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3 July 2020
Historical Facts That Are Hard to Believe

10 Historical Facts That Are Really Hard to Believe

Natalia J. for ba-bamail.com

1. Oxford University is older than the Aztec civilization

Image Source: Kim Alaniz/ Flickr

It can be really tricky to compare timelines across different parts of the world, and this fact is a great example of that. It’s true, teaching at Oxford University started in the distant year of 1096, whereas the Aztec Empire only started in the 13th century with the founding of the city-state of Tenochtitlán in 1325.

What’s more, Oxford isn’t the oldest known university in the world either, with the title belonging to the Nalanda University in northern India, which assembled scholars throughout Asia and was started as early as the 5th century. Unfortunately, the university was destroyed by invaders in 1193.

2. Pineapples were once so pricey people rented them

Not a fan of pineapple on your pizza? Well, after reading this story, you might just change your mind. The thing is that in the 1700s and before, pineapples were incredibly rare because of the very specific climatic conditions they require to grow. Columbus was the first to introduce the tropical fruit to Europe when he brought pineapples back from his voyage to the Caribbean.

For centuries, the fruit was imported from the Caribbean islands, which made it a real luxury available only to the wealthiest. According to Mentalfloss, “Monarchs such as Louis XV, Catherine the Great, and Charles II (who even commissioned a painting of his gardener presenting him with a pineapple) enjoyed eating the sweet fruit, and pineapples came to symbolize luxury and opulence”. The estimated value of just one fruit was $8000 in today’s money, so some people resorted to renting pineapples to exhibit their wealth.

3. Forks were once considered sacrilegious

As we’ve mentioned in a previous article the fork is a Chinese invention that wasn’t used in Europe until Catherine de’ Medici popularized the utensil in the 16th century. Before the French queen made forks fashionable, though, they were considered sacrilegious for at least 500 years, since the pitchfork was the sign of the devil and no Christian would agree to keep the utensil at home let alone use it in food.

4. There was a war on cats in 13th century Europe

The black cat is still associated with witchcraft and considered to be a bad omen by some people to this day, but few people actually know that this tradition goes back to the 13th century, when Pope Gregory IX proclaimed that cats were the helpers of the devil that spread disease through cities.

As a result, countless cats were exterminated throughout Europe. The absence of cats, in turn, led to a mass rise in the rat population in cities, which, as we know today, were carriers of the bubonic plague, one of the deadliest epidemics in history that, ironically, started just a few decades after this mass cat purge.

5. The time period between the existence of Tyrannosaurus rex and Stegosaurus is larger than the time between T. rex and humans

Image Source: Tim Evanson/ Flickr

Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for quite some time, and few things can help us realize just how massive the actual time frame is then this creepy fact. Stegosaurus, a dinosaur that roamed the Earth during the Jurassic period about 150 million years ago and is famous for the series of triangular plates on the top of its back, was actually extinct for 80 million years when the famous T. Rex appeared 67 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. Thus, approximately 67 million years separate us from this creepy predator, which is 13 million years less than the time between the existence of the Tyrannosaurus and the Stegosaurus.

6. Ancient Greek and Roman architecture and statues weren’t white

During the excavations of the city of Pompeii, historians found out that Ancient Greek and Roman statues, building, and even just walls in residential buildings were, in fact, painted in various colors. By the time Europeans were once again fascinated by Ancient Roman and Greek art and architecture during the Renaissance and started using it as inspiration, the paint faded away, and Renaissance artists started recreating statues in pure white marble, unknowingly perpetuating this long-standing myth.

7. Tomatoes were once believed to be poisonous

Like potatoes, tomatoes were first brought to Europe from the Americas, and both veggies were met with opposition for nearly 200 years before finally becoming the staple foods they are now. When it comes to tomatoes, in particular, people would often die of lead poisoning after eating highly-acidic tomato dishes from lead plates.

Reacting with the acids naturally present in tomatoes, the lead would leech out of the kitchenware and caused toxic reactions and death, but our ancestors knew nothing about the dangers of lead at the time. In 1820, there was a whole trial in Salem, New Jersey, held to dispel the belief that tomatoes were deadly, during which Gibbon Johnson, one of the residents, ate a whole basket of tomatoes in public.

8. Alarm clocks made a whole profession obsolete

We never suspected that technology has been making jobs obsolete for this long! It turns out that before alarm clocks became available to most people, there were professionals called knocker-uppers whose job was to knock on people’s windows to help them wake up at the right time. These people used a variety of tools, such as sticks, pea shooters, or rattles to wake people more gently and reach each window.

9. A horse as consul

The Roman Emperor Caligula is widely known as a mad tyrant, but a lack of love for animals is a trait you can’t ascribe to the Roman head of state. Caligula was reportedly especially caring and protective of one of his horses, whom he called Incitatus. The emperor loved the horse so much that he had an ivory manger built for him to sleep in, a collar with precious stones, as well as an entire palace complete with servants. The cherry on top of the story is that the Roman Emperor even tried to make Incitatus a consul, though unsuccessfully.

10. The Charlie Chaplin contest

Image Source: Insomnia/ Flickr

According to gossip columns from the 1920s, Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition, and after performing his famous walk, the famous silent cinema actor reportedly came in 27th place. Though no records of this event appear in the actor’s official autobiography, it may have very much been true, as the press was spreading this story all around the world at the time, you can even say it went viral!

30 March 2025
Photos of the Week

ATLANTIC OCEAN (March 24, 2025) The Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) transits the Atlantic coast while underway. Iwo Jima is conducting advanced-phase training exercises designed to enhance warfighting readiness and interoperability at sea. Iwo Jima is the flagship of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group which is uniquely positioned to deter aggression, project power through presence abroad, and execute contingency missions with its integrated Marine Corps team in support of U.S. strategic interests. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Zachary Swigart)

Army

U.S. Soldiers assigned to Regimental Engineer Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment jump over a wall at the obstacle course during a Squadron spur ride at the 7th Army Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, March 25, 2025. During the event, Troopers must complete a series of warrior tasks and drills in order to obtain the right to wear the cavalry’s coveted spurs. The 2nd Cavalry Regiment provides V Corps, America’s forward-deployed corps, with combat-credible forces capable of rapid deployment throughout the European theater to defend the NATO alliance. (U.S. Army photo by Markus Rauchenberger)

Navy

An aircrew member assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 26 is hoisted aboard a MH-60S helicopter as part of a training event onboard Naval Weapons Station Yorktown. HSC-26 trains pilots and aircrewmen to employ the MH-60S worldwide in a variety of missions, including fleet logistics support, search and rescue, medical evacuation, special warfare support, anti-surface warfare and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. The squadron fulfills secondary missions of theater security cooperation and U.S. 2nd Fleet operational support. (U.S. Navy Photo by Max Lonzanida/Released).

Marine Corps

Recruits with Kilo Company, 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, execute the Battle of Fallujah event during the Crucible at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island S.C., March 20, 2025. The Crucible is the culmination of the knowledge and skills recruits learn throughout recruit training. (U.S. Marine photo taken by Lance Cpl. Jacob Claudell)

Air Force

Senior Airman Dariel Gonzalez Ramos, 90th Security Forces Squadron military working dog handler, carries MWD Rex after being fired at by opposing forces during detection training with environmental stimuli at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., March 10, 2025. Detection training is conducted to test and enhance MWD’s performance capabilities in simulated hostile environments. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Mattison Cole)

Coast Guard

Members of a U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment and U.S. Navy Sailors assigned to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance (DDG 111) conduct small boat operations in the Pacific Ocean, March 26, 2025. U.S. Navy assets are employed under U.S. Northern Command’s maritime homeland defense authorities with a U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment embarked to enable maritime interdiction missions to prevent the flow of illegal drugs and other illegal activity. U.S. Northern Command is working together with the Department of Homeland Security to augment U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the Southern border with additional military forces. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Joey Sitter) (This photo has been altered for security purposes by blurring out personal identifying information.)

30 March 2025
Mia Love

Mia Love never had it easy. Yet in an age where cynicism about the United States and its founding had become the norm, she never lost sight of the great opportunities America had given her.

In 2022, Love was diagnosed with brain cancer. Two weeks ago, she announced in a moving Deseret News essay that she would soon die, and used this final opportunity to write a love letter to America. We wanted to have her on “Honestly,” but this past weekend, her family announced that she had passed away at age 49.

You can read all about her life in this beautiful obituary published by Deseret News, a Utah publication we admire. We are grateful to them for allowing us to reprint this lightly edited piece and help it find the widest possible audience. — BW

My dear friends, fellow Americans, and Utahns, I am taking up my pen, not to say goodbye but to say thank you and express my living wish for you and the America I know.

My battle with brain cancer is coming to an end. The disease is no longer responding to treatment, and my family and I have shifted our focus from treatments to enjoying every moment and making memories with the time we have.

My life has been extended by exceptional medical care, science, and extraordinary professionals who have become dear friends. My extra season of life has also been the result of the faith and prayers of countless friends, known and unknown. The result of such humble faith and pleading prayers have been felt by me and my family in ways too numerous to count. I have always believed that faith and science are inextricably interconnected.

As a mayor, member of congress, and media commentator, I have seen the worst of petty politics, divisive rhetoric, and disappointing lapses of moral character by some. These same roles also provided me a front-row seat and backstage pass to be blessed and inspired by the courage, vision, and hope of America’s finest daughters, sons, and citizens.

Couching this column as a “dying wish” felt a little dramatic, even for a drama person like me. We are not certain how long this season of my battle will be, and I do want to share, and reshare, some things with the world that I passionately believe. I write all of this as my “living wish” and hopefully “enduring wish” for you.

Let me tell you about the America I know. My parents immigrated to the United States with $10 in their pocket and a belief that the America they had heard about really did exist as the land of opportunity. Through hard work and great sacrifice they achieved success—so the America I came to know growing up was filled with all the excitement found in living the American dream. I was taught to love this country, warts and all, and understand I had a role to play in our nation’s future. I learned to passionately believe in the possibilities and promise of America.

Watching my father and mother work odd jobs in order to provide for us and maintain their independence taught me valuable lessons in personal responsibility. When tough times came, they didn’t look to Washington, they looked within. Because the America they knew was centered in self-reliance, the America I know is founded in the freedom self-reliance always brings.

What makes America great is the idea that when government is limited and decisions are made closest to the people they impact, people are free—free to work, free to live, free to choose, free to fail, and free to achieve. The America I know provides everyone an equal opportunity to be as unequaled as they choose to be.

The America I know gives back. Americans, regardless of financial status, are the most giving people on the planet. On their own, without government requirement, our people give their money, their time, and their attention to causes, communities, and people in need whether it is across the street or around the world. I’ve experienced this generosity throughout my life and during my battle with cancer. I am so grateful.

The America I know makes tough choices. As the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, facing its own fiscal cliff, we put limited government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility first in order to create an amazing community that could last. I have also seen that facing challenging choices head-on inspires our citizens to get involved, engage in meaningful dialogue, rally around shared values, do things differently, and change the way government works.

Regardless of the difficulties we may face individually, in our families, in our communities, and in our nation, the old adage is still true—you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you cannot make both! The America I know doesn’t make excuses.

The America I know is grounded in the gritty determination found in patriots, pioneers, and struggling parents, in small business owners with big ideas, in the farmers who work in the beauty of our landscapes and the artists who paint them, in our heroic military and our inspiring Olympic athletes, and in every child who looks at the seemingly impossible and says, “I can do that.”

The America I know is great—not because government made it great, but because ordinary citizens like me, like my parents, and like you are given the opportunity every day to do extraordinary things. That is the America I know!

What the America I Know Deserves

Some have forgotten the math of America—whenever you divide, you diminish. What I know is that the goodness and compassion of the American people is a multiplier that simply cannot be measured. The goodness and greatness of our country is multiplied when neighbors help neighbors, when we reach out to those in need and build better citizens and more heroic communities.

You see, the America I know is built by citizens and leaders who respect, strengthen, and serve each other, not based on race, gender, or economic status but because we are Americans! We all have a role to play in uniting the country around the principles that have made us extraordinary.

The America I know will continue as long as each of us simply remember that this country is exceptional—because it is! I know it is! I can see on the horizon that our best and brightest days as a nation are still to come.

The America I know deserves leaders who trust the people and will tell them the hard truth about where we are and what we need to do in order to preserve our future. We need leaders who are prepared to engage in a dialogue about realities, priorities, and solving America’s problems.

When I wrote my memoir, Qualified, the working title was By the Content of Your Character. The American principles I wrote about in my book are the principles that shaped and blessed my life. I have always felt that it was character that counts in this country. The America I know, while far from perfect, is the place where we strive every day to live up to the principles Dr. Martin Luther King declared from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We will be judged in the end, individually and as a nation, by the content of our character.

