Today is the anniversary of the 1857 decision of the Supreme Court – Dred Scott v. Sandford. It held that the United States Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens.
The decision involved the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from Missouri, a slave-holding state, into Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom and claimed that because he had been taken into “free” U.S. territory, he had automatically been freed and was legally no longer a slave.
In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision against Scott. In an opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court ruled that people of African descent “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States”.
Although Chief Justice Taney and several other justices hoped the decision would settle the slavery controversy, which was increasingly dividing the American public, the decision only exacerbated interstate tension. In 1865, after the Union‘s victory in the Civil War, the Court’s ruling in Dred Scott was superseded by passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery, and by Congress with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 conferring full citizenship and equal rights flowing from it. After Southern lawyers and courts countermanded this federal law with state law, Congress and 3/4 of the states in 1868 constitutionalized the 1866 Act by enacting the Fourteenth Amendment, whose first section guaranteed citizenship for “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Today is the anniversary of the 1770 Boston Massacre, known in Great Britain as the Incident on King Street. It was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 during the American Revolution in Boston in what was then the colonial-era Province of Massachusetts Bay.
In the confrontation, nine British soldiers shot several in a crowd, estimated between 300 and 400, who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. Five American colonists were killed. The event was subsequently described as “a massacre” by Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and other leading Patriots who later became central proponents of independence during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War.
Amid tense relations between the civilians and the soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry and verbally abused him. He was eventually supported by seven additional soldiers, led by Captain Thomas Preston, who were hit by clubs, stones, and snowballs. Eventually, one soldier fired, prompting the others to fire without an order by Preston. The gunfire instantly killed three people and wounded eight others, two of whom later died of their wounds.
Eight soldiers, one officer, and four civilians were arrested and charged with murder, and they were defended in court by attorney, and future U.S. president, John Adams. Six of the soldiers were acquitted; the other two were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to branding on the thumb, according to the law at that time.
The Boston Massacre is considered one of the most significant events that turned colonial sentiment against King George III and British Parliamentary authority. John Adams wrote that the “foundation of American independence was laid” on March 5, 1770, and Samuel Adams and other Patriots used annual commemorations (Massacre Day) to encourage public sentiment toward independence.
A variation of Paul Revere’s famous engraving, produced just prior to the American Civil War, which emphasizes Crispus Attucks, the black man in the center who became an important symbol for abolitionists
Unfortunate headline….
Today is the birthday, in 1951, of English singer and actress Elaine Page, best known for her work in musical theatre. Paige played Eva Perón in the first production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita in 1978 which for this role won the Laurence Olivier Award for Performance of the Year in a musical. She had the 1985 UK No.1 single with Barbara Dickson from the musical Chess ‘I Know Him So Well’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gd_ohoPzYc
Today is the birthday, in 1745, of Kazimierz Michał Władysław Wiktor Pułaski, anglicised as Casimir Pulaski. He was a Polish nobleman, soldier, and military commander who has been called “The Father of American cavalry” or “The Soldier of Liberty”.
Born in Warsaw and following in his father’s footsteps, he became interested in politics at an early age. He soon became involved in the military and in revolutionary affairs in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Pulaski was one of the leading military commanders for the Bar Confederation and fought against the Commonwealth’s foreign domination. When this uprising failed, he was driven into exile.
Following a recommendation by Benjamin Franklin, Pulaski traveled to North America to help in the American Revolutionary War. He distinguished himself throughout the revolution, most notably when he saved the life of George Washington. Pulaski became a general in the Continental Army, and he and his friend, the Hungary-born colonel commandant Michael Kovats, raised Pulaski’s Legion and reformed the American cavalry as a whole. At the siege of Savannah, while leading a cavalry charge against British forces, he was fatally wounded by grapeshot and died shortly after.
Pulaski is remembered as a hero who fought for independence and freedom in Poland and the United States. Numerous places and events are named in his honor, and he is commemorated by many works of art. Pulaski is one of only eight people to be awarded honorary United States citizenship.
Pulaski at Częstochowa, an 1875 painting by Józef Chełmoński.
Some people are just really hungry…
today is the birthday, in 1678, of Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi’s influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LiztfE1X7E
On this day in 1938, oil was discovered in in commercial quantities at Dammam oil well No. 7 in 1938 in what is now modern day Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
On January 15, 1902, Ibn Saud took Riyadh from the Rashid tribe. In 1913, his forces captured the province of al-Hasa from the Ottoman Turks. In 1922, he completed his conquest of the Nejd, and in 1925, he conquered the Hijaz. In 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed with Ibn Saud as king. Without stability in the region, the search for oil would have been difficult, as evidenced by early oil exploration in neighboring countries such as Yemen and Oman.
In 1922, Ibn Saud met a New Zealand mining engineer, Major Frank Holmes. During World War I, Holmes had been to Gallipoli and then Ethiopia, where he first heard rumors of the oil seeps of the Persian Gulf region. n 1923, the king signed a concession with Holmes allowing him to search for oil in eastern Saudi Arabia. In 1925, Holmes signed a concession with the sheikh of Bahrain, allowing him to search for oil there. He then proceeded to the United States to find an oil company that might be interested in taking on the concession. He found help from Gulf Oil.
Meanwhile Ibn Saud had dispatched American mining engineer Karl Twitchell to examine eastern Arabia. Twitchell found encouraging signs of oil, asphalt seeps in the vicinity of Qatif, but advised the king to await the outcome of the Bahrain No.1 well before inviting bids for a concession for Al-Ahsa. To the American engineers working in Bahrain, standing on the Jebel Dukhan and gazing across a twenty-mile (32 km) stretch of the Persian Gulf at the Arabian Peninsula in the clear light of early morning, the outline of the low Dhahran hills in the distance were an obvious oil prospect.
the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC) was set up to develop the oil concession. SOCAL also joined forces with the Texas Oil Company when together they formed CALTEX in 1936 to take advantage of the latter’s formidable marketing network in Africa and Asia. they identified a promising site and named it Dammam No. 7, after a nearby village. Over the next three years, the drillers were unsuccessful in making a commercial strike, but chief geologist Max Steineke persevered. He urged the team to drill deeper, even when Dammam No. 7 was plagued by cave-ins, stuck drill bits and other problems, before the drillers finally struck oil on 3 March 1938. This discovery would turn out to be first of many, eventually revealing the largest source of crude oil in the world.
Dammam No. 7, the first commercial crude oil well in Saudi Arabia, struck oil on March 3, 1938.
BADA BING!!!!!!!!
My wife keeps acquiring new tastes in music. First it was Sixpence None the Richer, then 50 Cent, now Nickelback. I think she’s going through the change.
Trump Invites Caucasian Half Of Alysa Liu To Visit White House.
I couldn’t beat a computer in a game of chess, but it would be no match for me in kickboxing. In a related development, my monitor and my toe are broken.
The Finland hockey team, who won Bronze, was not at the Olympic medal awards because they were Finish-ed.
State of the Union Fact Check: None Detected.
If the president invites you to the White House or the State of the Union Address, you go. If a pedophile invites you anywhere, tell them to fuck off.
What’s worse than a racist, authoritarian president? The people that support him.
Don’t bother walking a mile in my shoes, that would be boring. Spend 30 seconds in my head, that’ll freak you right out.
Sometimes I feels like my brain has a lot of things to hold and no pockets.
People who think you get boring as you age have obviously never experienced the thrill of seeing two hummingbirds at the feeder at the same time.
Someone asked me what the 9th letter of the alphabet is. I had to think about it, but I was correct.
You know what seems odd to me? Numbers that aren’t divisible by two.
People in the 80s: I bet they have flying cars in 40 years. Meanwhile on a pizza box in 2026: Open box before eating pizza.
The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.
I went outside once… The graphics were great but the story was horrible.
Today is the birthday, in 1779, of Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American physician, botanist, politician, and diplomat. He was the first U.S. agent in Hispanic America, a member of the South Carolina Legislature, and later a United States Representative from 1821 to 1825. In 1825, he was appointed by John Quincy Adams as the first United States Minister to Mexico and serving through the first year of Andrew Jackson’s administration in 1829. He represented the United States government to the First Mexican Empire and the First Mexican Republic in Mexico City.
Poinsett was a strong supporter of Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian democracy. He was a Unionist leader in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis in 1832 and 1833, when the state refused to enforce federal tariffs, declaring them unconstitutional. Poinsett was subsequently appointed 15th U.S. Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren. He was a co-founder of the earlier National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts in 1840, a predecessor of the modern Smithsonian Institution.
Beginning in 1801, Poinsett traveled the European continent. In the spring of 1803 he arrived in Switzerland and stayed at the home of Jacques Necker and his daughter, Madame de Stael. On one occasion, Robert Livingston, the United States minister to France, was invited for a visit. Poinsett was compelled to assume the role of interpreter between the deaf Livingston and the aged Necker, whose lack of teeth made his speech almost incomprehensible. Fortunately, Madame de Stael tactfully assumed the duty of translation for her elderly father.
Poinsett arrived in the Russian capital of Saint Petersburg in November 1806. Learning that Poinsett was from South Carolina, the Empress asked him if he would inspect the cotton factories under her patronage. Poinsett made some suggestions on improvement, which the Dowager Empress accepted. In January 1807, Czar Alexander and Poinsett dined at the Palace. Czar Alexander attempted to entice Poinsett into the Russian civil or military service. Poinsett was hesitant, which prompted Alexander to advise him to “see the Empire, acquire the language, study the people”, and then decide. Always interested in travel, Poinsett accepted the invitation and left Saint Petersburg in March 1807 on a journey through southern Russia. He was accompanied by his English friend Philip Yorke, Viscount Royston and eight others. They were among the last westerners to see Moscow before its burning in October 1812 by Napoleon’s forces.
They were provided with a Cossack escort as they traveled in Dagestan, but when a Tartar dignitary claimed that this would only provoke danger, the escort was bypassed for the security of the Tartar chiefs. This new security increased the numbers in Poinsett’s company, which they believed made it less vulnerable to attack as it passed out of Russia proper. Thus, they were joined by a Persian merchant, who was transporting young girls he had acquired in Circassia to harems in Turkey. With a strong Persian and Kopak guard, the party left Derbent and entered the realm of the Khan of Kuban.
Upon his return to Moscow, Czar Alexander discussed the details of Poinsett’s trip with him and offered him a position as colonel in the Russian Army. However, news had reached Russia of the attack of the Chesapeake affair, and war between the United States and Great Britain seemed certain. Poinsett eagerly sought to return to his homeland.
He served as a “special agent” to two South American countries from 1810 to 1814, Chile and Argentina. President James Madison appointed him in 1809 as Consul in General. Poinsett was to investigate the prospects of the revolutionists, in their struggle for independence from Spain.
In 1820, Poinsett won a seat in the United States House of Representatives for the Charleston district. As a congressman, Poinsett continued to call for internal improvements, but he also advocated the maintenance of a strong army and navy. Poinsett simultaneously served as a special envoy to Mexico from 1822 to 1823, when the government of James Monroe became concerned about the stability of newly independent Mexico. On January 12, 1828, in Mexico City, Poinsett signed the first treaty between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Limits, a treaty that recognized the U.S.-Mexico border established by the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty between Spain and the U.S.
After visiting an area south of Mexico City near Taxco de Alarcón, Poinsett saw what later became known in the United States as the poinsettia. (In Mexico it is called Flor de Nochebuena, Christmas Eve flower, or Catarina). Poinsett, an avid amateur botanist, sent samples of the plant to the United States, and by 1836 the plant was widely known as the “poinsettia”. Also a species of Mexican lizard, Sceloporus poinsettii, is named in Poinsett’s honor.
Poinsett served as Secretary of War from March 7, 1837, to March 5, 1841, overseeing the forced ethnic cleansing and dispossession of land from Native Americans to European settlers known as the Trail of Tears. reduced the fragmentation of the army by concentrating elements at central locations; equipped the light batteries of artillery regiments as authorized by the 1821 army organization act; and again retired to his plantation at Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1841. He died of tuberculosis, hastened by an attack of pneumonia and is buried at the Church of the Holy Cross Episcopal Cemetery.
Joel Roberts Poinsett, Secretary of War
(this image does not depict a horngus (or anything else) attached to a dongfish — a creature that does not exist. It’s an altered version of a Wikipedia entry for Aristotle’s theory of biology, which includes a site note describing that “Aristotle recorded that the embryo of a dogfish was attached by a cord to a kind of placenta (the yolk sac)”)
Snow Sculpture Contest…
Don’t order the pineapple pizza…
TEA??
Spring is in the air!
SIGNZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Today is the birthday, in 1950, of American singer and drummer Karen Carpenter, who with The Carpenters had the 1973 UK No.2 single ‘Yesterday Once More’ plus 3 US No.1’s including the 1975 US No.1 single ‘Please Mr Postman’. Their 1974 UK & US No.1 album ‘The Singles 1969-1973 spent 125 weeks on the UK chart. The Carpenters album and single sales total more than 90 million making them one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She died on 4 February 1983 of anorexia nervosa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hJCr9cq5co
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