammar.” Siggy, shut the hell up.






1564    Astrophysicist Galileo. He said “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who had endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego its use.” This came as a result of a squabble with the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church wanted Galileo to teach want the Pope said instead of what he had discovered. The church prevailed under the threat of torture. I am going to repeat that. The church prevailed under the threat of torture.






1748    English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. He said “As to the evils of censorship, it is impossible to measure because there seems to be no end to it.” That is one of the main reasons for the establishment of the United States.






1912    English writer George Mikes. He said “British humor resembles the Loch Ness monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither one exists.”






1964    American comic Chris Farley. He paraphrased the famous quote by Erasmus who said “In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.” Chris Farley said “In the land of skunks, the man with half a nose is king.”






Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow