Matt's Today in History

The End of a World, September 2, 1945

2011-09-25T19:02:00.000-04:00

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On September 2nd, 1945, the Second World War ended with the signing of surrender documents by a Japanese government and military delegation on board the American battleship USS Missouri. Military representatives of every Allied power fighting in the Pacific were present, along with members of the press, who reported the sights and sounds of the ceremony to a world eager for peace. From beginning to end, the event lasted 23 minutes. And though most people alive at the time did not realize it, the ceremony also marked the beginning of one world and the end of another.

Although history rarely falls into the neat patterns of human expectation, there are dates which clearly mark the beginnings or ends of eras. September 2nd, 1945 marked the end of several eras---cultural, political, and military. It also marked the beginning of the world in which we now live, a world that would be fundamentally different had just a few small events turned out differently in 1945. While most people alive today had not yet been born when the Second World War ended, we live with the aftereffects of that conflagration every day.

As the victorious allied representatives stared at the Japanese delegation on the other side of the table holding the surrender documents, some of them had to wonder what they had won. The Soviet officers present were citizens of a nation that had suffered over 23 million military and civilian deaths, although the exact figure will never be known. That number represented 14% of the USSR's population. Only Poland, with nearly six million dead, had a greater percentage of its population killed by the war.For Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the war was far from over. Eastern Europe and the area that would become East Germany were subject to communist reprisals for years after the war officially ended in Europe in May, 1945. Anyone living in an area under Soviet control that had fought with Germany or in any way opposed the Red Army was arrested and either sent to the infamous gulags of Siberia or summarily executed. German prisoners-of-war being held by the Soviets did not go home when the war ended; as many as a third of them died in captivity. Those who survived were put to work at various industrial sites inside the Soviet Union and were not repatriated until the mid-1950s. Most of these men were not guilty of war crimes and a majority weren't Nazis; they just had the misfortune of being on the losing side and surrendering to an enemy that did not recognize the Geneva Convention’s rules governing the treatment of prisoners-of-war.

Not that being on the winning side helped many Soviet soldiers held by the Germans when the war ended. Almost all of them were imprisoned upon returning to their home country under orders from Stalin, who probably saw them as an embarrassing reminder of how badly he had blundered during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. Some of the Soviet POWs and others, including many Polish soldiers, had no desire to return to areas controlled by the communists because they knew what awaited them. What they did not know, and what the world would not know for another 50 years, was that their fates had already been decided by Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and US President Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945. One of Stalin’s demands was for the quick return of any Soviet or Eastern European citizen who had ended the war in territory not controlled by the Red Army. Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to this demand, even though they understood the implications. Apologists for both men claim they were ignorant of Stalin’s plans, but history recent to 1945 had shown the Soviet leader to be genocidal and paranoid. The two Western leaders were, by tacit approval, helping to send tens of thousands of men to certain imprisonment or death.

The Chinese delegation on board the Missouri that Sunday morning was comprised of representatives of the Republic of China, the legitimate Nationalist government of that nation as recognized by all the allies except the Soviet Union. China had been embroiled in a civil war since 1928, a struggle that was largely abandoned while the two sides, the Nationalists and the Communists, fought separately against the Japanese. At the same time the Japanese surrender ceremony commenced in Tokyo Harbor, the two Chinese belligerents were trying to hammer out some sort of agreement on their nation's future. But fighting continued, and by the middle of 1946 the two sides were again fully engaged in a death struggle. The Nationalists could claims superior numbers in terms of manpower, but the Communists controlled the countryside and were soon bolstered by farmers who were promised their own land in exchange for military service, a promise that quickly turned into a fantasy. By the end of the 1949, the war was over and the Communists were taking power in Beijing. The Nationalists escaped to Taiwan and set up a government-in-exile, but from the beginning it was obvious that they would never again control the mainland. They had not only been beaten by the Communists, but by years of struggle against the Japanese occupation.

China would undergo painful upheavals over the next 40 years, including the Great Leap Forward, a plan to make the nation into an industrial giant in the course of just a few years. As a result of mismanagement and the allocation of resources away from agriculture to manufacturing, the years 1958-1962 saw more than 16 million people (and possibly as many as 40 million) die of starvation. This failed movement led directly to the Cultural Revolution, the effects of which shaped Chinese society for a generation.Also represented on the Missouri were the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. All three had been colonial powers in the Pacific before the outbreak of hostilities, but most of their possessions had been occupied by Japanese forces and, with a few exceptions, would never be fully under their control again. France tried to quell the rising tide of anti-colonialism in French Indochina (Vietnam), but after a stunning military defeat at the hands of Viet Minh communists in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, the government in Paris was done in mainland Asia. Vietnam was divided in two, but the partition solved nothing. In a little over 10 years, American, Australian and South Korean troops would be fighting communist insurgents and North Vietnamese Army regulars in the jungles of South Vietnam.

Of all the colonial powers, the British Empire paid the highest price for victory. The British people and the colonial citizens of the Empire, along with the Dominion nations, had stood alone against the Nazi war machine from the fall of France in May, 1940 until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941. British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and dozens of other nations' soldiers, sailors, and airmen from across the Empire fought on almost every front during the war. Resources were always strained, even after the United States entered the war in December, 1941.In 1922, four years after the end of the First World War, one in four human beings lived in lands controlled by the British Empire. It was truly worldwide in scope; when people said the sun never set on the British Empire, they meant it. But even then, cracks were starting to appear. Defending far-flung outposts required the world’s largest navy and a large standing army. The Royal Navy met the challenge, at least until the outbreak of the Second World War. But Britain could not maintain a large standing army as France did during most of the inter-war years. Nor could it fight a two-front war. The Empire had reached beyond its grasp; bravery and a stiff upper lip were no longer enough to win the day on their own. Such was the availability of the Royal Navy, for example, that when the British Pacific Fleet was formally organized in 1944 from smaller area commands, the entire formation was given a single task force number when operating with units of the US Pacific Fleet, itself part of a navy which had strength of more than 6,000 ships in 1945. The British Pacific Fleet contained fewer than 180 vessels during the same period.The Empire’s largest colony, India, gained its independence in 1947. Within 20 years, almost all the colonial territories would be independent nations. By the time the generation who fought the war reached middle age, the term ‘British Empire’ was no longer in use. Economically devastated, it would not be until the beginning of the 1950’s that the UK’s economy would again show sustained growth.

Of all the allied powers, only the United States emerged stronger overall than when the war began. While the death of nearly 420,000 Americans was a grievous loss, it was actually a smaller death toll than had occurred during the US Civil War 80 years before. And it was a much smaller total than expected, since all but a handful of Americans assumed that victory in the Pacific would require an invasion of the Japanese home islands. While the morality of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki is debated today, the average American of 1945 welcomed the news with relief.While the economic might of the United States had been evident for decades, it emerged from the Second World War as a superpower in every quantifiable way. But that status came with great responsibilities. By 1947, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was underway. Historians will probably debate the true origins of this standoff for the next few centuries and we will not delve into the causes or merits of it here. The Soviet Union’s military might did not fade immediately after the war; conversely, the United States’ military draw-down was quick and, as later events would prove, excessive. The lessons learned from the Berlin Airlift in 1947-48 and the Korean War (1950-53) led to a situation unique in American history. Until the mid-20th century, the United States had an established tradition of allowing the American military to shrink to alarming levels during times of peace. When war loomed, citizen soldiers volunteered (or were drafted) to fill in the ranks, led by the small corps of professional officers and senior enlisted men. Arms manufacturers cranked up production and makers of other products began making the tools of combat.

So it had been from the War of Independence to the Second World War. But those days had passed. The Cold War required constant readiness, which required a relatively large military. The United States kept troops on permanent station in West Germany, South Korea, Japan, and dozens of other places around the world, armed and trained for the Third World War. This costly endeavor was maintained for 40 years, until the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.Such military strength required the creation of a permanent arms industry in the United States, Europe and Asia. The so-called military-industrial complex is still with us and probably always will be. America’s willingness to out-spend and out-research the Soviet Union in terms of military spending and procurement was one of the leading causes of the collapse of communism in Europe. The Cold War was won not with the force of arms, but by the constant threat of new and better ones.

It doesn’t take much examination to see how fundamentally our world changed because of the Second World War. That war brought an end to the vestiges of 19th century life, mainly colonialism and the idea that wars were only to be fought against a nation’s military, not its entire civilian population. It also created the specter of nuclear annihilation, a reality that probably kept the world out of another worldwide conflagration. But that’s another story.

New London Bridge Opened, August 1, 1831

2011-08-02T21:54:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1831, the New London Bridge opened, spanning the River Thames in London, England. The granite structure, 928 feet in length, represents just one chapter in a history of structures collectively known as "London Bridge". As we begin it's important to note that London Bridge is not be confused with Tower Bridge, a bridge that was built downstream of London Bridge and completed in 1894. Many tourists see the more massive Tower Bridge and think it is the other.

The spot where London Bridge crosses the Thames has been home to one type of bridge or another for nearly two millennium. The original bridge was a wooden structure built during the first century AD by the Romans. It likely fell into disrepair after the Romans left the island several hundred years later, but at some point it was either renovated or replaced by one or multiple bridges. During the 11th century, the bridge was burned in an attempt to slow the advance of Danish invaders. According to legend, this incident was immortalized in the nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down.

Two more wooden bridges were built on the same location during the 11th and 12th centuries, but both were destroyed by weather or fire. It was only then that the proposal was put forth to build a larger stone bridge across the river. This endeavor was undertaken during the reign of Henry II and took 33 years to complete. It opened in 1209.

King John, who was the ruling monarch at the time of the bridge's completion, proposed that houses be built on the structure. This was undertaken almost immediately and, before long, the span was covered with houses, stores and a chapel located on top of the center span. Although exact details have been lost to history, drawings of the time show buildings up to seven stories high covering the bridge. The population of the structure was so large that it was made a separate ward of London with its own representative on the city council.

London Bridge served its namesake for over 600 years. During that time, parts of the span collapsed and were rebuilt and various structures on top of it were purposely burned or accidentally set on fire. During Jack Cade's rebellion in 1450, a battle was actually fought on the bridge. The southern gate of the bridge became notorious for being the place where the severed heads of traitors were put on display. William Wallace was the first person to suffer such a fate; hundreds of others would follow over the next three and a half centuries, until King Charles II put a halt to the practice in 1660. In 1633, a fire destroyed the northern end of the bridge, which was not immediately rebuilt. Because of this delay, the bridge remained free of damage from the Great Fire of 1666.

By the dawning of the 19th century, it was clear that London Bridge was in need of replacement. Traffic was so bad that London's Mayor issued an edict in 1722 ordering all horses and carts to be driven on the left side of the road from the perspective of the rider. It is believed that this is where the British tradition of driving on the left began, although it is possible that right-handed people wanted to have their weapons close to oncoming traffic in case of an incident.

A competition was held in 1799 to determine the best design for a new bridge. The winner was John Rennie, whose design included five stone arches. It was built 100 feet upstream of the old bridge and took seven years to complete. After the New London Bridge opened in 1831, the old one was demolished.

The new bridge underwent various renovations over the next 130 years, including a widening in the first decade of the 20th century. The extra traffic brought on by automobiles caused the bridge to begin sinking into the riverbed until the east side of the bridge was four inches lower than the west side. Construction on the current London Bridge began in 1967 and the span was opened in 1973. Part of the cost of the construction was offset by the sale of the old bridge to Robert McCulloch, an American businessman. McCulloch had some of the bridge transported to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where the stones were used to cover a concrete framework. The finished product, opened in 1971, looks much like the original bridge, but much of the actual structure never left England.

Constitution Sails Again, July 21, 1997

2011-07-21T00:20:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1997, the United States Ship Constitution officially set sail for the first time in 116 years. She remains today the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat, having been in service for almost 214 years as of this recording. Planned and built as one of six ships meant to serve as the core of a new navy, her travels, travails and near-abandonment have become an indelible part of the history of the nation she was commissioned to defend.

Officially, the United States Navy was born on October 13th, 1775 when three armed schooners were placed under the authority of the Continental Congress with the mission of intercepting any British supply ships in the waters off Massachusetts. However, the American naval effort during the Revolution was made mostly by the separate colonies’ own naval forces and by private individuals. The colonial fleet eventually grew, but during the course of the war lost 24 ships; when the war officially ended in 1783, there was only one warship left to follow Congress’ orders. While the men and officers of the Navy did not lack for bravery or skill, they lacked resources, especially when compared to the British Royal Navy, which was and would continue to be for more than a century the greatest naval force the world had6+ ever known. It was the French Navy that did the real heavy lifting for the American cause during the War for Independence.

After the war, Congress and the President began look to the interior of the North American continent and away from the sea. Navies are expensive and the young United States could not afford a fleet that had to be manned and ready to fight wars at sea. The last Continental Navy ship was sold in 1783, which left the defense of the American coastline to the Revenue Cutter Service, the forerunner of today’s Coast Guard. Opponents of a permanent navy believed that a large fleet would become a standing invitation to foreign entanglements, something the early Presidents were loathe to contemplate.

Other powers, however, used the new nation's lack of naval strength as an open door to take advantage of Americans who sailed the open seas. During the 1790s, US merchant ships were harassed by France and Britain. Both nations considered the open seaways as theirs to control and since there was nothing the United States could do, her civilian sailors paid the price.

The most notorious group which preyed on American merchantmen were the pirates from the Barbary Coast, an area that today is the coastal areas of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Many European nations, including Britian and France, paid a yearly tribute, basically protection money, to the Dey of Algiers, the leader of the most active group of corsairs. The United States began paying the tribute as well, but that did not stop the capture of eleven American ships during the first few years of the 1790's. It was with this in mind that Congress passed what came to be known as the Naval Act of 1794, which provided for the construction of six ships, four carrying 44 guns and two carrying 36 guns apiece. They were to be considered heavy frigates, powerful enough to take on any ship in their class yet fast enough to avoid the first-rate ships of the line, some of which carried more than 100 guns.

Thus was the USS Constitution born. A peace accord was signed with Algiers in March, 1796, which caused construction of the ships to come to a halt per the wording of the Naval Act. After some goading by President Washington, Congress agreed to fund the completion of the three ships closest to completion. Those three ships became the USS United States, USS Constellation and the USS Constitution. The other three were completed a few years later. After some problems encountered during her initial launching ceremony, Constitution slid into Boston Harbor on October 21, 1797.

Constitution's launching and fitting out coincided with the beginning of what became to be known as the Quasi-War with France, a conflict which occurred almost entirely at sea. But that's for part two.

Skylab Falls, July 11, 1979

2011-07-11T23:04:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1979, Skylab fell back to Earth after six years in orbit. This space station was the first attempt by the United States to put a long-term platform in space for the purpose of scientific experimentation. It remains the only space station that was completely of American design and construction.

The idea for a US space station dates back to the 1950’s, when the concept of using the discarded upper stage of a large rocket was first put on paper. This idea was far-reaching, so much so that it was not pursued for another decade. In the meantime, the US Air Force made plans to build a smaller station, essentially a manned spy satellite, called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MLO. It would carry two men and several powerful telescopes. When plans for the MLO became known to NASA administrators, the program was immediately seen as a threat to their funding. And so it came to be that, while racing to put a man on the moon before the Soviets, the minds at NASA also began drawing up ideas for a space station.

At first, NASA wanted a station large enough to hold a crew of 24. A design of this magnitude would require orbital construction and an entirely new generation of reusable supply vehicles to transport the tons of food, water and other supplies needed to keep two dozen astronauts alive and productive for months at a time. But with the likelihood of budget cuts looming on the horizon, plans for the giant station were put on hold in lieu of a smaller, more affordable orbital lab. As time went by, however, the giant station and her new resupply craft did not die; eventually, the space station design became Space Station Freedom, a 1980’s proposal that was eventually scaled down to become the International Space Station. The resupply vessel became the Space Shuttle.

By the mid-1960’s, the design had been more or less finalized. The station would be made from one stage of a Saturn rocket, the S-IVB stage. Originally, the stage would actually be filled with hydrogen fuel since the only available lifting rocket, the Saturn 1B, needed to use that stage’s thrust to achieve orbit. Once in a safe orbit, the stage’s fuel tank would be vented to space and everything would be moved in. This planned changed when NASA canceled Apollo missions 18 through 20, freeing up large Saturn V rockets that could achieve Earth orbit without the thrust developed by the S-IVB stage. Thus, the space station could be assembled on the ground and launched into space as a complete package.

Skylab included the Apollo Telescope Mount, the EREP (or Earth Resources Experiment Package), the Multiple Docking Adapter (with two docking ports), the airlock (with EVA hatches for spacewalks), and the Orbital Workshop in the main body of the station, which housed much of the supporting systems. Power came from a solar array as well as fuel cells in the docked Apollo Command Service Module. The rear of the station included a large waste tank, tanks for maneuvering jets, and a heat radiator.

Skylab, as the space station was dubbed, was launched on May 14, 1973. While everything about the launch was within specifications, the station was discovered to be seriously damaged during its trip to Earth orbit. One of the station’s main solar panels had broken off completely and the other one was pinned to the side of the station by the remains of the micrometeoroid shield, another victim of the launch. The first crew to visit the station on May 25, 1973 stayed for 28 days and spent a great portion of that time doing repair work. The second crew came aboard on July 28 of the same year and stayed for 59 days. The final crew arrived on November 16, 1973 and lived aboard Skylab for 84 days. Each crew of Skylab broke the previous record for the most time spent in space by human beings.

During their time aboard Skylab, the crews performed solar experiments that led to the discovery of the Sun’s coronal holes. They also did experiments that led to a greater understanding of the human body’s ability to adapt to low-gravity environments. The astronauts had little free time, but they had been provided with a dart board, playing cards, books, and tape players for their non-working hours. However, looking out the station's window that provided a view of the Earth became the most popular activity for all the crews.

After the third crew left, Skylab was placed in an orbit that was expected to deteriorate in 8 years. The Space Shuttle was supposed to lift the station to a higher orbit in 1979, but the first Shuttle mission did not fly until 1981. An unmanned mission was planned, but funding was denied. Even if Skylab had been saved, it would probably have never been used again. The launch damage was worse than what could be fixed by the first crew and any future crews would have had to replace many critical systems before the station could be used long-term. The decision was taken to let Skylab fall.

The station met the thick part of Earth’s atmosphere on July 11, 1979. Debris fell over a wide area of the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. No one was injured by falling parts, but the Shire of Esperance in Australia fined the United States $400 for littering, a debt which remained unpaid until April, 2009, when American radio show host Scott Barley raised money from the listeners to his morning show and paid the fine on behalf of NASA. As of this writing, Barley has yet to be compensated by the space agency.

A second Skylab had been built as a backup at the same time as the one that flew, but it was never used. It is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

David Farragut Born, July 5, 1801

2011-07-06T00:36:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1801, David Glasgow Farragut was born at Lowe's Ferry, Tennessee, a settlement on the Tennessee River not far from the city of Knoxville. A family tragedy would ultimately propel the young man into a career at sea, a life of service which culminated in his becoming the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral in the United States Navy. He is most remembered today for one phrase he uttered in the heat of battle, a phrase that spoke to the man's courage and fortitude under the most dire of circumstances.

The child who would become Admiral Farragut was given the first name James upon his birth. When his mother died in 1808, James' father arranged for him to be adopted by David Porter, a naval officer with two sons who would both become admirals during the Civil War along with their adoptive brother, who took the first name David in 1812 to honor the man who agreed to raise him as his own. It almost seemed inevitable that David Farragut would serve his nation at sea.

Through David Porter's influence, Farragut was commissioned a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1810; he was nine years old. It was not unusual for boys of his age to go to sea on warships, and Farragut had the good fortune to serve aboard the USS Essex, a frigate commanded by his adoptive father, now a captain. There was no naval academy for American naval officers at that time, so young men and boys slated for leadership positions learned their trade on the job. It was a tough school, even under the best of circumstances.

Midshipman Farragut was 11 when the War of 1812 began. By the time of his twelfth birthday, he had held the position of prize master, the temporary captain of a captured ship. In March, 1814, however, he and the crew of the Essex saw the tables turned when they were captured by the British outside Valparaiso Bay, Chile. Farragut was wounded during the engagement, not for the last time during his career.

Promotions were unbelievably slow in the post-war navy and Farragut was not promoted to lieutenant until 1822. Senior officers, some of them so elderly they could no longer go to sea, were kept on the active duty list while younger officers were marooned in lower ranks. As a result of this practice, Farragut was not promoted to commander until 1844 and did not achieve the rank of captain until 1855. By this time, he was 54 years old and had been in the service for 45 years.

Despite the slow pace of promotion, those years were well-spent by Farragut, and his professional experience during that time was extensive and varied. In the early 1820's he helped hunt pirates in the West Indies. During the Mexican-American war, he commanded the sloop Saratoga. But probably his most important contribution to the navy during the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was his role as the founding commander of the Mare Island Naval Yard at Vallejo, California. Mare Island served for years as the only facility on the west coast of the United States that was capable of overhauling a warship.

Farragut married for the first time in the mid-1820's to Susan Marchant. She suffered years of bad health and ultimately died in December, 1840. The future admiral married Virginia Loyall in 1843; this marriage produced one child, a son named Loyall Farragut, in 1844.

When southern states began to secede from the Union in late 1860, Captain Farragut found himself stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Although both he and his wife were born in states that would eventually try to secede, Farragut made it clear that he regarded secession as treason and those who aided the movement as traitors. Nonetheless, the navy was initially reluctant to give Farragut a sea-going command once the Civil War began in April, 1861. Assigned to the Naval Retirement Board, it looked as if the 60-year old captain would spend the war behind a desk.

But it was not to be. For the second time in his career, Farragut was helped along by the intervention of his adopted family. His brother David Porter was able to offer him a special assignment, an opportunity to command a squadron. While Farragut was eager for a more active role, he was afraid his assignment would be to retake the naval facilities at Norfolk, Virginia, a town where he had forged many personal relationships in the years preceding the war. But the mission targeted a much more important city: New Orleans. Farragut was to be the man who wrested the south's most important port from Confederate control. His command was the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and his flagship was the USS Hartford.

Early in the war, Union leaders decided that in addition to using the army to defeat the Confederate Army in the field, the Union Navy would be used to keep foreign goods from entering southern ports. The blockade was called the Anaconda Plan. In addition to active interdiction of ships, the plan called for the seizure of port facilities and sea defense forts from Virginia to the mouth of the Mississippi and up that river all the way to St. Louis, Missouri. New Orleans was the western anchor of the operation and controlling it was crucial to Union success on the Mississippi River.

Beginning on April 18th, 1862, Farragut's squadron bombarded Forts Jackson and St. Philip, two forts downriver from New Orleans. By April 24th he had thirteen ships past the forts and on April 29th Farragut and 250 Marines removed the Louisiana state flag from city hall and raised the Stars and Stripes. Major General Benjamin Butler and his Union force occupied the city on May 1st.

The United States Congress honored Farragut (and eight other senior captains) by creating the rank of rear admiral and promoting them to the position. Before then, there had been no admirals in the United States Navy. When squadrons of ships were sent on a specific mission, the senior captain was referred to as commodore or more generically as a flag officer. This was in sharp relief to European navies, most of whom were heavy with admirals. But the Civil War showed how necessary a clearly-defined chain of command was if the Union Navy were to expand quickly and remain an effective fighting force while doing so.

Rear Admiral Farragut followed up his success at New Orleans by sailing up the Mississippi with a flotilla of 38 ships in an attempt to subdue the artillery batteries at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Some of his ships were able to run past the batteries, but it was a symbolic gesture more than anything else. The guns defending the city and a Confederate ironclad (an iron-plated warship, new to the world at the time of the Civil War) forced Farragut to withdraw his forces back down the river in July, 1862.

The naval bombardment at Port Hudson in March, 1863 also proved unsuccessful. In an attack uncoordinated with Union General Nathaniel Banks' Army of the Gulf, Farragut's force of seven warships was badly damaged after dueling with heavy Confederate artillery ashore. When the smoke cleared, only Farragut's flagship, USS Hartford, and USS Albatross, were able to pass upstream and begin blockading the mouth of the Red River. What the admiral pictured was a pounding from the Mississippi River that would result in the rebels abandoning Port Hudson. What occurred was an initial Union defeat resulting in the port being taken under siege until July 9, 1863. While the Confederate force was eventually badly beaten, it only surrendered after news arrived that Union forces were in control of the fortifications at Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was a painful lesson for both the Union Army and Navy, as the campaign had the highest casualty rate of the war.

By the summer of 1864, the Confederacy had one major port left on the Gulf of Mexico: Mobile, Alabama. The rebels knew this and Mobile Bay was heavily mined except for an unmarked channel used by blockade runners. In the mid-1800's, tethered naval mines were called torpedoes; the self-propelled devices fired by submarines and surface ships today did not yet exist. In his typical aggressive fashion, Farragut ordered his fleet of 18 ships (including four monitors, low-slung ironclad vessels named after the first ship of this type, the USS Monitor) into the lower bay. The wooden-hulled ships were lashed together in pairs and placed to the port side of the monitors. In that formation, they proceeded up the right side of the channel, almost directly under the guns of Fort Morgan. It was hoped the monitors would be able to absorb most of the shots from the fort while protecting the older wooden warships. When the Confederate ships inside the bay appeared, the combined firepower of the entire force would be unleashed on them.

Events proceeded more or less as planned until one of the monitors, the USS Tecumseh, strayed too far towards the center of the channel, struck a torpedo, and sank. The two columns of ships began to slow, now unsure if the assumption about Confederate torpedo placement was correct. Admiral Farragut, who had lashed himself to the rigging of his flagship, yelled at the bridge crew of the USS Brooklyn through his megaphone: “What's the trouble?”. “Torpedoes!” was the response to which an angry Farragut replied, “Damn the torpedoes! Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!”

While Farragut's order may seem reckless, the admiral believed that many of the torpedoes in Mobile Bay had been in service for years and were no longer capable of doing damage to an enemy ship due to saltwater corrosion. While we will never know if this calculation was correct, most of Farragut's fleet arrived in the lower part of the bay with little or no damage. The three forts guarding the bay were subdued and the only Confederate ironclad in the area was the ram Tennessee, whose captain tried to engage the entire Union fleet at one time. After a merciless pounding from the surviving Union monitors, the ship was surrendered.

In December, 1864, history was once again made when the rank of vice admiral was created and awarded to David Farragut by President Abraham Lincoln. He was the only officer in the navy to be placed at this rank, making him the highest ranking man in a naval uniform when the Civil War ended in April, 1865. In July, 1866, Congress created the rank of admiral and Farragut was appointed to that rank by President Andrew Johnson. The same bill cleared the way for David Dixon Porter, Farragut's adoptive brother, to be promoted to vice admiral. For the next four years, the brothers remained the two highest ranking officers in the post-Civil War navy.

Admiral Farragut's last active command was as the admiral in charge of the European Squadron, a position he held from 1867 to 1868. He retired that year but was placed on active duty for life, an honor granted to only six other naval officers in the country's history as of 2011.

David Farragut, the man who spent seven decades in the service of his nation, died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of a heart attack on August 14, 1870. He was 69 years old. After his death, David Porter was promoted to admiral in his brother's place. After Porter and Vice Admiral Stephen Rowan died, no naval officer held the rank of admiral or vice admiral again until 1915, when Congress authorized one position of each rank for each of the navy's fleets.

The Tunguska Event, June 30, 1908

2011-06-30T21:58:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1908, an enormous explosion occurred near the Tunguska River in Siberia. The blast had the equivalent energy of between 10 and 15 million tons of TNT, but while the available evidence points to a likely cause of the event, no conclusive proof has ever been made public. More than a century after it took place, the Tunguska event remains one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.

Central Siberia was, and remains today, a remote wilderness. Even so, there were witnesses to the event. Near Lake Baikal, villagers saw a bluish light move across the sky at 7:15AM; they described it as being brighter than the sun. 10 minutes later, there was a bright flash and a sharp noise that sounded like artillery fire. When the shock wave arrived, it knocked people off their feet and broke windows. It was so strong that people felt its force hundreds of miles away. In England, barographs, used to measure atmospheric pressure, showed fluctuations from the explosion. That night, and for weeks thereafter, night skies in the northern hemisphere contained a strange glow so bright it allowed people to read outside. In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months, believed to have been caused by dust suspended high in the atmosphere.

The remoteness of the Tunguska area coupled with the chaos present in Europe during World War One, the Russian revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war meant that a scientific expedition did not study the explosion site until 1921. What the researchers found was astonishing. At what should have been the impact point for whatever fell out of the sky, a stand of trees stood with their branches and bark stripped. Outward from there, for a distance of nearly 40 miles, every tree was laid flat. Aerial photos made of the area in 1938 showed that the trees were knocked down in a sort of butterfly-shaped pattern. Still, there was no crater to be seen. Whatever came to earth that day seemed to have exploded in mid-air.

Further expeditions to the site found tiny glass spheres embedded in the soil. The spheres were found to contain iridium and nickel in close proportion to the concentrations found in some meteorites. These findings led scientists to conclude that the most likely cause of the explosion was a meteoroid which exploded several miles above the Earth’s surface. This would explain the lack of a crater and the upright trees found at ground zero. Model testing concluded that the butterfly-shaped damage pattern could have been caused by an object approaching the Earth at a 30 degree angle.

Of course, not all researchers agree on what happened at Tunguska. One competing theory states that the object was a comet. Comets are composed mainly of dust and ice, so one exploding high in the atmosphere would leave no trace and would help explain the bright night sky observed after the explosion. Geologists have discovered that the region in question was once very volcanic. Therefore, a theory has been put forward stating that nothing fell from the sky, but rather a large pocket of methane from the Earth exploded. This type of explosion has happened on a smaller scale at other locations around the globe, so it is not implausible.

From there, the hypotheses grow more and more incredible. Two researchers put forth a theory in 1973 that a small black hole passed through the Earth and caused the damage. If true, then there would have to be an “exit wound” on the other side of the Earth; none has been found. Three scientists hypothesized in 1965 that the explosion was caused by a chunk of anti-matter. What the scientists failed to explain was how the anti-matter got so close to the Earth without being annihilated by regular matter higher in the atmosphere. Ufologists have long theorized that an alien spacecraft could have caused the incident.

The fact that Tunguska is located in an area that was once part of the Soviet Union made study of the region even more difficult after the Second World War as mistrust of Western researchers grew. Some of the photographic evidence collected by Soviet scientists in the late 1930's was destroyed 40 years later, possibly because of professional rivalries inside the Communist state. By the time the USSR collapsed at the end of 1991, the Tunguska event had become a dim memory among scientists and even those interested in the mystery found the prospect of traveling to central Siberia daunting.

But research has continued. In 2007, scientists from the University of Bologna identified Lake Checko, a small body of water in the Tunguska region about five miles from the center of the event, as a possible impact crater from the event. They do not dispute that the Tunguska object exploded in midair but believe that a one-meter fragment survived the explosion and impacted with the ground. This hypothesis has been disputed by other impact crater specialists for 50 years. A 1961 investigation dismissed the theory, saying that the presence of deep silt deposits on the lake bed suggest an age of at least 5,000 years, but recent research concluded that only a few feet of the sediment layer on the lake bed is "normal”, a depth indicating a lake of possibly only 100 years in age. Soundings revealed a conical shape for the lake bed, which is consistent with an impact crater. Magnetic readings show a possible meter-sized chunk of rock below the lake's deepest point that may be a fragment of the object. Finally, the lake's long axis points to the center of the Tunguska explosion. After two years of research, the University published the scientists' findings, concluding that the lake was created by a meter-long chunk of rock that had to have come from whatever exploded over the Tunguska region in 1908. As of this writing, no sample of that rock has been retrieved.

Eugene Shoemaker of Shoemaker-Levy fame estimated that explosions like that which took place over Tunguska occur every 300 years. If this is accurate, then it is important to understand exactly what happened that morning over a century ago because it will happen again, be it tomorrow or centuries from now.

Washington-Moscow Hotline Established, June 20, 1963

2011-06-21T21:34:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1963, representatives of the United States and the Soviet Union signed the “Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Line” in Geneva, Switzerland. The technical details of this agreement were physically manifested several months later when the Moscow-Washington hotline was completed, allowing direct communication between the leaders of the world's two superpowers for the first time. Known as the Hot Line or the Red Phone in popular culture, the system has become part of the mythology of the Cold War.

In the decade following the end of the Second World War in 1945, both the Soviet Union and the United States created enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Bombers armed with freefall nuclear weapons were kept in a constant state of readiness by both sides; later, these bombers would be supplemented by thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles buried deep in silos or carried aboard submarines. At any given moment, the world could be as little as 30 minutes away from nuclear annihilation.

By 1954, leaders in Washington and Moscow realized that a direct, secure line of communications was needed between their two nations. The Soviets floated the idea publicly for the first time that year, and in 1958 the United States proposed that both nations take part in the Conference of Experts on Surprise Attack in Geneva, Switzerland. No agreement was reached during the conference, but the seeds of an understanding had been sown. Things moved slowly in Cold War diplomatic circles, and the next four years saw almost no concrete progress towards establishing any type of communications system meant to act as a safeguard.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, changed that. For two weeks that month, the world stood on the brink of an all-out war, a conflagration that would have undoubtedly included the use of nuclear weapons against the United States, the Soviet Union and most of Europe. The standoff demonstrated how difficult it was for the two nations' leaders to communicate directly. For example, it took the U.S. nearly 12 hours to receive and decode Nikita Khrushchev's 3,000 word initial settlement message. By the time a reply had been written and edited by the White House, Moscow had sent another, tougher message. A faster, more direct means of contact was a necessity if the world was to avoid a third world war.

The Moscow-Washington hotline began operation in August, 1963. When most people think of the hotline, they imagine a serious-looking red phone sitting on the President's desk in the Oval Office and its twin sitting on the desk of the Soviet Premier in the Kremlin. In fact, while voice communications are believed to be technically possible over the line, the device used to send messages when the system became operational was the teletype machine. The use of text removed some of the human traits that can show up during a voice conversation. It is reasonable to assume that a nation's leader could be tired, angry, frustrated, or confused while speaking with his opposite number thousand of miles and eight time zones away. Text would reduce the chance of poor translation, give each side time to consider the others message before replying, and prevent a leader’s tone of voice from being misinterpreted. The telegraph circuit was routed Washington-London-Copenhagen-Stockholm-Helsinki-Moscow, and a radio link was routed Washington-Tangier-Moscow as a back up.

The establishment of a direct link between Washington and Moscow caused some diplomatic upheaval in western nations, specifically the United Kingdom. Since the physical line between the two capitals ran through London, the British proposed that they be allowed access to any conversation taking place on it. They could then consult with Washington, instead of being informed of disagreements after they had been settled. While this would have gone a long way towards strengthening the special relationship that exists between London and Washington, the administration of President Kennedy believed that a three-way conversation in times of crisis might be counter-productive. It was also obvious that if London were given access to the hotline, other NATO member nations would want the same thing. The tension that arose was abated, however, when both the Soviets and the Americans made it clear that the line was only to be used in the event of an emergency where the failure to communicate directly might lead to an all-out war. It would not be used for situations that called for regular diplomatic channels.

The hotline was first used during the Six Day War between Egypt and Israel in June, 1967. The Soviet Black Sea Fleet and the US 6th Fleet were both operating in the Mediterranean at that time and both fleets had elements located close to the war zone. To avoid any confusion about intentions, Moscow and Washington kept each other informed of their fleets’ operations until the war was over.

The 1970’s saw relatively heavy use of the hotline, much of it outside the agreed-upon parameters put in place when the system was established. It was used during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and in 1979 when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. None of these events rose to the level of a nuclear standoff between the two superpowers, but the use of the line allowed leaders to discuss events in real time, something that would have been difficult using normal diplomatic procedures.

The hotline was used several times during the 1980’s, but less frequently than during the previous decade. The line had gone through a rolling upgrade between 1971 and 1978, a process that included the addition of fax machines on each end so documents and photographs could be exchanged. It was during this time that the backup radio link was discarded in favor of two geosynchronous satellites, one Soviet and one American. Another upgrade in 1986 saw the use of newer satellites and faster transmission capabilities.

There have doubtless been upgrades to the hotline in the past 25 years, but technical details have yet to be made public. The system is still active and in use, despite the fact that one of the original agreement's signatories, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. Today, the hotline links the governments of the United States and Russia, who between them own the vast majority of the nuclear weapons on the planet. Other hotlines now connect various seats of power around the world, the latest being a direct connection between India and Pakistan, in use since June, 2004.

So did the hotline between Washington and Moscow prevent the Cold War from becoming hot? We may never know for sure. While some of the incidents in which the system was used have been publicized, it is probable that many have not and may never be. What is certain is that the Red Phone, as the Soviets liked to call the hotline, made a nuclear exchange less likely due simply to its existence.

Amelia Earhart Declared Dead, January 5, 1939

2010-09-26T22:26:00.001-04:00

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On January 5th, 1939, Amelia Earhart was declared dead. The noted aviatrix and American aviation pioneer had been missing for nearly two years, and while the declaration of her death was necessary for legal reasons, it did nothing to quell those who, even today, search for clues to her fate. Earhart's legacy continues to motivate young women as much now as it did when she was alive.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24th, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. In an age when the average woman's choices in life were narrowly defined, Earhart (known as “Meeley” to her family) and her younger sister were not taught to respect the boundaries placed on them by society. She excelled in the sciences in school and kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings which told the stories of women who excelled in traditionally male career fields.

In December, 1917, Earhart, now 20 years old, visited her younger sister in Toronto, Canada. The United States had recently entered the First World War, but the Canadians had been at war for three years. Spadina Military Hospital was full of wounded men and hospital volunteers were in short supply. Earhart trained to be a nurse's aide with the Red Cross and joined the hospital's Volunteer Aid Detachment. She was still at the hospital in 1918 when the Spanish flu pandemic reached Toronto. While she did not contract the potentially fatal virus, she was hospitalized for pneumonia and sinusitis. Sinus-related problems would plague her for the rest of her life.

Although Earhart had seen her first plane at the age of 10, it was not until her time in Canada that she developed the urge to fly. A flying exposition was visiting Toronto, and Earhart and a friend decided to watch the spectacle from a nearby field. One of the pilots spotted the two young women alone in the open and decided to dive on them. Instead of seeing two women run for cover, the pilot saw one of the women stand her ground as he passed right over her head. Earhart said later that something awakened inside her at that moment. “I didn't understand it at the time, but I believe that little... airplane said something to me...”

Earhart first rode in a plane in December, 1920. Instantly in love with the sensation, she began saving what money she could so she could afford flying lessons. Her instructor was Anita Snook, an early female aviator. They flew in the Curtiss JN-4, called a “Jenny” in the United States. Millions of people worldwide would learn to fly in the military surplus planes; they were cheap, slow and stable. Six months after starting training, Earhart bought a used, bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane which came to be known as “The Canary”. In October, 1922, she flew The Canary to a record altitude for a female pilot: 14,000 feet. The following May, she became the 16th woman in the United States to be issued a pilot's license.

By 1927, Earhart had accumulated more than 500 hours of solo flying time. She was living in Medford, Massachusetts, and paying the rent with a job as a social worker. She helped create Dennison Airport in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1927 and was granted the honor of being the first pilot to take off from the new field. She wrote a local newspaper column about flying, which made her into a local celebrity. There was little expectation that she would become a household name.

That expectation changed in April, 1928 when Earhart was asked to become the first woman to be flown across the Atlantic. Charles Lindbergh's solo flight in 1927 focused the nation's attention on aviation and Earhart saw this invitation as a chance to highlight the role of women in the industry. She was essentially a passenger on the flight while her two male companions filled the roles of pilot and co-pilot. The flight was a rousing success, with the trio making the crossing in 20 hours and 40 minutes. Earhart and her companions, Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, received a ticker-tape parade in New York City upon their return. Soon thereafter, they traveled to the White House for a reception with President Calvin Coolidge.

Earhart became an overnight sensation. She went on a year-long lecture tour throughout the United States in support of her first book, entitled 20 Hrs., 40 Min. George Putnam, the book publisher who had organized the trans-Atlantic flight, worked to put Earhart's name and image in front of every American with endorsements for clothing, luggage and cigarettes. She accepted a position as associate editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, using the publication as a forum to enlighten the public on the new field of commercial air travel. During this time, she used her name to help publicize several new airlines, including Transcontinental Air Transport, which eventually became TWA and National Airways, which later would become known as Northeast Airlines.

Earhart spent the next several years helping with the formation of different aviation clubs dedicated to women and to setting several aviation records on her own. It was during this time that she was often seen in the company of George Putnam, her publisher. Amelia had been briefly engaged once before in her life, but after Putnam divorced his first wife in 1929, it seemed to the public that the pair were on their way to the altar. While they would eventually marry in 1931, Putnam had to ask her six times before Earhart would agree to do so. Her views on marriage were considered almost criminally open-minded for that time; she once referred to her marriage as a partnership with dual controls and thought both spouses should contribute financially to the household. She reportedly gave Putnam a note on their wedding day in which she more or less defined their marriage as being open, but there has been some debate as to whether or not this was really her intention. She did not change her name, a move that while not unheard of for celebrities in the 1930's, was very rare outside of Hollywood. The couple had no children, but Putnam had two sons from his first marriage.

Early on the morning of May 20, 1932, Earhart took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in a single-engine Lockheed Vega 5b in an attempt to become the first woman to make a solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic. 14 hours and 56 minutes later, after fighting strong winds and heavy ice, she touched down in a pasture outside of Derry, Northern Ireland. She would later be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross from the US Congress, the first woman to be so honored. Over the next few years she would claim several firsts in the aviation field and make several forays into long-distance air racing, a craze that had swept the nation during the previous decade.

In 1935, soon after joining the faculty of Purdue University in Indiana, Earhart began planning for a flight around the world. The university financed the purchase and modification of a new Lockheed Electra 10E, a twin-engined craft that had been introduced in 1934. The aircraft was turned into what the press called “a flying laboratory”, although there was little scientific instrumentation on board. The flight, while the not the first to fly around the planet, would be the longest attempt at 29,000 miles along a roughly equatorial route. Earhart needed a navigator for the journey, as long over-water flights in the 1930's required navigational skills similar to those used on board ships. Two men were chosen for the job: Harry Manning, an experienced transport ship captain, and Fred Noonan, who had been a pilot for Pan Am and had trained most of the company's navigators on the San Francisco to Manila route using the famous China Clipper seaplanes. The original plan called for Noonan to navigate from Hawaii to Howland Island, a 450 acre coral high spot in the Pacific Ocean located 1,700 miles southwest of Honolulu; this was considered to be the most difficult portion of the flight in terms of navigation. Manning would take over on Howland and serve as her navigator all the way to Australia. From there, Amelia would be on her own.

The Electra took off on March 17th, 1937 from Oakland, California and headed for Hawaii. Earhart, Noonan, Manning, and Paul Mantz, an experienced Hollywood stunt pilot asked to join the crew as a technical adviser, made it to the islands but mechanical problems forced them to stay grounded while the plane was repaired at the naval air station on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. Upon takeoff three days later, the aircraft ground-looped, a spin caused when one wing touches the ground. The exact cause of the accident remains open to debate, but Earhart claimed the Electra's right tire blew and the landing gear collapsed. Several reporters on the scene claimed to witness the tire blow, but Mantz, who was on board the aircraft, claimed it was a case of pilot error. Either way, the Electra was too damaged too fly and had to be shipped in pieces back to the Lockheed aircraft plant in California for repairs.

Earhart was determined to make a second attempt. She and George Putnam raised funds for another flight with one big difference: instead of flying east to west, the flight would start in California and head east all the way around the globe. The first leg of trip was flown without public notice and it was not until she reached Miami that Earhart announced her intention to continue flying eastward. Fred Noonan, the only passenger for the second attempt, would serve as her navigator. The two took off from Miami on June 1st, 1937 and headed out over the Atlantic.

The trip was, in Earhart's own words, leisurely. She and Noonan made many stops in South America, Africa, India, and parts of Southeast Asia before landing at Lae, New Guinea on June 29th. This put them around 22,000 miles into the flight, but the remaining 7,000 were all to be flown over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. After three days in New Guinea, the Lockheed Electra took off for Howland Island, almost 2,600 miles away.

Howland is a hard place to find as it is completely flat, a little over a mile long and only 1,600 feet wide. With these facts in mind, the United States Coast Guard cutter Itasca was put on station near the island. The plan was for Noonan to use his skills to place the aircraft near the island; after that, radio navigation and voice communications from the cutter would point Earhart towards the tiny airstrip and temporary fuel depot.

Most evidence points to Fred Noonan's celestial navigation skills being good enough to place him and Earhart somewhere within 100 miles of Howland Island on the morning of July 2nd. The Itasca received very clear transmissions from Earhart but it seemed as if she could not hear the ship's responses. Her messages seemed to indicate that they were having trouble using the plane's Bendix antenna, which was used for direction-finding. It is unclear whether this was due to technical problems or lack of experience as the technology was new. At 7:58AM, Earhart said that they could not find the cutter or the island and asked that the ship continue to send voice signals. They were flying at 1,000 feet and the signal received by the Coast Guardsmen was so strong it was assumed the plane was very close. Forty-five minutes later, after several more messages were received from the Electra, one final transmission was heard: “We are running on a line north and south.” Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan then disappeared into history.

The operation that followed Earhart's disappearance was the largest at-sea search in history up to that point in terms of cost and intensity. Itasca began the search northwest of Howland but turned up nothing. Elements of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet were soon on hand, including an entire battleship task force and the carrier Lexington. Two Japanese ships also remained in the area to help. In all, more than 150,000 square miles of ocean was searched in detail. George Putnam financed a land search of nearby islands after the Navy search ended. No physical evidence of the Lockheed Electra or its pilot and navigator were found.

Hundreds of books have been written about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Many theories abound, including the possibility that she and Noonan made it to Gardner Island, 350 miles southeast of Howland. Gardner was uninhabited at the time and had almost no potable water. Skeletal remains of what appeared to be a women of European ancestry were found in 1940, but the bones disappeared on Fiji during the Second World War and the notes taken by British colonial authorities in 1941 do not seem to coincide with some later eyewitness accounts. In 2007, searchers found some artifacts on Gardner, which is now called Nikumaroro. While some of the items are of great interest, 70 years of weather and tidal action have made certain identification incredibly difficult.

Research done by the U.S. Navy shortly after Earhart disappeared concluded that the aircraft most likely went into the ocean some 100 miles northwest of Howland Island. If this is true, the likelihood of ever finding physical evidence is small as the ocean depth in that area can be as great as 18,000 feet.

While Amelia Earhart was not the first woman to fly a plane, she did more to advance the cause of women in aviation than anyone before her or, arguably, since. She was a celebrity during her lifetime, but her status as a legend was established partly as a result of her mysterious disappearance. Had she lived into her 80's, she would have seen women flying passenger jets and the first generation of female astronauts go into space. More than 70 years after she was declared dead, Amelia Earhart continues to inspire.

Washington D.C. Burned, August 24, 1814

2010-08-22T20:28:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1814, British forces under the command of General Robert Ross marched unopposed into Washington, D.C. and, before the day was over, burned most of the city's public buildings and a few private residences. This day marked the low point of American fortunes during the War of 1812.

The war, referred to as the American War of 1812 to 1815 by the British, was fought entirely in North America and at sea. The causes of the conflict were clear to the War Hawks in the United States: Great Britain's refusal to surrender frontiers forts as agreed to in 1783, the boarding of American ships by Royal Navy crews in search of missing sailors (often resulting in the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy) and the on-going trade embargoes of both England and France, which resulted in the seizure and forfeit of American merchant ships.

Attempts had been made to deal with these issues peacefully with mixed results. However, enough members of the US Congress supported a fight that a declaration of war was introduced in June, 1812. As eager for war as some American leaders were, neither side was ready for a fight. England was fighting Napoleon's French army in Europe and had little desire for a second war thousands of miles from home. That summer, there were only 5,000 British troops in Canada. The Americans were not in better shape: the entire US Army amounted to 12,000 men on paper, but it's real strength may have been as little as half that number. But war had been given, and so war would be fought.

The British repelled an American invasion of Canada in 1812 and made their own invasion near Detroit soon thereafter. The favor of war visited both sides more or less equally until 1814, when British successes against Napoleon allowed them to send more troops to North America, eventually totaling more than 48,000 regulars. Part of this force landed in Maryland and overwhelmed American militiamen at Blandensburg early on August 24, 1814; this American defeat left the city of Washington unguarded. President James Madison was present at the battle, the last time a sitting American Commander-in-Chief would personally view the US military in combat.

The First Lady, Dolly Madison, was meanwhile busy with her servants trying to save some of the valuables in the White House. The most famous item they saved was Gilbert Stuart's full-length painting of George Washington, which was hidden in the bottom of a wagon.

The British force arrived at the nation's capital in the afternoon; the only resistance they encountered were a few angry civilians, which they quickly dispersed. A detachment was sent to the White House, where they found the dining hall ready to seat 40 people. They ate the food and then set about burning the place down. They also burned the Treasury Building and the unfinished Capitol Building. The facilities of the Washington Navy Yard and the incomplete USS Columbia were burned by American sailors to prevent their capture. The US Patent Office was saved by the Superintendent of Patents, who convinced the British soldiers of the importance of its preservation.

Miraculously, a severe storm ravaged the district that night, putting out many of the fires before they could engulf the entire city. The last British troops left the city after 26 hours of occupation, bound for their next objective: Baltimore. The President returned to the city the next day after hiding with his cabinet in the nearby Virginia countryside overnight, but most of the government buildings had been rendered unusable. Repairs to the various buildings and construction of replacements would continue well into the 1830's.

It is important to remember that the burning of Washington was not a unilateral action. In 1813, American forces had burned York, the capital of Upper Canada. In addition to burning Parliamentary buildings, they also looted many civilian homes. The US officers present were unable to control their men. While European armies had certainly looted their enemies, by the early 19th century most nations recognized an unofficial agreement by which cities and towns would not be looted or burned unless facilities in the city presented an immediate threat to the invaders.

The British Generals had hoped that the destruction of the US capital would have a devastating effect on American morale. Instead, the populace was outraged; thousands of men volunteered to help defend Baltimore against invasion. American forces successfully repelled every British attack for the remainder of the war.

What Price Victory, August, 1945

2010-08-15T14:19:00.000-04:00

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August 6th and 9th, 2010 marked the 65th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. These two dates remain the only times nuclear weapons have been used for their original intended purpose: to destroy population centers along with an enemy’s ability and desire to wage war. For seven decades, the world has debated the wisdom and morality of the use of these weapons. To better understand the reasoning at work in the minds of Allied leaders and war planners, it is important to look at the events leading up to these August, 1945, dates and consider one of the greatest ‘what if’ scenarios of not just the Second World War, but of all modern military history.

By the summer of 1945, the Empire of Japan had ceased being a threat in most areas of the Pacific theater of war. Okinawa, only 340 miles from mainland Japan, was secured by U.S. Army and Marine Corps divisions by the end of June. While significant Japanese ground forces remained active in China and Korea, the Allies had destroyed the Imperial Navy over the course of the previous three-and-a-half years, leaving her coastal cities open to shelling from the battleships and heavy cruisers of the U.S. and British Pacific fleets. The Japanese air force, while numerically still a presence, was all but grounded due to a lack of fuel. Every major city in the Japanese home islands had been at least partially leveled by daily U.S. Army Air Corps bombing raids. The Japanese merchant fleet, once one of the world’s largest, had ceased to exist. The island nation was cut off.

Yet, the remains of the once-vast empire fought on. There was a strong belief among the military leaders of Japan that a successful invasion of the four main Japanese home islands would mean the end of the nation as a distinct cultural entity. The hardliners believed that surrender was not an option and that an Allied invasion required the entire population to fight to the point of extinction. There were voices of moderation in Tokyo, one of them being the Emperor of Japan. However, tradition demanded that he remain officially silent. He had made his desire for a negotiated peace clear, however, in private discussions with his ministers. The Emperor wanted the Soviet Union (who was not yet at war with Japan) to act as a mediator between the warring powers in the Pacific. However, he also wanted some sort of concrete victory in order to gain leverage during the negotiations. By the end of June, 1945, it was clear there would be no great Japanese victory on Okinawa or anywhere else. Furthermore, the Soviets were not interested in brokering a deal of any sort: Josef Stalin had his own plans.

Meanwhile, the war in Europe ended in early May, 1945. While the occupation of Germany and Eastern Europe and post-war actions of the Allies had been discussed on multiple occasions since early in the conflict, there were still many details which needed to be sorted out. Beginning on July 17th, leaders of the United States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union met in Potsdam, Germany to discuss both the issues of occupation and the war in the Pacific. President Harry Truman, who had come to the office after the death of President Roosevelt in April, arrived at the conference with monumental but secret knowledge: an atomic bomb had been successfully tested in the New Mexico desert just one day before the beginning of the conference. Three years of super-secret work and billions of dollars had resulted in the construction of the most deadly weapon in human history. Yet only a handful of people not working directly on the device knew that it even existed. Truman himself was not made aware of the bomb’s pending completion until after Roosevelt’s death in April, 1945, despite the fact he had been the Vice-President.
Truman met with Prime Minister Winston Churchill on July 21st, at which time the two agreed on the use of the weapon. Soviet Premier Stalin was not told until July 25th, a delay which made him privately angry but only because his advice on the weapon’s use was not sought as Churchill’s had been. In truth, Stalin knew about the new weapon from information provided by Soviet spies working inside the Manhattan Project.

On July 26th, Truman, Churchill and President of the Republic of China Chiang Kai-Shek issued the Potsdam Declaration, a statement which called for the surrender of Japan. It was an ultimatum; as the Declaration stated, the alternative for Japan was “prompt and utter destruction.” The Declaration was transmitted via radio, leaflets were dropped over the home islands, and it was conveyed diplomatically by Swiss intermediaries. Newspapers in Japan were the first to announce that the government rejected the Declaration, although it is doubtful they had any official word on which to rely. On July 28th, Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki announced that since the Declaration was just a rehash of earlier Allied demands, it would be met with mokusatsu, a Japanese word that roughly translates to the phrase “to treat with silent contempt.” Thus, the Declaration was not so much rejected as it was ignored.

Much has been made of the Premier's words by historians, with some suggesting that his failure to issue an outright rejection indicated a willingness to negotiate. However, there is no strong evidence to support this. The faction in Tokyo that was willing to negotiate an end to the war wanted to deal from a position of strength. Even the Emperor, portrayed for more than seven decades as a man who wanted nothing more than peace, believed that strong resistance to an Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands would open the door for more balanced negotiations.

Even the Emperor, subject to deification by the Japanese population, could not see the events unfolding across the Pacific. When news reached Washington that Tokyo was unwilling to surrender, President Truman took the decision to use one or more nuclear weapons against Japanese cities. On August 6th, 1945, the weapon known as Little Boy was detonated over the city of Hiroshima. On August 9th, the weapon called Fat Man was detonated over Nagasaki. The immediate effects of the blast and short-term intense radiation exposure killed more than a quarter-million people over the next four months. The plan called for the continued use of nuclear weapons against one city after another until the Japanese surrendered. However, on August 15th, the Japanese government announced its surrender. Three weeks later, on board the battleship USS Missouri, the instrument of surrender was signed by representatives of the Japanese government and the Allied powers. The most destructive war in the history of mankind was over.

But what if the two atomic bombs had not been used? What if technical difficulties had delayed the production of a working nuclear weapon for several more years? Or, what if President Truman had come to consider nuclear weapons morally reprehensible and forbade their use against any target? While the latter scenario is unlikely (Truman said repeatedly that he did not hesitate in his decision to use the bombs against Japanese targets nor did he regret it later), the former could very well have taken place.

For the millions of Americans and their allies in uniform in 1945, an invasion of Japan seemed the next logical step in a bid to bring the Second World War to an end. What few of them knew, and what many people still do not know today, is that planning for the invasion of Japan was well underway. In fact, the primary plan for the invasion had been circulated in early May, 1945. It took into account the fanatical resistance the Japanese military had put up in the face of invasion of even the smallest bit of land in the Pacific. It was this plan which President Truman and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had in their minds as they discussed the use of nuclear weapons. As you will see, there were no easy alternatives.
The planned invasion of Japan was known as Operation Downfall. It was broken down into two major operations: Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of the main Japanese islands. The operation would begin on X-Day, Thursday, November 1st, 1945. Operation Coronet was the planned invasion of the Kanto Plain south of Tokyo. Y-Day was set at March 1st, 1946. The southern third of Kyushu would be used as the staging area for this invasion.

The resources being set aside for these two operations were unlike anything seen up to that point in the war. The landing force for Olympic would consist of 331,000 American soldiers and 99,000 Marines. Coronet could consist of roughly the same number of Americans, many of them belonging to divisions that had fought in Europe. Three divisions of U.S. Marines would participate in each landing; that was the entire Marine Corps as it existed in 1945. These numbers do not include the tens of thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand troops which would have taken part in Operation Coronet.

In the air would have been the Fifth, Seventh and Thirteenth Air Forces of the U.S. Army Air Corps, along with the Eighth Air Force just transferred from Europe. With them would have been the Tiger Force of the RAF Bomber Command and the Australian First Tactical Air Force. The waters surrounding the invasion beaches would have contained the largest naval armada ever assembled. The U.S. Third, Fifth and Seventh fleets, comprised of 56 aircraft carriers, 20 battleships, over 50 cruisers and hundreds of smaller warships would have been joined by the entire British Pacific Fleet made up of 6 fleet carriers and their escorts. This represented 90% of the world's naval ships as of 1945, all concentrated in one area. And this tally only includes the warships. Thousands of cargo ships and troop transports would have been on the scene as well, making the Allied of invasion of Normandy in June, 1944 look small in comparison. The invasion beaches had already been given names such as Cadillac, Zephyr, Mercury, and Packard, all automobile manufacturers.
The Japanese Army had large numbers of troops in Korea and China in 1945, all of them essentially trapped in position with no hope of resupply or rescue. There were, however, hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed in the Japanese home islands. Japanese defense planners, like the Allied war planners, understood the importance of using Kyushu as a base of operations. Thus, they had stationed 600,000 regular army troops there. There were also 5,000 aircraft assigned for use as kamikaze aircraft, the suicide planes that had caused so much trouble for the U.S. Navy during the last year of the war. And although post-war estimates vary, there were as many as 12,000 aircraft set aside in reserve status, although the airworthiness of these planes is questionable.

The Tokyo Plain, the landing area for Operation Coronet, was defended by 560,000 troops. This did not include the vast number of civilians that were being armed with everything from modern rifles to wooden spears. The Japanese Navy, such as it was, still had 350 midget submarines ready for use, 1000 manned torpedoes and over 800 suicide boats. Like the aircraft designated for kamikaze work, the seaworthiness of some of these naval vessels is in doubt. However, the intent was to use them while the Allied invasion fleet was still far out at sea. While the powers in Tokyo knew that they could not ultimately repel an invasion, it was hoped that the operation could be made so costly that Allied leaders would be willing to negotiate a ceasefire, giving the Japanese the ability to negotiate from a position of strength.

For two generations, historians have debated the number of casualties (both dead and wounded) that would have resulted from an Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands. Even military leaders of the day could not agree on a casualty projection. The last study done during the war, created by Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff, estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The total number of American deaths, on the low end, would have been more than the total number of American war dead experienced to that point in the war, both in the Pacific and Europe. Keep in mind that while American and Allied forces fought on Kyushu and the Tokyo Plain, the Army Air Corps would have continued to fire bomb Japanese cities, thus increasing the total civilian death toll.

Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of the Second World War—including the Korean and Vietnam war—have not exceeded that number. There are still so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.
There would also have been political consequences to consider. In early August, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded parts of Manchuria and the Kuril Islands, the northern part of the Japanese island chain. It is very likely that Josef Stalin would have ordered his forces to continue moving down the island chain as the rest of the Allied forces moved up the chain from the south. It is very possible that Japan would today be two nations, much like North and South Korea. The effect that would have had on the world, both economically and culturally, can not be measured.

The debate over the use of nuclear weapons against Japan in August, 1945, will continue as long as those events are remembered by human beings. One can only hope that future events will never be so horrendous as to cause Hiroshima and Nagasaki to fade from out collective memory.

The Gimli Glider, July 23, 1983

2010-07-22T20:32:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1983, Air Canada Flight 143, on its way from Montreal to Edmonton via Ottawa, ran out of fuel and lost both engine thrust and electrical power at 41,000 feet. The crew's amazing actions in the following minutes saved the lives of the plane’s passengers. The causes of the incident ensured that the story of the Gimli Glider will serve as a cautionary tale in aviation circles for generations to come.

Air Canada Flight 143 was a Boeing 767, an aircraft model that had only been in service for two years at that time. The particular plane in question had not yet been in service for four months by July, 1983. It was the first large aircraft flown by Air Canada that only required a pilot and co-pilot and eliminated the position of flight engineer, the person who would normally have been responsible for calculating the fuel load necessary for a given flight. This omission would become important during the post-incident investigation.

Earlier on the day of the incident, the aircraft had been flown from Edmonton to Montreal. A pre-flight inspection by a maintenance engineer showed that the plane’s Fuel Quantity Indicator System (FQIS) was malfunctioning. The FQIS had a built-in redundancy in which the plane’s remaining fuel was measured by two separate sensors and the results were compared to ensure accuracy. The pilot and co-pilot were shown only one amount however, assuming the two measurements agreed. The engineer in Edmonton noticed that the FQIS quit working entirely unless he pulled the fuse for one of the measuring sensors. He informed the pilot of this and the flight was made with the FQIS working with only one measurement sensor.

Once in Montreal, another Air Canada engineer looked at the FQIS and reconnected the second measuring sensor, which caused the system to stop working again entirely. The engineer was then called away to check another system and left the FQIS in non-working order. The new flight’s captain, Robert Pearson, and First Officer Maurice Quintal were told about the FQIS problem by the pilot who had flown the plane from Edmonton to Montreal earlier in the day. However, they were under the mistaken belief that the FQIS was not working at all on the earlier flight, so were not alarmed when the gauge was blank as they entered the cockpit. Instead of grounding the flight, the crew decided to measure the fuel via dripstick and track fuel consumption via the Flight Management Computer.

It was during this time that a critical error was made. In 1983, Canada was in the middle of a nation-wide conversion from Imperial units to the metric system. The 767s being put into service with Air Canada were the first to use the metric system; every other aircraft model in the fleet still used Imperial measurements. In the process of converting liters to kilograms to pounds to gallons, a wrong conversion factor was used and the aircraft ended up with less than half the necessary fuel on board for the trip. After the plane finished the first leg of the trip by landing in Ottawa, Captain Pearson had the fuel measured again via dripstick. He again made a conversion error and the aircraft took off with the 69 passengers and crew onboard, heading towards Edmonton with no chance of reaching there.

Air Canada Flight 143 was over Red Lake, Ontario when an alarmed sounded, notifying the crew that there was a fuel pressure problem on the plane’s left side. The pilots turned off the port side fuel pump, assuming it had failed. This was not a serious problem as gravity could still feed fuel to the aircraft’s engines. The alarm sounded again a few seconds later, this time accompanied by the failure of the left engine. Captain Pearson decided to divert to Winnipeg and land using the 767’s one running engine. As they talked to air traffic controllers, yet another alarm told the pilots that both engines had now failed. Most of the cockpit instrumentation went dark, leaving only a few battery-powered basic instruments. The plane’s ram air turbine, a small generator powered by the forward motion of the aircraft, quickly deployed and maintained power to the hydraulic system, which meant that the pilots could at least somewhat control the plane. Air Canada Flight 143, over six miles above the earth, was now a giant glider.

Fortunately for everyone present on the Air Canada flight that day, Captain Pearson was an experienced glider pilot. Up to that point in its short flight history, no one had made an unpowered landing in a Boeing 767. In fact, the aircraft’s emergency checklist had no section for such a contingency. Captain Pearson guessed that the best glide ratio speed for a 767 was 220 knots, or 250 miles per hour. Using the plane’s altimeter and information from air traffic controllers, the pilots determined that they were maintaining a glide ratio of 12:1; that is, 12 miles of forward travel for every one mile of descent. They were not going to make it to Winnipeg.

First Officer Maurice Quintal, who had once served as a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, remembered the Air Force Station at Gimli, Manitoba. It had been closed since 1971, but it still boasted two parallel runways nearly 7,000 feet long. If they could make it there, their chances of making a safe landing would improve dramatically. They would have to glide for 17 harrowing minutes over dense forest, maintaining a constant rate of descent the entire way.

As the airliner approached the old air force base, the pilots were faced with three problems: first, they were too high and going too fast to make a head-on approach landing as they had planned. They considered trying to fly a 360 degree turn in order to lose speed and altitude, but Captain Pearson was afraid they would not have enough momentum left for a safe landing. He decided to execute a forward slip, a maneuver in which an aircraft stays on track while slipping sideways. This causes an immediate loss of speed and increases the rate of descent.

This introduced the second problem. As the plane slowed, the ram air turbine began slow down, which meant the hydraulic system began to lose pressure. This made the aircraft more difficult to control and made use of the wing flaps impossible. This meant the plane would still land at a higher than normal speed.

The third and most harrowing problem presented itself as the plane lined up with one of the runways. What neither Pearson or Quintal knew was that while one of the runways of the old Air Force base could still be used, the other one had been converted into a drag strip complete with a guardrail running down the centerline. A Winnipeg auto club was, coincidentally, hosting a family day at the converted airfield that day, so the apron of the non-converted runway was being used as a parking space and was full of cars, trucks and trailers. The drag strip would have to do.

The pilots tried to lower the 767s landing gear using gravity, but the nose wheel failed to lock into position. As the plane made contact with the runway, Captain Pearson pushed the brakes as hard as he could, which caused two of the plane's landing gear tires to blow. The nose wheel collapsed and folded back up into its well, leaving nothing to hold the front of the aircraft up. The underside of the nose scraped along the runway until it came into contact with the guard rail, which raised the front of the plane a little and helped to slow it down more rapily.

As the Air Canada craft came to a halt, a small fire began in the nose area. People working at the drag strip, already standing by with fire extinguishers in case one of the cars caught on fire, quickly put out the blaze. None of the passengers and crew were hurt by the landing itself. Several passengers were injured while sliding down the rear emergency chutes, which were at too steep an angle due to the higher than normal height of the rear tail section. These injuries were treated by a doctor who happened to be on-scene at the time of the landing.

Investigators eventually found both the mechanics and pilots at fault in the Gimli glider incident. However, the pilots and crew were praised for handling the situation with professionalism and skill. Captain Pearson was demoted for six months and First Officer Quintal was suspended for two weeks. Quintal was promoted to Captain six years later and Pearson returned to his captaincy until his retirement in 1993. The Boeing 767, thereafter known as the Gimli Glider, remained in service with Air Canada for the next 25 years. In January, 2008, it was flown to the Mojave Airport and is slowly being dismantled for parts. On board for that final flight was the entire flight crew from that day in July, 1983.

Memorial Day, May 31, 2010

2010-05-31T00:22:00.000-04:00

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“July 14, 1861
Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure - and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine 0 God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.”

So begins a letter from Major Sullivan Ballou of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers to his wife, written a week before the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major engagement of the US Civil War. The Major wrote prodigiously to Sarah and she received more upbeat letters written in the days before and following his July 14th update from Washington D.C. But this letter became his most famous, mainly because of its inclusion in Ken Burns' Civil War documentary series, first aired in 1990. As with many other mementos of wars past, it has come to represent not just a man and the war in which he fought, but a nation's desire to seek something honorable and just from the loss of so many in battle over the past 235 years.

Today, May 31st, is Memorial Day in the United States, the day on which we honor those who have given their lives while serving during wartime in our nation’s military. Over the more than 140 years of its existence, the Memorial Day weekend has also come to represent the beginning of the summer season.

Memorial Day began as Decoration Day in Waterloo, New York in 1866. A decoration day of sorts occurred in Charleston, South Carolina in May 1865 at the site of a former Confederate prison camp, but Waterloo is given most of the credit for creating the day as we now know it. The village was home to General John Murray, who was a friend of General John Logan, the head of a veterans’ organization called the Grand Army of the Republic. Logan pushed for a national observance on May 30th, a date in which no battles took place during the then-recent Civil War. The day was originally intended to honor those who died during that conflict, but was soon extended to include those who have paid the ultimate price in all the nation’s wars. The term Decoration Day was used because cemeteries were generally adorned with flags and flowers to honor the fallen. Although the term Memorial Day first appeared in print in 1882, it did not come into common use until the time of the Second World War in the 1940’s.

In 1968, the US Congress moved Memorial Day from May 30th to the last Monday in May. This created a three-day weekend, something that critics of the change point to as one of the reasons the holiday seems to have lost its meaning to so many Americans.

History is full of stories of men and women who showed unbelievable courage under fire even though they invited their own deaths in the process. While we rightly recognize these heroes, it is also important to remember those whose names have been lost to history but whose sacrifices were no less honorable. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, nearly every American had lost a family member, friend or co-worker. During two world wars, Americans again felt that ultimate sacrifice close at hand; as my father said of the neighborhood in which he grew up during the 1940's, “There were a lot of gold stars hanging in peoples’ windows by the end.”

The past 60 years have seen the general public in the United States become increasingly distant from the military. Even with combat taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan as I write this, many Americans personally know no one serving in the military. Our armed forces are smaller as a percentage of the population now than they have been since the end of the Revolutionary War and a draft has not existed for 37 years. Yet men and women from every walk of American life have their lives taken almost daily by war; some of their names will only be remembered by those who loved them. While we can debate the merits of any war, those who give their lives during it do so for us and for generations not yet born.

Lower Manhattan was still engulfed by smoke and dust in September, 2001 when National Public Radio's news program 'All Things Considered' aired a segment in which American college students were asked if they would consider joining the military to fight in what was not yet being called the War on Terror. One young man, apparently stunned by the question, responded that he would not because “I have plans for my life.” I thought of the hundreds of thousands of American men and women, many of them close to the respondent's age, who had their plans put on hold for all of eternity. Their journeys ended at places like Bunker Hill, New Orleans, Veracruz, Gettysburg, Belleau Wood, Normandy, Inchon and Khe Sahn. The first decade of the 21st century would add over 5,000 names to the list of those who have paid the ultimate price in the service of their nation. The true cost of these losses can never be measured. The best we can do is honor their sacrifice and keep it alive in our collective memory as a people.

In addition to the Americans who have died in service to our nation over the last 235 years, I ask that you also remember today those from around the world who have given all while fighting in common cause with our country. Most of the nations of Europe and many other countries around the globe have sacrificed not just to protect their own interests, but to ensure the continuance of our way of life. To them and their fallen go the thanks of a grateful nation.

Sullivan Ballou, the author of the letter which I quoted at the beginning of this episode, died two weeks after writing it from wounds received during the First Battle of Bull Run. It was never mailed, but was instead turned over to his family when his remains and a few belongings were returned to Rhode Island. Sarah Ballou, 24 years old and the mother of two sons in 1861, never remarried; she died in 1917 and is buried with her husband in Providence.

Khrushchev Demands an Apology, May 16, 1960

2010-05-17T20:50:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded an apology from US President Dwight Eisenhower for an incident in which a CIA U-2 aircraft was shot down over the Urals region of the Soviet Union. It was the latest shot in a battle of wills between two nations who had been at direct odds for most of the previous 15 years and would continue to fight the Cold War for another 30.

