Monday

                             Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“A lot of actors end up going to therapists, I go to Utah.”

Robert Redford

Trivia question of the day:

How many Russians were killed in WWII? Answer at the end of the blog.

                        This Date in History July 23

1967 There was an area in inner city Detroit called Virginia Park on 12^th street. At this point in time there were about 80,000 blacks crammed into about 460 acres living in rat infested absolute squalor. The only white faces seen were shop owners that commuted in to run their businesses. A black man named William Scott ran an illegal after-hours club in the “community center”. At 3:30am on this date, the Detroit police raided Scott’s club. The people that were in there (about 80) were reluctant to leave and the police called in some paddy-wagons and began arrested the patrons. A crowd began to gather on the sidewalk outside the club and some harsh words were thrown at the cops. Then there was a bottle broken on the sidewalk, and then another and soon the cops were under an all out attack and a riot was under way. The cops beat a hasty retreat and thousands of others spilled out into the streets and wholesale looting began. About 6:00am a fire was detected in one of the buildings and soon the whole block was aflame. The riot spread like wildfire and there was nothing the Detroit police could do to stop it. When firemen showed up to fight the fire, they were shot at by snipers and had their fire hoses cut. Finally the mayor of Detroit called Governor George Romney and asked for help and he sent in the National Guard. Even these troops were over their head and Governor Romney asked for federal help from the President, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson sent in the long suffering 82^nd Airborne who began patrolling the streets in armored vehicles but that did not stop it, the riot had spread to a very large area. Finally after 4 days of unabated riots, things began to calm down. The tally was 46 killed, 324 wounded, 7,000 arrested and 5,000 homeless. It was the worst riot in the United States in 100 years. I don’t really get it. Why burn down your own town? But I have never had to live in rat infested absolute squalor.

1878 On this date a highway bandit known as “Black Bart” stopped and robbed a stage coach in California. It was Bart’s style to wear a flour sack with eye holes cut in it on his head and did not speak in a threatening manner. He took the strong box containing $400 and a diamond watch and ring from one of the passengers. The strong box with a note inside was recovered by law enforcement. The note read:

“Here I lay me down to sleep

To await the coming morrow,

Perhaps success, perhaps defeat

And everlasting sorrow,

Yet come what will, I’ll try it once

My condition can’t be worse,

And if there is money in that box,

‘Tis money in my purse.”

This was not the first time that Bart had robbed a stage of the strong box and left a poem but it was the last time that he got away with it. On his next heist he retrieved over $4,000 from the strong box but he mistakenly dropped a handkerchief. The cops found a laundry mark on it and traced it to an elderly man named Charles Bolton living in San Francisco. He was arrested but bristled when the police called him a “ruthless robber”. Bolton emphatically insisted that he was a gentleman that had gotten used to living the high life. He did a short stretch in the slammer and was paroled because of his age. He spent the rest of his days relaxing in Nevada.

1917 On this date Della Sorenson kills her first of seven victims when she poisons her sister-in-law’s infant daughter. Over the next seven years friends, relatives and acquaintances die under mysterious circumstances. Her next victim was her mother-in-law who was also poisoned as they all were. She did not stop there; she poisoned her own daughter and then her husband. Waiting only 4 months, Della re-married and moved to Dannebrog, Nebraska. Shortly after this she was visited by a former sister-in-law and her infant child. You guessed it; Della fed that baby poisoned candy and he died. The same sister-in-law came back a year later with another baby. She was obviously oblivious to what Della was up to. Della fed this baby poison but it just got sick and recovered. The same thing happened to her second husband; he was poisoned and was sickened but recovered. She delivered a daughter of her own and when the child was one year old, Della poisoned and killed her. The police finally figured out that all these deaths were not a coincidence and arrested Della. She confessed and said “I really like going to funerals, I like to see people die.” The police and the justice system in their wisdom figured that Della was a fruit cake and she spent the rest of her days in an asylum. While there she tried to get the prison officials to get her some rat poison.

Born today:

1888 US writer Raymond Chandler. He was the author of only seven novels but was enormously popular. He invented a hard nosed private detective named Phillip Marlowe and most of his novels included the Marlowe character. One Marlowe’s famous lines was “She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.” I think I know this woman.

1912 British actor Michael Wilding. He said “You can always tell an actor by the glazed look in their eyes when the conversation wanders away from them.” Then that must mean that most of the people I have seen in “Richard’s” the biker bar near Mount Pleasant are actors because they have a glazed look in their eyes but I think it ain’t because of their egos.

1973 Cigar model and all around good egg, Monica Lewinsky. When speaking of alleged friend Linda Tripp she said “She can reconstruct her face, hair and body but she is still revolting to me.” Monica left the Clinton White House as a living legacy.

2001 Award winning author, photographer and died in the wool Mississippian Eudora Welty. She said “Never think you have seen the last of anything.” Say it isn’t so, Eudora. Think of when Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Diane Feinstein and Lindsay Graham, et al are gone, for crying out loud.

Answer to the trivia question:

There were at least 11 million Russian soldiers killed and between 7 and 20 million civilians (dependent upon which historian you read) killed or died from exposure, famine and disease during the German onslaught.

              Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow