Wednesday

  Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Blood is thicker that water but it makes lousy lemonade.”

                                           Dave Barry

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

                                                 Teddy Roosevelt 1907

                      This Date in History September 25

1864 CSA President Jefferson Davis traveled from Richmond to Palmetto, Georgia to visit with CSA Gen. John Bell Hood to find out why Hood’s mighty Army of Tennessee got a major ass whipping at the Battle of Atlanta. As usual when an army gets almost destroyed the military leaders start finger pointing to avoid the blame for the failure. In this case it was Hood pointing at CSA Gen. William Hardee one of his three Corp commanders. From the outset of the war it was apparent that Hardee should have had command of the Army of Tennessee but President Davis would not admit a mistake and left Hood in command. On his way back to Richmond Davis made a speech in Columbia, S.C. trying to pump up the morale of the people and mentioned that Hood “Had his eyes on farther horizons”. US Gen. William Sherman read this in the newspaper and correctly assumed that Hood was on his way back to Tennessee to try to cut Sherman’s supply lines. There was an army waiting on Hood and the Army of Tennessee was eliminated as an effective fighting group. Davis should have kept his mouth shut.

1957 Nine black students are escorted by the 101^st Airborne into Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Previously the US Supreme Court had ruled that separate but equal schools were unconstitutional. There were some 500 blacks within Central High School’s district that expressed interest in attending Central. Through a series of interviews and mind-changing the 500 were whittled down to nine. Gov. Orville Faubus being a staunch segregationist ordered the Ark. National Guard to prevent the blacks from entering the school to avoid bloodshed. This ploy did not sit well with Federal District Court Judge Davis and Davis ordered the black kids be allowed to attend the school, National Guard not withstanding. Finally President Eisenhower had had enough of Faubus and sent in the 101^st to enforce the law. It was not until the 70’s that blacks were socially accepted and the on and off violence abated. Hatred has no limits.

1942 The damned Nazis invade and conquer Norway looking for that country’s iron ore and it being a good location to mount attacks on allied shipping to England and Russia. The government of Norway had fled and set up a government-in-exile in London. The Norwegians were not happy about this and started giving the Germans some shit. The Germans responded with setting a puppet government with a Norwegian monster named Vidkun Quisling in control. This asshole sucked up to the Germans and even sent some his fellow Norwegians to German concentration camps. To this day the word Quisling means a hated government. The Germans also set up a Gestapo headquarters in Oslo and other cities to intimidate the populous into behaving. On this day the RAF (English Air Force) bombed the Gestapo headquarters in Oslo and sent the Germans running. But it was for naught because the Gestapo pigs came back a murdered innocent people in reprisal. I cannot express enough my hatred for the Germans and Arab terrorists. (See the last sentence in the previous paragraph) They are all the same pig sucking cowards.

1897 William Faulkner was born in Oxford, Miss. Faulkner was one of the most celebrated authors in American history. His first success was his book The Sound and Fury but he made his mark being a screenwriter in giving us the movies To Have and Have Not with Humphrey Bogart starring and The Big Sleep also starring Bogie. In 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and the next year his book Collected Stories was awarded the National Book Award. He was a true talent but left us when he had a heart attack and died at the age of 55. It is interesting to note that he and his wife Estelle bought an old ante bellum house near Oxford and refurbished it. I can see him now on the columned front porch in a cane bottomed rocker sipping a little Bourbon and branch water.

1957 Little Augie Carfano is shot to death on the street in New York. Augie was a soldier in the army of mobster Meyer Lansky and was caught not giving Meyer an appropriate amount of tribute after a successful score. Meyer didn’t play, ya’ll. It was estimated that Meyer had accumulated over $300M by the early 70’s but even with that the Feds could never come up with enough solid evidence to can his ass. His friend Bugsy Siegel with great vision had borrowed $6M from Meyer and opened the Flamingo, first casino in Las Vegas. It was an instant success but it looked like he wasn’t interested in paying Meyer back. Bugsy came down with a 30.06 caliber headache from which he never recovered. Almost appropriately Meyer disintegrated and died from lung cancer in 1983.

1867 Cattle baron Oliver Loving died in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico of gangrene. Ollie was also a great visionary. He and his friend Charlie Goodnight decided that it was a bummer to have to drive their cattle to a railhead somewhere in Kansas where a middle man would be involved and cut into their profits. So they decided to make cattle drives from west Texas through New Mexico and on up into the burgeoning cities and towns in Colorado and sell their cattle directly to the meat houses. On their first drive they lost 400 cattle but were able to deliver about 1,600 and walked away with $12,000 in gold an enormous amount in those days. They had one major problem, the Comanche. They were not happy with these honkies passing through their lands and demanded tribute in the form of cattle. Ollie and Charlie struggled with this problem until one day about 500 Comanche caught Ollie out by himself and hacked on him a while. Ollie was able to get back to Ft. Sumner with the most severe of his wounds being one of his arms. When his arm started to fester Ollie asked the local doctor to amputate it. The doctor said that he had never done such a thing and he wasn’t going to start now. So Ollie died a few days later because a freaking doctor had no nerve. There are markers out there to this day showing the Loving-Goodnight Trail from New Mexico to Colorado. The trail was used for many years by other drovers.

Born today:

1207 Afghani mystic and poet Jalal-ud Din-Rumi. He said “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” That sounds the stock market to me.

Died today:

0420 Italian religious leader Saint Jerome. He said “When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.”

1628 English writer Fulke Grenville. He said “No man was ever so much deceived by another as himself.”

1985 German actress Simone Signoret. She said “Chains do not keep a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.” That is a very profound and true statement, Simone. I guess I just ran out of thread, or never learned how to sew.

                 Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow

Tuesday

                                    Musings and History

Quote of the day:

This quote is the type that daughter #2 appreciates:

"I organized a band named 999 Megabytes...but we never had a gig.”

                                                 Woodie Paige

Trivia question of the day:

What South Carolinian was the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court?  Answer at the end of the blog.

I am going to catch y'all up on the action after the death of Henry VIII and the discovery of a conspiracy in which Henry's son, King Edward VI was murdered. All of those that were actively involved had a fatal meeting on the lawn of the Tower of London with a big guy in a black hood toting a big axe. Henry's daughter Mary I ended up on the throne even though she was a devout Catholic. Catholics were not allowed to be King or Queen after Henry had a squabble with them and formed his own church. After Lady Jane Grey was seated on the throne and the murder of Edward came to light, the English people rose up and an army of nearly 60,000 was formed and marched on London and it was then that the beheadings took place and Mary was seated as Queen. Almost immediately the politicians leaned on Mary to take a husband so there would be a King also. The first choice was an Englishman named Courtney that Mary had known since she was a child but he did not have the approval of the politicians of power. The head of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V told Mary to marry Prince Phillip of Spain. I forgot to mention that Phillip was the son Charles V, also a Spaniard. Being a devout Catholic, Mary took the word of Charles V to heart and agreed to marry Phillip and a letter of provisions was being composed to that effect. Remember the English people rising up and forming an army of 60,000? They did it again, but with only 7,000 when they found out that a Spaniard was going to become the King of England. Spain and England had been fighting since recorded history. That is as far as I am going at this point. Stay tuned.

A while back evidently a full moon was having an effect. Down in Batesville, South Carolina a high school band director was caught in the band room teaching a 14 year old girl on how to play his trombone, if you get my drift. He got five years in the joint. I can assure you that he will find out what playing an instrument is all about in a South Carolina prison.

Then about 150 miles away in Boiling Springs, South Carolina a 44 year and a 42 year old woman teachers threw a party for their students and furnished vodka and pot. The 44 year old did the thing with anyone that would sit still for it from 11 to 15 years old. But the 42 year old used a little logic and only bedded the boys that were 17 years old or older. In South Carolina consensual sex with anyone 17 or older is allowed meaning no statutory rape charge. However, she was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor for the booze and drugs. They were both fired. We never had anything like that in my high school...dammit.

All of you may remember the Susan Smith case 15 years ago over in Union, SC. To those of you that were in a cave in Mongolia during that time and do not remember, I will give a brief vignette. Susan fell in love with a man other than her husband. Her lover did not want children so Susan chose to strap her three and five year old boys into their car seats, then she ran the car into a nearby lake where the boys drowned.  She then called the police and said that her car with the boys aboard had been carjacked while she was in a convenience store. A police dragnet was quickly began but in the span of three weeks nothing was found. Then the sheriff of Union County, Harold Wells, called a news conference and said that Susan had confessed to drowning the boys and told him where the car was. Sheriff Wells was very composed and spoke with a very professional demeanor. Later on Harold Wells was convicted of loan sharking and witness tampering. He spent 90 days in the joint and paid a fine of $3,600. His days as an honest law enforcement officer are over. In fact, his days as an honest person are over.

                  This Date in History   September 24

622AD On this date Muhammad arrived in Medina after being kicked out of Mecca. This trip is known in the Muslim world as the Hegira. In fact, the completion of this trip begins as year 1 on the Moslem calendar. Muhammad was born in Mecca about 570AD. His father died before he was born and his mother died when he was six so he went to live with his grandfather. His grandfather died when little Mohammad was 8 years old so he went to live with his uncle Abu Talib. When he was 25 years old he married a wealthy woman 15 years older than he. They had issue of six children, 2 boys and 4 girls. Both of the boys died in childbirth, however. For reasons known only to Muhammad, once in a while he would go to Mount Hira near Mecca and sleep in a cave. On one particular occasion Mohammad heard a voice saying “You are the messenger of God”. Mohammad later said that he was sure it was the archangel Gabriel that gave him the message. Anyway, Muhammad went back into Mecca and began his evangelizing with his new found faith. He leaned heavily on the rich merchants who he declared as evil for scamming the poor people for fun and profit. He also says that the religions with more than one God are of the devil, that there is only one true God. He also declared himself as the last true prophet of the Judeo-Christian religious sect. He gathered about 100 followers but his reputation as a trouble maker, especially to the rich merchants had become well known and the local constabulary in Mecca came after him and his entourage. Muhammad and the boys slipped out and make the 200 mile trip to Medina and arrived on this date. Eventually Muhammad and the people of Mecca made their peace and Mecca also became a home for the followers of Muhammad. After a few years Muhammad got the nation of Islam on its feet on the entire Arabian Peninsula and the rest is history. By the way, Islam translated means “surrender to God” and Muslim means “those who have surrendered.” Also the Koran was a series of thoughts and revelations experienced by Muhammad or by others then relayed to Muhammad. Both Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia. Muhammad died in June of 632 and his successors continued with the expansion of Islam...up to a point. About the year 800 a division occurred in Islam that exists today and that being the Sunnis and the Shiites. One branch insists that the leader of Islam must be a direct descendant of Muhammad and the other branch believes that the leader of Islam must be a descendant of a series of Caliphs. They have been squabbling ever since.  By the way, the last provable direct descendant of Muhammad was Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.

1890 After several years of squabbling between the United States and the Mormon Church, the United States finally put its foot down and stated that if the Church did not abandon the “plural marriage” belief the US would seize all the Church’s lands in the Salt Lake City area and deny them statehood which would prevent any protection of the United States Cavalry from the hostile Indians all around them. So on this day the Church of Latter Day Saints issued and edict that the church no longer fosters “plural marriage” and from then on all marriages must be singular. If you read into the laws and tenets of this church you will find that the church is pretty dominate in the day in and day out operation of the individual family unit. I don’t know if that is good or bad, but there it is.

Answer to the trivia question:

The only South Carolinian to become Chief Justice was John Rutledge of Charleston.

                        Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow

Monday

                              Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Enjoy when you can and endure when you must.”

                       Johann Von Goethe

A while back I lambasted those Syrian and Iraqi men for running away from their homeland and leaving it to ISIS. This just goes to show you how Americans think. This country was established and held by force of arms and I assumed that if anyone invaded this country they would have to deal with an estimated 500 million firearms of a variety of powers, gauges and calibers and many very angry citizens, me included. Not every country has a 2^nd Amendment guaranteeing the right to bear arms meaning the Syrians and the Iraqis may have had nothing to fight with. When the Japanese architect of the raid on Pearl Harbor Admiral Yamamoto was asked why he did not cross the Pacific and invade the United States west coast he said “There are too many firearms in the hands of the citizens”. The Admiral attended Harvard.  Our ancestors had a hell of a lot more foresight than the leaders of today.

A while back i read a “letter to the editor” that was published by the local mullet wrapper known as the Greenville News. Some ignorant redneck sent a letter to the paper lambasting Starbucks for publishing an item saying that they are not going to forbid anyone from entering any of their shops bearing a weapon but request that their customers do not. This lunatic sent a letter to the editor saying that Starbucks might as well put a sign on their doors saying “robbers welcome”. Using this logic this lunatic obviously believes that if you put a sign on a front door saying “no guns allowed” it will stop any armed robberies. The bad part was that the Greenville News published this baloney. Ads and notifications in the newspapers will have no effect on crime but they published it anyway. It just shows you how anti-gun this local rag is. It is disgusting.

A friend leaned on me for condemning Jimi Hendricks because Jimi chose to commit suicide with drugs rather than bless us with his God given talent for a longer period of time. My friend said that I should just acknowledge what contribution Jimi made and let it go at that. He is right...if just aggravates me that many, many talented people die from self inflicted wounds or fatal addictions. Perhaps I should just take a pill and chill...maybe not the pill. Thanks Pete.

A few days ago I sent y’all a vignette about the Battle of Thermopylae in eastern Greece. In spite of the heroics by the Spartans, the Persians did eventually prevail and went through Greece burning, raping and pillaging. They did not prevail in the long run and here is why. It was because of two battles, one by sea and another was a land battle…here the sea battle:

                                          Salamis

After the defeat of the Greeks at Thermopylae, the Persian army marched almost unopposed and began the razing of many of the city-states in Greece including Athens. Earlier the Athenians began evacuating to the Salamis peninsula across the Sardonic Gulf from Athens. Following the Persian army was the Persian navy of about 750 ships. The only way for the Athenians not to be captured or cut off was to prevent the Persians from blockading Salamis. The Greeks assembled about 378 triremes (warships) to combat the 750 ships in the Persian fleet. The Persians were lured into a small estuary in a light wind with the Athenians slowly retreating. The Persians did not learn a damned thing at Marathon. The Greeks do not withdraw unless they have a mission in mind, especially if Spartans are involved. After a while the wind began to freshen and blew the Persian ships right at the Greeks. The Greeks were not interested in fighting ship-to-ship as the Persians; they use their larger and slower ships as nothing more than platforms for their infantry and catapults of “Greek fire”. Greek fire is mentioned in many manuscripts throughout the ancient world. No one knows exactly what it was but Herodotus tells us that is was probably a mixture of tar and naphtha, poured into a clay jar and set afire then launched toward the enemy by catapults. The burning tar sticks to nearly everything it touches and since all the ships were made of wood, the fire was deadly. If that didn’t work, they would throw grappling hooks to the enemy ships, pull them together and send the wild-eyed Spartan Hoplites (professional well armed soldiers) aboard the enemy ships to take care of business with spear and sword. The Greeks knew that the winds would increase and from what direction and set up for the Persian to be blown right into their laps. The retreat was just a delaying tactic waiting on the winds to come, and come they did. The Persians finally figured out what the Greeks were up to and tried to retreat but the prevailing wind prevented it. Before the battle was joined, King Xerxes set a chair out on a bluff overlooking the battle site and was stunned as he watched over 200 of his ships destroyed or sunk. After this, Xerxes boarded one of his ships and sailed his young ass back to Persia. It is thought by many historians that this was the most important military victories in history because it prevented a Persian presence in Europe. Today the Persians (Iran) are running to Europe in fear of ISIS and crying like a baby. The next major encounter was a land battle...later.

                     Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow

Friday

  Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“No longer forward nor behind I look in hope and fear;

But grateful take the good I find, the best of now and here.”

                      John Greenleaf Whittier

Trivia question of the day:

What major league baseball player was known as “The Georgia Peach”?

Earlier New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush returned the Heisman Trophy he was awarded in 2005. He said that he had to do it to settle his conscience. I seems that Reggie and his family was given thousands of dollars if he would attend the University of Southern California on a football scholarship. This is a gigantic no-no in the world of college football. No one has said from whence the money came but the University itself appears blameless, or at least that is their claim. They caught hell from the NCAA for recruiting violations. But I can assure you that they will not return the $48 to $50 million dollars gained when they beat Oklahoma for the national championship in the 2004-2005 season with Bush in the backfield. There was talk that the 2005 Heisman should be offered to Vince Young who came in second to Bush but the Heisman committee will just record that there was no Heisman Award given in 2005.

I saw a TV show about Moses and the 12 tribes being banished to wander the desert (probably the Negev) for 40 years after leaving Egypt...so I did some speculation. There is no definite amount given for the number of people involved in the Exodus. I am saying that the “banishment” to the desert was not a punishment at all but was planned. How could the Hebrews expect to fight their way through hundreds of miles of of hostile tribal lands without a trained army and weapons? After all they had been enslaved in Egypt for 300 years (give or take) and they certainly did not have a trained infantry, archers and for sure were not allowed to have chariots and horses. I think Moses camped out in the desert to increase the size of an available army by double, manufacture weapons and most of all, the training of an army in discipline and combat tactics. They would have been annihilated if they had entered the Jordan River Valley without a viable military. By the way, how could a significant number of people camp out in the desert for 40 years and not leave one archaeological site...just saying. The Exodus allegedly took place during the reign of Ramses II. This would put the time at about 1,400BC.

              This Date in History   September 20

1979 Lee Iacocca is elected chairman of the Chrysler Corporation. Lee had been fired by Ford earlier because Henry Ford II thought that Lee was just a “simple Italian immigrant”. Lee set about rescuing Chrysler from the precipice of bankruptcy. He was successful by layoffs, streamlining, “In your face advertising” and government guaranteed loans which Chrysler paid back in four years. During these four years, Lee asked that his salary be $1 per year setting an example for the other executives. After Chrysler began thriving again Lee was offered a salary of $7M per year, he said no to that offer and said “I will would take $1M a year, what the hell am I going to do with $7M a year.” Think about the raping other companies have been getting from their executives recently. We need more people like Lee.

1968 US military officials defend the use of Agent Orange and other defoliants in Vietnam. During the same news conference Dr. Fred Shirley a US Dept. of Agriculture official said the US military had severely underestimated the long term effect of these defoliants and that he suspected there would be an adverse effect on the crops that were sprayed. These chemicals were used primarily in III corps to clear out the foliage near the DMZ and borders with other countries to make it easier to discover incursions. Later on the Vietnamese people near the sprayed areas came down with unusually high rates of cancer and birth defects. I really don’t know the facts about what caused these tragedies because no comprehensive study has been done but I am convinced it was the defoliants. The US military sprayed 19 million gallons of this stuff. What the hell?

1943 The Germans had assigned the giant battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst to Norway to harass and/or stop the shipping of materiel from the US to Russia and England. The Scharnhorst left on an assignment leaving the Tirpitz alone in a Norwegian fiord. Many attempts were made to bomb the ship but all had failed so six English mini-subs were assigned the task of attaching explosives to the hull of the Tirpitz and lighting them off. On this day three of the subs were successful and damaged the ship to the point that it was out of commission for 6 months. By then better air cover for the convoys had been established and the Tirpitz was never able to fire a shot in anger.

Born today:

356BC Greek military genius Alexander the Great. He said “Remember upon the actions of one depends the fate of all.” His greatest enemy was the Persians which he always defeated. One reason was that Alexander’s troops carried lances that were about two feet longer than the Persians, meaning that in a head to head charge, Alexander’s troop’s lance points got there first. The Persians never figured that out along with Alexander’s mastery of his cavalry and engineering. The Persians came from what is now Iraq and Iran. They are still stupid.

Born today:

1902 English author Florence “Stevie” Smith. She said “This Englishwoman is so refined she has no bosom and no behind.” I think we have met, Stevie.

1921 US comic Slappy White. He said “The trouble with being unemployed is that as soon as you wake up you are on the clock.” Been there, done that, have tee shirt.

Died today:

1933 English social reformer Annie Besant. She said “For centuries the clergy considered women as a necessary evil and the most revered saints were those that hated women the most.” When you say “saints” that means Catholic to me. Maybe all of those priests that were prosecuted for sexual abuse of juveniles really hated women down deep. But what do I know?

1996 Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos. He said “A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.” I can’t drink Starbucks coffee, makes me too jumpy.

2005 Ukrainian Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. He said “None of my clients, not Stangl, not Mengele, not Eichmann, not even Hitler or Stalin was born a criminal. Someone had to teach them to hate: Maybe politics, maybe the society, or maybe it took even a Jewish prostitute to take them below.” Wiesenthal was a relentless pursuer of those monsters...he is no longer with us.

Answer to the trivia question:

The major league baseball player known a “The Georgia Peach” was Ty Cobb...born and raised near Royston, Georgia

                   Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow

Thursday

      Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Equal opportunity means that everyone will have a fair chance at proving their incompetence.”

                                               Laurence Peters

Trivia question of the day:

What was the deadliest hurricane/cyclone in history? Answer at the end of the blog.

The English language is a montage of words from many different sources, here is some examples:

“There is a “hurricane” just east of the windward islands.” The Mayan god of storms is Huracan.

“That fluid is toxic.” or “Sarin is a toxin.” According to Greek mythology in a fit of madness Hercules (Heracles in Greek) killed his wife and children. The punishment given by the Gods was eight “labors” or tasks considered to be impossible for the common man and a hell of a challenge for a superhuman like Hercules. The second of his tasks was to destroy the Lernean Hydra. This critter had the body of a giant snake with nine heads (the number of heads varied with different versions) all of which could deliver a poisonous bite. The hard part was when you cut off one of the heads another one immediately replaced it...the Hydra was considered impossible to kill. This critter was so vile that even its breath and its blood could kill. Hercules waded into battle with his gigantic sword in one hand and a torch in the other. He would cut off one head and immediately cauterize it so another one would not sprout. He eventually was able to slay the Hydra. Since the blood of the Hydra was poisonous Hercules decided to dip the points his arrows into the blood of the Hydra. He also had the most powerful bow in the world...Hercules had named his bow TOXUS. Toxin and toxic are refugees from this Greek mythological tale.

Here is another one:

In Greek mythology there was a war for control of the universe between the god Cronus (Kronus) and his son Zeus (Dios). Cronus had the Titans and his allies and Zeus had the Olympians as his. Cronus was losing the war primarily because Zeus had control of lightning so Cronus unleashed his mightiest Titan which was the god of war...named TYPHON. It is from this that we arrive at typhoon.