Preserving the America We Know

The America I know isn’t just my story, and it isn’t just your story. It is our story. It is a story of endless possibilities, human struggle, standing up and striving for more. Our story has been told for well over 200 years, punctuated by small steps and giant leaps; from a woman on a bus to a man with a dream; from the bravery of the greatest generation to the explorers, entrepreneurs, reformers, and innovators of today. This is our story. This is the America we know—because we built it—together.

As my season of life begins to draw to a close, I still passionately believe that we can revive the American story we know and love. I am convinced that our citizens must remember the principles of our story so that our children, and those seeking freedom around the world, will know where to look to find a place for their story.

We must fight to keep the America we know as that shining city on a hill—truly the last best hope on earth. Like Benjamin Franklin and countless patriots down through the ages, I believe the American experiment is not a setting sun but a rising sun.

I thank each of you, and all of you, for being part of my journey in the American dream. You and I, we the people, will be forever connected in the cause of this country we love.

In the end, I hope that my life will have mattered and made a difference for the nation I love and the family and friends I adore. I hope you will see the America I know in the years ahead, that you will hear my words in the whisper of the wind of freedom and feel my presence in the flame of the enduring principles of liberty.

My living wish and fervent prayer for you and for this nation is that the America I have known is the America you fight to preserve and that each citizen, and every leader, will do their part to ensure that the America we know will be the America our grandchildren and great grandchildren will inherit.

Source: https://www.thefp.com/p/mia-love-last-wish-for-america-utah?utm_campaign=260347&utm_source=cross-post&r=m7lt7&utm_medium=email

Monday – March 24, 2025

30 March 2025
I’m tryin Lord, I’m trying

Thinking the Lord speaks different to me than to others

John 16:33

“trying ain’t gonna get done son”.

Heard tell, sometimes you just need loud music, that’s a damn lie, what goes good with LOUD music, coffee. Lots of coffee

Both will get you ready for doing stuff, with the department of indoctrination closing, schools just may bring back the trades, here’s a guy making life better for the ladies and the children

A common term you may have seen

“what’s in the box”.

Time, Knowledge, sweat and patience Not sure what it is about Women and sparkiles, but they like’em, ain’t that right fellas

Seeing that, does make one wonder how many Artisans, Carpenters and Plumbers along with many others that have been aborted.

Fellas, it is safe to say, Women have the gift of gab, back in school, knew a girl named Becky, she could talk and say a whole of nothin. the Dan-knee said if girls don’t talk, they’d probably blow up, sounds about Dan-knee.

This Woman can talk, talking in such a way as a thank you to the fellas and other gals.

Be honest here Ladies, moms attempt to teach table manners like how to use a fork and spoon and other stuff, dads are different, not wrong just different

They’ll remember dad’s cooking like forever, unlike their best day gaming.

Well this offering went different than expected, leathercrafting can be like that, probably because of the music playing.

30 March 2025
Welcome to Sunday Scripture and Conversation on March 30

Over Black Coffee and Gunpowder Tea served with

Our scripture for this Sunday is:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

—Romans 8:26-27

Thoughts on Today’s Verse

From verseoftheday.com

Most of us will face very difficult circumstances at some time in our lives. When we do, we will likely feel that our prayers just bounce off the ceiling. Our words will feel empty and useless. We can’t seem to verbalize what is on our hearts. We feel like our words are ineffective and insufficient. So what do we do? We trust this promise in these verses. We go to God in prayer. We aim our hearts toward heaven. Even when we don’t have words to say, we offer our hearts to him, trusting that the Holy Spirit takes those thoughts, emotions, and inarticulate frustrations to God. The Spirit makes our hearts known to God, interceding for us according to God’s will. Even when we don’t have words, the Spirit makes our needs known. What a tremendous reassuring grace!

Spirit Divine, Attend Our Prayers

1 Spirit divine, attend our prayer,

And make this house your home;

Descend with all your gracious pow’r;

O come, great Spirit, come!

2 Come as the light; to us reveal

Our emptiness and woe,

And lead us in those paths of life

Where all the righteous go.

3 Come as the fire and purge our hearts

Like sacrificial flame;

Let our whole soul an off’ring be

To our Redeemer’s name.

4 Come as the dove, and spread your wings,

The wings of peaceful love;

And let your Church on earth become

Blest as the Church above.

5 Spirit divine, attend our prayer;

Make a lost world your home;

Descend with all your gracious pow’r;

O come, great Spirit, come!

Source: One in Faith #654

Words by: Andrew Reed

Here is our Sunday egg.

30 March 2025
Vietnam War Veterans Day

Today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

The Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act, signed into law in 2017 by President Trump, designates March 29 of each year as National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

Vietnam Veterans represented nearly 10% of their generation.

The U.S. actions in Vietnam began slowly with the deployment of advisors in the early 1950s and expanded incrementally to include the deployment of combat forces in July 1965.

The conflict continued until January 1973, when representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris. U.S. forces returned home over the next few months, with the last military unit leaving on March 29, 1973.

March 29 is a fitting choice for a day honoring Vietnam Veterans. March 29, 1973, was when the last U.S. combat troops departed Vietnam. In addition, on and around this same day, Hanoi released the last of its acknowledge prisoners of war.

On behalf of the crew here at MVAP I thank all of you.

29 March 2025
Should the Trump Administration Change the ‘Signal’?

Should the Trump Administration Change the ‘Signal’?

It’s an app everyone uses in D.C. But who’s behind it?

By Daniel Greenfield for frontpagemag.com

Last month, a source called me. As usual in D.C., he wanted to talk on Signal. The encrypted communications app long ago replaced Blackberries as the default way to message in D.C.

So it wasn’t that surprising that a magazine editor somehow got added onto a Trump administration Signal chat involving J.D. Vance and other administration figures discussing air strikes against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen. Since everyone under 50 in D.C. is constantly messaging each other and media contacts, something like this was eventually bound to happen.

In an age where high-level remote government meetings have become the norm, important decisions in America and Europe are arrived at by video chat and text.

But there may be bigger reasons why the Trump administration and everyone in D.C. should be wary about using Signal. While the app is ubiquitous because it’s perceived as being more ‘private’ than WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, Brian Acton, the man behind WhatsApp, created the Signal Foundation and is a major liberal donor. Moxie Marlinspike, Signal’s other founder and coder, claims to be an anarchist, and no fan of the Trump administration.

Liberal foundations helped fund Signal’s rise and the initial fiscal sponsorship for Signal was provided by the Freedom of the Press Foundation whose key figures, Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, are better known for leaking damaging government information to leftists, rather than for keeping it secret.

Signal continues to be run today by leftists who passionately hate the Trump administration.

The Signal Foundation’s president, Meredith Whittaker, described as the “woman in charge of the secure communication channel”, became famous leading a revolt against Google when it dared to add the black female president of the Heritage Foundation to its AI council.

“There is zero proof that anti-conservative bias exists. In fact, these companies bend over backwards to not enforce their terms of service for people like President Trump,” Whittaker falsely claimed.

Other foundation board members include Katherine Maher, the current head of NPR and former head of Wikimedia, who famously claimed that “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”

Maher had said that, “the number one challenge that we see here is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States.” She had cheered Hillary and Kamala, and denounced President Trump as a “deranged racist sociopath.” Rounding out the board are Jay Sullivan, a former Twitter exec ousted by Musk and Amba Kak, a Whittaker protege with ties to the Biden administration.

Signal is a leftist activist group which makes it all the more strange that so much of D.C. is convinced that their privacy is secure using it. So much so that key Trump administration figures, including the vice president, could chat about an upcoming military strike on Signal.

For now there’s no evidence that Signal calls or chats were compromised by anything other than ‘user error’ of the kind that leads random people to occasionally try to add me to groups on Skype, WhatsApp, Signal and every known communications app in the free world.

Signal’s leaders continue to boast that they are committed to the security of the app and the organization’s actual CTO, Ehren Kret, occasionally retweets Elon Musk, but the fundamental difference between WhatsApp and Signal lies not in the technology, but its credibility.

“Signal either works for everyone or it works for no one. Every military in the world uses Signal, every politician I’m aware of uses Signal. Every CEO I know uses Signal because anyone who has anything truly confidential to communicate recognizes that storing that on a Meta database or in the clear on some Google server is not good practice,” Whittaker said.

The question is whether there might be a tipping point at which the value of sabotaging the ‘right’ takes priority over operating a credible platform, as it did when Whittaker went to war against having even one single conversative sit on Google’s AI ethics review board.

Signal is just a digital incarnation of leftist civil libertarianism of the kind that created the ACLU and other free speech movements because they believed that privacy and speech innately favored insurgent revolutionary movements over establishment conservative ones.

“I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which worker’s rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental. When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever,” ACLU co-founder Roger Nash Baldwin wrote in ‘Soviet Russia’.

The entire quote is important because it makes it all too clear that civil libertarianism for groups like this is a strategy, a means, not an end, a way to bring down the system and then rule over it.

The ACLU’s current Case Selection Guidelines lay out a more sophisticated version of this argument calling for a consideration of the “impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression” on the organization’s leftist political agenda. And in the last election, you could find the ACLU holding events on “ways to combat the spread of disinformation”.

The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation still, for the most part, oppose the government use of big tech companies to engage in censorship, known as ‘jawboning’, but other digital civil libertarian groups, notably the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have come out on the side of some government censorship. The Knight Foundation, which helped fund Signal and retains ties to it, has sympathies for ‘jawboning’ censorship.

Katherine Maher, a Signal board member, described taking “a very active approach to disinformation,” based on “conversations with government” in her past career.

Privacy on Signal, like that on any platform or app, depends on the commitment of those in charge to maintaining its integrity. Where WhatsApp is seen as an information gathering tool for Facebook’s data hungry operation, Signal emphasizes that it’s a non-profit and has no reason to spy on you. But Facebook does things to make money whereas Signal’s motives are ideological. And that ideology is hostile to conservatives and the Trump administration.

I use Signal, the way I use every communications app or service, with the assumption that anything I send is vulnerable to being intercepted, seen and heard if there is a sufficiently motivated party inside or outside the organization behind it. That’s not paranoia, it’s pragmatism. Privacy can be improved, but it can’t ever be absolutely ensured.

Conservatives should use Signal cautiously and Trump administration officials would do well not to hold meetings using a supposedly secure app run by some of their worst enemies.

29 March 2025
Oldest Surviving WWII Paratrooper Joe Harris Dies

Sergeant Joe Harris, who was believed to be the oldest surviving WWII paratrooper died on 15 March in Los Angeles. He was 108.

Harris was born on June 19, 1916, in West Dale, Louisiana. He began his military service in 1941 when he was 24. By the time he was honorably discharged in November 1945, he had completed 72 parachute jumps.

After the war, he worked for the U.S. Border Patrol. He also spent more than 60 years in Compton, California, where Pittman said he was the neighborhood patriarch, a man everyone on the block knew and gravitated to.

Harris was among the last surviving members of the historic 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the Triple Nickles. The battalion did not serve overseas during World War II, primarily because it never reached full strength for an Airborne Infantry Battalion. Instead they were shipped to the west coast to battle fires started by Japanese Fu-Go balloon bombs.

He is survived by his son and two daughters along with five grandchildren. His wife, Louise Harris, died in 1981.

He will be honored with a full military funeral on April 5.

Requiescat in pace.

29 March 2025
There’s music for that man

That’s the look when I look I have when stepping outside, seeing the world. Engaging my pronouns XYFU

For those with teevee, can you imagine charles manson being invited onto a talk show to discuss his murders and continues to do so

You can see it ole Isaac Newton’s face expression

Chance, now you’re just showing off

Try to keep up Mophead

I see the religion of pieces is being peaceful again

Yeah, right and ok world Knowing the storm was heading in thought I would go check Armydog’s blood pressure early, seen his wifey first. Where is he? ” in his workshop, been out there 2 hours with my vacuum cleaner, I’m not allowed in his shop, you go check on him”

Ok

Dog, what you doin man

“I’m making a family heirloom”

Needs a better bridge

“The wife sent you out here didn’t she, you back in and tell her, I’ll have her vacuum tuned up soon”.

Ok dog

29 March 2025
Welcome to Conversation on Saturday, March 29

Over Black Coffee and Gunpowder Tea served with

In case you were unaware, a new species has been discovered.

We have a disturbing then and now. Of course, yours truly knows this would never be something our MilVap members would consume. (Quickly hides French fry container evidence.😳😎)

Until Easter, I continue the egg art.

29 March 2025