APRIL 13 — 1743 Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson; 1861 Headlines: The War Commenced! (Fremont Journal); 1997 Tiger Woods wins 1st Major; 1993 Massachuetts Aerosmith Day
APRIL 13
1743-Happy 272nd Birthday holla to the Sage of Monticello, the Man of the People, the Apostle of Democracy, Thomas Jefferson.
Yes, he drafted the Declaration of Independence and was our third president and did a lot of other stuff. If Jefferson were alive today, he would probably know how to make an iPhone app that can take us all to a sustainable location on Mars.
It’s astonishing the amount of books written about this man. Almost as astonishing as the fact that he had about 6500 books in his personal library. I think I have 50 in mine. In fact after the British burned the Library of Congress in the War of 1812, Jefferson offered out his library as a replacement. Problem solved. He wrote about 19,000 letters in his lifetime.
His Monticello home has 33 rooms on it, most of them octagon in shape? Why? Bebcause octagon was his favorite shape. I’m not sure what my favorite shape is, I’m thinking it’s a toss up of either round, or two-dimensional quadrilateral. If there is such a thing, then that’s probably my favorite.
His friendship with John Adams nearly ended over the politics of the Federalist Party, and they became bitter rivals until the two men retired from politics and became friends again. In fact Jefferson and Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826. He disapproved of slavery but he may have had a song named Eston Hemings from his slave Sally Hemings.
He also had four mockingbirds. And if you think that’s obnoxious, he once broke his wrist because he was trying to act cute by jumping over a fence iat a park in France and impress his girlfriend, oops I mean his painter and musician Maria Cosway.
1861— War Begun are the headlines on the Boston Globe, The South Strikes the first Blow. Albany Times union: Seven Batteries Opened on Fort Sumter. Fremont Journal: The War Commenced! The New York Herald reported, “Civil War had finally begun. A terrible fight is, at this moment, going on between Ft. Sumter and and the fortification by which it is surrounded.” April 12th, a day where nobody actually died in the first day of fighting except for two men in a 100 gun salute at the Ft when a spark blew up a a pile of nearby cartridges. But the next four years engulfed the nation in the bloodiest battle in American history, taking 600,000 people. “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mind, in the momentous issue of the Civil War,” said President Lincoln. Robert E. Lee once said, “The war…was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.” . He also once aid, This war is not about slavery. Fort Sumter, Charleston N. Carolina, the biggest port in the South at the time, was so badly in need of supplies it was vulnerable to attack, just like Ft. Moultree and Castle Pickney nearby. From Kentucky, born June 14 1805, Robert Anderson had served in the Black Hawk War of 1832, the Second Seminole War of 1837 under Winfield Scott, and almost fatally wounded at Battle of Molino del Rey where he was promoted to major, now was being sent to the unfinished Sumter to relieve the aging commander Col. John Gardner. On the 11th of April, confederat General Pierre Beauregard demanded that Anderson abandon Sumter, but Anderson stalled for time, hoping to get supplies. Beauregard grew inpatient, and on April 12th, 1861, 0430, opened fire. Anderson didn’t return fire until 7 a.m., but the two battled it out will into the next day after a shell lit the barraces inside the fort on fire, and Anderson raised the white flag. The Yankees and Rebels would fight mostly inconclusive battles throughout the rst of 1861 and 62, with the Union tring to capture the Confereate capital of Richmond, while the South would be defeated in September 1862 in Antietam. Robert E. Lee took command of the rebels, and attacked up north but was stopped in the bloodiest battle of all in Gettysburg. President Lincoln, after going through command changes, finally settled on General Ulysses Grant, who would successfully defeat the Confederate army. After four years of fighting and bloodshed in Atlanta and Richmond, Lee finally would be the one to raise the white flag in the end. But for today, just like the Herald said, The War Begun.
1866-Happy birthday Robert Leroy Parker,
…otherwise known as Butch Cassidy .He first got his last name as a young lad after running away from home at the age of 13 and working for a cattle rustler who called himself Mike Cassidy. Then began his life of train robbing! He stole about $20,000 from a train in Tulleride, Colorado.
Butch later got his first name from working in a butcher shop. In 1894 he got arrested, spent two years in jail, and was released. He immediately got back into crime and starting riding with his gang the Wild Bunch, which included his best friend Harry Longbaugh, aka the Sundance Kid.
But by the early 1900s, law enforcement started taking its place in the west, and the west wasn’t so wild anymore. The Pinkerton detective agency started catching up to Butch’s train robberies by placing armed guard on the trains. Butch and the Wild Bunch took off to Argentina, and we’re not exactly sure what happened there. We know two white English speaking males robbed a bank in Rio Gallegos and took off with some $100,000 in today’s US currency, and finally was gunned down possibly in Bolivia. Or maybe not, there’s a whole nother story on that.
Either way, it made a great movie featuring Robert Redford and Paul Newman.
1997-Tiger Woods wins his first major
…at age 21. He started teeing off against Bob Hope when he was 2 years old, true story. In 1997 won the tournament in 12 strokes at the Masters in Augusta GA. It was the greatest performance by a golfer in a hundred years.
1993-Happy Aerosmith day, Massachusetts.
Governor William Weld declared April 13 to be Aerosmith day. It’s fun to note that in the 1970’s, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia called the band the druggiest people he’d ever seen. Yeah Jerry, but they went to rehab in 1986 and made one of the biggest comebacks in rock history. Got to love the irony on that.
BTW Aerosmith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Faime in 2001, they Greatest Hits has gone diamond, which means it’s sold over 10M copies, and they inspired the ride “Rock and Rollercoaster” at Disney’s MGM Studios.