In early 1945, American and Soviet forces met at the Elbe River in Germany, each force having fought their was across Europe, but from opposite directions. These two nations had been, along with the other Allied powers, united in their goal of destroying the Nazi war machine. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged that day, but the euphoria of an Allied victory in Europe soon turned to distrust. Two years later, East and West would face off over the fate of West Berlin, an island of democracy in the middle of the Soviet-controlled eastern half of Germany. A shooting war was avoided, but a new type of conflict, soon to be called the Cold War, had begun. It would shape the world for the rest of the 20th century and beyond.

By 1960, 15 years after the end of the Second World War, most of the world was divided into two camps: one dominated by the United States and the other by the Soviet Union. Both nations had extensive stockpiles of nuclear weapons ready for use. It was a deadly stalemate, with neither side willing to force the ultimate issue for fear of bringing an end to civilization. Both sides spent billions of dollars on different war-fighting technologies, but in the United States the general assumption was that at least technologically, superiority lay on the side of democracy.

That assumption was shaken to its core on October 4th, 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik-1, the world's first artificial satellite. It was crude compared to what would come just a few years later, but to the Western imagination it was a giant leap forward in technology. The 185 pound sphere transmitted a regular pattern of signals at frequencies easily picked up by amateur radio enthusiasts all over the world. For 22 days, until Sputnik's batteries failed, the world could plainly hear the sound of Soviet achievement.

Today, we remember the launch of Sputnik-1 as the beginning of the Space Race. It also lent credibility to those in the US government who believed that a “missile gap” existed between the United States and the Soviet Union, with Moscow having a larger missile arsenal than Washington. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, never one to let a good panic go to waste, played on Americans' fears by claiming that Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (or ICBMs) were numerous and advanced. This was not the case, but the launch of Sputnik on top of an ICBM argued otherwise. The order from the Eisenhower White House was clear: more had to be known about the USSR's missile program and other advanced military weaponry.

Enter the Lockheed U-2, nicknamed the Dragon Lady. This incredible spy plane was the brainchild of Kelly Johnson, who headed Lockheed's secret Skunk Works facility in Burbank, California. It was an ungainly creature with the adapted fuselage of a fighter married to the giant wings of a glider. Johnson guided the creation of the U-2 from paper to flying prototype in less than a year; it first flew from Groom Lake (now called Area 51) in August 1955. By summer, 1956, U-2s flown by CIA pilots were taking pictures of the Soviet Union from 70,000 feet, an altitude too high for the Red Air Force's fighters or, it was thought, their surface-to-air missiles.

Soviet officials were made aware of the U-2 flights conducted in 1956 from the surprised reports of their nation's radar operators. Official complaints were made to Washington and Eisenhower put a stop to flights over the nation, although flights over other Eastern Bloc countries were still allowed. The President's rationale was two-fold: first, he did not want Khrushchev to believe the flights were being used to create target lists for a preemptive nuclear strike, although the Air Force certainly gleaned much targeting date from them. Second, he feared the loss of a U-2 to a missile or mechanical problem while on a mission. Such a loss would be highly embarrassing to the United States and could increase already-high Cold War tensions.

Concerns over the missile gap caused Eisenhower to reconsider his ban. In early April, 1960, the first deep penetration flight over the Soviet Union in almost four years began in Pakistan and ended in Iran, both nations having consented to allow the U-2 flights to begin and/or end at air bases within their borders. The second flight, originally scheduled for April 29th but delayed due to bad weather over the flight path, took off from Pakistan on May 1st, 1960. The pilot was CIA employee and former Air Force Captain Francis Gary Powers. His flight was supposed to be a lengthy one that flew over several sites of interest before landing in Norway.

What no one in the United States or Pakistan knew was that the Soviet Air Defense Forces were on high alert and waiting. The April flight had been tracked and intercepts attempted with fighter aircraft to no avail. The word had been passed from Moscow to the commanders of the various air defense commands in the Soviet Union: the next flight would not be allowed to leave the USSR's airspace once it entered. Every fighter within range of the plane's course was to attempt an intercept and ram the U-2 if necessary.

What made the difference on that May 1st were not the fighters that zoomed underneath the U-2 as it flew on its mission, but a surface-to-air missile known to Western observers as the SA-2 Guideline. The SA-2 was first deployed in 1957 in the Soviet Union but it was not believed it could reach the 70,000 foot altitude at which Powers' plane flew. At least three of the missiles were fired at the U-2, although this number varies to as high as 14 depending on the source. What is known for certain is that Francis Gary Powers' aircraft was shot down, along with a MiG-19 trailing him, by an SA-2 over Degtyarsk, a small town east of the Ural Mountains in Russia.

Within hours, President Eisenhower knew he had a problem on his hands. Over the next four days, a cover story was conceived. NASA released a press memo stating that one of the organization's aircraft was missing somewhere north of Turkey and that the pilot had reported problems with his oxygen equipment before losing contact with ground controllers. The American press was then shown a U-2 sporting the NASA agency logo and colors.

The next day, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that a spyplane had been shot down over his country, but gave no further details. The White House took this to mean that the pilot of the craft was dead and the plane heavily damaged. With these assumptions in mind, the Eisenhower Administration released a reiteration of its cover story stating that the spyplane in question was actually a weather research aircraft that must have strayed into Soviet airspace after the pilot lost consciousness due to the problem with his oxygen system. The story claimed there was never any intention to violate the airspace of the USSR.

On May 7th, 1960, Khrushchev played his trump card when he said: “When I made my first report I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and well… and now just look how many silly things [the Americans] have said.” Gary Powers, along with a CIA-issued suicide pin to be used in case of imminent capture, was in Soviet custody. His plane was recovered almost intact, its self-destruct charge never having been armed. The United States government had been caught in a gigantic lie.

According to several of his biographers, Khrushchev believed he had developed a strong personal relationship with President Eisenhower. When word of the U-2 shoot-down reached him, the Soviet Premier assumed the overflights must have been resumed by the CIA without Eisenhower's knowledge. However, the President was quick to admit he had ordered the flights, lest the American public and US allies fear that rogue elements in the intelligence establishment were acting on their own. The flights were, he said, “a distasteful necessity.”

The shoot-down of Gary Powers and the ensuing exchange of words between Washington and Moscow all occurred during the first two weeks of May, 1960. As it happened, there was a scheduled meeting, called the Four Powers Paris Summit, scheduled to begin on May 16th. In attendance would be President Eisenhower, Premier Khrushchev, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and French President Charles DeGaulle. It was an important summit and one that Khrushchev was not quick to abandon. He did, however, believe that he needed to confront the American President. The two men had not spoken directly since the May 1st incident, so neither knew what to expect from the other in Paris. Upon his arrival on May 16th, Khrushchev gave a statement in which he demanded an apology for the overflights and a promise they would be halted. President Eisenhower released his own statement which contained no apology but offered to begin negotiations for what would become the Open Skies initiative, by which both nations would have monitored and scheduled use of each others' airspace for basic monitoring purposes.

Khrushchev had already decided to leave the summit, which he did on the same day. His statement was released to the public shortly thereafter and before Eisenhower's statement had been read, an act seized upon by the three other nations present as a sign that the Soviet Premier intended to wreck the summit regardless of Eisenhower's actions. Whether this was poor timing or a deliberate act of subterfuge remains unknown.

Eisenhower, who had scheduled a visit to the Soviet Union for later in 1960 but had his plans cancelled by the Kremlin, never met with Khrushchev again. His two terms in office ended in January, 1961 with the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, who would have his own showdowns with Khrushchev over the Bay of Pigs invasion, the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Soviet Premier remained in power until 1964, when he was removed by a group of younger leaders who accused Khrushchev of numerous policy failures and erratic leadership. He was allowed to retire and received a pension, something that had never happened to a former Soviet leader. He had led his nation after years of terror imposed by Josef Stalin; even though he was in Stalin's inner circle for years, he was considered a reformer by his contemporaries.

Francis Gary Powers languished in a Soviet prison for almost two years until he was exchanged for spy Rudolf Abel in February, 1962. He did not receive a hero's welcome and his dismissal from CIA service was almost a given. He flew as a test pilot for Lockheed from 1963 to 1970, but was terminated from the position when he wrote a book about the U-2 Incident which received a great deal of negative publicity. He died in 1977 while flying a news helicopter for Los Angeles TV station KNBC. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of the U-2 aircraft Powers flew can be viewed today at the Central Museum of Armed Forces in Moscow. The display also includes his survival pack and other related items. A small piece of the plane was returned to the United States and is on display at the National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade, Maryland.

The US Air Force continues to fly the U-2, although the equipment it carries has changed dramatically. It has been used extensively in Afghanistan for consistent real-time monitoring of enemy forces, a service that satellites can only provide for brief periods of time.

The Changes, May 15, 2010

2010-05-15T21:27:00.000-04:00

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Thoughts on Direction, April 26, 2010

2010-04-26T21:52:00.001-04:00

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Sorry, no transcript tonight.

The USS Thresher Lost, April 10, 1963

2010-04-11T19:40:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1963, the USS Thresher, an American nuclear-powered attack submarine, sank in the Atlantic Ocean 220 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Everyone on board-129 officers, enlisted men and civilian technicians-went down with the ship. The disaster shocked the world and changed the way the US Navy operates and maintains its submarine fleet.

The Thresher was the lead ship in what was planned to be a 14-ship class when she was commissioned in August, 1961. She used a proven nuclear reactor design (the S5W built by Westinghouse) and carried four torpedo tubes amidships to make way for new and powerful bow-mounted sonar equipment. Her normal crew compliment was 16 officers and 96 enlisted men. Thresher could dive to 1,300 feet and run at over 30 knots (or 35 miles per hour) submerged. She was designed to hunt and kill Soviet submarines and surface warships and was the finest war machine her country could produce for that task.

In the spring of 1963, the Thresher was coming out of her first refit period and was made ready for post-overhaul trials. On April 9, the sub and her escort, the submarine rescue ship USS Skylark, headed for open ocean off the coast of Massachusetts. The next morning, she began deep-diving tests, staying in contact with the Skylark via underwater telephone.

Communications between the two ships soon became garbled. From what could be made out, Skylark reported that the Thresher had experienced some sort of difficulty and was still diving. Finally, a short message was understood clearly “...minor difficulties, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow.” It was the last message the submarine would ever send. Two days later, the Navy announced to the world that Thresher and aboard her were lost.

The water in the area of the sinking is 8,400 feet deep, far deeper than any normal submarine could go. The Navy used the deep-diving bathyscaphe Trieste and oceanographic surface ships to find the wreckage. Eventually, the ship was found to be in six major sections; smaller debris was found in an area of about 134,000 square meters.

A Naval Court of Inquiry determined that the ship probably sank due to a failure in the saltwater intake and piping system on the ship, which was not welded but used silver brazing to hold pipe joints together. Post-overhaul tests using ultrasound equipment found that 14% of the Thresher's brazed joints were problematic, but this was not considered a large enough risk at the time to warrant repair. The failure of one or more brazing joints at test depth could have caused the submarine to take on more water than the ship's ballast tanks, which create buoyancy, could have compensated for.

Later tests also showed that moisture in the sub's high pressure air flasks, which are used to blow seawater from the ballast tanks, could have caused ice to form inside the piping to the ballast tanks, leading to the flasks' inability to clear seawater from the ballast tanks. This would have made it impossible for the Thresher to surface.

Another problem, this one operational, could have contributed to the loss of Thresher. The officers and enlisted men tasked with running the ship's nuclear reactor received two years of intensive training in the Navy's Nuclear Power Program. At that time, the thinking was that in the event the reactor was shut down due to an electrical short or manually, it was imperative to keep the reactor warm so it could be restarted quickly. This means the secondary side of the reactor plant, which produces the steam which ultimately drives the vessel, would need to be cut off, leaving the submarine with no propulsion. Thresher's Reactor Control Officer was not on the boat the day of the loss---he was home with his wife who was recovering from an accident. Thus, the reactor plant was supervised that day by an officer only recently graduated from Nuclear Power School. Although we have no way of knowing if the rules were followed, it would have been drilled into every Power School officer to close the main steam valves leading to the ship's twin turbines if the reactor SCRAMed, meaning shut down. This likely occurred as seawater entering the aft of the boat shorted out electrical panels. Once shut, those valves had to be opened by hand. With Thresher sinking tail-first past her crush depth, it would not have been humanly possible to open those valves before pressure from the ocean outside crushed the sub. Would a more experienced Reactor Control Office have saved the ship by using all the steam at his disposal to drive the ship to the surface? We'll never know.

As a result of the loss of the Thresher, the Navy instituted the SUBSAFE program designed to ensure proper construction and maintenance of any component of a submarine which comes into contact with seawater. No SUBSAFE-certified ship has ever been lost.

The US Navy continues to monitor the area of the Thresher sinking to ensure that harmful levels of radiation are not released into the area. To this day, the nuclear fuel remains intact in the reactor and radiation remains typical of worldwide background levels.

The loss of the USS Thresher resulted in design changes to the other 13 ships of the class. The second ship of the class, the USS Permit, assumed the role of class leader after loss of Thresher. The last Permit-class submarine was retired from the US Navy in 1994.

IBM System 360 Introduced, April 7, 1964

2010-04-07T21:38:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1964, the International Business Machines Corporation, more commonly known as IBM, announced its System 360 line of computers. The System 360 represented a milestone in computer history that helped IBM to become the largest computer company in the world. The “360” in the name indicated the 360 degrees of a circle, meaning that the System 360 was designed to be a single computer family for all types of computer work. In the 1960s, this mainly meant doing both business administration-type tasks and computation-intensive engineering tasks. Previously, computers had been designed to do one or the other pretty much to the exclusion of anything else.

For those unfamiliar with the computers of the 1960s, it is worth pointing out how the System 360 machines looked. They were large refrigerator-like boxes, located in special computer centers with air conditioning and powerful power supplies, and tended to by specialists in white coats. A single computer could occupy several cabinets, and have many tape drives, disk drives, printers, and punched card readers attached.

Most importantly, the System 360 was not a single computer, but rather a whole range of computers with different price points and performance levels. Initially, IBM announced six different models and, over the coming years, many more were introduced. These computers would all run the same software programs, and let customers upgrade to bigger machines as their businesses grew. In today’s computer market, this is something we take for granted. For example, we can buy a 300 dollar netbook which essentially can run the same software as a 30000 dollar server, albeit slower. In 1964, this similarity was considered revolutionary. Many people within IBM doubted that it could be done at all. But it was done, and at its launch, the fastest System 360 machine was about 25 times faster than the slowest. In 1970, the System 360 models offered by IBM spanned a performance factor of 200.

The key to the System 360 design was the idea of using common instruction set architecture across a range of computers. For those less familiar with how computers work, the instruction set of a computer determines which programs it can run. Programs written to use one instruction set cannot run on a computer using a different instruction set. For example, programs for Apple’s iPhone do not work directly on Apple desktop machines, as they use different instruction sets.

Prior to the System 360, there had been ad-hoc efforts at making new computer systems run the same software as older computer systems. The System 360 made this an explicit promise, and machines were marketed as part of the family with a guarantee that existing software would work on the new machines.

Looking back at this decision from 2010, it can be seen to signify a maturing of the information technology field. Today, the common wisdom in the computer industry is that software is more important than hardware. People and businesses buy computers to run certain software on them, and the hardware is of secondary importance. We make the choice between Windows, Linux, or MacOS when buying a new computer. In the early days of the computer, the hardware was primary and the software was created after the hardware, and it was normal to rewrite all software when a new computer was acquired. As business usage of computers increased, more and more effort was invested in software, and the value of the software began to overtake the value of the computers on which it was run.

The System 360 proved very popular with customers and IBM's sales doubled from 1965 to 1970. In the mid-70s, IBM as a company was as big as the rest of the US computer industry combined. The success of the System 360 drove other firms to create compatible machines, creating for the first time a computer market in which different vendors sold machines that would compete on performance and price, but run the same software.

The System 360 was also copied by the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc nations. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union decided to clone the System 360 architecture instead of using a homegrown design. The machines were called “ES EVM”, and more than 15000 were manufactured up until 1998. Thus, the IBM System 360 ended running the most important business computer systems on both sides of the iron curtain. When the Cold War ended, this turned out to be a blessing for IBM, as the old East provided a large pool of programmers skilled in the System 360 architecture, while Western computer science students had long moved on to newer technology like PCs and client-server computing.

Over the years, the architecture of the System 360 has been upgraded and developed. The first major upgrade was the System 370 announced in 1970, and in 1990, another redesign gave it the new name System 390. In 2000, the name was changed to “zSeries” following another major redesign to extend the amount of memory the computers could use. The “z” indicates “zero downtime”, the main selling point of mainframe computers today. The most recent generation of the System 360 lineage is the the “z10”. The z10 can essentially still run all the software written since 1964, as well as newer software which can take advantage of the new features of the System 370, System390, and zSeries. To an outsider, it can be quite surprising to realize just how much decades-old software is still in active use in many businesses, for the simple reason that there is no point in fixing what is not broken.

IBM “mainframe” computers, offered referred to as 'big iron' by IT workers, still run many of the most critical computer functions of our modern society, in particular in the financial system. The IBM mainframes have a reputation for outstanding stability and reliability, as well as services and support that -- while costly -- ensure that the computers never go down and that business never stops. IBM’s mainframe computers are not the dominant force in the computer industry that they once were, but they are still a major business, even if it is far out of the public eye. It is quite possible that the descendants of the System 360 will continue to be around for many decades to come. So far, all predictions about the death of the mainframe have proven to be false.

Howard Hughes Dies, April 5, 1976

2010-04-05T20:06:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1976, Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. died at the age of 70 while in route from Mexico to a hospital in Houston, Texas. Hughes died as one of the wealthiest men in the world, leaving behind him not only a legacy of well-publicized odd habits, but a mark on several major industries as well.

Hughes was born in 1905 in Houston, Texas. His father was the inventor of the dual cone roller bit, a tool which allowed oil drilling in areas previously considered unreachable. When his parents died while he was still a teenager, Hughes was left with a significant fortune and the company business, the Hughes Tool Company.

Hughes’ formal education was sporadic, but this did not stop him from at least trying to attain his goals. He set out for Hollywood while still in his early 20’s, convinced that he could make it as a movie producer. Despite the fact that he was not, at first, taken seriously by the establishment, he eventually made several very successful films including Hell’s Angels, Scarface and The Outlaw. It was during this time that Hughes’ reputation as a ladies’ man was first established. Rumors of his affairs and troubled marriages would follow him the rest of his life.

Hughes’ love of aircraft led him to become involved in the burgeoning aircraft industry in California. In 1932, he founded Hughes Aircraft Company as a division of Hughes Tools. In 1935, Hughes set a world speed record in the Hughes H-1 Racer, a plane that combined all the aerodynamic breakthroughs of the day and influenced the designs of many of the fighter aircraft used in the Second World War. Hughes also became the principal stockholder of T&WA, the airline which would become Trans World Airlines.

Hughes’ best-known aviation feat is the building and single flight of the H-4 Hercules, better known as the “Spruce Goose”. We highlighted the H-4 in November, 2005 on the anniversary of her first and only flight; you can find a transcript of that podcast at mattstodayinhistory.com.

Hughes survived a plane crash in 1946 while piloting one of his company’s experimental aircraft, the XF-11. It is during his recovery that he probably first became addicted to pain-killers, a demon that would be with him for the rest of his life. He began wearing his famous mustache after the crash to cover a scar on his upper lip.

Although it is not well-known, Howard Hughes probably did more to break the Mafia’s control of Las Vegas than anyone. In the mid-60’s, he decided to move to Las Vegas and begin investing in casinos. At that time, every major gambling establishment in the city was mob-controlled. He bought six large hotel/casinos from Mafia front organizations in an effort to change the city’s image into that of “a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car.”

Suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and drug addiction, Hughes became more and more erratic as the years went by. When he died, he was nearly unrecognizable; fingerprints had to be used to positively identify his body. He is buried in Houston, Texas, his boyhood home.

The First Pony Express Run, April 3, 1860

2010-04-03T13:31:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1860, the first Pony Express run began in St. Joseph, Missouri. The run’s destination was Sacramento, California, a distance of more than 2000 miles that was covered in a little less than eleven days. The Pony Express proved that vast continental distances could be covered in relatively short periods of time with organization and good planning. The image of the Pony Express rider---young and alone, determined to see his mission through---is still part of the American image of the Wild West.

The Pony Express was born out of the need to get messages from the eastern United States to California. Between those two areas lay broad plains, treacherous mountain passes and Native American tribes. Normally, letters and parcels going west were carried by one of two overland routes or by sea to Panama, where cargo was ported over the isthmus and loaded into ships again for the Pacific half of the journey. Depending on the final destination, delivery could take weeks or even months. The founders of the Pony Express wanted to cut that time down to ten days.

The Pony Express route was divided into sections, with each section being about 10 miles long. The distance was used because it is the distance a horse can comfortably gallop. At the end of each section was a station where the rider would transfer his mail pouch to a new horse and continue on. A new rider took over every 100 miles or so. Thus would the routine continue all the way to California. Along with the direct route from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, there were other spur routes which split off from the main route and went to places like San Diego.

The men who began the Pony Express wanted to secure the $1,000,000 mail contract Congress had granted to another company to deliver mail to California using stagecoaches via a different route. Even though the 10 day delivery time promise was met, Congress only granted the Pony Express’s parent company (the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company) part of the contract running from St. Joseph to Salt Lake City, Utah. The original holder of the government contract, the Overland Mail Company, operated the Pony Express from Salt Lake City to destinations in California.

Even though the Pony Express cut delivery times dramatically, the world was changing. On October, 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed. This meant that messages taking 10 days to deliver could now be transmitted coast-to-coast in minutes. The horse and rider had been outpaced by the electron.

Despite the fact that mail cost $5 per 1/2 ounce to send when the Pony Express began (eventually, the price dropped to $1 per 1/2 ounce), the service was a financial failure. But by the time the Pony Express service was ended in November, 1861, it had done a great service to settlers in California and had shown the best routes across the center of the nation, routes that would, in a few years, be used by the first transcontinental railroads.

The Spaghetti Hoax, April 1, 1957

2010-03-31T21:43:00.000-04:00

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In our age of instant worldwide communications, most hoaxes don’t get very far. Even the most popular e-mail hoaxes, forwarded to millions of people, have very short effective life spans. But those of us over 35 remember a time when a well-orchestrated hoax could fool millions of people at once for as long as the perpetrators wished to carry on the charade. Tonight, we will chronicle one such event from 1957.

In this case, the creators of the hoax worked for the British Broadcasting Company’s current affairs show ‘Panorama’. For those who live in the United States, think of ‘Panorama’ as the UK’s ’60 Minutes’. The show is still on the air and is the worlds oldest televised current affairs news program, having begun in 1953.

To fully appreciate the impact of the hoax we are about to discuss, it’s important to understand television during its first decade as a widespread means of communication. In the UK, as with most Western nations at the time, television during the 1950’s was a limited affair. The BBC has been broadcasting regular television transmissions since 1936, but the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 halted television service in the UK until 1946. At the time of the hoax, in 1957, there were only two television channels covering all of England, Scotland and Wales.

Today, we are used to dozens of television channels ranging from the deadly boring to the outrageously offensive. Viewers today would have found the BBC shows of 1957 a bit stodgy by comparison, but the news presented there was treated as practically gospel by viewers. So when the April 1st edition of ‘Panorama’ came on the screen, the audience expected a serious presentation of news and events.

The last report on the show that evening discussed the spaghetti harvest in the southern Swiss canton of Ticino. The past winter had been a mild one, so the harvest was bountiful and viewers saw young women picking strands of spaghetti from local spaghetti trees and placing them in the sun to dry. The spaghetti weevil had been all but eradicated from the area, a fact that also contributed to the bumper crop of 1957. Also shown was a local harvest festival and farmers discussing the difficulties in obtaining a strain of spaghetti that would grow to just the right length.

Half the homes in Great Britain had television sets at the end of the 1950’s. It is estimated that eight million people watched ‘Panorama’ on the evening of April 1st, 1957. For the vast majority, spaghetti was something with which they were either completely unfamiliar or knew only as something that came in a can with meat sauce. The fact that almost all spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water was simply overlooked by many viewers.

The phones at the BBC television offices began to ring immediately. The calls fell into three categories. First were those who appreciated the joke. Second were those who knew the story was a hoax and were outraged that such foolishness was aired. Then there were those who were so interested in the spaghetti trees of southern Switzerland and Italy that they wanted to try their hand at growing one at home. Some enterprising staffers told callers to fill up a tin can with water, insert an uncooked strand of spaghetti and “hope for the best.”

What made the hoax that much more believable or funny, depending on your perspective, was the fact that Richard Dimbleby, the host of ‘Panorama’, delivered the story in perfect form without the slightest hint of humor. Dimbleby was well-known in the UK, having been BBC radio’s first wartime correspondent during the Second World War. The only thing he added to the script was one line at the end, a hint to those who were wondering about the story’s veracity: “Now we say goodnight, on this first day of April.”

Before the station went off the air for the night, a statement was issued acknowledging the final segment of ‘Panorama’ as a hoax. Despite this, the BBC continued to receive calls for several days.

Elections in Bloody Kansas, March 30, 1855

2010-03-29T20:07:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1855, groups of Missouri citizens invaded the Kansas territory in order to ensure the election of a pro-slavery legislature. This act was only one in a series of actions, both violent and non-violent, that would be called the Border War, or Bloody Kansas. This conflict became a microcosm of the tensions being felt in the United States as a whole in the 1850’s. In that way, Bloody Kansas really marked the beginning of the Civil War.

The trouble began in 1854 with passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the legislation which created the two territories. It also overturned the Missouri Compromise by stating that the question of slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska would be decided by the territories’ inhabitants. It was hoped that pro-slavery settlers would move to Kansas and anti-slavery settlers (called abolitionists) would move to Nebraska. This hope came to fruition in Nebraska, where a majority of abolitionist settlers found homes.

Kansas was another matter. People on both sides of the slavery issue rallied their forces in order to ensure that their side maintained a majority in the territory. The abolitionist movement brought in people from as far away as Maine to settle in the area, while most of the pro-slavery settlers simply crossed the border from Missouri. There was a third party present in Kansas: the Free Soil movement. On the surface, the Free Soilers appeared to be anti-slavery, and they were. But their main goal was to make the territory a “whites-only” state free of the plantations which, they believed, kept whites from land ownership.

Violence quickly ramped up as settlers moved into Kansas. John Brown, who would later go on to greater infamy with his raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859, brought a group of abolitionists to the area with the expectation of an armed conflict. The conflict grew in 1854 and 1855 to the point where it had actually become a small civil war. Realizing that Bleeding Kansas had national importance, a coalition of Whigs, Northern Democrats and Free-Soilers who opposed slavery formed the Republican Party. In 1860, a middle-aged lawyer named Abraham Lincoln would run on their Presidential ticket.

The state legislative election in March, 1855 was rife with fraud. Over 5,000 people crossed over from Missouri to cast their ballots in support of a pro-slavery legislature. When the counting was finished, the number of votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters in the territory. Afraid of more conflict, territorial Governor Andrew Reeder approved the election.

In 1856, a Congressional Committee traveled to Kansas in order to investigate matters there. It was agreed by all members that the elections had been fraudulent. Furthermore, the committee decreed that the will of the people was that Kansas should be a free state. President Franklin Pierce ignored the Committee and continued to recognize the pro-slavery legislature.

It is believed that 55 ultimately died during the fighting in Kansas. The violence continued off and on until until 1859, when a state constitution was finally approved that recognized the abolitionist view. It was approved by voters with a 2-to-1 margin. Kansas, a free state at last, entered the Union in January, 1861, just three months before the beginning of the US Civil War.

Accident at Three Mile Island, March 28, 1979

2010-03-28T20:08:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1979, the TMI-2 reactor located at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant experienced the most serious accident in US commercial nuclear power plant operating history. No deaths or injuries occurred because of the accident, either to workers or to people living in nearby communities. Nevertheless, the events of that day marked the beginning of the end of the growth of nuclear power in the United States.

The Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station occupies 814 acres on an island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1979, the number 2 reactor at the site was just a year old and had only been operating for a few months. At 4AM on March 28th, the main feedwater pumps on the secondary side of the plant stopped running. This prevented the steam generators, the giant heat exchangers that remove heat from the primary, or reactor, side of the plant, from removing heat. The reactor shut down, but pressure in the primary system began to increase. A relief valve opened to relieve the pressure; it was designed to close when pressure decreased to an operational level. However, the valve remained open, allowing primary cooling water to pour out of the reactor side of the plant. This exposed the core of the reactor, causing it to overheat.

The reactor operators on duty, like ROs everywhere, could only react to what their instruments told them. In this reactor design, the water level in the core was determined by the pressure reading in the primary side of the plant. Since the pressure was high, it was assumed that the core was still covered with water. In fact, one-half of the fuel pellets in the core were already melting. This is what is known as a core meltdown. Fortunately, the containment building was not breached, a situation that would’ve released toxic amounts of radiation into the outside environment.

There were other concerns which arose over the next three days that were serious enough to cause the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to call for an evacuation of those most vulnerable to radiation within a 5-mile radius of the plant.

Studies over the years have shown that no significant damage was caused by the small amount of radiation released during the crisis. Despite this, the accident led to a re-evaluation of training and safety standards at all nuclear power plants in the United States. But no amount of redesign and retraining would curtail the psychological damage done to the American public in its opinion of nuclear power. Support for nuclear power dropped 20 percent to a point where only half the population supported the building of more nuclear plants. Of the 129 plants that had been approved at the time of the accident, only 53 were ever completed. It can be argued that nuclear power was already in danger the late 1970’s due to inexpensive oil and a nation that was already beginning to forget about the oil embargo just a few years earlier. If this is so, then Three Mile Island helped to nail the coffin shut.

Today, TMI-1, the first reactor at Three Mile Island, continues to operate. The cleanup of TMI-2 lasted for more than 14 years and cost approximately $975 million. In the end, it was determined that a few simple water level gauges (already standard on some designs) would have prevented the accident.

This Side of Paradise Published, March 26, 1920

2010-03-25T20:14:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel This Side of Paradise was published. The book launched his career as a writer and celebrity both in the United States and in Europe during the 1920’s and early 30’s. Today, F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. His works have helped define the “Lost Generation” (the generation who fought in the First World War) for those of us who came after him.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896, Fitzgerald was named after his famous distant relative Francis Scott Key. After attending various private schools, Fitzgerald entered Princeton University in 1913. When the United States entered World War One in 1917, he quit school and enlisted in the army.

It was during officer’s training at Camp Sheridan in Alabama that Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre. Zelda was from a wealthy and well-connected family, something to which young Fitzgerald aspired. The war ended before he could be sent overseas and the two were soon engaged. Fitzgerald moved to New York City alone to set up a life for himself and his betrothed. He worked in advertising and wrote short stories, but his efforts were not enough to convince Zelda that the couple could live the kind of life to which she had become accustomed. She broke off their engagement, which sent Fitzgerald packing back to his parents’ house in Minnesota.

Back home, the young writer began to revise a novel he had written during the war entitled The Romantic Egotist. After much work, he renamed the book This Side of Paradise. It was accepted by Scribner’s and first published in March, 1920; Zelda, evidently deciding that Fitzgerald showed promise after all, came back to him. The two were married a week later and had their first and only child, a daughter, in 1921.

During the rest of the 1920’s, Fitzgerald wrote many short stories, but only two more novels, The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby. The Fitzgeralds moved to Paris, where they ran in the same literary circles as Ernest Hemingway. Although Scott was famous and made good money, the couple’s lifestyle far outpaced his ability to earn. They were constantly in deep debt, a condition that required continual loans from Scott’s literary agent and editor.

Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930, a condition that led her to be hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland in 1932. While living nearby, Scott wrote his fourth novel, Tender is the Night, about a young psychiatrist and his wife. Zelda would spend the rest of her life in and out of mental institutions.

Scott spent the second half of the 1930’s in Hollywood doing various writing jobs. He also began work on his fifth novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. The Fitzgeralds were separated by this point: Zelda was hospitalized on the East Coast and Scott was living with his mistress in California. Scott’s drinking, a problem since his college days, spun out of control. He had two heart attacks in 1940; he died the day after the second one on December 21, 1940. He was 44 years old.

Zelda lived another eight years, dying in a mental institution fire in Asheville, North Carolina in 1948. Scott never finished his last novel, although it was eventually published using notes and outlines he left behind.

Alcatraz Prison Closed, March 21, 1963

2010-03-22T19:53:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1963, the federal prison on Alcatraz Island, located in San Francisco Bay, was closed. The Rock, as the island became known, is probably the most famous prison in the US federal system and remains today, more than forty-five years after its closing, the stuff of legend.

Alcatraz Island was named by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775 while he was exploring San Francisco Bay for Spain. He named the place La Isla de los Alcatraces or “Island of the Pelicans”. Except for the birds, the island was barren and surrounded by swift currents. The island was all but ignored until 1847, when the US Army first noticed the value of the Rock as a military installation. The discovery of gold in California the next year spurred the Army to begin building a fortress on the island. When finished in the mid-1850’s, the fort housed four gigantic, 15-inch cannons capable of engaging enemy warships at a distance of three miles. The cannons were only used one time against an unidentified ship; the single shot missed.

The Army began sending prisoners to Alcatraz in 1861 during the early months of the Civil War. Between that time and 1933, thousands of military personnel would be imprisoned on the island. In October, 1933, the Department of Justice acquired the island and turned it into a federal prison. The first civilian prisoners arrived in August, 1934.

Alcatraz became the place where the worst of the worst in American crime were sent to pay their debt to society. Al Capone, “Machine Gun” Kelly and many others found themselves on the windswept rock. The federal government claimed that escape from Alcatraz was impossible due to the tide and strong currents of San Francisco Bay as well as the fact that the closest point of land was over a mile away and that the average temperature of the Bay water is 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite this, there were 14 escape attempts involving 36 men (two tried to escape twice) during the federal prison’s 29-year history. All but five of the prisoners are accounted for: 23 were caught, six were shot and killed and two were drowned. The remaining five are presumed to have drowned but there is no conclusive proof of this. Despite urban legends to the contrary, it is not impossible to swim from Alcatraz Island to the mainland; dozens of people have made the swim under monitored conditions. Also, the rumors of man-eating sharks in the Bay are not true as the sharks in that area tend to be bottom-dwellers of a smaller variety.

By early 1960’s, Alcatraz had become the most expensive federal or state prison to operate. The federal government decided that other, newer institutions could serve same purpose for less expense to the taxpayer. Another issue was the effect the pollution from the island was having on San Francisco Bay. The prison was closed on March 21, 1963.

Iranian Oil Industry Nationalized, March 20, 1951

2010-03-21T17:43:00.001-04:00

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Tonight's transcript was written by Amir Mans of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Thanks, Amir, for your hard work in putting this show together.

On this day in 1951, nationalist members of the Iranian parliament led by Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq nationalized Iran's petroleum industry. This historic event inspired a lot of other movements in the Middle East region and has had consequences which have continued up to the present day.

The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) had been founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in south west of Iran and on May 26th of that same year, the first oil well in the region was drilled. It was the first company to use the oil reserves of the Middle East and eventually became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954. High volume production of Iranian oil products eventually started in 1913 from a refinery built at Abadan, for its first 50 years the largest oil refinery in the world. Also in 1913, shortly before World War I, AIOC managers negotiated with a new customer, Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. At Churchill's suggestion, and in exchange for secure oil supplies for its ships, the British government injected new capital into the company and, in doing so, acquired a controlling interest in the oil company and as a result, the British government became the de facto hidden power behind the AIOC.

From 1949 on, sentiment for nationalization of Iran's oil industry grew. Grievances included the small fraction of revenues Iran received. In 1947, for example, AIOC reported after-tax profits of $112 million and gave Iran just $19.6 million. In late December 1950 word reached Tehran that the American-owned Arabian American Oil Company had agreed to share profits with Saudis on a 50-50 basis. The British Foreign Office rejected the idea of any similar agreement with AIOC.

On 20th March 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC and its holdings, and shortly thereafter elected a widely respected statesman and champion of nationalization, Mohammed Mosaddeq, as Prime Minister. Iran had gained its democratic parliamentary system after its 1906 constitution revolution which was the first event of its kind in Southwest Asia.

This led to a virtual standstill of oil production as British technicians left the country and Britain imposed a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil and increased output from its other reserves in the Persian Gulf. In September 1951, Britain froze Iran's sterling assets and banned export of goods to Iran. The British ratcheted up the pressure on the Iranian government and explored the possibility of an invasion to occupy the oil area. It challenged the legality of the oil nationalization and took its case against Iran to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court found in Iran's favor, but the dispute between Iran and the AIOC remained unsettled.

In the following months, the crisis became acute. By mid-1952, an attempt by the Shah to replace Mosaddeq backfired and led to riots nationwide; Mosaddeq returned with even greater power. At the same time however, his coalition was fraying, as Britain’s boycott of Iranian oil eliminated a major source of government revenue, and made Iranians poorer and unhappier by the day.

The administration of President Truman initially had been sympathetic to Iran's nationalist aspirations. By 1953 both the US and the UK had new, more anti-communist and more interventionist administrations. Britain was unable to subvert Mosaddeq as its embassy and officials had been evicted from Iran in October 1952, but successfully appealed in the U.S. to anti-communist sentiments, depicting both Mosaddeq and Iran as unstable and likely to fall to communism in their weakened state. If Iran fell, it was theorized that the enormous assets of Iranian oil production and reserves would fall into communist control, as would other areas of the Middle East.

In June 1953, President Eisenhower's administration approved a British proposal for a joint Anglo-American operation, code-named Operation Ajax, to overthrow Prime Minister Mosaddeq and committed the CIA to execute this assignment. This plan became reality in August 1953 when the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddeq was overthrown by the CIA with support from the British government and the Shah was reinstated on the throne. He remained an authoritarian monarch for more than 25 years. Mosaddeq, whose efforts to nationalize the oil industry and democratize Iran had already earned him Time Magazine’s Man of the Year award for 1951 was sentenced to three years imprisonment for trying to overthrow the monarchy, but he was subsequently allowed to remain under house arrest in his village outside Tehran until his death in 1967.

This event inspired a lot of other movements in the Middle East region. Many believe that the fall of the two British allied kingdoms of Egypt and Iraq in the 1950s and the nationalization of Suez Canal in 1958 all were inspired by the movement of Iranian nationalists.

The 1953 coup was the first time the US had openly overthrown an elected, civil government. In the US, Operation Ajax was considered a success, with immediate and far-reaching effect. Overnight, the CIA became a central part of the American foreign policy apparatus, and covert action came to be regarded as a cheap and effective way to shape the course of world events, but the coup caused long-lasting damage to the United States' reputation.

The joint US-British operation ended Iran's drive to assert sovereign control over its own resources and helped put an end to a vibrant chapter in the history of the country's nationalist and democratic movements. The coup was a critical event that destroyed Iran’s secular parliamentary democracy, by re-installing the monarchy of the Shah. These consequences resonated with dramatic effect in later years as it has been widely believed to have significantly contributed to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which deposed the pro-Western Shah and replaced the monarchy with an anti-Western Islamic Republic that brought to power a group of fanatically anti-Western clerics who turned Iran into a center for anti-Americanism. The Islamic regime in Iran also inspired religious fanatics in many other countries including those who give refuge to terrorists who eventually have gone on to attack the US.

Some Middle East observers have claimed that the anger against the US that flooded out of Iran following the 1979 revolution has its roots in the American role in crushing Iranian democracy in 1953. While this remains just a theory, the reality is that this coup left the most open-minded and civilized people of the Middle East under 25 years of dictatorship and 30+ years of tyranny and brutality at the hands of the Islamic Republic.

Questions and Answers, March 18, 2010

2010-03-18T20:23:00.001-04:00

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I haven’t done a question and answer show in a while, so I thought tonight might be a good time to do one. The volume of e-mail I receive has increased about five-fold since we began the 500 for 5 campaign and some of the questions are identical. I’ve chosen five of them to answer with the assumption that if 2 or 3 people write with similar questions, there are even more people out there with the same thought.

The first question concerns the fate of frame 313 of the Zapruder film, which we discussed in episode 424. If you recall, Abraham Zapruder sold his film to Life magazine on the condition that the publication never show frame 313, which shows the impact of one of the rounds to the back of the President’s head and its resulting exit in gory detail. Zapruder believed the American people should never be shown the horror that he witnessed.

When the film was shown on television for the first time, however, frame 313 was back in the picture. In 1968, a U.S. District Court had ruled that use of the Zapruder film came under the rules of fair use because of its historical and societal importance. Thus, no one who used the film after that was under any obligation to take out the offending frame.

Interestingly, the first time the film was shown to a public audience of any kind was in a courtroom in 1969 during the New Orleans trial of Clay Shaw, which was re-created in the 1991 film ‘JFK’.

Of all the shows I’ve recorded, I probably received the most comments about the story of D.B. Cooper and his subsequent jump out of a hijacked airplane with $200,000 into one of the most densely wooded and remote areas of the United States. And so the question is asked: what do I think happened to Cooper? Put simply, I think he walked away and started a new life somewhere. Cooper’s strict instructions to the pilots indicate to me that he intended to jump at a specific time when the aircraft was over a specific point. All he needed to know was the plane’s direction, airspeed and time of departure, all factors that he controlled.

My guess is that he either had an accomplice on the ground or a stash of clothes, food and hiking equipment somewhere near his jump point. I believe he was an experienced parachutist and a former soldier, perhaps even Special Forces. He had about a 12 hour head start on any pursuers, enough time for someone with evasion training to cover a significant distance, perhaps 15 miles. At some point he arrived in a small town or met up with his accomplice and made his escape. If he is still alive today, he would be a senior citizen, probably 70 or so years old.

I receive a lot of e-mail from people who want to start a podcast of their own and who ask what my setup is for recording the show. It’s very simple: I have an Audio-Technica model ATM61HE microphone that hasn’t been produced in several years. That plugs into an M-Audio Fast Track audio interface with connects via USB to my PC, which is now running Windows 7. For recording, I use Audacity version 1.3, which is free. I have tried other software but I find I can produce better results with this simple and well-written application.

Question number four concerns my career. This query comes mostly from people who either began listening to the show recently, or who pick and choose episodes based on their interests. The question is whether or not I am a history teacher. I am not. I began college as a history major but allowed family members to convince me that a degree in Business Management was much more practical. I deeply regret that decision. Through a series of twists and turns in my life, I ended up working in IT, or Information Technology. I work for a medium-sized company in Louisville where there are only three of us in the IT Department. This means I do everything from helping to manage the network to handling helpdesk calls to working on the owners’ home computers.

Finally, several people with whom I am friends on Facebook have asked me where the initials TLK come from. It stands for The Lovely Kelli, my wife of nearly 12 years. I began using that term of endearment early in the life of the podcast after hearing a radio talk show host use the term ‘fetching’ whenever he mentioned his wife. It seemed like a sweet idea. Without The Lovely Kelli’s support and patience, there would be no podcast. She has been especially understanding during the 500 for 5 campaign.

The Stamp Act Repealed, March 18, 1766

2010-03-17T18:29:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1766, King George III of Britain agreed to the repeal of the Stamp Act. This ended the highly contentious provisions of the bill, which was instituted in the American colonies in order to help pay back the costs of the Seven Years War that had ended 2 years earlier. The Americans' reaction to the bill was just a precursor to what the next decade would bring.

The Stamp Act was ratified without much deliberation on March 22, 1765 by the British Parliament. It levied taxes on the American colonies in the form of duties paid on every piece of paper that the colonists purchased. This included legal documents, newspapers, printed publications, and ships’ papers. The general purpose of the Stamp Act was to pay back the massive debt Britain incurred through its participation in the Seven Years, and to raise around £ 60,000 annually in order to support the cost of quartering English troops in the colonies.

Parliament had successfully used stamp acts throughout Britain in previous years. It produced over £100,000 in revenue, with low enforcement costs. The provisions were easy to implement because only documents with an official stamp were valid. Moreover, Prime Minister George Grenville was extremely supportive of imposing a new tax, even after passing The Sugar Act only a year before. Official colonial protests to the Stamp Act were ignored in Parliamentary debates, and it passed 259-49 in the House of Commons, and unanimously in the House of Lords.

The colonies’ response to the Stamp Act was one of anger and disbelief. Although the overall cost of paying for the Bill was rather low in monetary terms, it only added to the burden the Crown was imposing on the colonists as it sought to expand its sphere of influence. Britain had already put into effect the Molasses Act, The Navigation Acts, and Sugar Act, which were severely hampering colonial economic affairs by regulating commerce and economic transactions. Furthermore, colonists were hostile to the Stamp Act because it had been passed without any form of colonial representation in Parliament. Taxation without representation would become the main issue surrounding the Stamp Act, and colonists were up in arms about the infringement on their rights as British citizens. They felt that Parliament, which was thousands of miles away in England, was out of touch with the colonies and arbitrarily issuing taxes with no limitations to its power.

Protests in the streets occurred throughout the colonies, but most notably in Boston, Massachusetts. On August 14 1765, a large crowd opposed Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s order to take an effigy down that mocked the distributor of stamps in Massachusetts and Prime Minister Grenville for role in approving the Stamp Act. They ransacked the stamp distributor’s home and called for his resignation, which he ultimately agreed to the following day. On August 26th, a crowd looted Hutchinson’s home of valuables in their fury over the Stamp Act and its negative aspects on society.

A soon-to-be famous group, the Sons of Liberty, was also established around this time. Although they had been around since early 1765, this brotherhood of American patriots did not form into an organized group until November of the same year. They spread their influence to each of the 13 colonies by forming correspondence links with major cities and recruiting at large public demonstrations. The Sons of Liberty were instrumental in the eventual repeal of the Stamp Act by shaping Colonial resistance and coordinating boycotts of British goods.

Parliament became well aware of the protests and boycotts by early 1766. British manufacturers were being hit hard by them and losing a great deal of money from lack of business. In the end, Parliament had no choice but to begin debate on the merits of the Stamp Act. On January 14, 1766, they convened and Prime Minister Lord Rockingham, successor to Grenville, proposed a repeal of the Stamp Act. He felt that any changes to it would be fruitless and much too late to do any good. William Pitt, British hero of the Seven Years, made an impassioned speech to Parliament defending the rights of the Colonists. He said in part: “It is my opinion that this Kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. They are subjects of this kingdom equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen; equally bound by its laws, and equally participating in the constitution of this free country. The Americans are the sons, not the bastards of England.” When Grenville, still a member of Parliament, responded with a denouncement of the Colonies and their failure to contribute their share of burdening the debt, Pitt proclaimed, “I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.”

Following Parliamentary debate on February 21st, a resolution was drafted for the repeal of the Stamp Act. It passed in the House of Commons by a vote of 276-168. One month later, on March 18, 1766, the Stamp Act was officially and completely repealed by King George III.

Beware The Ides Of March, March 15, 44 B.C.

2010-03-16T20:03:00.002-04:00

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Today in 44BC Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome. His rise to power against seemingly impossible odds and his subsequent rule has made him a figure of both derision and curiosity more than twenty centuries after his death.

Caesar's childhood was consumed by the fires of war. His uncle, Gaius Marius, was an influential politician and military leader in Rome. When Caesar was a teenager his uncle engaged in a civil war with Lucius Cornelius Sulla, another Roman general. Sulla seized control of Rome and subsequently executed many of Marius’s supporters and forced the rest into exile, including Caesar.

After being forced from Rome, Caesar joined the military and served in Asia. He served with distinction and was awarded the civic crown, a headpiece woven from oak leaves that was the second highest military honor in ancient Rome. In 78 BC Lucius Sulla died and Caesar attempted to return to Rome. However, his bad luck persisted and he was captured by Cilician pirates and held for ransom. When Caesar learned the pirates had only asked for twenty talents of silver he felt insulted and insisted the pirates raise the bounty to fifty talents. After the ransom was paid Caesar returned to Rome where he raised a private army. He then set sail and captured the pirates, fulfilling the promise he made while in captivity. Caesar crucified the pirates as an example. However, Caesar had their throats cut to demonstrate his ability for mercy. He was already becoming a cunning politician.

Upon returning to Rome, Caesar was elected as military tribune. His political career gained momentum when Caesar formed a three way division of power. This alliance known as The First Triumvirate included Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus or Pompey, and Marcus Licinius Crassus. Each man controlled considerable territory and possessed political and military strength. This powerful alliance dominated the Senate and controlled Rome.

In 69 BC while Caesar was in modern Spain to supervise financial affairs he encountered a statue of Alexander the Great. Caesar was roughly the same age that Alexander was when he had conquered most of the known world. Perhaps Caesar felt inadequate when he looked upon Alexander, a vision of success that mirrored the shadows of his ambition. Motivated, Caesar resigned from his post and returned to Rome. He was elected Pontifex Maximus, or head priest, of the Roman state religion. Using his shrewd political tactics Caesar climbed the ranks of the government until he was appointed Consul, or Governor, of Gaul, an area that encompassed most of Western Europe. Caesar used his military prowess to raise an army and began expanding the borders of the Roman Republic. In fact, his conquests spread to the shores of England. This military accomplishment gained Caesar a powerful reputation among Rome’s citizens. In 50 BC Caesar’s former political ally and friend Pompey was in control of the Senate. He ordered that Caesar disband his army and return to Rome as Caesar’s Consulship had expired. Caesar rolled the dice and marched his legion on Rome. When his army crossed the Rubicon River in northern Italy on its way south, it ignited a civil war. Although Pompey’s forces outnumbered Caesar’s, Pompey retreated from Rome with the Senate. Caesar pursued them across the known world, winning decisive battles along the way. Finally, in Egypt, Pompey was killed.

While in Egypt Caesar met Cleopatra. This started a romantic relationship that would last for more than a decade. While in Egypt Caesar once again exercised his power and overthrew the existing government. In 47 BC Caesar installed Cleopatra as Queen of Egypt. This led to a prosperous trade alliance that contributed to the growing wealth of the expanding Roman Republic.

Upon returning to Rome in 49 BC the Senate had no choice but to elect Caesar as Dictator of Rome. At this time Caesar’s arrogance had alienated him as much as his position as Dictator did. Caesar made himself into a God. He claimed to be a descendant of Aeneas who was a hero of the Trojan War and the son of a Roman Goddess. Aeneas is the mythical father of Rome so by Caesar tracing his lineage to Aeneas he solidified himself as rightful heir of Rome. He used this association to further tighten his grip on Rome. He became the first living Roman to put his face on a coin, an honor normally reserved for those who had been deified after death.

A growing hostility in the Senate transformed a group of some 60 Senators into conspirators, and on the Ides of March, 44 BC they confronted Caesar and stabbed him twenty-three times as he made his way to the Senatorial forum.

William Shakespeare romanticized and glorified the epic tale of Julius Caesar. There are many different ideas of what exactly Caesar’s dying words were. The most famous are the ones penned by Shakespeare. “Et tu brute?” meaning: you, too, Brutus? This referred to Caesar’s friend Brutus, who was among the conspirators. It seems that Caesar’s ambitions had left him, at the end, a man alone in the world.

In history and fiction Caesar didn’t fear death. He feared irrelevance. The following monologue from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar best exemplifies this mentality.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Julius Caesar was responsible for transforming the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. His actions were a catalyst that allowed his adopted grand-nephew Augustus to become Rome’s first Emperor. Julius Caesar was followed by five Emperors of his lineage, known as the Julio-Claudians. They reigned until 68 AD. Rome was never again returned to a Republic.

George Eastman Dies, March 14, 1932

2010-03-14T19:59:00.000-04:00

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Today in 1932, George Eastman died at the age of 77. His name is the “Eastman” in “Eastman Kodak”, the company that, more than any other in the world, brought photography to the masses during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Eastman’s story is one of poor boy made good, hard work rewarded with wealth and selflessness rewarded with immortality.

George Eastman was born in 1854 in Waterville, New York. His father ran a nursery business on the family land, but sold it when George was five in order to start his own school, the Eastman Commercial College. The senior Eastman died when George was 14, leaving the young man as the only bread winner for his mother and two sisters. He dropped out of school, never to return.

Eastman got his start as a messenger boy for a local insurance company and eventually ended up writing policies. Still not making enough money, he studied accounting at night and, five years later, was hired at a Rochester bank as a clerk. His hard work was paying dividends, but the real fruits of his labor were yet to come.

When Eastman was 24, he purchased the equipment necessary to take photographs and planned a vacation to Santo Domingo. He never made the trip, but he fell in love with photography. The problem with his new hobby was the weight and bulk of the equipment; it was no exaggeration to say that a pack mule was needed to carry everything a traveling photographer needed in the late 1870’s. Eastman read of advances being made in England with dry plates, which led him to start his own business preparing dry plates for sale to photographers in bulk.

It was during this time in the early 1880’s that Eastman began to focus on the task of making photography available to the masses. He invented roll film which replaced the rigid plate with a roll of cellulose-like material. It was easier and lighter to transport and made it possible to make cameras smaller than they had ever been. The race was on to make, in his words, “the camera as convenient as the pencil.”

And so the Kodak camera was born in 1888. The word ‘Kodak’ had no meaning other than as a brand name. Eastman liked the letter ‘K’, so he made up a word that started and ended with the letter. He also came up with the first slogan for the product “you press the button, we do the rest”---since early Kodaks were sent back to the factory for the film to be developed and the camera to be reloaded.

Eastman became famous for the generosity he showed his employees and the world. He set up a ‘Wage Dividend’ in his factories, which was a bonus paid to each employee yearly based on the company’s financial gains that year. In 1919, he gave one-third of his holdings in the company to his employees.

During his lifetime, it is estimated that Eastman gave away more than $100 million. He gave $20 million of that to MIT under the name ‘Mr. Smith’---it took years to find out who ‘Mr. Smith’ really was. Eastman gave the money to the school because he had hired some young men from MIT and he felt that they were his best assistants.

During the last two years of his life, Eastman was in great pain from spinal stenosis, although that diagnosis was unknown in the 1930’s. Knowing that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair and refusing to do so, he ended his own life on March 14, 1932 by firing a single bullet into his chest. The note he left simply said, “My work is done. Why wait?”

The Butler Act Passed, March 13, 1925

2010-03-13T10:57:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1925, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Butler Act, a law which stated, in part:

"That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals {schools whose purpose was to train teachers} and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."

The man who lent his name to the Act was John Washington Butler, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. He had concluded that teaching about the evolution of humans in public schools discredited the creation story as told in the Bible. This motivated him to become the author of the law. While many statutes such as the Butler Act had been passed in the United States and elsewhere since the publication of Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ in 1859, this particular one would become an important part of history because its passage led the way for what was called at that time “the trial of the century”--- Scopes v State, better known today as the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Teachers could be fined between $100 and $500 for violating the Butler Act, which was considered a misdemeanor. As written, the law did not forbid the teaching of natural selection or, for example, that mammals such as dogs are descended from simpler animals and share a common ancestor with, say, cats. It simply prohibited the teaching of evolution as related to human beings.

One of the strong voices behind the Butler Act was William Jennings Bryan. Bryan, from Illinois, was already a well-known figure in early 20th century America. He had been the Democratic nominee for the Presidency three times and was a leading public voice on many of the divisive issues of the day. Some referred to him as “The Great Commoner” because of his populist beliefs. Bryan argued that evolution could not be logically proven and was immoral in its assumptions and conclusions.

On the other side of the issue stood the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU, which offered to defend anyone accused of violating the Butler Act. The man who they first chose to defend was a high school football coach named John Scopes. Scopes was not the full-time science teacher in his school, but he had taught the class as a substitute. Since the state-mandated science book used in Tennessee at that time contained a chapter on evolution, Scopes argued that he had, in effect, taught evolution. Two local prosecutors (both friends of Scopes’) had him charged with violating the Butler Act. Thus, the trial was a test case---Scopes wanted to be charged with violating the Act and the state of Tennessee wanted to see how it stood up to scrutiny.

The trial was held in Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee over eleven days in July, 1925. It was described in Time magazine as “the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war.” The potential for the trial to become a media circus was enormous. The proceedings were broadcast on radio, a fairly new medium that was exploding in popularity. Additionally, both the prosecution and defense teams contained men who were already well-known in the public eye, primarily William Jennings Bryan (who we've already discussed) for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense.

Attorney Clarence Darrow was a leading member of the ACLU and was already famous for his participation in many well-known and controversial trials. Today, Darrow would be considered a liberal in the United States, although the meaning of that term has changed in the past 85 years and it is doubtful Darrow would have accepted our definition. In a nation that was, at least to outside observers, devoutly Christian, Clarence Darrow was an agnostic and made no secret of it.

The defense’s main argument wavered during the trial. At first, Darrow argued that the Butler Act was unconstitutional because it violated the Constitution’s wording on the separation of Church and State. As things became more heated, Darrow called Bryan himself to the stand to defend the legitimacy of Biblical history. Scopes himself never testified. After a week and a day of trial, it took the jury less than ten minutes to find Scopes guilty; the judge ordered him to pay a $100 fine. William Jennings Bryan, lead prosecutor, offered to pay the fine for the teacher.

Scope’s team appealed the decision to the Tennessee Supreme Court. The Court set aside Scope’s conviction on a technicality, but ruled that the Butler Act was constitutional. The US Supreme Court finally ruled on a similar law in 1968, saying that such acts were in violation of the US Constitution’s Establishment Clause because their primary reason for existence was religious. The Butler Act had already been repealed in Tennessee in 1967.

The effect of the Butler Act and the Scopes trial on science education in the United States has been enormous and volumes have been written about its impact on society at large. However, the act and trial have suffered greatly at the hands of historians of all political stripes who have done their best to bend reality to their will. Most Americans' knowledge of the trial comes from the play 'Inherit the Wind', which debuted in 1955. The play contains a disclaimer stating that the events portrayed therein are not based on any actual event, even though the intention is to reproduce the events of the Scopes trial in a more dramatic fashion than reality provided. The play has been adapted for film and screen several times since the mid-1950s, yet the trial itself was not mentioned in any American history textbooks until the late 1960's, and even during my time in high school was only discussed in passing as part of a discussion of the early 20th-century South.

The Anschluss, March 12, 1938

2010-03-11T20:34:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. This union, or Anschluss, made the nation part of Greater Germany and brought Adolf Hitler one step closer to his goal of unifying all the German-speaking areas of Europe under one government. It also tested the resolve of the Allies and their commitment to upholding the agreements which ended the First World War.

The idea of a unified German-speaking nation in Europe was not new; in fact, talk of it had occurred as early as the 18th century. By 1930, a majority of Austrians supported a union with Germany. After Hitler came to power in 1933, however, enthusiasm for such a move cooled, especially among government officials in Vienna. Although today it may seem like splitting hairs, Austria's type of government at that time was referred to as Austro-fascism, more like Italian Fascism than Naziism. Austrian Nazis who supported a union with Germany attempted a coup in 1934 in which the nation's reigning Chancellor was killed, but its failure and the short civil war that followed caused many of them to escape to Germany. The remainder were rounded up and placed in internment camps. Support for unification dropped sharply during the next four years, despite the fact that Hitler was from Austria.

By early 1938, the German dictator was ready to put his expansionist plans into action. That February, he summoned Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg to Bavaria for a meeting. During their discussion, which would later be remembered as more of a lecture, Hitler demanded that the Chancellor lift his ban on political parties and release all imprisoned Nazis. Furthermore, the freed Nazis were to be allowed to participate in Austria's government. Hitler made it clear that failure to take these actions would result in military action. Schuschnigg did as Hitler demanded and placed two Nazis in high Austrian offices, that of Minister and Interior Minister.

Other demands were soon made, including a call for the dismissal of the Austrian Army's Chief of Staff, who had created an extensive plan for the defense of Austria in the event of a German invasion. Hitler did not want to expend any military capital in Austria, so the removal of the top military leadership in Austria was of vital importance. Once again, Schuschnigg agreed to Hitler's demand.

As the weeks went by, it became clear that the new Nazis appointed to government positions in Vienna were working to undermine the Chancellor's authority. Desperate to save the independence of his nation, Schuschnigg called for a referendum to be held on March 13th in which the citizens of Austria would vote on whether or not they wanted to remain a separate nation. Upon hearing this, Hitler became enraged. The German Ministry of Propaganda released information to the world's press outlets claiming that unrest was sweeping the towns and cities of Austria and that the population was calling for the intervention of German troops to put an end to the rioting and looting. Schuschnigg appeared in public and denounced the reports as false, but the refutation was of little value. On March 11th, two days before the referendum, Hitler issued an ultimatum to Schuschnigg: hand over power to the Austrian Nazis or face an invasion. Before the ultimatum expired at 2PM local time that day, Hitler signed an order to send troops across the border. It was formally issued just hours later.

Schuschnigg hoped for support from England or France since the union of Austria and Germany was forbidden by the Versailles Treaty, the agreement which ended the First World World War in 1918. But both nations remained essentially silent, so the Chancellor resigned his office that evening. At about 10PM, the German government published a forged telegram that appeared to be from the Austrian government. In it, Vienna requested that German troops enter Austria. By this time, all the major government buildings in the nation were in hands of the Austrian Nazi party. By the time the 8th Army of the Wehrmacht crossed the border the next morning, the issue had been decided.

Newsreels from March 12, 1938 show cheering crowds greeting German troops as they enter town after town. Hitler was received in Vienna by a crowd of 200,000 people, all of them presumably supporters of their nation's absorption into Greater Germany. But while many Austrians did, in fact, support unification, it is doubtful that a majority did so. While the March 13th referendum was canceled in most places in Austria, several small villages not immediately occupied by German troops held their vote anyway. In each one, a very large majority voted for Austrian independence.

The Anschluss was rubber-stamped into law on March 13th, one day after the invasion. The law required that a referendum be held in which the Austrian people would approve or disapprove the German intercession. 99.73% of voters voted in favor of unification with Germany. This number seems incredible until one learns that Nazi officials watched every voter as he cast his ballot and that more than 70,000 voters, mainly communists and Jews, had been arrested and more than 400,000 more had been denied the right to vote.

Austria remained a part of Greater Germany until April 27, 1945, when the Austrian government declared the Anschluss null and void. The nation was occupied by the Allies after World War Two and did not fully regain its independence until 1955.

Since the end of the Second World War, historians have debated the actions of the Allied nations, especially Great Britain and France, before, during and immediately after the Anschluss. It has been argued that a simple threat of military force against Germany would have brought Hitler back in line, at least with regard to his expansionist desires. While we tend think of the German war machine as being unstoppable during the Blitzkrieg months of Spring, 1940, France alone had a much larger military than Germany in 1938. The training and modernization levels of the French and British armies may not have been comparable to the Germans, but the two forces together could certainly have forced at least a stalemate and reconsideration of Germany's actions on the Continent.

As mentioned earlier, Germany's annexation of Austria was a major breach of the Versailles Treaty. At first glance, one might imagine that such a violation would have been met with harsh criticism in the capitals of Europe. But Germany had begun ignoring the Versailles Treaty as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933. While Hitler's rebuilding of the German war machine was supposed to be a closely-held secret, it was nothing of the kind. Winston Churchill began warning his countrymen in 1930 that the Nazi Party in Germany would one day lead Europe into another war and by 1935 the strength of the German military could no longer be hidden.
But it is important to remember the times in which that generation of leaders lived. During the 1930's, the Great Depression gripped the entire industrialized world. Military budgets had been slashed to the bone in most countries. Furthermore, Hitler came to power in Germany less than 15 years after the end of the First World War. Nearly 17 million human beings had died in Europe during the war years of 1914-1918, a total so large that it was considered doubtful another war of that magnitude would ever be fought between modern nations. The terrible losses in the trenches of western Europe gave birth to a generation of British and French citizens for whom nothing was worth another war. Even though the losses experienced by the United States during the First World War were small in comparison to those suffered by the European powers, Americans tended more than ever towards isolationism during the 1920's and 30's.

We will, of course, never know what diplomatic or military action by the Allied powers would have done towards stopping the Anschluss or even preventing another world war. Two things are certain: in this case, inaction proved to be action in another direction and history, however terrible, would repeat itself yet again with humanity paying a cost that no one in 1938 could even begin to imagine.

USS Monitor Meets CSS Virginia, 1862

2010-03-09T19:33:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1862 the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia fought a one-on-one battle off Hampton Roads, Virginia. While neither ship was seriously damaged in the encounter, this engagement was historic because it marked the first time that two ironclad warships met in battle.

The ironclad was a logical improvement in warship design. Until the 1850’s, the world’s navies built ships made from wood and shipbuilders were as much artisans as engineers. Wood made sailing ships light and fast and trees were a renewable resource. While ship designs improved over the centuries, the materials used to build them scarcely changed from the dawn of recorded history.

Naval armaments were a different story. At one time, ships rammed each other while soldiers fought from one ship to another in order to win a battle. Early cannons placed on warships meant that fighting could be done at a distance, but they were crude, heavy and inaccurate. They improved with time and by the mid-19th century, naval gunnery had become much more deadly not only to sailors, but to their wooden-hulled ships as well.

Koreans were probably the first people to use iron to protect their warships; their “turtle ships” saw action as early as the 16th century. The western powers first grasped the importance of iron as armor during the Crimean War. The British and French navies developed pre-ironclad vessels, essentially artillery batteries that floated and had to be towed into position. These were used against Russian shore defenses that had previously defeated wooden-hulled ships. With this early success in mind, France launched its first ocean-going ironclad warship in 1859.

While the British and French ironclads were actually traditional sailing vessels with armor plating, the use of steam power led to a completely different design. The USS Monitor was the first ship of this new type (all ships like her would henceforth be referred to as monitors). Her top deck was only 18 inches above the waterline and the only structures rising from the hull were a small pilothouse and a rotating turret that housed two cannons. Although not called this at the time, the Monitor was really a semi-submersible ship.

The CSS Virginia began life as the USS Merrimack, a 40-gun frigate commissioned in 1856. When the Union Navy evacuated the Norfolk Navy Yard in April, 1861, they burned the Merrimack down to the waterline to keep her from falling into Confederate hands. However, the rebels raised the hulk and rebuilt her as what they called an ironclad ram, essentially a wooden ship covered with iron plates and carrying non-rotating cannons. Many people still refer to the Virginia as the Merrimack, since the Union never recognized the Confederacy as a legitimate government.

The Virginia’s first mission was to attack the Union blockading squadron near Hampton Roads, Virginia. The Virginia began her attack on March, 8, 1862 and consequently sank the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress. The USS Minnesota was run aground to avoid sinking. But when she returned on the 9th to finish the job, the Monitor was waiting for her.

The battle that followed lasted four hours. Neither ship was seriously damaged and tactically speaking, the fight was a draw. However, the Monitor had successfully defended the blockading squadron while the Virginia had to return home without sinking anything. Strategically, the Union won the day.

Neither ship would survive to see the end of 1862. The Virginia continued to sail down the James River in hopes of confronting the Monitor again, but the Monitor’s captain was under orders not to engage her opponent. In May, 1862, the Union re-occupied Norfolk. The Virginia could not retreat up the James River due to her deep draft, nor was she very seaworthy. Instead, her crew set her ablaze and watched as her magazine exploded, sending the ship to the bottom.

The Monitor lasted a while longer, but her very design sealed her fate. While under tow near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, she was swamped by the high waves crashing over her low deck. She sank, losing 16 of her 62 crewman.

Pancho Villa Raids Columbus, March 8, 1916

2010-03-07T19:09:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1916, two hours before sunrise, more than 500 Mexican raiders led by Francisco "Pancho" Villa crossed the US border and attacked the small town of Columbus, New Mexico. The raid marked the beginning of a confrontation with the Mexican revolutionary and helped the citizens of the United States wake up to the fact that isolation and neutrality brought no guarantees of security and peace.

Columbus, New Mexico was a typical border town. Its only distinguishing characteristic in 1916 was Camp Furlong, a nearby Army post manned by 350 men from the 13th Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Meade, South Dakota. Their presence brought a sense of security to the area. But a revolution was raging in Mexico, a revolution that would soon spill across the border and into the lives of both the town's citizens and the unprepared soldiers of the camp.

The attack came from the southwest around 4:20AM. The raiders were not in Columbus to kill, but to raid. While their true intentions remain unknown, it is likely that the group was short on supplies, weapons and ammunition. This theory is supported by the fact that most of the damage was wrought in Columbus' business district. Had they wanted to destroy the town and kill its citizens, they most likely could have done so. Some townspeople believed that the rebels were retaliating against a local arms dealer who had received payment from Villa for weapons and then never delivered them.

As it was, the damage they caused was extensive. Most of the buildings in the business district were either totally consumed by flames or suffered major fire damage. Camp Furlong was attacked but received little damage, possibly because the raiders did not know how many soldiers were stationed there and did not want to find themselves surrounded by a numerically superior force. Many residents fled their homes and either headed for the desert, the local schoolhouse or the Hoover Hotel.

The noise from the raid alerted the garrison at Camp Furlong. Soldiers were soon running to the business district, weapons in hand. Two crew-served machine guns were set up, one in front of the Hoover Hotel and another on East Boundary Street. This created a deadly crossfire. As the sun began to rise and Pancho Villa's men ran from the murderous machine gun fire back towards the border, the damage assessment began. Almost 75 of Villa's men lay in the streets of Columbus; 18 Americans, mostly civilians, died there as well.

The American response to the raid was swift. General John "Black Jack" Pershing arrived from Fort Bliss, Texas, two days after the raid and established Columbus as his base of operations. In less than 48 hours, soldiers from other cavalry regiments began to arrive. Soon, they numbered over 5,000 and made Columbus, at least temporarily, the largest city in New Mexico. On March 16th, exactly a week after the raid, Pershing and his men crossed the border into Mexico on what came to be called the Punitive Expedition. Their mission was to capture Villa and scatter his rebel army.

Supporting a growing army of 5,000+ men in northern Mexico proved to be a logistical nightmare. Pershing could not initially gain permission to use the Northwest Railroad to transport men and supplies, so his army resorted to using trucks and mules. Army trucks of 1916 were not the specially-designed, rugged machines we know today---they were mostly bought straight from the manufacturer in the same configurations that were offered for sale to the public. On the crude and often non-existent roads of Mexico, maintenance soon became a major problem. In addition, thousands of horses needed to be shod, feed and watered at regular intervals.

Pershing had Army aircraft at his disposal for aerial reconnaissance, but the small, underpowered planes were easily grounded by strong winds. In addition, Villa's men knew the area well and utilized the rough terrain to remain virtually invisible. Still, Pershing's use of airplanes and his partial reliance on mechanized ground transportation helped bring the US Army into the 20th century.

The expedition eventually pushed 300 miles into Mexico, but Villa was nowhere to be found. The local population was of little help as many citizens supported the rebel leader and disliked the idea of foreign troops riding through their country. In January, 1917, the expedition was recalled; by then, it was a force of more than 10,000 soldiers. Pershing took his force to El Paso, Texas, where they were welcomed as heroes. The Punitive Expedition marked the last time a unit of United States Cavalry took to the battlefield on horseback.

Pershing called the journey into Mexico a learning experience, and a timely one: in April, 1917, the US Congress declared war on Germany, drawing the nation into the First World War. The strategies of modern combat devised in Mexico would serve the American Army well in Europe, considering that Pershing was placed in command of the American Expeditionary Forces. One of the young officers who gained valuable experience in Mexico was a man named George Patton.

Pancho Villa retired from rebellion after three more years of fighting. He reached an agreement with the Mexican government in which he would move to Durango. It was near there on July 20, 1923 that he was killed by gunmen while driving home. He was 45. Although never proven, it has been theorized that powerful players in the Mexican government arranged the assassination.

