Ridley's Believ It Or Not For March 14, 2016 Commonwealth Day

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For March 14, 2016. Unfortunately in this leap year, still 312 days to go in President Obama’s pathetic lame duck term but fortunately you can find daily updates and photos on the Iditarod at www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com and anxiously await the start of March Madness praying that you have filled out your brackets with the right teams. On the eve of an event that demonstrated the deadly resolve of the establishment 2060 years ago in Rome on the Ides of March, this could be the last gasp of the Republican establishment to stop Trump as the sounds of silence from the Blues over what appears to be efforts of paid professional disrupters to prevent Trump from speaking in one word is deafening and the blaming by the Red candidates that Trump is at fault in one word is cowardly and do not bode well for the First Amendment in this nation.  I trust that you have recovered from the loss of one hour of sleep on Sunday and your Monday is proving to be a great one; and as always, I hope  you enjoy today’s holidays and observances,  a music link to Glenn Miller, factoids of interest, a  relevant quote from  Albert Einstein while looking forward to enjoying a slice of freshly baked pie, 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. Commonwealth Day—celebrating the link among Britain and its former colonies other than its ally the United States which was the first colony to gain independence from the British Lion against which it fought two wars.

2. Genius Day Day—celebrating and appreciating the contribution to humanity of really, really smart people like Einstein, Edison, and Jobs who today at least in Washington, D.C. have become an extinct specie.                                          

3. 1940 Number One Song—heading back in time to flee from rap music to celebrate the celebrating the number one song in 1940 on a run of twelve weeks in that position In The Mood by Glenn Miller. Here is a link to Glenn Miller performing  In The Mood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPXwkWVEIIw

4. National Bake a Pie Day—celebrating by showing solidarity with another observance National Pi Day (not that you need a reason or an excuse to bake a pie since a pie, especially a boysenberry or blueberry pie is always a welcome complement to the ending of a lunch or dinner). 

5. A Smart Fish Swims on Top—celebrating the birthday on this day in 1879 of Pisces Albert Einstein, one of the most brilliant scientists of our time who thank God had the foresight to flee Germany and avoid the Holocaust and whose letter to President Roosevelt on the feasibility of an atomic bomb was instrumental in creating the Manhattan Project. 

On this day in:

a. 1794 in an invention that created the economic justification for plantations dependent upon cotton and the slaves needed to pick it, Eli Whitney received a patent for the cotton gin.        

b. 1900 the Gold Standard Act was passed, requiring that paper U.S. currency could only be redeemed with gold, thereby ending the practice that currency could be redeemed by silver or gold.   

c. 1903 the Hay-Herran Treaty granting the U.S. a lease of a six mile wide path across the Isthmus of Panama in perpetuity to build a canal was ratified by the U.S. Senate only to be rejected by the Senate of Columbia which lead to due to U.S. military and political support the declaration by Panama of independence from Columbia on November 3, 1893 and the United States commencing construction of the Panama Canal in 1904 and opening it to traffic in 1914.     

d. 1910 the Lakeview Gusher located near Bakersfield vented and was not controlled until after 18 months of efforts and only after releasing 9 million barrels of oil, dwarfing BP’s Deep Horizon gusher that took 87 days to cap and  which spewed out almost 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and left 11 dead whose bodies were never found.  

e. 1994 Linux kernel version 1.0.0 with 176,500 lines of code was released; in a testament to the fact that computer programming never stands still but is always on the advance Linux 4.5 was released yesterday.                                                                         

Reflections on genius from one who is one and whose birthday today we celebrate: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.” Albert Einstein. How true he was especially if the observation is applied to most politicians and bureaucrats and sadly perhaps the voters who believe that politicians will act up to their promises.

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.

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