The World is Shocked

I have recovered from my slide of doom on the Gene Snyder last Thursday. Jay says it’s my own fault for driving 50 mph in an ice storm. That’s why he’s the chief. This weekend I said we’d get some “stuff” over Louisville with some flakes but that the air temperatures would be above freezing. Generally in the ballpark but I have to admit it was a little more robust than anticipated. Really nothing more than nuisance snow showers and it ended by the afternoon as I suspected but some folks in the northern third of the viewing area did get some minor accumulation that disappeared relatively quickly. Today, my mother-in-law said someone was claiming temperatures near 60 which I knew was bogus and the mid 40’s was more likely. I told her to stop watching the wrong channel. As it is, we will probably only get to the low 40’s today as the warm front will not get here, though its possible we climb overnight to the mid 40’s with rain then the front moves through and we fall to the low 30’s by Tuesday afternoon. Snow showers are possible late Tuesday carrying into Tuesday night and ending as flurries on Wednesday…a cold Wednesday at that. Snow White had someone accost her about snow today and we had some calls about salt trucks standing by this afternoon! I’m not sure where that type of information is coming from but the threat of snow does not show up until at least Tuesday afternoon so enjoy the day while you can.

On This Date In History: Muhammed Ali shocked the world with a forecast any meteorologist would love. On this date in 1964, the 22-year-old Louisvillian and Olympic Gold medal champion defeated the feared World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston in one of the greatest upsets in sports history. The legend of Ali was well on its way and today, Ali stands as a champion to many, not just in sports but also as a living icon.

On this date in 1928, the Federal Radio Commission issued its first television licence to Charles Francis Jenkins Laboratories for a television station in Washington, D.C. This guy Jenkins must have been sorta experimenting…either that or he was the forerunner to PBS.

See…government has been getting its nose into new technology almost as quickly as it gets started, though they seemed to have hit a wall with the Internet…so far. The Wireless Act of 1910 required ships at sea broadcasting wireless transmission to have trained and licensed personnel at the radio. Did the Titanic alot of good in 1912 when the operators, trained and licensed, were more interested in sending personal messages of the passengers instead of listening to ice warnings. In the 20’s, Congress passed a bunch of laws regulating commercial stations, how much power they could use and the use of commercials and such. In 1927, the Radio Act created a new bureaucracy with the creation of the Federal Radio Commission, which became the Federal Communications Commission in 1934. All this regulation and CBS still switched from the Kentucky game with less than a minute to go to the Duke tip-off! There ought to be a law!! We got all sorts of calls and it wasn’t our fault. We apologize for the switch and I promise no one here made the decision nor the switch. It was strictly controlled from New York.

And finally, not long after Henry Ford’s Model T’s started filling the roads, on this date in 1919 Oregon introduced the first state tax on gasoline…and they haven’t stopped taxing since. Seems like every time we get a new invention, we get a new tax….and in fact we have been getting taxed since…

This Date in 1913, when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by the required 3/4 of the states and became the law of the land. This amendment allowed the Congress to tax the income of Americans. Now, it didn’t Require that Congress tax Americans but Congress couldn’t resist and by October of that year, President Wilson had signed into law the Revenue Act of 1913 that re-introduced the income tax on Americans.