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Who Put the Kibosh on the Bay of Pigs Invasion?

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Sunday, April 15, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1961 — The CIA’s ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion begins as three flights of falsely-marked American B-26s bomb and strafe Cuban airfields.” While this brief entry is technically correct, we hope to eventually enhance it and all our Bay of Pigs entries by incorporating additional information from Dave Emory’s “Guns of November” Audio Archive. Two little bits of transcript will demonstrate how daunting a task that will be. First, from 4:44 to 5:00 of Part Two of The Guns of November: …

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The Pine Tree Riot

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Saturday, April 14, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1772 — In South Weare, NH the County Sheriff tries to collect fines from sawmill owners for stealing the King’s trees. They beat him up.” The image at right, from our issue of Friday, April 24, 1772, shows our original reportage of that event. [Thanks to the Portsmouth Athenæum for access to the originals.] Here’s a transcript: “Portsmouth, April 24, 1772 — We hear from Hale’s-Town, That one Day the beginning of last Week, Benjamin Whiting, Esq; High-Sheriff of the County …

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Congressman Resigns, Reveals, Redeems

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Friday, April 13, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1981 — Rep. Jon Hinson (R-MS) resigns his seat three months after being arrested for attempting to commit oral sodomy in a House restroom.” Hinson was elected to represent Mississippi’s 4th District (right) in 1978. It was revealed during his re-election campaign that he had been arrested in 1976 near the Iwo Jima Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery for exposing himself to an undercover cop. Hinson denied being a homosexual, attributed his behavior to alcohol dependency, and was reelected in 1980. …

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World’s First Steam-Driven Airplane

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Thursday, April 12, 2012 — For years now we have been running about 140 very brief items of historical interest on the back page of our paper in a feature we call, “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes).” We love putting that page together; due to its limited space it is an ideal opportunity to practice the journalistic virtue of concision. Also, for years now, we’ve been under-using the spiffy and infinitely-elastic medium you are now reading. Today it occurred to us that we might meld our passion with our deficiency by selecting a single item daily and expanding upon it. …

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The Vermont Joy Parade Busking in Market Square

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Monday, April 9, 2012 — Human beings trapped by the machinations and depredations of late-stage plutocracy are likely to respond by sinking into numb despair or by defiantly manifesting, in whatever mode best suits them, their utter contempt for the corrupt system that mistakenly believes it can confine the human spirit. In other news, The New Hampshire Gazette’s Newsreel Division stumbled upon the Vermont Joy Parade busking in Market Square this afternoon.

Lowering the Weights

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Sunday, March 25, 2012 — The last section of a 500-ton counterweight was lifted from the south tower of Memorial Bridge between Portsmouth and Kittery about 1:45 p.m. yesterday. At about the 45-second mark, three guys can be seen shoving the 250,000-pound hunk of concrete and steel into place on the barge.