SEPTEMBER 24 –1991 Dr. Seuss passes away; 1906 Teddy Roosevelt declares Devil’s Tower National monument; 1964 Warren Commission is released; 1866 Black Friday Jay Gould and James Fisk try to corner gold market
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SEPTEMBER 24
1991 RIP Dr. Seuss.
Four years after his death in La Jolla CA, the University Building at UC San Diego honored Ted Geisel and Audrey by renaming the building Geisel Library for their dedication to expand literacy.
Meanwhile on the exact opposite side of the U.S. in Springfield Mass, Oh the Places You’ll Go, the Dr. Seuss Memorial Garden is where you can cast your vote for the Cat in the Hat! There’s a 10’ Yertle the Turtle at the front, a Lorax in a tree stump with a sign that says “Unless…” a large Horton elephant and the large 10’ book Gertrude McFuzz, but watch out! Behind the book there’s the Grinch and his dog Max! Anyhoo Lindylou there’s a lot more to see here that memorializes the greatness of Theo Geisel Seuss.
By the way, if I ever see green in my ham at a restaurant, I’m calling the health department. That’s mold, bro. Y’all need to be shut down.
Sep 24 1906 — TR declares Devil’s Tower a national monument.
It looks like a volcano but it’s not; it’s actually a volcanic column. The largest in the world, in fact. Sometime around 50 million years ago started out as igneous rock. The softer sedimentary rock around it eroded, the magma cooled and shrank, leaving this 585 ft. tall volcanic column. It’s basically granite and quartz. Devil’s Tower is located in the Bear Lodge Mountains in Crook Country in northeastern Wyoming.
Legend has it got the name Bear Lodge because of an old story told by the Cheyenne, who described how the Great Spirit would protect the tribes who climbed the giant rock from great bears who would try to catch the tribesmen. Every time the bear tried to jump to the top of the rock, the Great Spirits would lift the rock or make the rock bigger so the bears couldn’t get to the humans. As you can imagine, there are hundreds of stories like this one that have been told throughout several centuries by many groups of American aborigines, such as the Arapahoe called it Bear’s Tipi, the Lakota’s called it many names including Mythic-owl Mountain, Ghost Mountain and more. This is sacred land, folks, and though you are of course welcome to visit, have some respect and don’t touch anything. As far as the name goes, that’s probably a typo. In 1875 when Colonel Richard Irving Dodge quote-unquote discovered the formation.
Historians speculate possibly Dodge named the formation bad god or evil spirit after the Lakota word for wakansica, which could, to the untrained ear, sound a lot like Wahanksica, or black bear. Of course, Teddy Roosevelt loved the American West and was a true conservationist, therefore when he saw it he had the perfect idea for the area: leave it exactly the way it is, and put that into law.
1789 – The Supreme Court comes to existence.
…In fact it says so in the constitution. Article III, §1, of the Constitution provides that “[t]he judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” The Judiciary Act of 1789 was passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, instituting six justices to serve the court. Those justices were John Jay as Chief Justice, and John Rutledge, William Cushing, Robert Harrison, John Blair and James Wilson.
The number of justices would change to nine in 1869, and to this day notables such as Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Elena Kagen serve as well as John Roberts as Chief Justice. So you can imagine the opinions that go on in this building. There are lots of opinions. Their website has a huge list of former rulings, case documents, oral arguments, and so much more.
1889 – Alexander Dey patents the dial time recorder.
…K? Now. This is how it works. You come into work, before you do anything you go to this clock that has a cast iron wheel attached, on its dial side with perforated numbered holes. You punch in your time, go to work, finish your day, punch out when you’re done. This thing had two different colored ribbons on it to indicate if you were tardy or not. So don’t be late or it will rat you out to your boss. Don’t do it.
Dey wasn’t a clock guy, he was a physician. In fact he cured Mr. Gamble’s wife of Porter and Gamble from an illness, and to show his appreciation, Mr. Gamble helped Dey get his business off the ground, helping him to form the Cincinnati Time Recorder Company in 1896.
1964 – Warren Commission report comes out to LBJ. Former governor of California Earl Warren chaired The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. On Sept. 24 1964, about a year after JFK’s assassination, the results of an investigation led by the FBI, Secret Service, Dep’t of State and attorney general of Texas concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing John F. Kennedy, and that Jack Ruby had acted alone when killing Oswald . I’m just telling you what the report said.
Conspiracy theory time! We all know how much I love a good conspiracy. Key word there, good. Sometimes I just can’t get through a whole day without hearing a good one, like how Elvis Presley is still alive somewhere at an undisclosed location in the south pacific writing songs for Justin Beiber. This has more holes than a salt and pepper shaker. Oswald acted alone? He barely had a motive compared to JFK’s real enemies: the Mafia, Cuban exiles, military leaders and even Lyndon Johnson himself. Several committee members, including Warren himself, didn’t even want to serve on this board. Gerald Ford allegedly knew that some of the committee members didn’t believe that the gunshot had come from the Texas School Board Depository’s sixth window. Within a few years only 56% of americans agreed with the Commission’s findings.
In 1979 the US House Select Committee on Assassination reopened the investigation and determined that there were likely two assassins, and that their probably was a conspiracy. The only possible saving grace the Warren Commission has is the trajectory of a bullet hitting a nerve-ending. This is going to sound gross, but bear with me here. The grassy knoll conspiracy revolves Frame #313 in an amateur video that captures the assassination. The top of Kennedy’s head was blown clean off…backwards. Not only does it look horrifying on video, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Why backwards? This is what led to the second shooter in the grassy knoll belief. However, some neurologists would respond to that by stating that when a bullet hits a nerve ending, the nerve ending explodes, which could make the top of Kennedy’s head to fly in the opposite direction of the bullet.
Beyond that, Oswald’s motive just doesn’t hold water compared to the amount of enemies JFK had. Incidentally, after the investigation, Fidel Castro did privately off the record tell a white house staff member that he didn’t kill have anything to do with Kennedy’s death. And then in 2014 we leared from a Marvel comics X-Men movie that Mystique and Magneto killed Kennedy. This whole time I believed Mick Jagger in the Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil when he shouted out: Who killed the Kennedy’s, and after all, it was you and me.
Who woudda thought.
1866 – Black Friday.
…Two gold speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner the gold market, which led to a tarnish on President Ulysses Grant, who was seen in public numerous times with these guys. Finally in entertainment news, While brandishing a shotgun, James Brown bursts into an insurance office next to his and demands to know which of the forty-odd salesmen used his personal toilet. Police were called and a two-state car chase ensued, during which nearly two dozen shots were fired into Brown’s pick-up. He was eventually arrested in Georgia without further incident. Although he was offered a deal to plead guilty and spend ninety days in jail, he refused and was sentenced instead to two concurrent six-year terms. He was paroled on February 27th, 1991.