Oldbutnotdead

Opinions expressed here are my own and not official opinions of my employer.

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 There were 80 Doolittle Raiders who risked their lives on the Tokyo Raid on April 18, 1942. They would hold a reunion every year after the war.

On the 17th reunion, the city of Tucson, Arizona did something special. They presented the Raiders with 80 Silver Goblets. Each goblet is engraved twice with the Raider's name. Once right side up and once upside down. Why?

At every reunion, the survivors would gather around the case and pour a glass of 1896 Hennessy Cognac, chosen because 1896 was Jimmy Doolittle’s birth year, and toast their fallen comrades.

When a Raider passed, his goblet would be turned upside down, but his name could still be read perfectly.

The Raiders agreed that when only two survivors remained, they would open the final bottle of 1896 cognac and drink a final toast to all their fallen friends.

The final goblet was turned upside down on April 18, 2019, after Lt. Col. Richard “Dick” Cole passed at 103 years old. He was Jimmy Doolittle's co-pilot on plane #1.

Today, the goblets are on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

[Snoopy @snoopyhero53]

🔴 HAPPY 76TH BIRTHDAY SNOOPY!

Snoopy made his Peanuts debut in 1950, while his August 10 birthday was first mentioned in a 1968 comic strip.

[wxornotBG @wxornotBG]

Good morning, WABBLES! Mother Nature accidentally hit the "extra rinse" button today...hopefully she doesn't switch it to extra tumble later on...

A big ol' line of showers and thunderstorms have moved through the WABBLES community this morning. These weren't severe, but they poured a lot of rain in a short period of time. Some places have picked up 1 to 3 inches of rain already, so if your driveway suddenly looks like a creek or your backyard starts looking like the local duck attraction, don't say we didn't warn you!

The afternoon is when we'll be paying the closest attention. If clouds break apart and we get even a little bit of sunshine, that will give the atmosphere extra energy to recover, making them liable to build stronger storms. Not everyone will see severe weather, but a few storms could pack strong wind, dangerous lightning, torrential rain, and even a brief spin-up tornado. The best chance for stronger storms will be between 1pm and 6pm, especially across the eastern half of the WABBLES.

The biggest concern for everyone is heavy rain. Some storms could move over the same areas more than once, which may lead to localized flash flooding, especially in low lyin' spots, small creeks, and roads that usually collect water. Flooding won't happen everywhere, but if you run into water covering a road, please turn around instead of trying to drive through it.

Here's the good news: Once today's storm system finally scoots out of here, we'll trade the steamy weather for a much nicer stretch...sort of. Sunday through Tuesday will feel a lot more comfortable, with highs mainly in the upper 70s to low 80s. We'll still have to deal with scattered showers and thunderstorms, especially during the afternoons, but they'll be much more disorganized than today's activity. This will be thanks to a pin-wheelin' upper low that'll overstay its welcome.

📌 WXorNOT Bottom Line Summarization:

🌧️ Expect rounds of rain and storms today.
⚡ Keep an eye on the sky this afternoon, especially from 1–6pm, when a few storms could become strong to severe.
🚗 Watch for water covering roads in flood prone areas.
😎 Cooler, less humid weather arrives Sunday and sticks around for the first half of next week.

Basically...today is Kentucky's version of a car wash. The wash cycle is free, ya just don't get to choose when it starts. Keep an eye on the sky and another on our APP! Y'all stay dry and safe!

[Just Rock Content @JustRockContent]

“Kashmir” - Led Zeppelin

Live at Earl’s Court 1975

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

141 years ago today, on July 23, 1885, Ulysses S. Grant died at 63.

Most people know him as the general who won the Civil War and the two term president on the fifty dollar bill. Almost nobody knows how his story actually ended, and it's one of the most quietly heroic things in American history.

