[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[gthewlis at comcast.net]

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Mark Twain

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Turn the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
Frank Lloyd Wright

These days an income is something you can't live without--or within.
Tom Wilson

Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.
Slovenian Proverb

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
Robertson Davies

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Frisbee

Arthur “Spud” Melin with his business partner Richard “Rich” Knerr successfully marketed the Frisbee, as well as several other joyful additions to human silliness, such as the Hula Hoop, the Slip ’N Slide and Silly Putty.

But neither Arthur Melin nor Richard Knerr can lay any claim to inventing the thing. And, despite their registering the name as a trade mark back in 1959, it’s also pretty clear that they cannot claim to have invented the word Frisbee either. It’s not a surprise that folklore should have grown up around an item that has become an archetypal part of the American way of life; what is odd is that the most commonly quoted story about where its name came from may even be true.

The direct history of the device is well known. For a long time, kids had played with throwing metal pie tins. Just after World War Two, two former Army Air Corps pilots named Warren Franscioni and Fred Morrison, based in San Luis Obispo, California, found a way of moulding war-surplus plastics into a concave aerodynamic shape that mimicked the action of pie tins but was a lot lighter and bruised you less when it hit you. This was 1948, and the term flying saucer had just appeared. Franscioni and Morrison borrowed it for their new toy — it was also at various times called the Rotary Fingernail Clipper, the Pipco Crash (after Morrison’s company) and the Pluto Platter.

The pair sold their saucer toys in California markets in the late 1940s and early 1950s, without huge success. Around 1955, they met Melin and Knerr, who had been running a novelty toy company since 1948 under the name of Wham-O, from the name of their first product, a wooden slingshot. They bought Morrison out (but didn’t pay anything to Franscioni, it appears) and marketed the Pluto Platters with mixed success. It was only after they renamed it the Frisbee that the device really caught on. The rest, to coin a cliché, is history.

But why Frisbee? It has been said that it came from the name of Mr Frisbie, a US comic strip. But another story takes us across the continent to the Frisbie Baking Company of Connecticut. The Frisbie company sold its pies in tins embossed with the firm’s name. As elsewhere, the empty pie tins were found to be throwable with a little skill. It is particularly said that games with them were played by Yale undergraduates around the time of the Second World War and after. Naturally they borrowed the company’s name for the game. Quite how Spud Melin or Rich Knerr heard about this from 3000 miles away is not clear, but it is suggested that one or other of them encountered it during a sales trip to the East Coast.

Despite the anecdotal nature of the link, and the lack of really firm evidence, it is now cautiously accepted by the experts that this is indeed where the name came from.

The saddest part of all this is that the Frisbie Baking Company went out of business in 1958, just when a respelled version of their name was about to become famous.

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Ulysses S. Grant's next few battles, including Vicksburg and Chattanooga, solidified his bona fides.
For his next major objective, Grant commandeered a six-week siege on the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in order to take the city over from General John C. Pemberton. The Union bombardment was so profound that most residents of the city were forced to leave their homes and shack up in caves. The editor of the town’s Daily Citizen newspaper was even reduced to printing the news on wallpaper. Pemberton eventually surrendered on July 4, 1863. Later that year, from November 23 to November 25, Union forces routed the Confederates at the Battle of Chattanooga. Grant, then a major general, masterminded a three-part attack—one of which was led by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman—against enemy entrenchments on two Confederate strongholds: Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. The multi-faceted gamble worked, and the Union army was victorious. Because of Grant’s successes, in March 1864 he was promoted to lieutenant general with command of all Union forces. From then on, Grant would answer only to the president.

Ulysses S. Grant wrote the surrender terms at Appomattox.
Despite one last push by General Robert E. Lee to rally his beleaguered troops, the Battle of Appomattox Court House lasted only a few hours after Confederate forces were cut off from their final provisions and support. Lee sent a message to Grant announcing he was willing to surrender, and the two generals eventually met in the front parlor of the Wilmer McLean home in the early afternoon of April 9, 1865. Lee arrived in full military dress—complete with sash and sword—while Grant characteristically stuck with his well-worn and muddied field uniform and boots. He then wrote out the single-paragraph terms of surrender. Under the terms, Confederate soldiers and officers were allowed to return home; officers were permitted to keep their horses for use as farm animals (according to the National Park Service, Grant also ordered officers to allow private soldiers to keep their animals) and to keep side arms. Grant allowed starving Confederate troops be fed with Union rations. When news of the surrender reached nearby Union troops, gun salutes rang out, but Grant, aware of the weight of the bloody war, sent out an order for all celebrations to stop. “The war is over,” he said. “The rebels are our countrymen again; and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field.”

Ulysses S. Grant was supposed to be at Ford's Theatre the night Abraham Lincoln was shot.
Days after the Appomattox surrender, Lincoln invited Grant to see a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. Advertisements for the Good Friday 1865 performance even boasted that Grant would accompany President Lincoln and the first lady. The celebrated general backed out, explaining that he and Julia were to travel to New Jersey to see their children instead. (In reality, Julia despised Mary Todd Lincoln and didn’t want to be in her company. Grant didn’t particularly want to go anyway. ) Grant was supposedly a target of John Wilkes Booth’s assassination plot, and was to be taken out along with Lincoln that night.