Musings
and History
Quote
of the day:
“Johnny’s
life left him like a warm summer day. On a quiet night you can still
hear him say, ‘We are just a shooting star, a shooting star.”
From “Shooting Star”
by Bad Company
Trivia question of the day:
Who
was the only United States President to serve 2 non-consecutive
terms?
This
Date in History April 17
1783
On this date British Colonel James Colbert attacked a Spanish Fort
San Carlos on the Arkansas River near present day Gillett, Arkansas.
Colbert was accompanied by 82 British partisans. If you will look at
the date you will see that the peace plan for the end to the
Revolutionary War had been submitted in Paris weeks before. But it
took weeks for the news to reach the Mississippi Valley. Anyway the
fort was defended by Spanish Colonel Jacobo Du Breuill and forty
Spanish soldiers and an unnamed number of Quapaw Indian allies.
After a couple of hours of attack, the Spanish Colonel got fed up and
ordered a counter-attack and opened the gate and out poured a swarm
of howling Spaniards and Indians. The English troops had to choice
but to retreat. Why was the English attacking a Spanish military
installation in North America you ask? It was because the Spanish
had sided with the Colonies during the Revolutionary War. Almost
twenty years later what is present day Arkansas and a hell of a lot
more land was bought by the United States from France in the
Louisiana Purchase.
1790
He was born in 1709 in the small settlement of Boston,
Massachusetts. At a very young age he joined his half brother Jim in
the printing and publishing business there in Boston. In 1723 he got
into a cuss fight with Jim and went to Philadelphia to open his own
printing business. Benjamin Franklin decided he needed to see some
of the other parts of the world and went on a sojourn to London. He
came home in 1728 and opened his own printing and publishing business
with a friend as a business partner. In 1729 he gained a contract to
print a local paper money and he started his own newspaper known as
the Pennsylvania Gazette. From 1732 to 1757 he published Poor
Richard’s Almanac which was an amalgam of wise sayings, seasonal
time to plant or reap, phases of the moon, etc. but it was very
popular. As his wealth and prestige grew he became more involved in
Philadelphia civic affairs. He was involved in helping form a
traveling library, a volunteer fire department, police department and
formed an academic group that eventually became the University of
Pennsylvania. From 1737 to 1753 he was postmaster of Philadelphia.
In 1753 he became Postmaster General of the northern colonies. Being
deeply interested in science and technology he conducted several
experiments and made several inventions among which was the Franklin
stove, which is still in manufacture to this day, and bifocal lens
eyeglasses among other things. In 1748 he sold his printing business
so he could spend more time with his other avocations. He wrote
several scientific papers especially about electricity. He was one
of the very few American scientists that were recognized in Europe.
In 1754, the colonies decided to become united which was rejected by
England. In 1764 he went to London to plead several cases for the
colonies and when the heat of war began rising he decided to stay in
London to try and get a handle on the interests of the colonies. He
came home in 1775 right at the outbreak of hostilities. This man was
instrumental in so many aspects of the success of this great
experiment in freedom that there are too many to mention in this
short essay. On this date the soul of Benjamin Franklin departed this
earth. Just take it from me, this man is included in the elite group
of people that were in the right place at the right point in time to
our benefit and it cannot be happenstance.
1961
On this date a CIA financed and trained “army” landed on the
south coast of Cuba in the Bay of Pigs. Their intent was to topple
the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Castro had taken
control of Cuba in 1959 in a military coup. Almost immediately
Castro began moving his government to the left and in just a few days
he said that he was a dedicated Communist and began courting other
Communist countries, especially the Soviet Union. In March of 1960
United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the training of
an army by the CIA to be used to depose Castro. President John
Kennedy inherited this program and when the CIA reported the army was
ready, he ordered the attack. The only problem was that when the
attack began to fall apart under a ferocious counter-attack by the
Fidel led Cubans, the expected air cover never materialized because
Kennedy would not authorize it. Nearly all of the invading army was
either killed or captured. A very few escaped in life rafts but most
of them died anyway from sunstroke and/or thirst. It was one of the
worst debacles in CIA history.
1945
On this date United States army Colonel Boris Pash commandeered
1,100 tons of German uranium to keep it out of the hands of the
Russians. Even then our scientists knew that they were just weeks
from “Trinity” or the first test of a nuclear device in New
Mexico and they also knew that the Germans were very close to
inventing a nuclear weapon also. Our federal officials could foresee
that Russia would be our next enemy and we did not want them to get a
leg up on nuclear development from the Germans. It helped a little.
We detonated a nuclear device on the New Mexico desert in July of
this year and delivered the first nuclear weapon used in anger in
August on Hiroshima. The Russians detonated their first nuclear
device in 1952. After that, fear on both sides prevailed.
1815
On this date, after a series of thunderous explosions of the volcano
Tamboro in Indonesia, things began to calm down only after the direct
and indirect death of over 100,000. The first explosion occurred on
April 5 and was the most powerful ever recorded. Probably the most
powerful of all was the explosion of the volcano Santorini in the
central Mediterranean in about 1,400BC but it was not sufficiently
documented. Pliny the elder was on one of his merchant ships at the
explosion of the volcano Vesuvius on the peninsula of Italy and sent
his ships to rescued those that waded out into bay to try and save
themselves from the hot fire and hot ashes: The ship got far as it
could but had to turn back because the ash falling from the air was
still hot enough to set fires on the ships
1882
Austrian pianist Arthur Schnabel. He said “I pretty much handle
the notes like any other pianist, but the rests between the notes,
that is where the art lies.”
1885
Danish writer Karen Blixen. She said “What is man, when you
begin think upon him, but minutely set, an ingenious machine for
turning, with infinite artfulness, a red Shiraz into urine.” Hey
Karen, stop drinking that rotgut wine and get into Maker’s Mark
bourbon like the good lord intended.
1894
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He said “Politicians are all
the same. The promise a bridge where there is no river.”
Answer
to the trivia question:
Grover
Cleveland was elected President in 1885 but lost reelection to
Benjamin Harrison then was reelected in the next election.
Thanks for
listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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