Another week coming to a close

Winding down here at work for the weekend and I wanted to pop over here and update. Lots of things going on. Checked the NASCAR page for practice times and saw Jeff Gordon was down in 11th position (sigh)! Running out of races before the Chase begins. Jeff had over a 500 point lead last year going into the Chase and it didn't do him any good. So, maybe, they are just playing it safe and making sure they are in the Chase and then hammer it down. Hopefully!!
The Olympics have been riveting so far. Phelps just might break Spitz's record of 7 gold-7 world records. I'll be watching that! And, yeah!!!, women's gym.!! They fought back and got some gold.

Metal Count (top ten)

US 46 (14 gold)
China 41 (26 gold)
Australia 20 (5 gold)
Russia 19 (3 gold)
S. Korea 18 (6 gold)
France 18 (3 gold)
Germany 14 (8 gold)
Italy 14 (6 gold)
Japan 13 (6 gold)
Great Britain 8 (3 gold)

Something else that caught my eye yesterday. On CNN they had an article about gas usage being down in June. DUH! Here's some numbers they threw out:

• people traveled 12.2 billion less miles in June
  
• used 400 million gallons less gas June
  
• 53.2 billion fewer miles overall from Nov. 2007 to June 2008

This is a larger decline than the whole decade of the 70's (49.3 Billion fewer miles) with gas embargo and gas lines!

People who were having a hard time making ends meet before all the gas increase sure isn't going to have the money to keep up with rising prices. Ours went as low as $3.61/gal until Tuesday when the British announced that they had shut off a pipe to-and-from Georgia (Russia invaded) due to the conflict. BAM ours went from $3.61 to $3.89!!!! It was either that or because the US women didn't win gold in team event. One of those 2 reason LOL I'm kidding!!

And just because I can and it always makes me smile....



I like to go boating! :)

This Day In History:

August 15, 1935

Will Rogers killed in plane crash

On this day in 1935, beloved actor and humorist Will Rogers dies in a plane crash in Alaska while flying with his friend, aviation pioneer Wiley Post.

August 15, 1945

Hirohito announces unconditional surrender

On this day in 1945, Emperor Hirohito of Japan announces the news of his country's unconditional surrender in World War II over a radio broadcast to the Japanese people.

August 15, 1969

Woodstock music festival

On this day in 1969, Woodstock begins. A massive rock festival in Bethel, New York, Woodstock drew vast crowds and served as a defining moment for baby boomers. Among the many performers were Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

On Aug. 12, 1994, the much-publicized Woodstock II music festival takes place in Saugerties, New York, near the site of the legendary Woodstock concert of 1969. An estimated 300,000 people attended the event, marked--as was the original--by bad weather and pervasive mud. Some 50 bands and singers performed, including the Neville Brothers, Nine Inch Nails, Bob Dylan, Green Day, Jimmy Cliff, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Brickyard Debacle

Sunday was a travesty to racing!! From my view this was Goodyear's fault but many are blaming the track, Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The track hasn't been changed since 2005 and they had drivers at the track earlier in the year to do tire tests and no problem showed up then. Last Saturday was an eye opener. Dale Jr. was the first to say anything. He went and got a news crew with camera and asked them to follow him. He had something to show them, that's how bad he felt like the situation was. After 7 laps around the track his tires were showing cords!

Even though NASCAR had flown in tires from Pocono overnight, most teams stayed with the Brickyard tires because the harder Pocono tire had the potential to cause other problems resulting in blown engines, So, NASCAR made the decision to throw a caution every 10-20 laps which took all pit strategy and racing out of the game.

I'm very thankful my trip to the Brickyard was last year. Would hate to spend that kind of time and money and not see a race. It was pitiful!! Even I quit watching!! Most drivers issued apologies last night and this morning to their fans for such a poor excuse of a race. Now how sad it that? Ok, I could go on and on once I'm on my Soap Box so I'll step down and move on...but grrrrr anyway :P

This Day in History:

July 28, 1929

Future first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy is born

On this day in 1929, President John F. Kennedy’s beautiful and popular wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, is born into a prominent New York family.

Jacqueline, or “Jackie” as she was called, grew up an avid horsewoman and reader. In 1951, after graduating from George Washington University, Jackie toured Europe with her sister. That fall, she returned to the U.S. to begin her first job as the Washington Times-Herald’s "Inquiring Camera Girl.” Her assignment was to roam the streets of Washington, D.C. asking strangers “man on the street” questions and then snapping their picture for publication. Shortly after her return to the capital, at a dinner party in Georgetown, she met a young, handsome senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy. They dated over the next two years, and in May 1953, Kennedy proposed. Jackie accepted and the couple married on September 12, 1953, at St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island. The Kennedys then settled in Washington, D.C., where Kennedy embarked on a meteoric political career. He served as a senator from Massachusetts from 1953 until he was elected president of the United States in 1961. At the time, he and Jackie were the youngest couple ever to reside in the White House.

The couple presented a public facade of a happy marriage--the general public did not know of Kennedy’s affairs with other women—and Jackie was a dedicated wife and civic-minded first lady. She raised two children in the White House and restored the building to historic specifications. She was a popular celebrity and style icon for women around the world. On a trip to France in 1961, President Kennedy once quipped “I’m the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.”

The most memorable and tragic images of Jackie Kennedy were captured on film on November 22, 1963, immediately after her husband was shot while the couple was riding in an open-car motorcade through the city of Dallas, Texas. A home-movie camera caught a frantic Jackie scrambling over the back seat of the car and onto the trunk, where it appeared that she tried to retrieve a portion of Kennedy’s brain. Later that day, the press photographers snapped Jackie as she stood--shocked, stoic and solemn in a blood-stained suit—next to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson as he took the oath of office en route to Washington on Air Force One.

July 28, 1945

Plane crashes into Empire State Building

A United States military plane crashes into the Empire State Building on this day in 1945, killing 14 people. The freak accident was caused by heavy fog.

The B-25 Mitchell bomber, with two pilots and one passenger aboard, was flying from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. As it came into the metropolitan area on that Saturday morning, the fog was particularly thick. Air-traffic controllers instructed the plane to fly to Newark Airport instead.

This new flight plan took the plane over Manhattan; the crew was specifically warned that the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the city at the time, was not visible. The bomber was flying relatively slowly and quite low, seeking better visibility, when it came upon the Chrysler Building in midtown. It swerved to avoid the building but the move sent it straight into the north side of the Empire State Building, near the 79th floor.

July 28, 1973

Bonnie & Clyde's Ford V-8 sold at auction

Bonnie and Clyde's bullet-riddled 1934 Ford V-8 sedan was sold at auction for $175,000 to Peter Simon of Jean, Nevada. The Ford V-8 model succeeded the new Model A, and it was well received due to its speed and power--perhaps this is why it seemed most popular among the criminal element. Henry Ford first received a personal letter congratulating him on the car's performance from famed outlaw gunman John Dillinger. Dillinger wrote, "Hello Old Pal. You have a wonderful car. It's a treat to drive. Your slogan should be Drive a Ford and Watch The Other Cars Fall Behind You. I can make any other car eat a Ford's dust. Bye-bye." Later, Clyde Barrow wrote a similarly laudatory note to Henry Ford: "Dear Sir, While I still have breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned and even if my business hasn't been strictly legal it don't hurt to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8." Almost enough to make you think Ford hired both high-profile criminals for an ad campaign, but alas, Ford made no use of either personal endorsement.

Until next post...

Weather, Johnny Depp Poll

It's a beautiful summer day here. Forecast is calling for 90's the rest of the week and into the weekend. 90's + humidity = hot! I will take that over freezing any day!! The older I get the more I don't like winter. Now that my friend 'Arthur Ritis' is with me everywhere I go it just makes me ache all over.
Monday the hubby had to stay home to meet the John Deere repair man to get our lawn mower running again. It was running along just fine and then died. Come to find out it was the battery, duh, don't we feel stupid! Anyway, when I get home from work I about had a heart attack!. Hubby had the yard done, dishes washed, coffee set for next day and house picked up!! Let me tell you that hasn't happened very often. Or not as often as I would like it too :P

I also added a poll to the right---> Feel free to vote ;)

Flashing back to the 70's yesterday was fun so I checked out my birth year, 1957...

• Soviet Union inaugurates the "Space Age" by launching Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite. A month later Sputnik II carries a dog into orbit, making that dog the first living being to enter space.
• Federal troops ordered to enforce integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas
• Teamsters union expelled from the AFL-CIO for failing to deal with organized crime
• New York Giants move to San Francisco; Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles
• Movies: The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Prince and the Showgirl, Twelve Angry Men, Love in the Afternoon
• Songs: Young Love, Tonight, Wake Up Little Susie, That'll Be the Day, Jailhouse Rock
• Books: On the Road, Jack Kerouac; Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand; The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss
• Theater: West Side Story and The Music Man open in New York
• "Beatnik" enters the vernacular as a description of the emerging "Beat Generation" counterculture movement
• An earthquake in the Soviet Union June 27 leaves 1,200 dead; an equal number die in a quake that rocks part of Iran 5 days later, registering 7.4 on the Richter scale; an Iranian quake that registers 7.3 kills 1,130 December 13.
  

Here's an interesting article about the Frisbee.

The Frisbee is introduced by the Wham-O Manufacturing Co. of San Gabriel, Calif., which has been licensed by Los Angeles inventor Walter Frederick Morrison to produce the plastic "Pluto Platter" devised by Morrison in 1948. New England college students have tossed metal pie tins produced since 1871 by the Frisbie Baking Co. of Bridgeport, Conn. (the company will go out of business next year), Morrison will obtain a patent next year for his faster, more accurate flying disc, Wham-O's Rich Knerr will come up with the registered trademark Frisbee, and his company will sell upwards of 100 million units before Mattel Corp. acquires the toy. The Frisbee launches a new sport whose first world champion will be crowned in 1968.

This Day in History:

July 16, 1951

Catcher in the Rye is published

J.D. Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is published by Little, Brown on this day in 1951. The book, about a confused teenager disillusioned by the adult world, is an instant hit and will be taught in high schools for half a century.

The 31-year-old Salinger had worked on the novel for a decade. His stories had already started appearing in the 1940s, many in the New Yorker.

The book took the country by storm, selling out and becoming a Book of the Month Club selection. Fame did not agree with Salinger, who retreated to a hilltop cabin in Cornish, New York, but he continued to publish stories in the New Yorker periodically. He published Franny and Zooey in 1963, based on two combined New Yorker stories.

Salinger stopped publishing work in 1965, the same year he divorced his wife of 12 years, whom he had married when he was 32. In 1999, journalist Joyce Maynard published a book about her affair with Salinger, which had taken place more than two decades earlier.

July 16, 1969

Apollo 11 departs Earth

At 9:32 a.m. EDT, Apollo 11, the first U.S. lunar landing mission, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a historic journey to the surface of the moon. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19.

The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, separated from the command module, where a third astronaut, Michael Collins, remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston a famous message, "The Eagle has landed." At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. Seventeen minutes later, at 10:56 p.m., Armstrong spoke the following words to millions listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." A moment later, he stepped off the lunar module's ladder, becoming the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface at 11:11 p.m., and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests, and spoke with President Richard M. Nixon via Houston. By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module, and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon--July 1969 A.D.--We came in peace for all mankind." At 5:35 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at 12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:51 p.m. on July 24.

There would be five more successful lunar landing missions, and one unplanned lunar swing-by, Apollo 13. The last men to walk on the moon, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission, left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972. The Apollo program was a costly and labor intensive endeavor, involving an estimated 400,000 engineers, technicians, and scientists, and costing $24 billion (close to $100 billion in today's dollars). The expense was justified by President John F. Kennedy's 1961 mandate to beat the Soviets to the moon, and after the feat was accomplished, ongoing missions lost their viability.

July 16, 1999

JFK Jr. killed in plane crash

On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, die when the single-engine plane that Kennedy was piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr., was born on November 25, 1960, just a few weeks after his father and namesake was elected the 35th president of the United States. On his third birthday, "John-John" attended the funeral of his assassinated father and was photographed saluting his father's coffin in a famous and searing image. Along with his sister, Caroline, he was raised in Manhattan by his mother, Jacqueline. After graduating from Brown University and a very brief acting stint, he attended New York University Law School. He passed the bar on his third try and worked in New York as an assistant district attorney, winning all six of his cases. In 1995, he founded the political magazine George, which grew to have a circulation of more than 400,000. Unlike many others in his famous family, he never sought public office himself.

Always in the media spotlight, he was celebrated for the good looks that he inherited from his parents. In 1988, he was named the "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine. He was linked romantically with several celebrities, including the actress Daryl Hannah, whom he dated for five years. In September 1996, he married girlfriend Carolyn Bessette, a fashion publicist. The two shared an apartment in New York City, where Kennedy was often seen inline skating in public. Known for his adventurous nature, he nonetheless took pains to separate himself from the more self-destructive behavior of some of the other men in the Kennedy clan.

On July 16, 1999, however, with about 300 hours of flying experience, Kennedy took off from Essex County airport in New Jersey and flew his single-engine plane into a hazy, moonless night. He had turned down an offer by one of his flight instructors to accompany him, saying he "wanted to do it alone." To reach his destination of Martha's Vineyard, he would have to fly 200 miles--the final phase over a dark, hazy ocean--and inexperienced pilots can lose sight of the horizon under such conditions. Unable to see shore lights or other landmarks, Kennedy would have to depend on his instruments, but he had not qualified for a license to fly with instruments only. In addition, he was recovering from a broken ankle, which might have affected his ability to pilot his plane.

At Martha's Vineyard, Kennedy was to drop off his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, one of his two passengers. From there, Kennedy and his wife, Carolyn, were to fly on to the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod's Hyannis Port for the marriage of Rory Kennedy, the youngest child of the late Robert F. Kennedy. The Piper Saratoga aircraft never made it to Martha's Vineyard. Radar data examined later showed the plane plummeting from 2,200 feet to 1,100 feet in a span of 14 seconds, a rate far beyond the aircraft's safe maximum. It then disappeared from the radar screen.

Kennedy's plane was reported missing by friends and family members, and an intensive rescue operation was launched by the Coast Guard, the navy, the air force, and civilians. After two days of searching, the thousands of people involved gave up hope of finding survivors and turned their efforts to recovering the wreckage of the aircraft and the bodies. Americans mourned the loss of the "crown prince" of one of the country's most admired families, a sadness that was especially poignant given the relentless string of tragedies that have haunted the Kennedy family over the years.

On July 21, navy divers recovered the bodies of JFK Jr., his wife, and sister-in-law from the wreckage of the plane, which was lying under 116 feet of water about eight miles off the Vineyard's shores. The next day, the cremated remains of the three were buried at sea during a ceremony on the USS Briscoe, a navy destroyer. A private mass for JFK Jr. and Carolyn was held on July 23 at the Church of St. Thomas More in Manhattan, where the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis worshipped. President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, were among the 300 invited guests. The Kennedy family's surviving patriarch, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, delivered a moving eulogy: "From the first day of his life, John seemed to belong not only to our family, but to the American family. He had a legacy, and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend, and he learned to live with it."

Investigators studying the wreckage of the Piper Saratoga found no problems with its mechanical or navigational systems. In their final report released in 2000, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the crash was caused by an inexperienced pilot who became disoriented in the dark and lost control.

Take care.....until next post...

T.G.I.F!!!!!!!!

Well, went to town last night to replace my dead dryer. Got a deal at HH Gregg, they took $100 off price if we bought the one on display. It had a few marks on it but let's get real, it's going in my basement, who cares about marks?! And the few it had came off with fingernail polish lol. So, we're back in the laundry business....yippee!
Since yesterday's post I saw the tiger Momma carrying the tiger baby to the wood shed so I now know who the Momma is. I also know she has more than 2 since I could see the 2 from yesterday and hear at least one more back in the corner of the wood shed. We have wayyyy to many cats!!! The 2 from yesterday I grabbed up and cleaned their eyes out. Both of them had matted eyes shut.
Not sure what we are doing this weekend. Sunday is our 33rd Anniversary and I guess we got a new dryer! Plus, a trip through Burger King...big spenders! ha
Today at work, we are having a cookout then a meeting with the 401K people so I get less phone time! yea!! Believe me I will try to stretch it out as long as I can!

This Day in History:

June 20, 1931

Hoover vs. the Depression

Unlike his successors Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover is often remembered for what he didn't do during his tenure in the White House. In particular, Hoover has taken his share of knocks for supposedly failing to marshal the nation's legislative forces against the Great Depression. While it's true that Hoover viewed the business community as the primary engine of America's economic revival, he did help devise a number of initiatives that aimed to speed the end of the Depression. Case in point: on this day in 1931, Hoover urged leaders of various nations to suspend payment of international debts and reparations for the next year. The moratorium was intended as a precautionary measure: with the recent demise of a major Austrian bank, Hoover feared that the international economy was on the brink of a nasty slump that would only worsen the United State's woes. The international community readily acceded to Hoover's wishes and by July the freeze was in effect. But, though Hoover's moratorium initially helped restore confidence in the world's various markets and economies, its healing powers were short-lived: that fall, Great Britain abandoned the global economy, shattering most nation's fragile faith in the international economy.

June 20, 1947

Bugsy Siegel, organized crime leader, is killed

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the man who brought organized crime to the West Coast, is shot and killed at his mistress Virginia Hill's home in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel had been talking to his associate Allen Smiley when three bullets were fired through the window and into his head, killing him instantly.

Siegel's childhood had been pretty similar to that of other organized crime leaders: Growing up with little money in Brooklyn, he managed to establish himself as a teenage thug. With his pal Meyer Lansky, Siegel terrorized local peddlers and collected protection money. Before long, they had a business that included bootlegging and gambling all over New York City.

By the late 1930s, Siegel had become one of the major players of a highly powerful crime syndicate, which gave him $500,000 to set up a Los Angeles franchise. Bugsy threw himself into the Hollywood scene, making friends with some of the biggest names of the time--Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow. His all-night parties at his Beverly Hills mansion became the hot spot in town. He also started up a solid gambling and narcotics operation to keep his old friends back east happy. Just before World War II began, Siegel traveled to Italy to sell explosives to Mussolini, but the deal fizzled when tests of the explosives did too.

In 1945, Siegel had a brilliant idea. Just hours away from Los Angeles sat the sleepy desert town of Las Vegas, Nevada. It had nothing going for it except for a compliant local government and legal gambling. Siegel decided to build the Flamingo Hotel in the middle of the desert with $6,000,000, a chunk of which came from the New York syndicate.

The Flamingo wasn't immediately profitable and Siegel ended up in an argument with Lucky Luciano over paying back the money used to build it. Around the same time that Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills, Luciano's men walked into the Flamingo and announced that they were now in charge. Even Siegel probably never imagined the astounding growth and success of Las Vegas in the subsequent years.

Not much in the news history today. Have a great weekend and be safe!

Is it the weekend yet?

Well, we got the pile of debris burned. Actually, Amanda and Tom were there before we got home and had the fire started. She also had brats and polish sausage wrapped in foil with peppers and onions cooking in the pit, fresh veggies, chips and s'mores for dessert! mmmmmmmmmmm Just gotta love having kids when they do something like that! :) The grand kids were playing in our kiddie pool so we were all happy campers.
More rain to move in tonight and usually when we get rain it travels down river to the southern counties that are still recovering from flooding. Here' an interesting chart for rainfall in June


This image from NASA shows rainfall totals from June 2-9. This image shows rainfall totals for the 7-day period between June 2 and June 9, 2008. Rainfall amounts exceeding 100 millimeters (approximately 4 inches, shown in green) extend from north-central Oklahoma up into South Dakota and eastward into Michigan and Ohio. Higher amounts on the order of 200 to 300 mm (about 8 to 12 inches, shown in yellow) cover significant portions of this same area. The highest totals for the period (shown in red) exceed 400 mm (16 inches) and are located over central Indiana. More: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/shownh.php3?img_id=14880 (NASA)

As you can see, south central Indiana got hammered! Crops are gone and some communities will never recover. Will be a long road for many. 90% of the town of Paragon was under water.


6th and Cottage St. in Columbus, IN









Mud lines on car in Columbus, IN


Interstate 70 in Putnam County, IN

Today in History:

June 12, 1942

Anne Frank receives a diary

On this day, Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father's office. For two years, the Franks and four other families hid, fed and cared for by Gentile friends. The families were discovered by the Gestapo, which had been tipped off, in 1944. The Franks were taken to Auschwitz, where Anne's mother died. Friends in Amsterdam searched the rooms and found Anne's diary hidden away.

Anne and her sister were transferred to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died of typhus a month before the war ended.

Anne's father survived Auschwitz and published Anne's diary in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The book has been translated into some 30 languages.

June 12, 1965

Supremes set record

On this day in 1965, the Supremes set music industry records when "Back in My Arms Again" becomes their fifth consecutive single to top the charts. The record still stands today.

June 12, 1987

Reagan challenges Gorbachev

On this day in 1987, in one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down" the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany.

June 12, 1994

Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman murdered

Nicole Brown Simpson, famous football player O.J. Simpson's ex-wife, and her friend Ron Goldman are brutally stabbed to death outside Nicole's home in Brentwood, California, in what quickly becomes one of the most highly publicized trials of the century. With overwhelming evidence against him, including a prior record of domestic violence towards Brown, O.J. Simpson became the chief suspect. (Who could forget: If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit? IMHO this trial was a joke and travesty to justice. The prosecution messed up and he got away with murder.)

Ok, I need to get some work done....latersssss ;)

Sometimes it's the little things in life that go far...

I am hoping to get back to a normal posting routine next week when I'm not covering work for co-workers on vacation. Looking forward to Monday for a change lol!!

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.

Ah, ceci est ma vie!

It's not even the weekend yet and the kids are filling it up for us...Amanda and Tom need some work done to the brakes of their van so they are coming over tonight after work to do that. Then, Jeremy called me at lunch to see if I could watch the girls Saturday night....and so it begins. I need to be cleaning carpet in the living room. Bob fell asleep on the couch the night before last and when he stretched or something he knocked over his glass of tea, which scared the cat sitting by me so she jumped spilling my Pepsi. Needless to say I had a mess at both ends of couch. The girls are older now so maybe I can still get it done. Somehow, I used to be able to do that kind of stuff when I had my kids at home, of course, I was 20 years younger too! Ah, ceci est ma vie! Hopefully they won't be there all day Sunday so I can catch the race.

Speaking of racing....Jeff Gordon was fastest in practice this morning, yea!! Jimmie Johnson is 5th but Jr is down to 21st. I wore my #24 shirt to work today hoping it would bring him some luck.

In China, weather is hampering the efforts to drain the lake caused by the earthquake. They are hopeful that they can control the draining but with the rain they are getting the water is rising and it's a race against time and mother nature before it burst. They say tens of thousands children were orphaned and because of the 1 child law parents have lost their only child. Very sad situation.

I still haven't caught to much on the earthquake in Iceland but then again, I haven't had time to surf the web since it's last day of the month...invoice, invoice, invoice....

This Day In History:
My first one is about the Indy 500 which is only about a 50 minute drive for me..Check out this Hot Rod!! :)

May 30, 1911

Indy 500 sees first winner

Ray Harroun won the inaugural Indianapolis 500, averaging 74.6mph in the Marmon Wasp. The Indy 500 was the creation of Carl Fisher. In the fall of 1909, Fisher replaced the ruined, crushed-stone surface of his 2.5-mile oval with a brand-new brick one. It was the largest paved, banked oval in the United States. Fisher then made two decisions vital to the success of the Indy 500. First, he determined to hold only one race per year on his Indianapolis Motor Speedway; second, he elected to offer the richest purse in racing as a reward for competing in his annual 500-mile event. By the second year of the Indy 500, 1912, it was the highest-paying, single-day sporting event in the entire world. The purse alone guaranteed that Indy would attract the media's undivided attention. Add to Fisher's marketing tactics the fact that European racing suffered from an absence of major events due to the ban on public road racing, and you have the ingredients that made Indy instantly successful. The media attention, in turn, meant that the best drivers in the world would come to Indy to make their reputation. Manufacturers acknowledged that a car bearing their name would mean millions in free advertising. It's a simple formula by today's standards, but in Fisher's time the risk of putting so much money down was rarely taken. In the very first race at Indy, Harroun's Marmon became nationally recognized. The car was owned, built, and entered by the factory, and Harroun drove as a hired employee. Among the Marmon Wasp's novel features, it is cited as the first car fitted with a rear-view mirror. But if the Indy 500 was responsible for attracting the industry to racing, it was even more responsible for creating racing as an industry. In 1911, the typical race car was built off the chassis of a big luxury car. They had huge four-cylinder engines. Instead of the heavy body of the luxury cars, the race cars were fitted with "doghouse" bodies that just covered the car's engine and cockpit. The floorboards were wood boards, the wheels were made of ash wood, and the seats were metal buckets bolted firmly to the floorboards. The cars were equipped with rear-wheel drum brakes only. Bolster tanks, like tubular sofa bolsters, held the oil and gasoline. Due to the ill-fitting pistons, gaskets, and valves that comprised the cars' innards, the best cars dropped nearly a dozen gallons of oil on the brick racetrack over the course of the 500-mile event. So these cars, equipped with no suspension, raced at speeds near 80mph on a brick track covered in oil. Only a decade later in 1922, nearly all the cars that started the Indy 500 were purpose-built race cars. All of them carried aerodynamic bodies, with narrow grills and teardrop-shaped tails. Knock-off wire wheels made for quick, efficient tire changes, and the new straight-sided tires lasted much longer than their early pneumatic counterparts. The best cars were equipped with four-wheel hydraulic brakes and inline 3.0-liter V-8 engines made of aluminum. The cars were smaller, lighter, more efficient, and far more expensive. They resembled nothing that could be purchased in a storeroom. Ray Harroun's speed of 74.6mph would have finished him 10th at the 1922 Indy 500. It wasn't the speeds that had changed so much as the driver's control over the car. Racing, at least partly because of Indy, had become a sport rather than an exhibition. In the mid-1920s, the Miller and Duesenberg cars took racing to another level. Indy became what it is today, a high-paying event for the world's most expensive cars.