Start with the fact that "Ulysses S. Grant" was never even his name. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. When he got to West Point, a congressman filled out the paperwork wrong and wrote him down as Ulysses S. Grant. The S stood for nothing at all. Grant just shrugged and kept it for the rest of his life. Later, when he forced a Confederate fort to give up with no conditions, soldiers said the U.S. stood for "Unconditional Surrender."

Here's the strange thing though. Before the war, Grant was a failure at nearly everything he tried. He flopped at farming. He flopped at real estate. By his late thirties he was working as a clerk in his father's leather goods store, hauling hides for his younger brothers. Then the war came, and the quiet clerk turned out to be one of the greatest military minds the country ever produced. He took Vicksburg. He ground down Lee. He accepted the surrender at Appomattox and, instead of gloating, let the Confederate soldiers keep their horses so they could plant crops. Then he won the White House twice.

So how does a man like that end up dying broke?

In 1884 Grant trusted his savings to a Wall Street firm run by a young hotshot named Ferdinand Ward, basically the Bernie Madoff of his day. Ward was running a con. When it collapsed, Grant lost everything. He was so wiped out that he had to borrow money just to cover his household, and he handed over his war trophies and swords to pay a debt. The most famous soldier in America was suddenly poor.

Then it got worse. Doctors found throat cancer. Grant had smoked as many as twenty cigars a day, a habit the public actually fed. After his victories, admirers mailed him cigars by the thousands, and it very likely killed him.

Now here is the part that gives me chills.

Grant knew he was dying, and he knew he was leaving his wife Julia with nothing. So a man in constant pain, throat closing up, some days unable to speak above a whisper, sat down to write his memoirs and out earn death itself. Mark Twain, who admired him, offered him a stunning book deal, far better than anything normal authors got. Grant took it and went to work.

He wrote something like three hundred thousand words in about a year while cancer ate his throat. On the days he couldn't talk, he wrote on slips of paper. Witnesses said the pain was constant. He kept going anyway. He finished the manuscript just days before he died.

And it worked. The memoirs became one of the best selling books of the century and are still considered maybe the finest memoir ever written by an American president. The royalties sent to Julia came to roughly four hundred fifty thousand dollars, an enormous fortune then, enough that she never had to worry about money again. He couldn't win the money back on Wall Street, so he wrote his way out and crossed the finish line with almost nothing to spare.

When he died, the country stopped. Around a million and a half people lined the streets of New York for his funeral, the largest the city had ever seen. And look at who carried him. His pallbearers included Union generals and Confederate generals, side by side. One of them, Simon Bolivar Buckner, was the very man who had surrendered to Grant at Fort Donelson decades earlier. He came to Grant's sickbed near the end, two old enemies making peace, and then helped carry him to his grave.

That grave became Grant's Tomb in New York, the largest mausoleum in North America.

A failed store clerk who saved the Union, lost everything to a con man, and then, dying and in agony, wrote a masterpiece to protect his wife.

141 years ago today. They really don't make them like that anymore.

[Oldbutnotdead @BGFDCodes]

Toby was one of a kind, and this may be my favorite song of his not that I’m getting there too. #dontlettheoldmanin

[Rock'n Roll of All @rocknrollofall]

This was the last performance of the country singer songwriter Toby Keith before passing.

[Oldbutnotdead @BGFDCodes]

@FreddyLA7 Winchell’s!! Love that place!

[Just Rock Content @JustRockContent]

“Fantasy” - Aldo Nova

The song became his biggest success, peaking at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album itself climbed to #8 on the Billboard 200. VH1 later ranked it at #78 on its list of the Greatest Hard Rock Songs. https://t.co/EH3tIGZspp

[US Department of the Interior @Interior]

“The flag was still there.”

Long before it flew at ballgames and front porches across America, the flag flying over Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine became a symbol of survival during the War of 1812.

