MARCH 8 — 1971 Rainer uncovers FBI’s COINTELPRO; 1962 CSS Virginia wreaks havoc on Union Navy; 1817 NY Stock Exchange founded; SPORTS: 2006 New Orleans Pelicans play for first time since Katrina, 1999 R.I.P. Joe DiMaggio
MARCH 8
1971 – John Rainer raids FBI and discovers COINTELPRO.
A couple generations before Edward Snowden , Philadelphia activist John Rainer had suspected that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI had been targeting and infiltrating groups for quite some time.
But by March 9th, John and his assistant, his wife Bonnie, realized they had what they needed to do to Hoover what no one in Washington, seemingly not even the president himself, to hold him accountable for infiltration, deception, harassment, intimidation and sometimes violence to disrupt or end civil rights groups. These days, it’s well publicized that the FBI was going after domestic political groups, as well as non-violent civil rights reformers such as Martin Luther King Jr, Howard Franklin, Huey Newton and others.
Since the early 1950s COINTELPRO was initially designed to go aver domestic communist advocates in America. Every president between FDR and Richard Nixon either had a hand in this so-called counter-terrorism or at least had knowledge and gave approval of it.
COINTELPRO seemed to be involved in every group out there beyond communist and socialist groups: including Black nationalist groups, the Young Lords, The American Indian Movement, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, National States Rights Party, , anyone protesting the Vietnam War, women’s rights, and beyond, no one appeared safe from J. Edgar Hoover.
Finally Idaho Frank Church formed the Church Committee which began investigations into the FBI, but beyond that no one seemed to be able to escape the FBI’s dragnet, except John Rainer. In 2014, he spoke two the New York Times, and then the details of the documents he and Bonnie stole were revealed in Washington Post writer Betty Medgar’s book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.
Betty Medgar first posted some of Rainer’s findings in the Post, and a month later, COINTELPRO had dissolved, but is it still in existence today?
In April 2018, according to Wikipedia, the Atlanta Black Star “characterized” the FBI for engaging in COINTELPRO like behavior towards the group Black Lives Matter, though no arrests have been made and there is otherwise no proof.
1950 – the Kombi goes into production, and what a long strange trip it’s been.
This sugar magnolia originally a concept from the Netherlands had the Eyes of the World on itas it went Truckin down Shakedown Street. It was generally blue and white but some hippies would paint a Touch of Grey on it, among other pretty colors. Friend of the Devil Adolf Hitler and Austrian born engineer Ferdinand Porsche met up and Porchse was tasked to design it.
The Estimated Prophet Hitler may have went to Hell In a Bucket but at least he was enjoying the ride. The bus wasn’t the most popular car when it was first introduced to America due to its prior Nazi connections, but by the 1960s America warmed up to it like a Fire on the Mountain and it went Truckin’. Pretty soon American hippies were trying to fit Uncle John’s Band and Tennessee Jed in the VW bus to go to their rock concerts and anti-war rallies. Better watch your speed, Casey Jones!
In 1993 when Jerry Garcia died, Volkswagon ran an ad featuring a drawing of the front of a bus with a tear streaming down it.
1862 – CSS Virginia reaks havoc on the Union Navy.
Originally called the U.S.S. Merrimack, in 1861, this massive 40-gun hulk was sunk by the Federals before they evacuated the Norfolk Navy Yard. The Confederates began rebuilding it using ironclad. This was a new concept in naval ship construction and would prove invulnerable to regular ammunition. On March 8 she sailed into the mouth of the James River at Hampton Roads and unleashed fury, ramming into the Cumberland and sinking it, destroyed the USS Congress and ran the USS Minnesota aground. There was sheer panic in Washington DC because of this beat down. But the next day came the USS Monitor, another ironclad ship, and the two giants went at it and fought to a draw. More on that later.
1817 – The Big Board is founded.
The New York Stock Exchange, though not the first, quickly became the largest stock exchange in America, and later on, the world. A stock exchange records back before physical stocks were actually involved to France in the 12th century where there was a system in place that exchanged debts for agriculture. In the 14th century, several Italian cities were trading government securities.
The East India Company is generally considered the first LLC type model in the 17th century due to risk factors, namely piracy. It was safer for investors to purchase shares in multiple companies instead of one company in case that company’s ship got captured by pirates.
The British used a stock as a type of exchange in their Talley stick economy which worked for over 700 years. Pennsylvania had the first stock market, but New York had the second and it grew to colossal proportions quickly. On May 17, 1792, underneath a buttonwood tree on 68 Wall Street in New York, 24 stockbrokers gathered and signed an agreement called the Buttonwood Agreement, which would lead to a constitution that was drafted on this day in 1817 called the New York Stock Exchange.
Yes, before Disney and Amazon it was wheat and tobacco. Back then a stock exchange and stock market was actually the same thing, where you would go to a market to exchange a stock, unlike today’s method of online trading and Electronic Communication Network or ECNs run by NASDAQ and BATS where millions of transactions occur in a microsecond, versus a few hundred people shouting at a glorified auctioneer. Since its inception it’s dealt with a 1929 crash, a 1920 bombing, and definitely its share of panics.
These Days the bell is run every morning at 9:30 a.m. eastern time to announce the beginning of the day’s trading. It didn’t start out as a bell, actually it started with a gavel, which is still used in addition to the bell. In the late 19th century it started using a gong. In 1903 the NYSE moved to its current address on Wall Street, and that’s when the bell started being used. According to Wiki, Several celebrities have had the pleasure of ringing the bell, including Liza Manelli, Joe DiMaggio, and Snoop Dogg.
1951 – The Lonely Hearts Killers fry in the electric chair.
Martha Beck and Raymond Martinez Fernandez from New York City may have killed as many as 20 people according to some sources. When Fernandez completed an unrelated jail sentence, he went after people who placed personal ads in newspapers.
He would gain their trust, steal their money and disappear. That’s how he met Martha Beck, who showed up at his door with two kids. He agreed to go along with her as long as she ditched the kids, and she placed them right away at the Salvation Army. The two began to fall in love and she went with him on his scam routines.
But she was unstable and her jealousy got to the better of her, so they started killing their victims. The last one was in Michigan when they were caught. They wrote a 73 page confession and were hoping to avoid execution, which was illegal in the state of Michigan. But they wound up getting extradited to New York, where the electric chair was an option, and on March 8 1951, they to a seat for the last time. Their story is told in the 2006 movie Lonely Hearts starring John Travolta and Selma Hayek and Jared Leto.
2006 LA Lakers play New Orleans in the first professional sports game since Katrina
1999 Joe DiMaggio died at age 84 – won 9 World Series, in 1941 had 56 games hitting streak, career: .325 average, 361 HRs, 1,537 RBI, 3 time MVP1930 Babe Ruth signs 2 year $160,000 deal – when told he made more than the President his reply was “I had a better year”