May 30, 1431

Joan of Arc martyred

At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy.

Long article but interesting. For more check out this site:

http://tinyurl.com/5v6vrw

May 30, 1927

Waters of Kentucky River peak

On this day in 1927, the Kentucky River peaks during a massive flood that kills 89 people and leaves thousands homeless. Torrential rains caused this unprecedented flood.

An account from the Mountain Eagle newspaper out of Whitesburg, Kentucky, in Letcher County, provides a detailed look at the disaster:

“The flood hit just after 11 o'clock Sunday night, and within a few minutes the whole camp of the Consolidated Fuel company was under water. The house in which Brent Breeding and his family were living was swept against the railroad trestle and then crushed to pieces. Not a plank of it is to be seen there now. All of the members of the family were saved except a five-year-old girl. The body has not yet been recovered.

Jimmy Higgins, superintendent, says that he heard at 11 o'clock that his sub-station was on fire and started up Smoot creek to see about it. The rain became so hard that he turned back and climbed the hill to his home overlooking the depot there. A prolonged flash of lightning showed him that the camp already flooded. He rushed back down the hill and began to direct the rescue work. They had to chop into the roofs of some of the houses to get the occupants out, for the water from below had trapped them. Swimmers went in at the risk of their own lives and carried out occupants. One home had thirteen children, all of whom were saved.”

This flood had a serious long-term impact on the communities of the region: 12,000 people were left homeless and men were out of work for months as the mines in which most worked had to be shut down. As with most floods, it was the flooding of small streams rather than a major river that caused the most deaths. Major rivers that flood can cause serious property and agricultural damage, but do not usually cause deaths because it takes more time for them to flood, usually providing ample warning to people nearby. Smaller rivers and creeks tend to flood suddenly when inundated by local storm bursts; the sudden waves of water that kill people usually come out of these smaller rivers.

Floods are the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States, causing about 140 deaths annually.

That's all for now. Have a safe weekend!

Lots of News today...

I started off the day looking around for info on the 'lake' in China that they are attempting to release. This is the one caused by landslides from the earthquake that blocked a river. They estimate it is the size of 50,000 Olympic sizes pools! They have evacuated the area and are set to blast through to begin releasing water back into the dry riverbed BUT we all know about 'best laid plans'. Video at CNN showed the 'ghost towns' left behind and to be honest it looked surreal.

While checking up on that, a breaking news banner loaded. There was a 6.1 earthquake in Iceland today! It was located in the southern region and there are reports that roads and buildings are damage but no injuries are reported at this time. Anyone working but living in effected area was told to go home and check on family and personal property.

I did a scan of my Chaiten/volcano sites and looks like she's still puffing like a steel mill, steady. It's just amazing what you can find on the Internet. While browsing around I saw a picture of Ayers Rock in Australia. Fascinating reading, check it out:

http://www.crystalinks.com/ayersrock.html



Article says it extends 3-1/2 miles beneath the surface! It's one of those things that I will never see in real life but I can experience it vicariously through the Internet. Wish we'd had computers in school. Would have made it much more interesting!

Onto This Day In History:

May 29, 1917

John F. Kennedy is born

One of America’s best-loved presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline, Massachusetts, on this day in 1917. He was the first American president to be born in the 20th century.

May 29, 1932

Bonus Marchers arrive in Washington

At the height of the Great Depression, the so-called "Bonus Expeditionary Force," a group of 1,000 World War I veterans seeking cash payments for their veterans' bonus certificates, arrive in Washington, D.C. One month later, other veteran groups spontaneously made their way to the nation's capital, swelling the Bonus Marchers to nearly 20,000 strong, most of them unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits. Camping in vacant government buildings and in open fields made available by District of Columbia Police Chief Pelham D. Glassford, they demanded passage of the veterans' payment bill introduced by Representative Wright Patman.

While awaiting a vote on the issue, the veterans conducted themselves in an orderly and peaceful fashion, and on June 15 the Patman bill passed in the House of Representatives. However, two days later, its defeat in the Senate infuriated the marchers, who refused to return home. In an increasingly tense situation, the federal government provided money for the protesters' trip home, but 2,000 refused the offer and continued to protest. On July 28, President Herbert Hoover ordered the army, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, to evict them forcibly. MacArthur's men set their camps on fire, and the veterans were driven from the city. Hoover, increasingly regarded as insensitive to the needs of the nation's many poor, was much criticized by the public and press for the severity of his response. (We really should treat our veterans with more respect!!)

May 29, 1942

Jews in Paris are forced to sew a yellow star on their coats

On this day in 1942, on the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler orders all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.

Joseph Goebbels had made the persecution, and ultimately the extermination, of Jews a personal priority from the earliest days of the war, often recording in his diary such statements as: "They are no longer people but beasts," and "[T]he Jews ... are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is pretty barbaric and is not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews."

But Goebbels was not the first to suggest this particular form of isolation. "The yellow star may make some Catholics shudder," wrote a French newspaper at the time. "It renews the most strictly Catholic tradition." Intermittently, throughout the history of the papal states, that territory in central Italy controlled by the pope, Jews were often confined to ghettos and forced to wear either yellow hats or yellow stars.

and for my Wisconsin friends... ;)

May 29, 1848

Wisconsin enters the Union

Following approval of statehood by the territory's citizens, Wisconsin enters the Union as the 30th state.

