FEBRUARY 23

FEBRUARY 23 — 1803 Happy birthday John Sutter; 1972 The Partenon in Nashville becomes a historic landmark; 2008 Lee Redmond wins world record for having the longest fingernails for a female

FEBRUARY 23

1803 – happy birthday John Sutter.

This German born Swiss pioneer of California had his share of ups and downs, starting with his business in Switzerland. Upon its failure, Johann August Sutter deserted his family to head to better opportunities in America.  He didn’t make it to California right away, in fact he pretty much went everywhere but California.

Upon his arrival to New York City, he changed his name to John Sutter and headed to Missouri to become a merchant and innkeeper. His story was that he was a captain in the Royal Swiss Guard of the French king, and he was sticking to it. He believed his fortunes to be out West, joined an expedition to the Cascade Mountains in 1838, and made a detour first into Vancouver, then used the rest of his money to sail to Hawaii in order to charter a boat to San Francisco.

But once he got to Hawaii, he realized he was out of luck since there were no boats going to the Bay Area. John Sutter was stuck in Honolulu     with no money but a lot of confidence in his story about his military record.  He impressed some local businessmen on a project for a merchant base in the Sacramento valley, and he was able to raise funds, supplies, and the support of nine Hawaiians that would sail with John back to the North American west coast.

California was under Mexican ownership during 1839, and John worked a deal with its governor in Monterrey, Juan Alvarado. Given a land grant, Sutter would build a settlement in the central valley and become a Mexican citizen. But what John didn’t know is that the Sacramento valley was full of hostile natives who didn’t take too kind to white man encroaching on their land.

But John carried a sense of diplomacy in his personality and was treated well by the natives, who helped his team build his legendary fort where the American and Sacramento rivers meet.   Starting out as a tent and some straw huts , Sutter’s Fort soon grew to include adobe buildings, and then after another land grant from Governor Alvarado, became John Sutter’s enterprise. As promised, he became a Mexican citizen, and in the summer of 1840, named his empire Nueva Helvetia, or new Switzerland.

Being the entrepreneur he really was, Sutter set up a blacksmith shop, distillery, flour mill, bakery, carpenter shop, and a boat to take supplies to and from the San Francisco Bay.

Cha-Ching.

By 1844 Sutter’s Fort was much more than a trading post, it was a virtual town, with John living in a giant estate.  I

n 1845, the Sacramento Kings started losing basketball games. In 1846, the few remaining members of the Donner party were rescued at taken to Sutter’s Fort. Finally in 1847, John’s buddy James Marshall was working on a sawmill about 50 miles east of the Fort, and discovered the gold nugget that would change the world. Starting with the fort. I go into this in more detail on my January 24^th ep, but basically California was very lawless. If you mined and found gold, you best not let anyone see it or they would beat you and take it.

John’s Native American guards couldn’t withstand the flood of gold seekers from America and the rest of the world. So they, along with everyone else who worked for John, ran to the hills looking for gold. After the 49ers came in and ransacked John’s lands, John would declare bankruptcy in 1852. In order to avoid losing it all, he signed the land over to his son John Sutter Jr., who would use it to start building the city of Sacramento., where the kings have been losing since.

Dammit guys, get it together!

Sutter moved to the area known today as Yuba City, or Yuabcity as the locals called it,   and then he made his way to Washington DC in 1865 where he tried to settle a dispute over his Sobrante Land Grant he got from Governor Alvarado was now null and void. He moved to Pennsylvania in 1871, where his health continued to decline. The courts would rule in Captain Sutter’s favor on June 16, 1880, and award him $50,000.

Two days later, John died of heart failure. His friend and once political ally from the Bear Flag Revolt John Fremont, general of the Union Army during the Civil War and one of California’s first US senators, was one of Sutter’s pallbearers. The New York Times pointed out his rise and falls from the depths of poverty to the wealthiest man on the Pacific Coast. Even though he would lose his fortune, he remained courtly and dignified.

In 2010, California Governor Jerry Brown named his Welsh corgi Sutter Brown.

1955 – SEATO convenes for the first time.

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was formed to help stop communism from spreading in Asia. Part of the Truman Doctrine, SEATO was intended to be like NATO only in the Southeast Asian area. The idea of SEATO interested the Philippines and Thailand, as they too were concerned about communism spreading.

Australia and New Zealand were interested due to their geographical locations relative to Asia. Great Britain certainly didn’t want communism to spread and French had lost their stronghold on Indochina, so they joined. Pakistan were having issues with India, so they joined.

In Vietnam, the communist forces of Ho Chi Minh had taken over North Vietnam, and it was believed by Capitol Hill to be the first domino to fall in President Eisenhower’s domino theory, or the spread of communism in Asia. SEATO became a justification to send US Troops to Vietnam, and like the situation in Vietnam itself, SEATO began falloing apart as well.

It had no lmilitary force like NATO, so it couldn’t take any action. Besides it only had three asian countries as members and began to smell like American imperialism. Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philpippines supplied troops to help south Vietnam, but Great Britain and France wanted nothing to do with the Vietnam situation, and therefore SEATO itself. Pakistan just needed help with India, but America wouldn’t help, so Pakistan left SEATO.

It finally ended in 1976 or1977 depending on who you ask.

1861 – President Lincoln avoids assassination attempt.

Abraham Lincoln was a marked man for being an abolitionist now in charge of the White House. His personal secretary, John Nicolay noticed increased amounts of death threats by means of a bullet, knife, poison ink, and in one case, spider dumpling. The South’s resentment wasn’t limited to LIncoln, it was all of Washington, which they spoke of capturing and doing everything in its power to prevent his inauguration from happening. But Chicago police chief Allan Pinkerton was on top of the situation, and learned that one of his undercover agents heard conversation of an attempt on Lincoln’s life in Baltimore. At wife Mary Todd’s insistence, Abe would quietly take the train to Washington instead of Baltimore, and the assassination attempt was diverted.

1940 – Woody Guthrie write This Land Is Your Land.

Even though he was a bit of a communist, Guthrie turned out to be pretty Patriotic. He wrote the song in response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America, and originally callin his version God Belssed America. He replaced the words in the song’s chorus God Blessed America to This land was made for you & me. There is arecording of two other versus you can find at the Smithsonean. Or online w hich is a lot easier.

Basketball news: 1993 John Stockton gets his 8,000th assist – 4th to do so – Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, and Isiah Thomas 1992 Hakeem Olajuwon gets his 2,000th block – only 5 others had done so – ends career with 3,830 1991 North Carolina is the first NCAA team to win 1,500 games

2008 – Lee Redmond wins the world record for longest fingernails female.

It took her thirty years to grow it. Dare to be different indeed; she used them sometimes to speak in front of junior high classes talking about self-esteem. 28 feet, 4.5 inches. They were trimmed to be round in shape, like an arc, like bendy and twisty like other fingernail record holders. Gross.

No, Lee’s were beautifully manicured, until the day she got in a 4 car pileup while travelling as a passenger in an SUV one day in 2009.

Lee was rushed to the hospital and survived major injuries, but the nails were for the most part gone. Lee came to grips with the fact that she doesn’t need her nails to use as a fence around her beautiful personality.