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[Oyam18]

Pitching this Monte Media Noche.  Tight draw, poker, still tight, pretty bad flavors.  Sheesh.

never did like them. Only non Cuban monte I enjoy are the White

[Wenglish]

Pitching this Monte Media Noche.  Tight draw, poker, still tight, pretty bad flavors.  Sheesh.

never did like them. Only non Cuban monte I enjoy are the White

I've had a handful across the years from here and there, various samplers and boxes, I guess.  Can't say any of them have been my top Broadleaf or anything, but all have been smokeable. 

I also like the Monte Afrique petit corona.  4.25x44, I think.  Oddball blend, but a good winter smoke.  The DDA used to put them up pretty regularly for less than $2/ea.

[Bad Dad]

I'm heading for bed... Nite everyone..!

[razgueado]

Pitching this Monte Media Noche.  Tight draw, poker, still tight, pretty bad flavors.  Sheesh.

never did like them. Only non Cuban monte I enjoy are the White

Common sentiment.  Me too.

[glassken]

Pitching this Monte Media Noche.  Tight draw, poker, still tight, pretty bad flavors.  Sheesh.

never did like them. Only non Cuban monte I enjoy are the White

Common sentiment.  Me too.

Testing, 1-2-3! Calling all Tony's! No, seriously. If we don't flip it will be fine, not the end of the world.

[razgueado]

I don't think Tony's making it tonight.

[LSUFAN]

Good morning guys.

[LSUFAN]

Pitching this Monte Media Noche.  Tight draw, poker, still tight, pretty bad flavors.  Sheesh.

never did like them. Only non Cuban monte I enjoy are the White

Common sentiment.  Me too.

Testing, 1-2-3! Calling all Tony's! No, seriously. If we don't flip it will be fine, not the end of the world.

Poor guy needs to get lucky once in awhile.

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1957, Althea Gibson claims the women's singles tennis title at Wimbledon and becomes the first African American to win a championship at London's All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

Gibson was born on August 25, 1927, in Silver, South Carolina, and raised in the Harlem section of New York City. She began playing tennis as a teenager and went on to win the national black women's championship twice. At a time when tennis was largely segregated, four-time U.S. Nationals winner Alice Marble advocated on Gibson's behalf and the 5'11" player was invited to make her U.S. Open debut in 1950. In 1956, Gibson's tennis career took off and she won the singles title at the French Open--the first African American to do so--as well as the doubles' title there. In July 1957, Gibson won Wimbledon, defeating Darlene Hard, 6-3, 6-2. (In 1975, Arthur Ashe became the first African-American man to win the men's singles title at Wimbledon, when he defeated Jimmy Connors.) In September 1957, she won the U.S. Open, and the Associated Press named her Female Athlete of the Year in 1957 and 1958. During the 1950s, Gibson won 56 singles and doubles titles, including 11 major titles.

After winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open again in 1958, Gibson retired from amateur tennis. In 1960, she toured with the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, playing exhibition tennis matches before their games. In 1964, Gibson joined the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour, the first black woman to do so. The trailblazing athlete played pro golf until 1971, the same year in which she was voted into the National Lawn Tennis Association Hall of Fame.

After serving as New Jersey's commissioner of athletics from 1975 to 1985, Althea Gibson died at age 76 from respiratory failure on September 28, 2003, at a hospital in East Orange, New Jersey.

[glassken]

Pitching this Monte Media Noche.  Tight draw, poker, still tight, pretty bad flavors.  Sheesh.

never did like them. Only non Cuban monte I enjoy are the White

Common sentiment.  Me too.

Testing, 1-2-3! Calling all Tony's! No, seriously. If we don't flip it will be fine, not the end of the world.

Poor guy needs to get lucky once in awhile.

Chip, there is a Chinese martial/ health practise called ba gua chang, and it means "the eight palm changes". Your tiger seems to be doing it. Google it, I'm serious!

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1775, one day after restating their fidelity to King George III and wishing him "a long and prosperous reign" in the Olive Branch Petition, Congress sets "forth the causes and necessity of their taking up arms" against British authority in the American colonies. The declaration also proclaimed their preference "to die free men rather than live as slaves."

As in the Olive Branch Petition, Congress never impugned the motives of the British king. Instead, they protested, "The large strides of late taken by the legislature of Great Britain toward establishing over these colonies their absolute rule..." Congress provided a history of colonial relations in which the king served as the sole governmental connection between the mother country and colonies, until, in their eyes, the victory against France in the Seven Years' War caused Britain's "new ministry finding all the foes of Britain subdued" to fall upon "the unfortunate idea of subduing her friends also." According to the declaration, the king's role remained constant, but "parliament then for the first time assumed a power of unbounded legislation over the colonies of America," which resulted in the bloodletting at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.

At this point, Congress assumed that if the king could merely be made to understand what Parliament and his ministers had done, he would rectify the situation and return the colonists to their rightful place as fully equal members of the British empire. When the king sided with Parliament, however, Congress moved beyond a Declaration of Arms to a Declaration of Independence.

[LSUFAN]

On this day, Confederate General Jubal Early's troops cross the Potomac River and capture Hagerstown, Maryland. Early had sought to threaten Washington, D.C., and thereby relieve pressure on General Robert E. Lee, who was fighting to keep Ulysses S. Grant out of Richmond, Virginia.

During the brutal six-week campaign against Grant in June 1864, Lee was under tremendous pressure. On June 12, he dispatched Jubal Early to Lynchburg, in western Virginia, to hold off a Union attack by General David Hunter. After defeating Hunter, Early was ordered to head down the Shenandoah Valley to the Potomac. Lee hoped that this threat to Washington would force Grant to return part of his army to the capital and protect it from an embarrassing capture by the Confederates. Lee was inspired by a similar Shenandoah campaign by Stonewall Jackson in 1862, in which Jackson occupied three Federal armies in a brilliant military show. However, the circumstances were different in 1864. Grant now had plenty of men, and Lee was stretched thin around the Richmond-Petersburg perimeter.

Still, the first part of Early's raid was successful. His force crossed the Potomac on July 6, and a cavalry brigade under John McCausland rode into Hagerstown. Early instructed McCausland to demand $200,000 from the city officials of Hagerstown for damages caused by Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley, but McCausland felt the amount was too large, so he asked for $20,000. After receiving the money, Early's army turned southeast toward Washington. The Confederates reached the outskirts of the city before being turned away by troops from Grant's army.

[LSUFAN]

In the light of a deepening ideological rift between the Soviet Union and China, U.S. officials express their belief that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev will seek closer relations with the United States. Unfortunately, the optimism was somewhat misplaced. Although China and the Soviet Union announced a serious split in mid-July 1963, Khrushchev's days in office were numbered.

Officials in the U.S. government watched with tremendous interest the developing rift between the Soviet Union and China in the early 1960s. The ideological split centered around the Chinese perception that the Russians were becoming too "soft" in their revolutionary zeal and too accommodating to Western capitalist powers. In mid-1963, Chinese and Soviet representatives met in Moscow to try to mend the damage. U.S. diplomats were convinced that the rift was irreversible. As a consequence, they believed Khrushchev would become much more receptive to better relations with the United States in order to isolate further the communist Chinese. Thus, on July 6, 1963, the New York Times carried several related stories, based on statements from "responsible" figures in the administration of President John F. Kennedy, about the hopes for a meaningful "peaceful coexistence" between the Soviet Union and United States. Khrushchev himself had coined the term "peaceful coexistence" in the late 1950s, indicating that the hope for better U.S.-Soviet relations was not entirely one-sided. Kennedy obviously hoped to build on these feelings to prepare the way for the success of arms control talks with the Soviets scheduled for later in the month. This hope was realized when the Soviet Union and United States signed a treaty banning the aboveground testing of nuclear weapons in August 1963.

Just a few days after the newspaper stories concerning improved U.S.-Soviet relations, the Russians and Chinese officially announced their ideological split. Any benefits the United States hoped would accrue from this development in terms of a closer working relationship with Khrushchev, however, were swept away in 1964 when the Russian leader was removed from power by more hard-line elements of the Soviet government. Almost overnight, talk of "peaceful coexistence" disappeared and the Cold War divisions once again hardened.

[LSUFAN]

FBI agents arrest George "Bugs" Moran, along with fellow crooks Virgil Summers and Albert Fouts, in Kentucky. Once one of the biggest organized crime figures in America, Moran had been reduced to small bank robberies by this time. He died in prison 11 years later.

Bugs Moran's criminal career took an abrupt downturn after the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, in which his top gunmen were slaughtered by rival Al Capone's henchmen. (A lasting feud had been established after Capone's men killed Moran's friend and mentor, Deanie O'Banion, in 1924.) Moran, who just missed the massacre by a couple of minutes, was visibly shaken when reporters talked to him days later. He shouted at them, "Only Capone kills like that!"

Al "Scarface" Capone established his alibi by vacationing in Florida at the time of the Valentine's Day murders. Sitting poolside, he mocked Moran, chuckling as he told reporters, "The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran." Later, while Capone was serving time for tax evasion, Moran may have earned a measure of revenge by killing Jack McGurn, one of the men who had carried out the massacre.

A bank robbery charge conviction eventually landed Moran in Leavenworth federal prison. He was released in 1956, but was then re-arrested for an earlier bank robbery. He died in prison of lung cancer on February 2, 1957.

[LSUFAN]

On this day in 1988, an explosion rips through an oil rig in the North Sea, killing 167 workers. It was the worst offshore oil-rig disaster in history.

The Piper Alpha rig, which was the largest in the North Sea, was owned by Occidental Oil and had approximately 225 workers onboard at the time of the explosion. It was located about 120 miles off the northeast coast of Scotland. On the evening of July 6, a gas leak led to a massive explosion and fire on the rig. A fireball 350 feet high erupted from the platform.

The fire emitted toxic fumes that overwhelmed and killed many of the workers. Others jumped more than 100 feet to the sea below to escape the flames and fumes, even though they knew that the fall would most likely be fatal. A couple of workers managed to survive the jump; others somehow avoided death by sliding down pipes into the treacherous waters below, where burning oil was floating on the cold sea. They were then rescued by helicopters and nearby boats.

Oil drilling in the North Sea began in the 1970s and has had a mixed safety record. This disaster was by far the largest single incident; most other deaths on the 120 rigs in the sea have been due to bad weather.

A 1990 inquiry into the disaster was critical of the safety procedures on the Occidental rig before the disaster, but did not identify the direct cause of the explosion itself. A civil action was resolved in 1997 with a finding that two deceased workers were negligent, but that decision has not been generally accepted.