In 1634, French explorer Jean Nicolet landed at Green Bay, becoming the first European to visit the lake-heavy northern region that would later become Wisconsin. In 1763, at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars, the region, a major center of the American fur trade, passed into British control. Two decades later, at the end of the American Revolution, the region came under U.S. rule and was governed as part of the Northwest Territory. However, British fur traders continued to dominate Wisconsin from across the Canadian border, and it was not until the end of the War of 1812 that the region fell firmly under American control.

In the first decades of the 19th century, settlers began arriving via the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to exploit Wisconsin's agricultural potential, and in 1832 the Black Hawk War ended Native American resistance to white settlement. In 1836, after several decades of governance as part of other territories, Wisconsin was made a separate entity, with Madison, located midway between Milwaukee and the western centers of population, marked as the territorial capital. By 1840, population in Wisconsin had risen above 130,000, but the people voted against statehood four times, fearing the higher taxes that would come with a stronger central government. Finally, in 1848, Wisconsin citizens, envious of the prosperity that federal programs brought to neighboring Midwestern states, voted to approve statehood. Wisconsin entered the Union the next May

That's all for now folks, thanks for stopping in! Make it a great day and catch ya on the blog...

Mother Nature and her cruel jokes!!!!

Was kind of different being woke up by the furnace kicking on this morning, geesh!! We use heaters and a wood stove to heat in the winter so the furnace very rarely comes on. It's usually the peacock I hear first thing in the morning...but even HE got cold last night and slept in the wood shed with the kitties!! Since the furnace kicked on before the alarm clock went off, I rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep. It seemed like 2 seconds but it was probably 2 minutes and CLICK, Whoa oh China Grove... Don't get me wrong, I like the Doobie Brothers but I hate it when the radio is playing songs my brother used to play. Makes for a hard start to the day. There always seems to be a little 'gut check'. But that's a long story for a different day....

I finally found out I can get some days off at end of June to help my best friend move. She is moving from Kentucky to New Jersey...(tears) Not sure what I will do next time I need a getaway :( She lived like 4-1/2 hours away but now she will be 12 hours away and with the price of gas.....Maybe that's why the song this morning bothered me so much, because things are changing and they will never be the same again. I tried to teach my kids that life is about changes but there's the 'do what I say, not what I do' line I used from time to time too....lol

Okay, on to something else before I get all blubbery at work...The news today from China sure isn't good. (over 60,000 known dead) They had 2 more aftershocks yesterday that destroyed more houses and killed another 63 people. They are also evacuating a large area where the original quake caused some landslides and blocked a river. The blockage has caused a 'lake' to form and is threatening to over flow and flood many towns in low lying areas. Pray that things calm down over there.
Latest news on the Chaiten volcano is that it is still rumbling and from time to time sending ash and gas around 4,000 feet into the air. Danger zone was lifted from 50 km to 24 km so they can get 600,000 Salmon to safety. I liked the way this was written up from the AP:

6,000 tons of salmon are moved from Chile volcano

By EDUARDO GALLARDO – 1 day ago

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — First they saved the people. Then they rescued the dogs and cats. Finally they went in for the fish — 6,000 tons of them — threatened by a volcanic eruption in southern Chile.

Some 600,000 salmon were being moved by boats Tuesday from a fish farm just eight miles from the Chaiten volcano, according to Carlos Odebret, a spokesman for Salmon Chile, the association of private salmon industries.

He said that farm was the last of several to be evacuated because officials recently reduced the size of the prohibited-entry zone around the volcano, making it accessible again to workers.

The volcano began erupting on May 2, spewing vast columns of ash and gas that spread across South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic and beyond.

All 4,500 residents of the town of Chaiten were evacuated soon after the eruption began and the future of the town is now uncertain. It has been flooded by a river that overflowed its banks, damaging scores of houses, and it has been coated in ash.

Authorities rescued hundreds of pets eight days after the eruption and removed thousands of heads of livestock. They then authorized the removal of the salmon.

Odebret told The Associated Press by telephone that small teams worked for days in the salmon operation, aided by the navy, which had speedboats on hand "in case something happened that forced a quick departure."

He said the relocated fish amount to only about 1.5 percent of the annual production of Chile's salmon industry, which has exports exceeding $2 billion a year.

Today in History:

May 28, 1916

Record set at Indy

Barney Oldfield ran a qualifying lap in his front-wheel-drive Christie at 102.6mph. It was the first time any driver had rounded the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in excess of 100mph. Oldfield ended up finishing fifth on race day, as Dario Resta beat the field in his Peugeot. Barney Oldfield is remarkable for having set so many landmarks in so many different places in so many different cars. He had a knack for creating history. It was Oldfield who first drove Ford's 888 cars to success; Oldfield who made Harry Miller famous in the Golden Submarine; Oldfield who beat Ralph DePalma in a series of match races. He somehow always managed to associate himself with the famous figures and venues of his time. He even served a ban for drag racing the African-American heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson.

May 28, 1937

Golden Gate Bridge opens

The Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic on this day in 1937. One of the world's largest single-span suspension bridges, the Golden Gate Bridge was designed by Clifford Paine. Paine submitted the final blueprints for approval in 1930. With the official design completed, it took over three years for the builders to attain the approval of the military, the city financiers, and the voting public. Construction of the bridge commenced on January 5, 1933. The bridge's aesthetics were influenced greatly by an assisting architect named Irving Morrow. Morrow had no experience building bridges, but he convinced Paine to adopt many of the Golden Gate's most striking features. It was his idea for the portal bracings above the roadway to diminish in size as they climbed, thereby creating the effect of heightening the bridge. The height of the towers over the water is a breathtaking 746 feet, and the length of the suspended structure is 6,450 feet. Over 80,000 miles of wire went into the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Morrow was also the driving force behind the bridge's striking color, international orange; he believed a warm color should be used to contrast with the cold tones of the surrounding land. The Golden Gate Bridge cost the community nearly $35 million during its five-year construction. Its name is derived from the body of water over which it spans, Golden Strait. The "gold" comes from the strait's location at the mouth of the North Bay, beyond which lies the gold of California. Other have mentioned that the Golden Gate Bridge is the Gateway to the Land of the Setting Sun, but they didn't mention this until nearly 30 years after the bridge was originally erected.

May 28, 1969

U.S. troops abandon "Hamburger Hill"

U.S. troops abandon Ap Bia Mountain. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said that the U.S. troops "have completed their search of the mountain and are now continuing their reconnaissance-in-force mission throughout the A Shau Valley."

This announcement came amid the public outcry about what had become known as the "Battle of Hamburger Hill." The battle was part of Operation Apache Snow in the A Shau Valley. The operation began on May 10 when paratroopers from the 101st Airborne engaged a North Vietnamese regiment on the slopes of Hill 937, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Bia Mountain. Entrenched in prepared fighting positions, the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment repulsed the initial American assault and beat back another attempt by the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry on May 14. An intense battle raged for the next 10 days as the mountain came under heavy Allied air strikes, artillery barrages, and 10 infantry assaults. On May 20, Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, commanding general of the 101st, sent in two additional U.S. airborne battalions and a South Vietnamese battalion as reinforcements. The communist stronghold was finally captured in the 11th attack, when the American and South Vietnamese soldiers fought their way to the summit of the mountain. In the face of the four-battalion attack, the North Vietnamese retreated to sanctuary areas in Laos.

During the intense fighting, 597 North Vietnamese were reported killed and U.S. casualties were 56 killed and 420 wounded. Due to the bitter fighting and the high loss of life, the battle for Ap Bia Mountain received widespread unfavorable publicity in the United States and was dubbed "Hamburger Hill" in the U.S. media, a name evidently derived from the fact that the battle turned into a "meat grinder." The purpose of the operation was not to hold territory but rather to keep the North Vietnamese off balance so the decision was made to abandon the mountain shortly after it was captured. The North Vietnamese occupied it a month after it was abandoned.

Outrage over what appeared to be a senseless loss of American lives was exacerbated by pictures published in Life magazine of 241 U.S. soldiers killed during the week of the battle. Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, was ordered to avoid such battles. Because of Hamburger Hill, and other battles like it, U.S. emphasis was placed on "Vietnamization"--turning the war over to the South Vietnamese forces rather than engage in direct combat operations.

Dillinger history

Wanted to post some 'on this day' with some Dillinger connections.

May 22, 1933 - Dillinger's step-mother is dying and he is released on parole from Michigan City Prison, thanks to a petition signed by 184 Mooresville, IN residents. By the time he arrives home his step-mother is already dead.

May 23, 1934 - Evelyn "Billie' Frechette is sentenced to 2 years in Federal prison for harboring Dillinger.

May 23, 1934 - Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are killed in an ambush on a county road in Louisiana. Texan prison officials hired a retired Texas police officer, Captain Frank Hamer, as a special investigator to track down Parker and Barrow. After a three-month search, Hamer traced the couple to Louisiana, where Henry Methvin's family lived. Before dawn, Hamer and a group of Louisiana and Texas lawmen hid in the bushes along a country road outside Sailes. When Parker and Barrow appeared, the officers opened fire, killing the couple instantly in a hail of bullets.

On a side note:

Today in 1701, Captain Kidd was hanged for piracy. At London's Execution Dock, British privateer William Kidd, popularly known as Captain Kidd, is hanged for piracy and murder. Suspicions that he had turned to piracy were apparently confirmed when he sailed to St. Mary's, Madagascar, an infamous pirate haven. From there, he traveled to the West Indies on the Quedagh Merchant, where he learned of the piracy charges against him. Intending to clear his name, he sailed to New York and delivered himself to the colonial authorities, claiming that the vessels he had attacked were lawful prizes. He was arrested and taken to London.

In 1701, he was tried on five charges of piracy and one charge of murdering a crewman. The Tories used the trial as a political opportunity to embarrass his Whig sponsors, and the latter chose to give up Kidd as a scapegoat rather than back his possibly correct claims to legitimacy. Convicted on all counts, he was executed by hanging on May 23, 1701. In later years, a colorful legend grew up around the story of William Kidd, including reports of lost buried treasure that fortune seekers have pursued for centuries.

Today in 1960, A tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile travels across the Pacific Ocean and kills 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii. The massive 8.5-magnitude quake had killed thousands in Chile the previous day.

The earthquake, involving a severe plate shift, caused a large displacement of water off the coast of southern Chile at 3:11 p.m. Traveling at speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour, the tsunami moved west and north. On the west coast of the United States, the waves caused an estimated $1 million in damages, but were not deadly.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning System, established in 1948 in response to another deadly tsunami, worked properly and warnings were issued to Hawaiians six hours before the wave’s expected arrival. Some people ignored the warnings, however, and others actually headed to the coast in order to view the wave. Arriving only a minute after predicted, the tsunami destroyed Hilo Bay on the island of Hawaii. Thirty-five-foot waves bent parking meters to the ground and wiped away most buildings. A 10-ton tractor was swept out to sea. Reports indicate that the 20-ton boulders making up the sea wall were moved 500 feet. Sixty-one people died in Hilo, the worst-hit area of the island chain.

The tsunami continued to race further west across the Pacific. Ten thousand miles away from the earthquake’s epicenter, Japan, despite ample warning time, was not able to warn the people in harm’s way. At about 6 p.m., more than a day after the earthquake, the tsunami struck the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. The crushing wave killed 180 people, left 50,000 more homeless and caused $400 million in damages. (This, I did not know nor remember anyone talking about it when Indonesia was hit by that massive tsunami in 2004)

Okay, I guess I need to actually do some work for my pay so I'll sign off for now.....

This day in history...

I'm feeling kinda stepped on and kicked to the gutter today so instead of blathering on about how bad I still feel, I'll post some interesting (hopefully) history and news.

News today on CNN tells that:
-Sen. Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor found during tests to find the cause of a seizure he had over weekend. Now, I don't wish that on anyone but Ted has always been a curiosity to me. I liked John, but was too young to know what was really going on with his presidency. At that time I was more interested in when everyone in the neighborhood would show up for a baseball game or beating the 'boys' to the neighborhood treehouse! Hey, I was only a kid! Now Bobby Kennedy was a different story. I followed his campaign and vividly remember him being shot in the hotel in California. It was 2 days before I stopped watching TV coverage on that. Had I been old enough, I would have voted for that man. But Ted always had some controversy going on and to this day I still think he left Kopechne to die in a channel on Chappaquiddick Island.
-A 60-year old woman was pulled from the earthquake in China rubble after 195 hours. She escaped with facial bruises and a minor fracture! Amazing!

Today in History

May 20, 1778

Battle of Barren Hill, Pennsylvania

On this day in 1778, British forces from Philadelphia attempt to trap 2,200 Continentals defending Valley Forge led by Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette, through skillful maneuvering, avoids the entrapment and the destruction of his forces. The encounter takes place at Barren Hill, now known as Lafayette Hill, just northwest of Philadelphia.

Washington had dispatched Lafayette and his men two days before to spy on the British in Philadelphia. The British learned of Lafayette’s mission and intended to surprise, surround and capture the encampment with a force of 7,000 to 8,000 men. Lafayette, in turn, learned of the British plan late on May 19.

Lafayette assigned 500 men and approximately 50 Oneida Indians armed with cannon to face the British onslaught and stand their ground by the local church, while the rest of Lafayette’s forces fled west over the Schuylkill River to safety. Before the Oneida warriors followed the Continental Army across the Schuylkill, they are believed to have bravely given chase to the British as they marched back to Philadelphia.

Lafayette, a Frenchman, had personally recruited the Oneida to join the Patriot cause by using the Indians’ preference for the French over the English; the Oneida arrived at Valley Forge on May 13. Lafayette promised the Oneida that they would serve under French instead of colonial Patriot commanders and that they would be given assistance in building a fort at their Mohawk Valley, New York, settlement.

These fresh Indian recruits were paired with Lafayette’s best Patriot fighters, fresh from training under European officers at Valley Forge. The Indians’ actions during the successful retreat at Barren Hill prevented disaster and allowed the Continental Army to emerge from Valley Forge as a disciplined military in June.

May 20, 1862

Lincoln signs Homestead Act

On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, which opens government-owned land to small family farmers (“homesteaders”). The act gave “any person” who was the head of a family 160 acres to try his hand at farming for five years. The individual had to be at least 21 years old and was required to build a house on the property. Farmers were also offered an alternative to the five-year homesteading plan. They could opt to buy the 160 acres after only 6 months at the reasonable rate of $1.25 an acre. Many homesteaders could not handle the hardships of frontier life and gave up before completing five years of farming. If a homesteader quit or failed to make a go of farming, his or her land reverted back to the government and was offered to the public again. Ultimately, these lands often ended up as government property or in the hands of land speculators. If, after five years, the farmer could prove his (or her) homestead successful, then he paid an $18 filing fee for a “proved” certificate and received a deed to the land.

Before the Civil War, similar acts had been proposed in 1852, 1854 and 1859, but were defeated by a powerful southern lobby that feared new territories populated by homesteaders would be allowed into the Union as “free states,” thereby giving more power to the abolitionist movement. In addition, many in the northern manufacturing industries feared the Homestead Act would draw large numbers of their labor force away and into farming. In 1860, President James Buchanan vetoed an earlier homestead bill, succumbing to pressure from southern slave-holding interests. With the Civil War raging and southern slave-owning states out of the legislative picture in Washington D.C., Lincoln and pro-western expansion Republicans saw an opportunity to pass a law that opened the West to settlement.

By the end of the Civil War in 1864, 15,000 people had homestead claims in territories that now make up the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado. Though some of these people were genuinely looking to begin a new life as a western farmer, others abused the program. Much of the land offered by the government was purchased by individuals acting as a “front” for land speculators who sought access to the vast untapped mining, timber and water resources of the West. The speculator would offer to pay individuals cash or a share of profits in return for submitting a Homestead Act claim. By 1900, settlers, legitimate or otherwise, had gobbled up 80 million acres of land through the Homestead Act. To make way for the homesteaders, the federal government forced Native American tribes off of their ancestral lands and onto reservations.

The first Homestead Act claim was filed by a civil war veteran and doctor named Daniel Freeman on January 1, 1863. Although the act was officially repealed by Congress in 1976, one last title for 80 acres in Alaska was given to Kenneth Deardorff in 1979.

May 20, 1922

Valentino arrested for bigamy

Heartthrob Rudolph Valentino is arrested on this day in 1922 for bigamy. A Los Angeles judge ruled that Valentino had married his second wife, Natasha Rambora, before his first marriage was legally dissolved. The charges were dropped a few weeks later.

Valentino was born in 1895 in Italy, the son of a veterinarian. He attended military school, but after he was rejected from a naval academy, he left Italy for Paris, then headed to New York in 1913. In New York, Valentino worked as a landscape gardener, dishwasher, and waiter, and often found himself in trouble with the police. Among other offenses, he was charged with petty theft and blackmail.

He began dancing in nightclubs and was soon partnered with the popular Bonnie Glass. His fortunes were improving, but his troubles with the law continued, and he left New York with the cast of a touring musical bound for Utah. He continued west to San Francisco, where he kept dancing. In 1917, he moved to Hollywood and began appearing in small roles in silent films. He got his big break in 1921, when screenwriter June Mathis chose him to star in The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (1921). That same year, he starred in The Sheik, the movie that launched the cult of Valentino. Women began swooning in the aisles and continued to do so when Blood and Sand was released in 1922.

After his marriage to Rambora, an actress and film designer, he turned his career over to his wife to manage. He appeared in increasingly effeminate roles, and Rambora irritated studio executives so much that she was banned from the sets of her husband's movies. Despite these problems, his 1925 movie The Eagle was a hit, as was Son of the Sheik the following year.

Valentino died suddenly in August 1926, provoking a hysterical outpouring of grief among women nationwide. Crowds gathered to file past his body at his funeral. A sense of drama and mystery continued to surround Valentino's memory for years. Valentino fan clubs escalated their adoration to cult-like proportions, and a mysterious woman in black appeared at his grave for decades on the anniversary of his death.

May 20, 1927

Spirit of St. Louis departs

At 7:52 a.m., American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris.

Lindbergh, a daring young airmail pilot, was a dark horse when he entered a competition with a $25,000 payoff to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. He ordered a small monoplane, configured it to his own design, and christened it the Spirit of St. Louis in tribute to his sponsor--the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce.

On May 20, 1927, a rainy morning, he took off from Roosevelt Field, but his monoplane was so loaded down with fuel that it barely cleared the telephone wires at the end of the runway. He flew northeast up the East Coast and as night fell left Newfoundland and headed across the North Atlantic. His greatest challenge was staying awake; he had to hold his eyelids open with his fingers and hallucinated ghosts passing through the cockpit. The next afternoon, after flying 3,610 miles in 33 1/2 hours, Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget field in Paris, becoming the first pilot to accomplish the solo, nonstop transatlantic crossing. Lindbergh's achievement made him an international celebrity and won widespread public acceptance of the airplane and commercial aviation.