Good
morning,
Quote
of the day:
“There
is no doubt that it is around family and the home that all the
greatest virtues, the most dominate virtues in human society, are
created, strengthened and maintained.”
Winston
Churchill
Keep
Sir Winston's thought in mind when reading about teenagers committing
capitol crimes...or crimes of any kind for that matter.
Crazy
as Hell
Chapter
6
The
Howard Johnson hotel was 17 stories tall and nearly a block long.
There was no 13th
floor because of people's superstitions. The stairwells went from
bottom to top with a fire door at every level. The door was of heavy
gauge steel and could only be opened inside out. Essex ran up the
stairwell trying to get in to the guest rooms at every level but the
fire door prevented it. Several times Essex saw housekeepers through
the tiny window in the fire door and tried to get them to open the
door but all refused. He finally found one fire door that had been
blocked open with a rolled up towel and he entered the hotel proper.
On the 8th
and 9th
floors he went into several rooms and jerked the telephones loose
soaked them in lighter fluid, threw them under the drapes and lit
them off. A large scale fire resulted. There was a married couple
on the 9th
floor preparing to check out. The man saw Essex running down the
hallway with the rifle and attempted to stop him. Essex slugged him
with the butt of the rifle and down he went. His wife jumped on top
of him trying to protect him and Essex put the muzzle of the rifle
against her head and fired killing them both.
Speaking
of the National Security Agency hacking in on the communications of
our allies, this ain't the first time this has happened. Back in the
early 1900's Germany decided to conquer all of Europe and WWI
erupted. Germany was not an ally of the United States but neither
were they an enemy. Germany felt that they could conquer Europe as
long as the United States stayed out of it and indeed the United
States refrained from joining the fray until the disclosure of the
“Zimmerman memorandum”. In this memorandum a German ambassador
named Zimmerman sent a telegraph to the prime minister of Mexico
encouraging him to attack the United States. The German government
felt that if the United States was busy protecting itself from Mexico
they would not join the allies against Germany. The Mexicans wanted
no part of this and told the Germans “Not no, but hell no”. This
message was intercepted and sent to the United States spy agency of
the time. Very soon thereafter, the United States ramped up their
munitions and men and entered the war in Europe and Germany was
severely beaten down...for a while.
Here
is some good news. Madieu Williams, a defensive safety with the
Minnesota Vikings is from the African nation of Sierra Leone. Madieu
has taken it upon himself to build a school and a medical facility
where none had existed before. See there, there is good out there in
the world.
Here
is more good news. About a year ago down in Mobile, Alabama 29 year
old Michael Woolf and his wife got into an argument in their double
wide. Michael testified that his wife produced a pistol and aimed it
at him. He said that he was able to disarm his wife and during the
struggle the gun fired accidentally and their two year old son was
killed. Woolf said that he finally gained control of the weapon and
shot and killed his wife. He went on trial a week ago and the jury
did not buy his story and convicted him of first degree murder and
recommended the death penalty. The final determination will be made
at the sentencing hearing in a couple of months. It is unfortunate
that two people were killed but the recommendation of the death
penalty is appropriate.
This
Date in History November 4
1801
US Patriot William Shippen died in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He
was a member of the powerful Shippen family of Philadelphia that
could trace their ancestry back to the earliest settlements in
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. William went to medical school at
the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. William and his brother
Edward were successful physicians in Philadelphia and were
instrumental in the upbringing of their community. William was
present at the founding of the Benjamin Franklin Public Academy that
eventually became the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and served as
a trustee for 24 years. He also was part and parcel of the founding
of the College of New Jersey that became Princeton and served as a
trustee there also. Now here is where the fun starts. Edward’s
daughter Margaret (Peggy) Shippen flirted heavily with one John Andre
and his close friend Benedict Arnold. But Peggy chose Benedict
Arnold for a husband. Soon thereafter, Andre was captured at a road
block and in his boot was a document detailing the surrender of West
Point, New York to the British by US General Benedict Arnold for
20,000 pounds Sterling. When Arnold found out the Andre had been
captured he and Peggy hightailed it to the British warship H.M.S
Vulture
for refuge. Arnold was made a commander of a British combat unit and
fought against his countrymen for the remainder of the war. Andre
was hanged as a spy, as well he should have been. After the
surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Arnold
and Peggy fled to London where he died in 1801 in relative obscurity
and poverty with Peggy at his side. There are those that believe
that Arnold betrayed his country because he got his feeling hurt when
a junior officer was promoted ahead of him, but in retrospect I think
he needed the money to keep up the “high maintenance” Peggy in
the lifestyle that she was accustomed. I have a niece that is “high
maintenance” so I know what it means.
1928
The notorious gambler Arnold Rothstein is shot and killed at the
Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. Arnold was found at a service
entrance of the first floor bleeding heavily. He had been upstairs
playing poker with his friends when the shooting occurred. One of
the players was “Hump” McManus. A few weeks before, Arnold and
Hump had been playing in a poker game and Arnold lost a cool $306,000
to Hump but refused to pay saying the game was rigged. It was Hump
that invited Arnold to come and play in this game although the actual
murderer was never determined. After Arnold was found bleeding, the
police tracked the blood trail back upstairs to a room where four men
were sitting around a table playing pinochle like nothing had
happened. The cops went back down to Arnold and asked him who had
done the shooting. Arnold just held a finger up to his lips and
shook his head no and he was gone. Arnold was most famous for the
“Black Sox Scandal” whereby Arnold financed the rigging of the
1919 World Series. There is no question that Arnold was involved,
the actual players that took money and played badly will always be in
question. One of those was a man from Greenville, SC named Joseph
“Shoeless Joe” Jackson. He was banned from baseball for life by
baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Landis. Joe played around in
amateur leagues for a while but he eventually became too old and
bought a liquor store in Greenville. On one occasion Ty Cobb who was
traveling from Detroit to his home near Royston, Georgia stopped by
Joe’s liquor store to say hello. After Ty walked in Joe acted like
he did not know him and Ty said “Joe, don’t you know who I am?”
And Joe said “I know who you are Ty, but I didn’t think you
would want to know me.” What a sad tale.
1995
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated. Two years
before Rabin and his lifelong foe, Yasser Arafat, had signed the
so-called Camp David Accord under the tutelage of US President Jimmy
Carter. The accord stipulated that both sides would seek peace and
the PLO would recognize Israel’s right to exist. In 1994, Rabin,
Arafat and Israeli under Secretary Shimon Peres were awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize. The murderer of Rabin was a 25 year old Jew that
shot Rabin while he was walking to his car after a meeting discussing
peace in the Middle East. He shot Rabin in the leg and then in the
chest. He was arrested on the spot and said that he was glad he did
it because Rabin was giving away Israel to the Arabs. Under
Secretary Shimon Peres assumed the office of prime minister. I
remember seeing Rabin speak several times and he seemed sincere in
his search for peace and was a man of great dignity. His loss was
hurtful to us all.
1948
T.S. Eliot was born to a privileged family in Saint Louis,
Missouri on September 8, 1888. His family wanted him to become a
lawyer or a doctor and sent him to the finest schools in the world
including Harvard, Sorbonne and Oxford. He returned to Harvard to
study the Indo-European language of Sanskrit. After all of this
schooling he secured a job with Lloyds of London and moved there
permanently. While there he met the American poet Ezra Pound. Eliot
had begun writing essays and poetry and assembled them in treatise
named “Criterion”. He and Ezra Pound fed off each other for
ideas. He was soon recognized as the author of a new type of poetry
that changed the way poetry was written thereafter and every renowned
poet since then has been influenced by him. His first work was “The
Love Story of J. Alfred Prufrock”. His masterpiece was “The
Waste Land” published in 1922. He was recognized as the genius
that he was when he received the Nobel Prize for literature on this
date. Eliot died in 1965 but not before becoming one of the most
influential poets in history.
Births and deaths:
1898
US writer Eugene Field dies. When critiquing a poem titled “Why
do I live?” he wrote back to the author saying “Because you sent
this poem by mail and are not here in person.”
1918
English soldier/writer Wilfred Owen dies. He said “No lips are
so red…as those stones kissed by the English dead.” Owen was
killed in combat during WWI just a few days before the Armistice.
Thanks for
listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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