After enduring hours of British bombardment, the fort’s enormous flag remained standing at sunrise, inspiring “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

This Flag Day, we honor the history, sacrifice, and stories behind the stars and stripes. 🇺🇸

Photo of the Great Garrison Flag by NPS

[Kentucky Men’s Basketball @KentuckyMBB]

.@KarlTowns IS AN NBA CHAMPION 😼🏆

[Roy Rogers Happy Trails Music Shop  @RoyRogers_HTMS]

Junior Brown on “Highway Patrol” 🔥
That deep baritone voice hits like a siren, and the outstanding picking skills on that guit-steel are next level. Rockabilly swagger, outlaw country perfection, and pure tone for days.
“I got a star on my car and one on my chest…”
Absolute legend.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

252 years ago today, the British Empire closed the busiest port in North America to teach one colony a lesson, and accidentally turned thirteen colonies into one country.

On December 16, 1773, a few dozen Bostonians had thrown 342 chests of East India Company tea into the harbor. The damages came to roughly £9,659. Lord North, the Prime Minister, decided to make an example. Parliament passed the Boston Port Act. King George III signed it on March 31, 1774. It took effect at dawn on June 1.

The Royal Navy moved warships into Boston Harbor and dropped anchor. Every dock was sealed. No ship could enter or leave. Not a barrel of flour, not a load of firewood, not a letter. The port would stay closed until Boston paid the East India Company in full and promised to behave.

The intent was to isolate Massachusetts and force her neighbors to watch her starve.

What happened instead is one of the strangest political miracles in modern history.

Down in Williamsburg, a 31 year old burgess named Thomas Jefferson and a few friends, including Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, pulled a dusty old book off the shelf of the House of Burgesses library, a record of how the Long Parliament had once handled a tyrant, and proposed that the entire colony of Virginia observe June 1, 1774 as a day of "fasting, humiliation, and prayer" in solidarity with Boston.

The Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the House two days later for treason. The burgesses simply walked across the street to the Raleigh Tavern and kept meeting.

June 1 came. In Virginia, every Anglican church was draped in black. The bells tolled all day. Plantation owners shut their doors. Jefferson wrote later that "the effect of the day through the whole colony was like a shock of electricity."

The same shock ran through every colony south of New England. Wagon trains of food started rolling toward Boston from as far away as Charleston. The Marblehead fishermen offered to give the Boston merchants the use of their docks for free. A Quaker miller in Pennsylvania sent a hundred barrels of flour. Israel Putnam personally drove a herd of sheep from Connecticut to feed the city.

Three months later, 56 delegates from twelve colonies sat down together in Philadelphia. It was called the First Continental Congress. None of them had ever met under one roof before.

Parliament wanted to punish a city. It created a nation.

252 years ago today, in a harbor full of Royal Navy frigates, the American Revolution stopped being a Massachusetts problem.

[Oldbutnotdead @BGFDCodes]

The best!

[𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 ✨🎵 @Hoang_HQ]

💥One of the most famous cover performances in rock music history. All the times listening to this and it still gives chills.✨🎶

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

Memorial Day isn’t about barbecues or beach days—it’s about those American heroes who gave everything for our freedom.

THIS 70-SECOND VIDEO CAPTURES WHAT THE DAY IS TRULY ABOUT. 🇺🇸

[Malachi Moreno @malachimoreno24]

BBN, I’m home. Job’s isn’t finished.💙

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

Remember the guy who wouldn't take the flag pole down on his Virginia property awhile back? You might remember the news story several months ago about a crotchety old man in Virginia who defied his local Homeowners Association and refused to take down the flag pole on his property along with the large American flag he flew on it.

Now we learn who that old man was. On June 15, 1919, Van T. Barfoot was born in Edinburg, Texas . That probably didn't make news back then.

But twenty five years later, on May 23, 1944, near Cyrano, Italy, That same Van T. Barfoot, who had in 1940 enlisted in the U.S. Army, set out alone to flank German machine gun positions from which gunfire was raining down on his fellow soldiers. His advance took him through a minefield but having done so, he proceeded to single-handedly take out three enemy machine gun positions, returning with 17 prisoners of war.

And if that weren’t enough for a day's work, he later took on and destroyed three German tanks sent to retake the machine gun positions.

That probably didn’t make much news either, given the scope of the war, but it did earn Van T. Barfoot, who retired as a Colonel after also serving In Korea and Vietnam , a well deserved Congressional Medal of Honor.

What did make news was his Neighborhood Association's quibble with how the 90-year-old Veteran chose to fly the American flag outside his suburban Virginia home. Seems the HOA rules said it was OK to fly a flag on a house-mounted bracket, but, for decorum, items such as Barfoot's 21-foot flagpole were "unsuitable."

Van Barfoot had been denied a permit for the pole, but erected it anyway and was facing Court action unless he agreed to take it down.

Then the HOA story made national TV, and the Neighborhood Association rethought its position and agreed to indulge this
aging hero who dwelt among them.

"In the time I have left", he said to the Associated Press, "I plan to continue to fly the American flag without interference."

As well he should. And if any of his neighbors had taken a notion to contest him further, they might have done well to read his Medal of Honor citation first. Seems it Indicates Mr. Van Barfoot wasn't particularly good at backing down.

If you've read this post and don't share it, - Guess what -You need your butt kicked. I share this with you because I don't want MY butt kicked anymore and I'm tired of seeing those who hate our country yet march in our streets, tear down our statues, burn our stores and loot our businesses have a free hand to do whatever they want.

WE ONLY LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE! AND, BECAUSE OF BRAVE OLD MEN LIKE VAN BARFOOT!

[Dr. M.F. Khan @Dr_TheHistories]

Instead of hiding his daughter with Down syndrome, Charles de Gaulle raised her proudly and she became the heart of his life....

When Charles de Gaulle died in 1970, he made a quiet request that surprised many. He did not want a grand state funeral in Paris. He asked to be buried in the small village of Colombey les Deux Églises, beside his daughter Anne. For him, that resting place mattered more than any monument.

Anne was born on New Year’s Day in 1928, youngest of three children. She had Down syndrome, a condition surrounded by fear and misinformation at the time. Doctors and society often blamed parents and urged families to hide children like her from public view. For families of power and status, sending such children away was considered normal. Charles and his wife Yvonne refused. They raised Anne at home with her brother Philippe and sister Élisabeth. There was no secrecy, no shame, no separation. She was simply their daughter.

To the world, de Gaulle was distant and unyielding. A leader shaped by war, discipline, and command. But inside his home, Anne revealed a side few ever saw. With her, he laughed freely. He sang songs, told stories, and played games. Friends noticed that the man who rarely showed emotion softened completely in her presence. He called her my joy. Anne asked nothing of him except love, and in that simplicity, he found peace. She was never treated as fragile or inferior. She was respected fully, included always, and loved without condition.

That love did not end within the family. After the war, Charles and Yvonne founded the Fondation Anne de Gaulle. They turned a château into a home for young women with intellectual disabilities, many of whom had been abandoned. At a time when support barely existed, they chose action over silence.

Anne’s life was short. She died of pneumonia in 1948, just after turning twenty, in her father’s arms. In his grief, de Gaulle whispered that now she was like the others, finally free from the limits the world had placed on her.

After her death, he carried her photograph everywhere. He believed her presence protected him, even during an assassination attempt years later. Whether faith or fate, he never doubted her importance in his life.

Charles de Gaulle found his deepest calm not in leadership or victory, but in loving a child the world did not understand. His family showed that dignity is not about ability. It is about how fiercely we choose to care.

© Soul Whisper

#drthehistories

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

Actor Michael Sheen delivers a powerful performance of Dylan Thomas’s 1951 poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night.”

[Sean @scs_real]

The greatest one hit wonder, in the history of humanity, was released on this day, 41 years ago.

Yes, you are that old.

You're welcome America