History & Comment for October 6, 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 Monday the 6th of October 2025. 

If the other day was light on news. The 6th is a vacuum.   The only historical event of note I could find for the day was Swedish Soprano Jenny Lind was born in 1820.   Even that might go unnoticed unless you have seen the film The Greatest Showman which is a biography of P. T Barnum.   Lind was well known in Europe, where Barnum met her while he was touring there.    He decided to bring her to America and planned a 150 show tour.   The film gets that correct but strongly suggest a romantic element that may not be accurate.    Hey its Hollywood.   The facts may be more moral, Lind who was raising money for charity,   exercised a clause in her contract with Barnum to end the tour at an early point.  Feeling Barnum was getting a excessive sum.    In fact the pair both profited handsomely from the tour and split the proceeds about 60 /40 in favor of Barnum.    Estimates are the 93 shows netted the pair about $30,000,000 in today’s dollars.     This was in the 1850’s  a couple of decades before Barnum began his circus career.  

Instagram is 15 years old today.  

Chicagoland native Kevin Cronin  is 74 today.   He used to tenor voice to lead the band REO Speedwagon on a few trips up the charts in the late 70s and early 80s.  

Beyond the trivial we like to use this forum to discuss religion and politics, but in a larger sense we are talking about human nature, what drives it and the options and solutions.   Last week I alluded to a conversation that was going bad places quickly.  The other person was suggesting among his points that morality is possible without God.   That is an argument that sounds nice, but humans have a strong tendency to revert to a very basic nature when the circumstances align.   It takes far more than humanist morality to keep humans civil let alone moral.   

Saturday evening a friend sent a couple of videos out of Pigeon Forge / Seiverville area.  That is a tourist mecca.  They routinely hold conventions and deal with large groups of people.     This weekend was an annual foreign and exotic car show, called SLAMMEDENUFF.   The event is held at an indoor convention center and each year draws a large crowd.    That is not the problem, it is the spontaneous gatherings of cars and crowds in various parking lots around the area.   Officials and law enforcement try to keep these to a minimum.    

LEOs get very uneasy, with any large spontaneous gathering.    Humans have a strong tendency to add alcohol to such events and become unruly and loud.   Normally civil folks begin acting and doing things that are completely out of control.   They very quickly devolve into mob rule.   My Father was fond of saying that one boy is all boy,  two boys are about half a boy and three or more, there is no boy left.  We could restate that as brains and common sense decrease as the amount of testosterone increases.  

The crowds in Pigeon Forge teetered Saturday Night on an outright riot and the final show  on Sunday was cancelled.   The future of the event is in question.  While that local community thrives on tourism, the nature and size of the crowd raised concerns.   The exact details are vague and the problem seems to have been centered on the lot of a single store that actually catered to these spontaneous gatherings.   Things were getting too volatile for comfort.   Local officials felt it was wise to cancel the final day.   From what I have seen that may have been a bit of over caution.   

My friend is correct, you can roughly gauge the character of a large crowd by their corporate actions.   Or the damage they leave in their wake.   There is a body of antedotal evidence from large gatherings over a number of locations and years. Mardi Gras in New Orleans is famous for it’s revelry,  but at dawn the next morning it is also infamous for its mountains of trash, much of it strewn on the streets.   Gatherings on the National Mall are also popular. Those that track such data note that some crowds leave behind more debris per capita than others.   

The simple fact is humans will behave like beast in large crowds.   We loose our inhibitions especially when others are doing the same things. Where we are egged on by others. Conversely, Law Enforcement also has a mob mentally and a hair trigger.   The two do not mix well.

The Middle East Peace effort is teetering at best.   There are detailed discussions on the process of releasing the 20 living hostages and turning over the bodies of another 28 that died in captivity.   This portion of the process should be a no brainer.   Hamas if they want peace, which they do not,  should drive them to the gate and hand them over with great pomp and circumstance.   It is a war crime that they took a large number of hostages almost two years ago. Let alone let a large number of them die.