Category: History

Armistice Day – The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month of 1918

The sign on the front of the truck reads, “The Kaiser’s Funeral.”

26 September 1918

“We are in a camp near Auzeville and the big drive is to start. In fact the one that finished the ‘Boches’. Then the morning of the 26th dawned but dawn was preceded by a terrific barrage which was as loud as thunder and lighted up the whole skyline for miles. We were not flying ours but were held in reserve.  Hundreds of “planes” were now flying over head. One bunch had over 150 in it.

Along about 8 a.m., along comes a boche plane and he burned three of the balloons all observers landed safe but one and his parachute burned and he fell to his death.

A fellow by the name of Barnett and I started out to see the fun.  Put our guns on and started for the front line trenches which were about 5 miles north.  After a short while we hit the trenches but of course our boys had advanced and were chasing the boche for a fare you well.  We hit several mine craters where the boche had mined the roads but already our engineers had started to budge them.  After another hour’s walk and dodging a few pieces of shrapnel we hit the town of Varennes and were keen for souvenirs.  The boche were still in one side of the Varennes and we were in the other.

Machine guns were crackling with a steady roar and long streams of ambulances carrying away the wounded.  Dead Boche were laying every where.  The roads were filled with them.  Long about then a Boche 77 took my ….. but never touched us. Then we started going through the dugouts and it was there that I got the general’s helmet.  Also was almost lucky enough to capture a Jerry but a doughboy beat me to it.  He was hiding in a dug out.  Looked like he wasn’t as old as “Bugs” and he was scared almost to death.

After monkeying around a while we hopped an ambulance and rode back toward Auzeville.  So that finished the day’s fun.  But you ought to have seen the dead Huns.  Some had legs blown off.  Some had their heads and shoulders off and some were in pieces only.  A great many had been burned by mustard gas and were burned to a crisp.”

PFC Walter Myers, age 19, US Army Signal Corps.

IL Giorno di Cristoforo Columbo

The first commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service honored Christopher Columbus on the 400th anniversary of his first voyage. $5 bucks in 1892 equates to about $130 in 2017 U.S. dollars, and not many could afford that steep price to ship something trivial.

The signature of Cristoforo Colombo [Italian], aka Cristóbal Colón [Spanish], aka Christophorus Columbus [Latin], aka Christopher Columbus [Anglic]. For the life of me I can’t decipher it, except that the “X” is likely the sign of Christ.

Apparently this mystery has stumped many, and it remains unsolved.

This one dollar Bahamian bill issued in 1974 features an image of Christopher Columbus and equals about $5 U.S. in 2017.

Columbus was a tyrannical leader by most accounts, but the fact that he made four round-trip voyages to The Americas tells us that he had men who were willing and able to take those dangerous risks on both sides of the Atlantic. (Note that Spanish law limited merchants to one slave per ship [source].)

As governor of Hispaniola and the Indies (1492-1499) he was a cruel despot and was removed and jailed by Queen Isabella I of Castile.

[Side note: Queen Isabella I presided over the final years of La Reconquista that began about 711AD. She didn’t put up with no jihad jibbajabba.]

Should we remove Christopher Columbus from history and kowtow to a relative handful of racist SJWs?

NO. His historical accomplishments far outweigh his failures, and he should be honored for his astounding bravery and seamanship in the face of the unknown, not his subsequent decline into dementia and moral turpitude. Any person, group or organization that attempts to rewrite history has nefarious motives in mind.

11 September 2001 – Never Forget

“I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane.”
– Vice President Dick Cheney, upon learning of the crash of UA93

“Flight 93” is a must-see movie. Based upon transcriptions of interviews, live recordings and eyewitnesses, it kept to the facts as much as possible. The 90 minute film plays out the events of 911 in real time, and focuses on the heroes of that doomed flight.

[Related 911 posts here.]

Harvey Speaks.

Yea, I heard what ye whar sayin’:

“Ignore him. He’s just a tropical depression.”
“He’s now a tropical storm, and his name is (get this) ‘Harvey.’ Hahahaha!”
“Oooh, Harvey! You’re only a Category 1, Harvey. Piss off or grow a pair.”
“Harvey? Isn’t that the name of an imaginary rabbit? Heh.”

I heard all yer banter, so I ramped it up a notch for fun, then decided to settle down an’ drop another several billion gallons of that wet stuff on ye. Ye still wish to mock me moniker?

But I warned you! I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh no, you knew it all, didn’t you? Oh, it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it? Well, it’s always the same. I always told them, but do they listen to me? Oooh, no…

Ye just mock me name an’ think it’s over. Now this lil’ bunny’s gonna drop another 20 inches on yer fuzzy heads, maybe another 20 after that if you don’t shape up.

—Hurricane Tropical Storm Tropical Depression Storm System Thunderhead Harvey

[Image found here, and in no way is my intent to make fun of the tragedy. God Bless the people of Texas. The reconstruction is going to take years, if not decades.]

 

 

 

[Image found here.]

USS Indianapolis Found After 72 Years

“That was the time I was most frightened, waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a life jacket again.” –Shark hunter Quint [Robert Shaw] in the 1975 film “Jaws.”

Quint was referring to the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis, torpedoed in 1945:

Recently the USS Indianapolis, missing for 72 years, has been found in the Philippine Sea approximately three and a half miles below the surface. Story w/ pics here.

Woody James was 23 at the time of the attack and lived to tell about it. His story of horror is very understated:

“Sunday, the 29th of July was a quiet day. The sea was runnin five or six feet waves, just a beautiful day out. Didn’t do too much, read a book, did a little tinkerin as usual. Had the 8:00 to 12:00 watch and just got off at midnight. A guy relieved me about a quarter to twelve. I went down through the galley and had a cup of coffee. Then went to my compartment and got a blanket off my bed and went back up on deck. I slept under the overhang on the first turret. My battle station was inside it so in case general quarters sounded, I slept underneath it. Just got laid down good, using my shoes for a pillow as usual and the first torpedo hit. I was up and down between the deck and the overhang of the turret like Yankee Doodle Dandy. And, I wondered, ‘what in the hell is goin on?’

I got out of my blanket and started to roll out from underneath the turret and the other torpedo hit. Another Yankee Doodle deal, all over the place. I started to walk forward to see what I could see and what I seen was about sixty-foot of the bow chopped off, completely gone. Within a minute and a half, maybe two minutes at the most the bow is startin to do down. It filled up with water that fast. Everything was open below deck and the water just flooded in and we were still under way, just scoopin water. Complete chaos, total and complete chaos all over the whole ship. Screams like you couldn’t believe and nobody knew what was goin on. The word got passed down, “ABANDON SHIP”! It was maybe five minutes and we were really down in the water so we proceeded to abandon ship.”

–Woody James

Survivor Woody James described his ordeal here. It’s even scarier than Quint’s monologue.

I’ll See You on the Dark Side of the Hot LInks

“Look, I got this. Just gimme a coupla minutes.” –Cristobal Columbo circa 1492

The Great American Solar Eclipse is tomorrow. Plug in your location here to find out what time you need to start banging your pots and pans to drive the dragon away. If anyone tells you it’s safe to look at with the nekkid eye, he/she is a fool.
Don’t do it.

Apparently The Ancients blamed dogs for the temporary darkness of a solar eclipse.

Every time I hear it, it seems she’s singing about her cat. On the other hand, it’s a good Solar Eclipse party song.

The Mystery of the U.S. Navy’s Ghost Blimp is still unsolved after 75 years.

84 year-old folk artist Denny Lunn tells some stories [via].

The last Blockbuster store is still open for business.

An honorary statue in New Orleans, depicting a famous military figure on a horse, was defaced with the words “Tear It Down” recently. The honored warrior was captured, tortured and killed by fire decades before Europeans even knew about this continent, and centuries prior to the founding of the United States of America. TRUE.

Walter E. Williams on Rewriting American History.

[Top image from here.]

 

Canary in a coal mine.

THAT was one dangerous job.

[Found here.]

Saturday Matinee – Earl Barton & Lisa Gaye, The Wolfgangs & The Reverend Horton Heat.

If you lived in that time period, you’d have done the exact same thing. Not me. Dig, man, I wouldn’t have been caught dead dancing plaid.

I don’t know anything about The Wolfgangs except that they rock and may or may not use illegal substances.

Very few bands can cover a classic Johnny Cash song like Folsom Prison Blues, but the Reverend Horton Heat did just that, and even cranked it up a notch.

Rock on, my friends. More stuff coming down the pipe.

Saturday Matinee – Bert The Turtle, Time for Sushi & Jaco Pastorious

Bert The Turtle showed children how to survive a nuclear attack – assuming they’re far enough away from Ground Zero to have time to react. The film was shown in schools from 1952 into the 1990s.

David Lewandowski‘s “Time for Sushi” (2017) is pure disturbed weirdness. (His 2013 vid “Late For Meeting” is a classic.)

The late Jaco Pastorius was one of the greatest jazz-funk fretless bass players in modern times, IMO. [Video h/t TITH]

Have a great weekend, folks. We’ll do something just as fun tomorrow.

Independence Day: “Let despots remember…”

John Philip Sousa‘s sheet music for “The Stars and Stripes Forever! March” was first published in 1894, and his band recorded it in 1901. Check it out:


[Free audio download of Sousa’s recording here. Wanna see the Conductor’s Sheet Music? Click here.]

It’s been a century and a quarter yet it’s still one of the most recognizable marches in the world, especially around July 4th. An Act of Congress adopted it as the National March of the USA… in 1987. What I didn’t know is that Sousa penned lyrics for his timeless classic, and here is the last refrain:

“Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever;
The gem of the land and the sea,
The ban-ner of the right.
Let despots remember the day,
When our fathers with mighty endeavor,
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray,
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever.”

Note that The Founding Fathers were all British citizens, right up until the Declaration of Independence. If you’ve never read it, read it; and if you’ve read it, read it again. Then read the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Out loud.

Teach your kids and grandchilluns the meaning and importance of Independence Day, because nobody else will. Tell them how pissed off the colonists were, and why, and then tell them what they eventually did about it. Then grill a buncha hot dogs and hamburgers, take ’em to a local fireworks show and have a great Independence Day Celebration. See ya there!