This Date In History, The Southern Version: August 2020

Monday, August 31, 2020

Tuesday

Musings and History

Quote of the day:
“Happiness is the sole purpose and meaning of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
Aristotle

A while back down in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina a 46 year old man invaded a home about midnight. It was the home of his ex-wife. She has taken another man in her life and moved him in. The invader shot his ex-wife in the arm and then emptied the pistol into the torso of his ex-wife’s new lover…except he saved one round for himself and blew his own brains out. I don’t get it. All he had to do was just move on.

Then down in Pendleton, SC a man walked out of a biker bar named The Twisted Spoke and was walking next door to a convenience store. Suddenly a pickup truck came roaring out of the dark and ran the man down and sped off. The man died of his injuries. The driver of the pickup was identified as the ex-husband of the dead man’s girlfriend. Like I said, I don’t get it.

Next is a Medal of Honor citation lest we forget the courage and bravery of our military. Here it is:

SALOMON, BEN L.

Captain Ben L. Salomon was serving at Saipan, in the Marianas Islands on July 7, 1944, as the Surgeon for the 2d Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division.

The Regiment's 1st and 2d Battalions were attacked by an overwhelming force estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 Japanese soldiers. It was one of the largest attacks attempted in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Although both units fought furiously, the enemy soon penetrated the Battalions' combined perimeter and inflicted overwhelming casualties. In the first minutes of the attack, approximately 30 wounded soldiers walked, crawled, or were carried into Captain Salomon's aid station, and the small tent soon filled with wounded men. As the perimeter began to be overrun, it became increasingly difficult for Captain Salomon to work on the wounded. He then saw a Japanese soldier bayoneting one of the wounded soldiers lying near the tent. Firing from a squatting position, Captain Salomon quickly killed the enemy soldier. Then, as he turned his attention back to the wounded, two more Japanese soldiers appeared in the front entrance of the tent. As these enemy soldiers were killed, four more crawled under the tent walls. Rushing them, Captain Salomon kicked the knife out of the hand of one, shot another, and bayoneted a third. Captain Salomon butted the fourth enemy soldier in the stomach and a wounded comrade then shot and killed the enemy soldier. Realizing the gravity of the situation, Captain Salomon ordered the wounded to make their way as best they could back to the regimental aid station, while he attempted to hold off the enemy until they were clear. Captain Salomon then grabbed a rifle from one of the wounded and rushed out of the tent. After four men were killed while manning a machine gun, Captain Salomon took control of it. When his body was later found, 98 dead enemy soldiers were piled in front of his position. Captain Salomon's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

This Date in History September 1

1862 On this the day after the Union army, General John Pope commanding, received a monster ass-kicking in the Battle of Second Manassas by CSA General R.E. Lee; Lee was not satisfied and sought complete annihilation of those Yankees. Pope’s army was heading east toward Washington, about 25 miles away, as fast their little legs could carry them, asses in hand. Lee sent Stonewall Jackson and the 2^nd Corp with Col. J.E.B. Stuart and his cavalry as a screen, north, then east and them south to try and cut off the retreat of the Yankees and catch them in envelopment before they were able to get behind the Washington defenses. The US General-in-charge being Henry Halleck sitting behind a desk in Washington sent a message to Pope to make sure he protected Centerville most of all. Jackson was aware of this order and by-passed Centerville and finally US General Isaac Stevens launched a partially successful attack on Jackson’s troops at Chantilly, Virginia and scattered a Louisiana unit but soon after General Stevens received a fatal head wound and the Confederates counter attacked and drove those Yankees back. All of this was taking place during ferocious thunderstorm with much thunder and lightning. Additionally, US General Phillip Kearney was scouting ahead on horseback trying to locate the Confederates in very dense cover. He came upon a line of Union infantry who told him to go no further because the Rebs were just a few feet ahead. Kearney responded with, “I don’t see any.............” That sentence was cut short by a Confederate musket ball in the throat and he was killed instantly. A Confederate rout of the Union army ensued.

1985 Seventy-three years before the largest and “most safe” ocean liner in the world, the “Titanic”, departed England, made a short stop in Ireland and then headed out across the North Atlantic for New York. About half way over, the mighty ship struck an iceberg that ripped a hole in the ship above the flood proof bulkheads. The Marine engineer that designed the ship was aboard because this was the Titanic’s maiden voyage, went below and looked at the damage and then went to the ships captain, Captain John Smith, and told him that the ship is fatally damaged. Captain Smith ordered the ship abandoned which was severely mishandled which resulted in the death of over 1,200 souls. The ship finally rose up almost vertical, broke into two pieces and disappeared beneath the waves. On this date a joint French/US expedition aboard the research vessel “Knorr” located a promising sonar target on the bottom of the ocean near the last reported position of the Titanic. The expedition was led by world famous explorer Bob Ballard. The crew sent down an undersea exploratory vessel named “Argo” to find out what was down there in the 17,000 feet of water. The first thing found was a gigantic boiler that was known to be aboard the Titanic and they just followed the debris field until they came upon the bow of the Titanic itself. The Argo brought back photos never before seen of this great ship.

1775 On this date American Representatives Richard Penn and Arthur Lee bring a document that had been called “An Olive Branch” document to British Lord Dartmouth to be forwarded to King George III. The document had been written by one of America’s best wordsmiths in John Dickenson. In short the document accused Parliament and other politicians of imposing insufferable laws and taxes on the American colonies without the knowledge of the King. The document stated that the colonists want their grandchildren to be raised under the wing of the King of England and suggests that the king should intervene in the colonist’s behalf. King George decided that he was too busy and disinterested in anything the Colonists had to say and the document was never opened. He should not have done that because a year later the Colonists delivered the Declaration of Independence which called King George III everything but a white man and said they did not want any part of him ever again. Thus began eight years of pain, suffering and bloodletting and did indeed result in the birth of the mightiest nation this planet has ever seen.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow

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Sunday, August 30, 2020

Musings and History

Quote of the day:
“It has been found that the average American is overweight. This means that a couple of years ago I was fat but now I am average.”
Jo Brand

Trivia question of the day:
What was the name of the Belgian Malinois dog that was with SEAL team 6 on the Ben Laden raid? Answer at the end of the blog.

Rather than local and non-local news Items, I am going to add an essay I wrote about my Scots-Irish ancestry. I think a great many of us have Scot-Irish blood along with a dab or two of Creek, Choctaw and/or Cherokee especially those of us that have roots associated with the Appalachians. Here it is:

A Brief History of Rednecks

I have been reading the history of the impact of the Scots-Irish in America and naturally the author went back into the far past to trace them out to present day. By the way it is Scots, not Scotch. Scots are a people and Scotch is a whiskey. Anyway, the big movement came right after James I became the King of Great Britain. Previously, he was James VI of Scotland making him the first of the dual crowned kings of Great Britain and started the Stuart dynasty. It got started when James financed the expedition to the new world led by Captain John Smith. But James' real passion was religion. He could not abide Catholics and he began a project to oust the Catholic landowners in Ireland and seize their lands. The Irish Catholics had been in rebellion against England for centuries and James saw this as a way of diluting them. This resulted in many Catholic Irish Earls fleeing the Emerald Isle trying to escape the wrath of the Protestants and Anglicans. To fill this void, it was decided that a “plantation” in Ireland in an area called Ulster would be formed. It consisted of six shires or counties. To fill the void James and company decided to kill two birds with one stone and offered land in Ulster to Protestant Scottish lords with the stipulation that they would bring their Scottish tenants with them. The waspish Scots would fight at the drop of a hat over anything that interfered with their independence or messed with the clans, or their tight-fisted Presbyterian religion. They were a hard-ass bunch, especially the Borderers or those that lived close to the border with England. As you might expect, the disenfranchised Catholic Irish fought like hell to take their lands back to no avail. The Scottish Lords indeed took the offer and brought their Scottish tenants with them. There was a stipulation that the Lords could not employ Irish tenants, they had to import the tenants from England and Scotland and they had to be English speaking Protestants, moreover the landowners were banned from selling land to the Irish. Whatever land that was left over was given to the Protestant Churches of Ireland including any lands previously owned by the Roman Catholic Church. James meant to castrate the Catholics in Ireland, y'all. This influx put the Protestant Irish in Ulster in a hard way because they spoke Gaelic while everyone else spoke English. As a result of this turmoil there were civil wars in England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1630 many Ulster Scots went home because Charles I, the king of England declared that the Church of Ireland had to use the prayer book of the Church of England essentially making it an Anglican church. That would change the way the fiery Scottish Presbyterians practiced their religion. As I have said before, you don’t pull on Superman’s cape or spit into the wind and you don’t fool around with the Scots religion. In 1638 an oath was imposed by King Charles I on the Ulster Scots binding them to never take up arms against England not matter what. I don’t need to tell you what kind of hell was raised after this outrage. By the way, it was King Charles I presumptuousness that cost him his head as will be discussed in a future lesson. In 1641 the Irish Catholics rose up in an armed rebellion and the prime target was the Plantation land owners. Many, many atrocities were committed by the Irish on the Scottish land owners in retribution for them taking Irish lands. In the 1690s a huge immigration of Protestant Scots came over to Ulster during a famine and as a result the Protestant Scots became the majority. The planters are known as the Ulster Scots. The present partition of Ireland with Ireland and Northern Ireland gets it roots from this era. Northern Ireland is occupied by the progeny of British Protestants and wanted to keep a link with England whereas the rest of Ireland are Catholic and want independence. Later on, the Scots being fed up with restrictions on their religion began heading west to America. They primarily landed in Philadelphia. They were not welcomed by the high bred plantation owners on the Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina tidewater and not by the snooty Puritans in the northeast so they headed further west and settled in small clans in the Appalachian mountain chain starting in western Pennsylvania and then south and west down the chain into Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. They were encouraged in this endeavor because of their warlike nature they would be a good match for the savage Shawnee, Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee, and a good match they were. There is a legend in my family on my father’s side that one of my great-great uncles owned a huge chunk of land in Maggie Valley, NC which is the very heart of Cherokee country, but he could not hold on to it because of the repeated attacks by the Cherokees. There are many reports of atrocities committed by both the natives and the Scots. It is the roots of almost constants turmoil, the love of fighting and an independent nature, especially their religion, which the so-called Scots-Irish have in their hearts and souls. Actually, the Scots-Irish are not a mix of Scots and the Irish; it is Scots that immigrated to Ulster, Ireland before coming to America and it is these Ulster Scots that are my ancestors on my father’s side. It is known that nearly all the troops fighting for the Patriots in the Revolutionary War in the south were Scots that came down out of the mountains and using guerrilla type tactics like they use against the Indians and against the staid and upright British to great effect. They demonstrated their ferocity at the Battle of Cowpens where Patriot General Daniel Morgan outmaneuvered the infamous British Colonel Banastre Tarleton and would have annihilated the entire army of British/Loyalists but some of them escaped the wrath of Morgan’s wild-eyed mountain men. But there were no escapees at the Battle of Kings Mountain. This group of Patriots was led by General John Sevier and was able to trap British General John Ferguson and his army of Loyalists on the peak of a mountain by surrounding the base. General Ferguson fought for a while but then realized that there was no escape and surrendered. The surrender was not accepted and the Patriots waded in and either shot or hanged them all to a man. This massacre was brought about because of Tarleton killing 220 Patriots that had surrendered but were bayoneted by Tarleton’s troops angering the Patriots and especially the mountain men. They sought their revenge and they found it. My ancestry comes from the Holston Valley of Tennessee and the mountains of Habersham County Georgia. That’s right folks; I am a Redneck and/or a Cracker albeit a well read and well spoken one. I am proud of my ancestors.

The Scots proved their heritage again during the Civil War, some fought in gray and some fought in blue but they fought with great zeal just for the sheer joy of it.

This epistle in no way covers everything that happened to the Ulster Scots during this time period but it gives you an idea of the mold that formed them.

Answer to the trivia question:
The Belgian Malinois dog that was with SEAL team 6 on the Ben Laden raid was named “Cairo”.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow

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Friday, August 28, 2020

Friday

Musings and History

Quote of the day:
“You can bet that if the cops have to run you down they are going to bring an ass-kicking with them.”
Chris Rock

Trivia question of the day:
There is a popular place in London called Trafalger Square. There is a statue of a British naval hero atop of a column there. Who is it? Answer at the end of the blog.

I don't get it y'all. President Trump has pardoned ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Democrats paint him as being close to Jack the Ripper. I guess the have forgotten the 60 some odd criminals that Obama pardoned just before leaving office some of which were drug dealers and scam artists that had embezzled thousand of dollars. It just goes to show it ain't a matter of what is right and wrong, all that matters is who has the power. They are all hypocrites with no honor.

This Date in History August 28

1955 Earlier a 14 year old black kid name Emmett Till came to Money, Mississippi from his home town of Chicago to spend the summer with his great-grandfather, a farmer near Money. Emmett came from a relatively tough neighborhood in Chicago and it appears that he felt that it was important that he display his toughness to the local Mississippi black kids. He told them he was the toughest kid in his school and had a white girl friend. As expected, the local black kids near Money blew that off and dared him to try to pick up the white woman that ran the community grocery store. Emmett accepted the challenge and went in the store. There was no one else in the store except for the woman and Emmett. No one knows what happened in the store but on the way out Emmett is heard to say “Goodbye, baby.” Two days later the woman’s husband returned form a business trip and his wife told him that Emmett had grabbed her and made lewd suggestions. The woman’s husband, Ray Bryant, gathered up his brother-in-law and they went to Emmett’s grand-father’s house looking for Emmett. They took Emmett with them and rode around for a while probably beating the hell out of him. The finally made Emmett drag a 75 pound cotton gin fan to the crest of a bridge over the Tallahatchie River. There they shot Emmett several times, gouged out his eyes, beat on him with iron bars, wrapped barbed wire around his torso and face and wrapped the other end around the fan and threw them over the side. Emmett’s body was finally found but his body was so mutilated that the only way he was identified was an initial ring he was known to have owned. Ray Bryant and his brother-in-law were tried for murder and acquitted. The jury said that the prosecution failed to prove that the body was that of Emmett Till because of the mutilation. Emmett’s mother had the body returned to Chicago and she had an open casket funeral to show what discrimination in the south was all about. Photos of the body were published in Jet magazine.

1963 On this date several hundred thousand people are gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in a rally for racial equality. The chief speaker was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King delivered one of the most engrossing and stirring speeches ever uttered. It was the immortal “I Have a Dream” speech. Dr. King was instrumental in nearly every change in legislation toward racial equality. Five years later he was assassinated in Memphis while attending a rally for the garbage collectors of that city. The assassin, James Earl Ray confessed to Martin Luther King’s son that he did not do it knowing he (Ray) was dying of cancer. There is no doubt in this redneck’s mind that Ray went to meet his maker with a lie on his lips.

1990 On this date the bodies of two University of Florida students are found murdered in the Gatorwood apartments in Gainesville, Florida. I remember it well since I had a daughter attending Florida at the time. Not only that, she was living in Gatorwood apartments. When I read about the murders I almost peed in my pants especially since two days earlier three other students had been found murdered nearby. The corpses were displayed in an obscene manner making the police believe that all the murders were committed by the same person. The Gainesville PD was under enormous pressure to capture the villain because the parents of the students were pulling their kids out of school in droves. In desperation the Gainesville PD arrested a man named Ed Humphrey and even though they did not have sufficient evidence for the murders, they kept him in jail on unrelated charges and kept searching. Finally, the police find a campsite in a patch of woods near the University. There they found evidence enough to try and convict a monster name Danny Rolling of the murders. He was sentenced to death and went to meet his maker in 2004 with a needle in his arm. It is too bad that this was not the middle ages then we could have gotten medieval with his rotten ass.

1996 After four years of separation, Charles, the Prince of Wales and Princess Diana are formally divorced in England. When they were wed it looked like a fairy tale marriage. Here was the heir apparent to the English throne marrying a stone fox from the royal House of Spencer. This woman in addition to being beautiful was graceful and charming. She was adored by everybody world wide and the British in particular. Now we come to Prince Charles. Very shortly after, or maybe before the marriage, Charles decides to have a mistress and selects Camilla Bowles. I don’t know what to tell you about Camilla except to make this comparison. If Helen of Troy launched 1,000 ships and Princess Diana would launch 500 ships, Camilla would launch a 14 foot, 20 HP crappie boat, at best. The upside of the marriage was that Charles and Diana had two sons, Harry and William, which appear to have dealt with the separation easily and have developed into apparently well balanced young men. As all of you know we lost Diana in Paris when she was involved in a wreck while being chased by the paparazzi. It was a loss for us all.

Born today:

1749 German philosopher Johann von Goethe. He said “An intelligent man finds everything ridiculous. A sensible man finds almost nothing.”

1899 French actor Charles Boyer. He said “A Frenchwoman when double-crossed she will kill her rival: An Italian woman would kill her deceitful lover: An English woman will just break off the relationship....but they will console themselves with another man.”

1913 Canadian writer Robertson Davies. He said “Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.”

1940 US publisher Gloria Leonard. She said “The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting.”

1982 US singer Lee Ann Rimes. When talking of the law suit against he father she said “I have to learn to forgive because I will become a bitter bitch if I don’t.”

Died today:

1985 US actress Ruth Gordon. She said “Never ever give up, and under no circumstances never ever face the facts.”

Answer to the trivia question:
The statue of the British naval hero in Trafalger square is of Lord Horatio Nelson.

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