Print

[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!

[Oyam18]

Good morning and good night.

[LSUFAN]

Good morning guys.

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1973, in a highly publicized "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match, top women's player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men's player. Riggs (1918-1995), 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. The match was a huge media event, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide. King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by men dressed as ancient slaves, while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by female models. Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King's achievement not only helped legitimize women's professional tennis and female athletes, but it was seen as a victory for women's rights in general.

King was born Billie Jean Moffitt on November 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California. Growing up, she was a star softball player before her parents encouraged her to try tennis, which was considered more ladylike. She excelled at the sport and in 1961, at age 17, during her first outing to Wimbledon, she won the women's doubles title. King would rack up a total of 20 Wimbledon victories, in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, over the course of her trailblazing career. In 1971, she became the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 in prize money in a single season. However, significant pay disparities still existed between men and women athletes and King lobbied hard for change. In 1973, the U.S. Open became the first major tennis tournament to hand out the same amount of prize money to winners of both sexes.

In 1972, King became the first woman to be chosen Sports Illustrated's "Sportsperson of the Year" and in 1973, she became the first president of the Women's Tennis Association. King also established a sports foundation and magazine for women and a team tennis league. In 1974, as a coach of the Philadelphia Freedoms, one of the teams in the league, she became the first woman to head up a professional co-ed team.

The "mother of modern sports" retired from tennis with 39 Grand Slam career titles. She remained active as a coach, commentator and advocate for women's sports and other causes. In 2006, the USTA National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open, was renamed in King's honor. During the dedication ceremony, tennis great John McEnroe called King "the single most important person in the history of women's sports."

[LSUFAN]

September 20, 1777, near Paoli, Pennsylvania, General Charles Grey and nearly 5,000 British soldiers launch a surprise attack on a small regiment of Patriot troops commanded by General Anthony Wayne in what becomes known as the Paoli Massacre. Not wanting to lose the element of surprise, Grey ordered his troops to empty their muskets and to use only bayonets or swords to attack the sleeping Americans under the cover of darkness.

With the help of a Loyalist spy who provided a secret password and led them to the camp, General Grey and the British launched the successful attack on the unsuspecting men of the Pennsylvania regiment, stabbing them to death as they slept. It was also alleged that the British soldiers took no prisoners during the attack, stabbing or setting fire to those who tried to surrender. Before it was over, nearly 200 Americans were killed or wounded. The Paoli Massacre became a rallying cry for the Americans against British atrocities for the rest of the Revolutionary War.

Less than two years later, Wayne became known as "Mad Anthony" for his bravery leading an impressive Patriot assault on British cliff-side fortifications at Stony Point on the Hudson River, 12 miles from West Point. Like Grey's attack at Paoli, Wayne's men only used bayonets in the 30-minute night attack, which resulted in 94 dead and 472 captured British soldiers.

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1960, California hot rodder Mickey Thompson takes another shot at the world land-speed record. A few weeks earlier, Thompson had become the first American to travel faster than 400 mph on land when he'd piloted his Challenger I (a car that he designed and built himself) across Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats at 406.6 mph. This drive had made Thompson the fastest man on wheels, but not officially: In order to win a place in the land-speed record books, racers must make a return pass within the hour, and Thompson's car broke down in the middle of his second run, necessitating a follow-up attempt.

At the time, the world land-speed record was 394 mph, set at Bonneville in 1947 by the British driver John Cobb. On his first run across the flats (403.135 mph), Cobb became the first man to go faster than 400 mph. (His second run only reached 388.019 mph; the record speed was an average of the two.) To set a world speed record, drivers must make two passes over the same measured mile, one out and one back (to account for wind assistance), and beat the previous average by at least 1 percent.

After Thompson's first pass across the Utah flats on September 9, he refueled the 7,000-pound, 2,000 horsepower Challenger and pushed off for the return trip. As the car gathered speed, however, something went wrong. For years, Thompson told people that something was the driveline: It had snapped, he said, forcing him to stop accelerating and coast back across the desert. In fact, one of the car's four supercharged engines blew when Thompson shifted into high gear. ("When you're sponsored by an engine company and you blow an engine," one expert on the Challenger I explained, "you don't say that you blew a Pontiac engine. You say that you broke a driveline.")

On September 20, Thompson tried again. This time, he only managed to coax the Challenger up to about 378 mph on his first run and 368 mph on his second. But it hardly mattered: The Challenger's speedy trips across the desert won worldwide fame for the car and its driver, and by the time Thompson retired in 1962, he had set more than 100 speed records.

In 1988, two hooded gunmen murdered Thompson and his wife in their driveway and fled the scene on bicycles. Almost 20 years later, one of Thompson's business acquaintances was convicted of the killings; he is serving two life sentences without parole. 

[LSUFAN]

In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, the Confederate Army of Tennessee drives the Union Army of the Cumberland back into Chattanooga, Tennessee, from Chickamauga Creek in northern Georgia. Although technically a Confederate victory, the battle had little long-term effect on the military situation in the region.

During the summer of 1863, Union General William Rosecrans had outmaneuvered Confederate General Braxton Bragg. Without fighting any major battles, Rosecrans had moved Bragg out of Tullahoma, Tennessee, and, by September, had captured Chattanooga. Pursuing Bragg into the mountainous region of northern Georgia, Rosecrans gleaned information from Confederate deserters that indicated Bragg was retreating. However, this information was false and had been deliberately fed to the Yankees.

Bragg had hoped to attack Rosecrans and drive the Federals south, away from Chattanooga and Union supply lines. On September 19, a division from Union General George Thomas's corps moved out to strike at what Thomas thought was an isolated Confederate brigade. But his force ran into dismounted Rebel cavalry, and the battle escalated when Bragg sent additional troops to the skirmish. As the day wore on, the battle spread down the lines until both armies were fully engaged.

That night, additional Confederate troops arrived under the command of James Longstreet. Longstreet was part of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and his men had fought at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, two months prior. He was dispatched with two of his divisions to stem the tide of Confederate defeat in the West.

Longsteet's appearance paid off for the Confederates. Around noon on September 20, the stalemate broke when Rosecrans ordered General Thomas Wood to move his division to plug a gap in the Yankee line. Although no such gap existed, one was created when Wood moved his division. Longstreet's troops were now able to march through the gap, and the Union line collapsed in chaos. Most of the Union army began a hasty retreat to nearby Chattanooga, leaving Thomas's corps alone on the battlefield. Thomas stubbornly held his ground and halted the Rebel attack, which allowed him to successfully withdraw without further losses. His action earned him the nickname "The Rock of Chickamauga."

Bragg did not immediately pursue Rosecrans to Chattanooga. Instead, the Confederates besieged the city until Union reinforcements arrived in late October. One of the largest battles of the war, Chickamauga resulted in 18,500 Confederate casualties and 16,100 Union casualties.

[LSUFAN]

An optimistic and upbeat President John F. Kennedy suggests that the Soviet Union and the United States cooperate on a mission to mount an expedition to the moon. The proposal caught both the Soviets and many Americans off guard.

In 1961, shortly after his election as president, John F. Kennedy announced that he was determined to win the "space race" with the Soviets. Since 1957, when the Soviet Union sent a small satellite--Sputnik--into orbit around the earth, Russian and American scientists had been competing to see who could make the next breakthrough in space travel. Outer space became another frontier in the Cold War. Kennedy upped the ante in 1961 when he announced that the United States would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Much had changed by 1963, however. Relations with the Soviet Union had improved measurably. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had been settled peacefully. A "hot line" had been established between Washington and Moscow to help avert conflict and misunderstandings. A treaty banning the open air testing of nuclear weapons had been signed in 1963. On the other hand, U.S. fascination with the space program was waning. Opponents of the program cited the high cost of the proposed trip to the moon, estimated at more than $20 billion. In the midst of all of this, Kennedy, in a speech at the United Nations, proposed that the Soviet Union and United States cooperate in mounting a mission to the moon. "Why," he asked the audience, "therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition?" Kennedy noted, "the clouds have lifted a little" in terms of U.S.-Soviet relations, and declared "The Soviet Union and the United States, together with their allies, can achieve further agreements--agreements which spring from our mutual interest in avoiding mutual destruction."

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko applauded Kennedy's speech and called it a "good sign," but refused to comment on the proposal for a joint trip to the moon. In Washington, there was a good bit of surprise--and some skepticism--about Kennedy's proposal. The "space race" had been one of the focal points of the Kennedy administration when it came to office, and the idea that America would cooperate with the Soviets in sending a man to the moon seemed unbelievable. Other commentators saw economics, not politics, behind the proposal. With the soaring price tag for the lunar mission, perhaps a joint effort with the Soviets was the only way to save the costly program. What might have come of Kennedy's idea is unknown--just two months later, he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, abandoned the idea of cooperating with the Soviets but pushed ahead with the lunar program. In 1969, the United States landed a man on the moon, thus winning a significant victory the "space race."

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 2012, 16 members of a dissident Amish group in Ohio are convicted of federal hate crimes and conspiracy for forcibly cutting the beards and hair of fellow Amish with whom they had religious differences. The government classified the ruthless attacks as hate crimes because beards and long hair have important religious symbolism to the Amish, who are known for their pacifism, plain style of dress and refusal to use many forms of modern technology.

The men and women convicted in the attacks belonged to a group of about 18 families who lived on an 800-acre farm owned by their leader, Samuel Mullet Sr., near Bergholz, Ohio, 100 miles southeast of Cleveland. Mullet, an Amish bishop and father of 18, masterminded the 2011 attacks against fellow Amish whom he viewed as enemies of his ultraconservative splinter sect. The five separate assaults involved nine people and spread fear through Amish communities in Ohio, home to an Amish population of roughly 60,000. The perpetrators—sometimes wielding shears meant for horse manes—restrained victims and in some cases hurt those who came to their aid. Afterwards, the attackers took photographs in order to further humiliate the injured parties.

The Amish typically resolve disputes on their own, without involving law enforcement; however, several beard cutting victims reported the attacks to police out of concern that Mullet was operating a cult. Mullet (who did not participate directly in the attacks) and a group of his followers were arrested in late 2011, and their case went to trial in late August 2012. It was the first case in Ohio that applied a landmark 2009 federal law—the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act—which gave the government increased powers to prosecute crimes motivated by bigotry.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that Mullet believed he was above the law and kept tight control over his followers with a kind of cult-like domination. Among other things, he censored their mail and imposed punishments on adults such as paddling and confinement in chicken coops. The prosecution also presented witness testimony that Mullet had pressured married female followers to have sex with him under the guise of marital counseling. Defense lawyers, who called no witnesses, did not dispute that the beard and hair cuttings took place. However, they said the acts were simple assaults that did not meet the definition of hate crimes because they were based on personal feuds rather than religious motives. The defense also contended that the shearings were performed out of compassion in order to convince the recipients to return to a stricter Amish lifestyle.

On September 20, 2012, the 66-year-old Mullet was convicted along with three of his sons, one of his daughters and 11 other followers. On February 8, 2013, a federal judge in Cleveland sentenced Mullet to 15 years in prison. His co-defendants received sentences ranging from one to seven years behind bars.

[LSUFAN]

A glacial avalanche in Russia buries a village on this day in 2002, killing more than 100 people.

The North Ossetia area of Russia was hard hit by floods in June 2002. These floods, along with an early and hot summer, proved to be a precursor to a much larger disaster in September. Large glaciers sit above the town of Vladikavkaz. With higher than normal temperatures in 2002, increased water runoff showed that these glaciers were beginning to melt and weaken.

On the afternoon of September 20, a 400-foot-tall chunk of ice broke from a large glacier and plunged down the side of the mountain. The resulting avalanche picked up speed, hitting close to 100 miles per hour at its fastest and traveling an astonishing 20 miles, destroying everything in its path. The village of Karmadon was completely buried by tons of stone and ice. Rescue efforts began immediately and continued for weeks. Twenty-seven people were pulled out alive. Finding victims' remains proved to be much more difficult work. Even weeks after the avalanche, less than half the150 people who had been reported missing had been found.

In total, the avalanche caused $20 million in damages. Had it traveled just a few miles further and hit Vladikavkaz, the death and damage toll would have been far worse.

[LSUFAN]

Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific. He searched the Río de la Plata, a large estuary south of Brazil, for a way through; failing, he continued south along the coast of Patagonia. At the end of March 1520, the expedition set up winter quarters at Port St. Julian. On Easter day at midnight, the Spanish captains mutinied against their Portuguese captain, but Magellan crushed the revolt, executing one of the captains and leaving another ashore when his ship left St. Julian in August.

On October 21, he finally discovered the strait he had been seeking. The Strait of Magellan, as it became known, is located near the tip of South America, separating Tierra del Fuego and the continental mainland. Only three ships entered the passage; one had been wrecked and another deserted. It took 38 days to navigate the treacherous strait, and when ocean was sighted at the other end Magellan wept with joy. He was the first European explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. His fleet accomplished the westward crossing of the ocean in 99 days, crossing waters so strangely calm that the ocean was named "Pacific," from the Latin word pacificus, meaning "tranquil." By the end, the men were out of food and chewed the leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. On March 6, 1521, the expedition landed at the island of Guam.

Ten days later, they dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebú--they were only about 400 miles from the Spice Islands. Magellan met with the chief of Cebú, who after converting to Christianity persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighboring island of Mactan. In fighting on April 27, Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades.

After Magellan's death, the survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas and loaded the hulls with spice. One ship attempted, unsuccessfully, to return across the Pacific. The other ship, the Vittoria, continued west under the command of Basque navigator Juan SebastiÁn de Elcano. The vessel sailed across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at the Spanish port of SanlÚcar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the globe.

[LSUFAN]

Spanish forces under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés capture the French Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. The French, commanded by Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, lost 135 men in the first instance of colonial warfare between European powers in America. Most of those killed were massacred on the order of Aviles, who allegedly had the slain hanged on trees beside the inscription "Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." Laudonniere and some 40 other Huguenots escaped.

In 1564, the French Huguenots (Protestants) had settled on the Banks of May, a strategic point on the Florida coast. King Philip II of Spain was disturbed by this challenge to Spanish authority in the New World and sent Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to Florida to expel the French heretics and establish a Spanish colony there. In early September 1565, Aviles founded San Augustin on the Florida coast, which would later grow into Saint Augustine--the oldest city in North America. Two weeks later, on September 20, he attacked and destroyed the French settlement of Fort Caroline.

The decisive French defeat encouraged France to refocus its colonial efforts in America far to the north, in what is now Quebec and Nova Scotia in Canada.

[LSUFAN]

The first annual Cannes Film Festival opens at the resort city of Cannes on the French Riviera. The festival had intended to make its debut in September 1939, but the outbreak of World War II forced the cancellation of the inaugural Cannes.

The world's first annual international film festival was inaugurated at Venice in 1932. By 1938, the Venice Film Festival had become a vehicle for Fascist and Nazi propaganda, with Benito Mussolini's Italy and Adolf Hitler's Germany dictating the choices of films and sharing the prizes among themselves. Outraged, France decided to organize an alternative film festival. In June 1939, the establishment of a film festival at Cannes, to be held from September 1 to 20, was announced in Paris. Cannes, an elegant beach city, lies southeast of Nice on the Mediterranean coast. One of the resort town's casinos agreed to host the event.

Films were selected and the filmmakers and stars began arriving in mid-August. Among the American selections was The Wizard of Oz. France offered The Nigerian, and Poland The Black Diamond. The USSR brought the aptly titled Tomorrow, It's War. On the morning of September 1, the day the festival was to begin, Hitler invaded Poland. In Paris, the French government ordered a general mobilization, and the Cannes festival was called off after the screening of just one film: German American director William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany.

World War II lasted six long years. In 1946, France's provincial government approved a revival of the Festival de Cannes as a means of luring tourists back to the French Riviera. The festival began on September 20, 1946, and 18 nations were represented. The festival schedule included Austrian American director Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend, Italian director Roberto Rossellini's Open City, French director René Clement's The Battle of the Rails, and British director David Lean's Brief Encounter. At the first Cannes, organizers placed more emphasis on creative stimulation between national productions than on competition. Nine films were honored with the top award: Grand Prix du Festival.

The Cannes Film Festival stumbled through its early years; the 1948 and 1950 festivals were canceled for economic reasons. In 1952, the Palais des Festivals was dedicated as a permanent home for the festival, and in 1955, the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award for best film of the festival was introduced, an allusion to the palm-planted Promenade de la Croisette that parallels Cannes' celebrated beach. In the 1950s, the Festival International du Film de Cannes came to be regarded as the most prestigious film festival in the world. It still holds that allure today, though many have criticized it as overly commercial. More than 30,000 people come to Cannes each May to attend the festival, about 100 times the number of film devotees who showed up for the first Cannes in 1946.

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1934, Sofia Villani Scicolone, later known to the world as the actress and screen siren Sophia Loren, is born in Rome, Italy. Loren, who was raised in poverty in Naples, rose to become Italy’s most famous film star and an international icon of beauty and glamour.

As a teenager, Sofia began entering beauty contests, and she eventually caught the attention of the Italian movie producer Carlo Ponti (1912-2007). In the early 1950s, Ponti (who later produced Federico Fellini’s 1954 La Strada and 1965’s Doctor Zhivago), started using her for small roles and by the mid-1950s, the dark-haired beauty (now known as Sophia Loren) was a star in Italy. She earned international notice in the 1957 English-language films Boy on a Dolphin, co-starring Alan Ladd, and The Pride and the Passion, co-starring Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant and directed by Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones, Judgment at Nuremberg, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner).

In 1957, Loren married the divorced Ponti by proxy in Mexico, which caused a scandal in Italy, a heavily Catholic country where divorce was illegal. Loren continued to make movies in Italy and America, co-starring with a long list of Hollywood’s top leading men. She appeared with Clark Gable in 1960’s It Started in Naples, Peter Sellars in 1960’s The Millionairess and Charlton Heston in 1961’s El Cid. In 1962, Loren won a Best Actress Academy Award for her role as a widowed mother trapped in a love triangle with her teenage daughter in the Italian film Two Women (released in the United States in 1961). Her Oscar win made her the first actress ever to win that honor for a foreign-language film. She was nominated for a second Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Matrimonio all’Italia, or Marriage Italian Style, which co-starred Marcello Mastroianni. Released in the United States in 1964, Marriage Italian Style was also nominated in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. Among Loren’s other film credits in the 1960s were Lady L (1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (1966) with Gregory Peck and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), co-starring Marlon Brando and helmed by Charlie Chaplin in his final time in the director’s chair.

After giving birth to her two sons, Loren stepped back from the spotlight and began acting less frequently. In 1994, she appeared in Robert Altman’s Pret-a-Porter, and in 1995 she was featured in Grumpier Old Men alongside Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon and Ann-Margret. In 2002, Loren starred in Between Strangers, directed by her younger son, Edoardo Ponti.

[LSUFAN]

On this day, Upton Sinclair, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and reformer, is born in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sinclair came from a once well-to-do Southern family that had suffered reverses. When he was 10, the family moved to New York. Starting at age 15, he earned money writing dime novels, which paid his way through New York's City College and Columbia University.

Sinclair, who married in 1900, also earned money writing journalistic pieces. An assignment on meat-packing plants led to his bestselling novel The Jungle, in which an idealistic immigrant goes to work in the Chicago stockyards. Unable to find a publisher for his book, he ultimately published it himself. The novel's gritty portrayal of labor abuses and unsanitary conditions led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

The book became a bestseller. Sinclair used the proceeds to fund a socialist utopia called Helicone Home Colony in Englewood, New York. However, the cooperative-living building burned down after a year, and Sinclair gave up the project. He wrote several more well-known novels, though none were as successful as his first. The Metropolis (1908) examined high society in New York, Oil! (1927) looked at the Teapot Dome scandal, and Boston (1928) dealt with the controversial Sacco and Vanzetti trial.

Sinclair moved to Pasadena in 1915. He fought for leftist reforms in the 1930s and 1940s. Meanwhile, he wrote a series of 11 novels looking at contemporary history. His hero, Larry Budd, travels the world and meets such figures as Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler. In 1942, his book Dragon's Teeth, portraying Germany's descent into Nazism in the 1930s, won the Pulitzer Prize. The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair came out in 1962, and the author died six years later in Bound Brook, New Jersey.