Is that 167 million tax free Art?

Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933. 

But it didn’t ban drinking it.

Is that 167 million tax free Art? I believe so. But it didn’t ban drinking it. Now that's interesting Pete because what I'm reading hasn't mentioned that.

I always found that part a little odd also Art.

If you can't produce, sell, import or transport alcohol there won't be any to drink anyway. The only way I suppose was to drink any you already had in the house prior to the ban, or cross into Canada or Mexico of course.

Similar with prostitution over here, it's not illegal to sell sex but it is to advertise it or to go looking for it if payment is involved.

18 January 1912 - Captain Scott reached the South Pole.

Robert Scott and four members of his expedition; Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans reached the Pole five weeks after a Norwegian expedition under Roald Amudsen had done so. All five Brits died on the return journey; Evans in mid February, Oates in mid March and the final three at the end of March. 

When I was growing up, one of our favourite entertainers was the almost now forgotten, Danny Kaye, born in 1913 today.

19 January 1915 - The first Zeppelin raid on GB.

Two German Naval Zeppelins, the L3 and the L4 bombed the Norfolk coast on the evening of 19 January. First to attack was the L3 which bombed the port of Great Yarmouth where two were killed and three injured. The L4 became lost as it crossed the coast and wandered aimlessly along the north Norfolk coastline dropping the occasional bomb. Eventually it reached King's Lynn where it released the remainder of its bombs, here two more were killed and 13 injured.

Both airships returned to Germany unscathed despite several aircraft being sent up to tackle the intruders.

 ‍Mark, the war was still new on this date but the Zeppelins were such an easy target. No coastal defense artillery or naval support?

Major, I remember Danny. What was so special about him?

Major, I remember Danny. What was so special about him? I wasn't born a fool, it took a lot of work to get this way......Danny Kaye. Great quote from a man who loved to play the fool in film and TV. A film critic once said, you couldn't invent Danny Kaye, that would be stretching credibility too far. He was multi talented. When I was a kid we used to have a radio programme on a Saturday called 'children's favourites' and Danny's records always featured in that. He specialised in songs with a story, like The Ugly Duckling, Tubby the Tuba and the Emperor's clothes. He was massive over here and my mother in law queued with her friend for 3 hours to get tickets to see Danny. There was Beatle mania and Kaye mania was just as big. He did a huge amount of work for children's charities and as a performer he was multi multi talented. Actor, singer, writer, jet pilot, even a renown Chinese food chef. He could do a hundred accents and was a superb comedy and straight actor. He gave his time to so many for no reward, including the armed forces, who he performed to in many conflicts around the world. Ever see 'The secret life of Walter Mitty?' typical Kaye. A great man.

 ‍Mark, the war was still new on this date but the Zeppelins were such an easy target. No coastal defense artillery or naval support?

Major, I remember Danny. What was so special about him?

Not many defences in the early days. The feeling was that the Zeppelins would never be able to break through such defences as we had, but the two on 19 January evaded detection by flyng above the clouds and by the time aircraft had been sent up they were well away.

As the war progressed the defensive emphasis was placed on fighter aircraft rather than AA fire from the ground as Zeppelins flew so high that conventional AA fire was no good.

James Watt born this day in 1736 at Greenock Scotland. Many believe Watt invented the steam engine whilst watching a kettle boil, even I was fetched up with that one, which isn't true of course, what Watt did was to make it efficient. Watt was an all round practical man who was called upon to repair many things and it was whilst repairing a Thomas Newcomen engine, which was the first practical steam engine, he came up with the idea of a separate condenser, which went on to revolutionise the steam engine in stages. Following his first condenser he became, off all things, a surveyor, and planned the routes for canals in Scotland. Eventually he partnered up with the great, but almost unknown now, Mathew Boulton, who financed Watt's ideas. He went on to develop many improvements to his engine, including rotary motion, followed by his two action engine, which pulled and pushed the cylinder and finally the centrifugal safety valve, which you see spinning on steam engines. The faster it spun, the more pressure it released, so it was self regulating. Boulton and Watt paved the way to Britain creating the industrial revolution, which built our modern world.

Greenock Scotland, the port were the Canadian first Div landed on the Clyde.

Pronounced Grennock Pete

Probably but spelt Greenock. From there the first div went south by train to the out skirts of a small town called Lavington on the edge of Salisbury Plain. The place was crawling with rabbits to the Canadians delight and it didn’t take them long to thin out the area with small arms up to 303’s. My father preferred snares which he said didn’t up set the locals or bring the local coppers out to investigate all the shooting.

 ‍A rabbit with a .303 eh? See instant stew.

20 January 1936 - George V, died.

In 1986 it was revealed through the diary of the King's physician Lord Dawson of Penn that Dawson had hastened the King's death with an overdose of morphine. Obviously close to death Dawson administered the overdose so that the news of his passing would be announced in the morning newspapers, if he had been allowed to pass away naturally he would have lingered into the next day and the news would have been broken in the less prestigious evening press. He died at 2355 hrs  20 January.

January 15, 1929 Martin Luther King born, but the U.S. celebrates his birth day today January 20th. The reason is because we like to string holidays along with the week-ends to give workers & students a long weekend. Good idea eh? Anyway King was a Christian-activist who advocated change through peaceful means a la Gandi to give Negroes equal rights. He had a wonderful speaking voice & gave many memorable speeches such as the "I have a dream" one. He was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis Tennessee  by James Earl Ray.

On this day in 1778 Captain James Cook became the first European to step foot on the Hawaiian Islands

Hence the Union Flag on the State flag of Hawaii.

 ‍Well Mark, there you go again bringing up the controversial is at a Union flag or Union jack?  We colonials always called it the Union Jack, but the term "Jack" is really a nautical one.

Back to prohibition. 27 states have gone dry as a result of wheeler's crusade and once the virtue signalling had worn off, many felt as though they'd been mugged. Some states held out against the onslaught and many cities, especially where there was a heavy concentration of immigrants. These places had seen what Wheeler had achieved and how he did it, so they were to all intents, immune to his evangelism. Wheeler the zealot was livid at this sudden halt to God's work and as he prayed for a way forward, suddenly he got his big break, world war one broke out. The Yanks wanted out of this war but Germany appeared determined to get them in....on the opposite side. Firstly they started bombing civilians, which might be par for the course now, but not then. Germany had a party trick, where they used to fly a single plane to Paris every day and drop a single bomb on the place, which surprisingly drove President Wilson into fits of anger and he made them know in no uncertain terms but the Krauts gave him two fingers. Then the barbarians announced they were going to target passenger ships and good to their word, they sank the Lusitania and of the 1200 who went down with her were 128 Yanks. The Yanks complained bitterly about this and in response Germany called a holiday to celebrate the fact and unbelievably, the German head of the Red Cross in the US said they got what they deserved. They had to sneak him out of the country as lynch mobs were looking for him. Well they might have missed him but one German who complained about his new country was dragged out into the street and hung with an American flag. All things German now became verboten. Germans stopped talking German, people changed their names and even sauerkraut was renamed 'liberty cabbage.' Governor Harding educated the country to the fact that God himself what not listening to German prayers anymore, only those spoken in English. (let's face it, God is English anyway) Now, here's the crux of the hysteria, a huge amount of breweries were owned by Germans and they had used a lot of their profits campaigning against prohibition. Temperance fanatics leapt on this with the slogan.... we are fighting three enemies, Germans, Austrians and drink, all in the same sentence. This was a huge boost to the ASL and when Nebraska voted dry, they had a majority to go ahead and make it law in the whole country.

Capone didn’t go down because of his ties to booze. It was for income evasion. Thing he got 10 years for it.

21 January 1793 - Louis XVI, King of France 1774-92, executed.

Deposed in 1792 and tried for treason in 1793 the former King Louis, by then known as Louis Capet, was guillotined in the Place de la Revolution (today the Place de la Concorde) Paris. 

The great jack Nicklaus was born in 1940 and General Stonewall Jackson in 1824

25/11/2019 06:24:19

 ‍In 1859 Darwin published Origin of the Species.

Darwin was only 22 when he set out on his five year voyage aboard the Beagle in 1831. Returning at 27 he was celebrated in Europe for his discoveries in botany & zoology, and for his early theories of evolution. Over the next 30 years, Darwin took enormous pride sitting on top of the celebrity-scientific world. He developed more theories, published books & essays & the like. But as he progressed into his 50's he stagnated, hit a wall in his research. When this happened he fell behind as an innovator, became despondent & his life ended in sad inactivity.

In comparison the author of the article mentions Johann Sebastian Bach who had enormous success in his early years & then started to fade like Darwin. In part because musical trends changed many of which were ushered in by his own son. But when Bach fell behind he managed to reinvent himself & died respected & fulfilled even though he was less famous than he once was.

The moral of the story is, especially after 50, be like Bach & not Darwin. Sorta like the retired athlete who misses the accolades of the crowd, or the singer who hangs on after his/her voice is gone. They cease to be relevant & try mightily to regain their former prominence.

I guess this is typical in human nature, what say you our learned members?

It's rare to find anyone performing at their best after 50, most writers and artists produce their best work in middle age, 35-50 seem to be the most productive years. I offer you Charles Dickens' greatest work Great Expectations written when he was 48.  

The act of prohibition, called the 18th Amendment, was all too vague and Wheeler wanted the loopholes legislating out of it. Thing was, it didn't truly define what was and what wasn't an intoxicant, so they handed it all over to the man whose name would define the act (Andrew) Volstead, the person who headed up the House Judiciary Committee and became known as the Volstead act, much to Wheeler's dismay. Yet again, as with everything to do with this insane act, alcohol required for industry, in effect, became illegal, as he set the bar at rock bottom. Another thing, millions of people had actually laboured under the illusion that beer and even wine would be exempt from the ban and were plunged into a state of shock by the sheer severity of the new law but not as shocked as they were going to end up being. Within a couple of years the national murder rate had jumped 33%. Being a prohibition agent became one of the most dangerous, yet underpaid jobs in the country. Thirty of their small band were killed in the first two years and they in turn became so jittery and trigger happy, they killed 23 innocent civilians in Chicago alone. Comically, they were grossly underpaid, so they just went into the booze business themselves, confiscating it then selling it back. Every copper and politician was on the payroll and it's estimated that $150 million a year was being paid out in bribes in New York alone. Canadians were making fortunes, especially the French Canadians and in France itself their largest export was Champagne headed for prohibition America. The booze that did make it to government warehouses for safety from the bootleggers ended up back on the streets. Two thirds of all booze entering government safe warehouses ended up back on the streets. California's vineyards went from 100,000 acres to 700,000 acres and blamed the expansion on a craze for raisons and sultanas. So poor did the wine become that it took a few decades after the law ended to rebuild and restore the quality. Y'know, vineyards posted out grape concentrate (wine kits) through the post with a notice on the container.... Warning, this juice could turn into wine within 60 days. Then irony or irony's prohibition became so lucrative to the bent lawmakers and politicians, it became too difficult to amend, even though the country had had enough of the madness. Wheeler, the zealous architect and anti booze fanatic was the man who got the authorities to poison the alcohol, which was a deliberate act of murder, to which he replied that they deserved it. The nation finally awoke from this self induced madness and the law was repealed to mass celebration, a celebration Wheeler unfortunately missed as he died in 1927.

Origin of the word "cop."

I am aware of two versions.

1) Cop = Constable On Patrol

2) Cop or "copper" = The copper buttons worn on the uniforms of Bobby Peel's boys

What say you. 

Over here, to be 'copped' is to be discovered, found out doing something.... ie I copped him stealing my bike, so I've always presumed it came from that