This Date In History, The Southern Version: February 2021

Friday, February 26, 2021

Friday

Quote of the day:
“One of the best cures for pride is seasickness. A person that wants to vomit will not put on airs.”
Josh Billings

What NFL wide receiver was known as “Bambi”? He is in the Hall of Fame. Answer at the end of the blog.

Here is a conversation I had with a Democratic lady from Killeen, Tx and is a long time friend. She died recently and I miss her.

Me...“Donald is coming.”
Her...“Oh s—t...my daughter thinks he is the anti-christ.”
Me...“He is too old to be the anti-christ”.
Her...“I did not know there was an age limit.”
Me...“In my mental image he is too old...but Hillary is about right.”

A couple years ago my 8 year old HP laptop slowed down to an intolerable crawl and kept freezing up. Rather than buy another laptop I chose to do this. This computer has a program that once initiated will take the computer back to where it was when it came out of the factory. I did this and when it finally stopped whining and flashing, sure enough it was back to basic. But it did save all the programs that had been deleted and all I had to do was reload what I wanted. I had one problem, I accidentally deleted about 550 items that I had written and saved. Thank God that a good friend had given me a “thumb” drive for Christmas and I had downloaded all of my writings on it. I downloaded all of this back aboard the laptop. I did lose all I had written since the initial download but this is a hell of lot better than losing it all.

This Date in History February 26

1813 Robert R. (R.R.) Livingston dies on this date. Livingston was one of those people in the history of our country that played a major role but was not well known. Robert was the eldest of nine children to a powerful judge also named Robert R. who owned vast stretches of land along with two major estates in the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York. The main estate where the family lived was Clermont the other was Belvedere. In 1766 the elder Livingston tried to impose restrictive leases onto his tenant farmers which resulted in a tenant farmer uprising who threatened to kill the elder Livingston and burn down his estates. The British army came to his rescue and his estates remained. After this, young Robert is sent to Kings College (Now Columbia University) where he graduated with a law degree. In 1777 after the elder and younger Livingstons has declared their allegiance to the Patriots, the British Army burned down Clermont and Belvedere. The younger Robert represented the Provincial New York Congress to the Continental Congress. He was selected to be the United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs and engineered the sale of the French holdings in North America to the United States. This was known as The Louisiana Purchase. This addition to the United States nearly doubled the size of our country. He was named as “chancellor” of New York. I do not know the equivalent of this office today. But from then on his nickname was “The Chancellor”. It was he that swore in our first President George Washington. There are statues of him in New York City and in the United States Capitol building.

1862 On this date Elisha Hunt Rhodes is in camp in Washington, DC. Rhodes is a soldier in the 2^nd Rhode Island Regiment attached to The Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War. Rhodes was a gifted writer and kept a detailed diary for the entire four years he was in the army. The resulting book made from his diary gives us a seldom seen insight into the day-in, day-out existence to the average infantryman. There are hours of sheer boredom intermixed with moments of heart stopping terror and views of horrible after-battle carnage. On this particular day he and his friend Isaac Cooper go to hear a speech by Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson and then the go to a fair in a Methodist church. Elisha and Isaac meet two girls at the fair and walk them home. I suppose even Yankees can get lucky from time to time. Just joking.

1993 On this cold and snowy morning in New York City a thunderously powerful explosion happened in the parking garage under the North Tower of the World Trade Center. There were six people killed and over 1,000 injured. The police had no choice but to evacuate both the North and South towers. The initial investigation indicated that it was a band of Serbs that had done the deed but it was later found that this group was simply jewel thieves. From this the FBI was able to dissolve a large diamond theft organization. But the investigation continued into the bastards that were responsible for the explosion. Investigators found a piece of a van that carried the explosives that still had the serial number visible. From this they tracked the van back to a rental agency in Jersey City, New Jersey where a contract showed the van was rented to one Mohammed Salaamed. This jackass had reported the van as stolen on February 25 and told the agency that he was coming to get his $400 deposit back. There is no need for me to tell you that the FBI was waiting and arrested this dumb ass. A search of Salaamed’s apartment and records implicated two others. They also found a video tape on how to build bombs and were able to identify a fourth person in the video. An owner of a storage facility came forth and said that he had seen four men loading something into a rental van in one of his rental garages. The FBI investigated this site and found enough nitro-glycerin to build another gigantic bomb. Also one of the four had went to the AGL Welding Service and purchased steel hydrogen tanks. In the debris from the blast the investigators found a piece of a tank that still had the AGL logo on it. All four of these lunatics went on trial and were convicted. They all received sentences of 240 years each. I can only hope that all of them are taken under the wing of a 6’-9” 375 lb. sex pervert that has a penchant for middle-eastern men.

