AUGUST 16 1812 – Detroit falls to the British ...and Shawnees. Just a month prior, American General William Hull, a veteran of the Revolution, now 59 years old, led 2500 man army to the Detroit River and made camp at Ft. Detroit. He sent a strong message to the inhabitants of Canada, threatening that in so many words, Mr. Canadian inhabitant; the Americans are coming into y our country to fight the British and Indians, so stay out of the way. If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. I’m paraphrasing, of course. Big tough words and yet Hull was totally unprepared when the attack actually came.
On August 11th, when he saw a sea of redcoats and Indians yelling their battle cries, Hull panicked, and even though his army outnumbered his enemy, for some reason he raised the white flag and surrendered the city. By the 16th of August, the British and Shawnees took over Detroit. It would be another 13 months before future US President General William Henry Harrison could recapture the city. Hull meanwhile, after the war of 1812 was over, court-martialed for cowardice and neglect of duty in surrendering the fort, and sentenced to death. President James Madison however rever4sed the sentence due to Hull’s previous brave actions during the Revolution.
In football news: 1862 – Amos Alonzo Stagg invents the tackling dummy. That’s not why he has at least two high schools named after him, it probably has more to do with his ability to bridge communities of sports and religious faith. 1888 – We lose a great American as John Pemberton passes away. He gave us Coca-Cola. Why? Because when he served in the civil war he was wounded and needed a painkiller. Like many wounded veterans, Pemberton became addicted to the morphine that was administered. Pemberton was a pharmacist and wanted to come up with an opium-free alternative to painkillers.
Through trial and error he came up with the delicious kola nut soda and sold it as a fountain drink as opposed to medicine. The name Coca Cola was coined by Frank Mason Robinson. Pemberton in life unfortunately never shook his addiction to morphine and died at age 57 on August 16, 1888.
1974—Let’s go sniff some glue. At a dive bar in Manhattan, Douglas Colvin, John Cummings, Thomas Erdelyl and Jeffrey Hyman, aka Dee Dee, Johnny, Tommy and Joey Ramone start belting out a new type of music that would change the world It was noisy, they couldn’t play more than three notes, they were terrible. They were so bad that across the Atlantic, bands like the Clash and the Sex pistols started forming. But the Ramones not only get credit for comingup with a new genre of music. If it weren’;t for the Ramones, we probably wouldn’t have Green Day, Nirvana, the Hives or the Strokes. We probably wouldn’t have had Metallica, as Kirk Hammett once said There were no standards after the Ramones. All you had to do would just be yourself. These guys did not dress like hippies like everyone else was doing. They wore jeans, leather jackets, and a big attitude. The Ramones everybody like a boss! In football news… 1965 –The Miami Dolphins become the first expansion franhise in the AFL.
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