The FReeper Foxhole Profiles the Homefront and "Joe Palooka" - Jan. 2nd, 2005

American History Magazine ^ | T. Wayne Waters

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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Joe Palooka Goes To War



Joe Palooka is Born

In 1940, one man saw the gathering war clouds and decided to forgo his career and enlist in the United States Army. His name was Joe Palooka-and he was a comic strip character.

It is November 1940 and boxer Joe Palooka is in Cuba. A local promoter offers him a lucrative opportunity in Havana. "Sorry-but I got other plans," the fighter says.

Knobby Walsh, his manager, is astonished. "Are ya nuts?" he demands. "We kin have a wonderful time here for a month an' then git a load of jack!"

"I got other plans," Palooka repeats. "I'm gonna enlist in the army."

"But kid," Knobby protests, "if they want ya they'll draft ya. Ya got plenty of time fer that. You registered!"

"I know," Palooka says stubbornly, "but I'm goin' anyway." Knobby looks crestfallen. "I-I would too if they'd take me," he stammers.

And so it was that Joe Palooka, the heavyweight champion in one of the country's most popular comic strips, began blazing a trail for the many thousands of Americans who would soon don uniforms and fight on World War II battlefields. Other comic strip heroes would enlist and fight in the war, but Joe Palooka did it first.



Palooka, the lovable, laudable, squeaky-clean comic strip boxer created by Hammond "Ham" Fisher, made his newspaper debut on April 19, 1930, a little less than six months after the stock market crash of 1929. In that first series, readers saw Joe become heavyweight boxing champion by knocking out the dastardly Jack McSwatt with a powerful right and a spirited "WHOOPEEEEE!"

The Palooka comic strip scored big with the American public, even as he underwent a stunning personal transformation, changing from ugly, dark-haired, bug-eyed, and quite stupid to handsome, blond, clear-eyed, and merely inarticulate. By the late 1930s, the strip appeared in more than 500 newspapers and had an estimated 50 million followers.

Even as Palooka enjoyed great popularity in the United States, much of the world was teetering on the brink of war. Japan attacked China in 1937, the next step in a decade of aggressive moves Japan had made in Asia. In Europe, Adolf Hitler became more belligerent, "annexing" Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938, then seizing the rest of the Czech homeland. In September 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland, and World War II began.



Many Americans still had clear and unpleasant memories of World War I, and the country remained vigorously isolationist, with public opinion opposed to the nation's entering another foreign war. Like it or not, though, the conflict was going to involve the United States, and the country needed to prepare for it. Joe Palooka, all-American bastion of honesty, humility, courage, and devotion to duty, came along at just the right time to do his nation proud.

Ham Fisher came up with the idea for Joe Palooka in 1921 when he encountered a big, burly, and inarticulate boxer outside a poolroom in the struggling young illustrator's hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. As Fisher told it years later in the pages of Collier's magazine, "Here, made to order, was the comicstrip character I had been looking for-a big, good-natured prize fighter who didn't like to fight; a defender of little guys; a gentle knight-I ran back to the office, drew a set of strips and rushed to the newspaper syndicates."



Editors and newspaper syndicators resisted the charms of the amiable but dim-witted pugilist that Fisher first considered naming Joe Dumbelletski or Joe the Dumbbell. For the next decade Fisher fine-tuned his strip and shopped it around, and he eventually settled on the name Palooka for his boxer. The word is of uncertain origin. In 1945's The American Language: Supplement 1, H.L. Mencken credited baseball player and writer Jack Conway with coining it to mean a "thirdrater." The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word's origin to 1925 and a book by H.C. Witwer called Roughly Speaking. In any case, the word was certainly used verbally before it ever saw print. Once Fisher finally sold his Palooka strip it took off quickly. Within 25 days he placed it in 30 big-city newspapers. Readers found Joe's "common man" persona appealing. He was unpretentious and had a strong work ethic. He possessed integrity along with smalltown simplicity and morals. And he fought off scores of crooked, mean, cursing (#!$#!) contenders with names like Ruffy Balonki, Red Rodney, and the aforementioned Jack McSwatt.

