Sunday, October 12, 2014

October 12 History Freethought Day


Ridley's Believe It Or Not—October 12, 2014:  Trust your Weekend is a good oneyou’re your college teams won on Saturday and that you  enjoy the holidays and factoids and  quotes from Winston Churchill and the pastor of the North Texas Church of Freethought, with a smile on your sunscreened face, sharing a sausage pizza with friends and family, blessed with a positive attitude, and secure in the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for a memorable event or the coming Christmas, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem tailored to the event and the recipient. Sloppy win for the Cardinal against the Cougars yesterday but a win and defense looked great and a real nail biter for the Trojans yesterday removing Arizona from the ranks of the unbeaten.
      1. Columbus Day—celebrating the discovery of North America by Genoese born Christopher Columbus on this day in 1493, some 500 years after Leif Erickson and improved to the status of a federal holiday in 1937, but observed on the second Monday which means no mail tomorrow.
      2. Freethought Day-- celebrated by free thinkers and secularists to mark the anniversary of the effective end of the Salem Witch Trials on this day in 1692—sad period of religious hysteria in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
      3. UN Spanish Language Day—created by UNESCO in 2010 to promote multilingualism and to promote equal usage of the six official languages of the UN but not the seventh endless babble.
      4. Old Farmers  Day—celebrating the hard work of farmers and the harvests they create which give us the food surplus to allow the poets, artists, priests, warriors, craftsmen and sadly lawyers to exist.
       5. National Gumbo Day—celebrating that great Cajun dish, especially when made with copious amounts of Tabasco Sauce
On this day in
       a. 1773 America’s first insane asylum for “Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds opened in Virginia, reasonably close to the future sight of Congress and the White House and all federal buildings in between.
       b. 1810 the first Oktoberfest was held in Munich to celebrate the marriage of the Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen—still celebrated today and not just in Munich.
       c. 1928 an iron lung respirator was used for the first time at Children’s Hospital in Boston—thank God Salk and Sabin removed the scourge of polio with their respective vaccines thirty some years later.
       d. 2000 the USS Cole was badly damaged in Yemen by two suicide bombers, killing 19 crewmen and wounding 39 others.
Why the Salem Witch Trials finally ran their course sadly not before taking 20 innocent victims and two dogs to their deaths: “Winston Churchill once remarked that 'What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.' Churchill also said that 'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else!'
      For, you see, eventually, at some point, and to some degree, people simply have to act rationally. You have to open doors before walking through doorways. You have to turn the key in your ignition before you drive home today. No amount of faith and prayer can allow anyone to do otherwise. And despite all the rhetorical flourishes of the superstitious believers, that’s the way it’s always been and always will be. Indeed, this truth is becoming more and more important every day.
      It’s also the essence of the role of the law: to hold people to a standard of dealing with one another that’s based on reason. That’s the basis of every shall and shalt not that there is, not some divine command of 'do it or else.”  Dr. Tim Gorski, Pastor of the North Texas Church of Freethought Amen to that!
Please enjoy the 140 character poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and join almost 150 growing followers and please follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs--click on 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. Go to Rhymes On The Newsworthy Times for comments on important and breaking news events that should be of interest.
© October 12, 2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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