On January 24…

“I am here to face you Larry, so you can see I have regained my strength — that I am no longer a victim, I am a survivor.”
~Aly Raisman

“He’s going to sit in jail for the rest of his life. We, on the other hand, are going to move forward.”
~Gwen Anderson

I came to the stand as a victim, and I leave as a victor.”
~Stephanie Robinson

You have pissed off the wrong army of women.”
~Lindsey Lemke

Victim Impact Statements
Larry Nassar Sentencing

1848 – James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma (near Sacramento), California.
Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter.
Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold.
His fears were realized.
The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The Gold Rush had severe effects on Native Californians and resulted in a precipitous population decline from disease, genocide and starvation.
Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called “forty-niners” (referring to 1849, the peak year for Gold Rush immigration).
However, on the positive side, the sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy, and the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood.

1908 – Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell published Scouting For Boys as a manual for self-instruction in outdoor skills and self-improvement. The book becomes the inspiration for the Scout Movement.

1935 – Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale was first sold on this date by American company Krueger Brewing Co. They were America’s first canned beers.
Compared to glass, the cans were lightweight, cheap, and easy to stack and ship. Unlike bottles, you didn’t have to pay a deposit and then return the cans for a refund. By summer Krueger was buying 180,000 cans a day from American Can Company, and other breweries decided to follow.

1940 – The Grapes of Wrath, based on John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name, and directed by John Ford, premiered.
The film – widely considered as one of the greatest American films of all time – starred Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell. It received seven Academy Award nominations, winning two; Best Director (Ford) and Best Supporting Actress (Darwell).

1943 – Adolf Hitler ordered German troops at Stalingrad to fight to the death.
Winter had set in and German troops under the command of Gen. Friedrich Paulus had run out of food, ammunition and medical supplies.
Paulus said he had “18,000 wounded without the slightest aid of bandages and medicine,” and requested that he be allowed “immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops.”
Hitler rejected the request on a point of honor. He telegraphed the 6th Army, claiming that it had made a historic contribution to the greatest struggle in German history and that it should stand fast “to the last soldier and the last bullet.”
The 6th Army managed to hold out until February, at which point Paulus had no choice but to surrender. The German death toll stood at half a million by the end of the battle, with another 91,000 troops taken prisoner.

1955 – Ira Hayes, a Native American and a United States Marine who was one of the six flag raisers immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, died at the age of 32.
Hayes was never comfortable with his fame, and after his service in the Marine Corps, he descended into alcoholism. He died of exposure to cold and alcohol poisoning after a night of drinking.
He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on February 2, 1955.

1965 – Sir Winston Churchill died nine days after suffering a severe stroke. He was 90.
Churchill was a British politician, army officer, and writer, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
Although he made many enemies in the world of British politics throughout his career, Churchill’s reputation among the general British public remains high. He was voted number one in a 2012 BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons of all time.

1970 – James Sheppard, lead singer with The Heartbeats (A Thousand Miles Away) and Shep & The Limelites (Daddy’s Home), was found beaten, robbed and shot to death in his car on the Long Island Expressway. He was 34.
His death was never solved.

1975 – Larry Fine, curly-haired star of the legendary comedy team The Three Stooges, died after a series of strokes. He was 72.
The violin was not a gag prop for Fine. He was an extremely gifted violinist.

1982 – At Super Bowl XVI, the San Francisco 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 26-21.
Joe Montana, San Francisco QB, was named MVP.

1986 – L. Ron Hubbard, author (Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health) and the founder of the Church of Scientology, died at the age of 74, one week after suffering a stroke.
Though many of Hubbard’s autobiographical statements have been found to be fictitious, the Church rejects any suggestion that its account of Hubbard’s life is not historical fact.
His critics, on the other hand, characterized Hubbard as a mentally unstable and chronic liar.
His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered at sea. Scientology leaders announced that his body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to “drop his body” to continue his research on another planet, having “learned how to do it without a body.”

1989 – Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison. He was 42 years old.
Technically, he died for the 1978 murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach of Lake City, Florida, but was also convicted of two other Florida murders, and blamed for dozens more in Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Utah.
Shortly before his execution and after more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 homicides that he committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. The true number of victims is unknown and possibly higher.

1993 – Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, died of heart failure at the age of 84.
Marshall was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson, and served until his retirement in 1991.
After he lay in repose in the Great Hall of the United States Supreme Court Building, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

2010 – Actor Pernell Roberts died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 81.
He was best known for his roles as Ben Cartwright’s eldest son Adam Cartwright on the television series Bonanza from 1959 to 1965, and as chief surgeon Dr. John McIntyre, the title character on Trapper John, M.D. from 1979 to 1986.
By the time Roberts left Bonanza, he was dissatisfied with his role and expressed a desire to return to the stage, where he had found success early in his career.
Roberts said he would have stayed with Bonanza had he been allowed to do so on a part-time basis to enable him to return to theater, but when the television producers refused to budge, he walked away.

2017 – Butch Trucks, drummer and founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, died at the age of 69 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was reportedly depressed over financial difficulties.
Trucks was one of two original drummers, along with Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson, who helped formed the rhythms and the drive for The Allman Brothers.
Formed in 1969 and led by Duane and Gregg Allman, the group helped define the Southern rock sound that incorporated blues, rock, country and jazz.

2018 – Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University and Team USA Gymnastics doctor, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for multiple sex crimes, capping an extraordinary seven-day hearing that drew more than 150 young women to publicly confront him and speak of their abuse.
Two months earlier, he had pleaded guilty to sexually abusing seven girls and had already been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for child pornography convictions.
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who had opened her courtroom to the young women, including several prominent Olympic athletes, delivered a blistering condemnation of Nassar, and bluntly made clear that he was likely to die in prison.
“I just signed your death warrant.“

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2019 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.