The Palooka strip included various curious but lovable supporting characters. There was Knobby Walsh, the boxer's cynical, not-quite-trustworthy, yet somehow endearing manager and bestfriend. Fisher modeled him on a Wilkes-Barre cigar store owner. There was Smokey, the valet, at first a racist caricature rendered as a shuffling, subservient blackface. Like his buddy, Smokey underwent a transformation as he slowly lost some of his stereotypical characteristics and became a trusted sparring partner and friend to the champ throughout the 1930s. He remained one of the few black characters in comics until he suddenly disappeared from the strip in the early 1940s. Joe also had a love interest in the beautiful, ever faithful, ever chaste Ann Howe, the sophisticated daughter of a cheese tycoon. She loved Joe for his admirable integrity and despite his obvious lack of education and their different backgrounds.



Never much of a cartoonist himself, Fisher eventually began to farm out the strip to a number of assistants. The story goes, though, that Fisher insisted that only he draw the faces on Joe and Knobby, so the assistants would always leave blank features on those two characters. One of Fisher's illustrators was Al Capp, who would go on to create L'il Abner. Capp and Fisher later carried on an ugly feud that sometimes spilled over into their respective strips.

Boxing was a very popular sport in the 1930s, and so the fight sequences in the Palooka strip were often delightfully long, drawn-out affairs with lots of THUD! POW! and SOCK! Fisher typically described the action in print as if it were vocalized by a ringside radio announcer. "There's the bell . . . sixth round coming up . . . Palooka rushes in close . . . Rodney tries to keep him away ... but Palooka sends a short right to the body ... and a left to the head . . . aaaaand Rodney's down. The referee is sending Palooka to a neutral corner ... Rodney didn't take a count . . . he's getting up . . . Palooka is waved back in . . . he's shooting both hands like pistons . . . there goes a right to the chin ... that must be it ......



Joe left boxing behind for one of the most popular of the Palooka storylines from the 1930s, when Joe and Smokey enlisted in the French Foreign Legion after falling out with Knobby and losing the championship. The story shifted to a desert outpost in North Africa where Joe and Smokey endured the harsh and rigorous conditions of military service in the gritty unit and unforgiving climate. Fisher played out the Foreign Legion saga over six months in 1938, putting Joe in one dangerous adventure after another while finding ways to throw in a fistfight or two along the way. Toward the end of the storyline, Fisher had Joe falsely accused of desertion and sentenced to be shot. At this dramatic juncture, the cartoonist decided it was time to bring his hero home but discovered an interesting dilemma. In the strip Joe had enlisted in the Foreign Legion for five years, and Fisher felt it would harm the wholesome boxer's image if he reneged on his commitment.



To get out of this bind, Fisher contacted White House secretaries Stephen Early and Marvin McIntyre to see if President Franklin D. Roosevelt would agree to "appear" in the strip and extricate Joe and Smokey from their predicament. The White House agreed, and FDR showed up in the Palooka strip on two consecutive days in June 1938 to obtain Joe's release from the Foreign Legion and a full pardon from the French president for the desertion charges.

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[snippy_about_it]

..........

Part 2: "The Soldier's Best Friend"



By this time Joe Palooka was featured in newspapers in more than 20 countries. Even as Great Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Britons remained obsessed with Joe's adventures. When a wartime shortage of newsprint forced Britain's newspapers to scale back their editions, the editors at the London Star cancelled the newspaper's contract for the Palooka strip. Response from British fans was so vociferous that the paper sent a cable to the comic's syndication company. "War or no war, space or no space, London demands Joe Palooka," it read. "Please ship by Clipper immediately."

Yet not even Joe Palooka could protect London from German bombs. Following the German assault that quickly overwhelmed Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in the spring and early summer of 1940, Hitler turned his attention to Great Britain as the Luftwaffe tried to bomb the island nation into submission.

With war clouds spreading, in September 1940 the U.S. Congress, at Roosevelt's urging, enacted the Selective Training and Service Act, the first peacetime draft in American history. Two months later, Fisher's all-American hero decided to enlist. He made his choice between the army and the navy, Joe admitted, by flipping a coin. Joe Palooka became the first comic strip character to sign up, a move that may have helped persuade some young Americans to do likewise.

Fisher immediately began communicating patriotic messages in the Palooka strip, and the U.S. Army responded with encouragement. Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson furnished Fisher with a letter that allowed the cartoonist to tour army training camps and gather information for his strip. Soon, Palooka was reporting to Fort Dix for basic training, and he eventually helped instruct new recruits. As he told an army buddy, "The world's gotta be rid of fascists ev'rewhere! !"



When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Fisher wasted no time getting his hero into action. One strip published soon after the United States entered World War II saw Joe heading overseas on a troopship. During a boxing exhibition en route, Joe's sparring partner fell overboard. The good-hearted boxer plunged into the ocean to rescue him but instead found himself facing a surfacing U-boat. Joe climbed aboard, subdued the German vessel's officers as they clambered one by one from the conning tower, and captured the submarine-all while still clad in his boxing trunks.

It was February 1942 before Joe actually reached a battlefield, and Fisher took the opportunity to deliver a typically patriotic message. In this strip, Palooka was in a ramshackle house with another soldier, both attempting to shoot German snipers. As the action quiets and the two soldiers converse, Joe exclaims, "I like how labor an' employers is workin' t'gether now -we gotta depend on them as much as they gotta depend on us."

Fisher kept Joe in the thick of the action. Later in 1942 Palooka became trapped behind enemy lines in France following a commando raid. He managed to make it to England where he helped out British Intelligence on an important mission. At other times Joe fought with the Allies in North Africa, was wounded after parachuting into partisan Yugoslavia and joining forces with a patriot guerrilla army there, and finally reached the Dutch East Indies toward the end of his service. During his North African adventure Joe shot an escaping Nazi soldier in the back. This questionable act from the clean cut bastion of American fair play upset a number of readers who wrote to newspapers expressing their dismay. But perhaps Joe had merely taken to heart what his pal Jerry Leemy had told him sometime earlier: "Aren't we fightin' the dirtiest scum th' world ever seen fer gosh sakes??"

Millions of people on the home front followed Joe's adventures, but U.S. service personnel read them too in publications such as Yank and Stars and Stripes. An article by S.J. Monchak in the September 19, 1942, edition of Editor & Publisher noted the contribution that the nation's syndicated cartoonists made to maintaining the morale of civilians and soldiers alike. Monchak singled out Fisher's strip, saying the material in it was so authentic "that Palooka soon became known throughout the ranks as the soldier's best friend."



The armed services also used Pfc. Palooka's likeness in training manuals, recruitment materials, guides to invaded countries, and in hygiene instruction. When the army wanted to use the patriotic pugilist to explain the workings of the Officer Candidate School (OCS) in the strip, they offered Fisher an officer's commission for Joe. Fisher turned the offer down, not wanting to ruin Palooka's "common man" appeal. Fisher did devote some Sunday pages to the OCS, but Joe never rose above the rank of private first class.

And of course Fisher encouraged civilians to pull together in a united effort in the fight against German and Japanese aggression. Joe made numerous pronouncements about the importance of activity on the home front and took a stand against racism. "Anybuddy back home who's spreadin' intolerance against any person bucuz of his race, creed or color is spreadin' Nazi principals," Palooka said. Fisher also had Knobby find work in a defense plant while Ann became a Red Cross worker.



Joe Palooka remained popular after the war. The army used him in an educational comic book designed to assist soldiers in readjusting to civilian life. He also began appearing in his own comic book for the general public. A series of two-reel short films featured Joe Kirkwood as the good-natured boxer from 1946 until 1951, while a short-lived TV series ran in 1954. Ham Fisher, depressed and in ill health, committed suicide in 1955, but a number of artists continued the strip until 1984. In those postwar years Joe left boxing behind, married Ann, and raised a family in Connecticut. There he lived out his comic strip life as he had conducted himself in the military-with unfailing humility, decency, honesty, and devotion to duty.

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Today's Educational Sources and suggestions for further reading:

www.thehistorynet.com

[snippy_about_it]

Veterans for Constitution Restoration is a non-profit, non-partisan educational and grassroots activist organization.

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Actively seeking volunteers to provide this valuable service to Veterans and their families.

Thanks to quietolong for providing this link.

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NOW UPDATED THROUGH JULY 31st, 2004
Categorized by PAR35



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[SAMWolf]

Good Night Snippy.

[endthematrix]

Joe Palooka meet Pat Tilman!

"Cardinals defensive coordinator Larry Marmie, after a conversation with his former player, said Tillman felt he needed to "pay something back" for the comfortable life he had been afforded." RIP Pat

[Aeronaut]

Good morning Snippy.

[alfa6]

Good Morning to the Freeper Foxhole denizens

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[E.G.C.]

Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.

[GailA]

Good morning, looks like rain here in Memphis. It rained last night too. It's shirt sleeve weather today.

[soldierette]

Hi Snippy! Hi Sam!

Joe Palooka, wonderful, just wonderful. I really enjoyed today's foxhole, thank you so much. I'm all packed and ready to head back to Ft. Stewart, its back to work for me.

I'll check in when I can. Thanks for everything.

Trisha

[stand watie]

GM, snippy!

we're back from Port A & still stuffed on fresh fish, crabmeat & shrimp!

btw, i bought 5 pounds of 12-15 shrimp & brought them home! you oughta see those puppies!

free dixie,sw

[The Mayor]

January 2, 2005

The Nature Of The Beast

Read: Galatians 5:16-26

I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. —Romans 7:18

Bible In One Year: Genesis 3-5

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Years ago we had a pet raccoon named Jason. One minute he would snuggle up on your lap like a perfect angel and the next he'd be engaged in the most fiendish antics. If unrestrained, he would raid the garbage can or tear up the flowerbed. Although he was a delightful pet, we became increasingly aware that his destructive actions were governed by his wild instincts. Jason would always have the nature of a raccoon, and we had to watch him closely no matter how tame he seemed to be.

Often when I observed Jason's behavior, I thought of the sinful nature that we as Christians retain even though we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Paul referred to this as the "flesh" in which "nothing good dwells" (Romans 7:18). It may be restrained, but it's always there. Unless we are daily controlled by the Lord, our old "self" will demonstrate its destructive pleasure-seeking capacity in some way.

Although we are new creatures in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), we still possess the tendency to sin. But we don't need to be governed by it, for we are united to Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. By obeying God's Word and yielding to the Spirit (Romans 8:11), we can be victorious over the flesh—the nature of the beast within. —Mart De Haan

Lord, I am learning of Your power
To give me victory each hour;
As I keep walking close to You,
Your Spirit fills with life anew. —Hess

The Christian gains victory by starving the old nature and feeding the new.

[Valin]

On This Day In History


Birthdates which occurred on January 02:
1642 Mehmed IV sultan (Turkey)
1647 Nathaniel Bacon leader of Bacon's Rebellion, Virginia (1676)
1699 Osman III sultan (Turkey)
1727 James Wolfe commanded British Army (captured Québec)
1752 Philip Freneau poet of American Revolution (The American Village)
1822 Rudolph J E Clausius Germany, physicist (thermodynamics)
1835 Charles Russell Lowell Jr Brigadier General (Union volunteers)
1857 Frederick Opper cartoonist (Willie and His Papa, Maud the Mule, Alphonse & Gaston)
1860 William C Mills museum curator (excavated Ohio Indian mounds)
1861 Helen Herron Taft 1st lady (1909-13)
1873 Anton Pannekoek Dutch astronomer/marxist theorist (Communist Tactics)
1880 Louis Breguet French aviation pioneer
1895 Count Folke Bernadotte Sweden, statesman (Red Cross, UN)
1901 Robert Marshall founder (Wilderness Society)
1904 Sally Rand Hickory County MO, stripper (fan dance)
1913 Ernest Sidey British air marshal
1920 Isaac Asimov Russia, scientist/writer (I Robot, Foundation Trilogy)
1925 William J Crowe Jr Kentucky, chairman joint chiefs of staff
1928 Dan Rostenkowski (Representative-D-IL, -94), House Ways & Means Committee chair
1928 Vaughn Beals Cambridge MA, CEO (Harley Davidson motorcycle)
1932 Dabney Coleman Austin Texas, (That Girl, Mary Hartman, Buffalo Bill)
1936 Roger Miller Fort Worth TX, country singer (King of the Road, Dang Me)
1939 Jim Bakker televangelist (PTL Club)/philanderer (Jessica Hahn)
1949 Chick Churchill Wales, keyboardist (Ten Years After-I'm Going Home)
1952 Ricky Van Shelton Grit VA, country singer (Wild-Eyed Dream)
1968 Cuba Gooding Jr actor (Boyz N the Hood, Glaadiator, Few Good Men)

