Friday, August 22, 2014
Saturday, August 22, 1914. British at Mons.
Austro Hungaria declared war on Belgium.
The French lost 10,000 colonial troops dead at the Battle of Rossignol.
The British Expeditionary Corps reached Mons. Cavalryman Captain Charles Beck Hornby was the first British soldier to kill a German soldier using his sword. Drummer Edward Thomas of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards was the British solider to fire a shot, becoming the first British soldier to do so on the European mainland for 99 years.
That even 99 years prior was at Waterloo, also in Belgium.
The Germans finished destroying Kalisz, Poland.
Combined British and French forces defeated the Germans at Chra, Togoland. The Germans suffered largescale desertions.
Last edition:
Friday, August 21, 1914. Zapata warns about Carranza.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Friday, August 21, 1914. Zapata warns about Carranza.
Emiliano Zapata wrote to Lucio Blanco:
that this Carranza does not inspire much confidence in me. I see in him much ambition, and an inclination to fool the people.
Blanco and staff, 1913. Blanco was an artillery officer, and the first of the Mexican revolutionary commanders to redistribute hacienda land to peasantry. He was murdered in Mexico's revolutionary strife in 1922.
Zapata also wrote to Pancho Villa to warn him that Carranza's ambitions were dangerous and likely to another war.
The French fought the Germans in the Ardennes, Luxembourgian border and on the Sambre River in Belgium.
A German night attack on Dinant lead the German forces to erroneously believe that the city was full of hostile civilians.
The Germans lost two zeppelins on their first mission, making it three zeppelins lost in a row. French cavalry actually attacked and looted one of the crashed zeppelins.
German colonials troops captured Laï from the French in what is now Chad.
Pvt. John Parr, a 17 year old reconnaissance bicyclist, became the first British soldier to be killed on the Western Front when he was killed in an encounter with German cavalry.
Albanian rebels took Vlorë.
Captain Robert Bartlett met Burt McConnell, secretary for Canadian Arctic Expedition leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson, at Point Barrow, Alaska, who exchanged information on the stranded and missing.
Boston Red Sox.
There was a solar eclipse.
Last edition:
Thursday, August 20, 1914. Carranza enters Mexico City. The Germans enter Brussels.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Thursday, August 20, 1914. Carranza enters Mexico City. The Germans enter Brussels.
Venustiano Carranza and his supporters entered Mexico City to set up a new Mexican left wing Constitutionalist government, backed by Álvaro Obregón. Residents of the city turned out in mass to see the procession head to the Presidential Palace.
The Germans entered Brussels.
The Siege of Namur began. So did the Battles of Sarrebourg, Morhange and Gubinnen.
The Germans ordered the evacuation of East Prussia.
St. Pope Pius X died. His last words were "Together in one: all things in Christ," referencing his motto.
Born in an Italian speaking region of the Austro Hungarian Empire which is now part of Italy he was a strong opponent of modernist interpretation of theology, he initiated the preparation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. He was responsible for the lowering of the age for First Communion and promoted a Thomist approach to philosophical inquiry in Catholic institutions.
Last edition:
Wednesday, August 19, 1914. Sitting it out.
Today In Wyoming's History: History in the Making: The 2014 Primary Election
Today In Wyoming's History: History in the Making: The 2014 Primary Election: The 2014 Wyoming Primary occurred yesterday. The election was one of the most remarkable in recent history in that it featured the near co...
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Wednesday, August 19, 1914. Sitting it out.
Wilson had already noted American neutrality, but today he formally declared it in an address to the nation through an address to Congress.
My Fellow-Countrymen:
I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked himself, during these last troubled weeks, what influence the European war may exert upon the United States, and I take the liberty of addressing a few words to you in order to point out that it is entirely within our own choice what its effects upon us will be and to urge very earnestly upon you the sort of speech and conduct which will best safeguard the Nation against distress and disaster.
The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. The spirit of the Nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and magazines contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions on the street.
The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the United States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to its Government should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself in impulse and opinion if not in action.
Such divisions among us would be fatal to our peace of mind and might seriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend.
I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men's souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.
My thought is of America. I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest wish and purpose of every thoughtful American that this great country of ours, which is, of course, the first in our thoughts and in our hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a Nation fit beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a Nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.
Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the restraints which will bring to our people the happiness and the great and lasting influence for peace we covet for them?
Last edition:
Tuesday, August 18, 1914. Lady Teacher for Lincoln County. Neutrality for the US.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Fancy?
Every summer there's some song that hits and becomes the big song of the summer. This summer it seems to be "Iggy" Azalea's "Fancy".
I only note this due to the odd use of terms and the way their conceived of. This is a hip hop song, I guess, and that's not a genera that I've ever liked, save for a couple of odd instances. I don't like this song, and I wouldn't under probably under any circumstances. But Fancy?
Notable in the work are the following lyrics: "Let's get drunk on the mini bar."
That's not fancy. That's trashy. There is a difference
Tuesday, August 18, 1914. Lady Teacher for Lincoln County. Neutrality for the US.
The Lincoln County School District requested a "lady teacher" from the University of Wyoming for the Cumberland Mining Camp. (UW History Calendar).
Lincoln County is remote now, and it would have been even more so in 1914.
The Imperial Russian Army invaded the Austrian Crownland of Galicia, or Austrian Poland (it's now in Poland and Ukraine.
The French captured bridges over the Rhine as well as taking large numbers of German soldiers in Alsace.
President Wilson declared the United States to be strictly neutral in the war developing in Europe and spreading the globe.
Last edition:
Monday, August 17, 1914. Russia invades Prussia.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Monday, August 17, 1914. Russia invades Prussia.
The Russian First Army invaded Prussia.
The French First Army took Sarrebourg.
Last edition:
Sunday, August 16, 1914. Not going according to plan.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Things I've learned from being an author
As some might know, a while back a book of mine was published. Just a minor work, but nonetheless. I'm trying to finish another, but work has been setting me back.
My book.
Having had a book published has taught me a few things, some of which reinforced what I already knew, and other things which I did not. Here's a few observations.
Writing is hard work.
I write all the time. I'm nearly compulsive at it. From time to time people will ask me, for example, how much time I spend writing these blog entries. Next to none is the answer. I'm an extremely rapid typist and generally know what I'm going to say before I say it, so it doesn't take much time at all. Most of these entries are written early in the morning after I've had breakfast and before I go to work, which itself is pretty darned early as a rule.
At work, as I'm a trial lawyer, I write a lot as well. I have a lot of days where I basically write all day long until I get home from work.
But, what surprised me, is that writing a book, on your own time, takes piles of discipline. And it's often the case that after a full day at work, I can hardly sit down in the evening and write a sentence.
I'm an extremely shy person.
People who've known me since I was a kid know this. I'm an introvert and I'm shy. And by that I mean I'm genuinely shy.
What people often fail to appreciate about shy people is that almost all of them can, and do, check their shyness at their occupational door and proceed through their tasks unhindered. That's why there are a lot of people in public roles who are rip snorting shy, but that's generally unknown. There are shy actors, shy musicians, shy public persons. Actor James Garvin, for example, who recently died was quite shy.
In my case, I meet with a lot of people in an average week and I'm told that I seem really interactive and talkative with my clients. I don't observe that to be the case myself, but I suspect that's true. My father was a very shy man but he interacted with people all the time, and I can vividly recall him doing that, which he did on a daily basis.
Where it catches up with you, basically, is on your off time. That's where the shyness comes back in. And I've learned that here as I'm not only shy, I'm pretty modest.
A modest person shouldn't really claim to be modest, but if its a genuine attribute, you might be modest and be aware of it. I have a relatively good idea of what I've done and accomplished, but I don't really say a whole lot about it, that's the combination of shyness and modesty. Years ago, for example, I was in the start of a trial and an opposing lawyer, who had studied up on me, asked me if I was part of a group that had tried a certain number of cases. I'm not. "How many cases have you tried?" was her then question. "I don't know" was the answer. I really don't. I could figure it out, and have from time to time, and its a large number. But I don't keep a running tab, to paint on the side of my fuselage like I'm a P-51 Mustang pilot in World War Two or something. That lawyer was amazed. She later noted "You try everything". I don't, but I have tried a lot of cases to juries and interact with them pretty well, but don't talk that up. The point being, that you can know what you've done without talking it up much.
But I didn't think that most folks I know would realize I'd written a book, but they figured it out pretty quickly. And so I'm asked a lot about it, and it always embarrasses me. Some tease me in a good natured way. I have a hard time talking to anyone about it.
I have also found that I have a very hard time being in a public setting regarding my work. That's odd, but true. As an author you have to do that, which I didn't really realize, and its an odd experience for me. It's one thing to be in a courtroom on another's cause, it's another thing to be signing your own works or talking about them.
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