This Day In History, April 11, 1814

On April 11, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of France was exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea.

 I wonder if there is enough room on the island of Elba for a Trump Hotel?

On this Date in History, March 13, 1781

On this date, March 13, 1781 William Herschel sees what he thinks is a "comet" but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus.  Adolescent school boys have been giggling about the discover ever since.

6th grade boy's science project  poster of the what Uranus must look like.

Eating Animals

We watched the movie AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY.   Which I will get around reviewing one of these days.    A  conversation in the movie stirred my interest and gave me thing to wonder about:  While eating dinner the teenager girl at the table was asked by her extended family why she didn't meat, was a health thing or a religious thing.  She answered that she did not want to taste death.  She said when an animal is slaughtered for our eating enjoyment a second or so before the moment of death the animal likely knows it is about to die and releases several kinds of chemicals and  adrenalin.   I don't think she said but implied at the moment of death the animal's meat is suddenly marinated.  Adrenalin is a released into an animal to increase its heart rate to relax him and makes it accept  its own certain on coming death.... or that is my take on it.   Which of course can't help your own heart, if it is eating marinated meat that is pumping up your heart and relaxes you.  If you eat meat day after day you are just super marinating yourself for your moment of truth......maybe.

Which brings up another point about slaughtering innocent animals for food:  In slaughterhouses, the slaughter specialists, the ones that actually snuffs the lives out of the poor creatures - have a very high turnover rate.    Their nerves cannot take it very long.  

Now that we are talking about not eating meats for humane reasons, here is something  interesting in history.  One  well known world leader was a vegetarian for humane reasons.  He felt animals are cute cuddly and could not bear eating the lovable creatures of God.  His name, Adolph Hitler.

This Day in History May the 10th

1933 Nazis stage public book burnings in Germany

And it happens now and then here in the Land of the Free.

Dis Day was D Day Dat Will be Remembered

Stanly Hunter



Roy Petty


D Day, June 6, 1944, will be remembered** in history as the day the Allied Forces came crashing down on Third Reich* in France ending World War in Europe.

Two of my uncles landed on the beach of Normandy that day to do their part: My father's brother Stanly Hunter and my mother's brother Roy Petty.

The invasion was very high risk. Many men died. And all that lived/have had to relive that day of watching many of their friends cut down the rest of their lives.

I'm happy to say that both my uncles survived and lived to be old to be retired and old enough to see their grandchildren.

*The Nazi Party is a good example why no country should be controlled by one party. A one party system has full unquestionable power.

**It was also my mother's 26th birthday.

SUNDAY FUNNIES - CAESAR!

While I still have EC Comic's FRONTLINE COMBAT #8 out on my desk from two Sundays ago (I have a very messy desk), when again I used a story in it, I thought I would pull out another one, this time CAESAR written by Harvey Kurtzman and illustrated by Wallace Wood. Remember the quote about coming to bury Caesar? Well, you may find him under my piles of paper on my desk.

Power of the Press

On this date in 1898 of the Spanish American War American War Ships started to sail for Cuba. Many historians feel that their would not have been a Spanish American War if was not for William Randolph Hearst and his Hearst newspapers. Hearst orchestrated it all by having the battle ship U.S.S. MAINE blown up in the Havana harbor – so some believe.

Until then the public wasn’t all that enthused with the conflict. “Remember the Maine” gave them a battle cry and of course Hearst got to sell more newspapers.

Citizens of the Atlanta Art Supporters Died

Air France Boeing 707 crashes on takeoff from Paris, kills 130


On this date in history in 1962, a passenger plane left Paris and crashed after taking off, killing all the passengers. The passengers were the supporters of the Atlanta art community - the ones that mostly put up the money for the arts.

About that time I was in the Navy Reserves with a tall redheaded young man with the last name Darby, if I remember correctly. His parents were killed in the wreck. They owned a printing company in Atlanta.

Yesterday, one day short of 47 years later, another plane crashed and probably killing all the passengers. This time the plane was leaving Brazil and going to Paris.

Orbiting Around & Around - the First

On this day in history in 1962 John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. Later John became a U.S. senator representing Ohio. And later he became the oldest person to go into space…. Which I think he still holds that record.

The first nation to have a man-made satellite to orbit around the Earth (in 1957) was Russian with their little basketball looking thing they called Sputnik.

Well, ♫La Te Da♪.

A Brief History of the U.S.S.R. (Soviet Union)

86 years ago on this date, December 30, 1922, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) was founded. It consisted of fifteen individual countries.

In 1968 The Beatles recorded a song titled BACK IN THE USSR.

In 1991, after 69 years, the USSR disbanded; fizzled out; poof!

Thoughts on the History of World Peace

We (the World) have been at peace only 8% of the time over the last 3500 years.*

That is an average of 8 years of every century. Of course, an average is the overall number, in this case 3500 divided by the number of year the human race went without war – or is it the other way around? I get confused.

The bottom line is that to stay with the average every century would need to have 8 years of peace. Do you think the 20th Century has a total of 8 years of no wars? I doubt it.

What about the 19th Century with our Civil War and the War of 1812 plus England and France at each other’s throats, which was sort of a carry over from the previous century. Highly doubtful.

And the 17th Century was no better – there were new lands and worlds to fight to gain control of.

With the average of 8 peace years of every century and it looks like the most recent centuries were chocked full of wars, then the much earlier centuries, in keeping with the overall average, each century would have much more than 8 years of peace.

What did those earlier centuries have to keep peace than the latter centuries do not have?
Nothing. That is it! Nothing! They had no technology! They had fewer projectile things designed to kill people; no TV to keep citizens tempers pumped up; and no electronic communications.

Progress.

But there may be hope. The whole world has been looking at China for the past two weeks and the Chinese welcomed us with opened arms and fireworks.

International Capitalism and lead painted toys might be the world peace savior of this century.

*Uncle John’s Page-a-Day Almanac, Thursday, July 24, 2008.

Houdon Kept His Head & Made Some More

Speaking of art, Friday, we went to the High Art Museum in Atlanta.

We have been several times before over the past two or three years checking out the Louvre Exhibit. The Louvre has been lending the High segments of it art collection for Atlanta to view. Each exhibit stays several months and then is replaced by another segment.

This time the treat was sculptures by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). Remember the famous bust of Benjamin Franklin made by a sculpture while he was in France trying to get support for the Revolutionary War? That was done by Jean-Antoine Houdon.



They probably had 20, give or take, sculptures by Houdon. We learned quiet a bit about his art. He developed a technique of accentuating eye pupils and irises… and one full length sculpture of a nude woman we could see he was pretty good at accentuation asses too.

He seemed to have perfected the facial body language in his sculptures: Some radiate intelligence; some their sincere warm nature; one looked like it just said something very clever and witty and is looking at you waiting for you to “get it”; some show a wise understanding; and it goes on.

If the Mr. and Mrs. Potato kit had half as many emotional lips and eyes to stick in the potato, I wouldn’t have hesitated asking Santa for one.

Also how many sculptured portraits have you seen that show their teeth? Not many I bet. There is one bust of his wife with her mouth partly opened exposing nice natural not-so-straight teeth, she looked very real.



When you check in the High and tell them you are going to the Louvre Exhibit they lend you an electronic gadget with headphones attached. When you stand in front of an art piece there will be a number along with a brief description on a small sign. If you want to hear a more elaborate detail and background information key in the number provided.

Now, here is the drawback: what if you went to great pains writing, producing, and paid a speaker to give the talk for the gizmo and you copy the audio in hundreds of the gizmos and then somebody else decides to rearrange things? The solution, was probably just a typical management decision: Ignore the problem, maybe it will go away.

Several times the voice was describing the statue or bust in front of us, then it said look to your left to see how he did his wife, and the wife is plainly to your right, and visa versa on another duo set of busts. And once it said to proceed to the 3rd floor to see Houdon’s bust of Napoleon. We went up to the 3rd floor, but they had the Egyptian exhibit on loaned from the Louvre, which we had already seen. The security man told us all of Houdon’s sculptures are on the 2nd floor. So, Napoleon did not get looked upon by us.

As I mentioned, he did Benjamin Franklin’s while he was in Paris, and I assumed he did Thomas Jefferson’s about the same time.


He traveled to the United States and did George Washington’s bust between the time he was General of the Continental Army and the first President.

He rubbed elbows with the rich and famous of Paris and also the philosophers responsible for the French Revolution, such as Voltaire (top picture) I guess he was in a position well known to both sides, so when the working class revolted and took charge, his head was pretty safe sitting on top of his torso.

I could not take pictures of the visiting exhibit but I had a camera permit to photograph the art in the permanent exhibit, which most of these are. The others are sculptures that by Houdon that I did not actually take – but I did find and copy them with Google’s help.






We only spent about two hours at the High, and our parking bill was $8.00. Can you believe that? Outrageous!!

_________________________________________________________________________

Then we went to a barbecue restaurant we read about named Blues & BBQ on 5th near Spring Street. It was very hard finding a parking place. On one of our circles around a few one way blocks to go by the place again we got very near the Varsity on North Avenue and almost decided to go there instead, but on our next loop we found a parking lot, where I had to parallel park.

Also, I believe where the restaurant sits is about the same spot The Wits End* (*bring money) used to be over 30 years ago. Then, the street was a dead-end and you could see expressway traffic just through the trees. Now, there is a bridge going over the I75/I85 and onto the Georgia Tech campus. We went onto the campus, still looking for a place to turn around and saw a sign saying something about it was “Rush Week” – a lot of the “Joe College” type were standing around trying to look well dressed and suave. When we finally got inside the Blues & BBQ I saw a sign saying “Use Buzz Cards here” with a picture of a GT yellow jacket. That must we a meal card for students who pay for their meal tickets.

The place was covered with Tech students. One thing has changed – no orange caps “The Hell With GA” written on the top or bill. Used to freshmen at Tech had to wear those caps. They seemed to be all over the place on campus and at the restaurants nearby such as places like this and The Varsity.

Another thing that changed is while we were trying to park a Georgia Tech Orange and White trolley came by and not too long the same colors on a bus. Evidently Tech furnishes shuttle services to places off campus.

The lady in front of us was ordering for a whole office and numerous times she would say “center cut sandwich”. We finally broke her train of thought and keeping up with the money and change to ask her what center cuts was. She said it was the best, and was a 3 rib sandwich. I ordered the center cut. Anna ordered the regular chopped pork. Neither of us complained.

And that was our wild and crazy time in the big city Friday.

B.C. Battery

On today's Uncle John's Bathroom Almanac Daily Page A Day Calendar today tells of an electric battery in the National Museum of Iraq. It is a clay jar containing a copper roll and a cooper disc with an iron rod. They discovered if they fill the jar with vinegar it puts out about 2 volts of electricity. It is dated c200 B.C.

I want to know while they were making the tests did a mechanical rabbit roll by beating a drum?