Friday

   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