Musings
and History
Quote
of the day:
When
speaking of Richard Nixon he said:
“He
is a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that
corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream.”
Hunter
“Gonzo” Thompson
The
astrophysicists worldwide are all agog because they have found a
solar system with 7 planets orbiting a red dwarf sun. This means
that some of the planets would fall into the “Goldilocks”
category. It means that certain planets would be the right distance
from the sun to allow the right range of temperatures and have the
possibility of liquid water, both are necessities for life as we know
it. They are also happy that the system is only 40 light
years
from Earth, a mere blink of the eye when it is compared with the size
of the universe. A light year is the distance that light can travel
in one year. The problem is the age of humans and time itself.
Scientists know that we have not developed any means of propulsion
that will allow acceleration to anywhere near the speed of light.
Even if a method was conceived that would allow 1/10th
the speed of light it would take 400 years to get there and 400 back.
1/10th
the speed of light is about 67
million miles per hour,
y'all. It also would take a hundred year to accelerate to that
speed. Time is our enemy. We will have to figure out a way to make
people live longer or put them into suspended animation otherwise
there will be 5 generations to live and die aboard the spacecraft
before it gets there. The length of time that a living being can be
put into suspended animation is not known. Einstein said it is
possible to manipulate the time/space continuum and travel in time
but no one has yet figured out how. Until we solve these
problems...we ain't going no where. Just remember this, light from
those planets that we are seeing now is 40 years old. The planets
and their sun may not be there any longer. If we send an electronic
signal to them it will take 40 years to get there. It boggle the
mind, y'all.
This
Date in History February 28
1784
On this date John Wesley established the first Methodist church in
America in colonial Georgia. Wesley was a devout Anglican but after
the defeat of the British during the American Revolutionary War the
Anglican Church abandoned the United States and Wesley felt that he
had to replace the Anglican Church so he devised the Methodical
Anglicans or Methodists. While in Georgia he became involved with a
religious sect mostly from Germany called the Moravians. This was a
turning point in Wesley’s life because he admitted that for the
first time that he felt the presence of God was at one of those
meeting that he attended. While keeping touch with the Moravians he
sought the advice of fellow Cambridge graduate George Whitefield.
While at Cambridge Wesley and his brother Charles had founded the
“Holy Club”. John Wesley’s teachings were not allowed in any
Anglican Church so he preached out in the open and over a period of
years he had gathered a large following. He finally realized that
there had to be more evangelicals than himself along with an
administrative staff. His only problem was that his new church had
no bishops. He was still used to the Anglican way of things where a
minister must be ordained by the”laying on of hands” by a bishop.
So John decided that he would ordain the ministers himself and the
first two were Dr. John Coke and Francis Asbury and as the saying
goes, the rest is history.
1864
US Cavalry Commander Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and Colonel Ulrich
Dahlgren are tasked with riding into Richmond and freeing the Union
prisoners of war. It was Dahlgren’s job to release the prisoners
while Kilpatrick provided cover. They had one additional job and
that was to tell every Johnny Reb they met that President Lincoln had
offered amnesty and restoration of property to those that would lay
down their arms and swear allegiance to the United States. To
provide a diversion two divisions of cavalry one led by General John
Sedgwick and the other led by Colonel George A. Custer would made
raid into the western parts of Virginia. On this date Sedgwick,
Custer, Kilpatrick and Dahlgren parted company and went about their
assignments. Dahlgren was supposed to approach Richmond from the
west and Kilpatrick from the northwest. Kilpatrick arrived of March
1st
with CSA General Wade Hampton III and his howling, wild-eyed
Confederate Cavalry hot on his tail. Kilpatrick knows he is danger
of annihilation and turns his young ass back north which leaves
Dahlgren cut off. In the mean time Dahlgren had hired a local guide
to take his cavalry to the shallowest part of the James River for
crossing into Richmond. The guide instead leads him to the deepest
and swiftest current part of the river. The infuriated Dahlgren
hanged the guide on the spot. Dahlgren had no choice but to
backtrack out of there knowing the Confederates knew he was there.
Not only that, by now he had found out that Kilpatrick had been
routed and he was on his own. Dahlgren’s cavalry was ambushed time
and time again on their way out and they were nearly cut to pieces.
There is no record of a Confederate soldier taking Lincoln’s offer
of amnesty and restoration. They were a hard-headed bunch.
1993
Earlier a squabble occurred between two people trying to organize
the Mount Carmel Church. One of the squabblers was Vernon Howell who
claimed to be God and therefore his children would be children of
God. The other guy said that to prove who should lead the church
would be the one that could dig up a corpse from a graveyard. Howell
nixed that idea and in fact went to the police and told them that the
other guy was out digging in graveyards. The police did not want
anything to do with a religious disagreement. Finally, the two
settle it the Christian way, they had a gun fight and Howell won so
it must be God’s will. Howell changed his name to David Koresh and
called his church the Branch Dravidian. They then buy a compound
outside Waco, Texas. One day a delivery man going to the compound
dropped a package and out rolled hand grenades. The deliveryman went to
the local police who then notified the Alcohol, Tax and Firearms
division. The ATF try to talk Davis Koresh into giving up his
considerable stash of weapons and Koresh refused saying he has the
right to bear arms. On this date, the ATF organized a raid of the
compound in which 4 ATF agents are killed along with 6 of the
faithful inside. The ATF backed off and a two month siege ensued.
Finally on one very windy day, a US Army tank rolled up to the
buildings, poked its cannon through the wall and pumped in a hell of
a lot of tear gas. The only problem here is that the tear gas
canisters can, and very often do, cause a fire. The building caught
fire and in that brisk wind it burns to the ground in minimum time
killing 80 of the occupants, men, women and children. There were 11
that escaped the inferno. US Attorney General Janet Reno accepted
full responsibility for the disaster because it was she that told the
commander of the forces surrounding the compound to get it over with,
“We have spent too much money on it already.” Indeed, Janet,
indeed.
1881
A section of the US Great Plains had been occupied by Utes,
Arapahoes and Cheyenne Indians with virtually no Anglos for
centuries. Then gold was discovered near Pike’s Peak in what is
now Colorado. Then one of many gold rushes was underway. The gold
near Pike’s Peak played out early and so the gold seekers kept
moving west to the Rocky Mountains and there they found more gold and
silver. On this date, the US Government decided that a new state was
needed and they took a piece of Kansas, Utah and New Mexico and came
up with a rectangular state and called it the Territory of Colorado.
Thanks for
listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
