Friday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“We will not resist as long as no blood will be shed.”

Anonymous

The above quote was alleged to be said by a leader of a city that was surrounded by Genghis Khan and his mongol horde. Genghis Khan agreed and he and his troops went in and strangled everyone...but no blood was shed. On occasion he would gather children from a conquered city into an open field and trampled them to death with their horses. This was meant to be a deterrent to any other city that considered resisting. In the mid 12^th century Genghis Khan organized many different tribes in central Asia into one gigantic army. His troops went east and west and eventually conquered the largest area in history. His territory went from the Caspian Sea (Iraq/Iran) to the sea of Japan...that is about 4,500 miles. It is estimated that he had an army of about 250,000, all cavalry and no infantry. This presented a logistics problem. It is probable that each warrior had at least two spare horses meaning they had a hell of herd of horses to keep fed. In central Asia that was no problem because the grassy plains went to the horizon in all directions but the further west they went the smaller the grass plains became. They eventually ran out of grass to feed their horses and they were not trained to fight on their feet. The expansionism of Genghis Khan came to an end.

I read an essay about why people will go from one room to another and forget for a second or two why they went there. It is known as “portal consciousness”. It seems that the human mind catalogs events as they happened and in what surroundings. So if you go through a door into another room your mind is recalling events that happened in that room previously and is awaiting a continuation or a conclusion. It happens just for a microsecond, but it takes a conscious effort to recall why you went there...this also take a very short time but it does happen. I am glad I read this because it happens to me on occasion and I thought it happened because I am old...I feel better now.

Back in the 14^th century England one of the largest pastimes was falconry. This involved wealthy people going out hunting and flushing game birds like grouse and then send a falcon to kill or wound it. The falconer would have four or five falcons on the hunt and there would be a person with leather straps around his neck that held a round wooden rack down around his waist for the birds to sit on. This person was called a “cadger”. This word eventually was corrupted to “caddie”. We all know what a caddie does these days.

This Date in History April 17

1783 On this date British Colonel James Colbert attacked a Spanish fort San Carlos on the Arkansas River near present day Gillett, Arkansas. Colbert was accompanied by 82 British partisans. If you will look at the date you will see that the peace plan for the end to the Revolutionary War had been submitted in Paris weeks before. But it took weeks for the news to reach the Mississippi Valley. Anyway the fort was defended by Spanish Colonel Jacobo Du Breuill and forty Spanish soldiers and an unnamed number of Quapaw Indian allies. After a couple of hours of attack, the Spanish Colonel got fed up and ordered a counter-attack and opened the gate and out poured a swarm of howling Spaniards and Indians. The English troops had to choice but to retreat. Why was the English attacking a Spanish military installation in North America you ask? It was because the Spanish had sided with the Colonies during the Revolutionary War. Almost twenty years later what is present day Arkansas and a hell of a lot more land was bought by the United States from France in the Louisiana Purchase.

1961 On this date a CIA financed and trained “army” landed on the south coast of Cuba in the Bay of Pigs. Their intent was to topple the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Castro had taken control of Cuba in 1959 in a military coup. Almost immediately Castro began moving his government to the left and in just a few days he said that he was a dedicated Communist and began courting other Communist countries, especially the Soviet Union. In March of 1960 United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the training of an army by the CIA to be used to depose Castro. President John Kennedy inherited this program and when the CIA reported the army was ready, he ordered the attack. The only problem was that when the attack began to fall apart under a ferocious counter-attack by the Fidel led Cubans, the expected air cover never materialized because Kennedy would not authorize it. Nearly all of the invading army was either killed or captured. A very few escaped in life rafts but most of them died anyway from sunstroke and/or thirst. It was one of the worst debacles in CIA history.

1945 On this date United States army Colonel Boris Pash commandeered 1,100 tons of German uranium to keep it out of the hands of the Russians. Even then our scientists knew that they were just weeks from “Trinity” or the first test of a nuclear device in New Mexico and they also knew that the Germans were very close to inventing a nuclear weapon also. Our federal officials could foresee that Russia would be our next enemy and we did not want them to get a leg up on nuclear development from the Germans. It helped a little. We detonated a nuclear device on the New Mexico desert in July of this year and delivered the first nuclear weapon used in anger in August on Hiroshima. The Russians detonated their first nuclear device in 1952. After that, fear on both sides prevailed.

1815 On this date, after a series of thunderous explosions of the volcano Tamboro in Indonesia, things began to calm down only after the direct and indirect death of over 100,000. The first explosion occurred on April 5 and was the most powerful ever recorded. Probably the most powerful of all was the explosion of the volcano Santorini in the central Mediterranean in about 1,400bc but it was not sufficiently documented. Pliny the elder was on one of his merchant ships at the explosion of the volcano Vesuvius on the peninsula of Italy and sent his ships to rescued those that waded out into bay to try and save themselves from the hot fire and hot ashes: The ship got far as it could but had to turn back because the ash falling from the air was still hot enough to set the ships on fire.

1882 Austrian pianist Arthur Schnabel. He said “I pretty much handle the notes like any other pianist, but the rests between the notes, that is where the art lies.”

1885 Danish writer Karen Blixen. She said “What is man, when you begin think upon him, but minutely set, an ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, a red Shiraz into urine.” Hey Karen, stop drinking that rotgut wine and get into Maker’s Mark bourbon like the good lord intended.

1894 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He said “Politicians are all the same. The promise a bridge where there is no river.” That is a great observation, Nikita.

      Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow