History & Comment for June 11, 2025

 A look at historical and current events on this day, comment and humor so dry it would make a camel thirsty. 

Transcript

This is History and Comment for Wednesday the 11th of June 2025

British explorer James Cook is the first European to sight the Great Barrier Reef off of the North and East Coast of Australia.   How far before this date is uncertain,  but he runs aground on this day in 1770 and the repairs will take seven weeks. 

The Continental Congress appoints the Committee of Five to draft the declaration of Independence.  You know most of the names Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin,   Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston are more unknowns.   Roger Sherman was a lawyer and at 55 years old was the second oldest member behind Franklin.  He is the only founding father to sign all four of the founding documents. 

Robert Livingston was a delegate from New York and while he help draft the Declaration, he was recalled to New York before he could sign it.   He was the person who administered the Oath of Office to President Washington. 

Ethnic tensions have been an issue around the world since before written history of that point we can be certain.  The midigating factor was often distance.   Here in America be have tried to bring ethnic neighborhoods in to much closer proximity.  Often with bad results.    

Boston was a tender box in 1837 with an influx of Irish immigrants.   They were desperate and willing to work for lower wages and a strange religion only heightened the tensions.    A fire brigade returning to quarters got into a scuffle with a group of Irish.    How much alcohol may have been involved by both sides is of some debate.   The initial mix-up was made worse when the fire captain had the fire bells rung calling for assistance.    One fire rig responding to the believed emergency ran through an irish funeral procession  and things went down hill from there.   The event will help push Boston to a full-time paid fire department. 

1892,   One of the first film studios is established in Melbourne, Australia.   

The film industry can be interesting and by extension television production.   I was watching an episode of Emergency!.  That was a fire rescue series that ran for seven seasons from 1972 to 79.   The series premise was a Paramedic Rescue Squad based with LA County Fire Department.    LA County a few years earlier had pioneered the idea of advanced on-scene medical care and the show help spread the concept through out the nation.    But I digress,   on this episode Squad 51 responds to an accident on a film lot.   Not unusual for LA County.  The scenario was a boat had fell off of a wooden support and trapped a victim.   In a wide shot of the boat, showed a hull number PT73.   That would have been a prop from the early 1960s series McHale’s navy,  still on a lot a decade later.   It helps to have a cluttered mind to notice such details 

106 years ago, Sir Barton becomes the first horse to win the US Triple Crown.  That has only happened 13 times in total.  His grand sire was an English triple crown winner. It is said the horse had a terribly grumpy personality and hated humans, except for his groomer. 

The recent Presidential election saw  a massive bait and switch when Biden dropped out very late in the process.   The way parties choose their candidate has changed a few times over our history.   Early on, it was by a congressional caucus.   For the longest period it was by the party power brokers, the Primary elections system did not slowly emerge until the early 20th century and it was the 1960 primary of John F. Kennedy where he leveraged his wide support in the Primaires to get a first ballot nomination.     On this day in 1920 Republican bosses gather at their convention to settle on Warren Harding as their candidate.  The Associated Press claimed the political maneuvering occurred in a “smoke-filled room”   in the days of cigars and common tobacco use indoors that was a well-understood concept of a long close meeting.    The same year the Democrates took 44 ballots to settle on James Cox of Ohio for President and Franklin Roosevelt as VP.

The idea of radio as a primary form of information and entertainment is largely gone.   It is debated if a small town local radio station can sustain itself.   For much of the middle section of the 20th century national and regional radio programs were a major element in entertainment.  From the late 50’s into the 1980s.   Local radio stations with local news, weather and sports were extremely popular and more times than not profitable.    Government deregulation in the early 80s prompted a wave of mergers and buyouts.  Personal computer driven automation systems and national DJ feeds that could sound local help to kill local programing.   Still later the internet brought news and music to smaller devices.   Today local radio is nearly dead. 

But that is not the main story.    There are two type of radio signals the early AM or amplitude modulation was relatively simple circuitry that operated on lower frequencies.    A low power station could reach a local audience, but due to the frequency range, strange things happened at night.    The signal could bounce off layers in the atmosphere and be heard hundreds of miles away.    Higher power stations at night could be heard across much of the nation.    Wolfman Jack became a national name while broadcasting of XERF.  This was a station just across the Mexican border from DelRio Texas, that did not operate under US rules which limited power, frequency assignments and interference between stations. XERF was a 250,000 watt border blaster that could be heard in nearly the entire continental US.   

Again we have fallen down a rabbit hole.   The Radio story of the day in Edwin Armstrong demonstrates FM broadcasting in 1936.   FM employs a different modulation concept where the frequency shifted slightly,   as opposed to AM where the strength shifted.  FM also used a higher frequency band and was not prone to sky waves and skip.    FM will provide a much cleaner sound and allow for stereo signals.   From the 1970s on it will be the choice for music radio. 

The USS Missouri the last of the large Battleships is commissioned on this day in 1944.  The battleship was the power on the high seas until the advent of the aircraft carrier.   It is said that in the early days of naval aviation the big boat folks saw airplanes as a novelity and of little practical use.  A Battleship could propel a 15 inch shell 15 miles with a very high degree of accuracy.   That is 15 inches in diameter and weighing a thousand pounds or more.   During a demonstration of early aircrafts capabilies a squadron of airplanes bombed a decommissioned battle ship to the point sinking.   Some Admirals cried.

In a speech from the Oval Office  President John F Kennedy proposed the Civil Rights Act in 1963.  We could have a very long discussion about this. Kennedy is revered as a great Democrat, yet this landmark bill was passed on more regional basis than party.  If you look at party it had more universal support from Republicans than Democrats.    The clear contrast was the 11 hard core Confederate States were strongly opposed and they were overwhelmingly democrat.   

During computer boom Compaq gave other manufactures a good race for awhile.   In 1998 they buy the mainframe computer company Digital Equipment Corp of $9 Billion dollars.  This might have contributed to their downfall. At the time it was the largest high tech merger in history.  Compaq will be overtaken in the computer race by Dell and eventually sold to Hewlett Packard. 

It is too late to start another topic but I have several things in my stack of stuff.  

More on Pride month and the concept of Hate Speech.  

Religion and why we think most people go to heaven.

And the LA Riots.   

Birthdays today….:

French explorer Jacques Cousteau in 1910.   To facilitate his ocean work, he was a co-inventor of the aqua lung which is the precursor to all modern scuba devices.    Teathered diving of various types had been around for centuries but the rope and hose to the surface greatly limited mobility of the diver.  The aqua-lung took a supply of high pressure air with the diver and reduced it down to usable pressures on demand.   

Actor Gene Wilder in 1933,  he frequently teamed up with director Mel Brooks.   Except for the original edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  

Former Football Quarterback Joe Montana is 69.  

Actor Hugh Laurie is 66.   He has an extension resume in film and television.  Much of it in his native England.    Here in the states he appeared in the 1996 live action version of 101 Dalmatians as the burglar Jasper Badun.   As Mr. Little in the two Stuart Little films and 7 season as the lead in the medical drama House.   He is known of a very convincing American accent on screen. 

Heart surgeon and television personality Mehmet Oz is 65 today.  If the name is unusual he is a first generation American. His parents are from Turkey and he holds dual citizenship.   

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