Thursday

                       Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there with always be someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe that your critics are right.”

                                    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speaking of London, when I was over there a few years ago we went on a tour of the city that included the Tower of London, Big Ben, Parliament, etc. When asked what the most popular tourist site was, our guide said it was the torture chambers. People seemed to be fascinated by the tools of pain. Across the street for the Tower of London (a torture chamber and execution site for centuries) is a pub named The Drawn and Quartered Pub. I almost jumped out of the bus because I really wanted a tee shirt from there. To those of you that do not know what drawn and quartered means it is this: It is a method of torture reserved for the most reprehensible of criminals. The criminal is disemboweled carefully so they do not die, then each limb is attached to a Shire horse (Clydesdale) each headed in a different direction and then they start beating the horses. I will let your imagination take it from here.

80 year old Kenneth James suffered from dementia and wandered away from his retirement home and disappeared. They found him later frozen to death under the Blossom Street bridge in Columbia, SC. The temperature got down to 22 that night. I wonder how many homeless people out there died over that last day or two, especially in the area of Asheville, NC and north from there. I looked at the temperature in Black Mountain, NC that morning. It was 15 degrees but the wind chill made it 3 degrees. What exposed person can stand that for very long?

        This Date in History   December 8

1914 A month earlier German Admiral Maximilian Von Spee had sunk two British cruisers with the loss of all hands off the south coast of Chile. This was the worst defeat for the British navy in a hundred years. On this date Von Spee arrived at the British held Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic with the expectation of annihilating whatever British naval forces that were there. He expected to have an easy time with the slow and sluggish British battleships he saw anchored in the harbor. Von Spee’s squadron was not in peak condition because of the previous battle and the transit of Cape Horn enroute to the Falklands. What Von Spee did not see until it was too late was the two British fast cruisers Inflexible and Invincible. The British sailors aboard these ships were eager for revenge for the ships previously sunk by Von Spee. The two cruisers opened on Von Spee’s flagship Scharnhorst
at 16,500 yards which was out of the range of the Scharnhorst. That ship went to bottom with all hands in a matter of minutes. The British cruisers then turned their attention to the German cruisers Gneisenau and Nuremberg sent them to the bottom with all hands also. All told the Germans lost four ships and 2,000 men to 10 for the British. Military historians consider this the most important sea battle in WWI. It also has the distinction of being the last battle of sailors and their guns without the assistance of aircraft and/or submarines.

1980 Previously a maniac name Mark Davis Chapman decided that John Lennon is a phony and is going to do something about it. He tells his wife that he is going to New York and kill John Lennon but his wife blows it off as bravado. He goes to New York with a .38 caliber revolver and no ammunition. Once there he discovers that ammunition of that sort is illegal and flies to Atlanta to get ammo. After arriving back in New York, he camps out outside Lennon’s luxury apartment and waits. On this date, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono arrive at the apartment and Chapman walks up and pumps four rounds into Lennon. Chapman then casually walks back to the wall of the building, and whips out the book A Catcher in the Rye, and begins reading while waiting on the police to arrive. Lennon, bleeding profusely, is put in an ambulance and taken to a hospital but dies en route. We never know what kind of maniac is out there, do we?

1775 Earlier Patriot General George Washington had sent General Robert Montgomery and 1,000 troops into Canada via Lake Champlain and General Benedict Arnold with another 1,000 into Canada via the Maine woods to capture the cities of Montreal and Quebec. Montgomery captures Montreal almost without firing a shot but Quebec was another story. The Governor General of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, had been at Montreal but sneaked away to Quebec. Upon arriving at Quebec, Carleton whipped together a formidable defense and awaited the arrival of the Patriots. Arnold arrived at Quebec first and demanded that the Governor surrender which was denied. Arnold decided to wait for the arrival of Montgomery and the extra troops and artillery. The Patriots were on a schedule because the greatest majority of the troop’s enlistments ended on December 31. On this date, Arnold and Montgomery join forces and begin the siege of Quebec. The siege lasted until December 31 when Montgomery and Arnold, knowing their troops would be decimated the next day, launch an assault on the city. It was a disaster with Montgomery killed and Arnold suffering a severe leg wound. After this fiasco, the Patriots retreated down Lake Champlain into the United States and safety.

1860 On this date the United States Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb angrily resigned his position in protest of the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln. Some of you may not know this but the Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of the elimination of slavery in America. Anyway, Cobb goes back home to Georgia. Four months later when several state began seceding from the Union, Georgia being one of them, Cobb offered his services to the Confederate Army and was given the rank of General. It was Cobb and his brigade of Georgians that was behind the stone wall at the base of Marye’s Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. These Georgians rose up and fired at the unsuspecting oncoming Union infantry at a range of less than fifty yards and one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of the war was delivered. There is a county in Georgia named for Howell Cobb.

Births and deaths:

1542 Mary Queen of Scots is born. When she spoke of the lover the Earl of Bothwell she said “I would follow him around the earth in my underwear.”

1723 German philosopher Paul Holbach is born. He said “The hardest of stones, by degrees, give way to the touch of air.”

1889 US writer Hervey Allen is born. He said “Religions change, beer and wine remain”.

1936 US actor David Carradine is born. He said “If you cannot be a poet, then be a poem.”

        Thanks for listening  I can hardly wait until tomorrow