History WIll Be Kind

'History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Sir Winston Churchill

And write it he did. Churchill was a prolific writer, penning the biography of his ancestor, the Lord of Marlborough; a history of World War One when it was still The World War in the 1920s; and many other books, columns, essays, and treatises.

But his greatest works came later, after the World War Two. He wrote The Second World War during the years after his end-of-war defeat, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples after his second stint as Prime Minister.

The Second World War won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. It remains one of the definitive records of the war.

Dead Anchovies Leave a Stink

Dead Anchovies Leave Putrid Stink in Ore.
The Associated Press Tuesday, July 26, 2005; 8:37 PM
SEASIDE, Ore. -- Millions of dead anchovies have washed up on the banks of the Neawanna River on the northern Oregon Coast, biologists said, giving off a putrid stink of salt water, seaweed and sewage.

Biologists say such mass deaths are perfectly normal, and probably caused in this case by an increased food supply, allowing a greater number of anchovies to be born.
"That's the way nature works," said North Coast Land Conservancy Director Neal Maine. "You get too many, then they take all the oxygen out of the water." In the 1960s, Maine said, so many anchovies died in the river that the bodies were knee-deep.

Seaside Mayor Don Larson said the city is waiting for the tide to remove the bodies. Public health official Lynn McConnell said there are no known health problems from the anchovies, but advises the public to stay away from the fish if possible and wash hands after touching them.

© 2005 The Associated Press

Simply weird. Say goodbye to the tourists for a while.

Electrifying

More weird Canadian news, from the Seattle Times: "Squirrel fires regular occurrence in Canadian border town."

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - Page updated at 08:43 AM
Squirrel fires regular occurrence in Canadian border town
The Associated Press

OSOYOOS, British Columbia — Once again, a squirrel clambering onto a power line has been blamed for a brush fire in this border town north of Oroville, Wash.

Firefighters were summoned Monday after a squirrel scrambled up a Fortis Inc. utility pole, got zapped and landed in flames on some dry brush outside a fruit packing business, Fire Chief Ross Driver said. By the time a pumper truck and a bush truck arrived, nearby residents had doused the flames.

"This identical incident has happened on the same pole one or two times a year for the past several years," Driver said.

Each time, firefighters find a dead, burned squirrel at the base of the utility pole, he said. Driver said he didn't know what Fortis could do to prevent future squirrel-caused fires.

Simply shocking.

Why would squirrels be attempting to sabotage our electrical infrastructure? Are there secret Al Qaeda suicide squirrel training camps in the border country of Washington and British Columbia?

It's a conspiracy, I tell ya...

Hat tip: Dust My Broom.

Pioneer Day

Happy 24th of July!

Today Utahns celebrate the arrival of the Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley.

(Actually, we celebrate tomorrow, since the 24th fell on a Sunday this year.)

The date of July 24th, 1847 is significant in our state and cultural histories, as the first group of permanent settlers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. When the pioneers arrived, not even American Indians lived in the valley, having forsaken it for the lusher and greener valley surrounding Utah Lake to the south.

For the Mormons, at long last this was trail's end. Years of struggle and sorrow had brought them here. After trying to found and grow their church for seventeen years, they had been driven from their homes in Ohio and Missouri, and again from Nauvoo, Illinois. They had endured despite the loss of their leader, the Prophet Joseph Smith, murdered in the jail at Carthage, Illinois in 1844, and the deprivations which culminated in the final expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo in the winter of 1846. Somehow, their faith held on as they followed the new prophet Brigham Young away from the frontier of the United States and into the wilds of the American West.

Here, in the tops of the mountains, they would make their home.

Steve Greenwood, www.saltlakephotos.com