Month: July 2025

On this day in 1405, Admiral Zheng He departed on his first exploratory voyage for the Ming Dynasty. Zheng He is often regarded as the greatest admiral in Chinese history. Born into a Muslim family as Ma He, he later adopted the surname Zheng conferred onto him by the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424).

Zheng was born Ma He to a Muslim family of Kunyang, Kunming, Yunnan. In the autumn of 1382, a Ming army invaded and conquered Yunnan. In 1381, Ma Hajji, Zheng He’s father, died in the fighting between the Ming armies and Mongol forces. Zheng He was captured by the Ming armies in Yunnan in 1381. General Fu Youde saw Ma He on a road and approached him to inquire about the location of the Mongol pretender. Ma He responded defiantly by saying that the Mongol pretender had jumped into a lake. Then the general took him prisoner. He was castrated between the ages of 10 and 14, and placed in the service of the Prince of Yan.

Enslaved as a eunuch servant, Ma He eventually gained the confidence of Zhu Di (who later became the Yongle Emperor), who, as his benefactor, gained the allegiance and loyalty of the young eunuch. Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions, designed them to establish a Chinese presence and impose imperial control over the Indian Ocean trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin, and extend the empire’s tributary system.

Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook the expeditions. Preparations were thorough and wide-ranging, including the use of so many linguists that a foreign language institute was established at Nanjing. Zheng He’s first voyage departed 11 July 1405, from Suzhou and consisted of a fleet of 317 ships holding almost 28,000 crewmen.

Zheng He’s fleets visited Brunei, Java, Siam (Thailand), Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia, dispensing and receiving goods along the way. Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk, and in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili Coast. The giraffe that he brought back from Malindi was taken as proof of the Mandate of Heaven upon the administration.

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Inflation…

Good business names…

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Today is the birthday, in 1947, of John Holt, reggae singer and songwriter who first found fame as a member of the Paragons, before establishing himself as a solo artist. Holt penned ‘The Tide Is High’ made famous by Blondie. He died on 20th October 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ak06IseGgg

This date, in 1925, was the first day of proceedings of The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, commonly known as the Scopes trial or Scopes Monkey Trial. A high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law which outlawed the teaching of human evolution in public schools.

The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had offered to defend anyone accused of violating the Butler Act in an effort to challenge the constitutionality of the law.

William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state, argued for the prosecution, while famed labor and criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow served as the principal defense attorney for Scopes. The trial publicized the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, which set modernists, who believed evolution could be consistent with religion, against fundamentalists, who believed the literal word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge.

In 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that such bans contravene the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because their primary purpose is religious. Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

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All you need to know about Oklahoma…

And you think it’s tough to get stuff built today. The Cologne Cathedral took approximately 600 years to build…

No thanks…

Today is the birthday, in 1947, of Arlo Guthrie, US singer, songwriter, son of folksinger Woody Guthrie, (1967 album ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, 1972 US No.18 single ‘The City Of New Orleans’). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF1lqEQFVUo

On this day in 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, with South Carolina providing the final approval (somewhat under duress – the Reconstruction Acts required the Confederate states to ratify the amendment before they would be re-admitted to the United States).

The Amendment is one of the most consequential amendments. It addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law at all levels of government.

The amendment’s first section includes the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause broadly defines citizenship, superseding the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that Americans descended from African slaves could not become American citizens. The Privileges or Immunities Clause was interpreted in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) as preventing states from impeding federal rights, such as the freedom of movement. The Due Process Clause builds on the Fifth Amendment to prohibit all levels of government from depriving people of life, liberty, or property without substantive and procedural due process. Additionally, the Due Process Clause supports the incorporation doctrine, by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been applied to the states. The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people, including non-citizens, within its jurisdiction.

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Budget cuts?

“Full Self-Driving”…

SIGNS and SIGNS…

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Today is the birthday, in 1945, of American singer Dolores “Dee Dee” Kenniebrew, from the girl group the Crystals. She sang lead vocalist on both the Crystals’ 1963 Phil Spector produced hits ‘Then He Kissed Me’ and ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’. In 1960, at age 15, she was invited to join the girl group and was the only member who stayed in the group from their formation to their disbanding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-qqi7-Q19k

Today is National Culture and Senior Citizens Day, a public holiday in the Republic of Kiribati. The elders in Kiribati are an important part of society. Elder men are called Unimwane, and elder women are called Unaine.

Rather than the more familiar high chief structure, many of the islands were ruled by councils of Unimwane who met in Mwaneaba (meeting houses) to discuss and address all kinds of social, economic and political issues. The decisions made by the Unimwane are believed to be the best because they are made after careful deliberation by the oldest, wisest and most experienced members of the community.

Even though many decisions are now made by the courts and government of the country, the Unimwane association still plays an important role as a sounding board for many decisions.

Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census and more than half live on Tarawa. The state comprises 32 atolls and one remote raised coral island, Banaba. Its total land area is 811 km² (313 sq mi) dispersed over 3,441,810 km² (1,328,890 sq mi) of ocean.

The name is pronounced /ˈkɪrɪbæs/ KIRR-i-bass, as -ti in the Gilbertese language represents an ‘s’ sound. Similarly, the name of its people, the I-Kiribati, is pronounced /iːˈkɪrɪbæs/ ee-KIRR-i-bass.

The name Kiribati was adopted upon the country’s independence in 1979. It is the Gilbertese rendition of Gilberts, the plural of the English name of the nation’s main archipelago, the Gilbert Islands.

Kiribati is one of the most vulnerable nations to global sea level rise. According to projections by the end of the century, the sea level will be higher than all of the islands of Kiribati. In 2014, President Tong finalized the purchase of a 20 km² (7.7 sq mi) stretch of land on Vanua Levu, one of the larger Fiji islands, 2,000 km away. A move described by Tong as an “absolute necessity” should the country’s territory be completely submerged under water.

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How Brits and Aussies drive while visiting the states…

Isn’t that the whole purpose of brakes?

Geologists…

BADA BiNg!

I need to get in shape. If I were one of those victims in a crime show, my chalk outline would be a circle.

I wanted to have a nice summer body for people to look at. But I realized I like food more than I like people.

Hospital regulations require a wheel chair for patients being discharged. However, while working as a student nurse, I found one elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet, who insisted he didn’t need my help to leave the hospital. After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator. On the way down I asked him if his wife was meeting him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She’s still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown.’

Cops just left. They said if I’m going to walk around my house naked, I have to do it inside.

Nurse: Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? Patient: Yeah, I’m down for whatever. We should hang out sometime.

I love when people say “be yourself”, like I haven’t already been doing that and scaring everyone off.

Wife: My husband said the doctor told him I can suck out his kidney stone. After three days of trying, I think he lied to me. Husband: 😁

You are told Socialism is bad by the same people who said Segregation was good.

If you want to bring prayer into schools but not free lunch, you better stop pretending this is about Jesus. He would have fed the kids.

“Just cleared out some space in the freezer”, sounds so much more productive than, “I just polished off another pint of ice cream.”

My wife just texted me a selfie, asking “Does this dress make me look fat?” I texted, “NOO!” Autocorrect sent, “MOO!”

Space alien: Take me to your leader. Earthling: You’ve sort of come at a bad time.

In the Life Alert commercial, the lady said she fell and waited 8 hours for her friend. Why didn’t the cameraman help her?

Smart planning takes time. Stupid is immediate.

Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.

Friendly reminder to MAGA that actual Christians would never build or celebrate the construction of concentration camps.

I want to open a TWO dollar store for people that enjoy the finer things.

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Today is the birthday, in 1961, of American country music singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor Toby Keith. His chart-topping debut ‘Should’ve Been a Cowboy’, topped the US country charts and was the most-played country song of the 1990s. The song has received three million spins since then, according to Broadcast Music Incorporated. Keith released 19 studio albums and charted 61 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including 20 No.1 hits. In June 2022, Keith announced that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, he died in his sleep in Oklahoma, on 5 February 2024, at the age of 62. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKZqGJONH68

Today the Isle of Man celebrates Tynwald Day. It is the Isle of Man’s National Holiday and marks the annual outdoor sittings of the Manx Parliament.

The Isle of Man is situated in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, but a Crown Dependency. The head of state is King Charles III, who holds the title of Lord of Mann.

Norsemen first came to the island in about 800AD and ruled for over 400 years. During that time they established different administrative systems including Tynwald, a parliament for passing legislation. Historians have traced the origin of Tynwald back to 979AD, making it the world’s longest continuous parliament.

There is no representation from the Isle of Man in the United Kingdom parliament and UK laws do not automatically apply in the Isle of Man. Tynwald makes the laws which are given final approval by the King.

Tynwald meets regularly during the year, with an outdoor session held on Tynwald Day at St. John’s. The main event on Tynwald day is the promulgation of acts as each act of Tynwald must be promulgated on Tynwald Hill within 18 months of enactment.

On Tynwald Day any person may approach Tynwald Hill and present a Petition for Redress. The Petitions can be taken up by members of Tynwald and put to the parliament. Many pieces of legislation in the Isle of Man have been passed using this process.

The outdoor session is well attended and in addition to the parliamentary proceedings, there are plenty of other attractions such as concerts, family ceildh, firework displays, stalls and displays to keep everyone entertained.

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someone moved the ‘L’…

Great name…

Today is the birthday, in 1940, of Richard Starkey, ( Ringo Starr, ) drums, vocals, Rory Storm, The Beatles. He sang lead vocals on one track on most Beatles albums, The Beatles scored 21 US No.1 & 17 UK No.1 singles. Starr had the solo 1974 US No.1 & UK No.4 single ‘You’re Sixteen’ plus 9 other US Top 40 hits. Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band have made many tours and has featured; Joe Walsh, Howard Jones, Ian Hunter, Peter Frampton, Todd Rundgren, Edgar Winter, Greg Lake along with other guests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOuxVDgV6CY