DBKP Today in Weird History: March 7, 2008

WAR, TERRORISM, DISASTER, POLITICS, PATENTS, PROGRESS, COMING WAR, ASSASSINATION, PRONOUNCEMENTS, JAZZ, LABOR, PRO WRESTLING, SPORTS, JEWS, OH NO, MAINSTREAM MEDIA, HEALTH NAZIS, CIVIL RIGHTS,BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH

GAMES

1933 Game of "Monopoly" invented.

WAR!

1945 during World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.

1991 Iraq continues to explode oil fields in Kuwait.

TERRORISM

1981 anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Allen Bitterman, whom they accused of being a CIA agent.

2007 A suicide attacker blew himself up in a cafe northeast of Baghdad, killing 30 people.

DISASTER

2007 Ten people were killed in the Bronx, N.Y., when fire tore through their home.

CIVIL RIGHTS

1965 A march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff's posse.

PRONOUNCEMENTS

1908 Cincinnati Mayor Mark Breith stood before city council & announced that, "women are not physically fit to operate automobiles".

SPORTS

1955 Baseball commissioner Ford Frick says he favors legalization of the spitter.

PRO WRESTLING

1940 Ray Steele beats B Nagurski in St Louis, to become wrestling champion.

HEALTH NAZIS

1997 5 sue Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, because his smoking has violated the country's constitution guaranteeing a wholesome life.

OH NO

1981 1st homicide at Disneyland, 18 year old is stabbed to death.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

1993 Diff'rent Stroke actor Todd Bridges arrested for stabbing a tenant.

JAZZ

1917 1st jazz record "Dixie Jazz Band One Step", recorded by Nick LaRocca Original Dixieland Jazz Band, released by RCA Victor in Camden NJ.

LABOR

1932 Riots at Ford-factory Dearborn MI, kills 4.

1967 Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa begins 8-year jail sentence at Lewisburg Federal Prison for defrauding the union & jury tampering (commuted Dec 23, 1971).

KILLERS

2007 Sex offender John Evander Couey was found guilty in Miami of kidnapping, raping and murdering 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, who was buried alive.

POLITICS

1850 In a 3-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.

1975 The Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

PATENTS

1854 Charles Miller patents 1st US sewing machine to stitch buttonholes

1876 Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his telephone.

PROGRESS

1926 The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place, between New York and London.

JEWS

1977 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin meets President Carter.

COMING WAR

1774 British close port of Boston to all commerce.

1936 Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.

1998 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking in Rome, said the U.S. wouldn't tolerate any more violence in Kosovo, which she blamed on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

ASSASSINATION

1951 Ali Razmara Shah of Iran (1950-51), assassinated.

BORN

1849 horticulturist Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Mass.

BIRTHDAYS

Comedian Alan Sues is 82. Photographer Lord Snowdon is 78. TV personality Willard Scott is 74. Auto racer Janet Guthrie is 70. Actor Daniel J. Travanti is 68. Former Walt Disney Co. chief executive officer Michael Eisner is 66. Rock musician Chris White (The Zombies) is 65. Actor John Heard is 62. Rock singer Peter Wolf is 62. Rock musician Matthew Fisher (Procol Harum) is 62. Football Hall of Famer Franco Harris is 58. Football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann is 56. Rhythm-and-blues singer-musician Ernie Isley (The Isley Brothers) is 56. Actor Bryan Cranston is 52. Actress Donna Murphy is 49. Actor Nick Searcy is 49. Tennis Hall of Famer Ivan Lendl is 48. Actor Bill Brochtrup is 45. Opera singer Denyce Graves is 44. Comedian Wanda Sykes is 44. Singer-actress Taylor Dayne is 43. Rock musician Randy Guss (Toad the Wet Sprocket) is 41. Actor Peter Sarsgaard is 37. Actress Rachel Weisz is 37. Classical singer Sebastien Izambard (Il Divo) is 35. Rock singer Hugo Ferreira (Tantric) is 34. Actress Jenna Fischer is 34. Actress Audrey Marie Anderson is 33. Actress Laura Prepon is 28.

DEATH

322 -BC- Aristotle dies.

1959 Hinsdale Smith developer of roll-down auto windows, dies at 88.

1985 Victor W Farris inventor of paper milk carton, etc, dies.

1988 Divine [Harris Glenn Milstead] transvestite actor (Hairspray, Polyester, Pink Flamingos), dies in Los Angeles at 42.

1999 movie director Stanley Kubrick died in Hertfordshire, England, at age 70.

March 7, the 67th day of 2008. There are 299 days left in the year.

compiled by Mondoreb
image: northstargeneral
Sources:
* Today in History
* Today in History

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US and China: Signs of a Coming War or Dynamic Capitalism?

We're never ones to discount warnings: Winston Churchill was our hero. However, the warnings of a coming U.S. war with China continue.

The warnings about war take, in the main, two forms: military and economic. Zachary Hubbard, a retired Army officer, wrote in August about the possibility of military war.

Hubbard now looks at an economic one presaging any military actions.

The war on terror grabs headlines, but there are far greater threats to America than terrorism. Conditions are ripe for a shift in the balance of global power, perhaps in the next four to five years. When it occurs, America will no longer be the dominant economic force on the planet. As our economic power wanes, our political and military power will follow suit.

The Roman philosopher Seneca said, “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” His wisdom applies to America’s economic situation today.

Americans must choose a new economic destination and change course soon or we stand to lose much of our national power.

If we fail to act, the world could well end up with a four-way competition among the European Union, a China-dominated Asia, a global oil cartel dominated by Russia and a nuclear-armed Iran, and a U.S.-led North American Union.

Hubbard goes on to list the signs of distress in the United States' economy. He's not the only one to point these out; there's no end of stories alerting of a U.S. economic slide.

Indications of America’s waning economic power are numerous. A mortgage crisis caused by foolhardy subprime lending practices has thousands of Americans at risk of losing everything. Many financial institutions caught up in the scheme are also in trouble.

American consumer debt is at an all-time high and may cause the next major financial crisis.

The Baltimore Sun published an article on Oct. 10 titled, “Credit card debt is ready to blow.” According to the Sun, the financial industry is preparing for major defaults on the credit card debt held by Americans today, which exceeds $500 billion.

General Motors, once a global symbol of American industrial might, has suffered record losses recently and is facing financial disaster. Ford apparently has similar woes.

America’s manufacturing base is shrinking, as U.S. companies continue to ship manufacturing jobs overseas. Meanwhile, China is experiencing record economic growth funded largely by American consumers and U.S. government debt.

Failed energy policies could soon have Americans facing $5 per gallon gasoline. Looming energy shortages threaten manufacturing and other sectors. Every U.S. president since the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 has failed to exhibit leadership in addressing America’s energy needs. Consequently, today we must buy oil from a rogue cartel dominated by Middle Eastern tyrants who hate us.

The U.S. dollar has tanked on foreign markets. Exchange rates are at an all-time low against the Euro and even the Canadian dollar. Iran has shifted its hard currency reserves to the Euro. China is threatening to do the same. Such a move by China, which holds more than $1 trillion in U.S. debt, would be devastating to the U.S. economy.

After listing some fixes, the writer declares the problems go deeper than just dollars and cents.

Our problems are not purely economic. They reach to the very core of America’s national identity. Many politicians talk about repairing America’s reputation, but it’s not just our reputation that is broken.

The way we do business on Capitol Hill needs fixing. American voters must redefine the country economically by facing up to exploding personal and national debt, our disappearing manufacturing base and our dangerous foreign oil dependency. Only then may we hope to preserve our political and military might.

If party politicians continue to skirt these problems, America may suffer the same fate as the vanished democracies that preceded it.

Even the glory of Rome faded. Why should we expect our fate to be any different if we fail to tackle our problems?

Zachary Hubbard is a retired Army officer and freelance writer residing in Upper Yoder Township. He is a member of The Tribune-Democrat Reader Advisory Committee.

America’s reign as world’s economic king in peril

As we stated at the beginning, we're never one to discount warnings. It's hard to not join Hubbard in his concern. However, it would do well to keep in mind the inherent strengths and depth of the United States economy.

That doesn't mean that a close eye shouldn't be kept on various economic indicators. But the demise of big industries never much caused much worry in these quarters.

Capitalism is dynamic: today's ailing K-Mart, was yesterday's number one retailer K-Mart. Who knows where today's number one retailer Wal-Mart will be in 20 years. While warnings of demise should be kept in mind, warnings of capitalism's dynamic nature should also be heeded.

Two of the big employers in the late 1800s were buggy-whip makers and factories using human cigar rollers.

by Mondoreb
images: prisonplanet; slate]




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