Wednesday

                         Musings and History

Quotes of the day:

“It is no use in saying ‘We are doing our best’. You have to succeed at what is necessary.”

                                             Winston Churchill

A while back down in Simpsonville, SC the neighbors in an apartment complex heard gunshots in one of the apartments. The cops came and could not get anyone to come to the door so they broke out a window and gained entrance. There were two people dead. One was a 42 year old woman and the other was a 58 year old man and they were known to live together in that apartment. The cops determined that the woman had died first from a gunshot wound and the male had taken his own life seconds later. It was well known that these two people frequently argued and fought. What I do not understand is why the man who was an apparent “cradle-robber”, even though I have done it myself, did not just walk away rather than terminate 1/3 of his life because of this woman. But it has been a while since I have been in love, so what do I know?

            This Date in History   October 25

1994 On this date a Union, South Carolina woman named Susan Smith called the Union County Sheriff’s department and reported that her car with her two small boys Michael and Alex aboard had been carjacked by a black man and that he had left her at a convenience store and drove away. In very short order, with the help of several other law enforcement offices including the FBI, there was a dragnet thrown around that area of South Carolina and an intensive search began. Nothing was found and after nine weeks the sheriff of Union County held a news conference and reported that Susan had confessed to killing those two boys by driving the car into nearby John D. Long Lake with the kids strapped into their car seats. This event came as a culmination of her tumultuous on and off marriage whereby both Susan and her husband had participated in several affairs each. Finally Susan found the man of her dreams but he did not want children and Susan saw fit to fix that problem permanently. It apparently never crossed that bitch’s mind to file for divorce and surrender custody. Susan was tried and convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. While in prison she was disciplined several times for having sex with the inmates and/or the guards. Her husband w

rote a book about his experiences during this ordeal and stated that he could not live a comfortable life while Susan was alive and wished that the court had seen fit to execute her. With animals like this we need to resort back to medieval methods of dispensing justice.

1415 Two months earlier Henry V of England and an army of 11,000 had sailed across the English Channel and laid siege to the city Harfleur, France. After five weeks Harfleur fell. During the five week siege Henry had lost half of his army to disease and combat casualties. Henry decided to head north to the French port of Calais and meet up his navy that was coming to pick up him and his army and take them back home. About half way to Calais he met up with a French army of 20,000 near the town of Agincourt. Henry chose to array his troops in a fairly small field that was bordered by forests. This would prevent any large scale maneuvering by the French. At 11:00a the battle was joined. The French knights in their newly designed heavy armor began an attack toward the English across a muddy field. The English responded with a barrage of arrows from their newly designed long bows that had a range of 250 yards. The French knights were so densely packed that many could not even raise their arms and the knights in the rear kept pushing. Even though they were in armor, the English had designed a type of an arrowhead that could penetrate it and launched wave after wave of the deadly missiles into the French ranks. Soon the French knights were just a mass of confused humanity slipping, sliding and dying in the mud. It was then that Henry ordered his lightly armored bowmen to lay down their bows and take up pikes, swords, axes and clubs and led the rest of the 5,500 man army into the ranks of the French and took care of business. The slaughter was fantastic. The French lost 6,000 troops in that one afternoon while the English suffered 400 killed. After this resounding victory, Henry was declared heir to the French throne but it was for naught because he died of a fever two years later near Paris. Henry V’s victory at Agincourt went down as one of the greatest victories in military history.

1929 Two years earlier the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, had petitioned to have control of the naval oil reserves at the Elk Hill in California and Teapot Dome in Wyoming transferred to his department. The naval oil reserves are set aside for the US navy to use in case of a war. The transfer did indeed take place and soon thereafter Secretary Fall accepted a $100,000 bribe from the president of Pan-American Petroleum to allow them to drill in the Elk Hill reserve and $300,000 to allow Mammoth Oil to drill at Teapot Dome. This deception was discovered and on this date Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was arrested. Fall was tried, convicted and was imprisoned. This was the first time that a sitting cabinet member was jailed, and hopefully it will not be the last.

1853 On this date US Army Captain John Gunnison and his survey crew of 35 were set upon by a war party of Piute Indians near Sevier Lake, Utah. The survey crew was trying to find a route for a railroad to get to the west coast. Seven members of the survey team were killed including Gunnison. His second officer, Lt. Edward Beckwith assumed command and continued the survey and did indeed find three possible routes. Beckwith and his survey party made it back to Saint Louis and reported their findings which went a long way toward the completion of a trans-continental railroad.

1944 On this date the largest naval battle ever fought began in the Philippines at a place named Leyte Gulf. It was also the first time the Japanese had used Kamikaze aircraft attacks. The Japanese had not been able to stem the western advance of the US navy using traditional means so they decided to use nontraditional means. They asked for volunteers to dive their bomb laden aircraft into US navy ships, aircraft carriers in particular. They had swarms of volunteers and on this day the pilot of a Japanese Zero aircraft crashed his plane into the escort carrier St. Lo and it was on the bottom in 20 minutes. This was the very first attack of this kind. In all the Kamikaze sank 34 ships and damaged many more in this battle. Even though this carnage was phenomenal, the worst was yet to come at Okinawa. But that is another story. In all there were 1,321 Kamikaze aircraft used in WWII.

Births and deaths:

1989 US writer Mary McCarthy died. She said “We must not force sex to do the work of love nor love do the work of sex.” Mary, you are making it far more complicated that it really is...isn't she?

                    Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow.