June 11 History Davis Day

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—June 11, 2015 Trust your Thursday is off to a great start. As always, I hope you enjoy today’s holidays and observances, factoids of interest, a  music video by Kyu Sakamoto, a relevant quote by Ronald Reagan, looking forward to enjoying a large slice of German chocolate cakes, blessed with a positive attitude and secure in the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable event like Fathers’ Day, 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. Davis Day—observed in Nova Scotia and commemorating the death of William Davis, a coal miner in New Watersford killed on this day in 1925 during a coal mining strike and expanded to include all coal miners in the province killed while engaged in mining.  Coal mining is not for the faint hearted (either being exposed to the risk of mine collapses or explosions or years after leaving the mines exposed to the real probabilities of dying from Black Lung Disease—a very painful why to go) and during the 20^th Century, coal mining strikes were definitely not for the faint hearted.

       2.  Kamehameha Day—honoring since 1872 the monarch Kamehameha the Great  who unified the various island nations into the Kingdom of Hawaii but whose descendants could not prevail against the expansionist Manifest Destiny aspirations of the United States.     

        3. 1963 Number One Song—celebrating the number one song in 1963 on a three week run Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto a noted Japanese croner. Here is a link to Kyu Sakamoto performing Sukiyaki  in Japanese with English subtitles for those of you (probably 99.9 % not fluent in Japanese) with an apology to the commercial preceding the song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35DrtPlUbc

        4.  National German Chocolate Cake Day—celebrating another tasty caloric temptation which when topped with ice cream is a real weight gainer.

        5.  A Jackass Is a Friend Who Lets a Friend Drive Drunk—celebrating the birthday on this day in 1977 of Ryan Dunn, actor and stuntman of the Jackass Series who was killed far too early on June 20, 2011 by driving his Porsche into a tree at over 100 miles an hour with a blood alcohol level of .196.
On this day in:                                           

       a. 1919 Sir Barton won the Belmont Stakes to become the first horse to be a Triple Crown winner.

       b. 1942 the U.S. authorized Lend Lease aid of military supplies to the Soviet Union which ultimately resulted in over 13 billion dollars of war material which gave the Soviets the mobility to run circles around the horse and foot dependant Whermacht; an ungrateful Soviet Union after years of negotiations ultimately agreed to pay the U.S. over 700 million dollars of grain while the rest was written off by the U.S.    

       c. 1963 President Kennedy from the Oval Office addressed the nation, proposing adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which would end discrimination in accommodations and facilities open to the public and provide for the protection of voting rights. Sadly, Kennedy did not live to see its passage over a year later.

        d. 1998 Compaq paid 9 billion dollars to acquire Digital Equipment Corporation, at the time the largest high tech merger until easily surpassed by Hewlett Packard’s merger with Compaq three years later in a transaction valued at 25 billion dollars.

            e. 2002 the U.S. Congress in a not ruined by the bell moment the U.S. Congress by resolution affirmed that Italian American inventor Antonio Meucci was the inventor of the telephone, not Alexander Bell although in his application filed 6 years prior to Bell’s patent application, he failed to mention the electromagnetic aspect of the transmission and the conversion to voice at the receiving end, proving once again that a good patent lawyer is worth his weight in diamonds.                           

Reflections on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposed by Southern Democrats pushed through to passage by a Southern President and supported by more Republicans than Democrats: “I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.” Ronald Reagan It still is mind boggling that a large segment of this country in 1963 in the case of public accomodations and facilities viewed African Americans as if they all carried an airborne strain of Ebola thereby justifying their quarantine into separate facilities.     

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© June 11, 2015 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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