George Floyd: Syncs, Coincidences, and Name Games

Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, center, and his teammates warm up before an NBA basketball game against the Sacramento Kings, Tuesday, December 9, 2014, in Los Angeles. Several athletes have worn “I Can’t Breathe” shirts during warm ups in support of the family of Eric Garner, who died July 17, 2014, after a police officer placed him in a chokehold when he was being arrested for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

LeBron James (above) and Kyrie Irving (below) showed solidarity with people protesting the Staten Island Grand Jury decision not to indict the police office who killed Eric Garner with a chokehold on July 17, 2014, donning a black t-shirt with Garner's last words (on Monday, December 8, 2014).

Divided House

On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivered an important speech to 1000 delegates at the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse for the Republican State Convention. The Republicans of that time were the party of the North, of the abolitionists, and of the "all people are created equal" point of view.

In Lincoln's speech, he uttered the memorable lines:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

The title, "House Divided Speech," reflects part of the speech's introduction, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," a concept familiar to Lincoln's audience as a statement by Jesus recorded in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). Source.

In Abe Lincoln in Illinois, John Brown, comforts his dying son at Harper's Ferry, as he is arrested by Robert E. Lee. Brown was played by John Cromwell, the director of the film.

I watched Raymond Massey's Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) in the wake of having viewed the three-night History Channel's mini-series Grant this week (May 25-27, 2020).  Massey's tour-de-force performance as Lincoln shows him struggling with the decision to fight slavery. Grant does equally well demonstrating the pre-Civil War Grant grappling with the fact he finds he owns a slave he inherited because he married into a slave-owning family. "Timely" seems the least I can say about both of these docudramas based on a legacy of slavery in the USA that continues in today's events.

As reviewer Nick Schager points out:

Grant is an active attempt to rehabilitate the historical record, positing Confederate adversary Robert E. Lee as a symbol of the intolerant, aristocratic, treasonous old guard, and Grant as an emblem of a more open, just, unified modern America. Grant’s disgust for the Confederacy and the rancidness it stood for is on full display throughout this series, which pointedly contends that—good ol’ boy revisionism be damned—it was slavery, not simply the more euphemistic “states’ rights,” which drove the South to secede and take up arms against the Union. At the same time, Grant’s compassion and levelheadedness also remains front and center, epitomized by the lenient terms of surrender he ultimately offered to the defeated Lee, which helped him secure support throughout the South in the years following the end of the war.

George Floyd is Killed

The Incident: A Summary

The death of George Floyd occurred on May 25, 2020, when Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, kneeled on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, with 2 minutes and 53 seconds of that occurring after Floyd was unresponsive, according to the criminal complaint filed against Chauvin. Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the road, while Chauvin had his knee on his neck.

The incident occurred during Floyd's arrest in Powderhorn, a neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was recorded on cell phone video by several bystanders. The arrest was conducted after Floyd, an African-American, [shortly after 8:00 pm] attempted to use a $20 bill that a grocery store employee identified as counterfeit. Police alleged that Floyd "physically resisted" after being ordered to exit his vehicle, a claim that has been contradicted by available video recordings. The video recordings of the arrest, showing Floyd repeatedly saying "I can't breathe", were widely circulated on social media platforms and broadcast by the media.
The four officers involved were fired the next day. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is conducting a federal civil rights investigation into the incident at the request of the Minneapolis Police Department. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is also investigating possible violations of Minnesota statutes. On May 29, Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter for Floyd's death, with Hennepin County attorney Michael O. Freeman saying he anticipated charges to be brought against the other three officers at the scene of Floyd's death.
After Floyd's death, demonstrations and protests in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area were initially peaceful on May 26, but later that day turned destructive as windows were smashed at a police precinct, two stores were set on fire, and many stores were looted and damaged. Some demonstrators skirmished with law enforcement officers, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Source.

Videos Record Floyd's Death 

Part of the arrest was recorded by a bystander and streamed to Facebook Live, which went viral.
When the video starts, Floyd is already pinned chest down to the ground, and Officer Chauvin is kneeling on his neck. Floyd repeatedly tells Chauvin "Please" and "I can't breathe", while also moaning, groaning, and sobbing. A bystander tells police, "You got him down. Let him breathe."
Another bystander says, "One of my homies died the same way", and after Floyd responds "I'm about to die the same", Chauvin tells Floyd to relax.  The police ask Floyd, "What do you want?" Floyd answers, "I can't breathe." Floyd states: "Please, the knee in my neck, I can't breathe." Someone tells Floyd to "get up and get in the car" (which Agence France Presse, CBS News and WVLT-TV identify as one of the officers, while Buzzfeed News says it is "unclear" whether it was an officer speaking), to which Floyd replies, "I will ... I can't move." Floyd cries out, "Mama!" Floyd says, "My stomach hurts, my neck hurts, everything hurts", and requests water. The police do not audibly respond to Floyd. Floyd begs, "Don't kill me."
One bystander points out that Floyd is bleeding from the nose. Another tells the police that Floyd is "not even resisting arrest right now". The police tell the bystanders that Floyd was "talking, he's fine"; a bystander replies that Floyd "ain't fine". The bystander protests that the police were preventing Floyd from breathing, urging them, "Get him off the ground ... You could have put him in the car by now. He's not resisting arrest or nothing. You're enjoying it. Look at you. Your body language."
Floyd goes silent and motionless, but Chauvin does not lift his knee from Floyd's neck. The bystanders protest that Floyd is "not responsive", and repeatedly ask the police to check Floyd's pulse.  A bystander questions, "Did they f*cking kill him?"
An ambulance eventually arrives, and Chauvin does not move his knee until emergency medical services put Floyd's unresponsive body on a stretcher. Floyd was initially found pulseless by HCMC paramedics, but CPR was not initiated by the paramedic crew. Floyd is loaded into the ambulance and taken away to 36th Street and Park Avenue, according to an incident report by the Minneapolis Fire Department. A male bystander says that the police "just really killed" Floyd. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for at least seven minutes, including around four minutes after Floyd stopped moving.
Medics in the ambulance checked Floyd's pulse several times, but found none. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Source.

"I Can't Breathe"

Floyd's death has been compared to the 2014 death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who also repeated "I can't breathe" eleven times after being placed in a choke hold by a New York police officer during an arrest.

On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner died in the New York City borough of Staten Island after Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, put him in a chokehold while arresting him. Video footage of the incident generated widespread national attention and raised questions about the appropriate use of force by law enforcement.

Syncs, Coincidences, and the Name Game

As the George Floyd incident unfolded, I was sent or directed to various "twilight language" segments of the event and the people surrounding it.

George Floyd Name Game

From Greek, the meaning of the name George is from georgos meaning tiller of the soil, or farmer. Famous bearer: St George, patron saint of England, who struggled with a fire breathing dragon symbolizing the devil.
The name Floyd means gray or gray-haired, and is of English origin, from a Welsh byname, llwyd. Floyd is from Lloyd, a name originating with the Welsh adjective llwyd, most often understood as meaning "grey" but with other meanings as well.

Floyd and Coronavirus

 A widely circulated photograph of George Floyd at his job as a security guard shows him next to a poster of Corona beer. Floyd was laid off due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Kobe Bryant

"I can't breathe" was a slogan that Kobe Bryant began using in 2014, due to the Garner episode. Bryant was able to convince his teammates to all wear "I can't breathe" teeshirts. 

Both George Floyd and Kobe Bryant were successful basketball players in their own tiers, and about the same height. Floyd was 6 feet, 7 inches in height. Kobe Bryant was 6 feet, 6 inches tall.

Bryant died on January 26, 2020. Floyd died on May 25, 2020, almost exactly five months later, and one day after his birthday.

Kobe Bryant, 41, died with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, in the helicopter crash. George Floyd, 46, is survived by two daughters, one is 6-year-old Gianna. 

Chauvin Name Game

 

The police officer's name who is seen in the video with his knee on George Floyd's neck is Derek Chauvin. The roots of Chauvin are the same as for chauvinist. Chauvin's meaning is derived from the French diminutive of Chauve, a nickname for "a bald man," from Old French chauf "bald" (Latin calvus).

Derek Michael Chauvin, a 44-year-old Caucasian man, had been an officer in the Minneapolis Police Department since around 2001. Chauvin had 18 complaints on his official record, two of which ended in discipline from the department including official letters of reprimand. He had been involved in three police shootings, one of which was fatal.

Floyd and Chauvin Both Worked As Security Guards at El Nuevo Rodeo 

A bizarre twist in the murder of George Floyd was reported on Thursday night, as a former club owner in south Minneapolis revealed that Floyd worked at her club as a security guard, alongside recently fired police officer Derek Chauvin, the man who killed him.
Club owner Maya Santamaria says that the two both worked the same security shift at El Nuevo Rodeo club on Lake Street, before the business was sold a few months ago.
“Chauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open. They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside,” Santamaria told KSTP.
However, Santamaria said that she can’t be certain that Chauvin and Floyd knew each other, because often over a dozen security guards working at the club on any given night.
Still, they did work overlapping shifts, and the fact that one man ended up killing the other should justify further investigation into whether or not the two had a prior relationship.
If Chauvin and Floyd were not meeting for the first time in the moments before Floyd’s death, that could potentially mean that there was a deeper motive behind the murder. Source.

Floyd and Chauvin both worked as security guards and had overlapping shifts at the Latin nightclub, El Nuevo Rodeo. Owner Maya Santamaria said Chauvin had worked there for 17 years and Floyd had worked at about a dozen events. She said it was not clear if they knew each other but that she did not believe so. Santamaria described Chauvin as using overly aggressive tactics in her club, which she had asked him to tone down. Source.

Dakota syncs?

Synchromystic Ed Lin is working on research of "Minneapolis (Longtitude W 93 Thelema) where the Floyd riots began on May 26, 2020 and the history of the Twin Cities (11), which told of the mass execution (38 / 11 lynched in one day) and expulsion of Dakota Sioux Indians who spoke Dakota dialect. Then suddenly I saw a new article about new photos surfaced around the time John Lennon met his killer Mark David Chapman in front of the Dakota Building (where Rosemary's Baby was shot). Trying to connect the current situation with the Native American curse (The Shining / Dakota oil pipeline that ends in Stanley)." Source: Kitchen Sync Facebook.

See "Dakota" here at Twilight Language, August 3, 2011.

This souvenir building replica of the Dakota is produced by InFocusTech. 

Freeman

Michael Orville Freeman (born May 7, 1948) is an American attorney and politician from the state of Minnesota. He is currently the county attorney for Hennepin County, the most populous county in the state, of which the county seat is Minneapolis, and the person in charge of investigating the police officers involved with George Floyd's death...He is the son of Orville Freeman, who was a former Minnesota governor and Secretary of Agriculture under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Source.

In July 1960, Orville Freeman (Michael's father) nominated U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts for president at the Democratic National Convention.

By coincidence, "Freeman" was a surname taken by freed slaves, before and after 1863's Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln.

See also:

George Floyd and the Fayette Factor: Fayetteville to Lafayette Square (June 2, 2020).

Fayette Factor: Buffalo (June 7, 2020).

Take Heed on June 17 (June 8, 2020).

+++

Update

June 10, 2020

Matthew Bell has posted an extension of several of the themes above and more here: "The Strange Case of Jekyll and Floyd."

Also, Bell passes along the following:

(1) The February 23, 2020 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery occurred in Brunswick, Georgia right across from... Jekyll Island -- and just north of the "Floyd's Neck" location I identified in the video.

(2) Arbery had apparently been jogging on Holmes Road. Of course, in 2012, you extensively covered James Holmes, the man convicted of murdering 12 people and wounding 70 at the Aurora, Colorado Century 16 theater at the premier of... you'll recall... the Dark Knight Rises.

(3) And, unless my map is mistaken, Holmes Rd. is just south of the Jekyll Island Causeway, designated U.S. Route 17 -- which seems to fit into the Nicolas-Chauvin / Derek-Chauvin "17" numerical pattern.

(Possible secondary addition: U.S 17 apparently also connects up the State Route (SR) 520 just East of I-95. 520 is 6 short from the number of seconds in 8 minutes, 46 seconds, i.e., 526.)

Doubleday, Baseball, Charleston, Charles Manson, and Twilight Links

In an early Father's Day celebration, on Sunday, June 14, my son Malcolm took me to a Mets game. I had a wonderful time. Baseball is special.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. ~ Field of Dreams

Three days later, on June 17, the Mets were in the news, although events on the same day would overshadow the New York baseball-aligned obituary of the day.

The New York Times' opening paragraphs of the death news told quickly about the connections the deceased had to money, publishing, and baseball:

Nelson Doubleday Jr., who shortly after taking over his family’s publishing business used it in 1980 to buy the lowly New York Mets and put the team on course to win the World Series in 1986, died on Wednesday [June 17,2015] at his home in Locust Valley, N.Y. He was 81.
The cause was pneumonia, his son-in-law John Havens said.
Books and baseball defined Mr. Doubleday’s life. He was the grandson of Frank Nelson Doubleday, who founded the publishing company bearing his name in 1896, and the son of Nelson Doubleday, who built the business into a mass-market powerhouse.
Another Doubleday ancestor was Abner, a great-great-granduncle long credited (erroneously) with inventing the game of baseball. Growing up on the family’s Long Island estate, in Oyster Bay, Nelson Jr. was a passionate baseball fan, following the fortunes of the Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio. Source.

As you know, another incident occurred on Wednesday, June 17. That was the attack on African-Americans in Charleston. We don't need to go into details here, but if you want a refresher, see "There's A Storm Coming: Dylann Storm Roof."

Dylann Storm Roof clearly used highly significant symbols in the digital trail he left investigators to find, including the numbers 4:44, 88, and 23; Nazi imagery (such as the Othala rune - shown below); the Confederate flag; and so forth.

Roof left a ranting, racist manifesto on the internet calling for a new civil war in America before staging his massacre in a church.

But as S.J. Reidhead commented on my earlier Charleston posting, "Abner Doubleday was responsible for the first shot being fired from Fort Sumter."

That's correct, from the Union side, Abner Doubleday was responsible for beginning the Civil War or the War Between the States in response to the Southern forces firing first.

Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893)...

initially served in coastal garrisons and then in the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848 and the Seminole Wars from 1856 to 1858. In 1858 he was transferred to Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor serving under Colonel John L. Gardner. By the start of the Civil War, he was a captain and second in command in the garrison at Fort Sumter, under Major Robert Anderson. He aimed the cannon that fired the first return shot in answer to the Confederate bombardment on April 12, 1861. He subsequently referred to himself as the "hero of Sumter" for this role.

I've been to Cooperstown with my son's youth baseball championship team, seeing the fame Doubleday has brought to that town, although it is viewed as all myth today.

Although Doubleday achieved minor fame as a competent combat general with experience in many important Civil War battles, he is more widely remembered as the supposed inventor of the game of baseball, in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839.
The Mills Commission, chaired by Abraham G. Mills, the fourth president of the National League, was appointed in 1905 to determine the origin of baseball. The committee's final report, on December 30, 1907, stated, in part, that "the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839." It concluded by saying, "in the years to come, in the view of the hundreds of thousands of people who are devoted to baseball, and the millions who will be, Abner Doubleday's fame will rest evenly, if not quite as much, upon the fact that he was its inventor ... as upon his brilliant and distinguished career as an officer in the Federal Army."
However, there is considerable evidence to dispute this claim. Baseball historian George B. Kirsch has described the results of the Mills Commission as a "myth". He wrote, "Robert Henderson, Harold Seymour, and other scholars have since debunked the Doubleday-Cooperstown myth, which nonetheless remains powerful in the American imagination because of the efforts of Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown." At his death, Doubleday left many letters and papers, none of which describe baseball, or give any suggestion that he considered himself a prominent person in the evolution of the game. Chairman Mills himself, who had been a Civil War colleague of Doubleday and a member of the honor guard for Doubleday's body as it lay in state in New York City, never recalled hearing Doubleday describe his role as the inventor. Doubleday was a cadet at West Point in the year of the alleged invention and his family had moved away from Cooperstown the prior year. Furthermore, the primary testimony to the commission that connected baseball to Doubleday was that of Abner Graves, whose credibility is questionable; a few years later, he shot his wife to death and was committed to an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his life. Part of the confusion could stem from there being another man by the same name in Cooperstown in 1839.
Despite the lack of solid evidence linking Doubleday to the origins of baseball, Cooperstown, New York became the new home of what is today the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 1937. See also here.