The Zapruder Film Premieres, March 6, 1975

2010-03-06T18:17:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1975, the Zapruder film was shown to the American public on television for the first time. It is the most complete visual record of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which took place in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. The story of the film’s creation, subsequent ownership and virtual disappearance from public view for 12 years has become the stuff of legend and one of the many twisting, turning tales to emerge from that terrible day in Dallas 47 years ago.

Abraham Zapruder was the very essence of the American Dream. Born in the Ukraine, he immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1920 during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War. Just 15, he studied English at night and spent his days learning about the garment industry in New York City. In 1954, he co-founded his own clothing company in Dallas, Texas; his office was located in the Dal-Tex Building just east of the Texas School Book Depository and diagonally across from Dealey Plaza. On the day of President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas, Zapruder announced his intention to watch the motorcade as it passed by. He had no intention of filming the proceedings, but went home earlier in the day to get his Bell + Howell Zoomatic movie camera at the insistence of an assistant. Abraham Zapruder’s life would never be the same.

The film that would one day form so much of our national memory of that day is 26.6 seconds long and without audio. Zapruder caught the President's motorcade as it turned onto Elm Street and passed Dealey Plaza. The fatal shot to the President's head occurred when the car in which he was riding passed almost directly in front of the camera.

Zapruder knew immediately that his camera and what it contained were now of vital importance. As he walked back to his office, he encountered a local reporter who had contacts in the local Secret Service branch. The reporter told Zapruder that he would send a Secret Service agent to the clothing manufacturer's office. Once he arrived back at work, Zapruder sent an assistant out to find a Secret Service agent in case the reporter failed in his mission. Once Agent Forrest Sorrels of Secret Service arrived at the Dal-Tex building, Zapruder agreed to hand the film over on the condition that it only be used to aid the investigation and not be broadcast or otherwise shared. The agent agreed and the men went to local TV station WFAA to have the film developed. While there, Zapruder was interviewed live about what he had seen. The station could not develop the film, so it was taken to Eastman Kodak's Dallas processing plant. Zapruder kept the original and a copy and gave the Secret Service two copies, which were flown to Washington for analysis.

Later that night, Zapruder received a call from a Life magazine editor. The next day, he agreed to sell the magazine the original film and print rights for $50,000. The agreement was amended two days later with Life agreeing to pay Zapruder six annual payments of $25,000 for the television and motion picture rights as well. He donated the first payment to the family of Officer J.D. Tippit, the policemen killed by Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of the assassination. He later added a condition to the sale: that frame 313 of the film be removed from any public showing. That is the frame that shows the fatal shot to the President's head and Zapruder did not want the public to see the horror of the event.

Abraham Zapruder went on to testify before the Warren Commission, the first body convened to investigate the Kennedy assassination. A big fan and supporter of Kennedy, Zapruder broke down while testifying before the panel. He was also called to testify at the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969. This was the case re-enacted in the film JFK. Zapruder died of stomach cancer in 1970.

Life magazine retained ownership of the film through 1975. On March 6th of that year, the ABC network late-night show 'Good Night America' hosted by Geraldo Rivera aired the Zapruder film for the first time. The public response to the event was sudden and intense and eventually resulted in several more government investigations.

Today, the original Zapruder film resides in Washington, DC as part of the National Archives. Abraham's family retained copyright to the film until 1999, when it was turned over to the Sixth Floor Museum, located in the School Book Depository building in Dallas. That museum also owns one of the original copies of the film made during the afternoon and early evening of the day of the assassination.

In the end, Zapruder and his family benefited a great deal financially from the film. An entire generation of conspiracy theorists have also done well for themselves by using the film as proof that there any number of alternate realities related to the assassination. As late as 2003, an ABC News poll showed that 7 out of 10 Americans believe the Kennedy assassination was part of a plot and not the act of a lone killer. Perhaps the Zapruder film raised more questions than it answered.

Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech, March 5, 1946

2010-03-04T20:16:00.002-05:00

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Today in 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave an address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri entitled "The Sinews of Peace" in which he stated that "an iron curtain" had been placed across Europe. Every eastern European country behind this iron curtain had fallen or would soon fall under the Soviet Union's influence, both economically and militarily. While it is arguable whether Churchill's speech marked the beginning of the Cold War, it was certainly an accurate predictor of the events that would shape Europe for the next 45 years.

Use of the term iron curtain to describe the divide between eastern and western Europe was not new. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister, had used the term early in 1945 to describe the oncoming Soviet sphere of influence. However, it was Winston Churchill who brought the term to public attention. It was soon a household word across the English-speaking world.

Churchill's speech was initially met with widespread condemnation. President Harry Truman even went so far as to offer to send the USS Missouri to pick up Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and bring him to the United States so he could refute Churchill's assertions. Most of the American public still viewed the Soviet Union as an ally since the Second World War had ended a mere seven months before. Their control of half of Europe was still seen as a temporary measure.

The tension between the Soviet Union and the rest of the allied powers was nothing new. During the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920, England, France, Japan and the United States had sent troops to support the White Russians, the forces who wanted to restore the monarchy in Russia. It was not an action easily forgotten by the communists.

On the eve of the Second World War, the Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, a non-aggression agreement that, while only lasting two years, made many in the West believe that Josef Stalin was willing to do business with anyone. At the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Stalin demanded a buffer zone of Soviet client states be allowed to exist to guard against any future attacks on the communist nation. While Churchill was dead set against such a division of Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt agreed to the plan. It would lead to the virtual enslavement of millions of Eastern Europeans.

While many in the western world were angered by Churchill's assertions, those who worked behind the scenes were beginning to see the truth of his words. George Kennan, Deputy Chief of Mission to the Soviet Union, sent a cable to the US State Department on February 22, 1946, a document that would become known as the Long Telegram. In it, Kennan asserted that the Soviet Union perceived itself to be locked in an unending struggle with capitalism and that Soviet leaders did not have an accurate picture of either the outside world or events in their own nation. He went on to call for economic pressure against the Soviet Union.

Kennan's telegram, which more closely matched Churchill's assertions than any other observation to come from behind the Iron Curtain, was widely circulated at the US State Department and even the White House. The Long Telegram helped to form the basis of American Cold War strategy.

While it can be argued that Churchill's claim of the existence of an Iron Curtain may have been premature in March, 1946, it didn't talk long for its existence to become obvious. By the end of the year, the Truman administration was saying behind closed doors that a reunification of Germany was an impossibility, despite Soviet promises to the contrary. Early in 1948, the Soviets declared their zone of occupation in Germany to be a separate nation, thus creating East Germany. That summer, the Berlin Blockade began when the Soviets closed all the roads from West Germany to Berlin, which was located deep inside East Germany.

While the blockade ended on May 11, 1949, the Cold War was well underway. Tensions in Europe would rise and fall over the next four decades, but a constant state of pseudo-war always existed along both sides of the Iron Curtain. The fall of the USSR in 1991 and the subsequent opening of Soviet archives has given us a glimpse of what went on in Moscow during those early years of the Cold War.

Churchill's assertion that the Soviets were bent on expansion was true, as was his belief that communist activities in nations around the world were being funded by Moscow. In the end, Churchill was vindicated. His words were true---they were simply delivered to a nation not yet ready to accept reality.

The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapped, March 1, 1932

2010-03-02T20:07:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1932, Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s 20-month old son, Charles Lindbergh III, was kidnapped from the family’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey. The ensuing months became a strange tale of con men, mob figures, ransom notes, and other details more numerous than can be covered in one short podcast. Because of this event, a German immigrant would go to the electric chair, kidnapping would become a federal crime in the United States, and a nation would become enthralled in an event so heavily reported that writer H.L. Mencken dubbed it “the biggest story since the resurrection.”

The Lindbergh baby, as the couple’s son came to be known, went missing on the evening of March 1st when the family’s nanny found the child missing at 10pm. Charles Lindbergh immediately searched the house and the surrounding grounds, which led to the discovery of a ladder on the ground below the nursery’s second floor window. He also discovered a letter on the windowsill, but did not open it in the hopes that it might contain fingerprints of the kidnapper.

The local police soon arrived and were followed by the New Jersey State Police. It was at this early hour that the investigation began to break down. None of the property was marked off, meaning that policemen and reporters were soon walking in areas that potentially contained clues of the child’s disappearance. No fingerprint evidence was found on the ransom envelope; when it was opened, a poorly written note demanded $50,000 and said that instructions for delivery would be sent in 4-5 days. The note also demanded that the police not become involved.

Lindbergh’s concern for his son’s safety lead him to make many rash decisions and follow many leads without telling the police or, later, the FBI. His advisors initially told him that the Mafia had been involved in the kidnapping, so he contacted two speakeasy owners who were reputed to have mob ties. They turned out to also be working for a New York newspaper, who bought a copy of the ransom note from them. The distinct markings on the note were soon common knowledge, meaning that anyone now had the ability to pose as the kidnapper.

The Lindberghs eventually came to trust a man named John Condon, who became the go-between for the family and the kidnappers. On April 1, Condon received a letter claiming that the kidnappers were ready to receive their payment, but that the ransom was now $70,000 since the police were involved. The ransom was delivered to a cemetary by Condon and Lindbergh, who were given a note claiming that the child was being held aboard a boat named The Nelly in Martha’s Vineyard. No such boat existed. The Lindberghs had been fooled.

Six weeks later, the body of a toddler was found in the woods about five miles from the Lindbergh home. It was immediately identified by the Lindbergh and the child’s nanny as, indeed, being that of Charles Lindbergh III. However, the body was badly decomposed and even the child’s physician later said that there was no way he could have identified the child beyond a certainty.

With their child supposedly dead, the Lindbergh’s only hope was to catch his killer. They hoped to do this by use of the ransom money, which was composed of marked bills and gold certificates. Their serial numbers had been sent around to any public place in the area where they might turn up. On September 18, 1934, an alert gas station attendant found one of the bills mixed in with others that a customer had used to buy gas. He wrote down the license plate number of the car and called the police. This soon led to the arrest of a German immigrant, Bruno Hauptmann.

A search of Hauptmann’s home turned up $15,000 of the ransom money. As with the Lindbergh home two years earlier, the house was not secured and reporters roamed the place freely. Hauptmann was arrested and charged with kidnapping and murder. The trial was held in Flemington, New Jersey, a small town that was soon overrun with reporters and the curious. Unable to afford an attorney, a British newspaper hired one for him---a man named Edward J. Reilly. People who knew him called him “Deathhouse Riley” because so many of his clients ended up on death row.

Between his incompetent defense team and public pressure, Hauptmann never stood a chance. Despite a lack of certain proof, Hauptmann was convicted of the crimes and was sentenced to death. His appeals process netted the same outcome, except for the fact that the Governor of New Jersey at that time actually intervened on the man’s behalf to no avail.

Bruno Hauptmann was executed on April 3, 1936. The Lindbergh family donated their New Jersey estate to charity and moved to Europe to escape the media spotlight. Soon after and probably because of the Lindbergh kidnapping, the United States soon made kidnapping a federal crime. It remains so to this day.

Admiral Kimmel Born, February 26, 1882 (Part One)

2010-02-25T21:07:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1882, future US Navy Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel was born in Henderson, Kentucky. Kimmel gained notoriety for his role as the Commander of the Pacific Fleet at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Today, the Kimmel family continues to fight for an accurate public accounting of his actions before and during that fateful day.

Husband Kimmel graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1904 and began a career that would span more than four decades. He served aboard several battleships, including service in the Atlantic during the First World War. He later commanded two destroyer divisions and the battleship USS New York. He had the honor of serving as an aide to the Assistant Secretary of Navy in 1915; that assistant secretary's name was Franklin Roosevelt.

Kimmel was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral in 1937 and four years later, in February, 1941, he was given command of the Pacific Fleet. He gained a temporary promotion to the four stars of a full Admiral as the position demanded. He relieved Admiral James Richardson, whom President Roosevelt had fired due to the Admiral's opposition to moving the Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii in the summer of 1940. Richardson believed that this move placed the fleet at undue risk. Pearl Harbor, he argued, did not have the facilities to fully support such an influx of ships. Furthermore, Richardson believed that Pearl Harbor could not be adequately defended against an air attack. His willingness to state his opinion as an experienced naval officer cost him his career. Admiral Kimmel understood the deficiencies of Pearl Harbor itself and the poor condition of the local defense. The War Department allocated 180 B-17 Flying Fortresses to the Hawaiian Department for long-range reconnaissance and anti-shipping functions, but they were slow in coming; by December, 1941, only 12 had arrived. Two weeks before the attack, the Chief of Naval Operations informed the Navy command in Hawaii that there were no additional planes available. Admiral Kimmel and his Army counterpart, Lt. General Walter Short, knew that an air attack on Pearl Harbor would be devastating, but their areas of responsibility were obviously not high on the priority list at the War Department.

On November 27, 1941, the Chief of Naval Operations sent Kimmel and other commanders in the Pacific the now-famous "war warning" message, in which he stated that negotiations with Japan were breaking down and that an offensive push by the Japanese military was expected within the next few days. This message is often cited as proof that Kimmel knew of an impending attack but did little to prepare for it. However, a closer look at the wording of the message shows that no one in the Navy Department expected an attack at Pearl Harbor; instead, the Japanese were expected to move against the Philippines (which they did) or other targets in the Southwest Pacific.

Admiral Kimmel assumed, as any commander would, that any intelligence information related to his command would be forwarded to him as soon as it was made available. This was not the case. While the US Navy had been reading most of the Japanese radio intercepts for months before Pearl Harbor, several vital messages were withheld from Kimmel for reasons which are still unknown. He was not told, for example, that in September, 1941, Tokyo had ordered its consul general in Honolulu to make a detailed report of the ships present in Pearl Harbor as well as their movements. After November 15, he was ordered to make such a report twice a week. This would have told Kimmel exactly what he needed to know: that the Japanese were certainly planning to hit Pearl Harbor. Information of this type would have allowed the Admiral to order the entire Pacific Fleet to sea from where it could have better defended against an air attack. As it was, the only capital ships at sea on the morning of December 7, 1941 were the Fleet's aircraft carriers.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was an unmitigated success for the Japanese Imperial Navy. The Pacific Fleet lost four battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers and two auxiliary ships along with nearly 200 aircraft; over 2400 Americans, both military and civilian, lost their lives. Admiral Kimmel was relieved of his command ten days after the attack. He reverted back to his permanent rank of Rear Admiral (contrary to popular myth, he was not demoted as a punishment) and was allowed to retire. His son, Manning, died during the war when the submarine he commanded struck a Japanese mine.

Kimmel spent the rest of his life defending his actions during the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Navy eventually pinned him with most of the blame for the outcome of the attack, a sting from which he never recovered. Edwin Latyon, Kimmel's chief intelligence officer, later related in his book about that attack: “Kimmel stood by the windows of his office at the submarine base, his jaw set in stony anguish. As he watched the disaster across the harbor unfold with terrible fury, a spent .50 caliber machine gun bullet crashed through the glass. It brushed the admiral before it clanged to the floor. It cut his white jacket and raised a welt on his chest. 'It would have been merciful had it killed me,' Kimmel murmured to his communications officer.”

Tomorrow night, we're going to delve a little more into Kimmel's actions before December 7th, 1941 and the information that Washington did and did not share with the two commanders in Hawaii. We're also going to look at the involvement of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in the post-attack investigation and see how the Kimmel family is continuing to fight to clear the late Admiral's name.

Chester Nimitz Born, February 24, 1885

2010-02-24T21:31:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1885, Chester William Nimitz was born in Fredericksburg, Texas. No one knew at the time that this boy from a small town far away from any large body of water would one day become indispensable in his role as a Fleet Admiral during the Second World War.

The United States Naval Academy was not young Nimitz’s first choice as a place to pursue a college education. He initially applied to West Point, but all the appointments for that year, 1901, had already been allocated. Learning of Nimitz’s desire to attend a service academy, Congressman James Slayden informed him that he still had one appointment left to the Naval Academy. Nimitz knew this was the only shot he was likely to get for continuing his education, so he applied for and earned the appointment. He graduated from the Academy in 1905 ranked seventh out of a class of 114.

Nimitz served his required two years at sea before being commissioned an Ensign in 1907. He served on a series of surface ships, from a battleship to a destroyer which he ran aground near a beach in the Philippines while he was conning the ship, earning him a letter of reprimand but not seriously damaging his career.

The beginning of 1909 saw a radical change in Nimitz’s career. In January he was assigned to the First Submarine Flotilla and was given command of it less than six months later. As a Lieutenant, Nimitz commanded a series of submarines, including the first USS Plunger, later known by the less-than-memorable designation A-1. The tiny vessel was, according to Nimitz, “a cross between a Jules Verne fantasy and a humpbacked whale”. The subs Nimitz commanded were far smaller and cruder than the fleet boats that would prove so devastating to Japanese shipping a generation later, but they provided invaluable experience. By the end of the First World War in 1918, Commander Nimitz was the Senior Member for the Navy’s Board of Submarine Design. He was considered by both his superiors and subordinates to be the service’s leading expert on submarine design and operations.

The inter-war years were busy ones for Nimitz as he held various commands both at sea and on land. While he remained involved in the submarine community, he also commanded cruiser and battleship divisions. It was during this time he lost part of one finger during an accident involving a diesel engine; he was able to keep the rest of the digit only because the machine was jammed by his Naval Academy ring. By the time the Second World War began in Europe in September, 1939, Rear Admiral Nimitz was the Navy’s Chief of the Bureau of Navigation.

Nimitz became a full Admiral soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, skipping the three-star rank of Vice Admiral. He was selected to be Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, known in navy parlance as CinCPAC. In March, 1942, British and American war planners divided the Pacific theater of operations into three parts: the Southwest Pacific Area commanded by General Douglas MacArthur, the Southeast Pacific Area and the Pacific Ocean Areas, known as POA, an area that encompassed most of the Pacific Ocean minus the Philippines and New Guinea. Nimitz was given command of the POA in addition to his position as CinCPAC, two titles that he would carry for the rest of the war.

Nimitz went to war with the fleet he had until the forces he wished for were ready. Although the attack on Pearl Harbor had been psychologically devastating, the Navy’s Pacific Fleet remained a potent albeit under-equipped fighting force. Within days of the attack, the submarine force was underway from Hawaii and ports in Australia, hunting for Japanese merchantmen and warships. During the first year of the war, the men under Nimitz’s command had but five aircraft carriers at their disposal. At one point in November, 1942, there were only two operational carriers holding out against the Japanese fleet. But with these meager resources, the US Navy stopped a Japanese invasion of Port Moresby at the battle of Coral Sea and put the Japanese in a permanent defensive position at the battle of Midway.

Nimitz utilized an island-hopping strategy by which heavily fortified Japanese-held islands were bypassed when possible in favor of weakly defended locations. The defenders of the islands that were skipped over soon found themselves behind the American lines without hope of re-supply or rescue. Ten of thousands of Japanese soldiers were thus taken out of the war without a shot being fired at or by them.

In December, 1944, the grade of Fleet Admiral of the Navy was established by Congress. President Franklin Roosevelt promoted Admiral Nimitz the next day, making him a five-star admiral. Three other admirals were appointed to this rank that December; one more, Admiral Halsey, was given a fifth star immediately after the war. These promotions corresponded with five Army promotions to five-star rank at the same time.

On September 2nd, 1945, the Second World War came to an end with the formal surrender of the Japanese on board the battleship USS Missouri. Fleet Admiral Nimitz signed the instrument of surrender representing the United States. He returned to America soon thereafter and was promoted to Chief of Naval Operations in November, 1945. He served one two-year term at this post, during which time he oversaw the downsizing of the world’s largest navy to a fraction of its wartime size. He left the position in December, 1947, but since a five-star admiral is technically on active duty until his death, Nimitz never retired.

Chester Nimitz died on February 20th,1966 at the naval quarters on Yorba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay from complications related to a stroke and pneumonia. With him died the rank of Fleet Admiral, which is still listed as a valid grade, but can only be re-activated by an act of Congress. He left behind his wife, Catherine, and four children--- three daughters and a son. Chester, Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps by graduating from the Naval Academy in 1936 and serving in submarines before retiring as a Rear Admiral in 1957.

The 500 For 5 Campaign PLEASE LISTEN

2010-02-23T21:03:00.001-05:00

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Washington Monument Dedicated, February 21, 1885

2010-02-21T18:51:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1885, the Washington Monument was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The giant obelisk is probably the best known of the United States Presidential Memorials, having been named in honor of George Washington, the nation's first President and leader of the Continental Army during the War for Independence.

The building of the structure that would become known as the Washington Monument was begun in 1848; the cornerstone of the monument was laid on July 4th of that year. The Washington National Monument Society, a group of citizens who raised the initial money for the construction, settled on a design for a giant obelisk surround by a circular colonnade. Had the monument been built to these plans, the finished product would have resembled the Jefferson Memorial with a giant Egyptian-like obelisk protruding from the top. The designer, chosen from among contestants in a design competition, was Robert Mills. While Mills’ design was incredible for its day, there was one problem: the Society had raised $87,000, but the finished structure would cost over $1 million.

Undeterred by this lack of funds, the Society decided to begin work with the money it had in the hopes that a partially finished monument would help them raise more money. This money ran out in 1854, but soon thereafter Congress appropriated $200,000 to the project. However, this money was withdrawn from the Society when members of the American Party (better known as the “Know-Nothings”), effectively took over the Society and began to build their anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic beliefs into the monument by refusing some of the stones donated by different states and foreign powers. The block of marble contributed by Pope Pius IX in the early 1850's was removed and purportedly thrown into the Potomac River.

Mismanagement by the hijacked Society and the Civil War brought construction to a halt for almost twenty years, until 1876. That year marked the centennial of the Declaration of Independence and Congress, feeling patriotic, once again granted $200,000 to the project. The obelisk had been stuck at 1/3 of its planned height for two decades and engineers were worried that the monument’s foundation was no longer stable. Studies were made and it was eventually decided to move on with the project.

Tastes in design had changed significantly in the 30 years since Mills had submitted his plans in the 1840’s. It was eventually decided to abandon the colonnades and build a simple obelisk shaped like those found in Egypt. When construction got underway again in 1879, the US Army Corps of Engineers was managing the project.

One of the initial challenges facing the Corps can still be seen today. The bottom third of the monument is lighter than the rest of the 40,000 ton structure. This is because the same quarry stones used in the initial construction beginning in 1848 could no longer be found a generation later.

Upon its completion in December, 1884, the Washington Monument was the world's tallest structure, a record that would stand for five years, when Paris' Eiffel Tower was completed.

The monument’s apex point is made of 100 ounces of aluminum, a metal that was almost unknown by people not familiar with metallurgy in the 19th century. It was placed there in December, 1884, over 35 years after the cornerstone was laid. The final monument was and is today 555ft 5 1/8 inches tall and 55ft 1 1/2 inches wide at the base, at least according to who you ask. These figures are the ones used by the National Park Service; others vary only because the aluminum pyramid at the top of the monument has been blunted by about a half inch by lightning strikes. Eight lightning rods were added in 1934, which extend six inches above the tip. Some documentation includes these rods in the height total. The walls of the monument become thinner as the obelisk grows taller. At the base, they are 15 feet thick at the base and only 18 inches thick at the observation level. In 2004, nearly 400,000 people visited the monument.

Auschwitz Liberated, January 27, 1945

2010-01-26T20:59:00.001-05:00

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Today in 1945, the 322nd Infantry Division of the Soviet Red Army liberated 7,500 survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Although the exact number will never be known, most historians agree that between 1.1 and 1.5 million human beings were murdered there.

Auschwitz was not a single camp, but a complex of 3 main camps and dozens of sub-camps located about 60 kilometers southwest of Krakow, Poland. Auschwitz I was the first camp built at the site, which had been a Polish Army barracks. The administration offices were located there and it was also the initial place of confinement for the first group of prisoners, Polish citizens who were sent there in June, 1940. Once Germany invaded the Soviet Union in May, 1941, Soviet POWs were sent to the camp as were German civilian criminals, homosexuals and anyone else who did not fit into the tight social constructs of the Nazis. By 1942, there were 20,000 prisoners in Auschwitz I. The entrance to the camp had a sign posted over it which read, in German, “work liberates” or “work sets us free”. Similar signs were displayed above many other concentration camp gates, but this was the first.

Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, is the camp that most people think of when they think of Auschwitz. Most of the people imprisoned her were guilty of nothing more than being Jewish. Auschwitz II was located about 3 kilometers from the first camp and was built during 1941. It was over 5 square kilometers in area and could hold up to 100,000 prisoners at a time. While forced labor went on in every part of the Auschwitz complex, Auschwitz II’s main purpose was, simply, extermination. By the spring of 1942, the camp had four large gas chambers capable of murdering 10,000 people at a time. The bodies were then cremated.

Auschwitz III and the other sub-camps were labor camps built to assist Germany industry. They produced many items for the war effort, always under the watchful eye of camp doctors who sent the weak and injured to Auschwitz II for extermination.

Most of the Jews, Poles and Roma who were sent to the camps arrived by train. For the first couple years of operation, the trains were emptied out at a nearby rail terminal and the prisoners were marched to the compound. In 1944, because of the high volume of people being sent there, the tracks were extended into the camps themselves.

Once at the camps, the prisoners were immediately divided into groups: those who would go to work, those who would be held for medical experimentation and those who would go straight to the gas chambers. Jews from all over Europe were victims of this horrible sorting: Hungary, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Monrovia, Belgium and other nations all saw people ripped from their homes and taken away, never to be seen again.

The liberation of the complex by the Red Army did not spell freedom for all the enslaved. The Soviet POWs held in Auschwitz I were either executed or sent to gulags in the Soviet Union with the accusation that they had conspired with the Nazis. The NKVD, or Soviet secret police, used the complex as a prison before turning it over to the Polish government, which eventually restored parts of the area.

There has been a great controversy over how much the Allies knew about the concentration camps. Photographs were taken of some of the camps by reconnaissance flights, but this was because most of them were near potential industrial targets. It is safe to say that, by 1944 at the latest, the Allies were well aware of Nazi Germany's intention to rid Europe of Jews and other grou considered undesirable. It has been argued that bombing the camps themselves would have killed many innocent people and done little to slow the genocide, but we will never know. What is certain is that we must never forget what happened.

Prohibition Wins the Day, January 16, 1919

2010-01-17T00:05:00.002-05:00

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Today in 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified when Wyoming became the 36th state in the Union to ratify it. When the amendment went into effect, exactly one year later, it ensured that alcohol (or “intoxicating liquors”, the term used in the amendment) would become all but impossible to obtain by legal means. Thus, the United States entered the era of Prohibition, the unintended consequences of which would have a far-reaching impact on American society.

The temperance movement in the United States dates back to the time of the War for Independence. By the beginning of the Civil War some 80 years later, more than 3 million Americans out of a population of 31 million belonged to an organized temperance group. These groups had a tremendous effect on society and were able to influence various state legislatures to pass laws enacting strict limitations on how, where and to whom alcohol could be sold. Many states endorsed an anti-alcohol curriculum under pressure from temperance groups, the aim being to inform young people of the purported evils of liquor long before they took that first drink.

Out of the temperance movement grew the political prohibition movement. A national move towards a prohibition on alcohol sales first gained strength in the 1840’s, but the Civil War caused the movement to fade during the 1860’s. The last quarter of the 19th century, however, witnessed a resurgence with the establishment of such groups as the Prohibition Party and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1881, Kansas became the first state to outlaw alcoholic beverages by constitutional amendment. By the turn of the century, most states contained at least a few dry towns or counties; a large number of those still exist today.

Many Prohibition groups, called “dries”, were church-based, mainly Protestant denominations. The anti-Prohibition groups, or “wets”, tended to be mostly Roman Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutherans from Germany. Both major political parties had wet and dry factions. The issue was so contentious that during the 1916 Presidential election, both Democrat Woodrow Wilson and his challenger, Republican Charles Evans Hughes, ignored the issue. Wilson won the election and when Congress convened in January, 1917, the mandate was clear: regardless of party, dries outnumbered wets in Congress by 2-to-1.

Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate passed the resolution calling for the Eighteenth Amendment in December, 1917. There were forty-eight states in the Union at that time, so thirty-six state legislatures would have to ratify the amendment in order for it to be certified as part of the Constitution. This amendment was unique up to that point in American constitutional history in that it contained a codicil requiring it to be certified within seven years. The states needed barely one. Starting in January, 1918, one state after another voted in favor of the document. On January 16th, 1919, Wyoming became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. On January 29th, Secretary of State Frank Polk certified the ratification process. The amendment went into effect one year later. The Noble Experiment, as Prohibition came to be called in the United States by its proponents, was underway.

It is a peculiarity of the American legal system that Congress had to take one more action in order to give the Eighteenth Amendment teeth: it had to pass a bill which defined the term “intoxicating liquors” and implemented the amendment. This was accomplished with the National Prohibition Act, more popularly know as the Volstead Act. The law did not specifically outlaw the use of intoxicating liquors, but it superseded all state laws regarding the manufacture and sale of liquor, essentially forbidding any drink containing more than 0.5% alcohol.

Since distilleries, breweries and alcohol importation companies suddenly became illegal enterprises, those who made their livelihoods outside the law soon took over these businesses. All of the gangsters who would become household names during the 1920's owed their wealth and fame to the fact that they manufactured or imported beer and liquor for use in illegal bars, or speakeasies as they came to be known. The Mafia and other organized crime groups began to wield tremendous power in larger cities, especially those that served as distribution points for liquor importation. Southern moonshiners suddenly found their product in hot demand, resulting in a career boost for bootleggers and their fast cars. Modern stock car racing in the United States can trace its roots directly back to the young men who delivered moonshine all over the South at night in souped-up cars capable of outrunning all but the most aggressive police officers.

The surge in organized crime during the 1920's caused some who once supported Prohibition to re-think their position. The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression also helped to change the nation's attitude towards an industry that, if once again legitimized, would provide tens of thousands of jobs for the nation's unemployed. By 1933, public opinion had turned hard against Prohibition. In February of that year, the Blaine Act proposed another amendment to the Constitution, this one intended to end Prohibition and return control of alcohol manufacture and sales to the states. On December 5th, 1933, Utah ratified the Twenty-First Amendment and national Prohibition became another chapter in the history of the United States.

Dan Cooper Gets Away, November 24, 1971

2009-11-29T20:33:00.000-05:00

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Today in 1971, Northwest Airlines flight 305 began a scheduled run between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, an easy flight by airline standards. One man on board the aircraft, however, had a different flight plan in mind. Thus begins the story of D.B. Cooper, perhaps the best known airline hijacker of the 20th century. His identity and his ultimate fate remain a mystery more than 38 years later.

On the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper bought an airline ticket at the Northwest Airlines counter in Portland, Oregon. He was dressed in a dark suit covered by a raincoat and had short hair, the uniform of the day for business travelers. In those days of nearly non-existent airline security, Cooper boarded his flight with a briefcase that was not inspected. He checked no baggage.

While the aircraft was still on the ground in Portland, Cooper slipped a note to a passing stewardess. Thinking it contained the passenger’s phone number and request for a date, the woman slipped the note into her pocket and continued down the aisle. After the flight was in the air, Cooper stopped the same stewardess and told her calmly, “Miss, you’d better have a look at that note. I have a bomb.” The note reiterated Cooper’s statement, informing the flight crew that a hijacking was underway. Captain William Scott, the plane’s pilot, radioed the air traffic control center at Seattle-Tacoma airport and informed them of the situation. Scott was told to cooperate with the hijacker until the FBI and state law enforcement could be notified. In the meantime, one of the flight attendants talked Cooper into showing her the inside of the briefcase, which appeared to her to contain a real bomb.

Cooper’s demands were simple: he wanted $200,000 in cash and four parachutes, two mains and two emergency chutes which are worn over the chest. He also wanted the plane to be refueled in Seattle. The request for so many chutes made officials wonder if Cooper had an accomplice on the plane or if he was planning on taking a hostage with him. Regardless, the money was gathered and the parachutes were borrowed from a Seattle parachute school. Once informed that his demands were being met Cooper allowed Captain Scott to land the aircraft at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He then allowed the passengers to leave the aircraft in exchange for the parachutes and money; some of them did not realize the plane had been hijacked until they were in the airport terminal. As the plane took off again, only four people were on board: Captain Scott, his co-pilot, the flight attendant to whom Cooper had slipped his note and Cooper himself.

Once airborne, Cooper ordered the flight crew to fly towards the Mexican border at a speed not exceeding 170 knots or about 195 miles an hour. He also ordered them to stay under 10,000 feet, keep the landing gear down and raise the 727’s flaps by 15 degrees. This last demand later became important in the search for Cooper, as it indicated the hijacker probably had more than a passing familiarity with civilian jet aircraft.

The stewardess remained in the main cabin per Cooper’s order. Once the airliner was at altitude, he asked her to show him how to open the plane’s aft stairway. At that time, the Boeing 727 was the only civilian aircraft in commercial service that had a stairway at its tail end. The stewardess showed Cooper, but then told him that once opened, the stairway could not be raised again while in flight as it was only lowered by gravity and not a hydraulic mechanism. The hijacker then ordered the young woman into the cockpit with the pilot and co-pilot. Around 8:13PM local time, the crew reported feeling a “bump” from the rear of the aircraft. Visibility was poor that night, which worked in Cooper’s favor. Following the Northwest Airlines plane were two Air Force F-106 fighters, which stayed far enough behind the 727 so as to not attract attention. Between the fog and the darkness, they did not see anyone leave from the aft stairway at 8:13. D.B. Cooper had jumped into the night and into the fog of history, making a clean getaway.

At 11PM that night, Northwest Airlines flight 305 landed safely in Reno, Nevada, dragging her aft stairway along the tarmac. FBI agents and local police boarded the plane and searched for anything Cooper may have left behind. In the end, they found fingerprints which may or may not have been his, two of the four parachutes and the hijacker’s tie and tie clip. The area thought to be Cooper’s landing site was searched for eighteen days but nothing was found. In April, 1972, 400 soldiers from Fort Lewis, Washington spent six weeks scouring the same area on foot to no avail. The FBI questioned a man named Dan B. Cooper, but he was nowhere near the area on the night of the hijacking and did not fit the composite sketch made by the FBI. The name D.B. Cooper, however, stuck with several media sources and became the name of the hijacker, despite the fact he gave his name as Dan and never used a middle name.

More than 1,000 people have been suspected of being Dan Cooper over the past 36 years. A copycat hijacker, Richard McCoy, Jr., was suspected of being Cooper because his method of taking over the plane and his demands were so similar. However, the FBI eliminated him as a suspect when it was revealed he was in California on the day of the hijacking. Kenneth Christiansen, John List and Duane Weber remain strong suspects, made more so by the dozens of books and television shows written about the incident. In recent years, several people have come forward claiming that one of their deceased relatives was Cooper. All have evidence to support their claims, but no “smoking gun” has ever been found. The case remains open with the FBI.

The simple truth is that we will probably never know who hijacked that Northwest Airlines flight in November, 1971. In fact, there is no evidence that the perpetrator even survived his jump from the aircraft. No matter his fate, D.B. Cooper will remain a recognizable name in the annals of American crime for generations to come.

That Terrible Day in Dallas, November 22, 1963

2009-11-22T16:36:00.003-05:00

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Today in 1963, US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas, Texas. The shock, anger, and sadness which the American people felt had not been seen since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Not until the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, would the nation come together again in such a fashion.

JFK, as the President was known, was born into a family whose patriarch had political aspirations of the highest order. When the oldest son in the family, Joe Jr., was killed during the Second World War, the senior Kennedy’s hopes and dreams fell to the next son in line, John Fitzgerald. John had been a sickly child but compensated for it by keeping up with his peers in sports and after-hours activities. During the Second World War, he commanded Torpedo Boat PT-109. On August 2nd, 1943, Kennedy lost his command when the comparatively small wooden boat was hit and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy acted bravely and saw to the welfare of his men; he swam several miles with one of the injured crewman in tow. This incident, along with problems found during childhood, conspired to cause Kennedy severe back pain for the rest of his life.

After the war, Kennedy won a seat in the US House of Representatives representing Massachusetts’ 11th Congressional District. He held that office until 1952, when he won a Senate seat which he held until the Presidential race in 1960. That November, Kennedy won one of the closest elections in US history, barely beating his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon. He was the 2nd youngest president to hold the office and was the first and thus far only Catholic to serve in the Oval Office.

While Kennedy was certainly popular, he had his fair share of enemies. By today’s standards, JFK would be considered a moderate conservative. His dealings with the Soviet Union were tough, but not tough enough to please the far right in the nation. He worked for desegregation and civil rights legislation, a move which alienated him from some Southerners. If he was going to be re-elected in 1964, Kennedy had to mend many fences.

The trip to Dallas in November, 1963, was an attempt to bridge the gap with Texas Democrats, who were split on important issues of the day and fighting amongst themselves. It was also a fund-raising opportunity. Kennedy had lost Dallas County in the 1960 election and was acutely aware that he was not popular there with the majority of voters. U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was met with a near-riot when he visited Dallas the previous month and advised Kennedy not to go. But the Dallas Police Department promised increased security, so the trip was on.

Air Force One arrived at Dallas’ Love field 20 minutes before noon on the 22nd. The President’s itinerary called for his motorcade to travel through downtown and Dealey Plaza on their way to the Dallas Business and Trade Mart where the President was scheduled to have lunch with local business and political leaders.
As the motorcade made a left-hand turn onto Elm Street, over two dozen people recorded the moment with still and motion-picture cameras. The most famous of these recordings was filmed by a man named Abraham Zapruder, a Russian immigrant who owned a clothing manufacturing company located diagonally from Dealey Plaza. The Zapruder film today represents the most complete record of what happened next.

Witness testimony concerning traumatic events is not always accurate, but the general consensus is that the first of three shots was fired from the sixth floor of the Book Depository building at 12:30PM. The building was located on Elm Street, so the shooter had a downward facing shot into the President’s limousine. The first shot missed the President, but the second one hit both him and Texas Governor John Connelly, and the third hit Kennedy in the side of the head, causing the fatal wound. Realizing what had happened in only six seconds, the Presidential motorcade moved out at high speed towards Parkland Hospital several miles away.

The nation first learned of the shooting barely ten minutes after it occurred. Walter Cronkite with CBS News read an audio only statement which only mentioned what was then known: the President had been seriously wounded. It was 2PM Eastern Standard Time (1PM in Dallas) before the CBS News cameras in Cronkite’s New York studio were ready. Approximately 40 minutes later, the by-then veteran reporter told the nation that John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States was dead. All three television networks cancelled their regular programming for four days to cover the assassination without commercial breaks, something that would not happen again until the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

While the fate of the President played out at Parkland Hospital, Dallas Police were hunting for the shooter or shooters. Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who would later be charged with the crime, was briefly detained by police in the second floor lunchroom of the Book Depository, but was released. He left the building by its front door less than five minutes after the shooting. Several minutes later, the Book Depository was sealed off after witnesses claimed they saw a shooter on one of the upper floors. Police quickly found an Italian-made rifle on the sixth floor, leaning against a wall near a window.

At 1:15PM local time, about 45 minutes after the shooting, Oswald shot and killed a Dallas police officer less than one mile from the room he rented. This act was seen by at least 13 people and led to Oswald being tracked to a nearby movie theater, where he was apprehended after a brief struggle with police. He was taken to the Dallas jail.

While Oswald was being transported to jail, another incident worthy of mention was occurring at Parkland Hospital. Since the President had been shot in Texas, state law dictated that his autopsy must take place within the boundaries of the state. Since federal law at that time did not show shooting the President to be a crime, the only charges leveled against Oswald would be those pressed by the state of Texas. This added strength to the state’s position that the autopsy must occur in Dallas. However, the Secret Service detachment with the President’s body was under orders to return to Air Force One for an immediate flight back to Washington. In a hallway of the hospital, Dallas police officers and Secret Service agents brandished their service revolvers as they argued about what to do. In the midst of this tumult was Jacqueline Kennedy, who never left the President’s side. Eventually, the Secret Service won the debate and the coffin containing the President’s body was rushed to Love Field and placed aboard Air Force One. Before the plane left the tarmac, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States.

An industry has grown around various theories related to the Kennedy assassination. What I present here are facts that are considered official, although details about the shooting and the disposition of the three bullets remain in doubt. The Warren Commission, the first body to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald acted alone, thereby giving an official stamp to the “lone gunman” theory. Oswald could not be questioned, as he had been killed by club owner Jack Ruby the Sunday after the assassination as he was escorted through the parking garage of the Dallas Police Department. This shooting caused some conspiracy theorists to believe the murder was a Mafia hit job, since Ruby had those kinds of connections. Others place the blame on the Soviets, Southern separatists, and even the CIA.

In the late 1970’s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, known as the HSCA, returned to the issue of what really happened on that day in Dallas. It concluded that the FBI did a poor job of investigating the shooting, including improper handling of important evidence. The Secret Service was called out for not providing enough protection given the nature of politics in Dallas. While the HSCA did not directly question the authenticity of the lone gunman theory, it shed enough light on the issue to put the true nature of events in question for many Americans. In 2003, ABC News conducted a poll in which 70% of respondents stated they believe the assassination was part of a plot, not the act of a lone shooter. While most of the documents related to that day have been released to the public, a small number will not be available until 2017. Will they answer the question with any finality? Probably not, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Future Career, November 9, 2009

2009-11-09T21:12:00.000-05:00

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Lee's First Invasion Of The North, September 4, 1862

2009-09-07T11:26:00.002-04:00

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On this day in 1862 Confederate General Robert E Lee began his first invasion of the North, initiating the Maryland Campaign that would culminate in the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg as it was called in the South). Little did he know that he would set off a chain of events that would change the war and the course of the nation forever.

By the late summer of 1862 the American Civil War had taken a dramatic turn. Barely a month before, Union General George B McClellan and the Union Army of the Potomac were within site of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. A prolonged and bloody siege of the city seemed inevitable. The Confederacy was facing its first real test. However, as fate would have it, on May 31st 1862 the commander of the Confederate forces, General Joe Johnston, was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines. Without hesitation, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed his most trusted military advisor, Robert E Lee, to take over the command.

Lee came from one of the most celebrated families in the nation. His father ("Light Horse" Harry Lee) was a favorite lieutenant of George Washington and his wife was the granddaughter of Martha Washington. As a commander of men in the field Lee’s brilliance was a somewhat unknown commodity at this time in the war. However, Jefferson Davis could not have chosen a better man for the job. When the Civil War began, Colonel Robert E Lee was considered by his peers as one of the best soldiers the nation had. He was offered the command of all the Union forces by Abraham Lincoln, but he declined and followed his home state of Virginia out of the Union. Replacing General Johnston he named his new command the Army of Northern Virginia; it would become one of the most famous armies in history. In two months the bold and aggressive Lee would shift the fighting from the outskirts of Richmond to within 30 miles of Washington DC. After he forced McClellan off the Virginia Peninsula during the Battles of the Seven Days, he turned north and defeated General Pope at the second Battle of Manassas (also called the 2nd Battle of Bull Run).

With the initiative well in hand Lee had a critical decision to make, and he had several different options to choose from:

He could stay where he was near Manassas Junction and wait for the Federals to attack.

He could withdraw back to the Richmond defenses, dig in and wait for an attack.

He could move his army west into the Shenandoah Valley.

Or he could keep the initiative by continuing the offensive, moving his army into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The first three options presented Lee with no real advantage. Certainly, he could have used this time to rest and refit his tired army. Some of his men had been marching and fighting for months without a break, but fighting from a defensive position was not in Lee’s nature. He also knew that if he assumed a defensive posture, it would be only a matter of time before the superior numbers of men and material the North possessed overwhelmed his army. In the end, Lee decided that the best defense is a good offense.

In addition, an operation into the North presented several military and political possible upsides for the confederacy.

First, they could take the fighting out of the worn down countryside of northern Virginia and into the fertile farmlands of Maryland and Pennsylvania where food and fodder were plentiful. It would also, as the Confederacy believed, allow the citizens of Maryland to throw off the oppressive government of Abraham Lincoln and join ranks with the Confederate states. A victory on northern soil would demonstrate to France and England that the Confederacy was a legitimate nation deserving of recognition. Recognition by Europe was critical to the future of the Southern government. It was equally critical to the Lincoln administration to prevent such a move by England and France.

On the 3rd of September Robert E Lee sent a dispatch to Confederate President Jefferson Davis announcing his intention to take the war to the North, stating “The present seems to be the most propitious time since the commencement of the war for the Confederate Army to enter Maryland.” Lee had good reason to feel an offensive was his best and only move. Because of its recent defeats in the past few months Lee felt the Army of the Potomac was demoralized, beaten and not at all ready for renewed fighting. He also read in the northern papers that the Federal forces were getting some 60,000 raw recruits; it would take some time to train, coordinate, and fold these new men into the army. These two factors made Lee believe that it would be several weeks before the Union Army could get organized and come out of the Washington defenses to offer him battle. “By that time”, Lee told a subordinate, “I will be on the banks of the Susquehanna.”

Opposing Robert E Lee was the dashing young Major General George Brinton McClellan. McClellan was an over achiever his whole life, and early on in the war he was one of the few Union generals who actually won battles. He was soon elevated to commander of the Army of the Potomac and devised a plan that he was sure would defeat the Confederacy. He would float his massive army down the Potomac River and land it on the Virginia Peninsula, overwhelm the Confederates in front of Richmond, capture the city and end the war. This was a very ambitious strategy. Although he was extremely confident in his own abilities, McClellan was glacially slow on the battlefield. For almost a year he drove the Lincoln administration crazy with his incredibly plodding movements.

McClellan was completely out generaled by Lee at what was called The Battles of the Seven Days. After being chased off the Peninsula, his army was taken from him piece by piece to reinforce General Pope now advancing below Washington DC. McClellan was in a state of flux. It would not take long before he was thrust into the spotlight once again. Lee’s Confederates smashed Pope’ army. Defeated, Pope retreated back to Washington DC. Lincoln felt his only choice to save the day was to place Little Mac, as he was called, back in command. For all of his failings as a field commander Lincoln knew McClellan did possess assets that would be essential at this point: he was a master of organizing and training men for war. He was also the one Union general that held the confidence and support of the rank and file soldiers. He would skillfully use these assets to reform and refit the army in an incredibly short amount of time and get it ready for operations.

On September 4th Lee’s army of 40,000 men began to cross the Potomac River at White’s ford about 25 miles upstream from Washington DC. This sent waves of panic and misinformation throughout the North. The ragged and dirty Army of Northern Virginia march confidently into the Union to the strains of “Maryland My Maryland”, the state song. Lee was as confident as his men. But little did he know that McClellan’s Union force of 80,000 men would soon be on the march and in pursuit of him. The overly cautious McClellan was very careful to keep his force between Lee’s and Washington DC.

Then fate took over. On the 13th of September two union soldiers stumbled on a copy of Lee’s Special Order 191 just outside the town of Frederick, Maryland. Carelessly misplaced by a Confederate soldier whose name is lost to history, this order detailed Lee’s entire plan of operation. Lee had divided his army sending a large part of it to capture the federal stronghold at Harpers Ferry. This was one of those rare military opportunities that only happens once in a generation. If he moved quickly, McClellan could destroy the Confederate force in detail. But that was contrary to his nature. He did move just fast enough however to compel Lee to fight a holding action at South Mountain on the 14th. Lee’s force was too small to hold the federals back and they broke through the South Mountain Passes before nightfall. Being in a very tight spot with his army scattered all over Lee contemplated withdrawing from Maryland. Just then a timely message arrived from Confederate General Stonewall Jackson---the garrison at Harpers Ferry had capitulated and he was marching the bulk of his force north to rejoin Lee. It was at this time Lee decided to concentrate his army at the small hamlet of Sharpsburg, Maryland. This quite dusty crossroad sat in a crook of land between the Antietam Creek and the Potomac River. Lee was still in a very vulnerable spot, but he again counted on the slow moving McClellan to give him the time he needed to gather his widely scattered army. McClellan did not disappoint; he did not have his men in place and ready to attack until the night of the 16th. Lee had arranged his men in a defensive line just west of the Antietam Creek. McClellan set up east of the river. The Union general outnumbered his opponent by almost two to one, but he believed just the opposite was true. McClellan sent two corps across the river to attack the confederates at first light the next morning. The Confederates were not fooled by this obvious move and shifted several regiments to their left flank to meet this attack. On that day, September 17th 1862, the epic Battle of Antietam took place. It is known as the bloodiest day in American history. The day would see over 23,000 casualties, including more than 3600 killed. When all of the dust settled and the smoke cleared the massive battle was essentially a tactical draw. But George McClellan could claim a victory as Robert E Lee had to retreat back to Virginia with over 25% of his army killed, wounded, or missing.

During the course of the Maryland Campaign, McClellan had several excellent chances to destroy the rebel army, but he missed every single one. It was a campaign marked by desperate gambles and missed opportunities. McClellan did ,however, manage to check Robert E Lee and his seemingly unstoppable force. In the nine months to follow the Confederate tide would surge again as Lee would go on cement his reputation as one of the finest military minds this nation has ever produced.

Even if it was an incomplete victory in Lincoln’s eyes, it would have to do. He used the political momentum to issue the “Emancipation Proclamation”. This freed all the slaves living in states currently rebelling against the government. It was a political masterstroke. Without immediately freeing a single slave, Lincoln lifted the war to a higher moral ground. It would also end any real hopes of England and France intervening on behalf of the South. The war was dramatically changed, at least north of the Mason Dixon line, from one of preservation of the Union to one of emancipating slaves.

McClellan would eventually be fired by Lincoln because of his unwillingness to persue the Confederates and finish them off.

Undeterred, the audacious Robert E Lee would invade the North again less than a year later. That campaign would culminate near a small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. But that is another story.

An Introduction To The Introductions

2009-08-30T21:03:00.001-04:00

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The most common questions I receive from listeners to this podcast pertain to the voices played during the show's various intros. Tonight, I thought it would be fun to go through the intros and identify each of the voices and when the words were spoken. There are, in total, six variations of the intro, including the one without words you heard at the beginning of tonight's show. The shows theme was written and produced by a listener named Gena, who has steadfastly refused to be further identified. I owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude. She also, by the way, created the artwork for the podcast.

Without any further ado, let's go to the first intro.

The first voice you heard was that of President Franklin Roosevelt. The date was December 8th, 1941 and Roosevelt was addressing a joint session of Congress. As you know, he was there to ask the body to declare war on Japan, which it did. Germany would declare war on the United States on December 11th of that year.

The second voice is that of President Ronald Reagan. The date was June 12th, 1987 and Reagan was addressing the people of West Berlin, a city cut off from East Berlin by a wall erected by the East German government in 1961. We'll hear more from this speech later.

The third voice belongs to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The date was June 22, 1941 and Churchill was speaking to the British public about the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which had begun earlier that day. He said that the invasion was not a surprise to him and that, in fact, he had warned Josef Stalin about Hitler's duplicity. History shows us that Stalin was unprepared for an invasion and millions of Soviet citizens died as a result.

The fourth voice is that of Joseph Welch, who was head consul for the US Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. We could easily fill a podcast discussing Welch's exchange with Senator Joseph McCarthy that day, but the quote you heard was made in defense of a young lawyer who worked for Welch's law firm, a man who McCarthy accussed of belonging to a Communist front organization. The hearings were televised live and many historians believe they ultimately led to the downfall of McCarthy.

Fifth is a quote from President John F. Kennedy. The date was October 22nd, 1962 and Kennedy was addressing the American people on live television, updating them on the status of what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis would soon end peacefully, but on that night it was open question as to whether or not there would be a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The crisis resulted in the installation of a hotline connecting the White House and the Kremlin.

Sixth is part of Lou Gehrig's famous speech, given on July 4th, 1939, which became known as his Farewell to Baseball Address. Gehrig had been diagnosed with ALS, but the disease would come to be called by the famous player's name.

The final voice is once again Ronald Reagan's from the Berlin Wall address we discussed earlier.

Now we move to the second intro.

Over half of this introduction is dominated by Winston Churchill. He was reading a passage written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and sent to him by President Roosevelt in January, 1941. Churchill read the passage in a radio address to the British people soon thereafter.

The second voice belongs to Edward R. Murrow, the American correspondant in London for CBS radio during the darkest days of the war. He did a lot of his reporting from rooftops where the sound of German planes and bombs could be heard clearly in the skies over London. He introduced his reports by saying, "This...is London" with the emphasis on "this". If you listen to CBS television today, that emphasis is still used.

The third and final voice for this intro is, once again, Ronald Reagan during his Berlin Wall speech in 1987.

Here's the third intro.

The first voice belongs to Neil Armstrong, the commander of Apollo 11. He is announcing that he and Buzz Aldrin have landed safely on the moon aboard the lunar lander 'Eagle'. The date was July 20th, 1969.

We return once again to Winston Churchill for our next voice. This excerpt is from a speech the Prime Minister gave in the House of Commons on June 18th, 1940, when an invasion of England by Germany seemed a real possibility. It is probably Churchill's most oft-quoted speech.

The next voice is one about which I receive the most questions. It belongs to Spiro Agnew, who served as President Richard Nixon's Vice President from 1969 to 1973. This excerpt is from a record Agnew recorded and released early in Nixon's first term entitled "Spiro T. Agnew Speaks Out". Agnew and his speechwriters were full of sometimes witty, often tongue-twisting and confusing one-liners.

The fourth voice is that of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during her address to the House of Commons on April 3rd, 1982. The Argentinian military had invaded the Falkland Islands the day before. This led to the Falklands War and the eventual return of the islands to British control.

The final voice of this intro belongs to President Harry Truman. He was addressing the American people on August 6th, 1945, telling them about a weapon known as an atomic bomb, a device so destructive it seemed to belong to the realm of science fiction.

Here's the fourth intro.

The first voice is familiar to almost every American over 40. It is Walter Cronkite, the longtime CBS news anchor who fought back tears as he announced the death of President John Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963.

The second voice is that of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who announced that there would be "peace in our time" after he signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler on September 30th, 1938. The Second World War began almost exactly one year later.

The final voice is that of Jim Lovell, mission commander of Apollo 13. Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise narrowly avoided death in space after an oxygen tank rupture damaged their command module. They owed their lives to their tremendous personal courage and the incredible brainpower at NASA's disposal. The date was April 13th, 1970.

Here's the fifth and final intro.

The first voice is that of George Gay who, as an Ensign in the United States Navy, was the only survivor from Torpedo Squadron Eight based aboard the USS Hornet during the Battle of Midway in June, 1942. Gay survived the war, wrote a book about his experience and flew for TWA for over 30 years.

The second voice you heard is, again, that of Neil Armstrong announcing the landing of lunar lander 'Eagle' on the moon on July 20th, 1969.

The final voice belongs to President John F. Kennedy. This is an excerpt from his inaugural address of January 20th, 1961. This speech also contained the famous line "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

A Choice Between Evils, August 9, 1945

2009-08-09T19:09:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1945, the second atomic bomb used in wartime was dropped on the city of Nagasaki in Japan. We have discussed this bombing and the one against Hiroshima three days before previously on this podcast, so I will not repeat the details here. What I'd like to discuss this evening is the ongoing debate over whether or not the use of nuclear weapons against two Japanese cities was justified.

The most important aspect of the debate is probably the death toll from the two bombs. Estimates vary due to poor communications and confusion in the target cities in the days after the bombings, plus the fact that some victims lived for years before succumbing to the effects of exposure to harmful amounts of radiation. Despite this, most official estimates put the number around 150,000 people for both cities. Most of the dead were civilians. Keep in mind that the firebombing of Tokyo in March, 1945 killed 73,000 people, so this number of deaths in two large cities, while horrifying to imagine, was not beyond the capability of conventional strategic bombing at that time.

President Harry S. Truman, who ultimately made the decision to use the devices against Japan, knew nothing about the existence of nuclear weapons until after President Franklin Roosevelt's death in April, 1945. Employees of the top secret Manhattan Project had been working on developing an atomic bomb since 1942; at the time, it was the largest and most expensive research and development program ever undertaken. More than 130,000 people worked on project, which produced a working bomb for testing in July, 1945; the two bombs dropped on Japan were actually the second and third weapons produced. Despite the large number of people working towards the goal of creating a working atomic weapon, very few actually knew or understood what they were working on.

Truman ordered his Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, to convene a committee of scientists and prominent civilians to advise the President on the ramifications of using atomic weapons. At the end of May, 1945, the committee released its conclusions and opinions. Part of the group supported the use of the weapons, while others supported their use against military targets only. A third contingent called for a demonstration of the weapon in a desolate part of Japan so that the government could see the destructive force that was arrayed against the Empire. This third option was dismissed over fears that if the bomb was a dud (a real possibility in early nuclear weapon construction), it could strengthen Japanese resolve. In the end, Truman decided to use the nuclear option in the hope that it would bring a swift end to the war.

The President felt justified in his desire to end the war quickly because of the carnage that loomed on the horizon. As Truman considered his decision, military leaders were finalizing plans for Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands. The invasion was slated to occur in two stages: Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of the home islands and Operation Coronet, the invasion of the area around Tokyo and Yokohama. Olympic was set to go on November 1, 1945 with Coronet following in the spring of 1946. The logistics of the invasion were staggering. The Allied naval armada would be the largest in history and would include 90% of US Navy warships on active duty at the time, a total of over 1400 vessels. 14 Army divisions, including a Commonwealth Corps from Britain, Australia and Canada, were slated to be used in the initial landing on Kyushu. The two landings would also include the entire United States Marine Corps. The President was told by his advisors to expect more than 1 million American casualties during the campaign, more than twice the number of casualties experienced by the United States in the war up to that point. While the American public had been supportive of the war to this point, one has to wonder if that support would have held up under such horrific losses.

Postwar interviews of Japanese military and government leaders revealed a plan to mobilize the civilian population, including women and children, for the fight against the invasion forces. In fact, the training for the "Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps" had already begun. Assuming the civilian population of Kyushu and the Tokyo area would have fought against the Allied invasion, the Japanese casualties could easily have been 3 million or more.

It has been said that all wars are crimes. To an extent, this is true. War represents a failure of diplomacy. When the civil state between nations is washed away, what remains is war, which can be seen as a series of choices among evils. President Truman and his advisors stood by their decision to use nuclear weapons against two Japanese cities by claiming that they brought the war to a speedy conclusion, saving possibly millions of lives. Is this the case? Most likely yes, but some historians argue that Japan was on the verge of surrender by August, 1945, just not the unconditional surrender demanded by the Allies. The government in Tokyo was sending peace feelers to Moscow, but how serious this attempt was remains in doubt.

Some modern scholars have theorized that the bombings were meant to send a message to the Soviet Union that aggression in Europe could be devastating to Communist interests. The Red Army had already invaded the islands north of the Japanese home islands, and so the theory also suggests that the two atomic bombs were used to shorten the war before the Soviets conquered half of Japan, creating a divided nation as seen in Germany and Korea.

We have more than 60 years of hindsight on our side now; even knowing what we know, it is still difficult to place oneself in the mind of the decision makers during the summer of 1945. We will never know what an alternate course of action that August would have meant, but the fact that no nuclear weapons have been used in warfare since 1945 speaks volumes about the impression the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left on the world.

Mutiny on the Bounty, Part Two, 1789

2009-07-09T20:34:00.001-04:00

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In episode 406 of this podcast, we discussed the mutiny which took place aboard HMS Bounty on April, 28th, 1789 and the ensuing journey by commanding Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen across 3,600 miles of open ocean in a 23 foot open launch. If you have not yet listened to that episode, please go back and do so now, because it contains much of the back story you'll need for this second part of our story.

While Bligh and his party worked their way to Timor in the Dutch East Indies, Fletcher Christian and the mutineers aboard Bounty sailed for Tubuai, one of the Austral Islands that is today part of French Polynesia. After three months of fighting with the native population, however, the crew decided to head back to Tahiti. Christian and the rest of the mutineers knew they could not stay long in Tahiti since that was likely the first place the Royal Navy would look for them. However, twelve of the men who had participated in the mutiny and four who had remained loyal to Bligh but were forced to help crew the Bounty anyway decided to stay on the island and risk capture by the Royal Navy. Two of the mutineers who remained on Tahiti died during the next two years; one a victim of murder and the other murdered as an act of vendetta by the first man’s family.

It was not until March, 15th, 1790 that Lieutenant Bligh returned to London and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty. On November 7th of that year, HMS Pandora set sail with orders to search for Bounty and the mutineers. The ship carried almost twice her normal crew complement as it was assumed that a crew would be needed to bring Bounty home once she was captured. Pandora reached Tahiti in March, 1791, whereupon the four men loyal to Bligh immediately presented themselves to the ship’s crew. The remaining ten men were soon arrested and all of them, mutineers and loyal crew alike, were imprisoned inside a make shift cell on Pandora’s main deck, a small compartment which soon earned the nickname “Pandora’s Box.”

Pandora left Tahiti in May, 1791 and spent the next few months searching islands in the vicinity for signs of the Bounty. Passing through the Torres straight, the ship ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. She sank the next day, August 30th, taking 31 crew and four of the prisoners with her. The remaining 99 men (including prisoners) set sail in four small launches and made way for Timor in the same way Bligh had done two years before. They arrived there on September 16th, 1791.

After arriving back in Britain, the ten surviving prisoners were placed on trial in front of a naval court. It is important to remember that at this time in the Royal Navy, failure to attempt to stop a mutiny was seen as being no different than being an actual mutineer. On September 18th, 1792, the ten men learned of their fate. Four of them, being designated by Bligh as loyal and innocent, were acquitted. Two more were found guilty, but pardoned; both continued in the naval service and had successful careers. One man was acquitted due to a legal technicality. The remaining three men were convicted and hanged. Both Bligh and the captain of the Pandora faced courts-martial for the loss of their ships, an automatic proceeding under naval law at the time; both were acquitted.

Half a world away and nearly three years earlier, Fletcher Christian and eight other crewmen left Tahiti hoping to stay one step ahead of the Royal Navy. With them were six Tahitian men, eleven women and one baby. Their goal was to find an island where they might begin a new life, but this was a tall order given the Royal Navy’s extensive knowledge of the area.

In January, 1790, Bounty’s crew had an incredible run of good fortune when they “rediscovered” Pitcairn Island, which was misplaced on the Royal Navy’s charts by a significant distance. The decision was taken to settle there permanently. To ensure that the Royal Navy would not find the Bounty, the ship was burned on January 23rd, 1790 in what is now called Bounty Bay.

The settlers on Pitcairn Island had high hopes for their new life. The Tahitians were homesick and the British sailors knew they would never see their homes again, but the island provided plenty of food, water and land for everyone. Fletcher Christian became the leader of the small community and was, by all reports, fair and moderate. He wanted the Tahitians to have equal say in all affairs, but some of the British resented this, which led to tension between the two groups.

In 1793, the resentment and outright hatred between some of the British and Tahitian men came to blows. Five of the mutineers, including Fletcher Christian, were killed in the fighting while all six of the Tahitian men died. The community continued to exist, with various men holding the title of leader. Babies were born and became young men and women, many of them carrying the names of their British fathers. The first ship to visit the island was the American vessel Topaz, which only made a ten-hour stop. Topaz’s captain, Mayhew Folger, reported finding Europeans living on the island, a report which eventually made its way to the British Admiralty. The island was visited by two Royal Navy vessels in 1814, which sent a party ashore but otherwise took no action for by this time, only one mutineer, John Adams, was still alive. In 1825, he was granted amnesty for his part in the mutiny. Pitcairn’s capital, Adamstown, is named in his honor.

By 1856, the community on Pitcairn island had grown such that the island was becoming uninhabitable. The British government, which now owned several islands in the area, granted the citizens Norfolk Island as a place to live.

Lieutenant William Bligh, now a full Captain, eventually made a second journey to Tahiti and collected the breadfruit plants wanted for transplant in the West Indies. It was found, however, that the slaves on Jamaica refused to eat the fruit and so the entire venture was a failure. Bligh eventually achieved the rank of Vice Admiral and was appointed the governor of New South Wales in Australia. His purpose in this appointment was to stop the illegal rum trade going on there. This ultimately led to the Rum Rebellion, a topic for another episode of this podcast. Bligh died in 1817 back at home in London.

Federal-Aid Highway Act Signed, June 29, 1956

2009-06-30T20:06:00.001-04:00

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Fifty-three years ago today, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. This act established what became known as The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly called the Interstate Highway System. The project remains the largest public works project in history. The entire system has a total length of nearly 47,000 miles, making it the largest highway system in the world.

Eisenhower's support of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 can be directly traced to 1919 and his experiences participating in the U.S. Army's first Transcontinental Motor Convoy across the United States. Following the historic Lincoln Highway, the first road built across the entire nation, the trip from Washington D.C. to San Francisco took two months to complete over the summer of 1919. Over the course of this journey, bridges cracked and had to be repaired, and vehicles were repeatedly stuck in mud.

Eisenhower’s observations and experiences on the Autobahn in Germany during World War II drove home the need for a national highway system in the United States. In his book 'At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends', Eisenhower wrote, "The old convoy had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land."

Eisenhower’s support of the Highway Act was centrally based on his strong belief that the Interstate System was needed for the purpose of national defense. The military would need to have good roads for transporting equipment and troops in times of crisis. It was a valid point: the cross-country trip that took two months to complete in 1919 needed to be completed in a matter of days. Contrary to popular belief, no section of the Interstate Highway System was ever intended to be used as a runway by military aircraft, although many light planes have made emergency landings on interstates over the years.

Even though it is now difficult to imagine, Americans in the first five decades of the 20th century had to make due with a system of highways that barely deserved the name. At the turn of the century, the brand-new automobile quickly caught the fancy of the American public. In 1900, roughly 5,000 cars were produced. By 1917, approximately 3.5 million automobiles were registered in the United States. The new autos immediately pointed out the inadequacies of the current system of roads in America. First, roads had previously been designed for horses or iron-wheeled wagons. When the much heavier cars started whizzing along at twenty miles per hour on pneumatic tires, the old roads were quickly torn to shreds. Constant mud also took a toll on the cars' engines and undercarriages, which were not meant be used off of paved roads . Finally, there simply weren’t enough roads connecting enough places. People who needed to travel cross-country at this time still took the train; roads were mostly used for local travel.

And so, new roads needed to be built. The car, and therefore the necessary road construction, was a new business. In the beginning, there were no federal organizations to plan and dictate the structures needed for the new automobile. In fact, by 1913 few states had even formed highway departments. It was up to local authorities to figure out how and where to build roads. Concrete and asphalt were soon discovered to be the best materials for the new roads, and local construction escalated. By 1947 there existed a set of U.S. highways that served 209 of 237 cities with populations of 50,000 or more and had a total length of 37,600 miles. In 1956 portions of this system were incorporated and upgraded as part of Eisenhower’s Federal-Aid Highway Act.

Even though the Interstate Highway System continues to be expanded, the last section of the original 1956 plan was completed in 1992 at Glenwood Canyon, Colorado. As of 2004, a section of I-75 north of Atlanta, near the interchange with Interstate 285, has 15 lanes, making it the widest section of the Interstate System. The longest Interstate Highway is Interstate 90, which runs 3,099 miles between Boston, Massachusetts and Seattle, Washington. The heaviest traveled section is Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, California, with approximately 390,000 vehicles a day.

Dancing Mania Breaks Out, June 24, 1374

2009-06-24T20:39:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1374, much of the population of Aachen, Germany was struck by dancing mania, a type of social phenomenon. What exactly caused the mania is unknown, although several theories have been put forward as an explanation. What’s more, instances of dancing mania occurred throughout Europe from the late 1300’s through the middle of the 18th century. The Aachen outbreak was the first to be written about extensively by contemporary witnesses.

Medicine in medieval Europe was crude at best. Many ailments were treated with either foul-tasting mixtures or by bleeding the patient, a procedure that did more harm than good in almost all cases. Other illnesses could not be treated at all; dancing mania fell into this category. So even though outbreaks of the mania were well-documented and sometimes involved thousands of people, local doctors and civic leaders could do little as people danced until they collapsed from exhaustion or died from heart attacks. Some towns employed musicians when an outbreak occurred in the belief that music has a healing effect on the soul of the afflicted. As was common with many misunderstood phenomenon in those days, many local church leaders considered victims of the mania to be possessed, a belief that led to many exorcisms being performed. Family and friends of sufferers offered prayers to Saint Vitus, the patron saint of dancers and other types of entertainers.

Dancing mania broke out in small villages and large cities all over continental Europe. The only thing linking these locations is the fact that almost all of them were located on routes used by pilgrims to visit holy sites. Perhaps the best documented case of an outbreak of dancing mania occurred in Strasbourg, France and became known as the Dancing Plague of 1518, which took place in July of that year. The outbreak began with one woman, who was seen dancing in the street for between four and six days. Within a week, more than 30 people had joined her; over the course of the next month, 400 more people were afflicted. Most of that number died, either from exhaustion, stroke or heart attack. Local doctors came to believe the mania was caused by “hot blood”, although the records they kept do not define what they thought this condition actually was or what caused it.

Only one incidence of dancing mania has been recorded since 1800, that being in Madagascar in the 1840’s. A laughing epidemic with similar properties occurred in part of Tanzania in 1962, although the number of people affected varies according to source. Other than these two incidents, public manias such as dancing mania seem to have died out.

Modern historians and medical professionals have put forth a number of theories in an effort to explain dancing mania. One theory is that the sufferers had ergot poisoning, referred to as “St. Anthony’s Fire” during the Middle Ages. Ergot is a fungus that can infect rye, which when eaten is psychoactive. People suffering from ergot poisoning can suffer spasms and hallucinations. However, the spasms cannot reasonably be described as dancing and they do not last for days.

Another possibility is that the dancing mania was caused by the onset of the disease known as Saint Vitus’ Dance, or Sydenham’s chorea, which results in jerking motions of the limbs and face brought on by a streptococcus infection in childhood. While this would certainly explain the dancing motion observed by contemporaries of the mania, it is highly unlikely that hundreds of people would have been struck by the disease simultaneously. The same can be said of Apraxia, a neurological disorder in which victims lose the ability to carry out the movements they intended.

Although we will never know with certainty, it is also possible that dancing mania could have been caused by what is now termed mass psychogenic illness, or mass hysteria. Other events in history show us that it is possible for large numbers of people, numbering even into the thousands, to believe that they saw something or are suffering from the same illness. Some modern professionals have attributed religious miracles and demonstrations as examples of mass hysteria, although this is a hotly debated topic, especially with regard to apparitions involving the Virgin Mary.

Mass hysteria cases have been attributed to unusual levels of stress placed upon the groups involved. With this in mind, it is not unreasonable to think that mass hysteria was much more likely to occur in the towns and villages of medieval Europe. Starvation was only one bad harvest away for most people. Even when there was enough to eat, there was the constant stress of farming land that the farmer did not own for a local lord who claimed a large percentage of every crop for his own use or to sell. The vast majority of people lived in this state of near-permanent bondage for their entire lives. Most were illiterate and the only information they received from the outside world either came from travelers or from their local pastor. In such an environment, it is not hard imagine that one unusual occurrence could turn a town into a chaotic mess in which mass hysteria could become a real possibility.

Bligh Arrives At Timor (Mutiny on the Bounty, Part One), June 14, 1789

2009-06-14T22:03:00.002-04:00

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Today in 1789, Royal Navy Commanding Lieutenant William Bligh and 17 other crewmembers from the HMS Bounty reached the island of Timor after a 3,600 nautical mile journey in a 23 foot open boat. Their 47-day voyage marked the end of a long trial for those who had remained loyal to their captain during what would become one of the most famous mutinies in recorded history.

HMS Bounty was not a warship; she began life as a collier named Bethia. The Royal Navy purchased the ship in 1787, renamed her, and refitted her for one purpose: to travel to Tahiti in order to transfer breadfruit plants from there to the West Indies, where it was hoped the fruit could be used as food for the large slave population there. The man chosen to lead this expedition was Lieutenant William Bligh, a 33-year old career officer who had experience with navigation near the area of Tahiti and was familiar with the local customs, a familiarity that was crucial for the success of the mission.

Bounty’s complement was 46 in total, but Bligh was the only commissioned officer aboard. Space was tight since much of the space below decks was reserved for use by the breadfruit trees on the return trip. The trip to Tahiti was rough, with the ship attempting to round Cape Horn for a month because of bad weather. She eventually turned east and sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and across the entire width of the Indian Ocean. Bounty had been at sea for 10 straight months by the time she reached Tahiti in October, 1788.

Bounty’s crew spent five months on Tahiti, working to prepare more than one thousand breadfruit plants for transport. Captain Bligh allowed the men to live onshore during this time, and they came to know the native population of the island rather well. Some received tattoos in the native fashion, while others formed romantic relationships with native women. Master’s Mate and Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian went so far as to marry a Tahitian woman. Bligh was not surprised by his crew’s behavior nor was he apparently bothered by it because it helped to maintain good relations between the sailors and the native population.

HMS Bounty left paradise on April 4th, 1789 with her compliment of men and breadfruit aboard. 24 days later and 1,300 miles from Tahiti, a mutiny broke out aboard the ship. Fletcher Christian and several other men entered Bligh’s cabin, woke him up and pushed him to the deck. Except for an exchange of threats, the mutiny occurred without bloodshed. Eighteen men joined Christian in the mutiny, two were non-committal, and 22 remained loyal to Bligh. Four of the loyalists were forced to remain on the ship while the remaining 18 and Bligh were forced into the ship’s launch and set adrift with limited rations.

Much has been made in the past 220 years of Lieutenant William Bligh’s behavior as ship’s captain. It is important to remember that in the Royal Navy of the late 18th century, discipline was harsh. Even the smallest infraction could result in a sailor receiving a flogging; other penalties could result in death. By the standards of the day, Bligh was not a hard master. For example, while the Bounty was still anchored at Tahiti, three crewmen deserted from their work party, presumably to remain on the island when the ship left. All three were recaptured, whereupon Bligh ordered the men flogged instead of hanged, which was the usual punishment for such a transgression. It can be argued that the men were needed to help sail the Bounty to the West Indies, but other documents show Bligh to be no harsher than other commanders of this period.

Bligh and his 18 men found themselves in a 23-foot long open boat in the South Pacific. Their only navigation instruments were a sextant and a pocket watch. Initially, the boat was only 30 nautical miles from the island of Tofua, but landing there to acquire more rations only resulted in the death of one of the crewmen, who was stoned to death by a group of natives.

The 18 remaining men and their small launch encountered other difficulties on their journey, which by Bligh’s reckoning was 3,618 nautical miles. They arrived at Timor in the Dutch East Indies on June 14th, 1789. Shortly after landing, two of the men died. Three others would die in the following months, all due to their long open ocean journey.

The Bounty and the mutineers who now commanded her had their own difficulties, which we will discuss in part two of this podcast.

Pyle At Normandy, June 6, 1944

2009-06-06T06:13:00.002-04:00

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We have discussed the invasion of Normandy here before. D-Day, as it was called, was a monumental logistical effort put forth by the Allies in the hope they could grab a foothold in France and, thus, begin the liberation of Northwest Europe. The liberation of the Europe continent as a whole had begun with the invasion of Italy in September, 1943, but Operation Overlord, as the Normandy invasion was called, was to be the beginning of one of the stabs towards the heart of Germany, the other being the Soviet offensive coming from the east.

Instead of talking about raw numbers and the events of that longest of days, I have decided to let someone else tell the story of D-Day from his perspective. That someone is Ernie Pyle, an American journalist who told the story of the Second World War as he saw it, up close and personal. His style is in some ways very personal, as if he is telling his story to a friend. His roots as the son of Indiana tenant farmers show through in his writing, making it so popular that the editor-in-chief of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain ended up publishing his columns in over 300 newspapers. By the time of the United States’ entry into the Second World War, Pyle was already well-known in many communities.

What I am about to read are two columns Pyle submitted in the days immediately after the Normandy invasion.

Ernie Pyle eventually left the European Theatre of war and traveled to the Pacific, where he covered the invasion of Okinawa. While riding in a jeep, a Japanese machine gun opened up on him and the driver. They jumped into a ditch, where Pyle asked the driver if he was OK. As he did so, a bullet entered the side of his helmet, killing him almost instantly. Originally buried on Okinawa, he is now buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.

Martha Washington Is Born, June 2, 1731

2009-06-01T19:36:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1731, Martha Dandridge was born on Chestnut Grove plantation in the colony of Virginia. As Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, she would serve as the original First Lady of the United States.

Martha was married at the age of eighteen to Daniel Parke Custis, a wealthy plantation owner who was more than twenty years her senior. They lived at his White House Plantation, just a few miles from where Martha was born. The couple had four children, but Frances and Daniel, a daughter and son, each died before their fifth birthday. The two other children, John and Martha, each survived to become young adults.

Daniel Custis died in 1757, leaving Martha a 26-year old widow who was both landed and wealthy. It is believed that George Washington had known Daniel and Martha Custis for some years before Daniel’s death, so no formal introduction was neede before Washington visited Martha at the White House plantation twice in March, 1758. Martha was much sought after by various suitors, but it was the former Virginia militia officer, planter and politician who, in the end, won her approval. The two were married on January 6th, 1759; after several weeks at her plantation, the Washingtons, including Martha’s son and daughter, moved to Mount Vernon.

George and Martha Washington, by all accounts, had a solid, faithful marriage. They had no children together, possibly due to the smallpox George had suffered through in his youth. They raised Martha’s two surviving children together until the daughter, Martha, died during an epileptic seizure at the age of 17. Her son, John, died at the age of 27 while serving as General Washington’s aide during the siege of Yorktown in 1781; it is believed the cause of his death was typhus. George and Martha raised John’s two children, both of whom lived well into the 1850’s.

When the War for Independence began in 1775 and her husband was placed in command of the Continental Army, Martha Washington followed him to war. She was at Valley Forge during the terrible winter of 1777-1778. Letters from that period show that her very presence helped to lift morale during this low point of the war, even though most of the enlisted men and junior officers never saw the future First Lady.

When the war ended in 1783 and the United States gained status as an independent nation, it is possible to imagine that Martha Washington wanted nothing more than to return to her life at Mount Vernon. It was not to be. General Washington resigned his commission and returned to life as a private citizen that December, but his retirement was short-lived. He was persuaded by friends and associates to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787; upon his arrival, he was immediately voted president of the Convention. As the new Constitution took shape, so did the office of the President. There was little doubt among most of the delegates as to who should be the first man to hold the office. To that end, George Washington, even though he did not initially want the job, was elected unanimously by the Electoral College in 1789.

Martha was less than pleased. She opposed her husband’s election to the new office and refused to attend his inauguration on April 30th, 1789 in New York City. But once in office, she assumed the duties required by her new social position. The new nation had no capital city (Washington, DC was not even surveyed until 1791), so the Washingtons lived in New York and later in Philadelphia. Both Martha and George knew that as the first people to hold their respective positions, almost everything they did within public view would become the standard for future First Families. As a result, neither of them accepted some of the more fancy titles some Americans thought fitting for the new national leader. George decided that the title “Mister President” was fitting and Martha was simply known as “Lady Washington”. The term “First Lady” did not come into common use until some years later.

George Washington’s two terms in office were not a happy time for Martha. She once wrote to one of her nieces that she felt imprisoned by the position. It made incredible demands on her time, since she was expected to keep an essentially open house that was constantly full of visiting dignitaries and federal-level office holders. As a result, the very private First Lady found that she had no privacy at all. But she also understood that the duties taken on by her husband brought with them responsibilities for her. Some of the traditions begun by Martha Washington as First Lady continue to this day.

Recently, historians have claimed that Martha actually owned a slave who was her half-sister, the product of an affair between Martha’s father and one of his slaves. While affairs of this type were certainly not unheard of at that time, Ann is not listed in the record of slaves at Mount Vernon. It is possible, of course, that she was intentionally left out to cover up the entire lineage. George Washington was quoted many times in letters expressing his growing concern over the immorality of slavery. In his will, he freed one slave who had served with him during the Revolution and ordered that the rest of them be freed upon his wife’s death. Martha did not want to wait and freed all of the Mount Vernon slaves on January 1, 1801.

After their terms as President and First Lady, the Washingtons returned to Mount Vernon. Except for his short time as the head of the early US Army, neither George nor Martha ever really traveled again. George died on December 14th, 1799. Martha outlived her husband by two years, dying at the age of 70 on May 22, 1802.

Although she had no children with George Washington, Martha’s descendants continued to play important roles in United States history. George Washington Parke Custis, one of the grandchildren raised by George and Martha, built a house in Arlington, Virginia in 1802. He and his wife had four children, although only one daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, survived to adulthood. Mary Anna was herself married a young officer named Robert E. Lee in 1831 and they lived in the Arlington house. Early in the Civil War, part of the estate was seized by the US government and the family had to go all the way to the Supreme Court in order to receive proper payment for their property. Today, that land is known as Arlington National Cemetary.

As early as 1778, some Americans were referring to George Washington as the father of the country. If we accept this, then it is natural to assume Martha Washington was the mother of the country. As an example of duty, honor, loyalty and courage, Martha left an indelible impression on the nation she helped to create.

The Mystery of the Scorpion Part Two, May 22, 1968

2009-05-29T20:00:00.001-04:00

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In our last episode, we discussed the sinking of the USS Scorpion. The focus of the first episode was the facts of the case. In this second half of our story, we will spend time on some of the theories that have been put forth to explain the sinking of Scorpion, which occurred on May 22nd, 1968.

The loss of the USS Scorpion occurred between two momentous events in US history: the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4th, 1968 and the assassination of Presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy on June 5th. As a result, coverage of the loss of Scorpion quickly moved from the front page of most American newspapers. This was in stark contrast to the loss of the USS Thresher in 1963, which occurred during a comparatively quiet time in the nation. This may have been to the Pentagon's liking, because even a cursory investigation of the time line of the last cruise of Scorpion would have led to a discussion of the boat's last set of orders, something that was classified at the time.

Originally, Scorpion was due to arrive at Naval Station Norfolk at 9:30AM, May 24th. However, after she left the Mediterranean and was on her way home, she received a message from COMSUBLANT, the Navy abbreviation for Commander Submarines Atlantic, ordering her to divert to a location southwest of the Canary Islands, were a group of Soviet Navy warships were operating. This would push back Scorpion's homecoming to May 27th. In his book 'Scorpion Down', author Ed Offley states that these orders, the last Scorpion would ever receive, were sent on May 16th.

Initially, the Navy stated that the search for Scorpion began on May 27th, the day she failed to arrive back at Norfolk. Years later, documents released by the Department of the Defense showed that at least one ship, the USS Josephus Daniels, put to sea on May 18th to search for Scorpion. The same group of documents show that some time between May 18th and May 22nd, Scorpion sent a message stating that she was being followed by a Soviet submarine and could not evade the Russian boat. These two facts taken together tell us that the Navy knew as early as May 18th that Scorpion was potentially in trouble, although she did supposedly transmit her position as late as May 21st. Regardless, it is clear that the Navy knew of the loss of Scorpion at least six days before May 27th.

According to Offley, this omission on the part of the Navy was intentional for one reason: the top admirals in the Pentagon suspected that Scorpion had been sunk by a Soviet warship. Years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, some retired Russian admirals claimed that this was, in fact, the case. They stated that Scorpion was attacked as retaliation for the loss of the K-129, a Soviet diesel submarine which sank off the north coast of Hawaii in early 1968. Soviet naval leaders believed the K-129 had been sunk by a group of US destroyers while they were attempting to force the sub to surface. Sinking the USS Scorpion was seen as a means of evening the score without starting World War III.

A board of inquiry concluded in 1969 that Scorpion was destroyed by a torpedo, likely one of her own. This conclusion was later rejected in favor of a hardware failure, a more generic assumption. There is actually evidence that Scorpion was not a healthy sub at the time of her deployment in February, 1968. Her recent overhaul had been rushed and was done at the naval base in Charleston, SC which at that time had never done an overhaul and a re-fueling on a nuclear-powered submarine. But the wreck found off the Azores gave no clear indication of anything other than a large explosion.

Many other theories exist as to what happened to the USS Scorpion, including the idea that US Navy Warrant Officer John Walker, a Soviet spy who was not caught until 1986, gave Moscow enough detailed information about secret submarine communications that the Russians knew exactly where the Scorpion was most of the time, allowing them to hunt her with ease. It is not known if the information Walker gave the Soviets beginning in 1967 was being used in early 1968, but it is certainly possible.

We will never know what happened in the Atlantic Ocean 400 miles from the Azores in May, 1968. If the USS Scorpion was deliberately attacked by the Soviet Navy, then the cover-up necessary to keep such a fact hidden for more than 40 years is nearly unprecedented in American history. If some hardware failure caused her sinking, then those responsible for her lack of readiness were never brought to task. Either way, an injustice was done.

99 men died on board the USS Scorpion. It is my belief that their families have never been told the truth. For a nation that honors those who died in service to their country, this is unacceptable.

The Mystery of the Scorpion Part One, May 22, 1968

2009-05-23T20:31:00.005-04:00

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As you know, Monday, May 25th is Memorial Day in the United States, a day set aside for us to honor those who have died while serving our nation in the military. The holiday began as Decoration Day in Waterloo, New York in 1866. A Decoration Day of sorts occurred in Charleston, South Carolina in May 1865 at the site of a former Confederate prison camp, but Waterloo is given most of the credit for creating the day as we now know it. The village was home to General John Murray, who in turn was a friend of General John Logan, the head of a veterans’ organization called the Grand Army of the Republic. Logan pushed for a national observance on May 30th, a date on which no battles took place during the Civil War. The day was originally intended to honor those who died during that conflict, but was soon extended to include those who had paid the ultimate price in all the nation’s wars. The term Decoration Day was used because cemeteries were generally adorned with flags and flowers to honor the fallen. Although the name Memorial Day first appeared in print in 1882, it did not come into common use until the time of the Second World War.

In 1968, the US Congress moved Memorial Day from May 30th to the last Monday in May. This created a three-day weekend, something that critics of the change point to as one of the reasons the holiday seems to be losing its meaning to so many Americans.

The past 60 years have seen the general public in the United States become increasingly distant from the military. Even with combat taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan as I write this, many Americans personally know no one serving in the military. Our armed forces are smaller as a percentage of the population than they have been since the end of the Revolutionary War and a draft has not existed for 36 years. Yet the ultimate sacrifice is made almost every day by men and women from every walk of American life whose names will only be remembered by those who loved them. While we can disagree about the merits of any war, those who give their lives during it do so for us and for generations not yet born.

In addition to the Americans who have died in service to our nation over the past 233 years, I ask that you also remember those from around the world who have given all while fighting with us. Most of the nations of Europe and many other countries from around the globe have sacrificed not just to protect their own interests, but to ensure the continuance of our way of life. To them and their fallen go the thanks of a grateful nation. Have a thoughtful and thankful Memorial Day.

I do my best to not ever diverge from known facts when discussing historical events. But the story we revisit tonight, that of the sinking of the USS Scorpion, still contains much in the way of speculation. Since I first podcast about the lost submarine in 2006, I have read two books and many magazine and newspaper articles which cast significant doubt on the official story of the warship's loss. Tonight's episode will concentrate on the known facts of the incident; the next episode will enter into what I call informed conjecture. Let's get started.

Today in 1968, the USS Scorpion, an American nuclear-powered attack submarine, sank in the Atlantic Ocean 400 miles southwest of the Azores. This was the second time the US Navy had lost a nuclear-powered submarine; the first had been the USS Thresher in 1963. Even though more than 40 years have passed since the disaster, unanswered questions about the sinking still abound.

Scorpion was a Skipjack-class attack submarine. At 252 feet in length and 3500 tons displacement, she was small compared to the boats that would come after her. But what she lacked in size she more than made up for in speed; though the Navy claimed her top speed was close to 30 knots, she was capable of much more. Her teardrop-shaped hull was new to submarine design when she was laid down in 1958 and when she was commissioned in 1960, she had no equals in the foreign navies of the world.

Scorpion’s last deployment began on February 15, 1968. She operated with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea until May, when she was ordered home. On May 21st, Scorpion was reported to be 50 miles south of the Azores. After an initial delay, the families of the crewmen were told to expect the sub at 1PM on May 27th at Pier 22 on Norfolk Naval Station.

It was overcast and raining as the families of the crew of Scorpion waited for her return on that Monday. As the 1PM arrival time came and went with no word from the submarine, some of those waiting grew nervous. The older, more experienced family members comforted those for whom this was the first homecoming. There were many things that could delay the arrival of a navy warship: weather, mechanical problems, or a last-minute change of orders. The captain of a sub tender moored next to Pier 22 gave the family members permission to board his ship so they could wait for Scorpion in drier conditions. After several hours of waiting, naval station officials told the worried families to go home and wait for further news. They did not have to wait long: that evening, phones began ringing all over the Norfolk area, telling the next-of-kin of the crew of the USS Scorpion that the ship had been placed in a missing status. Those family members who lived outside the immediate area received telegrams. Soon, all three of the television networks were carrying the same story---the USS Scorpion was not where she was supposed to be.
The search operation that followed was one of the largest ever conducted by the United States Navy. Even though no wreckage was found, it was clear by the first week of June that Scorpion was never coming home again. On the fifth of that month, she and her crew were declared “presumed lost.” On June 30th, her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register.

It was not until the end of October that the remains of Scorpion were found. She was 400 miles southwest of the Azores in more than 10,000 feet of water. The deep-diving research bathysphere Trieste was sent to the scene to photograph the wreckage in an effort to determine what caused the sinking. The sub was in two main pieces with the sail and other debris littered on the sea floor nearby. The ship’s nuclear reactor was, and still is, intact.

The Navy concluded that the Scorpion was most likely sunk by one of her own torpedoes. At that time, the primary conventional torpedo carried by US subs was the Mk 37. This class of torpedo was discovered to contain potentially faulty batteries that could overheat and cause a detonation of the torpedo’s warhead. It is also possible that one of the torpedoes inadvertently went live in its tube. The normal course of action for the crew would have been to fire the torpedo, which could have been fatal if the torpedo was armed, because it would have looked for the nearest target---Scorpion herself.

The US Navy still monitors the area around the Scorpion for signs of increased radioactivity. In addition to a nuclear reactor, the Scorpion also carried two Mark 45 torpedoes tipped with nuclear warheads. These are presumed to still be in the torpedo room and corroded to the point of being insoluble.

The USS Scorpion sank during one of the darkest periods of the Cold War, a time when every act by the United States or the Soviet Union was viewed with deep suspicion by the other side. The US submarine fleet was very effective in both gathering information about the Soviet Navy as well as keeping that force off-balance. What is clear now, despite the US Navy’s initial public theories, is that the Soviet Union could very well have played a role in the loss of Scorpion and the 99 men serving aboard her.

That role, if indeed there was one, will be discussed in the next episode of this podcast.

Blue Jeans Patented, May 20, 1873

2009-05-20T15:47:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a United States patent for jeans with copper rivets. Since that day more than 135 years ago, blue jeans have gone from being sturdy pants made for the working man to a fashion statement worn casually all over the world. The progression of the denim trouser is a story of ingenuity and the ability of one small item to grow into a symbol of Western culture.

The word “jeans” comes to us from the French phrase meaning the ‘blue of Genoa’. The material from which jeans are made, denim, was developed independently in France and in India. Naval forces all over the world adopted the tough trousers, including the Genoese Navy in Italy as early as the 16th century. Sailors from the Dhunga area of India wore denim trousers as their work uniforms; those types of pants came to be known as dungarees. That term survives today in the navies of the United States and other nations.

Over the years, denim trousers traveled from ship to shore. A German-born immigrant named Levi Strauss made his way to San Francisco in 1853, eager to expand his dry goods business into the Gold Rush areas of California. He soon met Jacob Davis, a Latvian-born tailor who bought canvas-type materials, including denim, from Strauss for various applications. Soon, however, he was making pants out of the stuff to replace the cotton trousers that miners found nearly useless under heavy use. As tough as the canvas and denim were, they still ripped in particular places, like the pockets.

Davis had used rivets before on items like harnesses, but it wasn’t until 1871 that he first used them on his denim trousers. The story goes that he came up with the idea when a lady approached him to buy some denim to mend the rips her husband managed to make in his pants. Davis solved the woman’s problem by using rivets on the weak areas of the trousers. Thus, the trousers that would one day be called jeans were born.

Davis knew he had a virtual gold mine on his hands, but he worried about other people capitalizing on his innovation. Lacking the money at the time to file a patent on his invention, he approached Levi Strauss, the man who had supplied him with his raw materials for years. Strauss saw the brilliance in Davis’ design and agreed to enter into a partnership. On May 20, 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis were granted United States patent #139121 for using copper rivets to reinforce the pockets and other stress areas of denim work pants.

Levi Strauss soon left the dry goods business and began making denim jeans full time under the business name of Levi Strauss & Co. Jacob Davis became a partner with the company and worked as the company’s production manager until his death in 1908, although he sold his interest in the patent in 1907.

Levi Strauss died in 1902. Since he had no children, the business was left to his four nephews, who oversaw explosive growth in the company despite setbacks such as the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.

After the Second World War, blue jeans went from being work clothes to being casual clothes worn by young men and women. They became the symbol of the American counter-culture during the 1960’s and left such a strong impression that some people who lived through that era will not wear jeans to this day. By the 1970’s, blue jeans became acceptable casual wear for people of all ages, hippies or no. Today, the average North American owns seven pairs of jeans, although whether all those pairs fit or can be worn in public is a matter of some debate.

Some sociologists studying the fall of the Soviet Union attribute a desire for Western goods and freedoms to the appearance of blue jeans on the streets of Moscow. The jeans were very expensive and only available on the black market, but to own a pair was to have status in what was supposed to be a classless society. This glimpse at Western culture was, perhaps, one of the first cracks in the dam of Communism in Eastern Europe.

Queen Victoria Makes A "Neutrality Proclamation", May 13, 1861

2009-05-17T20:41:00.001-04:00

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Today in 1861, Queen Victoria of Britain issued a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognized the Confederate States of America as having belligerent rights. While this proclamation was not a formal recognition of the breakaway states, it was indicative of the edgy foreign policy Great Britain and other nations, such as France, practiced during the early days of the US Civil War.

The War Between the States began in April, 1861. The nation was essentially split in half, but the two halves were vastly different. The northern states had a larger population and an exponentially larger industrial base. The southern states’ economy was centered around agriculture, mainly cotton, a fact that would become critical to the Confederacy’s attempts to gain international recognition. The south had one critical advantage over the north: military leadership. While the Union Army suffered from a glut of overly-cautious peacetime officers early in the war, the Confederacy had officers, both in the general and lower ranks, who were decisive and thorough tacticians who eager to prove their mettle on the battlefield. This, too, would play a hand in how Great Britain and other European nations viewed the civil war playing out on the other side of the Atlantic.

The President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was counting on British and possibly French support. Britain was dependent on southern cotton for her textile industry, a fact which Davis believed would lead to diplomatic recognition. Once Britain recognized the Confederacy as a free and separate nation, other European powers would follow. Davis hoped this would lead to a British-mediated end to the war, the result of which would be the permanent seperation of the northern and southern United States. More remote was the possibility of British military intervention on the side of the Confederacy. This would all but guarantee a battlefield victory and leave Jefferson Davis free to name his terms for peace.

The Union, led by new President Abraham Lincoln, was hoping to persuade Europe to not recognize the breakaway states. Great Britain was seen as being at the center of this attempt, since she seemingly had the most to gain from forming a relationship with the Confederacy. Lincoln, however, had an advantage in that the relationship between Britain and the United States had reached a sort of high point in the years leading up to the war. The British recognized the legitimacy of the Northern blockade of the South early on in the war, a move that frustrated Jefferson Davis' government. However, the proclamation was more than a little self-serving. As the world's leading naval power, Great Britain used the power of the blockade often and demanded that neutral nations not interfere. Thus, London could not fail to recognize the Union blockade in the same manner.

After the beginning of hostilities in the spring of 1861, the British public and government seemed to back away from the pre-war good feelings that had developed between London and Washington. In fact, one event almost ruined the relationship entirely. In November, 1861, the warship USS San Jacinto fired two shots across the bow of the Trent, a British mail steamer. The Trent had just left the Cuban port of Havana headed for home. On board were two Confederate commissioners tasked to represent their cause in England and France. It was a commonly held belief during the 19th century that any neutral merchant ship could be stopped in international waters and searched by a warring nation’s navy if the neutral ship was thought to be carrying the enemy nation’s dispatches. The captain of the San Jacinto, Charles Wilkes, reasoned that the two Confederate commissioners were, at least in some way, dispatches from his nation’s enemy. The two Confederates were taken off the Trent, arrested aboard the San Jacinto and taken to a Union prison in Boston. The northern public, hungry for a victory at that early stage of the war, was elated.

The reaction in Britain was, to put it mildly, less positive. The Royal Navy began provisioning a fleet to sail for the Atlantic seaboard and 11,000 troops were dispatched to Canada. A communique was sent to President Lincoln demanding the release of the two Confederates and an apology. Lincoln, believing that one war at a time was enough for any nation, ordered the two men released and apologized for the incident.

Could the United States and Great Britain have really come to blows in the fall of 1861? It was certainly possible, but unlikely. The British were concerned with their far-flung empire and the trouble the US Navy, a formidable force, could cause in remote areas not easily reinforced by the Crown. More importantly, during the decade of the 1860’s, the United States provided nearly half the wheat and corn Britain imported every year. If the US stopped exporting that grain, it would have been all but impossible to make up the deficit from other nations.

As late as the summer of 1862, there were still those in London who believed something could be gained by mediating an end of the war so as to ensure in independent South that would continue to sell cotton on the world market at cheap prices. But mediation meant recognizing the Confederacy, a move that, once again, could drive the Union to declare war on the British Empire.

Three things occurred between the summer of 1862 and the summer of 1863 which all but ended British support of the Confederacy. First was the Battle of Antietam in September, 1862. While the battle was inconclusive from a tactical standpoint, it ended the southern invasion of Maryland and showed that, sooner or later, superior Union numbers and industry, if lead effectively, would end the rebellion.

Second was the failure of the Confederacy to dominate the cotton market in Europe. By early 1863, England and France had replaced their southern cotton imports with cotton from other countries. In the eyes of Europe, the Confederacy simply stopped being an important economic entity.

Finally, there was the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1st, 1863. It stated, in part, that any slave held in a state that was in rebellion was considered free. While it did little at the time to actually free anyone, the Proclamation changed the war from being just about maintaining the union of states to also being about a larger cause, that of human freedom and the end of forced bondage. By this time, slavery was outlawed in all of Western Europe. What nation would now stand in the way of President Lincoln when he stood for such a noble goal?

Even though the Civil War would continue for another two years, by 1863 it was clear that European (and specifically British) recognition of the Confederacy was an impossibility. Without notice and support from the European powers, it was only a matter of time until the rebellion by the southern states ended in defeat.

'In Flanders Fields' Written, May 3, 1915

2009-05-16T21:30:00.003-04:00

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Today in 1915, the poem “In Flanders Fields” was written by Canadian soldier and physician John McCrae. Written in the French rondeau style, the fifteen line, three stanza poem is still easily recognized by the general public in Europe and North America more than eighty years after its first publication.

John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada in November, 1872. He had recurring problems with asthma in his younger years, but that did not stop him from pursuing higher education and a career in the military. He was also an occasional poet. By the time of the Second Boer War in 1899, McCrae was both an experienced doctor and artillery officer. Since Canada was a Dominion of the British Empire, McCrae found himself serving with the British Expeditionary Force sent to South Africa. Upon his return home in 1902, he became a professor of pathology at the University of Vermont.

The First World War began in 1914 and McCrae, now 41, found himself once again on the battlefield, this time as a field surgeon in the Canadian artillery with the command of a field hospital. It was here during the Second Battle of Ypres in May, 1915 that McCrae learned of (or may have witnessed) the death of his friend and former student, 22 year-old Lieutenant Alexis Helmer. After presiding over Helmer's funeral, McCrae wrote a short poem in his notebook and then, not satisfied with it, ripped it out and threw it away. An observant fellow officer retrieved the notebook page and submitted it for publication in the British magazine Punch, which printed the poem anonymously on December 8th, 1915. However, the magazine's index listed McCrae as the author.

“In Flanders Fields” became instantly popular and is arguably the most culturally important poem to emerge from the First World War period. McCrae was amused with his sudden rise to fame, but it did not change his work as both a soldier and a healer. He did not, however, have much time to contemplate how his discarded poem might change his life. On January 28th, 1918, while commanding Number 3 Canadian General Hospital at Boulogne, France, Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae died of pneumonia at the age of 45. He was buried with full honors at Wimereux Cemetery, not far from his last command. A collection of McCrae's poems, many of them written before the war, were published soon after his death.

Some recitations of “In Flanders Fields” omit the third stanza because of what critics have called its pro-war stance versus the more sacrificial tone of the first two stanzas. But in remembering what has come before, I believe it is important to remember not just the words or events, but the personalities behind them. John McCrae was a patriot and soldier as well as a doctor; he once noted in a letter that “all the... doctors in the world will not win this bloody war: what we need is more and more fighting men “. This was the man behind “In Flanders Fields”. With this in mind, here is the poem in its entirety:

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below...

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields...

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields...

Today, a First World War museum called In Flanders Fields exists in Ypres, Belgium near the site where McCrae first mourned for his lost friend so many years ago.

President Reagan Shot, March 30, 1981

2009-03-30T22:04:00.002-04:00

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Today in 1981, US President Ronald Reagan was shot while on the way to his limousine after giving a speech in Washington, DC less than two miles from the White House. The shooting shocked the nation and made the issues of Presidential succession and the insanity defense front page stories for months to come.

President Reagan had been in office only 69 days on March 30th, 1981. At 1:45PM that Monday afternoon, the President arrived at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC. He was there to address a gathering of AFL-CIO representatives who had come to the city for a convention. Forty-five minutes later, Reagan walked out of the hotel's northwest exit and headed for the waiting Presidential limousine. A gunman rushed from a crowd of onlookers towards the President and fired six .22 caliber rounds from his revolver. The President was pushed into the limousine by a team of Secret Service agents as other agents and policemen grabbed the gunman. The entire incident, from the firing of the first bullet to the Presidential limousine pulling tearing away from the curb, had taken less than 10 seconds.

As the limousine sped from the scene, the Secret Service agents with the President checked him for gunshot wounds. None were readily apparent, but when Reagan began coughing up blood, the motorcade headed for George Washington University Hospital. The President walked into the emergency room, but soon fell to one knee and complained of difficulty breathing. By this time, a gunshot wound in Reagan's left armpit had been discovered. He was immediately prepped for surgery.

The President, a former actor who possessed an incredible talent for spontaneity, said to surgeons as he was wheeled into the operating room, “Please tell me you're all Republicans” to which one of the team responded, “Sir, we're all Republicans today.” The surgery lasted three hours and removed a bullet that had grazed one of the President's ribs and lodged in his left lung, a mere inch from his heart. He remained in the hospital for 13 days, but his recovery took much more time. Reagan's personal physician was later quoted as saying that the President's recovery was not complete until October, more than six months after the shooting.

There were five cameramen present at the scene of the assassination attempt, including one from each of the major news networks of the time. Those videos, along with detailed crime scene analysis, soon told the whole story of the shooting. The first bullet hit White House Press Secretary James Brady in the head. The second hit police officer Thomas Delahanty in the back. The third passed over the President and hit the window of a building across the street. The fourth hit Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy in the abdomen. The fifth hit the bullet-proof glass of the window on the open side door of the Presidential limousine. The sixth and final bullet ricocheted off the side of the limousine and hit the President in his left armpit.

The gunman who fired those shots was apprehended at the scene. He was John Hinckley, Jr., an Oklahoma native who grew up in University Park, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. He attended Texas Tech University on a part-time basis during most of the 1970’s, interrupted by a move to Los Angeles in 1975 in the hope of gaining success as a songwriter. It was during this time Hinckley first saw the film Taxi Driver, starring a then 14-year old Jodie Foster. Robert De Niro played the main character in the film who plots to assassinate a Presidential candidate. Hinckley saw the film numerous times and became obsessed with Foster. For months, he tried in vain to contact the actress. After learning that she was attending Yale University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut for a short time, during which he sent her numerous poems and messages, often slipping them under her door. He called Foster twice; she told him she was not interested in a relationship. Instead of being deterred, Hinckley tried even harder. In early 1981, Foster turned the notes she had received over to the Dean of Yale, who turned them over to the police. An investigation was launched, but Hinckley was already gone.

Before leaving Yale, Hinckley decided to take new course of action. Since he could not win over Foster in his current social position, he decided that he needed to become a nationally-known figure. He had followed President Carter for some time, apparently inspired, once again, by Taxi Driver. When President Reagan was sworn into office in January, 1981, he became the target of Hinckley’s plan for fame. He bought a bus ticket and arrived in Washington, DC on March 29th, 1981. He saw an article in a local paper discussing the President’s itinerary for the following day. Hinckley took this as a sign that it was time to act. He had with him an R.G. Industries Rohm .22 revolver he had bought at a pawn shop in Dallas, Texas; it cost $47. It contained six Devastator rounds, so named because they were designed to explode on impact. Thankfully, none of the six performed as intended.

Hinckley was charged with 13 offenses and on June 21st, 1982, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecution’s evidence pointed to legal sanity, but the defense produced clear psychiatric reports of Hinckley’s insanity. He was confined at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he is still held today, with occasional off-site visits with his parents.

There was intense public outrage at the outcome of the trial, so much so that a few states completely removed insanity as a defense in a felony crime. There were also restrictions placed on an expert witness’ testimony with regard to a conclusive decision of insanity. In other words, no psychologist or psychiatrist could conclude merely from third-party evidence that a defendant was mentally unstable at the time of the event. In the past 28 years, however, most states have changed the weight of that testimony again.

Another issue brought to light by the assassination attempt was the Presidential line of succession. At the time of the shooting, Vice President George Bush was in Texas. There were only three senior officials at the White House that afternoon: Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and National Security Advisor Richard Allen. At a White House press conference that afternoon, Press Secretary Larry Speakers, when asked who was running the government, responded, “I cannot answer that question at this time.” Secretary Haig went immediately to the Press Room and told the assembled journalists, in part, “As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the Vice President…if something came up, I would check with him, of course.” Haig was later attacked for that statement, but he claimed later it was not meant to imply he was in charge of the US government at that moment. In reality, he was fifth in the line of succession behind the Vice President, Speaker of the House, and President pro tempere of the Senate. Despite his stated intent, the quote haunted Haig for the rest of his time as Secretary of State. The question of Presidential succession is still a muddy one, since technically the President must give written authorization to the Vice President for him to assume power. In reality, then, the power of the Presidency still resided with Ronald Reagan that afternoon.

As we learned earlier, it was not just the President who was shot that Monday 28 years ago. White House Press Secretary James Brady was hit in the head, an injury that left him partially paralyzed and restricted to a wheelchair. Two of the three major networks initially reported him dead after the shooting, a mistake which caused the ABC anchor, Frank Reynolds, to yell at his off-air staff at the top of his lungs in front of a national audience.

Brady became an ardent supporter of gun control and lobbied for the passing of the Brady Bill, a law which, among other things, introduced a five day waiting period to the purchase of a handgun. Today, he helps lead the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Officer Thomas Delahanty of the Washington, DC Metro Police Department was hit in the neck by one of the Hinckley’s bullets. It ricocheted off his spinal cord, causing permanent nerve damage in his left arm. He was cited for heroism, but was ultimately forced to retire due to his injury. Several years after the shooting, Delahanty tried to sue both Hinckley and the manufacturer of the gun he used. The case was eventually rejected by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Today, Delahanty lives in retirement in suburban Washington.

Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy remains one of only two men in that agency to take a bullet for the President. He was hit in the abdomen, with the bullet lodging in his chest. Surgeons were able to remove the round and McCarthy recovered. He retired from the Secret Service in 1993 after a very successful career. He became Chief of the Orland Park, Illinois Police Department in 1994 and in 1998 ran unsuccessfully for the office of Illinois Secretary of State. He is, as of now, still the Chief of Police in Orland Park.

Ronald Reagan became a two-term President, winning a 49-state landslide in 1984. He retired from public life in 1994 after disclosing that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a few months earlier. He died in 2004 at the age of 93. On the entire 25-mile route from Point Mugu Naval Base to Reagan’s internment location at his Presidential Library in Simi Valley, crowds lined both sides of the highway and every overpass.

The Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942

2009-01-19T21:03:00.002-05:00

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Today in 1942, senior Nazi government and military officials, lawyers, bureaucrats and army officers, met at a lakeside villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee for a top-secret lunchtime conference. This meeting would serve as a blueprint for one of the worst atrocities in modern history, the Holocaust.

A surviving copy of the minutes from the meeting was discovered in 1947 by the staff of an American prosecutor, who was preparing for the famous Nuremburg war crimes trials. Dubbed the “Wannsee Protocol”, they reveal that the gathering was casual but calculating in the most perverse sense.

The architect of the Wannsee meeting was Reinhard Heydrich a charismatic yet ruthless man known as “The Blond Beast”, who at the time was chief of the Reich Security Main Office and deputy chief of the Nazi Schutzstaffel or “S.S.” military forces. Heydrich’s objective, and that of the other attendees, was simple in theory: to efficiently map out the systematic slaughter of Europe’s entire Jewish population. The Nazis knew that such a large-scale event had to be legal and needed to be enacted throughout all of the appropriate civil ministries.

In July 1941, Heydrich had been ordered by Reich Marshall Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, to organize and develop a “final solution” to the “Jewish question”. Göring’s directive to the S.S. came at a time when the Third Reich was facing a surge of Jewish refugees following the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union. The vicious hatred the Nazis had for all Jews was changing from a political ideal in Germany to a point of national policy.

Heydrich’s capable assistant was Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann chief of the Gestapo’s Office of Jewish Affairs, a born researcher who’s depth of knowledge about the Jewish people had impressed Heydrich. Starting out as a S.S. corporal, working at the newly built concentration camp at Dachau “dah-cow”, Eichmann had immersed himself in studies of Judaism, the Zionist movement, and had even learned to converse in Hebrew. The son of a mining company owner, Eichmann also had an interest in transportation logistics and immigration affairs.

After his Gestapo appointment, Eichmann traveled to Palestine in 1937 with a proposal of forced deportation, hoping this would relieve Nazi Germany of its Jewish population. This plan, and a similar one to send Jews to the island of Madagascar failed. Thereafter, the Nazis believe that more radical measures were necessary.

Mass killings began on the Russian front under Reinhard Heydrich’s direct orders. Special mobile firing squads secretly rounded up and executed thousands of Jewish civilians caught behind the German battle lines, as many as 34 thousand Jews were shot at one time outside the city of Kiev in the Ukraine. Amazingly enough, the Nazis believed that the firing squads ,and special gas-chamber trucks used in some cases, were not killing Jews quickly enough. The Holocaust was about to take a giant leap forward.

Adolf Eichmann personally welcomed all of the guests to Wannsee and told his staff that no telephone calls would be made or taken and that no guest directory would be kept; strict security was the order of the day. The fifteen Nazis gathered in the house’s main dining room. Reinhard Heydrich arrived by plane at 11 AM. The heavy oak doors were then closed and the meeting began. Heydrich read Reich Minister Göring’s directive, adding that the S.S. would delegate all of the ordered arrangements. “Europe will be combed of Jews from east to west,” he told the men, “This discussion has been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions.”The S.S. leader reemphasized the great need for secrecy throughout the proceedings. No personal copies of any directives were to be made and all future communication about the matter was to be directed to Colonel Eichmann.

Heydrich introduced two key goals for the Final Solution: namely the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of German life and the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people. There were three ways to accomplish this, Heydrich revealed: to prepare for the increased emigration of the Jews, to direct the flow of emigration and to dramatically speed up that process. “The aim of all this is to cleanse the German living space of Jews in a legal manner,” Heydrich said.
The outlines that were prepared for the Wannsee conspirators were laden with the Nazi’s euphemistic language, a cryptic process that insured the whole operation was a heavily guarded state secret.

“Emigration”, spelled with an “e”, meant the forced rounding up and transport of all Jews from Nazi Europe to concentration camps in the East. The heavy financial burden of emigration was to be shouldered by the Jews themselves, Heydrich said, with synagogues and political and civic organizations forced to finance the transport of their own people. Jews over the age of 65 would be exempt from the emigration and would be forcibly admitted to special “old age” ghettos, even wounded and decorated World War I veterans.

The term “evacuation” meant the actual execution of any Jews deported by rail to the East. Effective mass execution techniques were already being tested at camps throughout the Third Reich. Colonel Eichmann reported that special carbon monoxide gas chambers were being constructed that could kill thousands in one day. Large crematoriums and mass graves would conceal any evidence of the evacuations.
Heydrich then directed the meeting’s attention to a list of Jewish population figures from Germany and the rest of occupied Europe, a sphere the Nazis referred to as “Greater Germany”.

The total number of Jewish people in Nazi-controlled areas was 11 million: Nine percent worked in agriculture, 20% in trade, and 32% in private occupations like medicine, the press and the theater. These figures would help the appropriate Nazi agencies determine the labor force they could pull from within the camps.
Heydrich remarked that those who were not strong enough to work would die of “natural causes” (like disease or starvation) and that defiant survivors would be quote “treated accordingly” (gassed or shot) upon completion of their projects.
The infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935 had helped institutionalize many of the racial practices of the Nazi government so the Wannsee conspirators decided to further twist the system to further deal with Jews of mixed blood and mixed marriage.
One heavily debated issue was the actual legal definition of a Jew. Jews who descended from only three Jewish grandparents were considered to be fully Jewish while those that descended from only two Jewish grandparents were considered mixed.
Heydrich ordered that mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews be immediately dissolved and that any mixed children be evacuated at the camps along with their Jewish parent.

Heydrich finally ordered that the grim Nazi practice of sterilization be used in many of these special cases, the immediate goal being that it was legally preferred to evacuation and would ultimately prevent any further Jewish progeny.
The S.S. commander closed the Wannsee meeting after further discussion with the attending ministers. All personal notes were memorized then burned along with the stenographer rolls. Colonel Eichmann personally edited and prepared an official transcript of the proceedings.

The infamous group disbanded with unanimous assurances of their support of the entire project. The planning and approval of the Holocaust had taken just over an hour.
By the end of World War II, an estimated six million European Jews had died in Hitler’s Final Solution, two of every three alive. Many survivors successfully immigrated to Palestine and, in 1948 the state of Israel declared independence from the British Empire. Today Jews living there often remember the Holocaust as the Shoah “show-uh” a Hebrew word that means “the great catastrophe.”

Justice would come for all of the Wannsee conspirators, striking at some quicker than others. Reinhard Heydrich was the first to die. Appointed Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, he was assassinated while driving through the streets of Prague, on the morning of March 27, 1942 by two British-trained Czech commandos. The eager assassins failed to shoot Heydrich with their machine guns but tossed a grenade into the front seat of his Mercedes. It exploded, seriously wounding him. Heydrich was taken to a hospital where he died of an infection a week later, just three short months after the Wannsee meeting.

Of the fourteen surviving conspirators, five died during or immediately after World War II. The remaining nine were either sentenced to death or prison by the international court or temporarily jailed as P.O.W.’s. Gerhard Klopfer “gare-hard” “clop-fair”, the last of the Wannsee conspirators, died a free man in 1987.

Adolf Eichmann, who took control of Hitler’s Holocaust after Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination, had the most interesting fate of all; for years it appeared as if he had slipped through the cracks of history. Initial reports claimed that Eichmann was arrested by the Americans but that he managed to escape since they were unaware they were questioning the most wanted man in the Third Reich.

Nazi hunters, led by Holocaust survivor and human rights activist Simon Wiesenthal “wise-en-thawl”, picked up the trail, tracing Eichmann to Austria and later Czechoslovakia where he was rumored to have died.

By the 1950’s new rumors circulated that Eichmann had moved to Argentina with his family and was living there under an assumed name. Spies from the Israeli Mossad “moe-sod” agency finally found and kidnapped him in 1960.

Adolf Eichmann was convicted of crimes against the state of Israel. While he told the courtroom and television cameras that he regretted and condemned the actions of the former Nazi government, witnesses said that privately, Eichmann admitted he was very proud to be the chief exterminator for Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death under the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Law of 1950. On May 31, 1962, the former S.S. administrator was hanged and his body cremated. His ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean; no country dared to claim itself his final resting place.

The Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773

2008-12-18T21:45:00.002-05:00

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Today in 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place aboard three ships in port at Boston, Massachusetts. The actions that night were felt in all thirteen of the American colonies and triggered a series of events which lead directly to the beginning of the Revolutionary War less than two years later. It remains today one of the most notable acts of protest in American history.

At the beginning of the 1770’s, relations between England and her colonies in North America were difficult at best. While few called for open revolution, more and more colonists began to see Great Britain as less a mother country than an oppressive overseer. One fact, more than any other, was the cause of this feeling: taxation without representation.

Taxes had always been a part of life in the British Empire, but Parliament levied several taxes against the American colonies during the decade of the 1760’s that were, to the average colonist, unfair. Whether these taxes were fair or not has been a subject of debate for more than two centuries, but the bigger issue was the principle at hand. In short, the American colonies had no direct representation in Parliament, the body which levied the taxes. With no one to speak for them, many colonists believed that taxes would grow more and more confiscatory as the government in London needed more and more money in its coffers.

The lawmakers in England had a different view. To them, taxes levied against the colonies were no more restrictive than those placed on British subjects living elsewhere. In addition, the recently concluded French and Indian War (called the Seven Years’ War in Europe) had been incredibly expensive; it seemed reasonable that the colonies defended by His Majesty’s troops should help pay some of the cost of their defense. While the colonists had supporters in Parliament, they also had detractors who considered them disloyal. But it was events far from colonial shores that would push each side to the breaking point.

The East India Company, a huge conglomerate that exported goods from India and China with benefit of a royal charter, was being hit hard by weakening markets in Europe. The company's directors went to Parliament for relief, which led to passage of the Tea Act in May, 1773. Prior to the Act, the East India Company was required to sell all its tea in London and pay a steep duty to do so. This tea was then exported to the colonies by third parties and, as a result, was expensive. Smuggling tea into the Americas became a huge business, so big that it is estimated that in the early 1770's, Americans bought twice as much smuggled tea as that sold by the East India Company through intermediaries. The Tea Act allowed the company to sell tea directly to the colonies with only a small import duty attached.

Many American colonists resented the Tea Act despite the fact it meant their tea was about to become much cheaper. The Act represented the power of a monopoly with a huge lobby in Parliament, a body that contained no colonial representative. Protests against the Act occurred in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, causing many of the agents who would represent the East India Company to abandon their jobs. Those who were more steadfast were influenced by less than subtle means, such as attacks on their homes and businesses.

The first cargo ships bearing East India Company tea began arriving in Boston Harbor in November, 1773, with a ship named Dartmouth leading the way. The Sons of Liberty, a secret organization of Americans who were the strongest proponents of anti-government actions, confronted Boston port authorities and demanded that the tea not be unloaded from Dartmouth or from two other ships which arrived in the harbor, Eleanor and Beaver. The three ships' captains, mindful of what awaited them on shore should they unload their cargo, agreed to leave the tea on board their ships and return to England. However, Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson intervened, ordering the harbor blocked and the three ships held in port. Large crowds numbering in the thousands began to appear on the docks, some demanding a series of meetings with representatives of the East India Company and Governor Hutchinson. The meetings accomplished little beyond showing how many people in the Boston area were fed up with Parliament and the Crown.

On the evening of December 16th, after the Governor once again refused to allow the three ships to leave without unloading their tea, Son of Liberty Samuel Adams declared, “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” This declaration ended the meeting but it also served as a signal that the protest was being taken to the next level.

Shortly thereafter, a strange group of people appeared, dressed as Native Americans and carrying axes, saws and clubs. They walked straight to Griffin's Wharf, where the three tea-laden ships were docked. These Native Americans knew their way around a cargo ship, so much so that onlookers were convinced that many of them were local longshoremen. Cask after cask of tea was raised from the holds, opened up, and dumped into the harbor. When all was done, around 45 tons of tea was in the harbor. It was worth nearly two million dollars in today's currency. Tea washed up on shore for days afterward.

The Boston Tea Party, as the event came to be called, caused an uproar in Parliament. An example had to be set, lest such events happen in other colonies. Thus, the Intolerable Acts came into existence, a series of laws passed in 1774 to punish the American colonies in general and Boston specifically. These laws only served to strengthen the resolve of those colonists who opposed the actions of Parliament and the Crown. In 1774, the colonies sent representatives to meet and coordinate a protest; this meeting was called the First Continental Congress.

The largest result to come from the Boston Tea Party and Parliament's reaction to it was the change of perspective for so many American patriots. When the Sons of Liberty and other groups were in their infancy, the general feeling among members was that while they considered some laws passed by Parliament to be biased and punitive, they still considered themselves loyal subjects who merely wanted a change in government policy toward the colonies. After the Boston Tea Party, more and more colonists began to believe that a new nation, separate from the British Empire, needed to be formed. Once that belief began to spread, it was only a matter of time until the colonies were in a state of open rebellion.

The Abdication Crisis, December 11, 1936

2008-12-13T22:30:00.000-05:00

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Today in 1936, King Edward VIII’s reign ended, one day after he submitted the Instrument of Abdication witnessed by his three brothers. The events leading up to Edward’s abdication and the damage left behind have never faded from royal memory and still help to shape the British monarchy’s handling of publicity, both good and bad. Today, the abdication is viewed by some as a national tragedy, while others view it as a love story in which a man born to rule an empire gave up his birthright for the woman he loved.

In the last 25 years, people from every corner of the planet have become accustomed to hearing about accusations over one royal scandal or another inside Britain’s Royal Family. During the first decades of the 20th century, however, there was a high social and cultural wall between the outside world and the inner workings of Buckingham Palace. So while those of us living in the first decade of the 21st century might not be shocked by the actions of Edward and Wallis, post-Victorian Europe and North America reacted to the affair as if it were a shockwave from a huge explosion.

Wallis Warfield was born in Pennsylvania, either in 1895 or 1896. She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland under difficult circumstances with a widowed mother who was financially dependent on wealthier members of the family. Through a turn of fortune, Wallis attended a very exclusive girls’ school, which gave her the first glimpse of what true wealth and power looked like. By all accounts, she liked what she saw.

Wallis married Earl Spencer, a US Navy pilot, in 1916. The marriage lasted for eleven years, during which time she allegedly had an affair with Benito Mussolini’s future son-in-law. It was probably during this period that she was first introduced to the ideals of fascism. By the time of her divorce in 1927, she was already involved with Ernest Simpson, an American by birth, British subject by choice and wealthy to be sure. Simpson divorced his first wife, allowing him to marry Wallis in London in July, 1928.

In early 1931, Wallis met Edward, the Prince of Wales. Ironically, they were introduced by Edward’s then-mistress. The Prince was the oldest son of King George V and Queen Mary and was thus heir apparent to the throne. For the next three years, the two encountered each other at various gatherings. It has been alleged that they began their affair in December, 1933, while Edward’s mistress was in the United States. At the time, Wallis was still married to her second husband.

Much has been written about the relationship between Wallis and Edward, but one thing is certain: by early 1934, the future king was madly in love with this new woman in his life. Witnesses to their interactions spoke of her overbearing manner and lack of respect for Edward’s royal position, something the Prince evidently found refreshing. The King and Queen were less than amused, especially when the affair began to take precedence over the Prince’s official duties. The King ordered Wallis followed, with the detectives soon claiming that she was having an affair with another man as well as Edward. Whether or not the Prince knew about this other man is unknown.

George V died on January 20th, 1936 and Edward gained the throne as Edward VIII. His affair with Wallis continued unabated, leading many in his inner circle to believe he intended to marry the once-divorced American who was, as of 1936, still not divorced from her second husband. In the view of the royal family and the government, such a match was unacceptable for several reasons. First, Wallis was an American. While there was no legal reason why Edward could not marry a woman from the United States, it was believed the British public, and especially the upper-class, would never accept her as Queen.

Second, no British monarch had ever divorced or married someone who was divorced. Henry VIII did not even divorce Catherine of Aragon; rather, he had their marriage annulled. To make matters more controversial, both of Wallis' husbands were still alive, a condition that was not recognized as defining a valid divorce by the Church of England at that time. Thus, it was believed the King would not be able to keep his traditional position as the Supreme Governor of the Church.

Third were the questions of Wallis' background and behavior. Rumors about her past lovers, public spectacles and open disdain for the royal family circulated wildly. The British press, almost without exception, had ignored the relationship between the King and Wallis. By the end of October, when Wallis began divorce proceedings against her second husband, it was clear that courteous silence was soon to end.

On November 16th, 1936, King Edward invited Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Buckingham Palace and told him, for the first time, that he intended to marry Wallis Simpson. Baldwin told the King in no uncertain terms that such a marriage was not acceptable for some of the reasons we have already discussed. Two weeks later, on December 1st , the press broke its silence about the proposed marriage. A huge public controversy loomed on the horizon.

In early December, Prime Minister Baldwin and the prime ministers of the five Dominions of which Edward was King: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa, presented the King with three options: marry Wallis and make her Queen, marry Wallis and give her a title other than Queen, or abdicate and give up his claim to the throne, both for himself and his heirs. The first option was impossible and Baldwin promised that if option two was chosen, he and the rest of the government would resign.

On December 10th, King Edward VIII chose the third option and dictated an abdication notice witnessed by his three brothers. The next day, the abdication became law by a special act of Parliament. Edward's next oldest brother, Albert, Duke of York, became King and took the name George VI as a sign that he would continue the traditional policies of his father. On the evening of the 11th, Edward, now referred to as Prince, told the Empire that he could not rule without the company and support of the woman he loved. His reign had last 327 days.

Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, married Wallis Simpson in France on June 3rd, 1937. Wallis became the Duchess of Windsor, but did not receive the title of “Her Royal Highness”, an omission that Edward considered a personal affront.

Even after they were married and away from the royal family, Edward and Wallis continued to cause controversy. In 1937, the couple visited Nazi Germany and met Adolf Hitler at one of his personal retreats. The state-controlled media made much of the trip, especially the fact that Edward executed a Nazi salute as a mark of respect to Hitler. Many who knew Edward and Wallis believed the couple harbored pro-fascist views, reasoning that only a strongly controlled nation like Germany could stand up against Communism.

Such beliefs were politically difficult, especially at the beginning of the Second World War. After serving some time in uniform as a Major-General in France at the beginning of the war, Edward and Wallis moved to Portugal after German troops took Paris in May, 1940. Afraid of that Edward might return to Nazi-occupied France, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the Duke home, threatening him with court-martial if he did not comply. Edward was notoriously lax with national security secrets and Churchill did not want to take any chances. The Duke was made governor of the Bahamas, a job that put him out of harm's way for the duration of the war.

After the war, Edward and Wallis returned to France, where they lived the rest of their lives as private citizens. They were socially active and visited both President Eisenhower and President Nixon at the White House. Most of the American public saw Edward and Wallis' lives as an amazing and touching love story; many in England who were were better informed were not, understandably, as kind.

Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, died on May 28th, 1972. The Duchess died almost 14 years later, on April 24th, 1986. The two are buried together in the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore.

HMAS Sydney and Kormoran Do Battle, 1941

2008-11-30T21:02:00.000-05:00

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Today in 1941, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran faced each other in ship-to-ship combat off the coast of Western Australia. While inconsequential in a strategic sense, the battle remains a source of controversy in Australia and among naval historians even today, 67 years later.

Kormoran was a merchant raider, a class of ship used early in the Second World War by both the Allied and Axis powers. At first glance, merchant raiders appeared to be unarmed cargo ships. However, the vessels used various tricks to hide offensive armaments, often cannons, mines and torpedoes. They were unarmored and were not intended to do battle with naval ships of the line, but they were very effective in sinking unarmed merchantmen. The Kormoran, 515 feel long and weighing nearly 9000 tons, packed a punch with 6 5.9in guns, 2 37mm anti-tank guns, 5 20mm anti-aircraft guns, 6 torpedo tubes and 390 mines stored in her holds. She could also carry two seaplanes and a light torpedo boat. She was originally built as a merchant ship in 1938 for the Hamburg-America line, but when the war began the following September, she was converted into an HSK, the German abbreviation for “commerce disruption cruiser”. By the time of her confrontation with the Sydney, Kormoran had been operating in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans for 11 months and had sunk or captured eight Allied ships.

HMAS Sydney was a light cruiser launched in 1934 in England. She carried 8 6in guns, 4 4in guns, 12 mounted machine guns and eight torpedo tubes. She also carried a seaplane for reconnaissance and anti-submarine operations. She saw intense action in the Mediterranean during 1940, meaning that by the time of the battle with Kormoran in November, 1941, most of the crew was experienced and battle-tested. One of the newer members of the crew was the Captain, Joseph Burnett, who assumed command of the ship upon her return to Australia from the Mediterranean in early 1941. At the end of February of that year, Sydney began her new mission of carrying out patrol and escort duties in the Indian Ocean and surrounding areas.

Sydney was returning to Fremantle from an escort mission when she spotted Kormoran 11 nautical miles away near Dirk Hartog Island in Western Australia. It was 4PM on November 19th. Sydney signaled Kormoran asking for identification, but the German ship turned to port and headed west for the open ocean. She was disguised to look like a Dutch freighter, even flying a Dutch flag. As the Sydney turned in pursuit, the German captain, Commander Theodore Detmers, ordered radio signals to be sent to the effect that a Dutch ship was being followed by an Australian warship as a further ploy to confuse the Australians. Kormoran was slower than Sydney and it soon became apparent that the warship was closing the distance, albeit slowly. Over the next 90 minutes, the crew of Kormoran tried to send poorly worded phrases via flag signal. Sydney replied, asking for more information as the distance between the two ships lessened.

Commander Detmers did not want a fight with the Australians, but he knew that if he had to fight, he stood a better chance at close range, where Sydney's advantage in fire control and more accurate weapons would be minimized. At last, the two vessels closed to within 1,000 meters and Captain Burnett aboard Sydney asked the Kormoran to display a secret letter code which would lend proof to the Germans' assertion that they were actually a Dutch merchant ship. Since the commander of the Kormoran did not know the code, he knew that a battle was now a certainty. He ordered the Dutch flag lowered and the German naval ensign raised. It was 5:30PM, November 19th, 1941.

The Kormoran fired first with both her 5.9 inch guns and her smaller 20MM and 37MM mounts. The larger shells fell short, but the smaller rounds hit Sydney’s bridge and her gunnery direction tower. The 150mm guns soon fired a second round, which resulted in a square hit on the Australian ship. The fact that the Sydney had not yet fired a shot was later explained by some of the German crewmen on the Kormoran, who said that as the two ships approached one another before the battle, it appeared that the sailors aboard Sydney were not at their battle stations; that is, the ship was not at general quarters. The Germans saw Australian crewmen leaning against the ship’s railing and noted that while the Sydney’s main guns were pointed at them, their secondary weapons were not.

Despite being caught apparently by surprise, the gunners on Sydney soon opened fire on the Kormoran with a bracketing shot, but the German ship responded by knocking out Sydney’s two front turrets. She still had two rear turrets that were undamaged, though, and one of those hit Kormoran in the funnel and engine room, igniting a raging fire. Her engines soon quit, but not before she fired a torpedo, hitting Sydney in the bow.

HMAS Sydney, on fire amidships and flooding from the bow, turned on Kormoran as if to ram her but kept turning, exposing her starboard side long enough to fire four torpedoes, all of which missed. Although losing momentum, Kormoran could still fire some of her main guns and the gunners wasted no time in hitting the starboard side of the Sydney. After the battle, the Germans claimed to have hit the Australian warship more than 50 times with their big guns.

Sydney turned to leave the scene of the battle, firing one more torpedo on her way out of range. Kormoran kept firing on the cruiser until 6:25PM, two hours and twenty-five minutes after the ships first spotted each other. Even though she could still fire some of her guns, the German ship had fires raging belowdecks and her gunnery controls were destroyed. At 6:30PM, Commander Detmers gave the order to abandon ship. Scuttling charges were placed and the crew manned the ship's life rafts. The battle had killed 20 Germans, with another 40, mostly wounded, killed when their raft capsized in the rough seas. Kormoran exploded 25 minutes later and went down by the stern.

None of the men and officers of HMAS Sydney, 645 in all, were ever seen again. The German survivors, who later came ashore in Australia or were picked up by passing ships, reported seeing Sydney burning on the horizon until 10pm that night. She eventually drifted over the horizon, after which the Germans heard several loud explosions. It was their belief that these were caused by the detonation of the Sydney's ammunition magazines.

The loss of HMAS Sydney sent shock waves through all of Australia. The Royal Australian Navy held a court of inquiry into the sinking in March, 1942. The court concluded that Captain Burnett disregarded standing operational orders when he sailed to within 1,000 meters of Kormoran and the ship's gunnery officer did not have Sydney's main guns ready to fire. It also concluded that a torpedo from Kormoran was the cause of the sinking.

Australians familiar with naval warfare found it incredible that a modern light cruiser could fall victim to a vessel that was, in the final analysis, an unarmored cargo ship. The fact that most of the German crew survived while all the Australians died was also a source of controversy in the months and years after the battle. Many Australians doubted the German accounts of the battle; some believed a Japanese submarine must have also had a hand in the destruction of HMAS Sydney. Some also believed that the crew of the Kormoran killed the Australian survivors in the water.

In March, 2008, both ships were found twelve nautical miles apart in over 2,400 meters of water. Soon thereafter, the Australian government launched a Commission of Inquiry which is, as of this writing, still underway. While physical evidence recovered from the two ships may shed light on what actually happened on that day nearly 70 years ago, it is possible that many of the questions about the battle between HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran will forever go unanswered.

Bastille Day, July 14, 1789

2008-07-15T20:38:00.003-04:00

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Today is officially the Festival of Federation or informally known as “Bastille Day”, a national holiday for our listeners in France, the rough equivalent of July 4th in the United States.

Bastille Day commemorates an event that took place July 14, 1789 when angry mobs in Paris attacked and captured the Bastille, a large fortress and state prison on the eastern edge of the city. The Bastille was a symbol of royal tyranny and absolutism in the country and the crowds believed that it contained weapons and political prisoners.

The storming of the Bastille, however, would come to symbolize French independence from the Bourbon monarchy of King Louis the 16th. The great arsenal was gradually torn down in the following weeks; pieces from the fort were fashioned into models of the building and other souvenirs.

The raid and destruction of France’s state prison was part of a series of events that are now known collectively as the French Revolution, a brutal but important milestone for Western Civilization that lasted until 1799 and transformed both a country and continent.

The French Revolution is too broad and complex a subject to cover in today’s show, so we’re just going to examine several events that modern historians conclude caused the triumphant and tragic event.

First a little background on the Bastille. It was built beginning in 1370, during the Hundred Years War, a prolonged conflict between England and France that lasted until 1453. The Bastille was converted into a prison in the 1600’s by King Charles the Sixth. It has been described as, “a large, gloomy gray building with eight ninety-foot towers, encircled by a deep ditch that was once a moat.” Post-revolution artwork has tended to romanticize the storming by portraying the Bastille with towering walls to exaggerate the achievement of the attackers.

For generations the Bastille held a sort of ominous psychological grip over the country. Terrifying stories of its many torture chambers and rat-infested dungeons ran rampant throughout the French countryside. Most of the prisoners had been incarcerated by the command of the despotic king using a letter de cachet (cash-ay), a simple piece of paper that detained an individual without any kind of legal process.

Some early inmates were traitors, some were guilty of publishing works that slandered the monarchy; others were considered religious heretics. The prison was, in fact, less grim on the inside than imagined; prisoners reportedly lived quite comfortably (for the right price of course), and many cells had fireplaces, curtains and furniture. Notable prisoners included the philosopher Voltaire, the journalist Nicholas Linguet, and a former cavalry officer turned lecherous novelist known as the Marquis de Sade.

The walls of the Bastille were guarded by eighty-two French army veterans and thirty-two soldiers of a Swiss regiment. The walls mounted eighteen eight-pound cannons and twelve smaller guns. 250 barrels (about 30,000 pounds) of gunpowder were stored in the cellars. The prison was under the control of the Governor Marquis de Launay, an elderly nobleman, who was actually raised inside the compound and inherited the job of warden from his father.

The Seven Years War had ended in 1763 and cost France its territories in North America while ensuring that its main rival Great Britain was the dominant naval and colonial in most of the known world. The French philosopher Voltaire published his ground-breaking work Candide in 1759 and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, also published two popular works in 1762, entitled Emile and The Social Contract. All three became important tracts in the rise of the Enlightenment; a mass movement of radical ideas that spread across Europe and promoted reason over faith and tradition as well as the establishment of “natural rights” for mankind.

The American Revolution began in 1775, inspired by Enlightenment ideas and the New England colonies’ desire to throw off the yoke of Great Britain and found their own representative democracy. France served as an important ally to the new United States and many in France began considering their own revolution in favor of a republican government.

Louis the 16th inherited the French throne, following the death of his father Louis the 15th in 1774. His reign has been classified by historians, in a word, as incapable. One relative wrote: “The king is back-tracking. He is always afraid of making mistakes. Once he has made a decision he is terrified that he might have got it wrong.”

Louis’ young wife, the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette, was little more than a rowdy teenager, increasingly unpopular with the French people, who branded her an outsider and railed against her extravagant and debauched lifestyle. She suffered a near life-threatening public relations crisis when a rumor spread that she told starving peasants in Paris to “eat cake” after bad harvests and inflation had caused the price of bread to double. This did not happen, but like today, perception became reality.

The country was divided at the time into the so-called “three estates.” The First Estate consisted of the clergy, the second estate was designated for nobles and the third estate comprised the rest of the population: the wealthy bourgeoisie and the peasants. The three estates had been historically represented in a legislative assembly called the Estates-General, however, representatives had not met in over 150 years.

The country was in a mess and sitting on the throne was the well-meaning but incompetent Louis the 16th, “lacking in intelligence, good judgment and (the) strength of character needed for his difficult job.”

The feeble King Louis and his out-of-touch debutante of a wife enraged the people and they increasingly rebelled against the bankrupt monarchy. The unrest heightened after Louis banished the Paris parliament twice in 1787. Finally, in May 1788 the despot bowed to popular pressure and summoned the Estates-General. It was too late. The general populace, crushed by taxes, starving from the bread shortage and dissatisfied by their misrepresentation in the Estates began to revolt.

By 1789, the Bastille fortress had become a problem. It was too expensive to maintain and only a handful of prisoners were actually being held there. By July of that year, a grand total of seven were imprisoned: four convicted criminals, one murderer and two mentally insane.

July 1789 found Paris a hotbed of panic and rebellion. Thousands of Parisians who supported a representative assembly grew suspicious that King Louis was massing troops in the capital to put down a revolt. Mobs began seizing grain stores, mills and bakeries. On July 11, a popular finance minister who supported the Estates-General was dismissed by the king. It was the proverbial “last straw”.

By the time pro-revolution rioters reached the Bastille, furious citizens armed with stolen weapons had torn down government customs posts and looted storage compounds of grain, wine and cheese. One French patriot rallied his neighbors saying, “To arms! I would rather die than submit to servitude.” 30,000 rifles and a cannon were seized from one garrison. A counterattack by the royal army failed, after squads of soldiers turned on their commanders and joined the looters.

The Bastille was not prepared for a siege. There was no fresh water and only enough food for a few days. The towering prison’s commander the Marquis De Launay knew without reinforcements, he would be forced to surrender.

A mob of 1,000 arrived in the early hours of July 14th, furiously searching for gunpowder for their muskets. While some revolutionary leaders reportedly tried to negotiate a turnover with De Launay, impatient rioters broke into the inner courtyard of the garrison. The Bastille, with its cannons pointed at the street, fired on the crowds, killing nearly a hundred.

By mid-afternoon anti-royalist soldiers arrived to support the mob. Two cannons fired on the Bastille’s drawbridge and the mob surged inside. After a suicidal De Launay attempted to torch the gunpowder magazines below, he was forcefully subdued by his men and the garrison was quickly overtaken. The gunpowder was seized by rioters and dozens of empty cells were opened in an attempt to free the prison’s rumored inmate population. The Bastille, long a hated symbol of repression and despotism, had fallen.

De Launay and his remaining troops were quickly bayoneted and shot to death by the furious mob. One rioter cut off the head of the Marquis and hoisted it onto a pike, carrying it throughout the city in front of the advancing crowds.

That evening King Louis, upon being told of the Bastille’s fate, remarked, “Why, this is revolt!” “No sir,” answered an advisor, “This is a revolution.”

The next morning Louis called for the withdrawal of royalist troops from Paris and the city’s government was replaced by a Patriot government with a new militia under the command of the American Revolutionary hero Marquis de Lafayette. On July 17, 1789, Louis visited Paris, wearing commoner’s clothes and calling himself “Father of the French, the King of a Free People.” It was a short reprieve before more violence. The weak and contradictory monarch later rejected the new government and was arrested along with his wife Marie Antoinette. Both were condemned as traitors and executed by guillotine in 1793. The despised House of Bourbon had finally fallen.
One bright spot amidst the early violence of the French Revolution was the August 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Men which gave citizens of France freedom and equality and established a sovereign government resting in the nation. The new National Assembly abolished nobles’ rights, set up a new legal system and drafted a constitution. The French Republic was officially established on September 22, 1792.
The Bastille was dismantled immediately following its overthrow by hundreds of Paris workers in what one historian calls “the greatest demolition job in modern history… bonfires burned by day and fireworks exploded at night.”

A large dance and “people’s banquet” called the “Festival of Federation” was held on July 14, 1790, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Bastille’s destruction. Thousands marched down Paris’ Champ de Mars and the Seine River.

Every year afterward there were celebrations in Paris and throughout France. In May 1880, Benjamin Raspail proposed legislation creating a national holiday for France. The law was made official and 14 Juliette was designated to be the day. A national holiday was born. The Eiffel Tower was also constructed in 1889 to commemorate the important event.

Today military parades are held throughout Paris to mark Bastille Day. It is also a special day that the French President chooses to offer executive pardons to petty criminals.

Today the Place de la Bastille is all that is left of the infamous site. It’s home to dozens of shops, cafes, and nightclubs and the open square is a popular spot for concerts and political rallies. The moat has been converted into a marina for pleasure boats. There is the July Column there, erected in 1830 to mark that year’s anniversary of the storming. The remains of the one of the Bastille’s towers were excavated in 1899.

Several works contributed to this podcast including “The Oxford History of the French Revolution” by William Doyle, “Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution” by Simon Schama and two books for children: “The Fall of the Bastille” by Stewart Ross and “Robespierre and the French Revolution” by Tom McGowen.

A Plea and Thoughts on Memorial Day---PLEASE LISTEN

2008-06-06T21:43:00.001-04:00

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A Plea and Thoughts on Memorial Day

2008-06-06T21:43:00.000-04:00

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