Random News and Notes 23 August

On this date:

• 1244 – Turks expel the crusaders under Frederick II from Jerusalem.
• 1305 – Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn, beheaded, and quartered in London.
• 1541 – Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec on his third voyage to North America.
• 1711 – A British attempt to invade French Canada by sea fails.
• 1775 – King George III of England refuses the American colonies’ offer of peace and declares them in open rebellion.
• 1784 – Four counties in western North Carolina declare their independence as the state of Franklin. The counties lay in what would eventually become Tennessee.
• 1821 – After 11 years of war, Spain grants Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy.
• 1823 – Mountain man Hugh Glass is mauled by a grizzly. After being abandoned by companions, he is forced to travel more than 200 miles alone to reach safety—crawling, stumbling and eventually floating his way downriver in a makeshift canoe.
• 1861 – Allan Pinkerton, head of the new secret service agency of the Federal government, places Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow under house arrest in Washington, D.C.
• 1863 – Union batteries cease their first bombardment of Fort Sumter, leaving it a mass of rubble but still unconquered by the Northern besiegers.
• 1900 – Booker T. Washington forms the National Negro Business League in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1902 – Fanny Farmer, among the first to emphasize the relationship of diet to health, opens her School of Cookery in Boston.
• 1914 – The Emperor of Japan declares war on Germany.
• 1914 – In their first confrontation on European soil since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, four divisions of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by Sir John French, struggle with the German 1st Army over the 60-foot-wide Mons Canal in Belgium, near the French frontier.

• 1926 – Italian film star Rudolph Valentino dies, causing world-wide hysteria and a number of suicides.
• 1927 – Sacco and Vanzetti are executed for a payroll robbery gone wrong. While there is no doubt that the gun on Sacco when he was arrested was the murder weapon, there is doubt as to the guilt of Vanzetti, as no evidence connecting him to the killings has ever been presented.
• 1939 – Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, freeing Adolf Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland.
• 1942 – German forces begin an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad.
• 1944 – German SS engineers begin placing explosive charges around the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
• 1945 – LTG Jonathan Wainwright, (captured by the Japanese on the island of Corregidor, in the Philippines), is freed by Russian forces from a POW camp in Manchuria, China.
• 1945 – Staff Sergeant Marcario García became the first Mexican national to receive the American military’s highest honor.
• 1950 – Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps are called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.
• 1954 – First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
• 1958 – The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins: People’s Liberation Army bombards island of Quemoy during Chinese Civil War.
• 1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes first photograph of Earth from the moon.
• 1975 – Pathet Lao communists occupy Vientiane, Laos.
• 1979 – Bolshoi Ballet dancer Alexander Godunov defects in New York City.
• 2011 – Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi is overthrown after National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the 2011 Libyan Civil War.

Elon Musk just announced he was spending between $100 and $200 million on the upcoming midterms. The money is going to be used for voter outreach and get out the vote efforts.

GOTV efforts are – in this editor’s opinion – the major weakness of the right. That’s why it appears that guys like Scott Pressler have so much success, nobody else is doing it.

A former Chicago school principal and two others have been sentenced to federal prison for their roles in procurement fraud schemes that defrauded a pair of school systems and a non-profit organization out of more than $1 million. Brian Metcalf, Kimberly Maddox, and James Darnell Campbell schemed to illegally profit from various roles Metcalf held in school systems in Chicago and Indianapolis, as well as a non-profit corporation.

I went into the wrong business. . .

There is a big, 10,000+ acre fire burning near Reno Nevada. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo declared a state of emergency for Washoe County as the Hawk Fire grew quickly throughout the day. Strong, gusty winds, low humidity and dry vegetation helped fuel the flames. About 400 firefighters and other personnel from local, state and federal agencies were working the fire Saturday evening, both on the ground and from the air. Three helicopters were set to fly overnight as crews worked to protect homes and other property.

As of this morning, the fire is threatening more than 1000 homes in the area.

Here’s some Johnny Cash for no reason at all. . .

.

.

.

.

.

Just a couple of days ago, 19 August to be precise, a fisherman out of Cape Cod landed a new Massachusetts record Blue Marlin. The beastie weighed in at 1260 pounds and was more than 11 feet long.

The fish smashed the previous MA record of 873 pounds and was a mere 142 pounds shy of the current IGFA world record of 1,402 pounds 2 ounces.