You should have seen the celebration they had in the Warehouse District in '98. That was when France won the World Cup.
That was a party.
Nothing could match the one in '89 -- 200th Anniversary of the revolution. Watched it on TV. At the end of a huge celebration of paradess, opera singer, Jesse Norman, from Augusta, GA, sang the French national anthem La Marseillaiseunder the Arch de Triomphe. She was draped in a long robe with the Trois Couleurs.
One of the radio talkers is taking cruise of Mediterranean with his wife. One of the stops is a port between Barcelona and Italy (you do the geography) and he refuses to get off the ship.
One of the radio talkers is taking cruise of Mediterranean with his wife. One of the stops is a port between Barcelona and Italy (you do the geography) and he refuses to get off the ship.
That's funny because it's so pathetic.
It is more like principled. Something true liberals don't comprehend.
1873: Jesse James committed his first train robbery. 1969: Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon at 2:56:15 a.m. GMT. 1989: Greg LeMond won the Tour de France in the fastest time.
I can't believe none of you guys posted any of these historical events!
This Day in History: 1298: The English defeated the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk. 1952: 1775: George Washington took command of the troops. 1990: My cousin Brian was born :)
A group of federal prisoners classified as "most dangerous" arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay. The convicts--the first civilian prisoners to be housed in the new high-security penitentiary--joined a few dozen military prisoners left over from the island's days as a U.S. military prison.
Alcatraz was an uninhabited seabird haven when it was explored by Spanish Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775. He named it Isla de los Alcatraces, or "Island of the Pelicans." Fortified by the Spanish, Alcatraz was sold to the United States in 1849. In 1854, it had the distinction of housing the first lighthouse on the coast of California. Beginning in 1859, a U.S. Army detachment was garrisoned there, and from 1868 Alcatraz was used to house military criminals. In addition to recalcitrant U.S. soldiers, prisoners included rebellious Indian scouts, American soldiers fighting in the Philippines who had deserted to the Filipino cause, and Chinese civilians who resisted the U.S. Army during the Boxer Rebellion. In 1907, Alcatraz was designated the Pacific Branch of the United States Military Prison.
In 1934, Alcatraz was fortified into a high-security federal penitentiary designed to hold the most dangerous prisoners in the U.S. penal system, especially those with a penchant for escape attempts. The first shipment of civilian prisoners arrived on August 11, 1934. Later that month, more shiploads arrived, featuring, among other convicts, infamous mobster Al Capone. In September, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, another luminary of organized crime, landed on Alcatraz.
In the 1940s, a famous Alcatraz prisoner was Richard Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz." A convicted murderer, Stroud wrote an important study on birds while being held in solitary confinement in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Regarded as extremely dangerous because of his 1916 murder of a guard at Leavenworth, he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. Stroud was not allowed to continue his avian research at Alcatraz.
Although some three dozen attempted, no prisoner was known to have successfully escaped "The Rock." However, the bodies of several escapees believed drowned in the treacherous waters of San Francisco Bay were never found. The story of the 1962 escape of three of these men, Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, inspired the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz. Another prisoner, John Giles, caught a boat ride to the shore in 1945 dressed in an army uniform he had stolen piece by piece, but he was questioned by a suspicious officer after disembarking and sent back to Alcatraz. Only one man, John Paul Scott, was recorded to have reached the mainland by swimming, but he came ashore exhausted and hypothermic at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Police found him lying unconscious and in a state of shock.
In 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered Alcatraz closed, citing the high expense of its maintenance. In its 29-year run, Alcatraz housed more than 1,500 convicts. In March 1964 a group of Sioux Indians briefly occupied the island, citing an 1868 treaty with the Sioux allowing Indians to claim any "unoccupied government land." In November 1969, a group of nearly 100 Indian students and activists began a more prolonged occupation of the island, remaining there until they were forced off by federal marshals in June 1971. WoW-that is interesting!
In 1972, Alcatraz was opened to the public as part of the newly created Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is maintained by the National Park Service. Alcatraz Island and the former prison are open to the public, and more than a million tourists visit each year.
On this day in 1934, Adolf Hitler, already chancellor, is also elected president of Germany in an unprecedented consolidation of power in the short history of the republic.
In 1932, German President Paul von Hindenburg, old, tired, and a bit senile, had won re-election as president, but had lost a considerable portion of his right/conservative support to the Nazi Party. Those close to the president wanted a cozier relationship to Hitler and the Nazis. Hindenburg had contempt for the Nazis' lawlessness, but ultimately agreed to oust his chancellor, Heinrich Bruning, for Franz von Papen, who was willing to appease the Nazis by lifting the ban on Hitler's Brown Shirts and unilaterally canceling Germany's reparation payments, imposed by the Treaty of Versailles at the close of World War I.
But Hitler was not appeased. He wanted the chancellorship for himself. Papen's policies failed on another front: His authoritarian rule alienated his supporters, and he too was forced to resign. He then made common cause with Hitler, persuading President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor and himself vice-chancellor. He promised the president that he would restrain Hitler's worst tendencies and that a majority of the Cabinet would go to non-Nazis. As Hindenburg's current chancellor could no longer gain a majority in the Reichstag, and Hitler could bring together a larger swath of the masses and a unified right/conservative/nationalist coalition, the president gave in. In January 1933, Hitler was named chancellor of Germany.
But that was not enough for Hitler either. In February 1933, Hitler blamed a devastating Reichstag fire on the communists (its true cause remains a mystery) and convinced President Hindenburg to sign a decree suspending individual and civil liberties, a decree Hitler used to silence his political enemies with false arrests. Upon the death of Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler proceeded to purge the Brown Shirts (his storm troopers), the head of which, Ernst Roem, had began voicing opposition to the Nazi Party's terror tactics. Hitler had Roem executed without trial, which encouraged the army and other reactionary forces within the country to urge Hitler to further consolidate his power by merging the presidency and the chancellorship. This would make Hitler commander of the army as well.
A plebiscite vote was held on August 19. Intimidation, and fear of the communists, brought Hitler a 90 percent majority. He was now, for all intents and purposes, dictator.
On this day, Doc Holliday--gunslinger, gambler, and occasional dentist--dies from tuberculosis.
Though he was perhaps most famous for his participation in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, John Henry "Doc" Holliday earned his bad reputation well before that famous feud. Born in Georgia, Holliday was raised in the tradition of the southern gentleman. He earned his nickname when he graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872. However, shortly after embarking on a respectable career as a dentist in Atlanta, he developed a bad cough. Doctors diagnosed tuberculosis and advised a move to a more arid climate, so Holliday moved his practice to Dallas, Texas.
By all accounts, Holliday was a competent dentist with a successful practice. Unfortunately, cards interested him more than teeth, and he earned a reputation as a skilled poker and faro player. In 1875, Dallas police arrested Holliday for participating in a shootout. Thereafter, the once upstanding doctor began drifting between the booming Wild West towns of Denver, Cheyenne, Deadwood, and Dodge City, making his living at card tables and aggravating his tuberculosis with heavy drinking and late nights.
Holliday was famously friendly with Wyatt Earp, who believed that Holliday saved his life during a fight with cowboys. For his part, Holliday was a loyal friend to Earp, and stood by him during the 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral and the bloody feud that followed. In 1882, Holliday fled Arizona and returned to the life of a western drifter, gambler, and gunslinger. By 1887, his hard living had caught up to him, forcing him to seek treatment for his tuberculosis at a sanitarium in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He died in his bed at only 36 years old.
In 1921, an unknown World War I American soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This site, on a hillside overlooking the Potomac River and the city of Washington, became the focal point of reverence for America's veterans.
Similar ceremonies occurred earlier in England and France, where an unknown soldier was buried in each nation's highest place of honor (in England, Westminster Abbey; in France, the Arc de Triomphe). These memorial gestures all took place on November 11, giving universal recognition to the celebrated ending of World War I fighting at 11 a.m., November 11, 1918 (the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month). The day became known as "Armistice Day".
Armistice Day officially received its name in America in 1926 through a Congressional resolution. It became a national holidiay 12 years later by similar Congressional action. If the idealistic hope had been realized that World War I was "the War to end all Wars," November 11 might still be called Armistice Day. But only a few years after the holiday was proclaimed, war broke out in Europe. Sixteen and one-half million Americans took part. Four hundred seven thousand of them died in service, more than 292,000 in battle.
Realizing that peace was equally preserved by veterans of WW II and Korea, Congress was requested to make this day an occasion to honor those who have served America in all wars. In 1954 President Eisenhower signed a bill proclaiming November 11 as Veterans Day.
On Memorial Day 1958, two more unidentified American war dead were brought from overseas and interred in the plaza beside the unknown soldier of World War I. One was killed in World War II, the other in the Korean War. In 1973, a law passed providing interment of an unknown American from the Vietnam War, but none was found for several years. In 1984, an unknown serviceman from that conflict was placed alongside the others. To honor these men, symbolic of all Americans who gave their lives in all wars, an Army honor guard, The 3d U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard), keeps day and night vigil.
A law passed in 1968 changed the national commemoration of Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. It soon became apparent, however, that November 11 was a date of historic significance to many Americans. Therefore, in 1978 Congress returned the observance to its traditional date.
In 1940 An Armistice Day storm raged across the Great Lakes Region and the Upper Midwest. A blizzard left 49 dead in Minnesota, and gales on Lake Michigan caused ship wrecks resulting in another 59 deaths. Up to 17 inches of snow fell in Iowa, and at Duluth MN the barometric pressure reached 28.66 inches. The blizzard claimed a total of 154 lives, and in Iowa, killed thousands of cattle. Whole towns were isolated by huge snowdrifts.
Ask any Minnesotan born before 1940 and they can tell you where they were during the Armistice Day Blizzard. The weather was relatively benign the morning of the November 11, 1940. Many people were outdoors, taking advantage of the mild holiday weather. The weather forecast that morning was for colder temperatures and a few flurries. Few people were prepared for what was to come. The storm started with rain, however the rain quickly turned to snow. By the time the blizzard tapered off on the 12th, the Twin Cities had received 16.7 inches of snow, Collegeville 26.6 inches, and 20-foot drifts were reported near Willmar. In all 49 Minnesotans lost their lives in this storm, many of them hunters trapped by the sudden turn of events.
