Crabs and Beer!

On this day in 1945, the Soviet 322nd Rifle Division liberated the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The camp was was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and dozens of subcamps.

Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 others. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.

When the Soviet soldiers arrived, They found 7,000 prisoners alive in the three main camps, 500 in the other subcamps, and over 600 corpses. Georgii Elisavetskii, a Soviet soldier who entered one of the barracks, said in 1980 that he could hear other soldiers telling the inmates: “You are free, comrades!” But they did not respond, so he tried in Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian. Then he used some Yiddish: “They think that I am provoking them. They begin to hide. And only when I said to them: ‘Do not be afraid, I am a colonel of Soviet Army and a Jew. We have come to liberate you’ … Finally, as if the barrier collapsed … they rushed toward us shouting, fell on their knees, kissed the flaps of our overcoats, and threw their arms around our legs.”

Female prisoners at Birkenau

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By mail…

Only in Britain – Complaints to Councils Extracts from letters written by council tenants:

1. It’s the dog’s mess that I find hard to swallow.

2. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.

3. I wish to complain that my father twisted his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.

4. Their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.

5. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other day that blew them off.

6. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?

7. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.

8. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.

9. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.

10. 50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are just plain filthy.

11. The next door neighbor has got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can’t take it anymore.

12. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.

13. Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny color and not fit to drink.

14. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.

15. I want to complain about the farmer across the road. Every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and it’s now getting too much for me.

16. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.

17. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third, so please send someone round to do something about it.

18. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.

19. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife..

20. I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.

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He wants it all!!!

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Today is the birthday, in 1951, of Brian Downey, Irish drummer and founding member of Thin Lizzy, who had the 1973 UK No.6 single ‘Whisky In The Jar’ and hits with ‘Jailbreak’ and ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quyB8PMTD3o

Today is the birthday, in 1892, of Elizabeth Bessie) Coleman. She was the first African-American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot license, and is the earliest known Black person to earn an international pilot’s license. She earned her license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on June 15, 1921.

Born to a family of sharecroppers in Texas, Coleman worked in the cotton fields at a young age while also studying in a small segregated school. She attended one term of college at Langston University. Coleman developed an early interest in flying, but African Americans, Native Americans, and women had no flight training opportunities in the United States, so she saved and obtained sponsorships in Chicago to go to France for flight school.

When Coleman was two years old, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where they lived as sharecroppers. Coleman began attending school in Waxahachie at the age of six. She walked four miles each day to her segregated, one-room school, where she loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student. She completed her elementary education in that school. Every season, Coleman’s routine of school, chores, and church was interrupted for her to participate in bringing in the cotton harvest.

When she turned eighteen, she took her savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma (now called Langston University). She completed one term before her money ran out and she returned home. In 1915, at the age of 23, Coleman moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers. In Chicago, she worked as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop, where she heard stories of flying during wartime from pilots returning home from World War I. American flight schools of the time admitted neither women nor black people, so Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper, encouraged her to study abroad. Abbot publicized Coleman’s quest in his newspaper and she received financial sponsorship from banker Jesse Binga and the Defender.

Bessie Coleman took a French-language class at the Berlitz Language Schools in Chicago and then traveled to Paris, France, on November 20, 1920, so that she could earn her pilot license. She learned to fly in a Nieuport 564 biplane with “a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot’s feet.” On June 15, 1921, Coleman became the first black woman and first Native American to earn an aviation pilot’s license and the first black person and first self-identified Native American to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

“Queen Bess”, as she was known, was a highly popular draw for the next five years. Invited to important events and often interviewed by newspapers, she was admired by both blacks and whites. She primarily flew Curtiss JN-4 Jenny biplanes and other aircraft that had been army surplus aircraft left over from the war. She made her first appearance in an American airshow on September 3, 1922, at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I. Held at Curtiss Field on Long Island.

Committed to promoting aviation and combating racism, Coleman spoke to audiences across the country about the pursuit of aviation and goals for African Americans. She absolutely refused to participate in aviation events that prohibited the attendance of African Americans.

On April 30, 1926, Coleman was in Jacksonville, Florida. She had recently purchased a Curtiss JN-4 (Jenny) in Dallas. Her mechanic and publicity agent, 24-year-old William D. Wills, flew the plane from Dallas in preparation for an airshow and had to make three forced landings along the way because the plane had been so poorly maintained. Coleman’s friends and family did not consider the aircraft safe and implored her not to fly it, but she refused. On take-off, Wills was flying the plane with Coleman in the other seat. She was planning a parachute jump for the next day and was unharnessed as she needed to look over the side to examine the terrain.

About ten minutes into the flight, the plane unexpectedly went into a dive and then a spin at 3,000 feet above the ground. Coleman was thrown from the plane at 2,000 ft (610 m), and was killed instantly when she hit the ground. Wills was unable to regain control of the plane, and it plummeted to the ground. He died upon impact. The plane exploded, bursting into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine had jammed the controls. Coleman was 34 years old.

Coleman in 1923

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Today is the birthday, in 1964, of Susannah Melvoin, American vocalist, and songwriter. She has worked with Prince, Roger Waters, Eric Clapton and Mike Oldfield. As a songwriter, has co-written songs performed by Madonna and Eric Clapton. Prince wrote The Family’s 1985 song ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ about Susannah Melvoin. She is the twin sister of musician Wendy Melvoin who was in Prince’s band Revolution as well as Wendy & Lisa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk

On this day in 1789, Georgetown University is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of the District of Columbia) when Bishop John Carroll, Rev. Robert Molyneux, and Rev. John Ashton purchase land for the proposed academy for the education of youth.

The Province of Maryland was founded in 1634 by a group of settlers from England accompanied by Jesuit priests. In 1646, the defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. Following the end of the American Revolutionary War, plans to establish a permanent Catholic institution for education in the United States were ready to be realized.

At Benjamin Franklin’s recommendation, Pope Pius VI appointed former Jesuit John Carroll the first head of the Catholic Church in the United States, even though the papal suppression of the Jesuit order was still in effect. Carroll began meetings of local clergy in 1783 near Annapolis, where they orchestrated the development of a new university. On January 23, 1789, Carroll finalized the purchase of the property in Georgetown. Future Congressman William Gaston was enrolled as the school’s first student on November 22, 1791, and instruction began on January 2, 1792.

President James Madison signed into law Georgetown’s congressional charter on March 1, 1815, creating the first federal university charter, which allowed it to confer degrees, with the first bachelor’s degrees being awarded two years later.

Georgetown alumni pursuing graduate study have been recipients of 32 Rhodes Scholarships, 46 Marshall Scholarships, 33 Truman Scholarships, 15 Mitchell Scholarships, and 12 Gates Cambridge Scholarships. Georgetown is among the nation’s top producers of Fulbright Scholars, with 565 over its history, and produced more than any other institution in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. It is also one of the top-ten yearly producers of Peace Corps volunteers as of 2016.

Georgetown Alumni are heavily represented in government and politics. Alumni include Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, is a 1968 graduate of the School of Foreign Service. Former officials of the United States Cabinet include 59th Secretary of State and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen. Alexander Haig; 22nd Secretary of Defense and former CIA Director Robert Gates; 5th Secretary of Homeland Security and retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly; and 76th Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew. Other cabinet-level and senior executive branch officials include former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, former CIA Director George Tenet, 16th Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, Director General of the Foreign Service Marcia Bernicat, and seven White House Chiefs of Staff that include Ron Klain, Denis McDonough, and John Podesta.

In the 119th U.S. Congress, alumni Hakeem Jeffries, John Barrasso, and Dick Durbin hold party leadership positions, serving among a total of seven alumni in the United States Senate and 21 alumni and faculty in the House of Representatives.^[313] In total, 116 alumni have served in Congress and 26 have served as state governors, including Terry McAuliffe and Pat Quinn. On the U.S. Supreme Court, alumni include the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and former Chief Justice Edward Douglass White.

Patrick Francis Healy, born a slave and the first African-American to become a Jesuit, helped transform the school into a modern university after the Civil War

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Donut infusion…

SIGNSSSSSSS

On this day in 1965, ‘Downtown’ made Petula Clark the first UK female singer to have a No.1 on the US singles chart since Vera Lynn in 1952. The song was also a No.2 hit in the UK. Recorded in three takes (with the second take ultimately chosen as the completed track), session players in the studio recording included Jimmy Page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx06XNfDvk0

Today is the birthday, in 1788, of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron. He was one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest British poets. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Byron was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Following graduation, he traveled extensively in Europe, living for seven years in Italy, in Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa, and then was forced to flee to England after receiving threats of lynching. During his stay in Italy, he would frequently visit his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence to fight the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a folk hero. He died leading a campaign in 1824, at the age of 36, from a fever contracted after the first and second sieges of Missolonghi.

Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, owing to what his mother termed a “reckless disregard for money”. From 1809 to 1811, Byron went on the Grand Tour, then a customary part of the education of young noblemen. After the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), Byron became a celebrity. “He rapidly became the most brilliant star in the dazzling world of Regency London. He was sought after at every society venue, elected to several exclusive clubs, and frequented the most fashionable London drawing-rooms.

Involved at first in an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb (who called him “mad, bad and dangerous to know”) and with other lovers and also pressed by debt, he began to seek a suitable marriage, considering – amongst others – Annabella Millbanke. However, in 1813 he met for the first time in four years his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Rumors of incest surrounded the pair; Augusta’s daughter Medora was suspected to have been Byron’s child. He also had relationships with Jane Elizabeth Harley, Countess of Oxford, Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli who was married at the time, and a certain number of adolescent boys including Nicolo Giraud, a young French-Greek lad who had been a model for the painter Lusieri before Byron found him. When Byron returned to Italy, he became involved with a number of boys in Venice but eventually settled on Loukas Chalandritsanos, age 15, who was with him when he was killed.

He was a magnificent poet and one of my favorites. Among is works are two I especially like: She Walks in Beauty and So, we’ll go no more a roving .

Portrait of Lord Byron (c. 1813)

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(another abbreviated post – hoping to be back to full strength next week.

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Or Thursday…

Today is the birthday, in 1960, of Michael Hutchence, singer, songwriter from Australian rock band INXS, who had the 1988 UK No.2 & US No.1 single ‘Need You Tonight’. Their 1987 album Kick has sold over 10m copies in the US alone and features four Top 10 singles; ‘Need You Tonight,’ ‘Devil Inside’, ‘New Sensation,’ and ‘Never Tear Us Apart.’ INXS has sold over 55 million records worldwide. Hutchence was found dead in his hotel suite in Sydney on 22nd Nov 1997 age 37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93ywiGMDnQ

On this day in 1824, the Ashanti defeated a British army in the Gold Coast (now Ghana).

By 1817, the Ashanti were expanding with an army of about 20,000, in response to various British incursions, so the (British) African Company of Merchants which was operating in various ‘castles’ along the coast signed a treaty of friendship that recognized Ashanti claims to sovereignty over much of the coast. The British merchants, however, refused to pay the rents demanded by the Ashanti.

In 1820, another British mission headed by Joseph Dupuis arrived in Kumasi in an attempt to resolve the dispute. Dupuis signed a treaty that was denounced at the time as “a complete sell-out” that recognized the Ashanti claim to collect tribute from the coastal peoples; renounced the British claim to protect the coastal peoples from Ashanti raids and recognised the right of the Asantehene (King of the Ashanti) to “eradicate from his dominions the seeds of disobedience and insubordination”.

the British governor, Sir Charles MacCarthy, wrote to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst his belief that the Ashanti were “blustering” and “they were not prepared for war, but depended solely upon the terror of their name to bring us to seek a compromise, and I suppose to extort from the native people under our fort…a contributions of six hundred ounces of gold”. MacCarthy asked for and received permission to have the Royal African Corps redeployed from the Cape Colony (modern south-western South Africa) to the Gold Coast.

MacCarthy led an invading force from the Cape Coast in two columns. Moving out to confront the British were an Ashanti force of 10,000 men armed with their “Long Dane” muskets. MacCarthy failed to understand until it was too late for him that the Ashanti force that he was facing was the main Ashanti army instead of an advance-guard as he assumed.^[15] The governor was in the first group of 500, which lost contact with the second column when they encountered the Ashanti army of around 10,000, in the battle of Nsamankow. The British ran out of ammunition, suffered losses and were overrun. Almost all the British force were killed immediately while 20 managed to escape. MacCarthy, Ensign Wetherell, and his secretary Williams attempted to fall back. MacCarthy was wounded, however, and killed by a second shot shortly thereafter.

Some weeks later, a larger British force made up of White and Native troops came to a standstill with the same Ashanti army that had defeated MacCarthy’s force. The British army withdrew back to the coast with 176 dead and 677 men wounded.

Asante Warriors Displaying their weapons in a ceremony.

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Another abbreviated post today

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Today is the birthday, in 1950, of British singer and songwriter Billy Ocean. His 1984 single ‘Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run) peaked at No.1 in the US and Ocean won the 1985 Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for the song. He accumulated a series of international hit singles ‘When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going’ (1985 and the theme song for the film The Jewel of the Nile), ‘There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)’ (1986). In 1988, his single ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car’ reached No.1 in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNgcYGgtf8M