Monday

                          Musings and History

Quote of the day:

When asked about what he was writing about he said:

“I am writing about things I remember, things that are happening and historical events that I am interested in...that is all I have. I can't make any more memories.”

                                               Al Campbell

I was watching an interview of Dave Barry, one of my favorite writers. He said “If I was elected president my very first act would be to lean on the medical community for them to find a way to get to the prostate gland other than the way they do now.” Many, many of us gray panthers out there know what he is talking about.

              This Date in History   April 24

1916    On this date the so-called Easter Rebellion erupted in Dublin, Ireland. The rebellion was headed by James Connolly and Patrick Pearse along with 14 others. After centuries of repressive English control who favored Protestants and past unfair and prejudicial laws against the Catholics, a rebellion arose. The rebellion was successful at first when the followers of Connolly and Pearse were able to capture the British headquarters and the central post office in Dublin. From this position Connolly and Pearse declared that Ireland was no longer a vassal of England and was free. And they were free, for a little while anyway, until the British army and Navy showed up and crushed the rebellion. Pearse, Connolly and the other 14 were rounded up and hanged. But all that did was to drive the Catholics underground and they established a guerrilla organization known now as the Irish Republican Army. The Catholics in Ireland had plenty to bitch about. It was almost an impossibility for a Catholic to gain public office. And a few years earlier during the great potato famine in 1846-1848 thousands of Irish Catholics starved to death while the Protestants survived with government assistance. Eventually all of Ireland became free and operated as an independent country, except Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is in the Northeast corner of Ireland and contains the ancestors of the Scot Protestants that were brought over by English King James I in the early 1600’s to dilute the Catholics in Ireland that had been rebellious for centuries. James founded five shires (counties) in Ireland and called it Ulster and imported Scottish lords and their tenant farmer and gave them the land which previously had been owned by Irish Catholics farmers and the Catholic Church. Needless to say, even more animosity was raised. It is that small section of Ireland known as Northern Ireland that is the problem. When the time came to vote to be independent the good people of Northern Ireland voted to stay under the wing of Great Britain which meant that the British army would on premises all the time there. The IRA hit the roof and there has been bloodshed between the British army and the IRA ever since. Actually there are two wars. The British army and the IRA and also between the Protestants (brought over to Ireland by James I) and the Irish Catholics and they have been squabbling ever since over who is going to hold political influence over the other. It has been this way for four hundred years and I see no end to it. By the way, Dublin was originally established as a waypoint village by the Vikings.

1781   On this date British General William Phillips accompanied by former American Colonel and now traitor British General Benedict Arnold along with 2,500 troops land at a spot on the James River with the intentions of attacking the Patriot encampment at Petersburg, Virginia. Fortunately the 1,000 encamped Patriots were commanded by that superb Prussian General Baron Von Steuben. Von Steuben knew he would not be able to hold his own being as outnumbered as he was so he began a slow and skillful retreat which gave the other encampments to time to deploy to the best advantage and Phillip’s attack ground to a halt, especially when he died of typhus a month later.

1863   On this date a German immigrant to the United States named Francis Lieber began writing notes about the treatment of prisoner-of-war. He had three sons, one of which joined the Confederacy and was killed at Shiloh. The other two sons fought for the Union and survived the war. After Lieber had finished his notes he compiled it into a pamphlet and presented it to US General of the Army Henry Halleck. Halleck was impressed and presented it to Lincoln and other officials of foreign countries. Lieber’s pamphlet became the basis for what is now known as the Geneva Convention whereby all signatories agree to treat their prisoners-of-war equally. It did not help in Vietnam because North Vietnam was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and not only that North Vietnam did not consider themselves at war with the United States, they considered themselves at war with South Vietnam and the United States was a bunch of mercenaries. They may have been right.

1945   In 1939 US President Franklin Roosevelt had a meeting with Danish physicist Niels Bohr who stated that he believed the Germans were on the right track for the creation of an atomic bomb in a few short years and Roosevelt heard the same thing from Albert Einstein. It was then that Roosevelt tasked US General Leslie Grove with assembling a scientific community in total secrecy to formulate an atomic weapon. Grove chose the remote desert outpost of Los Alamos, New Mexico and hand picked the brilliant but eccentric nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to be lead scientist. Oppenheimer’s politics was way to the left and he might have been a Communist but he had the brains to get this job done and hand picked a staff to do the research. Roosevelt did not tell his Vice-President, Harry Truman about the project for fear of a leak to the press. After Roosevelt died, on this date Secretary of War Henry Stimson had no choice but to brief Truman on the “Manhattan Project” as the project to build the bomb was known. Truman was coming home from a meeting with Churchill, Stalin and himself when on July 16 he got word that “Trinity” was a success. Trinity was the code word for the testing of a nuclear weapon. Truman knew that they only had enough nuclear material for three bombs and they had already used one of them in this test. Truman responded that Stimson was free to use the bomb after August 2. Truman had negotiations that would end on that date. The first nuclear weapon used in anger was dropped of Hiroshima of August 6 and on Nagasaki on August 8. The Japanese government surrendered on August 14. The nuclear weapon attacks had a lot to do with the surrender but the Russians preparing to cross the Sea of Japan an attack Japans northern Islands closed the deal.

Born today:

1862 English writer A. C. Benson. He said “I hate authority, especially someone else’s authority.” Me too, that is why I did not do well in the military

1911 US comic Jack E. Leonard when speaking to Ed Sullivan he said “There is nothing about you that reincarnation won’t cure.”

1934 US actress Shirley MacLaine. She said “I have been cast as a hooker so many times that they don’t pay me the regular way anymore; they just leave it on the dresser.”

                   Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow