Today is the Prime Ministers birthday. The Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair is the first Labour Prime Minister to have lead his party to three general elections in a row, and the first to lead Labour into a third term. Mr Blair, during his period of office has done much to extend and modernise the welfare state, develop the economy and extend the ‘special relationship’ with the United States. Happy Birthday Mr Blair. Speaking of visionary leaders and the United States, today in 1877, Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux surrendered to United States troops in Nebraska. This sad event came less than one year after the Battle of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn on June 26, 1876, in which Crazy Horse joined forces with Sitting Bull and led his band in the counterattack that destroyed Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Whilst in custody, a United States soldier assassinated Crazy Horse (with a bayonet) on September 5, 1877. Three years later, after the ‘Battle’ of Wounded Knee the so-called Indian Wars were over. Lyman Frank Baum, later famous as the author of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ and the ever-popular ‘The Book of the Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs’, wrote: "..our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilisation, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.." There were 20,000 Lakota (Oglala Sioux) in the mid-18th century. There are now about 70,000, 20,480 of whom still speak their ancestral language.
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