December 21 RIP

Well, first on our list is someone important to our first birthday boy:  St. Thomas the Apostle, aka Doubting Thomas.  He seems to have been pretty interesting- unlike his fellows, he went outside the Roman Empire to preach, ending up in India.  Didn't help, in the grand scheme of things.  Instead of being martyred by the Romans, he was martyred by the Indians in 72.  Oh well.  But nobody can doubt his courage, I guess.

If you're into Renaissance literature then you'll no doubt mourn the passing of a chap named Giovanni Boccaccio in 1375.  He wrote the Decameron and some other stuff, but he wrote it in Italian rather than Latin.

In 1940, a writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald died.  He wrote a book you might recognize, "The Great Gatsby".  And some other stuff.  Rather than Latin, he wrote in English.

Remember a few weeks back when the US Army lost an army commander just after the War ended?  And I explained that it wasn't Patton, as his day was coming and he wouldn't be at the Officer's Club for New Years?  Yeah, well he won't be there for Christmas either.  Or December 22.  RIP Patton, who died on this date.  He was not only related to George Patton Sr., but also Hugh Mercer, a Revolutionary War general.  And a bunch of other Confederate officers, all of which helps explain why he wrote to his prospective father-in-law that it was "natural" for him to become a soldier.  He finished 5th in the pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics, behind Jim Thorpe, among others.  He was injured in a car wreck, and died of his injuries.  Or did he... Some people claim that he was assassinated, though I've never understood why he would have been.  Supposedly there was a mysterious object found on the car seat next to him, and it is curious that he suffered a spinal injury when nobody else in the accident was even hurt.  I guess we'll never know.  As for his generalship, our old acquaintance Field Marshal von Runstedt once told a reporter "Patton- he was your best".

If you're into the Blues, then you'll want to mourn the death of one of the Kings- specifically Albert King, in 1992.  If you've ever seen Bill Kirchen in concert, he includes AK in his version of "Hot Rod Lincoln" wherein he plays a sample of pretty much every great (and near great) guitar riff ever.  Good stuff.

And I guess that's it.