Found out the covered bridge that the storm took out was 122 years old, along with many of the houses that were that or older. How sad that piece of history is forever gone. Even if they re-build, it won't be the same. They would probably re-build with 2 x 4's anyway. I like to see people's faces when they see the beams in our house and barns, they are 12" X 12" hand-planned (sp?) hard wood with the wood pegs connecting the joints. It's the kind of wood you have to drill before you can hammer a nail into it. Over the years, as we have had repairs and changes, the tradesmen just smile when they see them. We hear a lot of: "They don't build them like this anymore." or "This is when they built them to last" We remodeled the bathroom last year and the guy we had helping us would every once in awhile cuss that 'damn hard wood'. The house was built wayyyy before indoor plumbing made it to the country farmhouses.
This Day in History:
June 5, 1870
Constantinople burns
A huge section of the city of Constantinople, Turkey, is set ablaze on this day in 1870. When the smoke finally cleared, 3,000 homes were destroyed and 900 people were dead.The fire began at a home in the Armenian section of the Valide Tchesme district. A young girl was carrying a hot piece of charcoal to her family’s kitchen in an iron pan when she tripped, sending the charcoal out the window and onto the roof of an adjacent home. The fire quickly spread down Feridje Street, one of Constantinople’s main thoroughfares.
The Christian area of the city was quickly engulfed. There was a high degree of cooperation among the various ethnic groups who called the city home, but even this was no match for the high winds that drove the rapidly spreading fire. An entire square mile of the city near the Bosporus Strait was devastated. Only stone structures, mostly churches and hospitals, survived the conflagration.
In 1887, Edmondo de Amicis published perhaps the best account of this disaster in a book called Constantinople.
June 5, 1956
Elvis creates uproar
On this day in 1956, Elvis introduces his new single, "Hound Dog," on The Milton Berle Show. Elvis scandalized the audience with his suggestive hip gyrations. In the media frenzy that followed, other show hosts, including Ed Sullivan, denounced his performance. Sullivan swore he would never invite Presley on his own show, but that autumn he booked Elvis for three shows.
Presley had been recording since 1954. While working at a Memphis electrical shop, the 18-year-old Presley dropped by a Memphis recording studio on a lunch break and paid $4 to record two songs for his mother's birthday. The office assistant at Sun Records, where he made the recording, was so impressed that she brought the record to studio executive Sam Phillips, who signed him in 1954. His first recording, "That's All Right," hit No. 4 on the country-western charts in Memphis.
Elvis soon began performing regularly on radio programs and made his television debut on a Memphis show in March 1955. That September, he had his first No. 1 country record--a rendition of Junior Parker's "Mystery Train." RCA purchased Presley's contract, and he made his first RCA recordings in Nashville in 1956, including "I Got a Woman," "Heartbreak Hotel," and "I Was the One." On January 28, 1956, television audiences met Presley on the variety program Stage Show. He appeared on several more programs before filming his first movie, Love Me Tender (1956), which took just three days to earn back its $1 million cost. All of Presley's singles that year went gold. Elvis' controversial dancing, with his trademark hip gyrations, upset parents but delighted teenage girls. During an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, cameras showed him only from the waist up.
Elvis received his draft notice in December 1957 but took a deferment to finish filming his fourth movie, King Creole. Before his military induction, he recorded enough material so that the stream of Elvis hits was uninterrupted during his tour of duty. He continued to dominate the charts through the mid-'60s and made more than 20 movies.
Elvis stopped performing live in 1961 but made a comeback in the late '60s, becoming a Las Vegas fixture and releasing several top singles, including "In the Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds" in 1969. As his popularity continued to skyrocket, the "King of Rock and Roll" reportedly turned to drugs. His final live performance was on June 25, 1977, and on August 16, 1977, the day of his next scheduled concert, his girlfriend found him dead in a bathroom at Graceland, the Memphis mansion where he'd lived. Congestive heart failure was cited as the cause of death, but prescription drug abuse was suspected as a contributing factor. He was buried at Graceland. Nine years after his death, he was one of the first 10 people inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During his life, he had scored 94 gold singles and more than 40 gold LPs.
June 5, 1968
Robert F. Kennedy shot
At 12:50 a.m. PDT, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, is shot three times in a hail of gunfire in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Five others were wounded. The senator had just completed a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary. The shooter, Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, had a smoking .22 revolver wrested from his grip and was promptly arrested. Kennedy, critically wounded, was rushed to the hospital, where he fought for his life for the next 24 hours. On the morning of June 6, he died. He was 42 years old. On June 8, Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, also the final resting place of his assassinated older brother, President John F. Kennedy.
Robert Kennedy, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1925, interrupted his studies at Harvard University to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was legal counsel for various Senate subcommittees during the 1950s and in 1960 served as the manager of his brother's successful presidential campaign. Appointed attorney general by President Kennedy, he proved a vigorous member of the cabinet, zealously prosecuting cases relating to civil rights while closely advising the president on domestic and foreign issues. After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, he joined President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration but resigned in 1964 to run successfully in New York for a Senate seat. Known in Congress as an advocate of social reform and defender of the rights of minorities, he also voiced criticism of the war in Vietnam.
In 1968, he was urged by many of his supporters to run for president as an anti-war and socially progressive Democratic. Hesitant until he saw positive primary returns for fellow anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy, he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on March 16, 1968. Fifteen days later, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey became the key Democratic hopeful, with McCarthy and Kennedy trailing closely behind. Kennedy conducted an energetic campaign and on June 4, 1968, won a major victory in the California primary. He had won five out of six primaries and seemed a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination and, some thought, the presidency.
Shortly after midnight, he gave a victory speech to his supporters in the Ambassador Hotel and then, while making his way to a press conference by a side exit, was fatally wounded by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan was arrested at the scene and indicted for first-degree murder. A mentally unstable drifter, his motives in killing Kennedy have never been clear. Some journalists have alleged that Sirhan was part of a larger assassination conspiracy, supposedly brought on by Kennedy's promise to end the Vietnam War if elected president. These conspiracists cite forensic evidence and witness testimony that they say proves the existence of additional shooters who were not detained.
In 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted and sentenced to die. In 1972, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty. Since 1983, he has repeatedly been denied parole by prison officials who consider him a serious threat to public safety.
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