Random News and Notes 12 May
After a 40 day siege, Continental forces at Charleston surrender to British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton on this date in 1780. It would be the worst defeat of the War for the Patriot forces. The British captured more than 3,000 Patriots and a great quantity of munitions and equipment, losing only 250 killed and wounded in the process. Confident of British control in the South, Lieutenant General Clinton sailed north to New York after the victory, having learned of an impending French expedition to the British-occupied northern state.
The control was short lived. The guerrilla warfare strategies employed by Patriots Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter and Nathanael Greene throughout the Carolina campaign of 1780-81 eventually chased the far more numerous British force into Virginia, where they eventually surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
On this day in 1932 the Lindbergh baby was found dead. The 20 month old son of famed Aviator Charles Lindbergh had been snatched from his nursery in the family home in Hopewell NJ. The kidnapper had used a ladder to climb up to the open second-floor window and had left muddy footprints in the room. In barely legible English, the ransom note demanded $50,000.
On May 12, a renewed search of the area near the Lindbergh mansion turned up the baby’s body. He had been killed the night of the kidnapping and was found less than a mile from the Lindbergh home.
The kidnapping looked like it would go unsolved until September 1934, when a marked bill from the ransom turned up. Suspicious of the driver who had given it to him, the gas station attendant who had accepted the bill wrote down his license plate number. It was tracked back to a German immigrant, Bruno Hauptmann. When his home was searched, detectives found $13,000 of Lindbergh ransom money. Despite weak evidence connecting him to the crime, Hauptmann was convicted and in April 1936, executed in the electric chair.
At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into four sectors administered by the four major Allied powers: the USSR, the United States, Britain and France. Berlin, the German capital, was likewise divided into four sectors, even though it was located deep within the Soviet sector of eastern Germany. The Western Allies planned to unite their zones of control into one entity. Joseph Stalin and the Soviets were unhappy with that plan and in March of 1948 quit the Allied Control Council governing occupied Germany over this issue.
On June 20, as a major step toward the establishment of a West German government, the Western powers introduced a new Deutsche mark currency in West Germany and West Berlin. The Soviets condemned this move as an attack on the East German currency and on June 24 began a blockade of all rail, road, and water communications between Berlin and the West. The four-power administration of Berlin had ceased with the unification of West Berlin, the Soviets said, and the Western powers no longer had a right to be there. With West Berlin’s food, fuel, and other necessities cut off, the Soviets reasoned, it would soon have to submit to Communist control.
It did not work. US and British high command immediately started planning what would be the largest airlift in history. Over the next 14 months more than 278,288 flights delivered 2,326,406 tons of supplies to West Berlin. At the height of the Berlin airlift, in April 1949, planes were landing in the city every minute.
On this date in 1949, the Soviets abandoned the blockade and the first Western road transport convoys reached the beleaguered city. The failure was a major embarrassment for the Soviets who thought the blockade would have forced the Allies to capitulate.
On this day in 1975, the US flagged freighter Mayaguez was seized by Khmer Rouge forces. Cambodia had fallen to communist insurgents, the Khmer Rouge, in April 1975. President Ford wasted no time in responding. On May 14, President Ford ordered the bombing of the Cambodian port where the gunboats had come from and sent Marines to attack the island of Koh Tang, where the prisoners were being held.
We start today’s news with a story out of Boston. On Monday afternoon near Harvard University, 46-year-old Tyler Brown of Boston walked Memorial Drive firing an “assault-style” rifle at passing vehicles, hitting two men who remain in critical condition at Boston hospitals. A State Police trooper and an armed former Marine confronted and shot Brown multiple times, ending the attack after he fired 50 to 60 rounds.
Brown, a paroled felon with prior convictions including a 2020 shootout with police, faces charges of armed assault with intent to murder.
Some AWFL judge let him out after his 2020 conviction on 8 charges including shooting at cops. This needs to stop.
Criminal charges have been handed down in the M/V Dali incident. You’ll recall that was the ship that hit and destroyed the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore. Synergy Marine Pte Ltd and Synergy Maritime Pte Ltd, along with technical superintendent Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, face an 18-count indictment for safety violations that caused the Dali’s blackouts and the bridge collapse. Prosecutors say the firms approved a dangerous fuel pump modification that bypassed backup power systems, then concealed it and lied to investigators.
The crash killed six pothole fillers, polluted the river, and triggered over $5 billion in losses. Civil actions are pending and the replacement bridge is years and billions away from being done.
The Dems in Virginia are in full-on panic mode over the SCOVA ruling on their brazenly unconstitutional redistricting attempt. VA Attorney General Jay Jones – who has never won a case in court – filed an appeal to SCOTUS and oh boy. The filing was not only filled with spelling errors, it used the wrong template and was addressed to the wrong court.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Ok, this one amuses me. A Texas couple moved to Maine. Because of climate change they say. Anyway, they bought a house in Bangor and woke up one morning to find someone had slept on their porch and left them a little present. Turds, whoever slept on their porch left turds, human turds.
Leaving the fact that it looks like ‘he’ is a power bottom and she indulges him aside, they moved from Austin to Bangor because of “climate change”. I mean, Bangor is a coastal city while Austin is what, 250 miles from the coast? VIrtue signalling retards. Retards that have a poopy porch.