Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For April 13, 2020 WHO has been hit with another black eye for seemingly pandering to China by downplaying the dangers of COVID-19 and ignoring Taiwan’s warning of human to human transmission (when does the president of WHO get his pink slip and when does the U.S. cut back on funding for this Chinese shill?); the CV pandemic continues unabated with 1,912,438 cases, 1,352,523 of which are active, 559, 519 have been closed with 441,432 recoveries (79%) and 118,683 deaths (21%); in the U.S. which has the dubious distinction of leading the world, new cases of 19,186 brought total cases to 579,486 with 521,570 active cases and 57,916 closures, 23,252 of which have been deaths and 34,664 have been recoveries; Mexico has reversed its closure of a U.S. owned facility in Tijuana that was producing ventilators for the U.S.; hold on to your hats for the next big political fight this time between a group of Northeastern governors and the Trump Administration on how to reopen the economy (how we do that with new cases still rising and testing still too low and an antibody test developed by Stanford Medical School close but not yet being rolled out is the $64 dollar question); troubling news on the CV front surfaced of more than 100 South Koreans who had recovered from the virus have retested as positive; the MSM caught with their collective “fake news” pants down have totally ignored the news that CNN had settled the $250 million defamation law suit brought by Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandman; the governor of South Dakota is not waiting for the CDC to start clinical trials of what many are viewing as the silver bullet in the war against the CV as she announced a clinical study for the drug hydroxychloroquine; Sanders has ended the suspense and has come out to endorse Joe Biden even as many in his campaign are attacking the move; Biden has expressed his appreciation, telling Sanders he will need his help to govern (given his mental acuity or lack thereof he is probably right on that point); the Cack News Network continues to ooze bias from all its “journalistic” pores as Daniel Dale on of its fact checkers has written 30 articles on Trump relating to his alleged misstatements and 1 on Joe Biden (no wonder the media is in such disrepute); on the coronavirus front, researchers have found 6 new corona viruses in these three species of bats: the Greater Asiatic yellow house bat, the wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat and Horsfield's leaf-nosed bat (if any of these bats are sold in China’s wet markets another reason for outrage against China and for demands that it shut down its wet markets immediately); in Chicago, as of April 12, 2020, 639 shootings of whom 117 have died but none on Easter Sunday; Baltimore with a fraction of Chicago’s population and hoping against all hopes that 2020 will not be a record in terms of deaths now stands at 38 behind Chicago with 79 murders (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 Michael Jackson, the fact that hopefully in the not too distant future you can escape your oppidian lockup and head to the great outdoors, and a quote by Glynn Lunney on how to surmount the chaos on Apollo 13, 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. Scrabble Day—commemorating the very popular word game created by Alfred Botts in 1931 but was not a commercial success until James Brunot discovered the game and after agreeing to produce the game and pay a small royalty and the rest is history with the game now being owned by Hasbro which owns Milton Bradley.
2. International Functional Neurological Disorder Awareness Day—enabled in 2013 by FND Hope a FND support group to raise awareness of the issues facing people afflicted with Functional Neurological Disorders and to raise funds to find cures.
3. 1983 Number One Song— the number 1 song in 1983 on this day on a run of 7 weeks in the position was “Billy Jean” by Michael Jackson. Here is a recording of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y.
4. Word of the Day—today’s word of the day is “oppidian” which means urban which each year describes where more and more Americans reside.
5. Tough Bridge to Cross—celebrating the birth on this day in 1976 of noted child actor Jonathan Brandis who starting modeling at age 2 and commercials at age 4 and moved up to such TV Series as One Life to Give but found it difficult to find roles as an adult, started drinking heavily and hung himself on November 12, 2003.
On this day in:
a. 1943 mass graves of some of the 22,000 Polish prisoners of war and members of the intelligentsia captured and killed by the Soviets were discovered in the Katyn Forest.
b. 1943 the Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D>C.
c. 1964 Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field.
d. 1970 an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13’ s Service Module while enroute to the Moon which ended the attempt to land there and put the crew’s life in jeopardy as it continued to loop around the Moon and head for a successful but nerve racking flight back to Earth and landing.
e. 1976 the U.S. Treasury reintroduced the 2 dollar bill featuring Thomas Jefferson on the 233rd anniversary of his birth.
Reflections on the flight of Apollo 13 and its in flight explosion that almost doomed it: “The team completely faced up to what had to be done. In this case, it was a survival challenge that we were faced with. So there you are, we pulled that off.Teamwork was necessary. Good leadership, initiative, to think outside of the box. When things go wrong, how do we repair them? Those were the three things that were absolutely necessary.” Glynn Lunney, NASA Flight Director for Apollo 13.
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.
© April 13, 2020 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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