Muffie's Minutes of Mindless Trivia

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More this date in history

1945 - American troops began landing in Japan after the fall of the Japanese government.

1967 - Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, was found dead in his London flat from an overdose of sleeping pills

1975 - Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia' monarchy, which had lasted 3000 years, died almost a year after being deposed..

 

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Today's birthdays

Actress Tuesday Weld is 59

Actress Barbara Bach is 55

 

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This date in history

1609 - Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay. The aborigenees knew it was there all along.

1963 - Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washinton, DC.

1968 - The Democratic party nominated Hubert Humphrey for president in Chicago as antiwar demonstrators clashed with police outside in the streets.

 

[Bidin~Time]

And Micheal Jackson is a new daddy today!!! no word on who the mother is...or how it happened!!

And as our local radio announcer said, "The baby is a boy, no word yet on the sex of the father".

 

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And as our local radio announcer said, "The baby is a boy, no word yet on the sex of the father".

That's just creepy!!!!

 

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This date in history

1533 - Atahualpa, the last Incan king of Peru, was murdered on orders from Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro. I'm sure it seemed to be the thing to do at the time.

1632 - English philosopher John Locke was born in Somerset.

1944 - The Allied troops staged the big parade in Paris as the French capital celebrated its liberation. I think we've all seen pictures of this one in the history books.

 

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1957 - Strom Thurmond, D-SC, ended a filibuster against civil rights legislation during which he spoke on the Senate floor for over 24 hours. Oh, the lengths some would go to perpetuate Jim Crow.

1966 - The Beatles concluded their fourth American tour with their last public concert, held at Candlestick Park in SF

1992 - The UN Security Council agreed to send 3000 more troops for relief in Somalia to guard food shipments. See the movie "Blackhawk Down" - such a lovely place, Somalia.

 

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This date in history

30 B.C. - Cleopatra put the asp in her dress. Seems she couldn't boff enough Romans to spare Egypt captivity.

1862 - The US Army was defeated at the second battle of Bull Run. You might think they would have learned after the first one....

1905 - Ty Cobb made his major league batting debut for the Detroit Tigers. He retired with the highest career batting average ever. 97 years later, all they woory about is their bank balances.

1941 - The WWII siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg) began. It lasted nearly three years, and seemed to solve nothing.

 

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More this date in history

1918 - The New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 1-0 in a game that took only 57 minutes to complete. They must have gotten all of their chewing, spitting and scratching out of the way before the game was started.

1963 - The "hot line" link between Washington and Moscow went into operation.

1967 - The US Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, allowing him to become the first black justice on the court. If I'm not mistaken, he helped argue the Brown vs Board of Education case before the high court in 1954.

 

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Birthdays

The original Jean-Claude, Monsieur Killy, the famous skier, is 59

Cameron Diaz is the big three-oh. (God, I was dreading starting ninth grade when she was born. Grew like a weed that summer, too. No. I didn't grow any weed!!!)

 

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This date in history

1886 - An earthquake rocked that town so highly noted for its faultline placement, Charleston, SC. Up to 110 people were killed. This one may actually bear further research....

1887 - Thomas Edison received a patent for what he called his "Kinetoscope", a device which produced moving pictures. Many of Edison's inventions were improvements of existing ideas, whith the notable exception of the phonograph, whereby he discovered that sounds could be stored and reproduced.

1935 - President Franklin Roosevelt signed an act prohibiting the US export of arms to belligerents.

1954 - Hurricane Carol hit the northeastern US coast, killing nearly 70 people.

 

[manofsteel52]

Feel free to add your own!

In 1792 Thomas Jefferson got all pissy at his Federalist buddies and did a total Susan Lucci by calling them all elitists and starting the Democratic-Republican party.

We call them the "Democrats" now.

The Concorde flies at Mach 2, twice the speed of sound. If you fly from London to NY, you'll pass through 5 time zones, landing 1 1/2 hours before you took off.

It's claimed the the Concorde is 12 inches longer after a trans-Atlantic flight than it was when it took off, due to the extreme heat!

 

[manofsteel52]

The SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, first built more than 30 years ago, is still the world's fastest production aircraft, capable of flying at speeds in excess of Mach 3(that's more than 2200 MPH).

Seeing one of these birds fly is a rare experience. In the 70's, they were top secret, kept inside hangers except when on a reconnaissance mission, but when they took off, as the landing gear left the runway, it would be retracted, afterburners ignited, nose vertical till the plane was out of sight.

Although this was not a carrier aircraft, one can be seen on display aboard the deck of the USS Intrepid museum in NYC.

 

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Cool. The USS Wisconsin is moored 100 miles from here, and I want to go see it, just to view the sheer mass.

The Wisconsin was the last of the Iowa class battleships built during WWII. It has three turrets with three 16" guns each. Each gun can hurl a high explosive projectile the weight of an old Volkswagen, accurately, in excess of 20 miles.

Some battleships were more notorious, but the Iowa class, of which there were four, were probably as good as were ever built.

Battleships were obsolete by the end of WWII because of naval aircraft.

 

[manofsteel52]

Cool. The USS Wisconsin is moored 100 miles from here, and I want to go see it, just to view the sheer mass.

The Wisconsin was the last of the Iowa class battleships built during WWII. It has three turrets with three 16" guns each. Each gun can hurl a high explosive projectile the weight of an old Volkswagen, accurately, in excess of 20 miles.

Some battleships were more notorious, but the Iowa class, of which there were four, were probably as good as were ever built.

Battleships were obsolete by the end of WWII because of naval aircraft.

I've always felt it a shame for so much history to be lost. When I was a kid, my family often traveled along the Hudson river, Bear Mtn, and through Port Jarvis, NY.
There was a Naval graveyard, hundreds of WWII ships, decomissioned, waiting to be salvaged.
They're all gone now... so much scrap metal.
It was once a sight to behold, all those proud old vessels, with all the stories of all the lives they once influenced.

 

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I've always felt it a shame for so much history to be lost. When I was a kid, my family often traveled along the Hudson river, Bear Mtn, and through Port Jarvis, NY.
There was a Naval graveyard, hundreds of WWII ships, decomissioned, waiting to be salvaged.
They're all gone now... so much scrap metal.
It was once a sight to behold, all those proud old vessels, with all the stories of all the lives they once influenced.

You've probably noticed in the news that the turret for the USS Monitor, which sank off Cape Hatteras NC on 31 Dec 1862, was recently raised. The CSS Hunley, the first submarine to sink a surface vessal, was raised a few months before from the bottom of Charleston SC harbor.

They found an 1860 $20 gold coin in the Hunley - legend has it that when the commander was at Shiloh in 1862, the coin, which was given to him by his girlfriend, stopped a ball which might have cost him his leg or his life. He carried it always.

They found a gold ring - maybe a wedding ring - in the Monitor, which might be engraved and hold a clue as to its owner.

And a couple of days ago, a Japanese midget sub was found in 1200 feet of water outside Pearl Harbor, sunk by US gunfire, an hour and a quarter before the aerial assault of the Pacific fleet started. It still had its two torpedoes intact.

Salvage is getting interesting. I've seen specials on it, one about finding a U-boat off the Jersey shore, and one about locating the Bismarck in the North Atlantic.

 

[manofsteel52]

Last August, the US Navy finally admitted that the USS Eagle (PE-56) was actually sunk off the Maine coast (in sight of land) by a German sub, 2 weeks before Gremany surrendered.
Untill last year, the Navy stuck with it's original story that the sub chaser was sunk by a boiler explosion, even though witnesses saw the sub surface just before the ship exploded.
49 US sailors were killed, only 13 survived.

 

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That may have been sunk by the U-869, which was the one found off the Jersey coast. German records had placed it somewhere near Gibraltar.

The 869 apparently took one of its own torpedoes in the conning tower as it fired at something else. As close as can be figured, no one survived.

My grandfather had second cousins who fought for the Wermacht in WWII, including one I have met. It's interesting to get a different perspective on the war by doing that. Germans I have met are reluctant to discuss WWII, though. I suspect it has something to do with collective national guilt.

I collect military rifles, and have several from that era....all fully functioning....and ammo is readily available.

My mother distinctly remembers things like Pearl Harbor and Doolittle's Raid. She dislikes the Japanese to this day.

 

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More this date in history

1895 - The first professional football game is played in Latrobe PA between Latrobe and Jeanette (PA).

1934 - The Chcago Bears played the college all-stars to a 0-0 tie in the first game of this long-running series, now cancelled.

1980 - Poland's Solidarity labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk, ending a 17-day strike.

1992 - Randy Weaver finally surrendered to the Feds, ending the 11-day standoff in Boundary County, Idaho, during which his wife and only son were killed by the Feds, and he and family friend Kevin Harris were seriously wounded. His other three children survived physically unharmed.

1997 - Charles, Prince of Wales, brought home the body of his deceased ex-wife, who was killed earlier in the day in an automobile accident in Paris, along with Dodi (translates to "Pookie" in English) Fayed. People the world over were shocked and saddened by her death.

 

[manofsteel52]

In the state of New Jersey alone, there are more than 17,000 lawyers!

 

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This date in history

1807 - Aaron Burr was found not guilty of treason. Burr almosr became president in 1800 when he tied with Thomas Jefferson for the number of electoral votes received. The election was settled by the US House of Representatives.

1923 - Tokyo and Yokohama were devastated by a major earthquake, which took up to 150,000.

1932 - James J. "Gentleman Jimmy" Walker, mayor of NYC, resigned following corruption charges.

1939 - Germany invaded Poland. This date is noted as the beginning of WWII - however, the Japanese had been in China for six years by this time.

1942 - A federal judge in Sacramento upheld the Executive Order which detained Japanese nationals and US citizens of Japanese extraction. Concentration camps in the US were found to be legal by this decision, which was later upheld by the higher courts as well.

 

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More this date in history

1961 - The USSR ended a moratorium on nuclear testing by setting off an above-ground explosion in central Asia. Joy.

1972 - American Bobby Fischer won the international chess crown by defeating Boris Spassky of the USSR.

1983 - A Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 was shot down by the Soviet air force after the airliner mistakenly crossed into Soviet air space, killing 269.

1997 - An official in the Paris prosecutor's office announced that Henri Paul, the driver, was drunk when the accident killing Princess Diana occurred.

 

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This date in history

Happy Labor Day!!!

1666 - The Great Fire in London broke out, claiming thousands of homes but few lives. Wonder where the Irish woman's cow was in all of this.

1789 - The US Treasury Department was established. In time, is has honed revenue collection into a fine science.

1864 - The army commanded by William T. "War is Hell" Sherman occupied Atlanta, GA. The next day, an Irish woman's cow kicked over a lantern, and the town was burned.

1901 - President Theodore Roosevelt ofeer his famous quip, "Speak softly and carry a big stick," in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair.

 

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More this date in history

1930 - The first non-stop airplane flight from Europe to the United States was completed. This is harder to do because of the prevailing winds, which blow the way Lindburgh flew.

1945 - The Japanese formally surrendered to the US aboard the USS Missouri, ending the hostilities of WWII. The Missouri is a sister ship of the Wisconsin, discussed a few posts back.

1945 - Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam to be an independent republic. Later, he would attempt to obtain aid from the United States, which was allied with France, Vietnam's colonial oppressor. The US had no help for Ho, but the Soviets did, on one condition....

 

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More this date in history

1963 - Then Alabama Governor George C. Wallace prevented the integration of Tuskegee High School by having it surrounded by state troopers. The black kids were supposed to be going to the separate but equal school (Also known as the former high school - the old building) across town.

What part of Plessy vs. Fergusson was correct?

1985 - It was announced that a French expidition (NOT led by Jacque Cousteau) had located the wreck of the Titanic 560 mile from Newfoundland. The band had taken a break by this time.

1997 - The Clinton administration selected Hillary to go to Princess Diana's funeral.