GMT

Good Morning


Today is going to be a beautiful day.

I’m thinking about retiring. Might call Uncle Sam and tell him to start sending me a check. I think it’s time.











Today in History.


1976 The first women enter the U.S. Air Force Academy.

1972 Richard Nixon announces that no new draftees will be sent to Vietnam.

1971 The Supreme Court overturns the draft evasion conviction of Muhammad Ali.

1970 Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay] stands before the Supreme Court regarding his refusal of induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

1967 14 people are shot during race riots in Buffalo, New York.

1964 Malcolm X founds the Organization for Afro-American Unity to seek independence for blacks in the Western Hemisphere.

1954 French troops begin to pull out of Vietnam’s Tonkin province.

1950 General Douglas MacArthur arrives in South Korea as Seoul falls to the North.

1949 The last U.S. combat troops are called home from Korea, leaving only 500 advisers.

1947 Mark Helprin, novelist (Winter’s Tale).

1945 General Douglas MacArthur announces the end of Japanese resistance in the Philippines.

1942 German troops launch an offensive to seize Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus and the city of Stalingrad.

1938 Congress creates the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure construction loans.

1930 More than 1,000 communists are routed during an assault on the British consulate in London.

1926 Mel Brooks, comedian, actor, and director (The Producers, Blazing Saddles).

1921 A coal strike in Britain is settled after three months.

1919 Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles under protest.

1914 Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated at Sarajevo, Serbia.

1911 Samuel J. Battle becomes the first African-American policeman in New York City.

1909 Eric Ambler, British mystery writer (The Dark Frontier, Uncommon Danger).

1906 Maria Goeppert Mayer, Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

1902 Richard Rodgers, American composer.

1891 Congress passes the Spooner bill, authorizing a canal to be built across the Isthmus of Panama.

1884 Congress declares Labor Day a legal holiday.

1874 The Freedmen’s Bank, created to assist former slaves in the United States, closes. Customers of the bank lose $3 million.

1873 Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize-winning French surgeon and biologist.

1867 Luigi Pirandello, Italian playwright (Six Characters in Search of an Author).

1863 General George Meade replaces General Joseph Hooker three days before the Battle of Gettysburg.

1862 Fighting continues between Union and Confederate forces during the Seven Days’ campaign.

1839 Cinque and other Africans are kidnapped and sold into slavery in Cuba.

1778 Mary “Molly Pitcher” Hays McCauley, wife of an American artilleryman, carries water to the soldiers during the Battle of Monmouth.

1776 Colonists repulse a British sea attack on Charleston, South Carolina.

1712 Jean Jacques Rousseau, French social philosopher (The Social Contract).

1709 Russians defeat the Swedes and Cossacks at the Battle of Poltava.

1675 Frederick William of Brandenburg crushes the Swedes.

1635 The French colony of Guadeloupe is in the Caribbean.






Joke of the Day


He feels that as he is getting older he is slowing down, and some of the youngsters are getting damn good. He decides he will consult a “gunfighter trainer” to help him improve his technique and show him the latest tricks.

He goes into the bar, and walks up to the gunfighter trainer at a table and tells him what the situation is. The trainer says “I think I can help you. Let me see your style.”

The gunfighter draws and shoots the piano player’s drink off the piano.

“Nice shot” says the trainer. “Why don’t you put your holster a little lower on your hip, and tie down the bottom with a rawhide thong?” The gunfighter does these things, and tries another draw. He shoots the piano player’s cigar out of his mouth.”

“Now here is what I think you should do next” says the trainer. “File the front sight off that revolver and rub axle grease all over it.”

“Will that get it out of the holster faster?” asks the gunfighter.

“Dunno” says the trainer, “but when Bat Masterson over there finishes playing the piano he’s going to take that thing away from you and shove it up your arse.”