•    Musing and History


    Quote of the day:

    “Margaret Thatcher has the mouth of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula.”

                                                   Francois Mitterrand


    Trivia question of the day:

    Who was the most successful pirate in world history? Answer at the end of the blog.


    Thursday lunch was at one of my favorite restaurants and one of my friends as the server. She has an infectious smile and a cheery attitude...in fact she has a following.  After a crossword I had:


    Eggplant Parmesan, garlic bread, a cup of tomato Florentine pasta soup, water and 3 cups of coffee. It cost twice as much as the “down home” food I had a couple of days ago but there was twice as much food. I ate half and brought half home and had it later in the evening so it equaled out. All of it was delicious.


    This is from 5 years ago:

    I don't want to appear prejudicial but after 2 super Tuesdays it looks like the Trump freight train is unstoppable but I ain't sure about the Hillary skate board. I heard a newsman on CNN say that he questions if the Democratic National Committee will even nominate her in spite of her delegates. They are really concerned about the likelihood that she will be indicted. Her wrong doings are a lot more serious that those of General Petraeus and he got hammered by Congress and the media. But no one ever said that everybody gets treated equally in the eyes of the law here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

                       This Date in History   March 11


    1779 On this date the United States Congress decided to implement an arm of the Government called the Corp of Engineers. The Congress decided that better offensive and defensive structures were sorely needed, especially around the mouth of New York harbor. In the war of 1812 The British navy took one look the defenses in the approaches to New York and said “To hell with, we ain’t going through there.” Then they attempted to invade other American ports and were successful for the most part that is until they ran across Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Chalmette or better know as the Battle of New Orleans. With the aid of the Corp of Engineers, “Old Hickory” constructed a formidable defense and kicked the crap out of the attacking British. The sad part here was that the Treaty ending this War of 1812 had been signed several weeks before and the war was actually over before the Battle was fought. After the Revolutionary War ended in 1784, the Corp of Engineers shrunk appreciably as a great number of civil engineers went back to the house to start their lives over. In 1804 the Corp was given an even larger role in the management of our natural resources. They were assigned the task of flood control of our rivers and later on were tasked with damming of there river for electricity and recreation. In my home state nearly all the lakes of the border rivers with the accompanying states are “Corp” lakes meaning they are responsible for the flow of the rivers related to flood control and maintenance of the dams and the power is governed by individual power companies such as Duke Energy and Carolina Power and Light, etc.


    1862 On this date Abraham Lincoln being fed up with his field commanders, as was evident in their defeat in the Battle of 1st Manassas, decided to break the army into three sections which essentially demoted the previous Commander of the Army, General George C. McClellan. The vain and arrogant McClellan still retained command of the Army of the Potomac which meant he was still the hound chasing the fox in CSA General Robert E. Lee. The three sections went to McClellan in the East, Fremont in the Appalachians and Halleck in the west. The bad thing about this arrangement was that Fremont was no military commander; he was an explorer/surveyor and a good one. While in this capacity as a military leader, he had the misfortune of running up against CSA General “Stonewall” Jackson during his brilliant Shenandoah Valley Campaign and Fremont had his ass handed to him. Fremont was so severely whipped that he resigned and went back out west and did some superb mapping and surveying which was his calling. Halleck was in his sixties and everyone felt he was too damned old to be in the field even though he had told Abe what strategy he should use and eventually that is what happened, The Anaconda Plan was Halleck’s. This plan was blown off by the younger officers as being untenable. But the plan called for the blockading of all the Southern ports and taking control of the Mississippi river and that is exactly what they did. Abe brought Halleck back to Washington and put him behind a desk. That left McClellan the only feasible commander out there. That is until a scruffy Ohioan named Grant began raising hell out west and then Abe told McClellan to take a hike.


    1897 Up in Chicago there was a wealthy man named Adolph Leutgent. Adolph owned a sausage factory there. He was a notorious woman chaser of the first magnitude and one day Adolph ordered his crew in the factory to put 300 pounds of potash (potassium chloride) into one of the larger vessels. Soon thereafter he took a walk in the park with his wife and this girl was never seen again. Adolph told the police that his wife had run off with another man but her friends knew better than that. Adolph and she had three children that his wife was devoted to them and they told the police about it. In their investigation they inspected Adolph’s plant and in the vessel with all the potash they found four teeth and three rings, one with Adolph’s wife’s name on it. On this evidence alone, Adolph was convicted and sentenced to life. He died in his cell 14 years later.


    1884 Earlier a Texan named Ben Thompson gained a reputation as a gunslinger by shooting a black man in a fight in Austin, Texas. He was 16. As with the majority of the gunfighters of that era they learned their trade during the Civil War. Ben earned no special notoriety during the war and even began an honest occupation of a typesetter in New Orleans after the war. But the whorehouses and gambling parlors there was too much of an attraction and Ben went over to the dark side. In 1872 Ben went to the cow town of Ellsworth, Kansas to meet his brother Billy. One night Billy and Ben got into an argument with other gamblers and the local deputy came in and broke it up. About that time the sheriff named Chauncey Whitney came to the deputy’s assistance and was escorting the Thompson brothers across the street to their hotel. All of a sudden Billy pulled out his hog leg and killed Sheriff Whitney. The two got away and Ben roamed around Kansas staying clear of Ellsworth. He gained some respectability and was successful in running for sheriff of Austin, Texas. He could not stay away from the gambling, however and got into fight over a gambling debt with three other men. Ben killed one of them but the other two escaped. On this date, Ben was coming out of the Vaudeville Theater in San Antonio when he was ambushed and killed by the two other gamblers that got away. Evil begets evil, y'all.


    Born today:


    1936 US Supreme Court Justice Anthonin Scalia. He said “It is no secret in the realization that the Constitution insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.” Well said your Honor...and RIP.


    Answer to the trivia question:

    The most successful pirate in world history was a Chinese woman known a Madame Cheng. At one point she had 17,000 ships and boats and 60,000 fellow pirates. She had ocean going vessels and smaller boats with a much shallower draft to travel up and down rivers.


             Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow