Tuesday New Years Eve

      Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“The price of Prozac went up 50% last year. When Prozac users were asked about it, they said, “Whatever…"

                                                  Jay Leno

A while back the cops down in Mobile, Alabama a man named Luke Cole was arrested for burglarizing 5 different businesses in West Mobile one of which was a Christian book store. Also arrested was Luke’s father who was fencing whatever his son brought home. By the way Luke is 17 years old.

Over in Fayetteville, NC an elderly cattleman had raised a black angus bull from a calf to a 2,000 behemoth. The bull never relented from his hostile behavior. The cattleman wanted to keep the bull at stud to replenish his herd but he had very little control of his its behavior. One day the bull got out of his personal pasture and was a couple of pastures over chasing the cows around. The cattleman attempted to coax the bull back into his personal field but tripped and fell. The bull immediately charged and pinned the old gentleman to the ground by pressing his forehead into the man’s chest. The old gentleman died. A few days before the cattleman had sold the bull to a slaughterhouse because of his behavior. The bull will soon be distributed around the southeast in smaller pieces.

                       This Date in History   December 31

1600 On this date Queen Elizabeth I signed a charter authorizing a group of London merchants to form an organization known as the East India Company to act at the behest of the crown to capture the spice trade in the East Indies from the hands of the Dutch. This endeavor was unsuccessful but the market they found in India and China more than made up for their failure against the Dutch. Soon the flow of spices from India and the tea from China was almost unending on their way to England. This almost untapped gold mine of consumables did not go unnoticed by the French and Dutch and they attempted to move in and get part of this cornucopia. This prompted the East India Company to form their own army and navy to protect their investment. Eventually England felt it was necessary to declare India as a British possession and sent in a governor and staff to rule this most recent colony to protect the trade from interlopers by use of the mighty British army and navy. After this decision the East India Company became nothing but an administrative arm of the British Governor. In 1857 the Indian soldiers in the British army revolted against the British control of their country. This “Indian Revolt” was crushed the next year and Great Britain tightened its grip on India even more by dissolving the East India Company. They even had the gall to pass a law stating that the Indians could not go to the seaside and dig out settling ponds to allow the water to evaporate leaving the salt. Salt was imperative to the Indians not only for seasoning but for food preservation. This meant that they could only get their salt from the British. It was a monopoly of a necessary item. In the early 1930’s an Indian holy man named Mahatma Gandhi began a peaceful revolt that eventually caused the demise of English rule and the beginning of an Independent India. By the way, the beginning of the end of British rule began when Gandhi left home headed for the coast to evaporate out some salt stating that salt was a gift from God and should not be controlled by man. Along the way he had gathered more and more followers and he arrived at the coast with over 60,000 people following. The British army did not know what to do with that many people and they let them alone to get some salt.

1972 Baseball superstar Roberto Clemente is in the San Juan International Airport, Puerto Rico. Clemente was an all-star outfielder for the Pittsburg Pirates and spent the majority of the off-season doing charity work in his native Puerto Rico or other places in Central America. Earlier Clemente had sent a huge amount of relief supplies to Managua, Nicaragua after that city was ravaged by an earthquake. He found out later that only a small amount of the supplies had reached those that needed it; the majority of it had been stockpiled by corrupt officials and sold to the needy. Clemente was a fiery individual anyway and when he found out about this travesty, he gathered more supplies in Puerto Rico and was going to take them to Managua himself and distribute them to the needy. He soon found that he had more supplies that the plane that he had chartered could handle. Observing all of this was an unscrupulous man named Arthur Rivera. Rivera owned a ram shackled propeller driven DC-7 that could barely fly. He offered to rent this plane to Clemente for $4,000. Clemente agreed and they began loading the DC-7. Rivera was not a pilot and he began frantically searching for a pilot and found one in a man named Jerry Hill. Rivera, Clemente and the pilot finally got aboard and the plane began its takeoff roll. Observers knew the plane was in trouble from the start because of the sound of the engines. The plane reached about 200 feet over the Caribbean and exploded and fell into the sea. It was found that the pilot had over-boosted the engines. The bodies of Clemente, Rivera and Hill were never found. Clemente was admitted to the baseball Hall of Fame posthumously and in 2002 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Born today:

1830 Scottish writer Alexander Smith. He said “To be occasionally quoted is all the fame I desire.” Tack on to that, “occasionally paid”.

1894 Movie star Pola Negri. She said “Love is disgusting when you no longer own yourself.”

1943 US songwriter John Denver. He said “Music paints pictures and often tells stories. All of it magic and all of it true.” John had a pure and clear voice; I have not heard a voice close to his since his demise except maybe Josh Groban

1952 US Guitarist/singer George Thorogood. He said “There are two types of music, the “blues” and that bullshit they play on MTV.” I second that.

1958 US actress Bebe Neuwirth. She said “If you have to ask how to be sexy after the age of 40, you probably can’t do it.” I am still trying, Bebe.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow