OCTOBER 2 — 1914 Happy birthday rocket engineer and occultist Jack Parsons; 2014 Wheeler becomes the oldest man to ever climb Mt. Kilimanjaro; 1945 Elvis makes first appearance, 10 years old
1914 — Happy birthday rocket engineer and occultist Jack Parsons.
That’s right, kicking off the American Halloween season about a man who might’ve been born during the Halloween season on purpose just to mess with us. I call him the American Mr. Crowley as he truly spent his short life changing the realities of mankind and blurred the lines between ingenuity and sheer madness. He was born Marvel Whiteside Parsons in L.A. to a wealthy family. He grew up reading sci-fi magi like Amazing and developed an interest in rocket propulsion.
He and his buddy Ed Forman would pepper Parson’s backyard in Pasadena with craters, burnt paper and cardboard tubes from homemade rockets and firecrackers that was in many ways the first Cape Canaveral. Marvel changed his name to John when his father, who was also named Marve, left the family As a lot of men who were named John in those days, his friends called him Jack and Jack would have to drop out of college since the Great Depression was in full swing.
In 1934 he and his childhood buddy foreman and Frank Malina began GALCIT at CelTech, or Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory Rocket Research Groupbut back in those days rockets were made up stuff y you would find in Amazing magazine. They were able to get government funding for the research from the National Academy of Science and worked with JATO or Jet-Assisted Take Off for the military. In 1939 Jack dabbled into Marxism and was led to the religion of Thelema, introduced by Englishman Alistair Crowley. Jack would then get heavily involved with the Agape Lodge and Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis, or OTO.
He divorced his wife Helen after he began an affair with her half-sister. Then again, all sorts of weird sexual things were going on in Jack’s rituals. At this point in the young man’s life he was creating the future of space aeronautics by day and by night was emerging from a creepy coffin in his church to perform strange sexual things with others dressed up in togas or as animals.
Then he met science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and things really started to get strange. Jack began behaving erratically, and soon the science community began turning its back on him. He lost his security clearance and dove full on into his sex magic. Hubbard moved into Jack’s giant mansion in Pasadena and they started summoning the Scarlett Woman through the Babylon Working.
These rituals had Mr. Crowley’s name all over it, and it was an attempt to manifest a being from the other side. The other side of what exactly I don’t know, but right away he met a redhead named Marjorie Cameron who just appeared out of thin air, which is what happens when you have free parties at your mansion. Sadly his buddy Hubbard would steal Jack’s girl Sara as well as his life savings as Hubbard’s Dianetics science fiction writings commanded his readers to believe him. Jack became an informant for the new state of Israel and its rocket program, but as a result of McCarthyism and the threat of espionage, Parson lost his security clearance and would never work with the space program again.
Instead, on June 17th, 1952 Jack Parsons died when his kitchen mysteriously blew up. No one knows if it was accident, suicide, or murder, but his legacy as a brilliant weirdo will live on forever. Happy birthday Jack!
2003 – David Kay’s Iraq survey Group
…report finds little evidence of WMD in Iraq. Instead it found a bunch of nerve and mustard gas facilities that were concealed from UNSCOM during the inspections that began in 2002. By the way, people who watched Fox News were three times as likely, according to a poll, to believe that Iraq had WMDs as those who got their news from NPR. Draw your own conclusions. That’s what’s great about this country. You can either spell Fox news Faux or you can say that NPR stands for National Palestinian Radio. Your choice.
BTW President George W. Bush would respond to Kay’s findings, saying “We know from years of intelligence, not only our own intelligence services, but other intelligence gathering organizations, that Saddam Hussein had weapons. After all, he used them.” Which is true. All Kay was saying is that there’s no stockpile of them lying around, and probably hadn’t been any since the mid-1990s.
2014 — Bob Wheeler becomes the oldest man to ever climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Former army Lt. Col and St. Louis Psychology Professor Dr. Robert Wheeler, at the time nearly 86 years old, and his son Jack made history when he climbed Africa’s highest peak and the world’s highest freestanding mountain. He began his journey with a three day, 20 mile hike to a base camp at 15,500 where he spent a couple days getting acclimated to the environment and getting ready for the big 9 hour steep climb to the summit. Good stuff.
1901—Happy birthday Charles Stark Draper.
…Call him Doc. He’s known as the father of inertial navigation, according to the International Space Hall of Fame. In the 1930s, Doc Draper founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Instrumentation Laboratory, later renamed the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. By the 1950s it was a booming engineering organization, leading the way of development of the most accurate and reliable guidance systems and instruments for intercontinental ballistic missiles. His guidance and control systems made the Apollo moon landings possible through the Apollo Guidance Computer it designed for NASA. These days, Doc Drapers labs empower nearly 200 startups and small companies in Massachusetts.
1866—J Osterhoudt patents the key opener. Kind of like the can opener, except this one was the can and a key to open it, like the way sardine are packed in cans. BTW the British call it a tin opener. Isn’t that just jolly good.
1833 – The American Anti-Slavery Society,
…or the AASS is founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass was one of its key leaders, and he spoke frequently at meetings. Within five years it would it would grow to 1,350 local chapters with nearly a quarter million members, including the likes of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Theodore Dwight Weld. The AASS would eventually split in 1839. Wiki says Garrison and his followers were more radical than other members. They denounced the US Constitution as supportive of slavery, were against established religion, and insisted on sharing organizational responsibilities with women. Some anti-feminist delegates, who were more lenient when it came to social issues left the society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, who tended to be more conservative on issues regarding organized religion, customary forms of authority, and keeping women out of leadership roles.
BTW the AASS should not be confused with the American Anti-0Slavery Group, which is a modern-day organization that represents the whole world.
1789 – George Washington transmitted the Bill of Rights to the States for ratification.
1945 – Ten year old Elvis Presley makes his first public appearance in a talent show at the Mississippi Alabama Dairy Show singing Old Shep. He wins second place and is awarded 5 bucks and free admission to the fairground rides. Second place! Woooooooow.