Monday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

The Allies had secured a foothold in France after D-Day and he was asked what he thought and he said “We have destroyed the German Navy and the Luftwaffe (German air force) but the German infantry dies hard.”

                 U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower

Here is an interesting story from Greek mythology:

A mortal young lady that was beautiful top to bottom had decided to channel her life in a direction that required her being a virgin. Her beauty did not go unnoticed by the most lusty immortal entity of all...the chief God Zeus. Zeus would seduce a mortal lady from time to time but this girl was surrounded by a wall with just a few windows. Zeus transformed himself into a shower of gold, flew into an open window and transformed himself back into his normal form. He succeeded in seducing this girl and her future was lost. Zeus's wife Hera was also immortal and found out about this tryst. She was furious but knew she could not fool around with the mighty Zeus so she targeted the girl even though she was innocent. Hera turned the girl into a “gorgon” and made her the ugliest being ever conceived. The girl ended up with pale gray skin and live snakes for hair. By now y'all know I am talking about Medusa. Medusa was so ugly that anyone that gazed upon her face would be turned to stone. She lived alone in a cave on a remote island but the sight of her face turning people to stone was weapon that the military could use with great effect. All they had to do was to move toward an enemy while holding up Medusa's head and they would either have to run away or be turned to stone. What eventually happened to Medusa is part and parcel of a myth about a hero named Perseus. I will pursue this later . This is to remind all men about the wrath of an angry woman.

Here is another case of what happens when you fool around with nature. Over in India many of their cattle were being infected with a mosquito-born virus. A drug was found that would counteract this virus. They found out that the drug was fatal to vultures but it was too late. When a cow died the first scavengers there was the vultures and there was a hell of a die off. This meant that packs of wild dogs became the chief scavengers and their population exploded. As a result the cases of rabies in the human population tripled. As the saying goes, it is not nice to fool with with mother nature.

This Date in History April 27

4977BC It is on this is the date that German astronomer Johann Kepler named as the date the Universe came into being. It was Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus that promoted the idea that it was the planets orbiting the sun rather that the Earth being the center of the Universe as taught by the all powerful Catholic Church. Kepler was correct in determining that the sun was the center of the “universe” but he was wrong in supposing the earth was created on April 27, 4977BC. Anyone can go out into their backyard and pick up a rock that is a million years old without a whole lot of trouble. Kepler was fortunate in that he was able to study with another genius astronomer in Nicholas Copernicus. Kepler also came up with laws of motion one of which is that the orbits of the planets are ellipses and tend to speed up when closest to the sun and slow down as they travel away from the sun. Another law was that ratio to how long a planet takes to orbit the sun as to its distance from the sun. Kepler was able to continue his research unhindered because he joined the brilliant Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague. Brahe died and left all of his writings and notes about observations he had made with the naked eye. Kepler became the chief astronomer for Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Kepler and Copernicus had been communicating with Galileo and found that Galileo had improved upon a telescope and Galileo had sent them instructions on how to make one of their own and indeed Kepler had a telescope made for him. Galileo was forced to recant any teaching about the earth orbiting the sun because the Pope did not see it that way and promised Galileo a life of torture if he didn’t recant. After the telescope a light came on in the mind of Kepler. It was Kepler that described in detail the operation of the human eye. Kepler died in Regensburg, Germany in 1630. Then 13 years later the sun rose over the scientific and mathematical community with the birth of Isaac Newton. Newton utilized many of Kepler’s theories in defining his own laws of motion that are still in use to this day. Even though Kepler made gigantic contributions to the scientific world, he was wrong about the age of the earth. Since the universally accepted beginning of the universe is the so-called “Big Bang” theory, Kepler was only off by about 13.7 billion years.

1865    Just a few days after the end of the Civil War one of the worst marine disasters in history occurs. The steamboat Sultana had departed New Orleans headed for Cairo, Illinois via the Mississippi River. The Captain of the ship was offered money per person by the US Army to take Union soldiers that were in the south at the end of the war, especially those poor souls that endured the Andersonville Prison, back up north an let them off in Cairo. The Captain saw dollar signs and began loading more and more soldiers aboard his vessel at each stop. After a while he was more than doubly overloaded. His chief mechanic came and told the Captain that the steam boiler had a leak in the plating and they needed to stop, bleed off the steam and make repairs. The Captain could not see anything but dollar signs and ordered a temporary repair and he continued up the river. The temporary repair was made and on they went with about 2,100 people aboard on a boat made for 1,100 passengers and crew. Just above Memphis the Sultana’s boiler exploded and all but 400 are either scalded to death in the steam or drown in the swift river which was just under flood stage after heavy rains. Nearly all of the victims were Union soldiers from Andersonville prison.

Born today:

1822 US General Ulysses Grant. He said “I only know two tunes, one is ‘Yankee Doodle’ and the other one isn’t.” Grant was successful because he knew he could win a war of attrition, the other generals before him did not realize this.

                    Thanks for listening    I can hardly wait until tomorrow