Michael Emmet Walsh (March 22, 1935 – March 19, 2024)

Longtime character actor M. Emmet Walsh has died. The
actor, known for his roles in films like Knives Out,
My Best Friend’s Wedding, Blade Runner, The Jerk, 
Romeo + Juliet, and more, died of cardiac arrest on
Tuesday, March 19. He was 88.

Walsh’s manager, Sandy Joseph, said he died at Kerbs
Memorial Hospital in St. Albans, Vermont. 

Walsh has been a working actor in Hollywood since his first
role in 1969 in Alice’s Restaurant. He racked up over 200
onscreen credits throughout his long career.

The  Jerk (1979)

Blade Runner (1982)

Blood Simple (1984)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Book Cover First Edition.

Harried Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist 
who came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular
novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans.

The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play,
and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain,
energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while
provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30
books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections
of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings
as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues
of the day.

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe
(June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896)

Bust of Harriet Beecher Stowe at the hall
of fame for great Americans.

It all started in this little white schoolhouse in Wisconsin.

In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party met to
establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the
western territories. The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834
to oppose the “tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson, had
shown itself incapable of coping with the national crisis over
slavery.

With the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
of 1854 that dissolved the terms of the Missouri Compromise
and allowed slave or free status to be decided in the territories
by popular sovereignty, the Whigs disintegrated.

By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the
upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party
and one such meeting, in Wisconsin was on this day in 1854 and
is generally remembered as the birth of the Republican Party.

On March 19, 2003, the United States, along with coalition
forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiates war on
Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s
capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a
televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition
forces are in the early stages of military operations to
disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world
from grave danger.”

President Bush and his advisors built much of their case
for war on the specious claim that Iraq, under dictator
Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of
building weapons of mass destruction.

Hostilities began about 90 minutes after the U.S.-imposed
deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war
passed.