Thursday

                         Musings and History

Quote of the day:

After the arrival of the king Xerxes led Persians in Greece he encountered the Spartan hoplite (professional soldiers) army led by Leonidas. Xerxes offered him command of all of Greece once the Persians had completed their adventure. All Leonidas had to do was not fight and pay homage to Xerxes and he would not be killed. After telling Xerxes that he could never dominated his fellow Greeks and making an obscene gesture with his middle finger Leonidas said “I would rather died on my feet than serve on my knees.”

History tells me that the Obama administration is the most corrupt since Warren G. Harding.

Speaking of Hillary...not all criminals are brought to justice. A prime example is a man from Chicago named Frank Nitti. This man was an immigrant from Italy and at an early age joined with Al Capone as his “enforcer”. Over a period of years he maimed and killed scores of Capone's enemies but was never convicted of any of them. The reason was that the Capone organization had the local and state law enforcement in their pocket with either bribery or intimidation and threats. The federal government knew what was going on but murder and extortion is a local crime that is pursued by local authority. The FBI arrested Nitti and convicted him and Capone of income tax evasion and he did 18 months in the joint and Capone got 11 years. Nitti was released and assumed a position of authority in the existing Capone organization. One day nearly all of his staff was arrested and indicted on a variety of charges...Nitti knew he was next. One Sunday morning his wife went to church and Nitti began drinking heavily and eventually went for a walk. He ended up in a rail yard staggering down a track. For reasons known only to himself, Frank Nitti shot himself in the head twice with a .32 caliber revolver. The first shot just scraped his skull but the second was on target and he died instantly. He was 57 years old. He was not thrown off a tall building like is displayed in the movie Untouchables. He murdered and maimed with impunity for over 25 years. Yes indeed, not all criminals are brought to justice.

I have been reading about the history of the Comanches. For some reason before the beginning of the 16 century they were considered the “trailer trash” of the plains Indians. Then all of sudden they were a power to be dealt with. What happened was they found Spanish mustangs running loose on the Great Plains and were able to capture and break them. There were no horses in North America before the Spanish came. After this the Comanche quickly developed into a formidable cavalry. They took out their wrath on the other plains Indians for centuries of abuse, especially the Apaches, and systematically removed them from the southern plains where there were millions of bison. The Comanche had no permanent settlements and just followed the bison. The other tribes were partly an agrarian society and therefore had settlements and villages which the Comanches were able to find and destroy. The Apache became desperate and went to the Spanish mission in San Antonio and said that they wanted to become good little Catholics and contribute their efforts to the glorification of the king of Spain. The priests about peed their pants and asked them what they wanted. The Apache said they wanted a mission (church) and presidio (fort) of their own on the San Sabo river near present day Menard, Texas. The priests gathered up some slave labor (that's right y'all, slave labor) and set to building said church and fort at the designated location. What the Apache failed to tell the priests was that the specified location was in the very heart of Comanche hunting territory and they knew the Comanche would not stand for such an encroachment. They did not disappoint and after the buildings were completed and the church and fort were fully staffed, the Comanche struck. The results were 40 dead Spaniards that had been severely tortured and mutilated which was common practice for the Comanche. The Spanish were outraged and sent out a 600 man army looking to punish the Comanche. This is what the Apache had in mind from the first, someone else to kill the Comanche. They did not attended one service before the San Sabo river Massacre.

The bad part was that the Comanche were acknowledged to be the finest light cavalry in the world. They struck with lightning like efficiency and anyone chasing them didn't have a chance. The Comanche and their horses traveled faster and longer without rest, food and water that any of their pursuers. Nobody could do anything with them.

The US Cavalry found the solution. They systematically slaughtered each and every horse they found that was deemed as being available to the Comanche. Eventually the Comanche were without horses and it was all over. That is why there are so few wild horses seen in North America. At one time it is estimated that there was over a million wild horses in the southern and central plains alone.

                 This Date in History   July 6

1944 Ringling Brothers& Barnum and Bailey open their circus in Hartford, Connecticut. In those days the circus was under the “big top” or a gigantic tent. About half way through the first performance a fire broke out and very quickly the tent was totally involved and flaming pieces of flaming canvas fall into the crowd. Soon the support ropes burn in two and the center of the tent fell to the ground trapping many people. As you might expect, the crowd became panicky and chaos prevailed. Later an investigation revealed that the tent had been treated recently with flammable paraffin to make it waterproof. But the worst thing was that the fire was arson. Some jackass set that fire in which 167 people died and 682 were injured. 2/3^rd of those that died were children. Ringling Brothers agreed to a settlement of $5,000,000 in a law suit. The arsonist was sentenced to two terms of 22 years, the maximum at the time.

1976 Elizabeth Ann Rowe is accepted and joins the Corp of Midshipmen at the US Naval Academy, she being the first female to do so and graduate. It was only four years after Elizabeth graduated that Kristine Holtereid graduated at the top of her class. I used to have misgivings about this, getting an academy education and not having to go into combat. But nowadays women fly combat fighters and helicopters, etc. But, to my knowledge, they have yet to have a woman as a member, much less a leader of a Marine Recon team, a Delta Team, a SEAL team, a Green Beret team, an Air Commando team or any other hunter/killer unit. If anyone knows of a woman that is I am all ears, Demi Moore in “G.I. Jane” not withstanding.

1862 Mark Twain begins working for the newspaper Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada. Samuel Clemens took the name of Mark Twain while working for a San Francisco newspaper earlier. Twain wrote about the happening in the gold and silver mines in and around the territories but gained a great reputation when he wrote The Great Jumping Frog of Calavares County. After this he moved to Buffalo, New York and then to Hartford, Connecticut where he settled. He wrote Tom Sawyer and later Huckleberry Finn with great success. He became a globe traveler and wrote successful books about his adventures the best of which was Innocents Abroad. When asked as to why Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn became so popular, he said that the books made fun of the pretentious easterners which pleases the average person. He was an immense talent but his writings, being still brilliant, became darker after the death of his wife. It is difficult for anyone to write and essay without his thoughts and writings coming to mind, mine at least.

                    Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow