QUARANTINE BLOG # 184

September 30, 2020

Another month comes to a close today, and is our habit, let’s take a look back at things which happened in September.

👉  On September 1, 1972, in the “Match of the Century,” American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer – who started playing chess professionally at age 8 – defeated Russian Boris Spassky during the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland.  In the world’s most publicized title match ever played, Fischer, a 29-year-old Brooklynite, became the first American to win the competition since its inception in 1866.  The victory also marked the first time a non-Russian had won the event in 24 years.

👉  On Sunday, September 2, 1945, more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The  flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the deck of the battleship Missouri.  Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the surrender documents on behalf of the Japanese government, and General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces.  Unconditional surrender.  Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed, declaring, “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.”

👉  In the early morning of September 5, 1972, a group of Palestinian terrorists stormed the Munich Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two and taking nine others hostage.  The terrorists were part of a group known as Black September.   In an ensuing shootout at the Munich airport, the nine Israeli hostages were killed along with five terrorists and one West German policeman.

👉  As one of the first acts of his presidency, on September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard M. Nixon for any crimes he may have committed or participated in while in office.  Ford later defended this action before the House Judiciary Committee, explaining that he wanted to end the national divisions created by the Watergate scandal.

👉  Four French teenagers followed their dog down a narrow entrance into a cavern near Montignac, France, on September 12, 1940, and discovered the Lascaux cave paintings.  The paintings, at least 15,000 years old, consist mostly of animal representations.  The walls of the cavern are decorated with some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols and nearly 1,500 engravings. The Lascaux grotto was opened to the public in 1948 but was closed in 1963 because artificial lights had faded the vivid colors of the paintings and caused algae to grow over some of them.  A replica of the Lascaux cave was opened nearby in 1983.

👉  On September 13, 1990, the drama series “Law & Order” premiered on NBC.  It became one of the longest-running prime time dramas in TV history and spawn several popular spin-offs.  Each episode opens with a narrator stating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9F1eYHw41Y: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.”

👉  Jimmy Carter filed a report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena on September 18, 1973, claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969.  He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called “the darndest thing I’ve ever seen” in the sky.  Carter described the object as “very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon.”  Carter reported that “the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance.”  That explains so much!

👉  It was billed as the “Battle of the Sexes.”  On September 20, 1973, top women’s player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men’s player.  Riggs, a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn’t handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player.  Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

👉  On September 24, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson received the report of the Warren Commission on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  The commission was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren and became known as the Warren Commission.  It concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that the Secret Service had made poor preparations for JFK’s visit to Dallas and had failed to sufficiently protect him.

Side Note: It’s funny sometimes how the human memory works, the things that will spark a thought.  Writing about the Warren Commission I was reminded about Crash Davis’s “I Believe” speech (Kevin Costner in the movie Bull Durham).  If you’ve seen the movie you know that section has some language that is too salty for the Quarantine Blog, so here is an edited version I prepared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qPUSIcv56o.

👉  Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, on September 25, 1957, nine Black students entered all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Three weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered racial integration.  After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army paratroopers to Little Rock to enforce the court order.

👉  For the first time in U.S. history, on September 26, 1960, a debate between major party presidential candidates was shown on television.  The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, met in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S. domestic matters.

👉  Just after midnight on September 27, 1869, Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok and his deputy respond to a report that a local ruffian named Samuel Strawhun and several drunken buddies were tearing up John Bitter’s Beer Saloon in Hays City, Kansas.  When Hickok arrived and ordered the men to stop, Strawhun turned to attack him, and Hickok shot him in the head.  Strawhun died instantly, as did the riot.  The  citizens of Hays City were tired of the wild brawls and destructiveness of the hard-drinking buffalo hunters and soldiers who took over their town every night. They hoped the famous “Wild Bill” could restore peace and order, and in the summer of 1869, elected him as interim county sheriff.  Largely because of his methods, during the regular November election later that year, the people expressed their displeasure, and Hickok lost to his deputy, 144-89.

👉  On September 30, 1927, Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run of the 1927 season and with it set a record that would stand for 34 years.  Remembered more for his home runs than for his pitching, 1914 when Ruth was signed as a pitcher by the Baltimore Orioles.  That same summer, Ruth’s contract was sold by the Orioles to the Boston Red Sox.  He was recognized as the best pitcher on one of the great teams of the 1910s.  He set a record between 1916 and 1918 with 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play, including a 14-inning game in 1916 in which he pitched every inning, giving up only a run in the first.  Before the 1920 season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold The Bambino to the New York Yankees where he switched to the outfield, and hit more home runs than the entire Red Sox team in 10 of the next 12 seasons.  Here is one of his most famous home runs, the “called shot” in the 1932 World Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvy_fuyj_kg.

👉  Today is National Gum Chewing Day (one of my favorites because I can pop gum like the cannons in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s1812 Overture – and for the sheer pleasure of it, watch this Flash Mob version by Societat Musical d’Algemesi, performing in a public square, Placa del Mercat, in Valencia, Italy, where really big drums replace the cannons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NJRCCgK_AM.  Watching the Mob assemble from out of the crowd is incredible.  The music is great, too).

Anyway, humans have used chewing gum for over 5,000 years.  They may have chewed it for enjoyment, to stave off hunger, or to freshen their breath much like we do today.  The sources used to make gum resulted in minty and sweet chewable globs of wax or sap resin that fulfilled the human urge to gnaw.  In 2007, a British archaeology student discovered a 5,000-year-old piece of chewing gum made from bark tar with tooth imprints in it.

Speaking of chewing gum, I have the last known piece of Green Hubba Bubba bubble gum in existence.  I’ll tell you that story on Monday.

👉 Lessons from Stone Waterpots #3

You can read the whole story here:
https://classic.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+2%3A1-11&version=NKJV.

In this first miracle we have a fascinating glimpse of divine love.  One stone water jar would have satisfied the largest marriage company.  Jesus transformed all six pots because God gives with a lavishness that is staggering.  It is the lavishness of love.

Occasionally our supplies run short, so that we can realize that everything we have, all of our blessings, come from God’s hand.  When we link up to God, His supply links up to us.  When Christ is near, the Supplier of our every need is near.

You may, at this moment, not be in the best of health.  You may be facing a difficulty which seems ready to crush you.  There may be pressures on your job that seem to have no end.  Problems in your family break your heart.  And in the midst of this pain, you ask, “Why, God?”

Remember that little couple in Cana?  They were on the verge of want.  They did not know that their supply was about to run out.  But Jesus was there!  And at His touch their need was supplied.

Jesus is still the same.  Your problems may be about to overwhelm you, but they will never overwhelm Him.  No difficulties can baffle Him.  His resources are inexhaustible.  Ask Him to help you.  He is ready, right now!

This clip is a moving, and powerful, cinematic retelling of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cITLfD78o84.

-30-