Happy New Year, 2015

Well it is finally here, 2015 has touched down, so as we always do, lets look back to see what happened in the past on 1st January...

[Cue swirly background and hippy music from the '60s. Then realise that 1985 was but 30 years ago and realise just how old you are...]

January 1st 1892, the immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened. The gateway to the United States for so many millions of hopeful immigrants, this would be the first landfall for the immigrants from wars in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

January 1st 1985, the UK's first phone call from a mobile phone.

Michael Harrison, the son of Vodafone's first chairmen Ernest, nipped out from a New Year's Eve party to make the historic call, using the mother of all bricks: the Transportable Vodafone VT1.

January 1st 2003, Joe Foss, the leading fighter ace of the US Marine Corps in WWII passed away. 

Mr Foss was a 1943 recipient of the Medal of Honor, recognizing his role in the air combat during the Guadalcanal Campaign. 

In October 1942, VMF-121 pilots and aircraft were sent to Guadalcanal as part of Operation Watchtower to relieve VMF-223, which had been fighting for control of the air over the island since mid-August.

On October 9, Foss and his group were catapult launched off the USS Copahee escort carrier and flew 350 miles north to reach Guadalcanal.

The air group, code named "Cactus", based at Henderson Field became known as the Cactus Air Force, and their presence played a pivotal role in the Battle of Guadalcanal.
Foss soon gained a reputation for aggressive close-in fighter tactics and uncanny gunnery skills. 

Foss shot down a Japanese Zero on his first combat mission on October 13, but his own F4F Wildcat was shot up as well, and with a dead engine and three more Zeros on his tail, he landed at full speed, with no flaps and minimal control on the American-held runway at Guadalcanal, barely missing a grove of palm trees.

On 7 November his Wildcat was again hit, and he survived a ditching in the sea off the island of Malaita. 

In postwar years, he achieved fame as a General in the Air National Guard, the 20th Governor of South Dakota, President of the National Rifle Association, and the first commissioner of the American Football League, as well as a television broadcaster.

What I find truly amazing about Mr Foss, is that he was a decorated fighter pilot who shot down 26 enemy aircraft. His name became folklore in wartime USA and still, all of his decorations when put together come to this;

So whenever you see someone strutting around your local mall or high street wearing much, much more than this, be aware that there is the faintest possibility that they are fakers - stolen valor merchants.

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Gun control argument #5485

I read a few blogs about 2nd Amendment rights and gun control - about 35 blogs actually. As a Brit living in Israel I have gone from a country allergic to the thought of gun possession to a country that depends on them being in every house, available for use at a moment's notice.

At the cunningly named 3 Boxes of BS (Soap Box, Ballot Box and Ammo Box –An average person's view on society, politics and firearms) Bob has an excellent article which left me angry, upset and slightly scared.

Image by Michael @ NW Lens via Flickr

FORT WORTH — Jasbahadur “J.B.” Rai worked for 10 years to bring his children to the United States.

Once they arrived, he only had a little more than two months with them.

On Jan. 6, Rai, a 48-year-old convenience store clerk, was repeatedly shot inside the TL Food store on East Lancaster Avenue by Leonard Junior Coulter, a drug addict in need of money for his next fix. Rai, a native of Nepal who had just become a U.S. citizen seven months before, died that same morning at a Fort Worth hospital.

A legal immigrant, who worked within the system to come to our country and more cut down by a thug looking for his next fix.

Rai’s widow said it well:

Rai’s widow, Toukta Rai, took the stand to describe to Coulter the loss he had caused her and her family. She said her husband would have helped him that January morning, had he only asked.

“My husband had only 2 1/2 months to get to know his children when he brought them here and he never got to see them grow up like young adults,” Toukta Rai said. “He worked for 10 years to get them here from Nepal. Because of your selfish action, he is no longer with us. It is not right that you killed my husband just for your own pleasure of getting high.”

Go read the article to see the sting in the tale at the end. Well worth it I assure you.

kthanxbai!