Besides the baseball links, Doubleday also was involved in the twilight world of Theosophy. In the summer of 1878, Doubleday lived in Mendham Township, New Jersey, and became a prominent member of the Theosophical Society. When two of the founders of that society, Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, moved to India at the end of that year, he was constituted as the president of the American body. Another prominent member was Thomas A. Edison.

There's another bizarre name game thread going through this Charleston event. 

The shooting of Walter L. Scott (February 9, 1965 – April 4, 2015), a 50-year-old black man, occurred on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, following a daytime traffic stop for a non-functioning brake light. Scott, a black man, was fatally shot by Michael Slager, a white North Charleston police officer. Slager was charged with murder after a video surfaced contradicting his earlier police report. The video showed him shooting the unarmed Scott from behind while Scott was fleeing. In the wake of shootings in Ferguson, Baltimore and other locations, Scott's killing further fueled a national conversation around race and policing.

Cory Panshin added:

I am becoming caught up in recurrences of the name Walter Scott. This started when I went looking in genealogy listings for members of the Roof family in the Columbia or Lexington area (because someone had written online that Dylann Roof's family was Afrikaans, which doesn't seem to be the case.) I found a fair number of them, going back into the early 1800s, including a Walter Scott Roof who was born in 1875. I don't know if he was Dylann's direct ancestor, but he seems pretty likely he was some kind of relative. That one name caught my eye in particular because I've read that the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott had a strong influence on Southern concepts of honor and chivalry and on the founding of the Ku Klux Klan. It made me wonder if the Roof family had a long-standing streak of Confederate romanticization.

... 

I also find this New Yorker article noting the coincidence of names between Walter Scott and Sir Walter Scott.

South Carolina is not Missouri—its racial past, in fact, is more violent, but its attempts to move away from that history, while less known, have been more bold. The state’s history of violence against black men and women is excruciating to know, or to read. If you are unfamiliar, then Google “George Junius Stinney, Jr.,” “Julia and Frazier Baker,” the Hamburg massacre, or the Orangeburg massacre. That is South Carolina at its worst. But there is a streak of fair-mindedness in the state’s history—an ancient ideal that Mark Twain parodied as coming straight out of the chivalric fiction of Sir Walter Scott’s mist-filled novels of courtly knights. While reserved exclusively for whites for most of its history, this tendency appears from time to time and is always surprising, especially to outsiders. . . .

Admittedly, it may be hard to make a case, any case, for a South Carolina tradition of fair play. But, as inchoate or feeble as it may be, it is there, and we may be seeing a little bit of South Carolina’s almost romantic longing for true justice in the reaction to this murder victim—whose name, historians of cosmic coincidence should note, is Walter Scott.

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, FRSE (August 15, 1771 - September 21, 1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet.

In line with the "race war" motivation behind Dylann Storm Roof's shooting of nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the name of Charles Manson and his similar reasons surfaced in some reports.

Charles Manson, 2014

Charles Milles Manson (born Charles Milles Maddox, November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in the California desert in the late 1960s. In 1971 he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the murders of a total of nine individuals, including seven people: actress Sharon Tate and four other people at Tate's home; and the next day, a married couple, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca; all carried out by members of the group at his instruction.

Charles Manson's biological father apparently was Colonel Walker Scott (born Pike County, Kentucky, May 11, 1910 – December 30, 1954) against whom Kathleen Maddox filed a paternity suit that resulted in an agreed judgment in 1937.

The official records by attorney Vincent Bugliosi in 1971 (who died June 6, 2015) declared that Manson's father, a cook named Scott, was African American. But Manson has emphatically denied that his biological father had African American ancestry.

A Pope Kills Three

Three are dead in a courthouse shooting in the Philippines. Above is a photograph of the shooter's gun found at the scene.

The official Philippines News Agency (PNA) has reported that a gunman identified as John Pope "went berserk" at the courthouse in the city of Cebu, Philippines, on Tuesday, January 22, 2013.

John Pope, a Canadian national, entered the Palace of Justice at about 8:10 a.m. clad in jogging pants, long white shirt and with a body bag.
He was body-frisked and his bag was inspected.
Pope went directly to MTC Branch 6 as he has a scheduled hearing for malicious mischief case.
According to Prosecutor Noel A. Cellona, Pope greeted him when they met at the stair near the court room.
Cellona noticed nothing unusual in Pope.
Before the start of the hearing, Cellona heard two successive gun bursts.
He saw the complainant Dr. Rene F. Rafols and private prosecutor Juvian Achas lying dead on the ground.
After shooting the victims, Pope went out of the court room and proceeded to MTC Branch 1 opposite the building about 50 meters away.
While walking towards the lobby of MTC Branch 1, Pope met Prosecutor Ma. Theresa C. Casino, the public prosecutor handling his grave threat case.
Casino was point blank shot and was hit in her neck. She was immediately rushed to the hospital and is now in critical condition.
Pope was found dead at the stair of the ground floor with gun shot at the head.
He allegedly shot himself, according to PNP SOCO-7.
Recovered from Pope is a 6-shot 357 revolver with four bullets spent. He was declared dead and his body was brought by the PNP SOCO-7 in Cebu City. (PNA)

Facing a criminal case in the courts, the gunman fatally shot the complainant in the case, who was a doctor, and the doctor's lawyer. The gunman also took his own life.

The scene at the courthouse on January 22, 2013.

According to the website of the City of Cebu, the name Cebu came from the word “Sebu,” meaning "animal fat."

The Supreme Court has now tightened security measures on all courts nationwide following the incident in the Palace Hall of Justice in Cebu where three people were killed including a lawyer, doctor and the gunman.

Other violence has swept through the Philippines in recent gun violence. Earlier this month, a gunman went from house to house in a town near the capital, Manila, killing at least 9 people. On New Year's Eve, a 7-year-old girl died after being shot in the head amid celebratory gunfire.

The country's Firearms and Explosives Office says there were 1.2 million registered firearms in the Philippines as of last year. Also, the office estimates there were 600,000 unlicensed firearms in circulation nationwide.

American John Popes

The name Pope is from the Latin: papa; from Greek: πάππας (pappas), a child's word for father. The familiar terms "Pop" and "Pops" for "father" are derivatives.
The name of the Cebu courthouse shooter, Canadian John Pope, is one that has a prosaic sound in America, in relationship to the military and spying, in reality and in fiction. This appears to be related to the founding nature of the Pope family in US History.

Some insights into the linkages of a Kentuckian named John Pope (February 1770 – July 12, 1845), U.S. politician, senator for Kentucky (served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Eleventh Congress), and governor of Arkansas Territory, gives a notion of the Pope power family. 

Pope practiced law in Washington, Shelby, and Fayette County, Kentucky. This John Pope was married to the sister-in-law of President John Quincy Adams. He was also the brother of Nathaniel Pope, a prominent figure in early Illinois Territory, and the uncle to both John Pope, Union General in the Civil War and Daniel Pope Cook, another prominent politician in the early history of the state of Illinois.

The Kentucky's John Pope's uncle was John Pope (March 16, 1822 – September 23, 1892), who was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He had a brief but successful career in the Western Theater, but he is best known for his defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas) in the East.

Another John Pope (December 17, 1798 – January 14, 1876) was an officer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War. Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Pope was appointed midshipman from Maine, May 30, 1816. Prior to the Civil War, he served in the Mediterranean, West Indian, Brazil, African and East India Squadrons.

