Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For December 12, 2016 The Fat Lady in PA joined the choir of the Fat Lady in
Michigan to join the Jill Stein pathetic swan song demands for a recount (hope
the idiots who donated to the effort can get their bait and switch money back);
the head of Exxon Mobil will be nominated to head State Department amidst concerns
over his connections with Putin and Russia; defense stocks are hammered due to
a tweet from Trump on the costs of the bloated F-35 joint strike aircraft (in a
world of tight purse strings when our most expensive destroyer has to be towed
through the Panama Canal a refreshing observation); in a touching moment that
should leave most readers with very moist eyes and tears running down their
cheeks, a 60 year old man who volunteers as Santa for a hospital in Tennessee
at the request of the family of a terminally ill 5 year old went to the child’s
room with a toy and an encouragement that he was Santa’s number one elf and
then held him in his arms as he died (there are great loving people in this
nation); in yet another all too familiar failure of the Obama Administration to
drain the swamp at the VA, a veteran died in a VA facility and was left
decomposing for nine hours in the shower (pray that this administration coming
in on January 20 pushes for legislation that will give the ability of the VA
Secretary to fire incompetents and fire them quickly to rectify the complete
and utter failure of Obama to correct this mess of incompetence and neglect on
his watch); China is rattling its sabers over Trump’s perceived willingness to
abandon the one China policy put in place by another feckless president Jimmy
Carter and not recognize a China that is democratic and has elected the first
Asian president without family ties to her predecessor-Taiwan; on a final note
the Democratic mayor of Denver where temperatures during the winter are below
freezing announced that police will no long enforce the city’s anti-camping out
ban on public grounds by confiscating tents and blankets of homeless—thank God
there is some room for humanity in an otherwise heartless world.
As always, I hope you
enjoy today’s holidays and observances, a music link to Bobby Darin,
factoids of interest for this day in history, a relevant quote from Tom Hodgkinson, while looking forward to enjoying a cup of hot cocoa, blessed with a
positive attitude and secure in the
knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable events like
birthdays, weddings, or anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can
provide you with a unique customized poem at a great price tailored
to the event and the recipient. You need only contact me for details.
1. Green Monday—celebrated on the last Monday with at least ten days out from Christmas
and coined by eBay to note its highest online daily sales day and now experiencing
close to $2 billion in online sales.
2. Poinsettia Day—celebrating the birth on this day of the man who is responsible
for all the poinsettias we get to enjoy during the Christmas season, Robert
Poinsett, a physician and botanist who sent cuttings from Mexico to his home in
Charleston, South Carolina in 1828.
3. 1959 Number One Song—celebrating the number one song in 1959 on a long run of 9 weeks
in that position “Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin. Here is a recording of Bobby
Darin performing the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEllHMWkXEU
4. National Cocoa Day—celebrating a great beverage that came into being when Cortes
brought back cocoa from Mexico in 1527; in one of the few predictions that
Jefferson erred, he after the Boston Tea Party predicted that hot cocoa would
replace tea and coffee as the favorite beverage in the colonies.
5. Forget about the Third,
the Fifth Is the Charm—celebrating the birth on
this day in 1929 of John Osborne, an English actor and playwright known for
mocking of English social norms and customs and who was married five times, the
first four of which were disasters and surprise, surprise marked by infidelities on
both sides.
On this day
in:
a. 1098 during the First Crusades, Crusaders breached the walls
of Ma’arrat al-Numan in modern day Syria, slaughtered some 20,000 civilians and
then due to a lack of food resorted to cannibalism, putting to bed any ideas
that Christianity was a turn the other check type of religion when dealing with
Islam.
b. 1901 Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio
signal in Morse code at Signal Hill, St. John’s, Newfoundland, the letter “S.”
c. 1937 Japanese aircraft attacked and sank the USS Panay on the Yangtze River in China.
c. 1937 Japanese aircraft attacked and sank the USS Panay on the Yangtze River in China.
d. 1942 in a beginning of the end for the German Wehrmacht on
the Eastern Front, von Manstein began Winter Storm, the failed attempt to
relieve the 6th Army trapped at Stalingrad.
e. 2000 SCOTUS in one of the most politicized decisions in its
history handed down its decision in Gore v. Bush which ended the recount
in Florida and gave Bush the presidency; with one vacancy one can appreciate
how important this election was in determining the future direction of SCOTUS.
Reflections on cyber shopping on this Green Monday: "The terrible thing about the Internet and
Amazon is that they take the magic and happy chaos out of book shopping. The
Internet might give you what you want, but it won't give you what you need.”
Tom Hodgkinson, noted British writer and editor of The
Idler. Please enjoy the poems on events of
interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and follow me) and follow my
blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs—click on the
links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day In
History, poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy and poems on
breaking news items of importance or go to Ridley's
Believe It Or Not for just This Day in
History.
© December 12, 2016, Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
Alaskanpoet for Hire, Poems to Admire
Poet Extraordinaire beyond Compare
The Perfect Gift All to Receive a Lasting Lift
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