Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For April 20, 2020 As the U.S. starts creeping toward a reopening of its economy, the CV pandemic continues with some evidence it is slowing down unabated with 58,981 new cases(-9.1% decrease) increasing the total to 2,465,556 cases, 1,651,730 of which are active, 813,826 have been closed with 644,570 recoveries (79.2%) and 169,255 deaths (20.8%); in the U.S. which has the dubious distinction of leading the world, new cases of 17,607 (-13.45%) have brought total cases to 782,243 with 668,777 active cases and 113,466 closures, 41,696 of which (36.74%) have been deaths and 71,770 of which (63.25%) have been recoveries while total testing has ramped up to 3,974,114, an increase of 141,874; the governors of Georgia and Tennessee are rolling the CV dice and have announced reopening plans and the ending of stay at home orders (not surprisingly Stacey Abraham who has never accepted her loss in the Georgia Governor’s race hand has her sights on a Joe Biden ticket slammed the move and called it “grossly incompetent;” in the interview showing Pelosi proudly displaying her gourmet ice cream which has created comparisons of her as Marie Antoinette may have activated vestigial traces of shame and guilt as unemployment skyrocketed as it appears that the Blue and Reds are moving toward another stimulus plan of $470 billion which includes $60 billion for economic disaster loans and grants, $25 billion for testing and $75 billion for hospitals (no wonder Omar wanted to nationalize private hospitals); Pelosi enjoying the life of Riley in her gated mansion fully stocked with all her needs include gourmet ice cream on a interview with Chris Wallace couldn’t understand why people were protesting stay at home orders when we have to listen to science (like the morbidity projects that have been shown to be exponentially wrong while she ignores the plight of being unemployed or facing employment soon); Witless Whitmer with her overreaching, arbitrary stay at home orders banning certain activities slammed protestors exercising their 1st Amendment rights by threatening to extend her orders; Wells Fargo Bank who got into major problems with its fraudulent fee generating account scandal is back at it again prioritizing PPP applications in favor of the largest to generate more fees to the detriment of numerous small ones and has been sued by a small business company in California but here they have the company of Chase, Bank of America and U.S. Bank (in a word shame for your greed if true); Facebook in censorship mode will not allow posts promoting protests of stay at home orders (Facebook’s censorship is a clear and present danger to the 1st Amendment); in Chicago, as of April 19, 2020, 699 shootings of whom 130 have died (so much for the effectiveness of Chicago’s stay at home order); 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 48 behind Chicago with 82 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 video link to Billy Ocean, the fact that you would enjoy to be an orarian, and a quote by Mark Shields on the Bay of Pigs invasion, 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. 420 Day—created by 5 students at San Rafael High School on this day in 1971 at 4:20 in the afternoon to celebrate the consumption of marijuana.
2. Patriots’ Day—created by Massachusetts in 1894 to commemorate the Battles of Concord, Lexington, and Menotomy (where the militia ambushed the British retreating from Lexington and Concord) and now celebrated on the third Monday of April in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Maine, North Dakota, and Connecticut and normally capped off with the Boston Marathon.
3. 1988 Number One Song— the number 1 song in 1988 on this day on a run of 2 weeks in the position was “Get Otta Of My Dreams, Get Into My Car” by Billy Ocean. Here is a recording of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNgcYGgtf8M This noted Trinidadian-British singer is still going strong at 70.
4. Word of the Day—today’s word of the day is “orarian” which means coastal or coast-dweller which describes to a tee the perfect place to live, assuming no hurricanes or tsunamis.
5. Warhol Superstar No Guarantee—celebrating the birth on this day in 1943 noted socialite, actress and model Edith Sedgewick who was named “Girl of the Year” after being in several of Andy Warhol’s short films but had mental issues, alcohol and drug abuse problems and died at age 28 on November 16, 1971 of a barbiturate overdose laced with alcohol.
On this day in:
a. 1945 Adolf Hitler made his last trip to the surface of the Fuhrer Bunker on his 56th birthday to award Iron Crosses to members of the Hitler Youth and would commit suicide 10 days later.
b. 1946 the League of Nations created after World War I but never joined by the United States dissolved, transferring its remain operations and function to the United Nations.
c. 1961 the CIA sponsored invasion of Cuba by CIA sponsored counter revolutionaries launched into the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961 ended with the surrender of the survivors of the invasion force to Cuban forces.
d. 1999 students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Columbine, Columbine shot and killed 13 people and injuring 24 others before taking their own lives. The silver lining in this tragedy was that it caused a major revision in police tactics, requiring police to move to the sound of gunfire immediately rather than taking positions outside the building where shooting was occurring.
e. 2010 the oil platform Deepwater Horizons exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and creating a massive underwater oil spill that lasted for 6 months.
Reflections on the Bay of Pigs: “President [John F.] Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs, said to Turner Catledge of The New York Times: I wish you had written more, I wish you had investigated more, because it might have saved the country of the cataclysm of the Bay of Pigs.” Mark Shields, noted Democratic political columnist.
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 20, 2020 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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