1942 On this date US actress Joan Fontaine won the Oscar for best actress for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Suspicion. Right after this gossip columnist Louella Parsons wrote in her column that Joan did not get the Oscar for her performances on stage but for her performances in bed with every producer west of the Rockies.

By accident Louella and Joan met in the bar at the famous Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles and the verbal exchange between these two women went down in sailor history as a benchmark in the delivery of profanity.

1564 On this date poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe is christened in the Church at Canterbury, England. Two months later William Shakespeare was christened. Marlowe was recognized and being a bright person and was given a scholarship to Cambridge where he earned a B.A. degree. It was believed that he was a spy for Queen Elizabeth while at Cambridge and was nearly denied his masters degree until a representative of the Queen dropped by and suggested that Marlowe had better get his degree ”for services rendered.” Marlowe did indeed receive his master’s degree. During a search of the apartment that he and Thomas Kyd shared, some literature was found that smacked of treason and Kyd was taken to the Tower and tortured. Kyd finally said the literature was Marlowe’s. Marlowe was arrested but made bail and was free. Soon after Marlowe got into a fight with a bartender over his tab and the bartender put a knife into Marlowe’s liver and it is adios Christopher. The moral here is when hammered do not argue with an armed bartender, just pay the freaking tab and go to the house.

Answer to the trivia question.
Lance Alworth was known as “Bambi”. He played most of his career with the San Diego Chargers. He was called Bambi because of his graceful leaps and bounds he reminded people of a deer.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow

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Thursday, February 25, 2021

Thursday

Musings and History

Quote of the day:
“You can spend the majority of your life trying to be popular, but in the final analysis the number of people attending your funeral will be governed by the weather.”
Lily Tomlin

One of my subscribers reminded me of an important event on February 23, 1945. Here is a little background and a brief history of that event.

After the United States was attacked on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the American military was extremely interested in at attack on the Japanese homeland. It was determined that due to the vast distances between island airports in the western Pacific. The B-17 aircraft used in Europe would be impractical because of its relatively short range and limited bomb load. The Commander of the US Army Air Corp, General “Hap” Arnold issued a prospective order to the different US aircraft manufacturers and described the minimum requirements that included a range of 6,000 miles and a bomb load of 10,000 pounds. Boeing Aircraft won the order with the inimitable B-29 Superfortress. Now the US Navy and Marines were assigned the task of capturing islands with airports in the Marianas and the Caroline Island chains that could be made available to aircraft the size and weight of the B-29. The first two to fall were Kwajalein and Eniwetok. Next came the airports they were really after on Tinian, Saipan and Guam. The islands were within 2,500 miles of the Japanese homeland and all could be modified to handle the B-29. The problem was that the Japanese had already figured out what the Allied strategy was and was ramping up a defense of these islands. The Battle of Saipan was one of the bloodiest in history up to that point. The US Army Air Force began bombing attacks on the Japanese mainland in the summer and fall of 1944. The immediate problem was that the Japanese had radar and a squadron of interceptors on the island of Iwo Jima which was about halfway between Tinian and the Japanese mainland making the trip to and from the Japanese mainland very hazardous resulting in many B-29’s and crews being lost. Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur agreed that Iwo Jima had to be taken at all cost. The reason was two-fold. One was they had to eliminate the interceptors launching from Iwo Jima and two, if the B-29’s on bombing missions had engine trouble or damaged from anti-aircraft fire, they could land at Iwo Jima.

On February 19, 1945 a task force led by Admiral Marc Mitscher for the US Navy and General Holland Smith for the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th divisions of the US Marine Corps dropped anchor on the east side of Iwo Jima. The big guns of three US battleships opened up and along with US Navy fighter/bombers began the largest artillery/bombing assault in history. In the meantime, 20,000 Marines were loaded onto landing craft to await the completion of the bombardment to commence landing. After this earth-shattering barrage, the Marines landed. Nearly the entire first assault wave had landed before they experienced any gunfire from the Japanese. The Japanese commander was General Kuribayashi, a very smart and capable leader. After the Marines were on the island, the Japanese opened up with everything they had and the slaughter was fantastic. The Japanese had dug 11 mile of tunnels on the island, especially on the extinct volcano named Suribachi on the south side of the island. All of these tunnels were bomb proof meaning the naval bombardment had hardly any effect. This mutual slaughter continued until February 23 when a Marine platoon fought its way to the peak of Suribachi and raised an American flag. All the troops below yelled, screamed and cried, the assault ships blew their horns and whistles and the Secretary of the US Navy, James Forestall said “This action will ensure the US Marines for 500 years.” This is the first and only battle where the casualties of the American forces exceeded those of the enemy. The only difference is the Americans had about 6,800 killed and 19,000 wounded where there were only 217 Japanese survivors out of 18,400 in this battle. When General Kuribayashi sent his last message to Tokyo he said “We have not eaten or drank in five days, our weapons have been destroyed, but out spirits are high. We will launch out last attack tonight. May Japan exist for a thousand years.” Sure enough, he led a night assault that was crushed by the Marines. The remains of General Kuribayashi was never identified.

There were 28 Medals of Honor given in this battle, most of them posthumously. That represents 85% of all Medals of Honor given to US Navy/US Marines in the entire war.

By the way, the average age of the combat Marines in this action was 19.7.

This Date in History February 25

1779 A few days earlier American Patriot George Rogers Clark departed the small village of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River with 175 militia and a few French mercenaries to capture Fort Sackville near present day Vincennes, Indiana. After wading through icy cold water Clark’s men arrived at the fort from a direction that was unexpected by the British army inside. Clark called for the surrender of the fort from the British commander who refused. Then Clark personally brought five Indians that he and his group had captured along the way, out in front of the fort and Clark personally hacked them all to death and disemboweled them with a tomahawk. Clark then called again for a surrender which was readily accepted. There were just over ninety British soldiers and their families in the fort. The success of this raid put the British between a rock and a hard place in that area because the French settlers realized that they could not depend on the British military to defend them and sided with the Patriots. George Roger Clark again was one of those little known hard-asses for the Patriots that had he not been where he was when he was, things may have turned out differently.

1576 On this date the head of then Roman Catholic Church, Pope Pius VI ex-communicated the Queen of England, Elizabeth I and told the English Catholics that they did not have to obey Elizabeth any longer. Elizabeth really did not care because her father, Henry VIII got fed up with the pope interfering with the affairs of the English crown and he formed his own church, a protestant church known as the Anglican Church or the Church of England. The only difference between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church was the Pope was head of the Catholics and the King/Queen was the head of the Anglicans. Not a hell of a lot of difference for the faithful. Elizabeth did not have to stress that the English subjects had better abide by the rule of the queen or they would meet a date in a dungeon somewhere or meet a big guy with a big axe and a black hood over his head. Elizabeth proved to be one of the greatest monarchs in the history of western man.

Famous quotes:

“Some people see things that are and ask why, others see things that are not and ask why, others have to go to work and don’t have time for all that bullshit.”
George Carlin

“Good soldiers decide that they will be killed in battle and lose their fear. Then they can kill with no compassion and no remorse. All wars depend on it.”
George Patton

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow

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