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Deaths which occurred on January 02:
0017 Publius Ovidius Naso Roman poet, dies
1861 Frederik Willem IV king Prussia (1840-61)/Germ (1849-61), dies at 65
1863 Roger Weightman Hanson Confederate Brigadier General, dies in battle at 35
1892 George B Airy English astronomer/writer, dies at 90
1904 James Longstreet Confederate General, dies at 82
1918 Sijbe K Bakker vicar/theologist (Christian-Socialism), dies at 42
1923 Sam Carter black resident of Rosewood FL, lynched by KKK
1963 Jack Carson actor (Star is Born, Mildred Pierce), dies at 52
1963 Dick Powell actor/director (Dick Powell Theater), dies at 58
1974 Tex Ritter country singer (5 Star Jubilee), dies at 67
1977 Erroll Garner jazz pianist (Misty), dies at 53
1981 David Lynch singer (Platters-My Prayer), dies at 51
1990 Alan Hale Jr actor (Skipper Jonas Grumby-Gilligan's Island), dies of cancer at 71
1994 Dixy Lee Ray chairwoman (US Atomic Energy Commission), dies at 79
1995 Mohammed Siyad Barre President of Somalia (1969-91), dies
2001 Former Attorney General and Secretary of State William P. Rogers died in Bethesda, Md., at age 87.

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Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1966 MAC LAUGHLIN DONALD C.---BALTIMORE MD.
1967 MENGES GEORGE BRUCE---MAPLE HEIGHTS OH.
[REMAINS RETURNED 08/80 BY INDIGINOUS]
1970 BROOKS NICHOLAS G.---NEWBURGH NY.
[REMAINS RETURNED 02/03/82]
1970 FRYAR BRUCE C.---RIDGEWOOD NJ.
1970 LINDSTROM RONNIE G.---DULUTH MN.
1970 WEST JOHN T.---BALTIMORE MD.

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

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On this day...
0069 Roman Lower Rhine army proclaims its commander, Vitellius, emperor
0533 John II begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1235 Emperor Joseph II orders Jews of Galicia Austria to adopt family names
1492 Spain recaptures Granada from the Moors (Granada Day)
1570 Tsar Ivan the Terrible march to Novgorod begins
1585 Spain & Catholic France sign Saint League of Joinville
1602 Spanish forces in Ireland surrender to the English at Kinsdale
1757 British troops occupy Calcutta India
1776 1st revolutionary flag displayed
1776 Austria ends interrogation torture
1788 Georgia is 4th state to ratify US constitution
1790 Mozart's opera "Cosi fan tutti" premieres, Vienna
1800 Free black community of Philadelphia PA petitions Congress to abolish slavery
1811 US Senator Thomas Pickering is 1st senator censured (revealed confidential documents communicated by the President of the US)
1831 Liberator, abolitionist newspaper, begins publishing in Boston
1832 1st Curling club in US (Orchard Lake Curling Club) opens
1839 1st photo of the Moon (French photographer Louis Daguerre)
1861 Colonel Charles Stone is put in charge of organizing DC militia
1861 SC seizes inactive Fort Johnson in Charleston Harbor
1863 Battle of Murfreesboro (Stone's River) ends
1870 Building Brooklyn Bridge begins
1882 Because of anti-monopoly laws, Standard Oil is organized as a trust
1885 General Wolseley receives last distress signal of General Gordon in Khartoum
1890 Record 19'2" alligator shot in Louisiana by E A McIlhenny
1896 Battle at Doornkop, South Africa (Boers beat Dr Jamesons troops)
1900 E Verlinger begins manufacturing 7" single-sided records (Montréal)
1903 President T. Roosevelt shuts down post office in Indianola MI, for refusing to accept its appointed postmistress because she was black
1905 Japanese troops capture Port Arthur
1908 Canadian branch of the Royal Mint opens in Ottawa
1910 1st junior high schools in US open in Berkeley CA
1911 Brooklyn Dodgers president Charles Ebbets announces purchase of grounds to build a new concrete-and-steel stadium to seat 30,000
1913 National Woman's Party forms
1919 Anti-British uprising in Ireland
1919 Lithuania gains independence
1920 10,000 US union & socialist organizers arrested (Palmer Raids)
1921 1st religious service radio broadcast in US, KDKA-Pittsburgh
1923 Ku Klux Klan surprise attack on black residential area Rosewood FL, 8 killed (compensation awarded in 1995)
1929 US & Canada agree to preserve Niagara Falls
1933 US troops leave Nicaragua
1934 1st state liquor stores open, in Pennsylvania
1935 Bruno R Hauptmann trial begins for kidnap-murder of Lindbergh baby
1936 1st electron tube to enable night vision described, St Louis MO
1938 Book publisher Simon and Schuster founded
1942 Japanese troops occupy Manila Philippines
1944 1st use of helicopters during warfare (British Atlantic patrol)
1945 Allied air raid on Neurenberg
1947 Mahatma Gandhi begins march for peace in East-Bengali
1948 WNDT (now WNET) TV channel 13 in New York-Newark, New York (PBS) begins
1949 KDKA TV channel 2 in Pittsburgh, PA (CBS) begins broadcasting
1954 Herman Wouks "Caine Mutiny" premieres in New York City NY
1955 1st "Bob Cummings Show" premieres on NBC (later on CBS)
1959 USSR launches Mechta (Luna 1) for 1st lunar fly-by, 1st solar orbit
1960 Senator John F Kennedy, announces his candidacy for President
1960 1st redshank old world shore bird reported in North America (Halifax)
1960 John Reynolds sets age of solar system at 4,950,000,000 years
1961 Hawaii's, then all time low temperature, 14ºF recorded atop Haleakale
1962 Nighttime version of "Password" with Allen Ludden premieres on CBS
1965 New York Jets sign quarterback Joe Namath
1965 Obverse design of all Canadian coins is changed to depict the Queen with a slightly more mature look
1966 American G.I.s move into the Mekong Delta for the first time.
1966 1st Jewish child born in Spain since 1492 expulsion
1967 U.S. planes down seven enemy planes
1968 Christiaan Barnard performs 2nd heart transplant
1974 55 MPH speed limit imposed by Richard Nixon
1974 Worst fire in Argentine history destroys 1.2 million acres
1975 US Department of Interior designates grizzly bear a threatened species
1977 Bowie Kuhn suspends Braves owner Ted Turner for one year due to tampering charges in Gary Matthews free-agency signing
1978 Rhino Records releases their 1st album "Wildmania"
1979 Sid Vicious' trial for murder of girlfriend Nancy Spingen begins
1984 Riot in Tunis kills over 100
1984 Wilson Goode, sworn-in as Philadelphia's 1st black mayor
1988 Mulroney & Reagan sign Canada-US free trade agreement
1990 Sting joins wrestlings 4 Horsemen (Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson)
1994 Battles between army & rebellious indians in South Mexico, kill 57
1995 Most distant galaxy yet discovered found by scientists using Keck telescope in Hawaii (estimated 15 billion light years away)

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Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Georgia : Constitution Ratification Day (1788)
Haiti : Ancestor/Hero's Day
Japan : Shigoto Hajime-Begin Work Day [beginning of the work year]
Spain : Granada Day (1492)
Switzerland : Berchtold's Tag, founding of Berne
US : Betsy Ross Day (1776)
US : Diet Resolution Week (Day 2)
Date Your Mate Month.

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Religious Observances
Christian : Commemoration of St Macarius the Younger, martyr
old Roman Catholic : Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus (most years)
Unification Church : Day of Victory of Love
Roman Catholic : Memorial of St Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, bishops
Roman Catholic : Commemoration of St Gaspar del Bufalo, Italian priest
Lutheran : Commemoration of Johann Loehe, pastor
Jewish : Asarah B'Tevet (Siege of Jerusalem); Tevet 10, 5756

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Religious History
1744 Colonial missionary to the American Indians David Brainerd wrote in his journal: 'We are a long time in learning that all our strength and salvation is in God.'
1909 Future Foursquare Gospel church founder Aimee Elizabeth [n‚e Kennedy] Semple [later McPherson], 19, along with her husband Robert Semple, was ordained to the ministry in Chicago by evangelist William H. Durham.
1921 The first religious program heard over the radio was broadcast from Calvary Episcopal Church of Pittsburgh over local radio station KDKA. (The first licensed radio station in the US, KDKA had been on the air only two months.)
1968 Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote in a letter: 'In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.'
1971 A team of Israeli scholars announced the discovery in Jerusalem of a 2,000-year-old skeleton of a crucified male. Found in a cave-tomb, it was the first direct physical evidence of the well-documented Roman method of execution.

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

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Thought for the day :
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

[Professional Engineer]

Howdy ma'am

[Professional Engineer]

Good morning ladies. Flag-o-Gram.

[Professional Engineer]

You're active duty?

[Professional Engineer]

1990 Alan Hale Jr actor (Skipper Jonas Grumby-Gilligan's Island), dies of cancer at 71

Msdrby noticed him first, while we watched "Hang'em High" yesterday. He was in the mob that lynched Clink Westwood

[Professional Engineer]

1974 55 MPH speed limit imposed by Richard Nixon

[SAMWolf]

Morning endthematrix.

America still raises real heroes.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Aeronaut.