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[CigarBanter]

What's up cigar enthusiasts?!  Join in this cigar talk with the rest of us and learn something along the way.  Be warned, you will catch hell if you post something everyone doesn't agree with.  And heaven forbid if you should make a grammatical error, you'll be berated with GFYs!  So don't have thin skin and welcome aboard!

[IrascibleOldFool]

No 2fer crappy Tuesday! Good morning everyone!

[LSUFAN]

Good morning guys.

[LSUFAN]

 2 Romeo y Julieta 1875 Bully Belicoso
         10/39.99
 1 La Aroma de Cuba Robusto
          5/24.00

[IrascibleOldFool]

Off to bed.  Have a great day,  Chip!

[LSUFAN]

3 Cain Habano 'F' Robusto
          5/22.50
 2 Romeo y Julieta 1875 Bully Belicoso
         10/39.99
 1 La Aroma de Cuba Robusto
          5/24.00

[LSUFAN]

4 CAO Italia Novella
         10/34.99
 3 Cain Habano 'F' Robusto
          5/22.50
 2 Romeo y Julieta 1875 Bully Belicoso
         10/39.99
 1 La Aroma de Cuba Robusto
          5/24.00

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1932, in his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest of the British government's decision to separate India's electoral system by caste.

A leader in the Indian campaign for home rule, Gandhi worked all his life to spread his own brand of passive resistance across India and the world. By 1920, his concept of Satyagraha (or "insistence upon truth") had made Gandhi an enormously influential figure for millions of followers. Jailed by the British government from 1922-24, he withdrew from political action for a time during the 1920s but in 1930 returned with a new civil disobedience campaign. This landed Gandhi in prison again, but only briefly, as the British made concessions to his demands and invited him to represent the Indian National Congress Party at a round-table conference in London.

After his return to India in January 1932, Gandhi wasted no time beginning another civil disobedience campaign, for which he was jailed yet again. Eight months later, Gandhi announced he was beginning a "fast unto death" in order to protest British support of a new Indian constitution, which gave the country's lowest classes--known as "untouchables"--their own separate political representation for a period of 70 years. Gandhi believed this would permanently and unfairly divide India's social classes. A member of the more powerful Vaisya, or merchant caste, Gandhi nonetheless advocated the emancipation of the untouchables, whom he called Harijans, or "Children of God."

"This is a god-given opportunity that has come to me," Gandhi said from his prison cell at Yerovda, "to offer my life as a final sacrifice to the downtrodden." Though other public figures in India--including Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambdekar, the official political representative of the untouchables--had questioned Gandhi's true commitment to the lower classes, his six-day fast ended after the British government accepted the principal terms of a settlement between higher caste Indians and the untouchables that reversed the separation decision.

As India slowly moved towards independence, Gandhi's influence only grew. He continued to resort to the hunger strike as a method of resistance, knowing the British government would not be able to withstand the pressure of the public's concern for the man they called Mahatma, or "Great Soul." On January 12, 1948, Gandhi undertook his last successful fast in New Delhi, to persuade Hindus and Muslims in that city to work toward peace. On January 30, less than two weeks after breaking that fast, he was assassinated by a Hindu extremist on his way to an evening prayer meeting.

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1776, General George Washington arrives at Harlem Heights, on the northern end of Manhattan, and takes command of a group of retreating Continental troops. The day before, 4,000 British soldiers had landed at Kip's Bay in Manhattan (near present-day 34th Street) and taken control of the island, driving the Continentals north, where they appeared to be in disarray prior to Washington's arrival.

In the early morning hours of September 16, 1776, General Washington ordered the Continentals to hold their line at Harlem Heights while he sent Captain Thomas Knowlton and a volunteer group of Rangers to scout British movements and possibly lure the British into combat. While Captain Knowlton and the Rangers engaged the British in a frontal assault, Washington sent a second force of Patriots to attack the British from their right flank. During the short but intense fighting that ensued, the Americans were able to force a small British retreat from their northern positions.

Despite the American failure to stop the British invasion of New York City the previous day at Kip's Bay, the successful Battle of Harlem Heights restored public confidence in the American troops and lifted the spirits of the Continental Army. The Americans and British each lost approximately 70 troops in the fighting. One of the Americans lost was the Ranger leader, Captain Thomas Knowlton.

[LSUFAN]

On September 16, 1908, Buick Motor Company head William Crapo Durant spends $2,000 to incorporate General Motors in New Jersey. Durant, a high-school dropout, had made his fortune building horse-drawn carriages, and in fact he hated cars--he thought they were noisy, smelly, and dangerous. Nevertheless, the giant company he built would dominate the American auto industry for decades.

In the first years of the 20th century, however, that industry was a mess. There were about 45 different car companies in the United States, most of which sold only a handful of cars each year (and many of which had an unpleasant tendency to take customers' down payments and then go out of business before delivering a completed automobile). Industrialist Benjamin Briscoe called this way of doing business "manufacturing gambling," and he proposed a better idea. To build consumer confidence and drive the weakest car companies out of business, he wanted to consolidate the largest and most reliable manufacturers (Ford, REO, his own Maxwell-Briscoe, and Durant's Buick) into one big company. This idea appealed to Durant (though not to Henry Ford or REO's Ransom E. Olds), who had made his millions in the carriage business just that way: Instead of selling one kind of vehicle to one kind of customer, Durant's company had sold carriages and carts of all kinds, from the utilitarian to the luxurious.

But Briscoe wanted to merge all the companies completely into one, while Durant wanted to build a holding company that would leave its individual parts more or less alone. ("Durant is for states' rights," Briscoe said. "I am for a union.") Durant got his way, and the new GM was the opposite of Ford: Instead of just making one car, like the Model T, it produced a wide variety of cars for a wide variety of buyers. In its first two years, GM cobbled together 30 companies, including 11 automakers like Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Oakland (which later became Pontiac), some supplier firms, and even an electric company.

Buying all these companies was too expensive for the fledgling GM, and in 1911 the corporation's board forced the spendthrift Durant to quit. He started a new car company with the Chevrolet brothers and was able to buy enough GM stock to regain control of the corporation in 1916, but his profligate ways got the better of him and he was forced out again in 1920. During the Depression, Durant went bankrupt, and he spent his last years managing a bowling alley in Flint.

[LSUFAN]

George Washington Custis Lee is born to Robert E. and Mary Custis Lee in Fort Monroe, Virginia.

The eldest son and the second of seven children, Custis Lee, as his family called him, followed his father's footsteps to West Point. At age 16, Custis had been denied entry into the military academy, but his father wrote an appeal to General Winfield Scott and so he was admitted the following year. Though he had needed his father's influence to gain admission, once in West Point Lee made the most of his opportunity. He graduated first in his class of 46 in 1854. For the last two years of his studies, his father was superintendent of the academy.

Lee served in the Engineering Corps until 1860, primarily in California. When Fort Sumter, South Carolina, fell in April 1861, he was stationed in Washington, D.C. Lee resigned his commission on May 2, 1861, about two weeks after his father resigned from the U.S. Army, and became a captain in the Confederate Army, assisting in the construction of fortifications for Richmond, Virginia.

In August 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis selected Lee to serve as his aide-de-camp, and he was soon promoted to colonel. Custis Lee spent the next three years in this position, gathering military information for Davis and conferring with him on a wide variety of military issues. For his service, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1863.

During the Gettysburg campaign, when his father's army was in Pennsylvania, Lee commanded part of the force defending Richmond, and he oversaw the Richmond defenses during Union General Ulysses S. Grant's Virginia campaign of 1864. He also assumed leadership of a division in October 1864, but his command saw action only when the Confederates evacuated Richmond in March 1865. He and his force were captured at Sayler's Creek, Virginia, a few days before his father surrendered the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865.

After the war, Custis Lee taught engineering at the Virginia Military Institute. In 1871, he replaced his late father as president of Washington College (later renamed Washington and Lee University). Custis Lee retired from that post in 1897, and died in Fairfax County, Virginia, on February 18, 1913.

[LSUFAN]

On this day, Soviet representatives condemn an essay writing contest sponsored by the United Nations. The incident, though small, indicated that the Cold War was as much a battle of words as a war of bombs and guns.

In 1950, the Public Information Department of the United Nations hit upon an idea to stir interest among young people in the work of the United Nations: an essay contest. The theme for the contest was "The Veto." The question posed to the contestants was: "Has the rule of unanimity (the veto) prevented the United Nations from functioning in the political and security field?" The question referred to the fact that resolutions in the U.N.'s Security Council (which handled the most important "political and security" issues) had to be approved by each of the so-called "Big Five" nations--the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and Nationalist China. One negative vote by any of these nations would veto any action on the resolution. It was a particularly timely topic. In June 1950, the Korean War began when communist North Korea invaded South Korea. The United States immediately asked the Security Council to approve the use of U.N. forces to repel the North Korean attack. The resolution passed only because the Soviet Union was absent that day, in protest of the exclusion of communist China from the United Nations.

The essay contest rankled the Soviet's U.N. representatives. The Soviets were famous for using their veto power in the Security Council; they cast 45 vetoes in the first five years of the U.N.'s existence. The chief Soviet delegate to the United Nations, Jacob Malik, launched into a tirade about the essay contest on September 16, 1950. He claimed that U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie had promised to end the contest. He was infuriated to learn that it was still on, and that winners were about to be announced. Malik declared that the contest organizers "aimed at undermining one of the basic principles of the United Nations Charter." Exactly what that "basic principle" entailed was not stated. Lie merely replied that he was "surprised that the Soviet delegation should take such interest in a relatively minor administrative question."

Later that day, the 10 contest winners--including one from Czechoslovakia--were announced. For their efforts, they received free transportation to the United States (no U.S. citizens had been allowed to participate, to avoid any claims of favoritism), were awarded a 30-day stay at the U.N. headquarters in New York, and given $10 a day to cover expenses. Most of the essays concluded that the veto interfered with, but did not destroy, the United Nation's effectiveness.

[LSUFAN]

Phineas Wilcox is stabbed to death by fellow Mormons in Nauvoo, Illinois, because he is believed to be a Christian spy. The murder of Wilcox reflected the serious and often violent conflict between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the surrounding communities. Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon Church in 1830, had been living with his followers in Missouri, where they had various conflicts with locals, including an armed skirmish with the state militia. In 1838, Governor Lilburn Boggs signed a military order directing that the Mormons be expelled or exterminated: "The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state, if necessary, for the public good."

Smith and the Mormons fled across the Mississippi to Nauvoo, Illinois, which quickly became the second most populous town in the state. But there were conflicts and tensions in Nauvoo as well. When a local newspaper printed editorials claiming that the religious leader was a fraud, Smith sent a group of followers to destroy the newspaper office. He was then arrested and sent to jail, where a lynch mob tracked him down and killed him.

Brigham Young, who quickly took command of the church and its followers, tried to stifle any dissent and banish his rivals. The killing of Phineas Wilcox was part of his consolidation of power. Tensions with other communities continued to escalate, and, a year later, over 2,000 armed anti-Mormons marched on Nauvoo. Young decided that it no longer was wise to stay in the area. He led his flock west and settled in the Salt Lake Valley, where he and his followers would become instrumental in founding the state of Utah.

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 2013, a 34-year-old man goes on a rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., killing 12 people and wounding several others over the course of an hour before he is fatally shot by police. Investigators later determined that the gunman, Aaron Alexis, a computer contractor for a private information technology firm, had acted alone.

Shortly after 8 a.m., Alexis used his security pass to enter Building 197 at the Navy Yard, a former shipyard, dating to the early 1800s, and weapons plant that now serves as an administrative center for the Navy. At approximately 8:16 a.m., Alexis, armed with a sawed-off Remington 870 shotgun and dressed in a short-sleeve polo shirt and pants, shot his first victim. Over the course of the next hour, he moved through the 630,000-square-foot, multi-level Building 197, the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command, gunning down more victims and exchanging fire with law enforcement officials. Alexis was shot and killed by police at 9:25 a.m. The shooting spree caused officials to put part of Washington on lockdown due to initial suspicions that other gunmen might have been involved in the incident; however, by the end of the day, authorities determined that Alexis had acted alone.

A Navy reservist from 2007 to 2011, Alexis began work as a computer technician at the Navy Yard on September 9, 2013. Five days later, at a gun store in Virginia, he purchased the Remington 870 and ammunition used in the attack. Investigators found no evidence that any specific event triggered the deadly massacre, and they believed Alexis shot his victims at random. The shotgun he used (he also took a handgun from one of his victims) was etched with several phrases, including “Better off this way” and “My ELF weapon,” and the FBI announced there was a variety of evidence indicating Alexis was under the “delusional belief” he was being controlled by extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic waves. In August 2013, Alexis told police in Rhode Island, where he was working, that he was hearing voices. The private IT contracting firm employing Alexis took him off his assignment for a few days then let him back on the job; weeks later, he went to work at the Navy Yard.

The 12 men and women murdered during the September 16th rampage ranged in age from 46 to 73. They were memorialized by President Barack Obama at a September 22, 2013, ceremony in which he remembered them and also issued a call to tighten America’s gun laws.

[LSUFAN]

The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists--half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs--had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the "Pilgrims" reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.

Thirty-five of the Pilgrims were members of the radical English Separatist Church, who traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they found corrupt. Ten years earlier, English persecution had led a group of Separatists to flee to Holland in search of religious freedom. However, many were dissatisfied with economic opportunities in the Netherlands, and under the direction of William Bradford they decided to immigrate to Virginia, where an English colony had been founded at Jamestown in 1607.

The Separatists won financial backing from a group of investors called the London Adventurers, who were promised a sizable share of the colony's profits. Three dozen church members made their way back to England, where they were joined by about 70 entrepreneurs--enlisted by the London stock company to ensure the success of the enterprise. In August 1620, the Mayflower left Southampton with a smaller vessel--the Speedwell--but the latter proved unseaworthy and twice was forced to return to port. On September 16, the Mayflower left for America alone from Plymouth.

In a difficult Atlantic crossing, the 90-foot Mayflower encountered rough seas and storms and was blown more than 500 miles off course. Along the way, the settlers formulated and signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement that bound the signatories into a "civil body politic." Because it established constitutional law and the rule of the majority, the compact is regarded as an important precursor to American democracy. After a 66-day voyage, the ship landed on November 21 on the tip of Cape Cod at what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts.

After coming to anchor in Provincetown harbor, a party of armed men under the command of Captain Myles Standish was sent out to explore the area and find a location suitable for settlement. While they were gone, Susanna White gave birth to a son, Peregrine, aboard the Mayflower. He was the first English child born in New England. In mid-December, the explorers went ashore at a location across Cape Cod Bay where they found cleared fields and plentiful running water and named the site Plymouth.

The expedition returned to Provincetown, and on December 21 the Mayflower came to anchor in Plymouth harbor. Just after Christmas, the pilgrims began work on dwellings that would shelter them through their difficult first winter in America.

In the first year of settlement, half the colonists died of disease. In 1621, the health and economic condition of the colonists improved, and that autumn Governor William Bradford invited neighboring Indians to Plymouth to celebrate the bounty of that year's harvest season. Plymouth soon secured treaties with most local Indian tribes, and the economy steadily grew, and more colonists were attracted to the settlement. By the mid 1640s, Plymouth's population numbered 3,000 people, but by then the settlement had been overshadowed by the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north, settled by Puritans in 1629.

The term "Pilgrim" was not used to describe the Plymouth colonists until the early 19th century and was derived from a manuscript in which Governor Bradford spoke of the "saints" who left Holland as "pilgrimes." The orator Daniel Webster spoke of "Pilgrim Fathers" at a bicentennial celebration of Plymouth's founding in 1820, and thereafter the term entered common usage.