Musings
and History
Quote
of the day:
“We
have not eaten not drank for five days. Our weapons have been
destroyed. But out spirit is good and we will mount out final attack
tonight. May Japan exist for 1,000 years.”
This
intercepted message was sent by General Kuribayashi the Japanese
commander on Iwo Jima. Sure enough General Kuribayashi led
a Banzai charge that night that was crushed by the US Marines.
General Kurabayashi's remains were never identified.
There
is a 60% chance of sleet and/or freezing rain here in the “upstate”
of South Carolina Friday. I hope not because our infrastructure has
no equipment to deal with this. We have no snow removal removal nor
de-icing equipment. The best that we have is the sanding of busy,
hilly roads with dump trucks. As usual there will be those
transplants from north of the 41st
parallel (Yankees) that will say stuff like “This is nothing, you
should see what it is like in Syracuse, it never stopped us.” You
have snow and ice removal equipment, jackass...and having the skill
to drive on ice and snow is not an asset I need or want, and no, it
does not “separate the men from the boys”. This is not the way
we southern boy prove our manhood, we do it in other ways and we
don't feel the need to prove it anyway because WE ain't worried about
it.
This
Date in History December 16
1773
On this night those wild and crazy guys from Boston known at the
Sons of Liberty decided to pay a visit to three British tea clippers
anchored in Boston harbor. The Sons of Liberty were not pleased that
Great Britain had maneuvered the tax structure trying to save the
British owned East India Company to the point that East India Company
had a monopoly on tea coming to the colonies. The Sons of Liberty
felt like they did not want to taken for granted and used so they
went aboard the three ships, the Dartmouth,
Eleanor and
Beaver
dressed as Mohawk Indians and threw all the tea aboard into the
harbor. The British authorities in Boston got word back to
Parliament in London and they about peed their pants at the loss of
about 1 million pounds sterling worth of tea. They immediately
passed the Coercive Acts as punishment to the colonies for this
outrage. The Coercive Act essentially declared Martial Law in the
state of Massachusetts; it also declared that English officers would
be exempt from the law and could not be tried for any crimes
whatsoever. The final straw declared that British soldiers could
commandeer private lands and houses if they felt like it. There is
no sense for me to tell you what effect this had on the already
hot-blooded Sons of Liberty. All it did was light even a larger fire
under altar of freedom and the Revolutionary War began in earnest at
the Battle of Bunker Hill two years later. This event was forever
known as the Boston Tea Party.
1811 The quiet of the afternoon in northwestern Tennessee near the
Kentucky border was broken by an earthquake estimated to be in the
7.5 range on the Richter scale. Some of the lands moved up or down
15 feet and the Mississippi River briefly reversed course causing
some of the nearby lowlands to flood. In one particular area the
water was trapped into a permanent lake and it was name Reelfoot
Lake. It is not often that we get to see the formation of a
naturally created lake but we did this time. Reelfoot is close to
the Mississippi flyway and enjoys a stopover to many thousands of
ducks and geese on their way south and north. It also holds the
distinction of having the largest number of nesting Bald eagles
outside of Alaska.
1944 With the attack on Germany from the east by the Russians beginning
in earnest the German army knew that with the attack of the Allies
from the west their days were numbered unless they could attack what
they considered the weaker of the two forces, that being the Allies
closing in form the west, and fight their way northwest and capture
the Belgian deep water port of Antwerp, they might have a chance of
being re-supplied and refitted and continue the war. They knew they
could not win the war but if they succeeded in this operation they
could negotiate a peace from a position of strength. After
stockpiling troops, artillery, tanks and other tools of war
undetected in the Belgian Ardennes Forest over a period of months,
on this morning the Germans launched a three pronged attack during a
snowstorm. The battle line was about 50 miles long with the center
prong led by a ruthless German Tank commander named Joachim Pieper.
The Germans enjoys initial success and drove through the unsuspecting
American troops with ease until they had pushed out about 60 miles
and had encircled the important transportation center of Bastogne,
Belgium that was defended by 18,000 members of the 101st
Airborne and the 10th
artillery. The troops held out in spite of constant German artillery
barrages from every direction and attempted attacks with infantry
without success. On December 22 The German commander asked for a
truce and brought a surrender request to the Commander of the 101st
named Major General Anthony McAuliffe telling him surrender or risk
annihilation. McAuliffe sent back one word “Nuts”. The German
officer had to get an interpretation of what it meant and was told
that it meant “kiss my ass”. During all this time the skies had
never cleared so the Allied air superiority could have its effect.
On the next day, the skies opened up and the Allied fighter bombers
fell upon the German tanks and artillery that had the roads choked
and destroyed them in place. On the day after Christmas a tank
column from Patton’s 3rd
Army reached the beleaguered town of Bastogne and the 101st
and the 10th
were “rescued”. The testy 101st
they felt they did not need to be “rescued”. They felt they
could beat the damned Germans alone without any help even though they
were nearly out of ammo, food and winter clothing. They insisted
that they were being “relieved” not “rescued”. General
Eisenhower assigned British General Bernard Law Montgomery to attack
the German right flank, US General Omar Bradley to attack the center,
and US General George Patton to attack the right flank and drive
those Germans back into Germany. They succeeded but it cost about
80,000 American lives, the worst loss for an American force ever in
one operation. The Germans lost 120,000 troops, 1,600 planes, 700
tanks. The end was in sight for the defeat of Germany.
Births and deaths:
1584
British jurist John Selden is born. He said “They that govern
the most make the least noise.”
1980
Colonel Harlan Sanders, the founder of KFC died. He said “There
is no sense in being the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do
business from there.”
Quotable quotes:
“My dog is half
Labrador and half pit bull. It bites my leg off and then brings it
to me.”
Frank
Carson
“I was trying to
daydream, but my mind kept wandering”.
Steven
Wright
“I never had any
trouble with drugs, only policemen.”
Keith
Richard
You
know you drank too much the night before when you wake up with crop
circles in your pubic hairs.”
Doug
Benson
Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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