I hear that story every year and just think of how fortunate we are to have the weather equipment that we have nowadays. It's still pretty much a spinning wheel and a crap-shoot forecasting a week out but the 24 hour forecasts are dead on most of the time.
Following its ratification by the requisite three-quarters of the states earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Before the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the anti-slavery Republican Party sought not to abolish slavery but merely to stop its extension into new territories and states in the American West. This policy was unacceptable to most Southern politicians, who believed that the growth of free states would turn the U.S. power structure irrevocably against them. In November 1860, Lincoln's election as president signaled the secession of seven Southern states and the formation of the Confederate States of America. Shortly after his inauguration in 1861, the Civil War began. Four more Southern states joined the Confederacy, while four border slave states in the upper South remained in the Union.
Lincoln, though he privately detested slavery, responded cautiously to the call by abolitionists for emancipation of all American slaves after the outbreak of the Civil War. As the war dragged on, however, the Republican-dominated federal government began to realize the strategic advantages of emancipation: The liberation of slaves would weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of a major portion of its labor force, which would in turn strengthen the Union by producing an influx of manpower. With 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, there were few pro-slavery congressmen to stand in the way of such an action.
In 1862, Congress annulled the fugitive slave laws, prohibited slavery in the U.S. territories, and authorized Lincoln to employ freed slaves in the army. Following the major Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September, Lincoln issued a warning of his intent to issue an emancipation proclamation for all states still in rebellion on New Year's Day.
That day--January 1, 1863--President Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation, calling on the Union army to liberate all slaves in states still in rebellion as "an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity." These three million slaves were declared to be "then, thenceforward, and forever free." The proclamation exempted the border slave states that remained in the Union and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union army.
The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the Civil War from a war against secession into a war for "a new birth of freedom," as Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address in 1863. This ideological change discouraged the intervention of France or England on the Confederacy's behalf and enabled the Union to enlist the 180,000 African American soldiers and sailors who volunteered to fight between January 1, 1863, and the conclusion of the war.
As the Confederacy staggered toward defeat, Lincoln realized that the Emancipation Proclamation, a war measure, might have little constitutional authority once the war was over. The Republican Party subsequently introduced the 13th Amendment into Congress, and in April 1864 the necessary two-thirds of the overwhelmingly Republican Senate passed the amendment. However, the House of Representatives, featuring a higher proportion of Democrats, did not pass the amendment by a two-thirds majority until January 1865, three months before Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
On December 2, 1865, Alabama became the 27th state to ratify the 13th Amendment, thus giving it the requisite three-fourths majority of states' approval necessary to make it the law of the land. Alabama, a former Confederate state, was forced to ratify the amendment as a condition for re-admission into the Union. On December 18, the 13th Amendment was officially adopted into the Constitution--246 years after the first shipload of captive Africans landed at Jamestown, Virginia, and were bought as slaves.
Slavery's legacy and efforts to overcome it remained a central issue in U.S. politics for more than a century, particularly during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
The confessed Colorado cannibal Alfred Packer is released from prison on parole after serving 18 years.
One of the ragged legions of gold and silver prospectors who combed the Rocky Mountains searching for fortune in the 1860s, Alfred Packer also supplemented his meager income from mining by serving as a guide in the Utah and Colorado wilderness. In early November 1873, Packer left Bingham Canyon, Utah, to lead a party of 21 men bound for the gold fields near Breckenridge, Colorado. The winter of 1873-74 was unusually harsh. After three months of difficult travel, the party staggered into the camp of the Ute Indian Chief Ouray, near present-day Montrose, Colorado. The Utes graciously provided the hungry and exhausted men with food and shelter. Chief Ouray advised the men to stay in the camp until a break came in the severe winter weather, but with their strength rekindled by food and rest, Packer and five other men decided to continue the journey.
Two months later, Packer arrived alone at the Los Pinos Indian Agency, looking surprisingly fit for a man who had just completed an arduous winter trek through the Rockies. Packer first claimed he had become separated from his five companions during a blizzard and survived on rabbits and rosebuds. Suspicions grew, though, when it was discovered that Packer had an unusual amount of money and many items belonging to the missing men. Under questioning, Packer confessed that the real story was far more gruesome: four of the men, he claimed, had died naturally from the extreme winter conditions and the starving survivors ate them. When only Packer and one other man, Shannon Bell, remained alive, Bell went insane and threatened to kill Packer. Packer said he shot Bell in self-defense and eventually ate his corpse.
Though shocking, Packer's grisly story would probably have been accepted as an unfortunate tragedy had not searchers later found the remains of the five men at a single campsite-not strung out along the trail as Packer had claimed. Packer was arrested and charged with murder, but he escaped from jail and remained at large for nine years. Recaptured in 1883 near Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, Packer once again changed his story. He claimed that all six men had made camp alive, but lost and starving, they were too weak to go on. One day Packer went in search of the trail. Upon returning several hours later, he discovered to his horror that Bell had gone mad, killed the other four with a hatchet, and was boiling the flesh of one of them for his meal. When Bell spotted Packer, he charged with his hatchet raised, and Packer shot him twice in the belly. Lost and trapped alone in a camp of dead men, Packer said he only resorted to cannibalism after several more days, when it was his only means of survival.
Having twice changed his story, Packer's credibility was undermined, and a jury convicted him of manslaughter. He remained imprisoned in the Canon City penitentiary until 1901 when the Denver Post published a series of articles and editorials questioning his guilt. Eventually, the state was freed Packer on parole. Packer went to work as a guard for the Post and lived quietly in and around Littleton, Colorado, maintaining his innocence until the day he died in 1907.
Though we will never know exactly what happened on the so-called "Cannibal Plateau" near present-day Lake City, Colorado, recent forensic studies of the remains of the men who died have tended to support the details of Packer's second confession.
Albert Fish is executed at Sing Sing prison in New York. The "Moon Maniac" was one of America's most notorious and disturbed killers. Authorities believe that Fish killed as many as 10 children and then ate their remains. Fish went to the electric chair with great anticipation, telling guards, "It will be the supreme thrill, the only one I haven't tried."
Fish was executed for the murder of 12-year-old Grace Budd. In 1928, at his Wisteria Cottage in Westchester County, New York, Fish strangled the girl and then carved up her body with a saw. Six years later, Fish wrote Budd's mother a letter in which he described in detail killing the girl and then preparing a stew with her flesh that he ate over the next nine days. The letter was traced back to the 66-year-old man.
A psychiatrist who examined Fish stated, "There was no known perversion that he did not practice and practice frequently." Albert Fish was obsessed with sadomasochism. He had his own children hit him with a paddle studded with nails. He inserted sewing needles into his body. Nearly 30 needles were found in his groin area after he died. In fact, the executioners had been worried that the amount of metal in his body might short-circuit the electric chair. Fish also ate his own excrement and burned himself with hot irons and pokers.
Most disturbingly, Fish was obsessed with cannibalism. He carried writings about the practice in his pockets. When he was arrested, Fish confessed to the murders of other young children whom he claimed to have eaten. Although nearly everyone agreed that he was insane, including the jury deciding his fate, he was nevertheless sentenced to die. Reportedly, his last statement was a handwritten note filled with filthy obscenities.
Although nearly everyone agreed that he was insane, including the jury deciding his fate, he was nevertheless sentenced to die.
While most people might think what he did was "crazy" in the sense they themselves would never do it, I don't think what he did would actually classify him as insane. A lot of people practice sadomasochism and do extreme things, but they also know the line where their activities begin to infringe on the rights of others. Only knowing what I read here, I would say it sounds like the decision to hold him accountable for his actions was the correct one.
Of course he is. You should see the shrine I have in my basement, complete with autographed picture of my grandpa sharing a smoke with him.
My grandpa Willem, god bless his soul, would reminisce about the good old days, how they would laugh and laugh about the concentration camps.
Grandpa's favorite story was about the time Hitler had toilet paper stuck to his boot, and they had marched miles before anyone told him. You can imagine how hard it was for his men to hold in their laughter, after all they were afraid of being shot for laughing at their leader. Well I guess Hitler was quite embarrased by this, not to mention furious that no one had told him. That evening he tasked my grandpa's best friend, I believe his name was Rogier, with checking the bottom of his shoes, on the hour.
One other interesting little fact - Grandpa said Hitler was allergic to moustache wax, instead he would use diaper cream.
the missing link about Taylor to Minnesota ...
In 1827 he returned to Baton Rouge and the following year was appointed Commander of Fort Snelling, Northwest Territory (now Minnesota).
http://www.aztecclub.com/bios/taylor.htm
that is true cool stuff - thanks for making me think of him :)
Did you put up the picture of the Eiffel Tower in honor of Bastille Day on Sunday?
Bastille Day was yesterday(Monday).
That's right. The celebrations in town here, were Sunday.
uh, yeah, er, thats right :)
I knew that
::no she didn't::
The celebrations in town here, were Sunday.
Another black mark against the town.
I knew that
I only know because my Mother is a huge fan of everything French.
I was playing with her last week, sending her e-mails with the French Army Knife, and the Google search on "French Military Victories".
You should have seen the celebration they had in the Warehouse District in '98. That was when France won the World Cup.
That was a party.
Nothing could match the one in '89 -- 200th Anniversary of the revolution. Watched it on TV. At the end of a huge celebration of paradess, opera singer, Jesse Norman, from Augusta, GA, sang the French national anthem La Marseillaiseunder the Arch de Triomphe. She was draped in a long robe with the Trois Couleurs.
It was pretty striking.
One of the radio talkers is taking cruise of Mediterranean with his wife. One of the stops is a port between Barcelona and Italy (you do the geography) and he refuses to get off the ship.
That's funny because it's so pathetic.
