Thursday

                    Musings and History

Quote of the day:

When speaking of David Lloyd George he said:

“He does not care in which direction the car is going as long as he is driving.”

                                   Lord Beaverbrook

Late this past Tuesday night the United States was set on a new and historic change of direction. We have a choice...1. Join together and play the cards we are dealt together or...2. Continue to wallow in your disappointment and self pity or beat your breast in your “victory” causing even more angst which helps no one. Lets move on, y'all...together.

         This Date in History  November 10

1775 The United States Marines were born on this date with the signing of a resolution by President John Adams specifying the formation of “two battalions of Marines”. The first amphibious assault by the Continental marines was led by Captain Samuel Nicholson against a British held fort on New Providence Island in the Bahamas which was captured by the Marines. The Marines consider Captain Nicholson the first Commandant. After the Revolutionary War in 1783 the short-sighted United States Congress de-mobilized the Navy and disbanded the Marines. However in 1798 United States shipping was harassed partly because of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. Not only that, pirates were preying on US shipping in the southern Mediterranean near the Barbary Coast (Tripoli) so the United States navy was resurrected along with the US Marines as an arm of the Navy. Now a days the Marines are divided into three divisions based at Camp Lejuene, North Carolina, Camp Pendleton, California and Okinawa. In these divisions there an “expeditionary” force. These guys are ready to go anywhere in the world and attack in force within two weeks of notification. The have their own artillery, tanks and armaments, etc meaning they are pretty much self contained. The US Marines have made over 300 landings in their history. As we all know, they are usually the first ones in and the last ones out. They are very much feared and respected by our enemies, as well they should be.

1865 Henry Wirz is executed by hanging. Wirz was the commandant of the notorious Confederate Prison near Andersonville, Georgia. After the Civil war essentially ended in April of 1865, the prison at Andersonville was abandoned. But the conditions those Yankee inmates had to live in was atrocious. They did not receive brutal treatment but the sanitation was so bad that many, many died from disease. As the war wore on Wirz received less and less supplies and medicine but the US held him personally responsible. The supplies and medicine were more sorely needed for the Confederate combat troops. What you won’t see is the commandants of the US prison camps at Columbus, Ohio, Elmira, New York and the most deadly of all, the prison camp in Chicago, being tried and hanged for crimes against humanity even though the percentage of deaths while in prison in Andersonville and these other three are all about the same, approximately 1/3 of the prison population never made it out. At his trial Wirz produced documents showing that he had repeatedly requested food and medicine from the Confederate Government the never came even after Wirz expressed fear of a Cholera epidemic. He was hanged anyway proving that they were not after justice, they were after revenge. It doesn’t matter what is right or wrong, all that matters is who has the power.

1926 Mrs. William Edwards showed up dead in San Francisco. Mrs. Edwards had been strangled to death and raped, in that order. She was not the only one that had been killed in that manner, there were nine others. The police finally figured it was a madman named Earle Nelson. Earle was a smoothie. He would go to a boarding house bible in hand and ask to speak to the landlady about a room. Once he got inside the door it was all over for the landlady. Earle felt the heat from the police and skedaddled into Canada and set up shop there. Pretty soon the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Mounties) discovered a trail of murdered and raped women all across Canada. Coordination with the American authorities who put the Mounties on Nelson’s trail and he was finally arrested but not before killing and raping an additional 11 Canadian women. When the Mounties asked if he was Earle Nelson and was it he who had killed all of those women? He said “Yes, but I only killed my ladies on Saturday nights.” Obviously Earle was a tent short of a campsite. Earle was tried and convicted and sentenced to death. He went to meet his maker at a “necktie party” in his honor in 1928.

1975 Two days before the merchant ship Edmund Fitzgerald had departed an iron mill in Wisconsin with a load of 26,000 tons of taconite (iron pellets) heading east across Lake Superior. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the biggest and fastest of all the ships on the Great Lakes. This puppy was 729 feet long with a crew of 29. On this night a storm of hurricane proportions roared in out of Canada. The merchant ship Anderson was following the Fitzgerald a few miles back and they were in occasional radio and visual contact. As night fell and the winds increased to over 80 miles an hour pushing up monstrous waves. According to the captain of the Anderson he had the Fitzgerald on his radar almost all the time then all of a sudden the blip disappeared and there were no answers to his radio calls. It was later determined that the huge ship had sank with all aboard killed. The ship was only 15 miles from Whitefish Bay and safety. The remains of the ship were found in 536 feet of water. The ship was in two pieces but that is no indicator of why the ship went down in the first place. That mystery will remain. The ship’s bell was recovered and is now in a museum on Whitefish Point.

1808 The Osage branch of the Sioux Indians ceded to the United States their lands in Missouri and Arkansas for settlers in return for a huge chunk of land in central Oklahoma. What the United States did not know was that that hunk of land was virtually afloat on a sea of oil and natural gas. Not only that, cattle ranches exploded with the arrival of new people and a railroad so the Osage Indians charged to let the cattle ranchers graze cattle on their lands while drilling for oil. As of this writing, the Osage Indians are the richest tribe in the Americas.

Births and deaths:

1867 US inventor Wilbur Wright is born. When he and Orville were at Kitty Hawk, Wilbur said “We can hardly wait to get up in the morning”. They knew they were on the cusp of a world shaking event. What a thrill it had to be when that contraption flew under its own power.

1889 Comedic genius Charlie Chaplin is born. He said “In the end, it is all a gag.” You lost me there, Charlie.

1922 English writer Kingsley Amis is born. When speaking of a fellow writer he said “He is chiefly of the faith in the sense that the church he does not attend is Catholic.” I know several people like that.

         Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow