Monday

 

•     Musings and History
  

  
  

  Quote of the day:

  While attending a cocktail party, Sir Winston Churchill had one too many brandies and was obviously hammered. A frumpy elderly lady walked up and said “Sir Winston, you are drunk.” Sir Winston said “Yes madam I am, and you are ugly. But tomorrow morning I will be sober.”

  
  

  Trivia question of the day:

  Who was in command of the US Army in Europe in WW1? Answer at the end of the blog.

  
  

  Some of y’all may not know of the Wong case in western North Carolina. Eduardo Wong was driving west on I-40 when he was stopped by a state trooper for a tail light outage. Wong chose to shoot the trooper three times killing him, he then got out and went through the trooper’s pockets. He was caught and went on trial a couple of weeks ago. The jury convicted him but could not agree on a sentence, for crying out loud. Any time a law enforcement officer is killed it is common practice to throw the book at the perpetrator, but not in this case. The judge was forced to issue a sentence which was life without parole. What the hell is wrong with the death penalty in this case?

  
  

  41 year old David Meggett was arrested in Charleston, SC and charged with criminal sexual assault. It seems that a 21 year old woman woke up to find Meggett sitting on her bed asking her to repay the $200 that she borrowed from him. She told Meggett that she did not have the money but would pay him in a few days. Meggett exploded and ripped the sheet off of her, ripped off her PJ’s and forcibly raped her. After this Meggett apologized and left. Apologized, for crying out loud. This is not the first time Meggett has done this. He was out on parole for the very same thing committed in 2009. What is wrong with him, thinking he can get away with that? By the way, David Meggett was a star running back with the Giants, Patriots and the Jets.

  
  

                          This Date in History November 9

  
  

  1780 on this date British General James Wemyss and 190 cavalrymen attempted to ambush Patriot General Thomas “Gamecock” Sumter and 300 infantrymen at Fishdam Ford, South Carolina. Sumter was nicknamed “Gamecock” by the British for his fighting style. Wemyss was the second most hated British officer in the southern United States. The most hated was Colonel Banastre Tarleton but both he and Wemyss waged war against civilians by burning down homes and the indiscriminate killing of livestock among other atrocities. Wemyss’ ambush was discovered and Sumter’s men were ready when the attack came. Wemyss was wounded in the arm and knee and was captured by Sumter. It was Sumter and Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion that was the largest thorn in the side of the British in the southern United States, primarily in North and South Carolina. Both Sumter and Marion were very capable military commanders and proved it time and time again. Unfortunately, Sumter was captured by Tarleton on November 30 and was out of action. The leadership of all the Southern Patriot armies fell to Francis Marion. Marion did not disappoint and was instrumental in driving the hated Redcoats out of the Carolinas into Virginia to the waiting Patriot army led by George Washington. The war was coming to a close when British General Cornwallis and the army that had departed the Carolinas were trapped against the Chesapeake Bay near Yorktown, Virginia with no possible means of escape and Cornwallis surrendered.

  
  

  1965 The largest power failure in United States history occurred on this date at rush hour. The failure started in Canada when a major power line failed which automatically shifted more power to other lines and they began failing from overload. The domino effect hit New York City and seven other states and three Canadian provinces. It trapped 800,000 people in the New York subways and thousands more in elevators and office buildings. In all there were 30 million people affected. By the following morning all power had been restored. The strange part was that 9 months later there was a spike in the birth rate in the northeastern United States.

  
  

  1862 On this date the commander of the 9^th Corp of the Army of the Potomac is promoted to command of the entire army. US General Ambrose Burnside protested vehemently against this but was voted down. He felt that he was at his capacity as a Corp commander and General of the entire army was over his head. The right man for the job would have been US General Joseph Hooker but he was a drinker and chased skanky women which did not float in the eyes of General in Chief Henry Halleck and he persuaded Lincoln to select Burnside to replace the inept George B. McClellan rather than Hooker. Burnside was born in Indiana and graduated from West Point in 1847 ranked number 18 in a class of 20. After serving in the Seminole War he resigned and became the Treasurer of the Illinois Central Railroad. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was given the rank of Colonel and assumed command of a division. He performed admirably at the Battle of 1^st Manassas and was promoted to Brigadier General and given command of the 9^th Corp of the Army of the Potomac. After assuming command of the Army of the Potomac, Burnsides confirmed his fears of being over his head. The first thing he had to do was resolve the animosity that existed in the ranks between those that liked McClellan and those who didn’t. Then he set out in pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia led by CSA General Robert E. Lee and his very capable Corp commanders CSA General James Longstreet and CSA General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Lee knew that Burnside was in pursuit and set up a defensive position at a place called Marye’s Heights near Fredericksburg, Virginia and after two days of preparation, Burnside and his army arrived. Burnside ordered an attack that was not well coordinated and fragmented. Jackson and Longstreet’s artillery had been pre-registered (aimed) and the slaughter of the advancing Yankees was horrendous. Those that survived the artillery found themselves facing a stone wall with shoulder to shoulder Rebel riflemen behind it who rose up and fired almost point blank. Needless to say, the attack was called off after 13 different charges that were repelled with stupefying losses. Soon after this, Burnside was relieved and was replaced by Hooker with the skanky women and whiskey not withstanding. It was after this battle that Lee uttered the famous line “It is good that war is so terrible or we would learn to love it.” Indeed General Lee, indeed. Not long after Hooker took command he ran across Bobby Lee near a small town named Chancellorsville, but that is another story.

  
  

  1971 On this date a quiet, unassuming and very religious man named John List killed his Mother Alma, his wife Helen and his three children. Earlier, he had stopped the mail and milk delivery and had called his children’s school and told them that he was taking his children out of town to a long visit with a sick relative. John had lost his job as an accountant and kept it from his family. He was close to losing everything and decided that it would be best if his family went on to heaven rather than suffer in poverty. Because of his preparation, no one missed the family for several days and John all but disappeared. He took a train to Denver and began a new life. He eventually ended up in Virginia with a new wife and family. His downfall came when he was featured of “America’s Most Wanted” television show even though the case was 18 years old. The shows producers tasked a reconstructive artist to use the 18 year old photo of John and create a bust of him as what he would look like today with the aging. The artist delivered a dead on match of John and he was soon arrested using the alias of Robert Clark. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to five life terms.

  
  

  Born today:

  1935 US baseball flame throwing pitcher Bob Gibson. He said “Why should I have to be an example to your kid. You be an example for your kid.” Bob hit the nail on the head here, y'all.

  
  

  Answer to the trivia question:

  The commander of the US army in Europe during WW1 was General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing.

  
  

  Before that Pershing was in the middle east and his troops were attacked by Muslim radicals. He tracked them down poured pig blood on them and then stood them up in front of a firing squad. The Muslims believe that they cannot go to heaven if they are “unclean”. Drenched in pig blood made them unclean. Pershing had no more trouble with the Muslim radicals after that.

  
  

  Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow    

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Friday

 

•     Musings and History
  

  
  

  Quote of the day:

  “This whole rock and roll thing is very over rated. Take away the sex, drugs and booze and what do you have left?”

                                                        Chrissie Hynde

  
  

  Trivia question of the day:

  Who was Roy Scherer, Jr.? Answer at the end of the blog.

  
  

                                    History of wedding rings

  It seems that the ritual of rings with a special meaning goes back to about 2,500BC, perhaps further back than that but there is no written language earlier than that explaining the meaning of rings in spite of corpses from previous eras wearing rings. The first ring with a written confirmation of its meaning came from the finger of a mummy that is about 4,000 years old. The ring was made of plant fibers and was a complete circle. A poem on the wall in the mausoleum in hieroglyphics said something on the order that the fibers are made from the earth and in a never ending circle as our lives were intertwined. Evidently the Egyptians were a romantic bunch. This is not the case with the Romans. The Romans put a ring on the fingers of those beings they felt they owned. This included all their slaves, gladiators, soldiers and wives. The Romans were a pragmatic bunch. I read a story about Hannibal Barca, the famous Carthaginian warrior, where he defeated five Roman legions in three battles and gathered the gold rings off the dead Roman soldiers and took them back to Carthage as a prize of war. According to the number of soldiers killed, Hannibal collected about 350 pounds of gold. Then with the Greeks the ring was simply a token of friendship. It was after the ritual of the rings reached Western Europe (Germans, Spanish, French, English, Scandinavians, etc.) that the rings had a meaning associated with matrimony. It is believed that the ritual was reinforced by the Catholic Church and other religious organizations to discourage polygamy, but that is just a supposition.

  
  

                        This Date in History   November 6

  
  

  1528 Earlier Spanish conquistador Alva Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and his army of 300 had been exploring north Florida but insects, disease and persistent attacks by the Indians drove them into the sea with only 80 to 90 men left. They built five flimsy boats and set sail westward. They suffered from the lack of food and water and when they tried to land to acquire fresh water and food they were driven back into the sea because the ubiquitous Indians were watching them all the while. On this date, they crashed on a beach in what is now Texas, probably near Galveston. These were most likely the first white men to see Texas. They were immediately captured by the Indians and made virtual slaves. But with Cabeza’s rudimentary knowledge of medicine, he was able to attain the title of medicine man and he and his survivors were released after two years. By now they were down to only Cabeza and three others left out of the 300. Cabeza and the others set out traveling west across New Mexico and Arizona heading for Mexico City that was by now under the control of the men left by the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortez. After a torturous trek, they ran across a Spanish unit out hunting for slaves. This meeting took place near Sinaloa, Mexico. With help of these men, Cabeza finally arrived in Mexico City and told his tale of survival that enthralled all that heard it. The unbelievable story of Cabeza and his men made its way to Europe and the rest of the world. But his story of the inhospitable lands and hostile Indians did not deter anyone and soon a flood of honkies began arriving in the America. Now this flood of honkies is accompanied a deluge of the progeny of the Spanish conquistadors. Their ancestry goes back to the Maya, Inca, Olmecs and Aztecs but they do not speak Quechua or any other language of their ancestors, they speak the language of their conquerors, Spanish. It is kind of funny that at no time was there ever more than 600 Spanish soldiers in one place at one time but the Natives could not kick them out. The Spanish had a few things that made a difference. They had shoulder fired weapons, war dogs, armor and horses. The natives had never seen a horse before the arrival of the Spanish. The Spanish also had natural immunity to measles, small pox, tuberculosis, etc. that he natives did not. It was disease that conquered them; it was not the military expertise of the Spaniards.

  
  

  1906 On this date United States President Theodore Roosevelt departed on a diplomatic mission to Panama and Puerto Rico. This is the first time that a sitting United States president had departed the contiguous United States on a diplomatic mission. He really went to Panama to visit the Panama Canal that was still under construction and to Puerto Rico it being a United States possession. Remember that citizens of Puerto Rico can vote in elections and have representatives in Congress. I have a friend of mine that lives in eastern Pennsylvania that says the local Puerto Ricans are the one complaining the loudest about the flood of illegals into their “hood” and have “discouraged” them on more than one occasion. Anyway, Teddy Roosevelt as far as I am concerned, is the best president we have had since A. Lincoln. I have some “unreconstructed” friends out there that are breathing smoke out their ears upon hearing this, but had it not been for Lincoln we would be two, maybe four, nations rather than one. We are better off united. Everyone knew where Teddy stood on any issue and all had respect and confidence in him. He was what I call “a stand up guy”. You knew where he was coming from all the time and you could believe anything he said as being the truth. Those virtues are few and far between since him. I might have said the Dwight Eisenhower would have been except he lied about the Francis Gary Powers spy flight that he later recanted. Harry Truman was close but he was a politician first and a patriot second. We need more like Teddy. Teddy contracted Malaria while on the trip to Panama and it contributed to his demise at relatively early age. Whatever happened to “stand up guys”?

  
  

  1861 Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. Like A. Lincoln he was born in Kentucky but in the year of 1808. He attended West Point and graduated in1828 and fought in the Black Hawk War. In 1832 he married Sarah Taylor who was the daughter of General (and future President) Zachary Taylor. Davis and Taylor remained close friends though out the rest of their lives. Soon after Davis and his new bride Sarah settled on Brierwood Plantation in Mississippi. Just a short time Sarah came down with malaria and died from it. In 1845 he married Varina Howells. After the southern states began seceding Davis thought that they may come to him for the Presidency. After his election Davis made this statement “Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits and flowers. But beyond this I see troubles and thorns innumerable.” Indeed Jeff, indeed.

  
  

  1887 Land near Toccoa, Georgia was bought for the purpose of building a Christian and Missionary College. An earthen damn was built across Toccoa Creek creating a small but deep lake with the college downstream of the dam. On this date in 1997 an examination of the dam was made and declared safe. Just hours later, the dam failed and a wall of water moving at 120 MPH arrived at the College. There were 38 students and teachers drowned and many injured. One teacher grabbed hold of a passing roof truss and held on and was washed a mile downstream. Her two children were not so lucky and were included in the 38 victims. Two days later First Lady Rosalyn Carter showed up and offered any assistance she could. I do not know what happened to the dam inspector.

  
  

  1943 US humorist Jon Carroll is born. He said “Everyone should live to be 92 years old, have an orgasm and drop dead.” That is cold, y’all.

  
  

  Answer to the trivia question:

  Roy Scherer, Jr. was Rock Hudson the actor that died of AIDS.

  
  

  Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow
  

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Thursday

•    Musings and History
  

  
  

  Quote of the day:

  “Keep it up, boys. We have caught them napping!”

  General George A. Custer…1876…Little Big Horn, Montana

  
  

  Trivia question of the day:

  What Mexican born actor was awarded two Oscars for “Best Supporting Actor”. Answer at the end of the blog.

  
  

  This is from 2016:

  I have heard from one of my subscribers that is acknowledged fan of Obama. After the ass-kicking received by the Democrats, it appears that she is beginning to realize how unhealthy national politics really is. She sees that the president–elect is obligated to reward those that helped with the election, especially fund raising to get a job in their administration, skill and ability notwithstanding. She said that what we need is not a President, but a head coach to pull us together to work as a team. She prefers Dick Butkus…not a bad choice…or maybe Jesse Ventura.

  
  

                                  This Date in History   November 5

  
  

  1775 On this day General George Washington issued a statement condemning some of his troops who were planning to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. Guy Fawkes Day is an English celebration for the capture of Guy Fawkes who schemed to blow up the Parliament building in London. He wanted to kill the king, James I who was a protestant, in the hopes that James’ daughter Elizabeth, a Roman Catholic, would take over the reins of England. In the celebration effigies of the Pope are burned and essentially a condemnation of the Catholics in general. Washington condemned this action not out of conscience, but because he was trying to get some of the French Canadians to join the Continental army and they were all Catholic. The celebration never materialized out of respect for George, but the animosity remained.

  
  

  1930 United States author Sinclair Lewis received the Nobel Prize for literature and he was the first American to receive this prize. Lewis was a cantankerous sort. In 1926 he had refused the Pulitzer Prize for his book “Arrowsmith” but decided to accept the Nobel Prize. He also gave us “Main Street”, “Babbitt” and “Elmer Gantry”. Every time I hear the words Elmer Gantry an image of Burt Lancaster with hair just a’ flying and bible in hand flashes across my mind. What a great performance. I miss him.

  
  

  1961 A group of cave explorers find a sack full of bones in South Wales which solved 43 year old mystery. It seems that chorus girl Mamie Savant married George Shotten and they moved to a remote house on a cliff over looking the sea. Evidently it was not a happy marriage because one day neither George nor Mamie could be found anywhere. The authorities finally ran George down and come to find out that he had been married to another woman for years and was living with her when he was caught. When he was confronted he denied ever being married to Mamie but that was easily shot down. But they could not find hide nor hair of Mamie. So George was tried and convicted of bigamy and served 18 months. In addition to the bones the spelunkers found a gold wedding band and a black comb that was known to be Mamie’s. The bones were reassembled and it was determined that it was the bones of a 26 year old female about 5’-4” tall. That described Mamie but it was too late because George died in 1958 three years before the discovery of the bones.

  
  

  1862 United States President A. Lincoln relieves General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. After the disastrous ass-kicking the Army of the Potomac received at the hand of CSA General Robert E. Lee at 1^st Manassas, Lincoln appointed McClellan to whip the Army of the Potomac into shape. McClellan was a superb organizer/trainer and did indeed whip the army into shape. He organized the command structure, divided the army into manageable units and trained the troops to a razor sharp readiness. He then took that army of over 100,000 by boat to the end of the James River peninsula southwest of Richmond and began a march on that city. Everything went fine until he met CSA General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia and received a series of ass-kickings. After this he went to the end of the peninsula and took his troops out of there. What pissed Lincoln off was that he camped out for six weeks before departing the peninsula. McClellan was always timid and shy in a combat situation and believed that he was always outnumbered which was never the case. His next faux pas was at the Battle of Antietam when his army drove Lee and the Confederates out of Maryland back across the Potomac into Virginia and did not pursue and destroy them. He chose to camp out again for several weeks while all the time Lincoln is burning up the telegraph wires telling him to get off his ass and do something. McClellan ignored Lincoln and indeed held him with distain and was vocal about it. Finally, McClellan got the army on its feet and they head for the Potomac River, however it took nine days for McClellan to get his troops across and that was the final straw. Lincoln called McClellan to Washington and sent US General Ambrose Burnsides to replace him. Burnsides knew that Lincoln wanted an aggressive commander so he immediately heads out to find Bobby Lee and his army of rebels. He found them at a place called Marye’s Heights near Fredericksburg, Va. and promptly has his ass handed to him at the cost of a terrible slaughter of the Army of the Potomac, but that is another story.

  
  

  1862 Earlier the Santee Sioux of Minnesota had been promised they would be fed by the US Government in return for them going to a reservation. The corrupt Government officials would not release the food unless they were paid their usual bribes. The Sioux were on the edge of starvation and the launched a series of raids led by Little Wolf on the farms of the honkies up and down the Minnesota River. They were finally subdued and 300 are sentenced to hang. A. Lincoln intervenes and finally the list is whittled down to 38. Before a cheering throng of Minnesotans all 38 were hanged simultaneously. What we have here is a group of men whose wives and children are starving because of corrupt politicians and because they revolt, they are hanged. What is up with that?

  
  

  Births and deaths:

  
  

  1892 US newsman Lowell Thomas is born. He said “Once you reach the age of 80 everything you see reminds you of something else.” I am getting there myself. Say, that reminds me….

  
  

  Famous quotes:

  
  

  “Familiarity breeds contempt….and children.” Mark Twain

  
  

  “Denial is not a river in Egypt” Mark Twain

  
  

  “Age is an issue of mind over matter, if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Mark Twain

  
  

  Answer to the trivia question:

  The Mexican born actor that was awarded 2 Oscars for Best Supporting Actor was Antonio Rudolfo Quinn Oaxaca better known as Anthony Quinn.

  
  

                             Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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