A Visit to Little Bighorn

Tuesday, we left Billings, Montana and head over to The Little Bighorn National Monument. As a history buff, this is a must see spot. It was the turning point of the Indian wars of the 1870s. After the inglorious defeat of Lt. Col. Custer and his men which outraged the federal government and the folks back east, the Indians of the northern plains never won another battle.

Today,

the monument commemorates those who died on both sides and the interpretive videos and talks speak of the cause for the united effort on the part of the plains Indians in their fight against the white man's incursions. (It actually sounds a lot like what may be happening today with the federal government's trampling the rights once guaranteed by our Constitution.)

Atop the hill is a monument to the soldiers, civilians and Indian scouts who died here on June 25, 1876. The remains of nearly all were interred beneath this stone. Some few have been reburied elswhere, like Lt. Col. Custer who has been laid to rest at West Point.

Standing on the north side of the monument and looking down toward the Bighorn River there are a number of white stones marking where those under Custer's command were found in the days following the battle. Most are on this flank of the little knoll.

 If you look closely, you'll see one stone has it's engraved statement of identity in black.

 

 This stone, seen above, marks the spot they found Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.

Other stones are to be found in the area around the battle site. Some, like the one below mark the place Indian braves were known to have died in defense of their way of life.

And one, marks the burial site of the horses belonging to the 7th Cavalry. Many of these were shot by their riders who were in desperate need of protective shelter.

The Little Bighorn National Monument is a place for reflection and remembrance.

******

The Monument, surrounded by the Crow Reservation is also the start of Route 212 also called the Warrior's Road which runs east southeast through Montana and into Wyoming and South Dakota. We drove along that road today heading to the Black Hills and Rapid City.

Tomorrow we go to see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument.

Want to see something that'stotally awesome?

Go on over to Dickiebo's to view a video of the winner from "Ukraine's Got Talent" at work. Just be sure to read Dickiebo's description first as there's no narration.

Kseniya Simonova’s Amazing Sand Drawing

(h/t to threecollie of Northview Dairy)

Ball players of old

This post over at Erica’s Blog about a Jewish boxer studying to be a Rabbi got me thinking about some famous Jewish baseball players.

(Hey, it’s baseball season. Everything makes me think about baseball. And I mean EVERYTHING!)

There was Hank Greenburg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Greenburg of the Detroit Tigers who took a lot of guff because of his religion. Said to have been subject to the more segregation and bias than any other white man, even his teammates treated him poorly. But he was "Hammerin' Hank" before Hammerin' Hank AARON came along.

And lets’ not forget Sandy Koufax, one of, if not the, greatest left-handed pitchers of all time. Koufax once sat out a World Series game because it fell on one of the Jewish holidays. (Yom Kippur 1965 against the Minnesota Twins.) ( Art Shamsky would also be remembered for sitting out during Yom Kippur. In 1969 he was playing with the New York Mets. It wasn’t the World Series, however, just a crucial double header near the end of that fabulous ’69 season. “The funny thing was, the Mets won both ends of a double header” that day, remembers Shamsky.)

But the most unusual of all was the Kid from Roseville Avenue: Baseball's Brainiest Player...and Top World War II Spy


Moe Berg: baseball player (catcher), Princeton graduate (magna cum laude, no less),attendee of the Sorbonne in Paris, graduate of Columbia Law School (one of 33 out of 500 to pass the bar exam and with the 3rd highest score to boot), master of many languages, baseball instructor to the Japanese in 1932--in Japanese, OSS assassin/spy during WWII. Oh, and he was a Jersey boy.

He died in 1972 in the Clara Mass Hospital in Belleville. His final words, reported by a Hospital nurse, were: "How did the Mets do today?"

From the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg
As to his play, it was his action on the field that led one scout having to report truthfully to his bosses as to what Berg was like as a player to say those famous words, “Good field, no hit.”

Even converting to catcher from shortstop, things didn’t change. He couldn’t hit but he could field and throw like the dickens. He once set a record for consecutive error free games: American League record 117 games ending On April 22, 1934, when Berg made an error, his first fielding mistake since 1932.

Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball.”

"Yeah. I know, and he can't hit in any of them." — Dave Harris, [Washington] Senators' outfielder, when told that Berg spoke seven languages.

Oh, my aching head!

For those of you who have been paying attention to the Presidential Primaries:

On this day in 1899, Friedrich Bayer & Co. received a patent from the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin for acetylsalicylic acid under the brand name, Aspirin.

Remember?

Today marks the 172 anniversary of the fall of the Alamo. It was on March 6, 1836 that the 13 day siege of the mission in San Antonio came to an end as a force of 6000 Mexican soldiers under General Santa Anna stormed the Alamo and killed the 184 Texian and Tejano defenders.

Although the defense of the Alamo Mission failed, by delaying the Mexican army for 13 days, it ensured eventual success for the Texan forces. Sam Houston was able to raise a large enough army of his own to defeat 1800 Mexican forces at San Jacinto on April 21st.

The Star Spangled Banner

Back on March 3, 1931, the United States Congress officially adopted The Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem of the USA.


Mariah Carey sings the Star Spangled banner at the 2002 Super Bowl in New Orleans.


An acappella performance by Take 6

The song is not the prettiest national anthem nor the easiest to sing (although both Ms. Carey and Take 6 do a fine job), but it is ours. And deserves respect regardless of your political leanings.

Civilians: Take off your hat. Place your right hand over your heard. Stand at attention. Do your best to sing the song! And for crying out loud, DO NOT start to cheer until the song is over!

Uniformed police, fire fighters, military: Stand at attention. Salute.

This day in 1836...

On this day in 1836, as defenders at the Alamo awaited Santa Anna’s final assault, a band of Texans formally declared their independence from Mexico and the creation of the Republic of Texas.
Texas declares independence

During the Texas Revolution, a convention of American Texans meets at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declares the independence of Texas from Mexico. The delegates chose David Burnet as provisional president and confirmed Sam Houston as the commander in chief of all Texan forces.

Happy birthday, Texas.

Ahoy Matey! Aaarrgh!

Captain Kidd Ship Found

This sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones adventure with a little bit of Dirk Pitt thrown in.

The wreckage of a pirate ship abandoned by Captain Kidd in the 17th century has been found by divers in shallow waters off the Dominican Republic, a research team claims.

The underwater archaeology team, from Indiana University, says they have found the remains of Quedagh Merchant, actively sought by treasure hunters for years.

The vessel in question is the Quedah Merchant. The last straw in a less than lustrous career for a man who thought he was doing the crown’s wishes. Kidd was forced to keep this “prize” by a mutinous crew that looted and burned the vessel when he left them in the Caribbean to defend himself against piracy charges.
(Indiana University? Okay, they are bounded by Lake Michigan, the Ohio and Wabash Rivers, but what the hey are they doing in the Caribbean? One would think a university closer to the scene would have a more active underwater archaeology team, but no, IU happens to have a world renowned team. Who’d have thunk it. )

It is remarkable that the wreck has remained undiscovered all these years given its location, just 70 feet off the coast of Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic in less than 10 feet of seawater.
"I've been on literally thousands of shipwrecks in my career," Beeker said. "This is one of the first sites I've been on where I haven't seen any looting. We've got a shipwreck in crystal clear, pristine water that's amazingly untouched. We want to keep it that way, so we made the announcement now to ensure the site's protection from looters."

Amazing that in an area where you would suspect there would be people fishing, diving and just plain out and about on the water a find like this can still be made.

According to the Wikipedia entry, Captain Kidd was one of the least successful of privateers/pirates. Even his capture of the vessel Quedah Merchant bearing a rich cargo and flying under an Armenian flag, was questionable as Kidd himself realized when he tried to persuade his crew to return the ship to its English captain. Unable to control his own crew, Kidd was doomed. Having lost the support of his backers (probably because he was less successful than they would have liked and because he was a bit of an incompetent leader), Kidd was convicted on one count of murder (one of his crew) and five counts of piracy. Available evidence that might have justified his acts of "piracy" was never presented at court. He was sentenced to be hung by a British court. His body remained in a cage hanging above the River Thames for two years as a warning to any and all pirates.

LZ 129 Hindenburg

I mentioned in my post yesterday on the War of the Worlds broadcast that people were conditioned to believe what they heard as breaking news on the radio in part because of the live broadcast of the crash of the zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg. I was checking out the Wikipedia entries for both the crash and Herbert Morrison’s report and discovered they did not broadcast the events live.

On May 6, 1937, Herbert Morrison of WLS in Chicago was on hand to record the docking of the Hindenburg. There was no live broadcast from the Lakehurst Naval Air Station.

Morrison and his sound engineer made a recording that was not broadcast until the next day when they returned to Chicago.

How did you earn your desk?

I have no idea if this story is true or not, but it is one hell of a story.
Jeff O'Bryant: A good story, an important lesson

Imagine, if you will, that you are back in high school and, on the first day of school, you walk into your social studies class and find that there are no desks. The teacher tells you and your classmates that, until you can answer her question, the classroom will remain empty of desks. By the last period of the day the whole school is abuzz, news crews have arrived to report on the story, and still nobody has figured out the answer to the teacher’s question which was “How do the students earn their desks?”

Go on over to the article from The Catoosa County News

We could use a few more Social Studies teachers like that.

This is cool!

The history of the Battle of Hastings in the form of the Bayeux Tapestry—
and it’s animated!