Today in history

[xinhui]

:))

So if that make is rotgut, is there a good brand? Kinda like Wilsons whisky vs Glenmorangie?

It requires a different taste, I guess, not your everyday sake, which goes down easy. Thank wild turkey.

[xinhui]

Maotai is about as good as you can get.
Don't do it man, it is not worth it.

[Parihaka]

Maotai is about as good as you can get.
Don't do it man, it is not worth it.

Lovely, thanks Xinhui. At the ripe old age of 49, I'm contemplating my first tattoo.

[xinhui]

Here it goes, this is actually petty funny.


Saying No to Baijiu


062508bottle.jpgBy Ernie Tadla

I attended many banquets, but one, as the guest of the chairman of Jia Ling Motorcycles, was more memorable than the rest. Jia Ling produced more than one million motorcycles a year plus over one and a half million motorcycle engines for other manufacturers. DMG was staging a large international exhibition for Jai Ling in Chongqing in Sichuan Province. We planned it as a Las Vegas style event: strobe lights, large overhead movie screens, blasting music, and many gorgeous, leggy ladies.

We were mobbed. The mayor, who heard of our sound and light show, couldn’t get near our area. The press of the people damaged the stands and the grounds and caused us problems with the building management. We ran out of literature. For a guy from North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada, it was an amazing spectacle to be at the center of.

On the last evening, the Jia Ling chairman staged a banquet for DMG’s senior people. Protocol stipulates that the most senior person from each company sit together at the head of the round table with the rest sitting in descending order. As group general manager, I sat next to the chairman. Business dining is a ritualistic affair based on guanxi and face.

A row of drinking glasses was placed in front of me — for water, beer, wine, and maotai. Maotai, a type of baijiu - or Chinese liquor - is made from wheat and sorghum and has an alcohol content of 55 per cent. It is a clear, white liquid and you drink it from small, shot-type glasses. Clearly from some foreigners, like me a, it is a lethal drink. Chairman Mao served maotai at state dinners during Richard Nixon’s state visit to China. I’d had maotais before and it was awful, had a nasty aftertaste and didn’t agree with my body.

The waiter filled the chairman’s glass and then mine. I was crushed with cultural and male, macho pressure.

I wanted to match my honored host, not lose face with my Chinese managers and be one of the boys. So when the chairman toasted us and downed his maotai, we all drank. As soon as the stuff hit my system, I knew that if it continued, and it does, my concern would not be about losing face, but losing it all. I had a choice: drink another maotai and get sick there or rush to the washroom, or put my hand over the glass as the waiter started to fill it. I could hold my own with the beer and red wine, but I couldn’t handle the maotai.

I put my hand over the empty glass.

The second, the very second, the chairman observed my action, he ordered everyone’s maotai glasses removed from the table. This was his way of showing me respect and saving my face. If I didn’t drink maotai, no one would. In actual fact, I felt I had lost face because my behavior had affected the drinking enjoyment of everyone else. They loved maotais and company banquets were some of the few times they could enjoy them. But that was a Western reaction. The Chinese are non-judgmental and acritical. So we never skipped a beat, drank red wine and beer and continued with the party. No fuss, no embarrassment, just Confucian face saving.

And apparently, I’m not the only one who saved my dining grace - if not face - by passing up maotai.

In the excellent book, Nixon in China: The Week That Changed the World, Margaret MacMillian detailed the former U.S. president’s encounter with maotais. Future secretary of State, Alexander Haig, having witnessed Nixon’s slight tolerance for alcohol and having experienced the potent Chinese maotai himself, warned in a top-secret cable, “UNDER NO, REPEAT, NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THE PRESIDENT ACTUALLY DRINK FROM HIS GLASS IN RESPONSE TO BANQUET TOASTS.”

[gabriel]

IT's not difficult to imagine what would happen if he tasted some of this Irish stuff. :))

[xinhui]

what is what I am missing in my life! Give me Poteen

[gabriel]

I wish i could post the song also but for some reason , it gets censored...

[gunnut]

White lightning is probably close to maotai. Clear spirits without aging. Not a big fan of those. I have a taste for scotch and cognac. It's all the Colonel's fault.

[snowhole]

Many would claim Huangjiu to be more dangerous... For its alcohol power comes very slowly... You would think 'this is no alcohol... and taste weird'. Those who claim it's dangerous usually end up drinking too much before they realize...

[Parihaka]

1945: US troops take Okinawa
The Japanese island of Okinawa has finally fallen to the Americans after a long and bloody battle.

The island, situated 340 miles (550km) south of the Japanese mainland, will now provide the Americans with an invaluable air and naval base from which to launch a sustained and forceful attack on the mainland.

It is estimated more than 90,000 Japanese troops were killed in the 82-day conflict.



America also suffered heavy losses - at this stage 6,990 servicemen have been reported killed or missing and 25,598 wounded.

Mopping up

In a statement issued today US Fleet Admiral Chester W Nimitz said: "After 82 days of fighting the battle of Okinawa has been won.

"Organised resistance ceased on June 21. Enemy garrisons in two small pockets are being mopped up."

The Japanese fought a desperate battle until the bitter end with many hiding out in caves on the southern-most tip of the island.

As the US forces closed in many threw themselves off 150ft (45.7m)cliffs or waded into the sea to drown rather than be taken prisoner.

More than 4,000 Japanese have so far been captured.

The conflict began on 1 April, when America's newly-formed 10th Army, led by Lieutenant-General Simon Bolivar Buckner, landed on Okinawa's western coast.

By 21 April most of the island had been taken by US troops but a stalemate developed in the south around Okinawa's capital city, Naha.

The Japanese were able to secure a strong defensive position in the rugged, cave-riddled terrain and it took several weeks to finally win the battle.

[Parihaka]

1941: Hitler invades the Soviet Union
German forces have invaded the Soviet Union.

In a pre-dawn offensive, German troops pushed into the USSR from the south and west, with a third force making their way from the north towards Leningrad.

At 0500 GMT, an hour after the invasion began, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, went on national radio to read a proclamation by Adolf Hitler promising that the mobilisation of the German army would be the "greatest the world has ever seen".

The invasion breaks the non-aggression pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.

The pact has since been described by the German leader, Adolf Hitler, as a stain on Germany's record.

Initial reports suggest that the German troops have made rapid progress.

A correspondent with the German Army on the northern front reported the Soviet Army opened fire immediately at the German advance, but German soldiers overran the first of the Soviet positions and within a few minutes had captured the frontier posts.

Germany is thought to have committed a massive force of more than three million men, supported by more than 3,000 tanks, 7,000 guns and nearly 3,000 aircraft.

They are nonetheless vastly outnumbered by the Red Army which has about nine million men under arms with another 500,000 in reserve.

Soviet arms and ability, however, are considered vastly inferior to the Germans.

The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, appears to have been taken completely by surprise.

Despite warnings from Britain and secret intelligence reports that war was imminent, Stalin has refused to prepare for an invasion, insisting that it would not happen until next summer.

In London the War Cabinet met early this morning to discuss the implications.

The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, condemned the invasion in a broadcast on BBC radio, in which he said it marked a turning point in the war.

Calling Hitler a "bloodthirsty guttersnipe", he said his own outspoken opposition to communism had "faded away" in the light of today's events, and pledged Britain's help for the Soviet Union in any way possible.

"The Russian danger is... our danger," he said, "and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe."

[zraver]

On this day in 1788 New Hampshire ratified the US Constitution becoming the 9th state to do so and giving the required majority for the document to go into effect.

On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan went to prison on federal conspiracy charges; none served more than six years.

On June 21st 2005 Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was found guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss., 41 years to the day earlier. (He is serving a 60-year prison sentence.)

[Parihaka]

On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss.

That's very interesting Zraver but don't call me Miss.

[Blackleaf]

On this day (27th September) in 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first in the world, opened. The huge speed of the "steam horse" - 15mph - so unnerved one man that he fell off the train at one point during the journey and was injured.

The line was 26 miles long, and ran between the two northern English towns of Stockton and Darlington.

The world's first railway locomotive, Locomotion, was finished in September 1825.


Crowds gather at the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825


The same location today

On 27th September 1825, large crowds saw George Stephenson at the controls of the Locomotion as it pulled 36 wagons. Twelve wagons of coal and flour, six of guests and fourteen wagons full of workmen. The initial journey of just under 9 miles took two hours. However, during the final descent into the Stockton terminus, speeds of 15 mph, were reached. These increased speeds surprised one man and he fell from one of the wagons and was badly injured.

The train also included a purpose built railway passenger coach called the Experiment. The carriage seated 18 passengers and as it had no springs it must have provided an uncomfortable ride but for the first time in history, a steam locomotive had hauled passengers on a public railway.

The Darlington & Stockton Railroad began running trains every day except Sundays. The company received 1d (a penny) per ton of coal for every mile carried. The following year this was reduced to half-penny a mile. Local colliery owners reported that locomotive transport was a third cheaper than horse transport.

From the Durham County Advertiser (1st October, 1825)

The hour of ten arrived before all was ready to start. About this time the locomotive engine, or steam horse, as it was more generally termed, gave note of preparation. The scene, on the moving of the engine, sets description at defiance. Astonishment was not confined to the human species, for the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air seemed to view with wonder and awe the machine, which now moved onward at a rate of 10 or 12 mph with a weight of not less than 80 tons attached to it.

The distance from Brussleton to Stockton is twenty and a half miles, the entire length from Witton Park Colliery, nearly 25 miles, being, we believe, the largest railway in the Kingdom. The whole population of the towns and villages within a few miles of the railway seem to have turned out, and we believe we speak within the limits of truth, when we say that not less than 40 or 50,000 persons were assembled to witness the proceedings of the day.

Spartacus Educational - Home Page

[tankie]

Thats where i come from B/L and Darlo must have the worlds lousiest rail museum , there is a much better one at Shildon 15 miles away , the Timothy Hackworth , its a good day out ;)

And no Knaur , i wasnt the stoker on the first train , or the rear gunner , or as you would Say ghonne,ria