Best line of the night, so far

“Poll of historians shows 60% of them think Bush is the worst president ever, 98% think he is a ‘failure’. Poll results show he did keep one campaign promise: he is a uniter, not a divider”

FARK.com

Here’s the background on the poll from History News Network.

Shiloh

The first great battle of the American Civil War began on this date in 1862. The Union Army, under Grant, was encamped in a poorly chosen position at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee,. They were attacked by Confederates under Johnston and Beauregard early Sunday, April 6. By the end of the day, Confederates had catured the key position of Shiloh church and driven Union lines nearly to the Tennessee River. Grant, reinforced by Buell, counter attacked Monday morning, regained the lost ground, and forced the Confederates to retreat to Corinth, Mississippi. It was ostensibly a Union victory, though Grant was faulted for a lack of precaution that led to the first day’s disaster. Under criticism to remove Grant, Lincoln replied, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.”

According to James M. McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom:

The 20,000 killed and wounded at Shiloh (about equally distributed between the two sides) were nearly double the 12,000 battle casualties at [First] Manassas, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Donelson, and Pea Ridge combined.

Shiloh was the beginning of total war.

Gravatars

If you’d like a little image to show up next to your comments (very small in the Latest Comments section in the sidebar, not so small next to the actual comment), you will need to sign up for a Gravatar — a Globally Recognized Avatar.

Sign up requires an email address and a password, uploading the image you want to use (and cropping it), a few other minor tweaks, and voila wherever you comment using that email address the image (the gravatar) will appear — well, it will appear if the particular website or blog is configured for gravatars, as NewMexiKen now is.

The hardest part for me was choosing an image — something I still haven’t settled on.

Just making stuff up

The news media can’t even decide when Charlton Heston was born (see earlier post), but The Writer’s Almanac has the birthday of Sacajawea. I didn’t even know the Shoshone were keeping birth certificates in 1786.

It’s the birthday of the Shoshone woman Sacajawea, born in Idaho (1786), who served as interpreter for Lewis and Clark’s expedition (1804). Born to a Shoshone chief, kidnapped at 10 by the Hidatsa tribe, and sold into slavery, she was then bought by a French Canadian trapper named Charbonneau, who married her. When Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau to guide them to the Pacific, his teenage wife — with her two-month-old baby on her back — was part of the package. Officially she acted as interpreter, speaking half a dozen Indian languages, but she also knew which wilderness plants were edible and saved the explorers’ records when their boat overturned. She served as camp cook, housekeeper, and peacemaker with the watchful tribes they met along their way.

Of course, Sacajawea did NOT serve as a guide in 1804. Lewis and Clark didn’t even meet Charbonneau until the winter of 1804-1805. And, of course, the two-month old (in April 1805) was a nine-month-old by the time they wintered 1805-1806 near present-day Astoria, Oregon.

Whatever.

We can’t go anywhere from here except south

Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson reached the North Pole 99 years ago today. They were the first known to do so.

Charlton Heston

In case you’ve noticed the discrepancy in various news reports, Charlton Heston’s birth year seems to be either 1923 or 1924. (In either case he was born on October 4.) Why no enterprising obituary writer saw fit to check some vital records is beyond me.

April 6th

Today is the birthday

… of Andre Previn. The composer-conducter and 13-time Oscar nominee — he won for Gigi, Porgy and Bess, Irma la Douce and My Fair Lady — is 79. Previn was married to Mia Farrow for most of the 1970s. They had three children and adopted three more.

… of Merle Haggard. The Country Music Hall of Fame inductee is 71.

Haggard has recorded more than 600 songs, about 250 of them his own compositions. (He often shares writing credits as gestures of financial and personal largess.) He has had thirty-eight #1 songs, and his “Today I Started Loving You Again” (Capitol, 1968) has been recorded by nearly 400 other artists.

In addition, Haggard is an accomplished instrumentalist, playing a commendable fiddle and a to-be-reckoned-with lead guitar. He and the Strangers played for Richard Nixon at the White House in 1973, at a barbecue on the Reagan ranch in 1982, at Washington’s Kennedy Center, and 60,000 miles from earth—courtesy of astronaut Charles Duke, who brought a tape aboard Apollo 16 in 1972. Haggard has won numerous CMA and ACM Awards including both organizations’ 1970 Entertainer of the Year awards, been nominated for scores of others, was elected to the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1977, and won Country Music Hall of Fame membership in 1994. In 1984 he won a Grammy in the Best Country Vocal Performance, Male category for “That’s the Way Love Goes.” (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)

… of Billy Dee Williams. Lando Calrissian is 71. Williams played Gale Sayers in the classic 1971 TV movie Brian’s Song.

“There’s always been a lot of misunderstanding about Lando’s character. I used to pick up my daughter from elementary school and get into arguments with little children who would accuse me of betraying Han Solo.”

… of Barry Levinson. The six-time Oscar nominee (writing, directing) won for best director for Rain Man. He’s 66.

… of John Ratzenberger. Best known as Cliff Clavin the mailman on Cheers, Ratzenberger is also the voice of Hamm the Piggy Bank in the Toy Story movies and Yeti in Monsters, Inc. Ratzenberger is 61.

… of Jason Hervey. Wayne Arnold of “The Wonder Years” is 36.

… of Zach Braff. He’s 33 today.