Well, it’s 2025 and I’m off to a good start. I’ve completed my New Year’s resolutions and thrown a little poetry your way. Not too bad for the first week of a new year. Since it’s freezing cold here in Maine and I’m stuck in the house and becoming a little disgruntled with this winter weather, I thought some morbid historical celebrity trivia was needed. Here ‘s the quiz . . .
What colonial patriot, author and inventor is buried at Christ Church in Philadelphia? Ben Franklin
What twentieth century president was born, raised, and buried in Hyde Park, NY? FDR
What famous pioneer and scout has his home and grave located in Taos, New Mexico? Christopher “Kit” Carson
What much loved western comedian’s home, birthplace, and grave can be visited in Claremore, Oklahoma? Will Rogers
Samuel Wilson’s grave is in Troy, NY. What U.S. symbol was he the original of? Uncle Sam
What is unusual about the large bust of Abraham Lincoln located near his grave? His bronze nose is very shiny because so many visitors rub it for luck.
What nickname for an Iowan resident honors the Sauk Indian chief Black Hawk? Hawkeye
What notable achievement of Thomas Jefferson’s life did he not mention when he created his own tombstone? President of the United States
Who is buried in Grants Tomb in Manhattan? Mrs. U.S. Grant and her husband.
I’m a lover of all things historical. I’m always on the lookout for books and reference material concerning not just the history of the United States, but of the world. Like it or not the history of the world in its entirety is much worse than this country ever has been. Here are a few examples of that history.
The Olympic Games of 1916, scheduled to be held in Berlin, were cancelled due to “global unpleasantness.” Thats just another world for WWI.
The medical officer at the Birmingham prison in 1918 recommended that any condemned men be supplied with at least a dozen cigarettes a day.
In 1920, King Alexander of Greece, uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh, died after being bitten by a pet monkey.
In 1921 in Russia, while reporting on the famine, Arthur Ransome found an old woman so desperate for food she was reduced to cooking horse dung in a broken saucepan.
In 1923, Coco Chanel set the trend for tanning when, on a Mediterranean cruise, she inadvertently allowed herself to go brown in the sun. The fashion world immediately assumed it was the chic thing to do.
In 1927 during a London run at the Little Theatre, an adaption of Dracula, caused 29 people to faint requiring a nurse to be on hand at all showings.
In 1936 during his brief period as king, Edward VIII once avoided an awkward interview by jumping out a window in Buckingham Palace and running away to hide in the garden.
In 1938 having just returned from Munich and bringing “peace for our time”, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain requested an update on the long-tailed tits nesting in the Treasury building.
The following story took place in Korea in 1967. It was my first Christmas without family and friends, and I really felt that loss. Here’s my story of how a few Korean friends helped make that Christmas one to remember . . .
I’ve talked a great deal over the years about my experiences while serving in the Army. As with any young man or woman serving outside of this country, being away from home and family during the Christmas season for the first time is difficult. In my case I was not only away from family, but I was also in a non-Christian country that seemed to be more than a little primitive to me.
Their religion was primarily Buddhist, and the Christmas holiday meant very little to them. They at times pretended to understand but that was motivated entirely by their desire to make money from visiting Americans.
At the time I was stationed in an area that was primarily populated by rice farmers living in small villages that dotted the northern countryside. There were no paved roads and most villages only had electric power for a few hours a day. For those of us from the United States it was like traveling back in time a hundred years.
I was living almost full time in a local village and actually had my laundry taken by a local woman to a nearby river where it was beaten on the rocks with wooden paddles and soap. That certainly took some getting used to for me. My Korean friends seemed totally befuddled by the entire Christmas holiday bro-ha-ha and sat politely and silently as I tried to explain it to them. They were interested in my stories of Christ and the Magi, but the virgin birth story had them all giggling a little.
Regardless I was determined to have a Christmas celebration so I asked a few of my them for their help in putting up a Christmas tree. They agreed to help but weren’t exactly sure what I was up to. As that project was progressing I had a little old mama-san ask me through an interpreter why would any sane person put a tree inside their home. I was hard pressed to answer her because I didn’t know the reason either. They continued to humor me as I explained other peculiarities that they couldn’t quite grasp.
A week or so later with two Korean friends I hiked up a nearby mountain near a small Buddhist temple to find a tree. We ended up dragging back the sorriest looking bush you could ever imagine, set it up in my hooch, and started to decorate it as best we could. There was a hand-made star on top of the tree (my doing) and a number of pieces of charcoal tied to the branches with twine (their doing). I never had that fully explained to me, but it was what they wanted to do. It had something to do with good luck or good pregnancy or something. Since we had no electricity, they suggested placing candles in and around the tree, but I nixed that idea immediately. The last thing I needed was to burn down my hooch and a portion of the village when my little, dry, and nasty looking tree, burst into flames.
I had some GI decorations I made from C-rations that looked stupid as hell, but the villagers loved it. Later we ate most of the decorations and drank a bottle of really cheap brandy that I’d brought along for the occasion. I presented them each with a small gift of candy and got a little kiss on the cheek from everyone.
It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t sophisticated, but it was heartfelt. Looking back over the years it remains one of the best Christmases I’ve ever had. It also helped endear me to the villagers and them to me. The following Christmas they even arrived with a strange collection of ornaments for my tree and couldn’t wait to once again hear my holiday stories.
Today marks the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This is certainly not a celebration but a memorial for the lives lost then and those that followed. Today’s trivia quiz is related to the military and war.
What was the only US battleship to be present at both the attack on Pearl Harbor, and at the D-Day invasion, on June 6, 1944? The U.S.S. Nevada.
What was the name of the Japanese destroyer that sank PT-109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy on August 2, 1943? The Amigiri.
Who was issued ID number when the US military started issuing dog tags in 1918? General John J. Pershing.
What is a military contractor referring to when talking about a “manually powered fastener-driving impact device? A hammer.
Who was the first American congressman tpo don a uniform following the attack on Pearl Harbor? Lyndon B. Johnson in the Navy.
What president ordered the integration of the armed forces? Harry S. Truman in 1948.
What actress obtained a patent as a co-inventor of a radar-controlled system to direct torpedoes at moving ships? Hedy Lamarr.
Why was actor Paul Newman disqualified from service in the Navy’s pilot-training program in WW II? His blue eyes were colorblind.
What was the name of Japanese propagandist Tokyo Rose’s WW II radio show for US servicemen in the Pacific? It was Zero Hour.
What entertainer sold more War Bonds than anyone else during WW II? Kate “God Bless America” Smith sold $600,000,000 worth.
I’m reasonably sure that most of us are familiar with the saying “Kilroy was here.” I’m also sure that most of us (especially non-military folk) haven’t a clue where it came from and how it’s managed to survive since its creation early in World War II. Here’s part of that story . . .
The exact creation of this image has never been discovered. It began appearing early in World War II and was found on ships, railroad cars, bunkers, fences, the occasional fighter plane, bombs, and the occasional torpedo.
In 1946, just after the war ended, the American Transit Association began a search for the real Kilroy and offered a real trolley car as the prize. Approximately 40 men tried to claim the prize, which was eventually awarded to 46-year-old James J. Kilroy of Halifax, Massachusetts. The judges thought that his story was the most convincing. During the war, Kilroy was an inspector at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, that produced ships for the military effort. Kilroy discovered that he was being asked to inspect the same ship bottoms and tanks again and again, so he devised a way to keep track of his work. He used a yellow crayon and wrote “Kilroy was here.” in big block letters on the hatches and surfaces of the ships he inspected. The same ships then made their way overseas with Kilroy’s inscriptions intact. Also, over the course of the war, 14,000 shipyard employees also enlisted, most of whom went overseas as well. No one knows who first decided to imitate the crayon scrawled words, but before long, soldiers saw them everywhere. It became common practice for the first soldier into a new area to pull out a piece of chalk and let those behind him know that Kilroy had already been there too.
True or not James J. Kilroy story convinced the judges and won the contest. What did he do with the trolley car? Kilroy had a big family, so he attached a 50 foot long, 12-ton trolley car to his house and used it as a bedroom for six of his nine children.
Just as an aside, I can’t tell you how many times when I was in the Army both here in the US and overseas, I discovered very quickly that “Kilroy was (already) here.” It was scrawled everywhere. Once while in Korea I was climbing through a deserted gun emplacement in the hills near Inchon. There was old graffiti on the walls from some Turkish soldiers which I couldn’t read and right next to them was a huge “Kilroy was here!” Most recently and most poignant was this magazine photo taken at the home of Osama bin Laden just after his capture.
TRUTHFULLY, I CONFESS TO PLACING “KILROY” ON A FEW THINGS MYSELF.
I purposely avoid posting about current political events after running a political blog in the early 2000’s called Anti-Stupidity. It was an interesting experiment that ultimately convinced me never to do it again. No matter what you post politically, half the country agrees, and the other half sends you hate mail and death threats. Such is the political condition of the country, and it hasn’t changed much in the intervening years.
I dislike all politics and political parties and will never understand why anyone would run for office these days. That includes those power-hungry individuals running for President. It would hardly be worth it if not for the corruption that eventually makes almost every former senator, representative, and President a multi-millionaire.
Today’s post is political trivia in its lamest form. These are odd and rarely known facts on many of our past Presidents chosen at random . . .
Jimmy Carter is the first President to have been born in a hospital. All thirty-eight previous presidents were born “at home.”
The chief drafter of the United States Constitution and twice President was a lightweight on the scales. James Madison weighed in at only 100 pounds and he was the shortest President, at 5’4″.
James Buchanan has been the only bachelor to serve as president of the United States.
Not until Herbert Hoover was President., in 1929, did the U.S. Chief Executive have a private telephone in his office. (The telephone had been invented 53 years earlier.) The booth in a White House hallway had served as the president’s private telephone before one was finally installed in the Oval Office.
A campaign issue in John Quincy Adams unsuccessful reelection campaign of 1828 was the White House expense account: $50 for a billiard table, six dollars for billiard balls and $23.50 for chessmen.
The first U.S. President to be born in the 20th century didn’t take office until 1961 – John F. Kennedy (1917-1963).
The longest Presidential inauguration Address lasted nearly two hours, 8,445 words, almost twice as many as any other Presidents. It was delivered during a snowfall by a hatless, coatless William Henry Harrison in 1841. He became ill and died of pneumonia exactly a month later making his presidency the shortest in history.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first US President to ride in an automobile and the first to fly in an airplane, among many other firsts.
Until 1826, white people in the United States were sold as indentured servants who would be freed after a certain period of time. Andrew Johnson, who became President in 1865, was a runaway white slave; advertisements appeared in newspapers in an attempt to get him back.
President William Howard Taft weighed 350 pounds. He got stuck in a bathtub in the White House and someone had to be called to pull him out. He then had a special bathtub made. It was so big that, when it was delivered, four White House workmen climbed into it and had their picture taken.
Most Americans are raised get an education, get a job, make money, and then make more money. There’s nothing like starting your work life in your early twenties with a huge student loan debt that will take you years to pay off. Money seems to be the driving force in this country and the pursuit of it is all consuming. In reality, it’s the same almost everywhere else as well. I think a lot of that make-money mindset was passed down through the Great Depression generation like my parents who were concerned with little else. It’s not a bad thing to chase money but how you go about is even more important. Make as much money as you can but try just as hard not to harm or destroy others in the process.
Today’s post involves a short history of money.
At the age of 12, Andrew Carnegie worked as a millhand for $1.20 a week. A half-century later, he sold his steel company for nearly $500 million.
Not a single bank existed anywhere in the 13 colonies before the American Revolution. Anyone needing money had to borrow from an individual.
Although he is famous for inventing the cotton gin, in 1793, Eli Whitney made no money from his invention because he did not have a valid patent on it.
Henry Ford shocked his fellow capitalists by more than doubling the daily wage of most of his workers in 1914, 11 years after he had established his first automobile factory. He knew what he was doing. The buying power of his workers was increased, and their raised consumption stimulated buying elsewhere. Ford called it the “wage motive.”
Paul Revere, the American silversmith and patriot, designed paper money for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which issued the money in defiance of English law even before independence was declared. The notes were handsome but soon depreciated. Some of them subsequently were used as wallpaper in barbershops.
When Jacob A. Riis published his classic book How the Other Half Lives, in 1890, the fortunes of about 1% of the US population totaled more than the possessions of the remaining 99%. The pattern hasn’t changed all that much. Today, the fortunes of about 8% of the US population total more than the possessions of the remaining 92%.
We hear all of the economy experts constantly raising fears about rising inflation. Here is why!At the height of inflation in Germany in the early 1920s, one American dollar was the equal of 4.2 trillion German marks.
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
I’ve been a science-fiction fan for more years than I care to remember. It started when I was a child of about four and my mother painted the walls of my bedroom with planets and rocket ships. It was the days of Sputnick and the “space race”. That was the beginning of my interest in space travel just like every other kid in the country at that time. You need to understand what I mean by an interest in space travel. I’d love nothing better than see an alien craft land at the White House (and take Joe Biden for a much-deserved joy ride), but I’ve lived long enough and gotten smart enough to become something of a UFO non-believer. Since the first human beings that saw fireflies and thought they were demons or angels, everything is either an alien, UFO, a spiritual mystery, or an omen of the end of the world as we know it.
👽👽👽
“To see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.”
George Orwell
People can be stupid and ignorant about many things and the internet media supplies video after video of BS stories that to any reasonably normal person are obvious fakes. I’d rather deal in facts.
Fact #1 – The Government supplies former military officers, former NASA employees, and a host of so-called scientific experts to the media and internet. It is their job to help use the subject of UFOs to distract the nation and the world from what they may be doing covertly. When you control all media, you control everything and the saying “Knowledge is Power” has never been closer to the truth. Mind games are the heart and soul of a government slowing eroding the rights of its citizens (President Eisenhower warned us about that) and that’s our new reality.
Fact #2 – ET’s if they even exist puzzle me. How can advanced beings keep crashing their ships all over the planet. I swear every effing country claims an alien craft crash site and a few even claim to have recovered alien vehicles. It doesn’t seem likely to me that such intelligent beings who are so more advanced than we are can’t seem to safely fly a UFO in our atmosphere. I’ll believe it when they land in my back yard and tell me something or anything that I haven’t already heard on the internet.
” Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
George Orwell
I’m also tired of hearing about the Egyptians and those stupid pyramids, tall skeletons, huge magical blocks of stone, treasures dug up in every back yard in American, and how every discovery about everything is all about every organized religion claiming it’s a sign from their god. How many people and governments have made billions of dollars by misleading billions of idiots. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the citizens worldwide will believe anything they’re told, no questions asked. Everything is always some sort of conspiracy, and we can rely on social media to spread it around the world, constantly repeating both the lies and the occasional truths ad infinitum.
I have three statements to make to start this post: I love T-shirts, I’m a proud American, and I have little or no use for politicians. That being said I wore one of my favorite T-shirts while food shopping yesterday. I have at least eighty T-shirts with all sorts of designs concerning musical groups to chintzy advertising logos, and I love them all. Yesterday’s shirt stated plainly “I love my country, but I fear my government”. I often get comments from passersby about the messages on my shirts, but this one apparently caught the attention of a number of people. They weren’t upset with me for wearing it, they were patting me on the back for wearing it proudly. Our founding fathers were very open about the responsibility of the citizenry to keep an eye on the government. Unfortunately, in recent years that is no longer the case. These days everyone can complain until their blue-in-the-face but unless your part of the politically elite you’re wasting your breath. Maybe it’s time to review some of the history of this country and the revolution that spawned it.
On June 12, 1775, the British offered a pardon to all colonists who would lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to this amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured they were to be immediately hanged.
“July 4th” could just as easily have been celebrated on July 2nd. It was on that date in 1776 that the Second Continental Congress voted our independence from England. John Adams, in fact, wrote: “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.” He believed that it would be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. “It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and Illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this day forward forever more.”
On July 4, 1776, King George III wrote in his diary, “Nothing of importance happened today.” He had no way of knowing what had just occurred that day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
And one signatory of the Declaration of Independence appended his address: Charles Carroll “of Carrollton,” Maryland. He wanted to be sure that the British, if they wanted to hang him, knew full well where to look for him.
It wasn’t until January 19, 1777, that the national Congress made public all of the names of the men who affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence. One reason for the delay may have been the knowledge that if the war effort failed, the signatories would have sealed their fate as traitors.
I’m willing to bet you couldn’t find five current politicians in this country that would even consider doing half of the things the Founders dealt with at that time. Their pride in this country during its formation in the 1700’s seems to be a long dead memory. I wonder what would happen if tomorrow the British decided to retake America and threatened to hang all of our politicians who refused to surrender. I fear the roads to Canada would be clogged with carloads of fleeing representatives from this great nation. What do you think? I also wonder how long it would take the Canadians to close their borders for their own protection.
Since my recent post of off-color limericks was so popular I thought I’d offer up a few more cute but nonetheless dirty jokes. I guess I should have figured out by now that I’ve got to “give the people what they want.” A few dirty jokes to help you continue the celebration of this important holiday.
Q. How did Pinocchio find out he was made of wood?
A. When his hand caught on fire.
A woman answers the door to a market researcher. “Good morning, madam, I’m doing some research for Vaseline. Do you use it at all in your household?” “Oh yes, all the time. It’s very good for cuts, scrapes, and burns.” “Do you use it for anything else?” “Like what”, she asked. “Ahem. . well, during. . ahem. . sex.” “Oh, of course. Yes, I smear it on the bedroom doorknob to keep my husband out.
Men are like parking spots: The good ones are taken, and the rest are too small.
A woman is in bed with her lover, who also happens to be her husband’s best friend. They have sex for hours, and afterward while they’re just lying there, the phone rings. Since it is the woman’s house, she picks up the receiver. Her lover looks over at her and listens, only hearing her side of the conversation (she is speaking in a cheery voice). “Hello? Oh, hi, I’m so glad you called. Really? Thanks. Okay. Bye.” She hangs up the telephone and her lover asks, “Who was that?” Oh,” she replies, “that was my husband telling me all about the wonderful time he’s having on his fishing trip with you.”
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