March 28, 2023 Ridley's Believe It Or Not

 

In Nashville after the shooting at the Covenant it should be a time for the families and loved ones of the six innocents who lost their lives to grieve along with the family of Audrey Hale, the shooter who was shot and killed by police; it is not the time to ridicule the congregation of the Covenant for not praying enough nor the time after making a fool out of himself after the shooting of praising gourmet ice cream for Bided to blame the shooting on machine guns and other automatic weapons. The debate over whether blacks should be paid reparations by taxpayers whose relatives never had  slaves or who died in the Civil War to end slavery rages on with San Francisco proposing $5 million to each black resident that it does not have  and Evanston, Illinois whose reparations program is at least limited to $25,000 to buy a house or to make improvements rages on. The trial between retired optometrist Gerry Sanders and actress Gwyneth Paltrow  over a who ran into whom skiing accident at Deer Valley is still going with conflicting testimony over who ran into whom. In Denver, parents outraged over a lack of school safety are demanding the school board resign which members refuse to do but reading the lea leaves of outrage over safety concerns that the Board sought to diffuse by having police back of high school campuses.
Ridley’s Believe It Or Not March 28, 2023
          Noted Holidays:
          Weed Appreciation Day:  Celebrating not marijuana and not bemoaning the weeds that sprout up in your lawn or choke your flowers and vegetables in your garden but the many of the 8,000 weed species that are beneficial to health, used for science, and for culinary purposes, like chicory, clover or chickweed. Not sure who created this “holiday” but a likely candidate might be an association of herbicide manufacturers whose products are used to chemically control weeds and thereby generate revenues.
          Word of the Day:  The word of the day is “alible” which means nourishing which many of the weeds you are celebrating in today’s holiday provide. 
          Number 1 Song: The number 1 song on this day in 1941 was “Frenesi” by Artie Shaw and His Orchestra on a run of 11 weeks not continuous to share with 10 other songs that achieved number 1 status. Here is Archie Shaw and His Orchestra performing “Frenesi”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxmmAEOYTco
          March 28 Famous Birthdays:  Luke Walton, born of this day in 1980 who did not follow his father, Bill Walton’s footsteps to play at UCLA, is a noted former NBA basketball player and head NBA coach and now assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers and who with Bill Walton is one of the three father-son teams that have played on a NBA championship team and is the only one that has won 2 championships.
           March 28 Notable Events
           1.     1939—After a 3 year long siege of Madrid, held by the Republican forces , the city surrendered to the Nationalists led by Generalissimo Franco and the remaining cities in Spain under Republican control started very quickly to follow suit such the by April 1, 1939 the internecine bloodbath that killed some one million participants and civilians, known as the Spanish Civil War had ended.
           2.     1979—A coolant leak in the nuclear reactor in Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station on Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania led to overheating and a partial core meltdown which had the meltdown continued would have led to the release of massive amounts of radiation which did not occur, but the possibility of such events effectively halted the construction of new nuclear power plants which will be desperately needed if we are to achieve total carbon free electrical power generation.
           3.     1979—-The British House of Commons passed a vote of no confidence by one vote on Prime Minister James Callahan which resulted in a general election and the election of the ‘Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party.
           4.     1990—President H.W. Bush posthumously awarded Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal.
           5.     2006—At least one million students, union members and unemployed take to the streets to protest the First Employment Contract Law which made it easier for employers to fire workers under the age of 26.
           Famous Quotes on Events and Issues
           George Orwell, noted author and journalist who fought for the Republicans  against Franco and his Nationalists from Homage to Catalonia:  The POUM [Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification] posters, designed for a wider public (posters are important in Spain, with its large illiterate population)…As time went on, the Communists and the POUM wrote more bitterly about one another than about the Fascists…Glory of war, indeed! In war, all soldiers are lousy, at least when it is warm enough. The men who fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae -- every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles.”

© 3/28/2023 Michael P. Ridley aka The Alaskanpoet
www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com
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