Page Sixteen

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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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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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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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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Saturday, November 10, 2007 — Well, now, we’re got ourselves a brand-new Attorney General. What do you know. Three years to the day since John Ashcroft punched out for the last time. 2004—John Ashcroft, having done enough damage, resigns as Attorney General. His replacement will make him look good. 1982—Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and all-around fun guy, kicks off from a bad ticker. 1975—The Edmund Fitzgerald sinks on Lake Superior, taking with her a crew of 29. 1973—In Drake, North Dakota the school board fires a teacher and burns the book he assigned, Slaughterhouse Five. 1964—In Australia, …

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