14 th. June Flag Day

1775 The U. S. Army was founded.

1811 Harriet Beecher Stowe was born.

1946 Donald Trump was born.

1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke at Dartmouth College.

1982 Argentine forces surrendered the Falkland Islands. (See April 13th entry.)

Today is Flag Day It’s the anniversary of the day we adopted the Stars and Stripes as our national banner. Since 1777, the Stars and Stripes have waved over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Today is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s birthday. In 1811, Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. As an adult, she wrote a book whose alternate title was, Life Among the Lowly. You never heard of it? Yes you have. The full title was, Uncle Tom s Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly. Her story first appeared in book form in 1852. It whipped up abolitionist sentiments in the North long before the Civil War. And its influence lasted long after that war. Today, when we call someone a Simon Legree, we are recalling one of Stowe’s characters; and if Uncle Tom does not mean today what it did to Mrs. Stowe, it is still drawn from her book.

There are those among us who have a fear of books. That thought was on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s mind on this day in 1953 when he addressed an audience at Dartmouth College. “Don’t join the book burners,” he warned. “Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”

Since it’s Donald Trump’s birthday, reflect on a few words from this Manhattan real estate developer who was born in 1946. Trump once said “if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”

This is the birthday of the U. S. Army. It was founded on this day in 1775, when the Continental Congress in Philadelphia authorized the recruitment of ten companies of riflemen to serve for one year. There is an old Army adage: If it moves salute it, if it doesn’t move, paint it.