December 26 birthdays

First on our list is George Dewey, US Admiral.  In the Navy, that is- just to be clear.  He had a long and distinguished career, which peaked in the Spanish American War, when he took the US Asian Squadron to the Philippines to attack the Spanish there.  He sailed to Manila Bay, where the Spanish were sorta waiting, and famously said "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley".  In the immortal words of Richard Armour, unfortunately for the Spanish Gridley was ready.  It wasn't pleasant to be a Spanish sailor in that fleet, as the whole fleet was sunk or captured with the loss of only one American sailor.  In the end, he was promoted to the rank of "Admiral of the Navy", which makes him unique, since nobody else ever reached that level.  Earlier in his career, he took part in the Civil War, where- surprise surprise- he performed well, and perhaps even brilliantly, in actions at New Orleans, along the Mississippi River, and at the final battle for Fort Fisher (if you've ever seen the movie "Glory", that was the land side of the Fisher battle).  Oh, and he was born in 1837 by the way. 

Here's one for the "rot in Hell" version of happy birthday.  Born on this date in 1893 was Mao ZeDong, leader of the Chinese communists.  He's best known, besides his "long march" for being the impetus for a number of actions taken after he reached power which, like all good communist dictators, resulted in the deaths of millions of his own people.  Numbers are hard to come by, but the Chinese communists are estimated to have killed 100 million of their own people, so Mao's share was probably well over half of that.  By comparison, WWII killed about 25 million people, so he was bigger even than the largest war in history.  Ah, the glories of communism, eh? 

Speaking of killers, also born today in 1939 was Phil Spector.  Once upon a time, he was known as a music producer, and a very influential one at that.  Then he killed an actress at his house, and his already dimming reputation went downhill.  While he was huge in the 1960s, I think his reputation has, in a sense, exceeded him.  While he gave us the "wall of sound" and a whole passel of "girl groups", he also wrecked the final Beatles LP, "Let it Be", by over-producing it.  The band members never liked it, and finally, a few years ago released the album that they had always wanted.  You can find it today as "Let it be... Naked" and trust me, it's worth finding.  As good as the "original" version was, "Naked" is infinitely better.  In the end, it's sorta like Spector never really progressed from the 60s, and was the stereotypical old dog who couldn't learn any new tricks.  Which is ironic to call him "stereo" anything, since it's my understanding that he never actually recorded in stereo, even though it came into general use in the 1970s.

And that's about it.  Enjoy!