                 This Date in History   September 19

1966 Twenty-two scientists including several Nobel laureates sent President Lyndon Johnson a letter advising against the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam because of the risk of several elements in the chemical that could adversely affect human and animal life. The House Republicans send LBJ a “white paper” advising that the US was getting too deep into the war in Nam and it was affecting the economy adversely. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant sent LBJ a letter advising him to re-think the US involvement in Vietnam. And finally Pope Paul VI suggests that a Catholic encyclical should be issued against the US getting involved what was considered by his holiness to be a civil war. LBJ responded by sending swarms of B-52’s, F-105’s, F-4’s and several types of naval aircraft to bomb the dog shit out of several targets north and south of the DMZ. This is a prime example of the old adage “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”. And finally “When enough people tell you that you are sick, you had better lie down.” LBJ was a hardheaded dude. There is no doubt in my mind that worry over the Vietnam War killed him.

1955 Argentina President Juan Peron is deposed by a military coup. You know, you see a lot of that in Central and South America. I guess it is their blood to change Presidents once in a while no matter what. Peron went into exile in Spain. Two years before this event Peron’s wife Eva died from cancer. Eva, known affectionately as Evita, was loved by the working class because while she was married to Peron she fostered many changes for the working class making their lives more tolerable and she was a damn good looking woman too. Y'all know about the musical “Evita” that more or less depicted Eva’s life. Later on Peron is re-elected President of Argentina and by this time he has a new wife named Isabel. In 1974 Peron died and Isabel assumed the Presidency but the Argentine Air Force said “I don’t think so” and is deposed by a, you guessed it, military coup. Argentina suffered under this brutal administration until they were kicked out by a…you know.

1900 Robert Parker and Harry Longabough robbed a bank in Winnemucca, Nevada together. Y’all may not know these guys but they were also known as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. In his youth Parker took his name Butch Cassidy in honor of a neighbor that taught him the ways of the gun. Longabough took the name Sundance because that the name of the town whose jail he spent a lot of time at for horse thievery. They both were members of the loose group known as the Hole in the Wall gang which got its name from a secret hideout in the mountains of Colorado. The Pinkerton detective agency was hired by the railroads to stop these two from robbing trains and was on their asses constantly. It got so bad that Butch, Sundance and a woman named Etta Place moved to South America and started knocking over banks in Argentina. The Argentinians were not amused and chased them out and they went to Bolivia and did some honest work for a while until their identities were discovered. It is reported that Butch and Sundance were killed in a shootout in San Vicente, Bolivia. The rumor persists that Butch escaped and spent his last years peacefully on a ranch in Nevada. Nothing was ever heard from Etta Place again. An interesting mystery.

1827 Jim Bowie got into duel in Alexandria, Louisiana and the weapon of choice was knives. For the first time Jim revealed the knife that bears his name and after being shot several times and stabbed with a sword he disemboweled his banker opponent. There were a lot of fights in those days but Jim and his brother Rezin had way more that normal. It is almost a certainty that Jim did not invent the famous knife but it was probably his brother Rezin who was severely wounded earlier in a knife fight and decided that he needed a knife that would cut both directions, had the weight of a hatchet and a sharp point to stab with and voila, the Bowie knife. There was a rumor that the knife was made with a piece of a meteorite making it “out of this world” which was untrue. Jim died at the Alamo in 1836 and Rezin died in New Orleans in 1841.

Born today:

1851 English writer Henry Arthur Jones. When speaking of George Bernard Shaw he said “He is a freakish homunculus germinated outside lawful procreation.” I had to go the dictionary here.

1911 English writer William Golding. He said “Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out of your mind like a dustpan in a high wind.” What a thought.

1974 US comic Jimmy Fallon. He said “Sometimes I wish I had a bad childhood. That might explain my Looney Tunes behavior.” Jimmy was a regular on Saturday Night Live and now has a late night show replacing Jay Leno.

Died today:

1881 US President James A. Garfield. He said “I have had a lot of trouble in my life but the worst never came.” This is a good philosophy for all of us. If you don't acknowledge the worst then it never happens.

Answer to the trivia question:

The deadliest hurricane/cyclone in history is the great Bhola cyclone of 1970. It roared ashore in India/Bangladesh with 155 MPH winds and 20 foot storm surge and killed between 300,000 and 500,000 people

           Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow