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Selasa, 31 Januari 2017
April 2017 Table of Contents
Larry Edgar
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April 2017 Readers’ Letters
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TV Series Review: Westworld
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The Truth About Facial Recognition Technology
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Daily Quiz for February 1, 2017
On July 24, 1897, twenty-one men of the 25th Infantry arrived in St. Louis after a 1400 mile, 40 day ride on these.
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February 01, 1884: Oxford Dictionary debuts
On this day in 1884, the first portion, or fascicle, of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, is published. Today, the OED is the definitive authority on the meaning, pronunciation and history of over half a million words, past and present
Plans for the dictionary began in 1857 when members of London’s Philological Society, who believed there were no up-to-date, error-free English dictionaries available, decided to produce one that would cover all vocabulary from the Anglo-Saxon period (1150 A.D.) to the present. Conceived of as a four-volume, 6,400-page work, it was estimated the project would take 10 years to finish. In fact, it took over 40 years until the 125th and final fascicle was published in April 1928 and the full dictionary was complete–at over 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes–and published under the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.
Unlike most English dictionaries, which only list present-day common meanings, the OED provides a detailed chronological history for every word and phrase, citing quotations from a wide range of sources, including classic literature and cookbooks. The OED is famous for its lengthy cross-references and etymologies. The verb “set” merits the OED’s longest entry, at approximately 60,000 words and detailing over 430 uses.No sooner was the OED finished than editors began updating it. A supplement, containing new entries and revisions, was published in 1933 and the original dictionary was reprinted in 12 volumes and officially renamed the Oxford English Dictionary.Between 1972 and 1986, an updated 4-volume supplement was published, with new terms from the continually evolving English language plus more words and phrases from North America, Australia, the Caribbean, New Zealand, South Africa and South Asia.In 1984, Oxford University Press embarked on a five-year, multi-million-dollar project to create an electronic version of the dictionary. The effort required 120 people just to type the pages from the print edition and 50 proofreaders to check their work. In 1992, a CD-ROM version of the dictionary was released, making it much easier to search and retrieve information.Today, the dictionary’s second edition is available online to subscribers and is updated quarterly with over 1,000 new entries and revisions. At a whopping 20 volumes weighing over 137 pounds, it would reportedly take one person 120 years to type all 59 million words in the OED.
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Bikes Honor Vets of All Branches & Wars
American Tribute Tour to take specially made bikes across the nation. The American motorcycles representing the four branches of the armed Tribute Tour, with services, is roaring across the United States and will make a stop at Rolling Thunder XXVIII in Washington, D.C. Scheduled to start at a Florida motorcycle rally in March and end …
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4 Stars and 6 Rides: NATO general and Rolling Thunder a perfect match
In May 2014, General Philip Breedlove completed a nearly 2,000-mile, seven-day ride through the Alps on a motorcycle. That trek, with a group of military colleagues, neatly encapsulates two of his biggest interests: Europe and bikes. Breedlove is commander of the U.S. European Command, in charge of U.S. military operations in Europe and parts of …
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Defenders Lodge a Comfort for Patients
Hotel at Palo Alto Veterans Affairs hospital offers free rooms. Billy Bryels was drafted in August 1966 and severely wounded in March 1968 while serving in Vietnam as an infantryman with the 2nd Battalion of the 327th Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division. The California native came home with three dozen fragment punctures in …
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Welcome to Rolling Thunder XXVIII: How Rolling Thunder Began
It takes a special breed of people to defend freedom. Those individuals are called veterans. It takes craziness, a little stupidity and a lot of courage to be one of the few. Most Americans have no idea of the hardships that veterans endure: poor pay, mediocre housing (especially on the battlefield) and, the most difficult …
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Book Review: F-104 Starfighter Units in Combat
F-104 Starfighter Units in Combat By Peter E. Davies, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2014 One of the more overlooked participants in the air war over Vietnam, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was a Mach 2 interceptor forced to adapt its sleek, lean airframe to a variety of tasks for which it was not designed. In entry …
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Book Review: The Pro-War Movement
The Pro-War Movement: Domestic Support for the Vietnam War and the Making of Modern American Conservatism By Sandra Scanlon, University of Massachusetts Press, 2013 The military conflict in Vietnam set off a political, social and cultural war in America that is still being fought. The deep divisions prominent in the United States today had begun …
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The Hunt for Missing POWs
The untold story of the CIA’s bungled recon mission to track down prisoners in Laos six years after the Vietnam War. In 2002, during a research trip to the National Archives to search the records of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (1991-93), author Lynn O’Shea found a box containing declassified documents detailing the …
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Shadows Over Cambodia: The Battle of Prey Totung
Relentless firepower from U.S. planes bolsters the Cambodian army in a fight against North Vietnamese forces at the Battle of Prey Totung. T he Vietnam War moved west into Cambodia beginning May 1, 1970, after President Richard Nixon authorized an incursion to destroy sanctuaries used by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to plan and …
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Monument in the Mountains: Soldierstone
High in the Rockies, Soldierstone fulfills an Army officer’s dream of a memorial to the men of many nationalities who fought in Indochina. Stuart Allen Beckley, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was dying of cancer. The pain was agonizing. But before night fell forever, he had one last mission. Beckley wanted to fulfill “a promise …
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In the Beginning, There was the Hump
The 173rd Airborne’s fight with the Viet Cong in November 1965 was the Army’s first major battle of the Vietnam War. My breath came in short gasps. I tried to bur- row into the ground and crawl inside my helmet at the same time. Other men were spread out in groups of two or three. …
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Powerful Memorials Take Myriad Forms
The approach of Memorial Day weekend reminds us that there are many—often poignant and sometimes surprising—ways to remember, honor and memorialize the service of Vietnam War veterans. This issue of Vietnam shows how varied the range of possibilities is. In what has become an annual tradition, the June issue includes the official guide to activities …
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Powerful Memorials Take Myriad Forms
The approach of Memorial Day weekend reminds us that there are many—often poignant and sometimes surprising—ways to remember, honor and memorialize the service of Vietnam War veterans. This issue of Vietnam shows how varied the range of possibilities is. In what has become an annual tradition, the June issue includes the official guide to activities …
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My War: Coast Guarding the DMZ
In January 1966, I enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard. Everyone was going to Vietnam; it was just the thing to do. I finished high school in Amsterdam, New York, did 1½ years at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica and spent another two years at GE making $1.55 an hour, which was good money. …
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Voices: Tony Orlando
Tony Orlando rocked to the top of the pop charts in the early 1970s with hits such as “Candida” and “Knock Three Times.” In February 1973 the group Tony Orlando and Dawn (Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson) released “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” which opens with “I’m comin’ home, I’ve …
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Intel- Vietnam magazine June 2015
Russian Submarines Shoring Up Vietnam’s Navy To bolster its military muscle in territorial disputes with China over oil and fishing rights in the South China Sea, Vietnam has been expanding its naval forces through an unprecedented acquisition of newly built warships. Over the past year, for example, it has cut deals to buy coastal patrol …
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Letters from Readers- Vietnam magazine June 2015
Cavalry Briefing—in Detail On page 53 of “Howard Breedlove’s Vietnam,” (April 2015) there is a photo captioned, “1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) platoon leader briefs squad leaders.” This is a picture of Captain William Taylor,commanding officer of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, on or around June 22, 1966. We were in mountains near Kontum, …
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Senin, 30 Januari 2017
January 31, 1950: Truman announces development of H-bomb
U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.
Five months earlier, the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Then, several weeks after that, British and U.S. intelligence came to the staggering conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top-ranking scientist in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. These two events, and the fact that the Soviets now knew everything that the Americans did about how to build a hydrogen bomb, led Truman to approve massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb,” as he described it in his public announcement on January 31.
On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated “Mike,” the world’s first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device, built upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion, instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. The incredible explosive force of Mike was also apparent from the sheer magnitude of its mushroom cloud–within 90 seconds the mushroom cloud climbed to 57,000 feet and entered the stratosphere. One minute later, it reached 108,000 feet, eventually stabilizing at a ceiling of 120,000 feet. Half an hour after the test, the mushroom stretched 60 miles across, with the base of the head joining the stem at 45,000 feet.
Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the “hell bomb,” as it was known by many Americans, and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.
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Daily Quiz for January 31, 2017
This was the first purpose-built and deployed fighter plane.
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Questions Regarding The Electoral College
In the late 1700s and the early 1800s, during the presidential elections, did the names of the presidential candidates always appear on the ballots in all the states? In which year did the ballots in all the states finally show the names of the presidential candidates? If there were some presidential elections early in our …
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Book Review: Marching Masters
Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army During the Civil War By Colin Edward Woodward The History Press 2014, $19.99 In September 1863, Confederate Private William Nugent tried to explain to his wife at home in Georgia why he was fighting to preserve slavery for others even though he didn’t own any. “We can …
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Book Reviews: The Last to Join the Fight
The Last to Join the Fight: The 66th Georgia Infantry By Daniel Cone, Mercer University Press 2014, $29 Daniel Cone’s the Fight: The 66th Georgia Infantry is an excellent addition The Last to Join to Civil War regimental historiography, a revealing look at a little-known Confederate unit formed straight out of the Georgia heartland in …
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Book Reviews: ’Death Does Seem to Have All He Can Attend to’
’Death Does Seem to Have All He Can Attend to’: The Civil War Diary of an Andersonville Survivor By Colin Edward Woodward, University of Virginia Nearly 56,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died in captivity during the Civil War, but— miraculously—more than 350,000 soldiers survived imprisonment. Among the survivors was Union Private George Alfred Hitchcock, who …
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Book Reviews: On a Great Battlefield By Jennifer M. Murray
On a Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013 By Jennifer M. Murray, University of Tennessee Press, 2014, $49 Gettysburg stands out among Civil War battlefields not only because of the great battle fought there in July 1863, but also because it is where Abraham Lincoln powerfully articulated the …
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Book Review: Bloody Autumn
Bloody Autumn: The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 By Daniel T. Davis and Phillip S. Greenwalt Savas Beatie, 2014, $12.95 Thumbnail accounts of important battles and campaigns go a long way in helping novice battlefield trampers understand the significance of each of these sites. In Bloody Autumn, National Park Service historians Daniel T. Davis …
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Book Review: Lincoln and the Power of the Press
Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion By Harold Holzer Simon & Schuster 2014, $37.50 Abraham Lincoln understood the power of the press. From early in his career, he subscribed to multiple papers, courted editors and tracked reports of his remarks. Following the debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858, he …
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Reality Check: Not a Quick Civil War
After the first year, any illusions that the war would be quick and dirty were gone. Winfield Scott, general in chief of the U.S. Army, – had identified the Mississippi River as an offensive opportunity. He came up with a plan, popularly called the Anaconda, which envisioned first encircling the Confederacy with a naval blockade …
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Wreck the Weldon Railroad
Grant sent them to destroy one of the Confederates’ few remaining supply lines; would they succeed? Threatening clouds presaged soggy weather on the morning of December 7, 1864, as the 97th New York Infantry joined a long column of Union troops on a road leading from Petersburg, Va. However dull the skies, the soldiers, commanded …
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Misfire at Mine Run
Major General George Meade’s options were limited as he worked to fill voids in the Army of the Potomac’s command hierarchy after the Battle of Gettysburg. His two biggest losses at Gettysburg came atop the I and II corps, with the death of Maj. Gen. John Reynolds early in the battle and the near-fatal wounding …
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Haunt of the High Seas: The Jefferson Davis
During the summer of ’61, Northern shippers trembled at the mention of Confederate raider Jefferson Davis. The Naval Historical Center calls the voyage of the Confederate privateer Jefferson Davis “the last truly classic cruise in the history of private-armed sea power.” Indeed, the Jefferson Davis was the single most successful maritime raider of the Civil …
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Grant’s Secret Weapon: Himself
What exactly was it that gave this general the power to succeed when so many before him had failed? I grew up hating Ulysses S. Grant, if only because he was the one most responsible for vanquishing my childhood hero, Robert E. Lee. In our household, Lee came next to God and cleanliness, a paragon …
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Dèjá Vu: Of Scales and Thumbs
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Déjà Vu: Organ Recital
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Petition of the Twenty Thousand: Women Help the War Effort
In late July 1864, 800 Philadelphia seamstresses put their names on a petition addressed to the Honorable Edwin M. Stanton, U.S. secretary of war. Titled “Twenty Thousand Working Women of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania”—so clearly speaking for more than themselves—it protested their abysmally low wages at the Schuylkill Arsenal and the outsourcing of work on government contracts …
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Field Notes- America’s Civil War January 2015
Harrisburg mayor attacks civil war museum Calling the National Civil War Museum a “failed experiment” and a “money pit,” Harrisburg, Pa., Mayor Eric Papenfuse has laid siege to the museum’s funding mechanisms in an attempt to make it pay for itself or close it down. Papenfuse says the 13-year-old institution is improperly spending $290,000 in …
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Letters from Readers- America’s Civil War January 2015
Put the flags back I think Washington and Lee University President Kenneth Ruscio and his administration were wrong to take down the battle fags around Robert E. Lee’s tomb (“Field Notes”; November 2014). Did these students not tour the campus before applying to study there? Did they not know the school’s name was changed from …
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Minggu, 29 Januari 2017
January 30, 1948: Gandhi assassinated
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the political and spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement, is assassinated in New Delhi by a Hindu fanatic.
Born the son of an Indian official in 1869, Gandhi’s Vaishnava mother was deeply religious and early on exposed her son to Jainism, a morally rigorous Indian religion that advocated nonviolence. Gandhi was an unremarkable student but in 1888 was given an opportunity to study law in England. In 1891, he returned to India, but failing to find regular legal work he accepted in 1893 a one-year contract in South Africa.
Settling in Natal, he was subjected to racism and South African laws that restricted the rights of Indian laborers. Gandhi later recalled one such incident, in which he was removed from a first-class railway compartment and thrown off a train, as his moment of truth. From thereon, he decided to fight injustice and defend his rights as an Indian and a man. When his contract expired, he spontaneously decided to remain in South Africa and launched a campaign against legislation that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. He formed the Natal Indian Congress and drew international attention to the plight of Indians in South Africa. In 1906, the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians, and Gandhi organized his first campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience. After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement with the South African government.
In 1914, Gandhi returned to India and lived a life of abstinence and spirituality on the periphery of Indian politics. He supported Britain in the First World War but in 1919 launched a new satyagraha in protest of Britain’s mandatory military draft of Indians. Hundreds of thousands answered his call to protest, and by 1920 he was leader of the Indian movement for independence. He reorganized the Indian National Congress as a political force and launched a massive boycott of British goods, services, and institutions in India. Then, in 1922, he abruptly called off the satyagraha when violence erupted. One month later, he was arrested by the British authorities for sedition, found guilty, and imprisoned.
After his release in 1924, he led an extended fast in protest of Hindu-Muslim violence. In 1928, he returned to national politics when he demanded dominion status for India and in 1930 launched a mass protest against the British salt tax, which hurt India’s poor. In his most famous campaign of civil disobedience, Gandhi and his followers marched to the Arabian Sea, where they made their own salt by evaporating sea water. The march, which resulted in the arrest of Gandhi and 60,000 others, earned new international respect and support for the leader and his movement.
In 1931, Gandhi was released to attend the Round Table Conference on India in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. The meeting was a great disappointment, and after his return to India he was again imprisoned. While in jail, he led another fast in protest of the British government’s treatment of the “untouchables”–the impoverished and degraded Indians who occupied the lowest tiers of the caste system. In 1934, he left the Indian Congress Party to work for the economic development of India’s many poor. His protege, Jawaharlal Nehru, was named leader of the party in his place.
With the outbreak of World War II, Gandhi returned to politics and called for Indian cooperation with the British war effort in exchange for independence. Britain refused and sought to divide India by supporting conservative Hindu and Muslim groups. In response, Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement it 1942, which called for a total British withdrawal. Gandhi and other nationalist leaders were imprisoned until 1944.
In 1945, a new government came to power in Britain, and negotiations for India’s independence began. Gandhi sought a unified India, but the Muslim League, which had grown in influence during the war, disagreed. After protracted talks, Britain agreed to create the two new independent states of India and Pakistan on August 15, 1947. Gandhi was greatly distressed by the partition, and bloody violence soon broke out between Hindus and Muslims in India.
In an effort to end India’s religious strife, he resorted to fasts and visits to the troubled areas. He was on one such vigil in New Delhi when Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist who objected to Gandhi’s tolerance for the Muslims, fatally shot him. Known as Mahatma, or “the great soul,” during his lifetime, Gandhi’s persuasive methods of civil disobedience influenced leaders of civil rights movements around the world, especially Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States.
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Daily Quiz for January 30, 2017
She was the first woman nominated for a Best Director Academy Award.
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Sabtu, 28 Januari 2017
January 29, 1936: U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects first members
On January 29, 1936, the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects its first members in Cooperstown, New York: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson.
The Hall of Fame actually had its beginnings in 1935, when plans were made to build a museum devoted to baseball and its 100-year history. A private organization based in Cooperstown called the Clark Foundation thought that establishing the Baseball Hall of Fame in their city would help to reinvigorate the area’s Depression-ravaged economy by attracting tourists. To help sell the idea, the foundation advanced the idea that U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown. The story proved to be phony, but baseball officials, eager to capitalize on the marketing and publicity potential of a museum to honor the game’s greats, gave their support to the project anyway.
In preparation for the dedication of the Hall of Fame in 1939–thought by many to be the centennial of baseball–the Baseball Writers’ Association of America chose the five greatest superstars of the game as the first class to be inducted: Ty Cobb was the most productive hitter in history; Babe Ruth was both an ace pitcher and the greatest home-run hitter to play the game; Honus Wagner was a versatile star shortstop and batting champion; Christy Matthewson had more wins than any pitcher in National League history; and Walter Johnson was considered one of the most powerful pitchers to ever have taken the mound.
Today, with approximately 350,000 visitors per year, the Hall of Fame continues to be the hub of all things baseball. It has elected 278 individuals, in all, including 225 players, 17 managers, 8 umpires and 28 executives and pioneers.
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Daily Quiz for January 29, 2017
This was the first coffeehouse to open in Europe.
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Jumat, 27 Januari 2017
January 28, 1986: Challenger disaster
At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.
Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.
In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.
In the aftermath of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the disaster was caused by the failure of an “O-ring†seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive loss. As a result, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle.
In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.
On February 1, 2003, a second space-shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry of the Earth’s atmosphere. All aboard were killed. Despite fears that the problems that downed Columbia had not been satisfactorily addressed, space-shuttle flights resumed on July 26, 2005, when Discovery was again put into orbit.
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Daily Quiz for January 28, 2017
In 1896, J. P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, William Vanderbilt and others formed this organization.
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Book Review: Through the Heart of Dixie
Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory By Anne Sarah Rubin, University of North Carolina Press 2014, $35 Few events have stirred as powerful a response from historically minded Americans as the marches William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union forces made from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean in late 1864, and through South Carolina …
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Book Review: Persuading John Bull
Persuading John Bull: Union and Confederate Propaganda in Britain, 1860-1865 By Thomas E. Sebrell II Lexington Books 2014, $35 The Civil War was a propaganda war as well as a shooting war. Nowhere was this more evident than in Great Britain, where two journals—one Union and one Confederate—waged a spirited contest for the opinions of …
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Book Review: ‘We Fought Desperate’
‘We Fought Desperate’: A History of the 153rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment By Jeffery D. Stocker, Self-Published, 2014, $44.95 Regimental histories appeared steadily through the postwar decades of the 19th century—especially for Northern units, whose survivors had far more money and leisure to spare than their late foes. As the last veterans died, unit histories …
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Book Review: Founders’ Son- A Life of Abraham Lincoln
Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln By Richard Brookhiser, Basic Books 2014, $27.99 Richard Brookhiser, a senior editor at the has written extensively about National Review, our nation’s Founders. His many books include works on George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, as well as a volume that asks “What Would the Founders Do?” …
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Book Review: A Gunner in Lee’s Army
A Gunner in Lee’s Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter Edited by Graham T. Dozier, University of North Carolina Press 2014, $35.16 Each year a number of collections of Civil War soldier letters, diaries or memoirs are published. Though all contribute something to our understanding of the war, most cast only a …
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Johnston Comes Out Swinging at Bentonville
Outmanned, disorganized and disheartened, the Confederates could do little more than harass Gen. William T. Sherman’s Federals as they swarmed through the Carolinas in February and March of 1865. But as he met with his commanders on March 18 just southwest of Bentonville, N.C., Sherman conceded he wasn’t ready to count out his familiar old …
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‘I Heard a Pistol Shot': Eyewitness to the Assassination of Lincoln
A soldier who rarely went to the theater witnessed the drama of the century on April 14, 1865. Captain Roeliff Brinkerhoff was sitting across from the president’s box during the performance at Ford’s Theatre the night President Lincoln was assassinated. He was one of the few present to notice John Wilkes Booth approach the presidential …
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Lincoln’s Final Appeal: The Last Speech of Abraham Lincoln
The president’s last speech reached beyond the war to a peace he wouldn’t experience. Despite the misty Washington weather, the White House was bathed in light on April 11, 1865, as thousands assembled to hear the president speak. Throughout the city, bonfires blazed and celebratory rockets whistled. Crowds had gathered here the day before, expecting …
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Charleston Harbor Hijinks
Nearly a century after young Edwin Halsey’s prank almost sparked a civil war, gunpowder and mischief mingled again in Charleston Harbor on January 9, 1961. The occasion was the reenactment of the firing on the Federal steamship Star of the West. One hundred years earlier, Citadel cadets had skillfully directed more than a dozen rounds …
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First Round at Fort Sumter
Everybody knows what happened at Charleston in April 1861, but the war was nearly started a month earlier—by mistake. Long jets of fame and billows of smoke erupted from two 8-inch Columbiads on Cummings Point, at the tip of Morris Island, S.C. The crash of heavy artillery from the Confederate “Iron-clad Battery” rolled across the …
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Lee’s Last Ditch Effort
His army was crumbling and the Yankees were everywhere. Could one more gamble work? All around him, his soldiers were ragged and hungry. Desperate attempts in the last week to feed, clothe and arm them had been thwarted at every turn. Half his troops had been captured, killed or wounded—or had just left. Enemy armies …
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Cease Fire: Lincoln On Death
Abraham Lincoln might not have believed in ghosts and spirits, or even known of the ancient legend of vampires (as a filmmaker vividly suggested recently). But long before he presided over the bloodiest war in American history—which cost the lives of more than 700,000 young men in their prime—Lincoln was indisputably a melancholy, mystical man …
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Field Notes- America’s Civil War March 2015
Cushing’s Medal of Honor awarded More than 151 years after his heroic actions during Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, 1st Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing was awarded the Medal of Honor at the White House by President Barack Obama. The November ceremony was the culmination of a four-decades-long struggle by Cushing supporters to recognize …
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Letters from Readers- America’s Civil War March 2015
Columbia’s culprit In response to your query on p. 27 of the January 2015 issue (“Who Burned Columbia, S.C.?”), William Sherman provided an answer. “In my official report of this conflagration in Columbia,” he wrote in his memoirs, “I distinctly charged it to Confederate General Wade Hampton and confess I did so pointedly to shake …
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Kamis, 26 Januari 2017
January 27, 1888: National Geographic Society founded
On January 27, 1888, the National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C., for “the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.”
The 33 men who originally met and formed the National Geographic Society were a diverse group of geographers, explorers, teachers, lawyers, cartographers, military officers and financiers. All shared an interest in scientific and geographical knowledge, as well as an opinion that in a time of discovery, invention, change and mass communication, Americans were becoming more curious about the world around them. With this in mind, the men drafted a constitution and elected as the Society’s president a lawyer and philanthropist named Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Neither a scientist nor a geographer, Hubbard represented the Society’s desire to reach out to the layman.
Nine months after its inception, the Society published its first issue of National Geographic magazine. Readership did not grow, however, until Gilbert H. Grosvenor took over as editor in 1899. In only a few years, Grosvenor boosted circulation from 1,000 to 2 million by discarding the magazine’s format of short, overly technical articles for articles of general interest accompanied by photographs. National Geographic quickly became known for its stunning and pioneering photography, being the first to print natural-color photos of sky, sea and the North and South Poles.
The Society used its revenues from the magazine to sponsor expeditions and research projects that furthered humanity’s understanding of natural phenomena. In this role, the National Geographic Society has been instrumental in making possible some of the great achievements in exploration and science. To date, it has given out more than 1,400 grants, funding that helped Robert Peary journey to the North Pole, Richard Byrd fly over the South Pole, Jacques Cousteau delve into the sea and Jane Goodall observe wild chimpanzees, among many other projects.
Today, the National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions. National Geographic continues to sell as a glossy monthly, with a circulation of around 9 million. The Society also sees itself as a guardian of the planet’s natural resources, and in this capacity, focuses on ways to broaden its reach and educate its readers about the unique relationship that humans have with the earth.
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Daily Quiz for January 27, 2017
Famed gunfighter John Henry "Doc" Holliday killed this many men during his career.
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Book Review: Embattled Capital- Frankfort Kentucky in the Civil War
Embattled Capital: Frankfort Kentucky in the Civil War By James M. Prichard Frankfort Heritage Press 2014, $39.95 Until recently, Kentucky’s role during the Civil War and Reconstruction had not received the level of scholarly attention it justly deserves. Fortunately, the void is gradually getting filled in recent years by the works of a number of …
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Book Review: ‘Stand to It and Give Them Hell’
‘Stand to It and Give Them Hell’: Gettysburg as the Soldiers Experienced It From Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top, July 2, 1863 By John Michael Priest Savas Beatie, 2014, $32.95 Many say the three-day Battle of Gettysburg was decided on July 2, 1863, even though the fighting didn’t end until the following evening. Rather …
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Book Review: A Broken Regiment- The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War
A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War By Lesley J. Gordon Louisiana State University Press, 2014, $49.95 John Otto’s cornfield near Sharpsburg, Md., was a bad place for any Union regiment to be the afternoon of September 17, 1862—let alone one that had formally mustered into service less than a month earlier. But that …
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Author Lesley Poling-Kempes
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Book Review: Fortune’s Fool- The Life of John Wilkes Booth
Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth By Terry Alford Oxford University Press 2015, $29.95 he name John Wilkes Booth is synonymous with infamy. In the popular view, he has remained frozen in the same gruesome tableau for 150 years, lurking in the shadows of President Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theatre. In one hand …
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‘Lick ’em to-morrow, though’: First Day at the Battle of Shiloh
Soldiers on both sides expected the Federals to retreat after the first day at Shiloh; Grant had other ideas. Elements of three of General Buell’s five divisions were at Pittsburg Landing by dawn April 7, and the placement of those Army of the Ohio brigades on the left allowed Grant to squeeze his army’s line …
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Everybody Loves a Parade: Grand Review of the Civil War
With the fighting finished, Washington pulls out all the stops for a Grand Review. THE CONCLUSION OF FOUR YEARS of grueling civil war called for a celebration, according to The New York Times. “This war has been singularly wanting in pomp and pride and circumstance,” the paper opined on May 4, 1865, expressing its hope …
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It’s Not Your Grandfather’s Civil War
The National Park Service used the sesquicentennial to shed new light on an old story. AS THE NATION PREPARED TO commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Civil War in 1961, the remarkable Robert Smalls was not part of the conversation. Born into slavery in Beaufort, S.C., Smalls worked the docks of Charleston Harbor, acquitting himself …
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Texas two-step at Palmito Ranch
Colonel John S. “Rip” Ford didn’t like what he saw. A line of blue was spread before him over a rolling coastal plain studded with chaparral. The shrub-like plants provided an ideal cover for his skirmishers, who kept up a brisk fire to stall the Union advance. The force he faced was twice the size …
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War’s Bitter End
After a four-year bloodbath, the guns finally fell silent. Now what? The Civil War ended with what amounted to a whimper compared with all the bloody bangs during the years preceding the surrender. The principal contestants, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac, concluded their contretemps at …
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Southern women and their new normal
On the afternoon of April 9, 1865, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee sat down in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s house in Appomattox Court House, Va., and negotiated the terms of Lee’s surrender. A few days later, in a ceremony that lasted seven hours, about 20,000 Confederate soldiers in the Army of …
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Letter From Wild West – April 2017
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Field Notes- America’s Civil War May 2015
Federal legislation protects land at Gettysburg, Vicksburg Two separate pieces of federal legislation passed late last year are set to add parkland to Civil War battlefields in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. At Gettysburg, the government expanded park boundaries to allow the Gettysburg Foundation to proceed with plans to donate the Gettysburg Lincoln Railroad Station and a …
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Letters from Readers- America’s Civil War May 2015
Nasty Yankee prison camps I usually attempt to maintain a neutral position concerning North vs. South, even though I am a Southerner from Virginia, But I could not restrain myself from responding after reading another letter condemning the Southern treatment of Yankee prisoners of war as if Northern prison camps were country clubs (January 2015). …
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Rip Ford’s Risky Ranger Raid
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Book Review: American Endurance
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Book Review: The Earth Is Weeping
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Book Review: The Terrible Indian Wars of the West
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Book Review: Apache Warrior Versus U.S. Cavalryman, 1846–86
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Book Review: Forging the Star
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Book Review: Sign Talker
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Rabu, 25 Januari 2017
January 26, 1788: Australia Day
On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. After overcoming a period of hardship, the fledgling colony began to celebrate the anniversary of this date with great fanfare.
Australia, once known as New South Wales, was originally planned as a penal colony. In October 1786, the British government appointed Arthur Phillip captain of the HMS Sirius, and commissioned him to establish an agricultural work camp there for British convicts. With little idea of what he could expect from the mysterious and distant land, Phillip had great difficulty assembling the fleet that was to make the journey. His requests for more experienced farmers to assist the penal colony were repeatedly denied, and he was both poorly funded and outfitted. Nonetheless, accompanied by a small contingent of Marines and other officers, Phillip led his 1,000-strong party, of whom more than 700 were convicts, around Africa to the eastern side of Australia. In all, the voyage lasted eight months, claiming the deaths of some 30 men.
The first years of settlement were nearly disastrous. Cursed with poor soil, an unfamiliar climate and workers who were ignorant of farming, Phillip had great difficulty keeping the men alive. The colony was on the verge of outright starvation for several years, and the marines sent to keep order were not up to the task. Phillip, who proved to be a tough but fair-minded leader, persevered by appointing convicts to positions of responsibility and oversight. Floggings and hangings were commonplace, but so was egalitarianism. As Phillip said before leaving England: “In a new country there will be no slavery and hence no slaves.”
Though Phillip returned to England in 1792, the colony became prosperous by the turn of the 19th century. Feeling a new sense of patriotism, the men began to rally around January 26 as their founding day. Historian Manning Clarke noted that in 1808 the men observed the “anniversary of the foundation of the colony” with “drinking and merriment.”
Finally, in 1818, January 26 became an official holiday, marking the 30th anniversary of British settlement in Australia. And, as Australia became a sovereign nation, it became the national holiday known as Australia Day. Today, Australia Day serves both as a day of celebration for the founding of the white British settlement, and as a day of mourning for the Aborigines who were slowly dispossessed of their land as white colonization spread across the continent.
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Daily Quiz for January 26, 2017
In 1898 this writer was convicted of criminal libel and fled France.
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Hallowed Ground: Camp de Beugy, Sainte-Suzanne, France
King William I of England is better known to history as William the Conqueror. He won consistently on the battlefield, conducting five campaigns, fighting some nine major battles and directing at least 17 sieges during his 40-year military career. From his first conflict in 1047 as William II, Duke of Normandy, he triumphed every time …
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Christmas Truce: The Western Front in 1914
In the lead-up to Christmas 1914 soldiers on either side of the Western Front no man’s land set aside fear and their weapons to exchange surreal holiday greetings. By late December 1914 World War I had been raging for nearly five months. Had anyone really believed it would be “all over by Christmas,” then it …
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Funston of the Philippines
In 1901 Brigadier General Frederick Funston masterminded a ‘desperate undertaking’ to quash the guerrilla insurrection that flared up after the Spanish-American War. In the spring of 1901 Frederick Funston, a young and bold brigadier general of volunteers, approached U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Arthur MacArthur Jr., military governor of the recently occupied Philippines, with an audacious …
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Empire Vs. Tribe: The Roman Empire and the Celts
For five centuries the Roman and Celtic armies and cultures clashed, pitting the most highly organized state of the ancient world against fierce individualists. War horns brayed eerily, swords thudded against shields with a dull menace, and a jeering, terrifying howl went up from the roughly 12,000 Celtic warriors arrayed along the Allia River less …
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The War That Wasn’t
The news account is fictional, of course, but there were times when it could have been all too real. For more than four decades, from 1945 to 1991, the world could have awakened on any day to read it, or something like it, on the front page of almost certainly had some boilerplate version of …
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What We Learned From the Highway of Death
It was a nasty fight with grandiose operational names (Desert Shield and Desert Storm), but the 1990–91 Gulf War was America’s post-Vietnam catharsis—the first large-scale conflict the nation had won since evacuating Saigon. It was also a demonstration of General Colin Powell’s doctrine of having a clear objective, assessing the risks, ensuring widespread support, and …
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A Happy Hero: Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart
In many respects Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart’s military escapades played out like fiction. With action in three major wars, numerous battle in- juries and multiple plane crashes on the one-eyed, one-handed war hero’s service record, it seems that receiving a Victoria Cross was but a footnote to his military career, as he failed to …
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Letters from Readers- Military History January 2015
No ‘Parade-Ground Soldiers’ This is in response to a letter from Gerhardt B. Thamm November regarding Task Force Smith, in which Thamm refers to the men who made up Task Force Smith as “parade-ground soldiers.” I take exception to this insulting characterization. None of the soldiers who came from Japan at the beginning of the …
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Hallowed Ground: Oradour-sur-Glane, France
When the Allies landed in France on June 6, 1944, the 2nd SS Panzer Division— Das Reich —under the command of SS-Brigade–führer Heinz Lammerding was reconstituting and re-equipping around the southern French town of Valence, nearly 60 miles northeast of Toulouse. In reaction to the D-Day landings the German High Command ordered Das Reich to …
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The Myth of Masada
The 2,000-year-old hilltop fortress stands as a revered symbol of Jewish nationalism— but does the historic record support the myth or a very different reality? In 1963 Yigael Yadin, famed archeologist and former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, began excavating an ancient mountaintop fortress overlooking the Dead Sea. Known as Masada, the …
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Battle of Jaffa: Lionheart’s Greatest Victory
When Saladin seized the key Crusader-held port in the Holy Land, Richard I clawed his way back and forced the sultan to the negotiating table. By the summer of 1192 the Third Crusade had ground to a bitter halt. After a string of early successes King Richard I of England, popularly known as “the Lionheart,” …
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Greek Tragedy: Civil War During World War II
In 1944, though their country lay shattered after years of Axis occupation, Greek partisan forces engaged in a bitter civil war with far-reaching consequences. On a Friday in mid-September 1944, after a fierce three-day battle outside the Greek town of Meligalas, the victors marched 50 captive soldiers and more than 1,000 civilians into the main …
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Australia’s Pearl Harbor: Darwin
Ten weeks after its sneak attack on Oahu the same Japanese carrier group hit the port city of Darwin—and caught the Aussies napping. The morning of Feb. 19, 1942, dawned hot and humid in Australia’s Northern Territory. Some 50 miles north across Beagle Gulf from Darwin—the region’s sparsely populated seaside capital—Roman Catholic Father John McGrath …
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What We Learned From the Battle of New Orleans
With the formal signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Dec. 24, 1814, the War of 1812 drew to a close —or at least it should have, if only there had been a faster means than sailing ship of spreading the word. One day after the signing, on Christmas Day, Maj. Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham …
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Valor: Into the Breach, William Edward Hall
The Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military honor, is awarded only to those who have demonstrated valor in the face of the enemy. An unsurpassed 24 British servicemen displayed such heroics at the relief of Lucknow, India, on Nov. 16, 1857, during that year’s massive sepoy uprising. Among the recipients was Able Seaman William Edward Hall, …
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Letters from Readers- Military History March 2015
What I Learned From Desert Storm Re. “What We Learned From the Highway of Death, by Stephan Wilkinson, January: Wilkinson is quick to fault the Allies for not “finishing the job” in Kuwait, but it was impossible to do with the assembled coalition and impractical to do based on the international situation. I know. I …
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Daily Quiz for January 25, 2017
The only recorded mass-suicide of African slaves brought to America happened in this state.
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Selasa, 24 Januari 2017
January 25, 1905: World’s largest diamond found
On January 25, 1905, at the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat diamond is discovered during a routine inspection by the mine’s superintendent. Weighing 1.33 pounds, and christened the “Cullinan,” it was the largest diamond ever found.
Frederick Wells was 18 feet below the earth’s surface when he spotted a flash of starlight embedded in the wall just above him. His discovery was presented that same afternoon to Sir Thomas Cullinan, who owned the mine. Cullinan then sold the diamond to the Transvaal provincial government, which presented the stone to Britain’s King Edward VII as a birthday gift. Worried that the diamond might be stolen in transit from Africa to London, Edward arranged to send a phony diamond aboard a steamer ship loaded with detectives as a diversionary tactic. While the decoy slowly made its way from Africa on the ship, the Cullinan was sent to England in a plain box.
Edward entrusted the cutting of the Cullinan to Joseph Asscher, head of the Asscher Diamond Company of Amsterdam. Asscher, who had cut the famous Excelsior Diamond, a 971-carat diamond found in 1893, studied the stone for six months before attempting the cut. On his first attempt, the steel blade broke, with no effect on the diamond. On the second attempt, the diamond shattered exactly as planned; Asscher then fainted from nervous exhaustion.
The Cullinan was later cut into nine large stones and about 100 smaller ones, valued at millions of dollars all told. The largest stone is called the “Star of Africa I,” or “Cullinan I,” and at 530 carats, it is the largest-cut fine-quality colorless diamond in the world. The second largest stone, the “Star of Africa II” or “Cullinan II,” is 317 carats. Both of these stones, as well as the “Cullinan III,” are on display in the Tower of London with Britain’s other crown jewels; the Cullinan I is mounted in the British Sovereign’s Royal Scepter, while the Cullinan II sits in the Imperial State Crown.
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Hallowed Ground: Trentino, Italy
With the signing of the Treaty of London on April 26, 1915, Italy entered World War I on the Allied side. The Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia) publicly welcomed Italy but privately besmirched it for the grasping territorial terms it demanded upon victory; Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill disparaged it as …
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The Last Imperial German: Hermann Ehrhardt
Hermann Ehrhardt fought for his country in World War I, fought to save it from communists in the interwar years, fought to save it from Nazis, then left it for keeps after World War II. Once upon a time in Germany a disgruntled World War I veteran organized his own private army, waged a successful …
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Paris Under the Gun
When a large explosion rocked the Quai de la Seine in northeast Paris at 7:18 on the morning of March 23, 1918, no one at first knew what had caused it. No German air- craft were visible, and although Germany had initiated its great Spring Offensive of 1918 just two days earlier, enemy ground forces …
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The Lion’s Last Roar: Marshal Michel Ney
Napoléon’s beloved Marshal Michel Ney went down swinging a broken sword for France—only to face a firing squad of his countrymen. Napoléon Bonaparte called him “a lion” and amid an army of heroes singled him out as “the bravest of the brave.” One of his fellow French marshals perhaps said it best: “We are soldiers, …
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Crags of Tumbledown
Thirty-three years ago this spring Argentina and Britain waged war over a contested patch of tundra in the bitter South Atlantic—and many still wonder why. For weeks the soldiers of Britain’s famed Scots Guards regiment had snatched sleep amid bone-chilling winds in holes that repeatedly filled with freezing water. Men were suffering from frostbite and …
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From Crac des Chevaliers
Crac des Chevaliers (in present-day Syria) remains a standout among surviving Crusader castles. In 1142 the Knights Hospitaller occupied the hilltop fortress, which protected the southeastern frontier of the County of Tripoli. In the early 13th century the Hospitallers added a 30-foothigh outer wall with projecting towers. At the time the military order was strong, …
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Honors for Mercy
During World War II the war- ring air arms generally used women in auxiliary roles, in their most active roles serving as test or ferry pilots. A notable exception was the Soviet air force, which fielded three all-female combat regiments: one of fighters, one of dive-bombers and, perhaps best known, one of night bombers, 23 …
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Letters from Readers- Military History May 2015
The War That Wasn’t There are a few things I would add to the article “The War That Wasn’t” by Robert M. Citino, January. When I was a captain in 1981–82, I was assigned the G3 section of the 8th Infantry Division in West Germany. The NCO in charge of the vault containing the general …
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Book Review: Airpower
Airpower by Major Al Williams Major Alford J. Williams is most often remembered as a dashing U.S. Navy and Marine aviator, a pioneering test pilot and record-setting racer who enlivened airshows during the Golden Age and beyond with performances in his bright-orange Curtiss and Grumman Gulfhawks. Yet his talents were not limited to showmanship in …
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Book Review: The Fight in the Clouds
The Fight in the Clouds: The Extraordinary Combat Experience of P-51 Mustang Pilots During World War II by James P. Busha, Zenith Press, Minneapolis, Minn., 2014, $30 Heading home from battle in WWII, air ace Pierce W. “Mac” McKennon had a favorite prank: He would position a wingtip under his wingman’s and bang it up …
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Book Review: Spitfire, Merlin Variant
Spitfire, Merlin Variant by Ron Mackay, Squadron Signal, Carrollton, Texas, 2013, $18.95 There is a little of the aeronautical engineer in nearly all of us who have caught the “aviation bug.” We marvel at the design, the details and the elegant mechanics involved in these flying machines. British designer R.J. Mitchell was no exception; his …
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Book Review: F9F Panther Units of the Korean War
F9F Panther Units of the Korean War by Warren Thompson, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2014, $22.95 The acknowledged guru of Korean War aviation, author Warren Thompson, “has done it again.” The phrase would be a cliché if it didn’t translate directly as “distilled enormous research into a well-written history,” for that’s Thompson’s ethic, style and …
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Book Review: Flight 232- A Story of Disaster and Survival
Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival by Laurence Gonzales, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2014, $27.95 Twenty-five years ago, a United Airlines DC-10 crashed in a cartwheeling fireball in the most spectacular way possible: right in front of a TV news camera at Sioux City, Iowa. Though 111 people died, 185 survived …
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Book Review: Lords of the Sky
Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 by Dan Hampton, William Morrow, New York, 2014, $29.99 The title of this massive tome says it all: Fighter pilots have commanded the battlefield’s third dimension from World War I to the present. In making his case, Dan Hampton …
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Hoosier Hero: Bud Miller from the Doolittle Raid
Bombardier Bud Miller survived the Doolittle Tokyo Raid, but his luck ran out in North Africa. Skimming low above Tokyo’s roof- tops, the crew of B-25B No. 40-2292 didn’t have time to climb to 1,500 feet, the minimum distance considered safe for bombing. First Lieutenant Travis Hoover leveled off at 900 feet, and bombardier 1st …
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A Newsman’s Frozen Odyssey
Eddie Jackson sat at Mitchel Field on Long Island, impatiently waiting for the airplane to arrive. It was now more than four hours overdue. There was no one on the flight he particularly wanted to see, just the end of the flight itself. Jackson was a press photographer for the New York Daily News,assigned to …
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Senin, 23 Januari 2017
January 24, 1935: First canned beer goes on sale
Canned beer makes its debut on this day in 1935. In partnership with the American Can Company, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale to faithful Krueger drinkers in Richmond, Virginia. Ninety-one percent of the drinkers approved of the canned beer, driving Krueger to give the green light to further production.
By the late 19th century, cans were instrumental in the mass distribution of foodstuffs, but it wasn’t until 1909 that the American Can Company made its first attempt to can beer. This was unsuccessful, and the American Can Company would have to wait for the end of Prohibition in the United States before it tried again. Finally in 1933, after two years of research, American Can developed a can that was pressurized and had a special coating to prevent the fizzy beer from chemically reacting with the tin.
The concept of canned beer proved to be a hard sell, but Krueger’s overcame its initial reservations and became the first brewer to sell canned beer in the United States. The response was overwhelming. Within three months, over 80 percent of distributors were handling Krueger’s canned beer, and Krueger’s was eating into the market share of the “big three” national brewers–Anheuser-Busch, Pabst and Schlitz. Competitors soon followed suit, and by the end of 1935, over 200 million cans had been produced and sold.
The purchase of cans, unlike bottles, did not require the consumer to pay a deposit. Cans were also easier to stack, more durable and took less time to chill. As a result, their popularity continued to grow throughout the 1930s, and then exploded during World War II, when U.S. brewers shipped millions of cans of beer to soldiers overseas. After the war, national brewing companies began to take advantage of the mass distribution that cans made possible, and were able to consolidate their power over the once-dominant local breweries, which could not control costs and operations as efficiently as their national counterparts.
Today, canned beer accounts for approximately half of the $20 billion U.S. beer industry. Not all of this comes from the big national brewers: Recently, there has been renewed interest in canning from microbrewers and high-end beer-sellers, who are realizing that cans guarantee purity and taste by preventing light damage and oxidation.
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Cold Warrior
The North Korean MiG-17 pilots charged their guns and rolled in behind their target over international waters in the Sea of Japan. They believed they were attacking a P2V Neptune, but the subtle beauty and supple grace of the Lockheed patrol plane were missing in the sturdy hunk of blue iron that was cruising along …
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Target Berlin: The First Air-Raid on the German Capital
As the French auxiliary bomber Verne night on June 7, 1940, the crew approached Berlin at mid- Jules was amazed to see the capital of the Third Reich fully illuminated. The aircraft commander, naval Captain Henri Daillière, instructed pilot Henri Yonnet to act as though they were landing at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, but then to …
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Daily Quiz for January 24, 2017
This was the largest and most expensive fort built by the English in North America.
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When Did Cousin Marriage Become Unacceptable?
I’m writing a novel set in the 1860s-90s (haven’t quite settled on the exact decade), and have been unsuccessfully trying to research this question. I know that there was first cousin marriage in the early Victorian period, including Queen Victoria herself, Charles Darwin, and so on. Sources tend to emphasize that this was perfectly normal …
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Build a Lockheed U-2
Models of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane are as scarce as available details of the actual aircraft. In 1962 Hawk Model Company produced a 1/48th-scale U-2 kit that was crude by today’s standards. During the 1970s Testors acquired the Hawk molds and updated the kit, adding extra parts and new markings. In 1980 Airfix of …
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Heinemann’s Hot Rod
In a world where the focus seems to shift daily from one technological wonder to another, the value of solid engineering—a design well thought-out and well executed—is too often overlooked. This is as true in jet aviation as it is anywhere else. Today more than ever it’s important to reflect on the work of pioneering …
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The Lost Squadron: VMF-422
On January 25, 1944, 23 young men faced the most perilous fight of their lives. They were from towns and cities all over the United States. A few were combat veterans; most were fresh out of training. Before the war they had little in common, but in 1944 they were all naval aviators eager to …
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Lawson’s Leviathan: L-4 passenger biplane
The innovative L-4 passenger biplane turned out to be too underpowered to fulfill its eccentric inventor’s ambitious plans. Alfred W. Lawson was a dreamer, an aviation visionary whose ideas about passenger-carrying trans- ports were clearly ahead of their time. As early as 1908, Lawson established a reputation in America’s infant aeronautical community as a proponent …
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Rescued From the Weeds: Lockheed Vega
Once a ground-looped wreck, the sole surviving metal-fuselage Lockheed Vega is back in the air after a meticulous restoration. The Lockheed Vega was the single-engine superplane of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Learjet of its day. Had there indeed been a jet set back then, its members would have traveled by Vega. The …
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Letters from Readers- Aviation History January 2015
A Hog By Any Other Name Great article on the Fairchild Republic A-10in the November issue. As a former employee of Fairchild Republic in Hagerstown, Md., and a manufacturing engineer who helped produce the A-10, I thought I would pass on a brief history of the Thunderbolt II’s designation. The P-47 as stated was a …
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Minggu, 22 Januari 2017
January 23, 1957: Toy company Wham-O produces first Frisbees
On this day in 1957, machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs–now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.
The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling “Frisbie!” as they let go. In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer” that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter”–an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O–the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle–changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company. A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc’s surface–called the Rings–to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million units of its famous toy by 1977.
High school students in Maplewood, New Jersey, invented Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer and basketball, in 1967. In the 1970s, Headrick himself invented Frisbee Golf, in which discs are tossed into metal baskets; there are now hundreds of courses in the U.S., with millions of devotees. There is also Freestyle Frisbee, with choreographed routines set to music and multiple discs in play, and various Frisbee competitions for both humans and dogs–the best natural Frisbee players.
Today, at least 60 manufacturers produce the flying discs–generally made out of plastic and measuring roughly 20-25 centimeters (8-10 inches) in diameter with a curved lip. The official Frisbee is owned by Mattel Toy Manufacturers, who bought the toy from Wham-O in 1994.
from History.com - This Day in History - Lead Story
Daily Quiz for January 23, 2017
The US President was the first to send military advisors to Vietnam.
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Sabtu, 21 Januari 2017
January 22, 1998: Ted Kaczynski pleads guilty to bombings
On this day in 1998, in a Sacramento, California, courtroom, Theodore J. Kaczynski pleads guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings attributed to the “Unabomber.”
Born in 1942, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He worked as an assistant mathematics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, but abruptly quit in 1969. In the early 1970s, Kaczynski began living as a recluse in western Montana, in a 10-by-12 foot cabin without heat, electricity or running water. From this isolated location, he began the bombing campaign that would kill three people and injure more than 20 others.
The primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the president of United Airlines in 1980. After federal investigators set up the UNABOM Task Force (the name came from the words “university and airline bombing”), the media dubbed the culprit the “Unabomber.” The bombs left little physical evidence, and the only eyewitness found in the case could describe the suspect only as a man in hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses (depicted in an infamous 1987 police sketch).
In 1995, the Washington Post (in collaboration with the New York Times) published a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto written by a person claiming to be the Unabomber. Recognizing elements of his brother’s writings, David Kaczynski went to authorities with his suspicions, and Ted Kaczynski was arrested in April 1996. In his cabin, federal investigators found ample evidence linking him to the bombings, including bomb parts, journal entries and drafts of the manifesto.
Kaczynski was arraigned in Sacramento and charged with bombings in 1985, 1993 and 1995 that killed two people and maimed two others. (A bombing in New Jersey in 1994 also resulted in the victim’s death.) Despite his lawyers’ efforts, Kaczynski rejected an insanity plea. After attempting suicide in his jail cell in early 1998, Kaczynski appealed to U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. to allow him to represent himself, and agreed to undergo psychiatric evaluation. A court-appointed psychiatrist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and Judge Burrell ruled that Kaczynski could not defend himself. The psychiatrist’s verdict helped prosecutors and defense reach a plea bargain, which allowed prosecutors to avoid arguing for the death penalty for a mentally ill defendant.
On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for a plea of guilty to all federal charges; he also gave up the right to appeal any rulings in the case. Though Kaczynski later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that it had been involuntary, Judge Burrell denied the request, and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Kaczynski was remanded to a maximum-security prison in Colorado, where he is serving his life sentence.
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Daily Quiz for January 22, 2017
The “Joker” playing card was first printed in this year.
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Jumat, 20 Januari 2017
January 21, 1977: President Carter pardons draft dodgers
On this day in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter grants an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of men who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.
In total, some 100,000 young Americans went abroad in the late 1960s and early 70s to avoid serving in the war. Ninety percent went to Canada, where after some initial controversy they were eventually welcomed as immigrants. Still others hid inside the United States. In addition to those who avoided the draft, a relatively small number–about 1,000–of deserters from the U.S. armed forces also headed to Canada. While the Canadian government technically reserved the right to prosecute deserters, in practice they left them alone, even instructing border guards not to ask too many questions.
For its part, the U.S. government continued to prosecute draft evaders after the Vietnam War ended. A total of 209,517 men were formally accused of violating draft laws, while government officials estimate another 360,000 were never formally accused. If they returned home, those living in Canada or elsewhere faced prison sentences or forced military service. During his 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter promised to pardon draft dodgers as a way of putting the war and the bitter divisions it caused firmly in the past. After winning the election, Carter wasted no time in making good on his word. Though many transplanted Americans returned home, an estimated 50,000 settled permanently in Canada, greatly expanding the country’s arts and academic scenes and pushing Canadian politics decidedly to the left.
Back in the U.S., Carter’s decision generated a good deal of controversy. Heavily criticized by veterans’ groups and others for allowing unpatriotic lawbreakers to get off scot-free, the pardon and companion relief plan came under fire from amnesty groups for not addressing deserters, soldiers who were dishonorably discharged or civilian anti-war demonstrators who had been prosecuted for their resistance.
Years later, Vietnam-era draft evasion still carries a powerful stigma. Though no prominent political figures have been found to have broken any draft laws, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and Vice-Presidents Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney–none of whom saw combat in Vietnam–have all been accused of being draft dodgers at one time or another. Although there is not currently a draft in the U.S., desertion and conscientious objection have remained pressing issues among the armed forces during the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Review: Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager
Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager Slitherine.com, $30 Simulations about life outside the cockpit are rare. Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager is a plucky independent effort that takes players into the control rooms and boardrooms of NASA and beyond. It’s heavily inspired by Buzz Aldrin’s Race Into Space, a 1993 sim about the race to the …
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Daily Quiz for January 21, 2017
In 1968 this well-known rock band recorded a song written by mass murderer, Charles Manson
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Book Review: The Air Campaign- Planning for Combat
The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat by John A. Warden III In August 1990, the first wave of American airmen arrived in the Middle East to shield allies in the region from the territorial ambitions of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Kuwait had been overrun, and back home little-known U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden briefed the …
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Book Review: Curtiss Ascender XP-55
Curtiss Ascender XP-55 by Gerry Balzer, Ginter Books, Simi Valley, Calif., 2014, $24.95 War is urgent. Yet amid history’s ghastliest conflict both sides found the leisure to evaluate unorthodox flying machines, in full knowledge that they would contribute nothing to the outcome. The weird Curtiss XP-55 Ascender was one of three pusher-propeller aircraft that underwent …
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