Wednesday

                             Musing and History

Quote of the day:

“Music hath the charm to soothe the savage beast, but bring a .357 revolver with you just in case.”

                                                    Josh Billings

Trivia question of the day:

In the movie “Ben Hur” he ended up as a galley slave on a Roman warship, who played the captain of that ship? Answer at the end of the blog.

Here is another event that shows I am here for a reason:

I was a based in Greenville, Mississippi while in the USAF. That base has since closed. Greenville is on the Mississippi river and has docks and piers. Just north of Greenville is an oxbow lake. It is a lake that was formed when the river changed course and was full of pan fish like shell cracker and bream. I decided to go fishing and headed out for a fish camp that was on a levee bordering the lake. I was driving my '51 Ford. While on the levee headed north a ferocious thunderstorm arose and it rained harder than I had ever seen before or since. The water in the lake rose rapidly and was running across the levee into a swamp. I stopped before I reached the overflow and took a look. It did not look that bad to me so I decided to cross. I was wrong and it washed me and my '51 off the road into the swamp. The car was on its right side nose down and was filling with water rapidly. Somehow I was able to get the driver side door open and crawl back up the levee to the top. I should have been killed for being so stupid. The fish camp was in sight and I walked up there and explained the situation to one of the people there. They called a wrecker and found out I had a long wait...so I went fishing.

                       This Date in History   March 6

1857 On this date the United States Supreme Court handed down one of the most infamous decisions ever made in the history of jurisprudence. It seems that a US Army doctor had a slave name Dred Scott that traveled with him on his various military assignments. Two of these assignments were in state of Illinois and the Territory of Wisconsin. These two were “free” states by what was called “popular sovereignty”. Popular sovereignty meant that before a state or a territory could become part of the United States they had a vote of the residents to whether they wanted to be a “free” state or a “slave” state. Both Illinois and Wisconsin had voted to be Free states. Dred Scot sued that since he had lived as a resident of both states he should be granted his freedom. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the United States Constitution did not recognize Negroes as human beings and therefore Dred Scot would remain the property of the US Army officer, popular sovereignty not withstanding and on top of that there were many free blacks already living in Illinois and Wisconsin. Well, all this did was throw fuel to the fire of secession and Civil War which erupted 4 years later. The Supreme Court had been stacked with five southerners along with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney being a supporter of slavery. This decision threw a big monkey wrench into the Republican Party whose only reason for its existence was the abolition of slavery. About this time Kansas and its next door neighbor Missouri entered the Union with Kansas being a free state and Missouri being a slave state. Everyone knew that trouble would be a-brewing there pretty soon. They were right.

1951 The espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg began on this day. Julius and Ethel were nuclear scientists at the Los Alamos nuclear Laboratory where atomic bombs were formulated. During the “Red Scare” days where the US government feared that there was a communist saboteur/spy behind every tree, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were fired for being Communists as indeed Julius was. Julius and Ethel in their anger got together with a machinist in the laboratory name David Greenglass and recruited him to be a “mule” smuggling atomic secrets out of the Laboratory and sell them to the Russians. The Rosenbergs had already made the deal with the Russians through a Russian named Martin Sobell. Greenglass in turn hired a man named Harry Gold to make the actual exchange of the secrets for the money. The trial lasted nearly a month and ended with all four being convicted. The Rosenbergs got the death penalty even though they could not be accused of treason because we were not at war with the Russians. Sobell got thirty years and Greenglass got fifteen. Soon after all of this Russia detonated its first nuclear device and acknowledged that they had constructed the weapon with information partially provided by the Rosenbergs. The Rosenbergs were offered life in prison if they would confess; they did not and fulfilled their destiny with a visit to “Old Sparky” and went to meet their maker extra crispy.

1475 On this date one of the greatest creative geniuses in history is born. Michelangelo Buanorrati is born in the small Italian town of Caprese. His father was a minor government official and had close ties with the powerful Italian Medici family. The Medici family was famous sponsors of the arts, especially in Florence. Michelangelo became an artist’s apprentice at the age of 13. He spent two years in the Medici palace studying sculpture under the master sculptor Bertoldo de Giovanni and also studied the Medici family collection of other Italian sculptures. He eventually grew into the genius that we all recognized today. His first major creation was the sculpture “Pieta” in marble showing a dead Jesus lying across the lap of his mother Mary. This work was commissioned by the French ambassador to the Holy See, Michelangelo was 24 years old. But I guess his most famous works were the statue of David and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Both of which were commissioned by Pope Julius II. There is little question that painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was by far the most difficult. Not only did he have to paint lying on his back, he had to had to paint his creations in the correct proportions on a curved surface, no easy trick. The majority of the Sistine Chapel was a dome. Michelangelo was very prodigious in anything he attempted, be it painting, sculpture, sketches or drawings. It would repetitive for me to list all of this great artist’s works. Just suffice it to say there has never been anyone like him before or since. He was a man for all the ages. What is eerie is that he, Leonardo da Vinci and the artist Rafael all lived at the same time in the same city (Florence) at one time or another. Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 89 leaving a trail of works of art that probably will never be equaled in history. The world is a more beautiful place because of him.

1987 On this date the car ferry “Herald of Free Enterprise” was preparing to leave Zeebruge, Belgium (been there) for a cross channel trip to Dover, England. The fairly large vessel was loaded with 543 people, 84 cars and 36 trucks. It had been the practice in the past for the ferry to back away from the dock with the front clam shell doors still open and would closed them as it was turning around to head out to sea. The ferry normally would take on an inconsequential amount of water in this process. But on this day, the crewman that was responsible for closing the clam shell doors was asleep, I SAID ASLEEP, Y’ALL. When the ferry got turned around and was headed out to sea, the water pressure on the doors was so heavy that they could not close and soon the bilge and lower deck was flooded and when everybody on board went to one side to see what the hell was happening, the ship rolled upside down trapping all that were on the lower decks and throwing those on the upper decks into the sea. In all 186 people were drowned even if they were less than 100 yards from land. It took marine rescuers four days for them to retrieve all the bodies that were trapped under the ship. The ships company was found guilty “top to bottom with sloppiness”. As you might expect, new safety regulations were written for ferry operations. You know, like closing the barn door before the horse escapes.

Born today:

1936 Washington mayor Marion Barry, Jr. He said “I am going to provide you with a copulation of answers to several questions.” It is compilation Marion, compilation for crying out loud.

Answer to the trivia question:

In the movie “Ben Hur” he was a galley slave on a warship commanded by English actor Jack Hawkins.

                   Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow