Morning Update, March 2, 2009

The_Kitchen_Guy

Last Saturday night, CBS News rebroadcast the episode of 48 Hours Mystery entitled The Secret Life of Paige Birgfeld that originally aired on June 10, 2008. It was virtually the same report but it was edited for content, updated with some new information and edited for timeliness. We can only hope the rebroadcast will jump start the search and investigation. Someone, somewhere, knows something that will bring this case to a close. There were no other new developments in her case. (We also reported this yesterday, Sunday, but we repeated this for those of you who do not usually log in on weekends.)

In news of Candles for Paige we had 88 candles as of this post. Remember, candles go out after 48 hours so keep lighting candles for Paige, her family and her three children.

Instructions for lighting candles for Paige are in the Missing thread, in this post.

On this date in History...

...in 1917, Puerto Rico became a protectorate of the United States. The island state had been ceded to the US as part of the Trety of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Jones-Shafroth Act made the island a protectorate and granted Puerto Ricans U..S. Citizenship. Of course, the act came about a month before the United States entered WWII, so those same citizens were eligible to join the military but not many did. When President Wilson enacted a draft, 20,000 Puerto Ricans were consigned. Many went to guard the Panama Canal but the 396th Infantry Regiment of Puerto Rico was formed in New York City and became known as the Harlem Hell Fighters. In WWII, Puerto Rico became an important army and naval base. In 1952, a new constitution declared the island a commonwealth under US protection. There were calls for complete independence from the US but just as many calls to apply for statehood. Today, it remains a commonwealth and protectorate.

...in 1807, Congress abolished the importation of slaves into the Untied States.

...in 1836, Texians declared their independence from Mexico, while the forces of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna continued their siege of The Alamo in San Antonio. The fate of the 185 defenders of The Alamo was sealed and would be met on March 6. Meanwhile, Sam Houston was assembling a large force In April, the Houston army would overwhelm Santa Anna and win independence from Mexico. The Texians wanted to join the US as state, but anti-slavery forces did not want to admit a potential southern slave state. Until 1845, when Texas finally became the 28th state, it was the independent Republic of Texas.

...in 1929, the Jones Act was passed, the last gasp of Prohibition. In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment was enacted, banning the importation, production and sale of alcoholic beverages. Prohibition was ineffective because it did not solve the root of the business of alcoholic beverages - demand in the marketplace. With legitimate sources eliminated, organized criminal elements stepped in to meet the demand. Alcohol was distilled within the country, however, the biggest source was from foreign spirits being smuggled in overland from Canada and Mexico and by sea from numerous sources. The Jones Act brought severe penalties to mariners who smuggled alcohol into the country. Within five years, the 19th Amendment would be repealed anyway, and alchohol once again flowed freely in the United States.


Federal agents dump beer overboard in
August, 1929. More than 75% of illegally
imported alchol came over the Detroit River
to Detroit, even through an underwater pipeline.

...in 1925, the association called AASHO (American Association of State Highway Officials) met in Washington, D.C. to create today's familiar federal highway numbering system. Prior to this date, there was a myriad of named highways and trails with a dizzying array of signs and color stripes. The new system of numbered highways followed a strategy of even numbers going east-west and odd numbers going north south. The lowest numbers were in the north and east, the numbers increasing in sequence to the south and west. It also called for the federal shield for the numbers that has evolved over the years to the black background signs in use today. (AASHO was renamed AASHTO, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, in 1973.)


The first federal highway shields
included the state name.


In the 1960s, the signs changed to
the black box background. The state
name was still on the signs along with
the outline graphics.


As time went on, the state name was shortened to
an abbreviation then dropped entirely, along with all the
text and graphic outlines. Only the highway number
appears in today's signage.

The signs are courtesy of Christopher J. Bessert and his fascinating website, Wisconsin Highways. Even if you're not from Wisconsin, the site offers a lot of info about highways and links to similar sites that might be from your state.

...in 1904, Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was educated at Dartmouth where he edited the school's humor magazine. He went on to Oxford where he met his first wife, Helen Palmer, who convinced him to work as a professional artist. He returned the US and worked in magazines and advertising. He wrote a children's book, using his mother's maiden name (also his middle name) as Dr. Suess. (He also used the name, Theo. LeSieg for books he wrote but did not illustrate and wrote one as Rosetta Stone.) The book, entitled And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street was rejected by more than two dozen publishers before being published in 1937. Just before the war, Geisel turned to polical cartooning and during the war, he drew posters for the government. In 1943, he joined the army and commanded the animation department for the motion picture unit. (He was the awarded the Legion of Merit.) In 1957, he had his first bestseller The Cat In the Hat, after his publisher asked him to use 220 new-reader words in something more fun than Dick and Jane. Dr. Seuss created many odd and memorable characters by penning many more favorite books, such as Yertle the Turtle, Fox in Socks, Horton Hears a Who, Green Eggs and Ham, If I Ran the Circus, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Bartholomew and the Oobleck and the immortal How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Dr. Seuss lived and worked in an abandoned observatory in La Jolla, California that was known as "The Tower." He died in 1991, but not before he penned his going away gift for the generations of adults who grew up on his fantasy books, Oh, the Places You'll Go.



That's it. That's all we know as of 12:01 AM, EST.

raebates

Whenever I see The Furry Guy standing at the window, looking out over the property, I recite:

I'm Yertle the Turtle,
Oh, marvelous me,
And I am the king
Of all I can see.


I call it his Yertle pose.