Friday

                        Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Last month I went to get a test for AIDS. The problem is that you don’t get the result for five days. I spend those five days in deep reflection. What the hell was I doing fooling around with all that skanky-ass I met in Miami, Cleveland, Milwaukee and many other places? What the hell was I thinking?”

                                                  Chris Rock

Trivia question of the day:

Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel...who was his opponent?

Answer at the end of the blog.

A while back a teenager near Charlotte, NC heard a knock at his front door but he did not answer. He looked out a window and saw a young man standing on his porch. The person on the porch waved at two other people in the yard waving them to go around to the back door. The young man was not happy with this and ran upstairs and retrieved a Samurai sword. When he got back downstairs the two at the back door almost had the door knocked open. The teenager charged them with his sword over his head. The two in the back ran into the street retrieving the third guy on the front porch and they hightailed down the street with the sword bearer in close pursuit. All three potential burglars were arrested. The young man said that he was fearful at the start but when they started running with him nipping at their heels he felt great exhilaration. I would have too.

Down at Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Florida two undocumented aliens were arrested. These arrests mean that a grand total of 40 undocumented aliens that have been arrested while working on an addition to the 7^th Special Forces building. This outfit specializes in “Black Ops” y’all. It is these soldiers along with the Delta division based in nearby Hurlburt Air Force Base that do most of United States covert assignments worldwide. It is disconcerting to know that they cannot keep undocumented aliens away from one of the most secretive military units on the planet.

         This Date in History   December 21

1761 Revolutionary War hero and hard-core Patriot Robert Barnwell was born in Beaufort, South Carolina. This boy joined his local militia at the age of 16 and was promptly engaged in the Battle of Mathew’s Farm on John’s Island near Charleston. During this battle young Robert received 17 separate wounds. He had his equipment taken from him and was left for dead. He was taken from the field by a slave to the plantation home of his aunt which was nearby. He spent several months in recovery and eventually rejoined his militia and was given the rank of lieutenant. Unfortunately, soon thereafter Charleston, South Carolina was captured by the British including Lieutenant Barnwell. Barnwell was put aboard the British prison ship Pack Horse anchored in Charleston Harbor where he spent 13 months before being exchanged. During the Revolutionary War, Barnwell rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After the War Barnwell was elected a member of the South Carolina legislature and was sent to Washington as a member of the South Carolina delegation to ratify the US Constitution He spent two years in Washington as a member of the US House of Representative and then returned to his beloved South Carolina and rejoined the South Carolina legislature. He stayed in the legislature along with serving on the board of directors of Beaufort College until his death on October 24, 1814. Strangely enough his son Robert Woodward Barnwell was a passionate advocate of South Carolina secession from the Union. His son was trying to tear apart what his father had spent most of his life putting together.

1861 Earlier in November of this year a United States warship had stopped and boarded the British mail ship Trent in the Bahamas and captured two Confederate representatives on their way to England and took them prisoner. On this date British Secretary Lord Lyon met with United States Secretary of war William Seward about this event, Lord Lyon assured Secretary Seward that the British crown thought of this act as one of piracy and was worthy of a declaration of war if the Confederate representatives, James Mason and John Slidell, were not released immediately. Seward took Lyon’s words to Lincoln. Lincoln stalled for a few days until he found out that there were 11,000 British troops on the way to Canada. Soon thereafter, Mason and Slidell were released and the US promised to observe the sovereignty of British ships in the future. Lincoln could not risk having to fight a war on two fronts.

1975 On this date in Vienna, Austria, a terrorist named llich Ramirez Sanchez led a group of fellow terrorists into a meeting of OPEC and kill three guards and capture 16 OPEC members. This was not the first, nor the last, act of terrorism committed by a man that had been labeled Carlos the Jackal. He made a demand for a bus and an airplane which the Viennese government provided. Carlos directed the plane to Algeria where all aboard were released, Carlos was born into a wealthy Marxist family in Caracas, Venezuela, He was educated at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. He chose a life of terrorism at an early age. No one really knows why he chose a life on the run but he was an accomplished terrorist. He had practiced his craft for over 25 years without capture, However in 1994, French undercover agents tracked him down to the Sudan and kidnapped the son-of-a-bitch back to France. The French government chose to not announce his capture for three years when finally he was put on trial for killing two French counter-intelligence agents in 1975. He got life without parole. Not enough, as far as I am concerned.

1866 In 1861 the United States signed the Treaty of Laramie with the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians ceding the Indians the lands that contained the Bozeman Trail, but soon after this treaty was signed, gold was discovered on the Indian lands and gold seekers resume using the Bozeman Trail once again much to the displeasure of the Indians in general and the Cheyenne chief Red Cloud in particular. The US Government not only allowed the breaking of the treaty, they built army forts along the Bozeman Train to protect the travelers. The most obnoxious one to the Indians was the fort on the Little Piney named Fort Phil Kearney. This fort saw very few days without some kind of attack by Red Clouds warriors. During all of this, the fort had to have timber for heat and sent out wood cutting groups on a regular basis. On this date, Red Cloud was waiting and killed all but one of the wood cutting crew. Red Cloud sent seven or eight warriors in view of the fort and when the fort fired a round of artillery the Indians ran away in fear….or so they thought. A Lieutenant Fetterman requested permission from the camp commander to chase down the Indians that had ran away in fear and the permission was granted. Fetterman took 45 cavalryman and 45 infantry and left the fort. Fetterman had instructions to not go out of sight of the fort but soon after leaving the fort Fetterman spotted 7 or 8 Indians running over the snowy hillside and chased after them. As soon as all the troopers were over the hill, Red Cloud and 2,000 of his warriors fell upon the hapless troopers and annihilated them to a man. Not only that, not one of the troopers was found in one piece. They had all been mutilated. Soon after this the United States decided to abandon Fort Phil Kearney. After the troopers left the fort, it was set afire by Red Cloud before the troopers were out of sight. This is one of the very few victories the Native-Americans enjoyed.

Answer to the trivia question:

Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow