Monday, February 3, 2020

February 3, 2020 Ridley's Believe It Or Not Four Chaplins Day1

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For February 3, 2020 The Kansas City Chiefs ended their Boston Red Sox imitation by ending 54 years of Super Bowl frustration with a win over the 49ers in a game marked by some questionable calls and two political ads one for Blumberg and one for Trump; Senate will have its members explaining to the nation willing to watch the same the reasons for their votes prior the State of the Union Address tomorrow and the actual vote on Wednesday; the news cycle has shifted to Iowa and its caucuses now voting for the Democratic nominee with Biden’s chances really riding on a strong outcome which may not be in the cards (Quid Pro Joe may be getting a bit testy over the fallout over his son Hunter’s questionable Ukraine and China dealings as he lashed out at DNC lackey and NBC reporter Savannah Gutherie over her grilling of him on Hunter); the DNC has announced that quality control problems are delaying release of results of the caucus voteing;  while pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus which has now expanded to some 17,000 infected with 360 deaths, some potentially helpful news that the transmission is fecal to digestive which once more proves the adage on should always was one’s hands after going to the restroom; in a reminder that the coronavirus is a serious matter Apple has announced it is closing its Apple Stores in China; 5 passengers were wounded and 1 killed in a shooting on a Greyhound Bus bound for San Francisco near the Grapevine in Southern California early this morning with the suspect now in custody; in a reason why this poet calls CNN the Cack News Network, that moniker was reinforced by CNN Reporter John Harwood tweeting that the 25 Republican Senators voting for no witnesses were from the states that had joined the Confederacy, implying in some fashion Dixie still exists; we may be in climate change, but Mother Nature is doing a great job of disguising that fact by unleashing another arctic storm heading to the Midwest with snow and freezing temperatures; J.C. Penny, once a retail icon is in great danger from internet sales and shifting consumer patterns from being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange;  in Chicago, as of February 2, 2020, 189 people have been shot of whom 32 have died; Baltimore with a fraction of Chicago’s population and hoping against all hopes that 2020 will not be a record in terms of deaths has dropped back to 4 behind Chicago with 28 murders by shootings (when will Chicago and Baltimore get serious about this carnage or is this the case of true racism as a Blue run city turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to the slaughter of people of color by people of color and when will the left focus on the problem of color on color shootings in Blue run cities which have been more deadly and more numerous than random mass shootings?).
      As always, I hope you enjoy today’s holidays and observances, factoids of interest for this day in history, a musical link to Glenn Gray and The Loma Linda Orchestra,  the fact you are not in the grips of obnixely acts,  a relevant quote by Marine General Smedley Butler on war,  secure in the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable events like Father’s Day, college graduations, 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. Four Chaplains Day—commemorating the heroic acts of 4 chaplains aboard the SS Dorchester which was torpedoed and sunk by a U-Boat who gave up their life jackets and life jackets to save 4 soldiers and civilians in the water out of the 220 of the 900 aboard who survived.
2. Women’s Physicians’ Day—celebrated since 2016 on the birthday on this day in 1821 of Elizabeth Blackwell,  the first woman’s doctor in the United States, to honor the achievements of women as doctors and promote their joining the profession.
3. 1944 Number 1 Number One Song— the number one song in 1944 on this day on a run of 5 weeks in the position was “My Heart Tells Me (Can I Believe My Heart?) Glenn Gray, leader of The Casa Loma Orchestra. Here is recording of the song with Eugenie Baird as vocals:  https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mnet-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mnet&p=glenn+gray+can+i+believe+my+heart#id=12&vid=83f8714f4bdeab86ba63f67404f9b1e1& action=click  This note saxophonist died from cancer at the age of 63 and Baird retired from singing in 1962 after marrying the president of Smith Corona and died at age 64.
4. Word of the Day—today’s word of the day as we move to words starting with “o” is “obnixely” which means earnestly or strenuously which describes to a tee the resistance of Blues to Trump’s agenda.
5Hunger Strike While Livingcelebrating the birthday on this day in 1909 of noted French philosopher, activist and mystic, Simone Weil who fled to the United States with her parents and was recruited by the OSS to return to France as an agent but because she felt that she had to support the French starving under Vichy and Nazi occupation ate very little and ultimately starved herself to death on August 24, 1943.
On this day in:               
    a. 1917 after running on a campaign that heralded the fact he had kept the U.S. out of war, President Wilson severed relations with Germany due to unrestricted submarine warfare and began the move toward a declaration of war against it on April 6, 1917.
    b. 1945 U.S. and Philippine forces began a month long campaign to fulfill Mac Arthur’s promise that he would return and liberate Manila from the Japanese and in the process destroyed much of the city.
    c. 1959 in the “day in which the music died” a private plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richards crashed in bad weather near Clear Lake, Iowa killing all aboard.                                      
d. 1984 John Buster and the research team at UCLA-Harbor Medical Center announced the first embryo transfer from one woman to another.
e. 1995 Astronaut Eileen Collins in piloting the Space Shuttle Discovery became the first female pilot of the a Space Shuttle when she piloted it to a fly around of the MIR Space Station in preparation for the next launch of a Shuttle which would dock at the MIR Space Station.
Reflections on war by a Marine General who fought in many including World War I and at the time of his death in 1940 was our most decorated Marine: “I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.   Boys” ― Smedley D. Butler, War Is A Racket!: And Other Essential Reading
 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.             
          © February 3, 2020 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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