From July 1 to October 24, 1861, he was attached to the Gulf Squadron commanding Richmond. He participated in the search for CSS Sumter in the West Indies while on his way to join the Gulf Blockading Squadron, assisted in the blockade of the passes of the Mississippi River and took part in the engagement with Confederate States’ vessels at the Head of Passes October 12, 1861. He died January 14, 1876, in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Fictional John Popes

John Pope is a fictional astronaut character in James A. Michener's 1985 novel Space. One of the main figures in the book is this John Pope. Small town Pope is swept from naval warfare in the Pacific, through air combat in the Korean War and his test pilot life at "Pax River," to his astronaut selection and training.

Another character in this book, according to this summary, is "a highly intelligent but cynical cult leader calling himself Leopold Strabismus who exploits first the UFO craze and then an anti-scientific creationist agenda to increase his fortune...The novel closes with Pope retired from NASA and a respected professor of astronomy, his wife Penny in the Senate, and [aeronautical engineer Stanley] Mott consulting on 'Grand Tour' unmanned missions to the outer solar system. The two men finally attending a NASA workshop discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life, at which Strabismus privately drops the creationist/fundamentalist persona he has adopted and joins in the intellectual debate on the inevitability of life elsewhere in the Universe."

Also in 1985, in the fiction movie Agent On Ice, the lead character, ex-agent John Pope (Tom Ormeny) was unwittingly involved in a deadly conspiracy, and in the film, the Mafia, the police, and the C.I.A. all want him.

A Real Pope Spy

The name "Pope" is one that some remember from CIA flights over 50 years ago in Asia.

Allen Pope, 1960, Indonesia, shot down flying a B-26 bomber in Indonesia in May 1958, flying for the CIA in support of Indonesian rebels and against the Government of Indonesia. Sentenced to death, the US brokered his release, but he spent four years in an Indonesian jail. Source.

VA: 8 Dead

The number of shooting incidents has increased dramatically in the USA since the Fort Hood incident. Whether the reasons are the copycat effect, behavior contagion, media reporting increase, or coincidence doesn't matter. It is happening and we are in the midst of a major cluster. Another shooting has occurred.

On Tuesday, January 19, 2010, a gunman went on a "rampage" (as the media is terming it) in the Virginia, killing eight people and shooting a police helicopter taking part in a hunt for him, officials said. A 39-year-old man was believed to be surrounded early Wednesday after the shootings in a rural district near Appomattox (where the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee took place, ending the Civil War) in southern Virginia. Police confirmed that there were eight dead.

The suspect, named as Christopher Speight, shot a helicopter that was called to the scene at least four times, forcing it to make an emergency landing, officials said.

[Some of the first settlers in America with this family name, Speight, or its variants, were Frances Speight who settled in Virginia in 1642; William and Mary Speights plus their daughter Elizabeth in Barbados in 1678; and Christopher Speight in New England in 1760. The family motto is "by strength and valor." One of the more well-known holders of the name was Englishman Mark Warwick Fordham Speight (August 6, 1965 – April 7, 2008), who was an English television presenter, who once played the "Abominable No Man" in Timmy Mallett's Timmy Towers. On the afternoon of January 3, 2008, Speight called emergency services after waking up to discover fiancée Natasha Collins's body in the bath of their St John's Wood flat, in northwest London. He was originally arrested and charged with her murder. An inquest later determined Collins had died of a drug overdose and severe burns from hot water. Then on April 7, 2008, Speight was reported missing and soon found that he had died by suicide by hanging near Paddington Station. He left suicide notes saying he could not live without Collins.]

"More than 100 deputies, officers and state troopers will continue working through the night to locate and apprehend the armed subject" Virginia State Police said in a statement.

The incident unfolded around noon on Tuesday when a deputy from the Appomattox sheriff's office responded to an emergency call about an injured man lying on a country road.

"When the deputy arrived on scene, the deputy heard several gun shots," Sergeant Thomas Molnar, a spokesman for the Virginia State Police told AFP.

As the victim was being airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he later died, officers found four bodies outside a nearby home and "three bodies inside the residence."

The victims were male and female, according to police.

The shootings were said to be the act of a lone gunman, who was pinned down by police in nearby woods late Tuesday, officials said.

A nearby residence was evacuated as the manhunt grew ever tenser.

"The perimeter has been established and we believe the suspect is within the quarantined area," Molnar said.

A motive for the attacks was not immediately clear.