One of the radio talkers is taking cruise of Mediterranean with his wife. One of the stops is a port between Barcelona and Italy (you do the geography) and he refuses to get off the ship.
That's funny because it's so pathetic.
It is more like principled. Something true liberals don't comprehend.
It was pretty striking.
How many times was she struck?
Man, the world's full of wiseasses.
Sorry, Rick, couldn't resist :^)
The first man appeared on the coast of the Southern Alps during the Stone Age.
Hold up... wouldnt someone else had to have been there already to see that guy appear on the coast?
He was seen through a telescope from Africa.
Would that have been a telescope made out of stone?
Man, the world's full of wiseasses.
Damn, man... lighten the hell up... cant even try and get funny around here, without someone gettin pissed.
Oh, you're trying to get funny.
Sorry, I didn't recognize it.
Man, the world's full of wiseasses.
Word.
Don't mind Rick V.J. he is just full of him self.
I thought you were funny VJ :p
I chuckled
Hell yeah.. atleast someone does!
If it helps, I've always thought you were funny looking too VJ. ;-)
actually, vj, i think you're hilarious as hell too!
If it helps, I've always thought you were funny looking too VJ. ;-)
Hahaha... damn..
I had to read that a couple times before I actually saw what it said... I'm up too early on a day when I dont gotta work.
um, TRY BLACK COFFEE!
or for you my friend, hot chocolate ;P
Monday, July 21, 2003
This Day in History -YESTERDAY
1873: Jesse James committed his first train robbery.
1969: Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon at 2:56:15 a.m. GMT.
1989: Greg LeMond won the Tour de France in the fastest time.
I can't believe none of you guys posted any of these historical events!
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
This Day in History:
1298: The English defeated the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk.
1952: 1775: George Washington took command of the troops.
1990: My cousin Brian was born :)
Mall Of America / Camp Snoopy
turns 11 years old today!
FEDERAL PRISONERS LAND ON ALCATRAZ:
August 11
A group of federal prisoners classified as "most dangerous" arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay. The convicts--the first civilian prisoners to be housed in the new high-security penitentiary--joined a few dozen military prisoners left over from the island's days as a U.S. military prison.
Alcatraz was an uninhabited seabird haven when it was explored by Spanish Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775. He named it Isla de los Alcatraces, or "Island of the Pelicans." Fortified by the Spanish, Alcatraz was sold to the United States in 1849. In 1854, it had the distinction of housing the first lighthouse on the coast of California. Beginning in 1859, a U.S. Army detachment was garrisoned there, and from 1868 Alcatraz was used to house military criminals. In addition to recalcitrant U.S. soldiers, prisoners included rebellious Indian scouts, American soldiers fighting in the Philippines who had deserted to the Filipino cause, and Chinese civilians who resisted the U.S. Army during the Boxer Rebellion. In 1907, Alcatraz was designated the Pacific Branch of the United States Military Prison.
In 1934, Alcatraz was fortified into a high-security federal penitentiary designed to hold the most dangerous prisoners in the U.S. penal system, especially those with a penchant for escape attempts. The first shipment of civilian prisoners arrived on August 11, 1934. Later that month, more shiploads arrived, featuring, among other convicts, infamous mobster Al Capone. In September, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, another luminary of organized crime, landed on Alcatraz.
In the 1940s, a famous Alcatraz prisoner was Richard Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz." A convicted murderer, Stroud wrote an important study on birds while being held in solitary confinement in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Regarded as extremely dangerous because of his 1916 murder of a guard at Leavenworth, he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. Stroud was not allowed to continue his avian research at Alcatraz.
Although some three dozen attempted, no prisoner was known to have successfully escaped "The Rock." However, the bodies of several escapees believed drowned in the treacherous waters of San Francisco Bay were never found. The story of the 1962 escape of three of these men, Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, inspired the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz. Another prisoner, John Giles, caught a boat ride to the shore in 1945 dressed in an army uniform he had stolen piece by piece, but he was questioned by a suspicious officer after disembarking and sent back to Alcatraz. Only one man, John Paul Scott, was recorded to have reached the mainland by swimming, but he came ashore exhausted and hypothermic at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Police found him lying unconscious and in a state of shock.
In 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered Alcatraz closed, citing the high expense of its maintenance. In its 29-year run, Alcatraz housed more than 1,500 convicts. In March 1964 a group of Sioux Indians briefly occupied the island, citing an 1868 treaty with the Sioux allowing Indians to claim any "unoccupied government land." In November 1969, a group of nearly 100 Indian students and activists began a more prolonged occupation of the island, remaining there until they were forced off by federal marshals in June 1971.
WoW-that is interesting!
In 1972, Alcatraz was opened to the public as part of the newly created Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is maintained by the National Park Service. Alcatraz Island and the former prison are open to the public, and more than a million tourists visit each year.
August 11th
Full Sturgeon Moon
11:48 pm
Adolf Hitler becomes president of Germany
On this day in 1934, Adolf Hitler, already chancellor, is also elected president of Germany in an unprecedented consolidation of power in the short history of the republic.
In 1932, German President Paul von Hindenburg, old, tired, and a bit senile, had won re-election as president, but had lost a considerable portion of his right/conservative support to the Nazi Party. Those close to the president wanted a cozier relationship to Hitler and the Nazis. Hindenburg had contempt for the Nazis' lawlessness, but ultimately agreed to oust his chancellor, Heinrich Bruning, for Franz von Papen, who was willing to appease the Nazis by lifting the ban on Hitler's Brown Shirts and unilaterally canceling Germany's reparation payments, imposed by the Treaty of Versailles at the close of World War I.
But Hitler was not appeased. He wanted the chancellorship for himself. Papen's policies failed on another front: His authoritarian rule alienated his supporters, and he too was forced to resign. He then made common cause with Hitler, persuading President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor and himself vice-chancellor. He promised the president that he would restrain Hitler's worst tendencies and that a majority of the Cabinet would go to non-Nazis. As Hindenburg's current chancellor could no longer gain a majority in the Reichstag, and Hitler could bring together a larger swath of the masses and a unified right/conservative/nationalist coalition, the president gave in. In January 1933, Hitler was named chancellor of Germany.
But that was not enough for Hitler either. In February 1933, Hitler blamed a devastating Reichstag fire on the communists (its true cause remains a mystery) and convinced President Hindenburg to sign a decree suspending individual and civil liberties, a decree Hitler used to silence his political enemies with false arrests. Upon the death of Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler proceeded to purge the Brown Shirts (his storm troopers), the head of which, Ernst Roem, had began voicing opposition to the Nazi Party's terror tactics. Hitler had Roem executed without trial, which encouraged the army and other reactionary forces within the country to urge Hitler to further consolidate his power by merging the presidency and the chancellorship. This would make Hitler commander of the army as well.
A plebiscite vote was held on August 19. Intimidation, and fear of the communists, brought Hitler a 90 percent majority. He was now, for all intents and purposes, dictator.
I just watched a special on tv about him on Sunday
It must have been because of the anniversary today
amazing stuff!
Princess Diana
died 6 years ago today.
Doc Holliday dies of tuberculosis
On this day, Doc Holliday--gunslinger, gambler, and occasional dentist--dies from tuberculosis.
Though he was perhaps most famous for his participation in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, John Henry "Doc" Holliday earned his bad reputation well before that famous feud. Born in Georgia, Holliday was raised in the tradition of the southern gentleman. He earned his nickname when he graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872. However, shortly after embarking on a respectable career as a dentist in Atlanta, he developed a bad cough. Doctors diagnosed tuberculosis and advised a move to a more arid climate, so Holliday moved his practice to Dallas, Texas.
By all accounts, Holliday was a competent dentist with a successful practice. Unfortunately, cards interested him more than teeth, and he earned a reputation as a skilled poker and faro player. In 1875, Dallas police arrested Holliday for participating in a shootout. Thereafter, the once upstanding doctor began drifting between the booming Wild West towns of Denver, Cheyenne, Deadwood, and Dodge City, making his living at card tables and aggravating his tuberculosis with heavy drinking and late nights.
Holliday was famously friendly with Wyatt Earp, who believed that Holliday saved his life during a fight with cowboys. For his part, Holliday was a loyal friend to Earp, and stood by him during the 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral and the bloody feud that followed.
In 1882, Holliday fled Arizona and returned to the life of a western drifter, gambler, and gunslinger. By 1887, his hard living had caught up to him, forcing him to seek treatment for his tuberculosis at a sanitarium in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He died in his bed at only 36 years old.
In 1921, an unknown World War I American soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This site, on a hillside overlooking the Potomac River and the city of Washington, became the focal point of reverence for America's veterans.
Similar ceremonies occurred earlier in England and France, where an unknown soldier was buried in each nation's highest place of honor (in England, Westminster Abbey; in France, the Arc de Triomphe). These memorial gestures all took place on November 11, giving universal recognition to the celebrated ending of World War I fighting at 11 a.m., November 11, 1918 (the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month). The day became known as "Armistice Day".
Armistice Day officially received its name in America in 1926 through a Congressional resolution. It became a national holidiay 12 years later by similar Congressional action. If the idealistic hope had been realized that World War I was "the War to end all Wars," November 11 might still be called Armistice Day. But only a few years after the holiday was proclaimed, war broke out in Europe. Sixteen and one-half million Americans took part. Four hundred seven thousand of them died in service, more than 292,000 in battle.
Realizing that peace was equally preserved by veterans of WW II and Korea, Congress was requested to make this day an occasion to honor those who have served America in all wars. In 1954 President Eisenhower signed a bill proclaiming November 11 as Veterans Day.
On Memorial Day 1958, two more unidentified American war dead were brought from overseas and interred in the plaza beside the unknown soldier of World War I. One was killed in World War II, the other in the Korean War. In 1973, a law passed providing interment of an unknown American from the Vietnam War, but none was found for several years. In 1984, an unknown serviceman from that conflict was placed alongside the others. To honor these men, symbolic of all Americans who gave their lives in all wars, an Army honor guard, The 3d U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard), keeps day and night vigil.
A law passed in 1968 changed the national commemoration of Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. It soon became apparent, however, that November 11 was a date of historic significance to many Americans. Therefore, in 1978 Congress returned the observance to its traditional date.
In 1940 An Armistice Day storm raged across the Great Lakes Region and the Upper Midwest. A blizzard left 49 dead in Minnesota, and gales on Lake Michigan caused ship wrecks resulting in another 59 deaths. Up to 17 inches of snow fell in Iowa, and at Duluth MN the barometric pressure reached 28.66 inches. The blizzard claimed a total of 154 lives, and in Iowa, killed thousands of cattle. Whole towns were isolated by huge snowdrifts.
Ask any Minnesotan born before 1940 and they can tell you where they were during the Armistice Day Blizzard. The weather was relatively benign the morning of the November 11, 1940. Many people were outdoors, taking advantage of the mild holiday weather. The weather forecast that morning was for colder temperatures and a few flurries. Few people were prepared for what was to come. The storm started with rain, however the rain quickly turned to snow. By the time the blizzard tapered off on the 12th, the Twin Cities had received 16.7 inches of snow, Collegeville 26.6 inches, and 20-foot drifts were reported near Willmar. In all 49 Minnesotans lost their lives in this storm, many of them hunters trapped by the sudden turn of events.
I hear that story every year and just think of how fortunate we are to have the weather equipment that we have nowadays. It's still pretty much a spinning wheel and a crap-shoot forecasting a week out but the 24 hour forecasts are dead on most of the time.
SLAVERY ABOLISHED IN AMERICA:
Following its ratification by the requisite three-quarters of the states earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Before the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the anti-slavery Republican Party sought not to abolish slavery but merely to stop its extension into new territories and states in the American West. This policy was unacceptable to most Southern politicians, who believed that the growth of free states would turn the U.S. power structure irrevocably against them. In November 1860, Lincoln's election as president signaled the secession of seven Southern states and the formation of the Confederate States of America. Shortly after his inauguration in 1861, the Civil War began. Four more Southern states joined the Confederacy, while four border slave states in the upper South remained in the Union.
Lincoln, though he privately detested slavery, responded cautiously to the call by abolitionists for emancipation of all American slaves after the outbreak of the Civil War. As the war dragged on, however, the Republican-dominated federal government began to realize the strategic advantages of emancipation: The liberation of slaves would weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of a major portion of its labor force, which would in turn strengthen the Union by producing an influx of manpower. With 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, there were few pro-slavery congressmen to stand in the way of such an action.
In 1862, Congress annulled the fugitive slave laws, prohibited slavery in the U.S. territories, and authorized Lincoln to employ freed slaves in the army. Following the major Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September, Lincoln issued a warning of his intent to issue an emancipation proclamation for all states still in rebellion on New Year's Day.
That day--January 1, 1863--President Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation, calling on the Union army to liberate all slaves in states still in rebellion as "an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity." These three million slaves were declared to be "then, thenceforward, and forever free." The proclamation exempted the border slave states that remained in the Union and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union army.
The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the Civil War from a war against secession into a war for "a new birth of freedom," as Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address in 1863. This ideological change discouraged the intervention of France or England on the Confederacy's behalf and enabled the Union to enlist the 180,000 African American soldiers and sailors who volunteered to fight between January 1, 1863, and the conclusion of the war.
As the Confederacy staggered toward defeat, Lincoln realized that the Emancipation Proclamation, a war measure, might have little constitutional authority once the war was over. The Republican Party subsequently introduced the 13th Amendment into Congress, and in April 1864 the necessary two-thirds of the overwhelmingly Republican Senate passed the amendment. However, the House of Representatives, featuring a higher proportion of Democrats, did not pass the amendment by a two-thirds majority until January 1865, three months before Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
On December 2, 1865, Alabama became the 27th state to ratify the 13th Amendment, thus giving it the requisite three-fourths majority of states' approval necessary to make it the law of the land. Alabama, a former Confederate state, was forced to ratify the amendment as a condition for re-admission into the Union. On December 18, the 13th Amendment was officially adopted into the Constitution--246 years after the first shipload of captive Africans landed at Jamestown, Virginia, and were bought as slaves.
Slavery's legacy and efforts to overcome it remained a central issue in U.S. politics for more than a century, particularly during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
So much for the Constitutional process.
January 7, 1901 Cannibal Alfred Packer is paroled
The confessed Colorado cannibal Alfred Packer is released from prison on parole after serving 18 years.
One of the ragged legions of gold and silver prospectors who combed the Rocky Mountains searching for fortune in the 1860s, Alfred Packer also supplemented his meager income from mining by serving as a guide in the Utah and Colorado wilderness. In early November 1873, Packer left Bingham Canyon, Utah, to lead a party of 21 men bound for the gold fields near Breckenridge, Colorado. The winter of 1873-74 was unusually harsh. After three months of difficult travel, the party staggered into the camp of the Ute Indian Chief Ouray, near present-day Montrose, Colorado. The Utes graciously provided the hungry and exhausted men with food and shelter. Chief Ouray advised the men to stay in the camp until a break came in the severe winter weather, but with their strength rekindled by food and rest, Packer and five other men decided to continue the journey.
Two months later, Packer arrived alone at the Los Pinos Indian Agency, looking surprisingly fit for a man who had just completed an arduous winter trek through the Rockies. Packer first claimed he had become separated from his five companions during a blizzard and survived on rabbits and rosebuds. Suspicions grew, though, when it was discovered that Packer had an unusual amount of money and many items belonging to the missing men. Under questioning, Packer confessed that the real story was far more gruesome: four of the men, he claimed, had died naturally from the extreme winter conditions and the starving survivors ate them. When only Packer and one other man, Shannon Bell, remained alive, Bell went insane and threatened to kill Packer. Packer said he shot Bell in self-defense and eventually ate his corpse.
Though shocking, Packer's grisly story would probably have been accepted as an unfortunate tragedy had not searchers later found the remains of the five men at a single campsite-not strung out along the trail as Packer had claimed. Packer was arrested and charged with murder, but he escaped from jail and remained at large for nine years. Recaptured in 1883 near Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, Packer once again changed his story. He claimed that all six men had made camp alive, but lost and starving, they were too weak to go on. One day Packer went in search of the trail. Upon returning several hours later, he discovered to his horror that Bell had gone mad, killed the other four with a hatchet, and was boiling the flesh of one of them for his meal. When Bell spotted Packer, he charged with his hatchet raised, and Packer shot him twice in the belly. Lost and trapped alone in a camp of dead men, Packer said he only resorted to cannibalism after several more days, when it was his only means of survival.
Having twice changed his story, Packer's credibility was undermined, and a jury convicted him of manslaughter. He remained imprisoned in the Canon City penitentiary until 1901 when the Denver Post published a series of articles and editorials questioning his guilt. Eventually, the state was freed Packer on parole. Packer went to work as a guard for the Post and lived quietly in and around Littleton, Colorado, maintaining his innocence until the day he died in 1907.
Though we will never know exactly what happened on the so-called "Cannibal Plateau" near present-day Lake City, Colorado, recent forensic studies of the remains of the men who died have tended to support the details of Packer's second confession.
On this day in 1935, Elvis Presley was born.
January 16 1936
Albert Fish is executed at Sing Sing prison in New York. The "Moon Maniac" was one of America's most notorious and disturbed killers. Authorities believe that Fish killed as many as 10 children and then ate their remains. Fish went to the electric chair with great anticipation, telling guards, "It will be the supreme thrill, the only one I haven't tried."
Fish was executed for the murder of 12-year-old Grace Budd. In 1928, at his Wisteria Cottage in Westchester County, New York, Fish strangled the girl and then carved up her body with a saw. Six years later, Fish wrote Budd's mother a letter in which he described in detail killing the girl and then preparing a stew with her flesh that he ate over the next nine days. The letter was traced back to the 66-year-old man.
A psychiatrist who examined Fish stated, "There was no known perversion that he did not practice and practice frequently." Albert Fish was obsessed with sadomasochism. He had his own children hit him with a paddle studded with nails. He inserted sewing needles into his body. Nearly 30 needles were found in his groin area after he died. In fact, the executioners had been worried that the amount of metal in his body might short-circuit the electric chair. Fish also ate his own excrement and burned himself with hot irons and pokers.
Most disturbingly, Fish was obsessed with cannibalism. He carried writings about the practice in his pockets. When he was arrested, Fish confessed to the murders of other young children whom he claimed to have eaten. Although nearly everyone agreed that he was insane, including the jury deciding his fate, he was nevertheless sentenced to die. Reportedly, his last statement was a handwritten note filled with filthy obscenities.
and who wants NO death penalty in this state?
The thought of him getting out of an asylum for good behavor or escaping is just horrifying-
Although nearly everyone agreed that he was insane, including the jury deciding his fate, he was nevertheless sentenced to die.
While most people might think what he did was "crazy" in the sense they themselves would never do it, I don't think what he did would actually classify him as insane. A lot of people practice sadomasochism and do extreme things, but they also know the line where their activities begin to infringe on the rights of others. Only knowing what I read here, I would say it sounds like the decision to hold him accountable for his actions was the correct one.
On this day, Adolf Hitler takes to his underground bunker, where he remains for 105 days until he commits suicide.
So was he your hero
So was he your hero
Of course he is. You should see the shrine I have in my basement, complete with autographed picture of my grandpa sharing a smoke with him.
My grandpa Willem, god bless his soul, would reminisce about the good old days, how they would laugh and laugh about the concentration camps.
Grandpa's favorite story was about the time Hitler had toilet paper stuck to his boot, and they had marched miles before anyone told him. You can imagine how hard it was for his men to hold in their laughter, after all they were afraid of being shot for laughing at their leader. Well I guess Hitler was quite embarrased by this, not to mention furious that no one had told him. That evening he tasked my grandpa's best friend, I believe his name was Rogier, with checking the bottom of his shoes, on the hour.
One other interesting little fact - Grandpa said Hitler was allergic to moustache wax, instead he would use diaper cream.