Today in History

FEBRUARY 21 = Malcom X is Assassinated

2012-02-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

"There was a prolonged ovation as Malcolm walked to the rostrum past a piano and a set of drums waiting for an evening dance and stood in front of a mural of a landscape as dingy as the rest of the ballroom. When, after more than a minute the crowd quieted, Malcolm looked up and said, “A salaam aleikum (Peace be unto you)” and the audience replied “Wa aleikum salaam (And unto you, peace).”
Bespectacled and dapper in a dark suit, his sandy hair glinting in the light, Malcolm said: “Brothers and sisters . . .” He was interrupted by two men in the center of the ballroom, about four rows in front and to the right of me, who rose and, arguing with each other, moved forward. Then there was a scuffle in the back of the room and, as I turned my head to see what was happening, I heard Malcolm X say his last words: “Now, now brothers, break it up,” he said softly. “Be cool, be calm.”
Then all hell broke loose. There was a muffled sound of shots and Malcolm, blood on his face and chest, fell limply back over the chairs behind him. The two men who had approached him ran to the exit on my side of the room shooting wildly behind them as they ran. "

These were the last moments in the life of "Malcom X", the firey spirited Afro-American Muslim leader as reported in the "New York Post" on Feb. 22 by Thomas Skinner. Malcom X was shot to death on this day, February 21, 1965 just as he began to address a meeting of his followers at the Audobon Ballroom in New York City.

Malcom X and His Conversion to Islam

Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz had been born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children to Earl Little and Louise Norton. Malcom's father

was an outspoken Baptist lay speaker, who was killed, it was believed by white suprem- acists when Malcom was a young child. His mother was judged to be insane a few years later, and Malcom spent much of his youth in foster homes. He was a good student, but chafed at the limited opportunities open to an intelligent young black man, being told by a teacher that being a lawyer was "no realistic goal for a nigger." He moved from Boston, wherein he lived for a time with his older sister, to New York where he wound up living in Harlem. There he lived a life of occasional employment,mixed with the fast crowd of clubs, crime and drugs. He returned to Boston and was eventually sent to jail on charges of burglary.

There at Charlestown State Prison in Charlestown, Boston, Malcom met a self-educated fellow prisoner named John Elton Bembry, who introduced him to the teachings of the Nation of Islam. Bembry convinced the headstrong and proud young Malcom that by educating himself and cleansing his body of the poisons of cigarettes and drugs, he could become free and self-reliant. Malcom thereafter became a voracious reader and converted to the Islamic faith as preached by the American Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad. It was in 1950 that he began signing his letters as "Malcom X". In his autobiography he expalined why:

"The Muslim's 'X' symbolized the true African family name that he never could know. For me, my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears."

Malcom X Becomes an Orator

This newly embodened and very devoted Malcom X became one of the leaders of the Nation of Islam as the African American

Muslim movement was then known. He had a natural gift for public speaking, able to deliver firey addresses to rouse large crowds, but also adept in one on one interviews. In the segments which this writer has seen his calm, almost matter of fact way of saying things which were fairly radical then or now (that all whites were devils for example), made him one of the most remarkable figures of this or any period. The man also had a fairly imposing physical presence. He stood at 6 ft. 3 inches tall, and weighed about 180 pounds and was described by Marable Manning as "mesmerizingly handsome ... and always spotlessly well-groomed."

The Break With the Nation of Islam

Of course, being so much in the public eye made Malcom the object of some amount of jealousy within the Nation of Islam. By 1963, he ahd already fallen into disfavor with some of that groups leadership. There had long been rumors of illegtimate children fathered by Elijah Muhammad, and on investigating some of these claims, Malcom found them to be true. When he referred to the assassination of John F. Kennedy as "Chickens coming home to roost" he was supsended from speaking in public by Elijah Muhammad. This lead to his break with the Nation of Islam in March of 1964. He pledged to try and organize black Americans in order to heighten their plotical awareness, and also to work more openly and cooperatively with other civil rights leaders, whom he had previously dismissed for their devotion to a non-violent approach. During a pilgrimage to Mecca, he found himself conversing with and praying alongside many white muslims as well, so he returned with a willingness to accept help from whites that he had previously lacked.

Malcom is Killed on February 21, 1965.

It was when addressing a meeting of his new organization "the Organiztion of Afro-American Unity" that Malcom X was shot down and killed (below). The account by Thomas Skinner from the New York Post continues:

"I fell to the floor, got up, tried to find a way out of the bedlam.
Malcolm's wife, Betty, was near the stage, screaming in a frenzy. “They're killing my husband,” she cried. “They're killing my husband.”
Groping my way through the first frightened, then enraged crowd, I heard people screaming, “Don't let them kill him.” “Kill those bastards.” “Don't let him get away.” “Get him.”
At an exit I saw some of Malcolm's men beating with all their strength on two men. Police were trying to fight their way toward the two. The press of the crowd forced me back inside.
I saw a half-dozen of Malcolm's followers bending over his inert body on the stage, their clothes stained with their leader's blood. Then they put him on a litter while guards kept everyone off the platform. A woman bending over him said: “He's still alive. His heart's beating.”
Four policemen took the stretcher and carried Malcolm through the crowd and some of the women came out of their shock long enough to moan and one said: “I don't think he's going to make it. I hope he doesn't die, but I don't think he's going to make it.”
I spotted a phone booth in the rear of the hall, fumbled for a dime, and called a photographer. Then I sat there, the surprise wearing off a bit, and tried desperately to remember what had happened. One of my first thoughts was that this was the first day of National Brotherhood Week."

Malcom X was pronounced dead a short time later. Not only had the man been gunned down by a shotgun blast that blew half of his lectern away with him, but horribly, this had happened in full view of his wife and young children who were sitting in the front row at the time. Three men would be convicted of the murder, but their ties to elements within the Nation of Islam have never been clearly defined. Although most historians believe that some such connection did in fact exist, the precise natue of that connection remains undetermined to this day. The New York Post reacted to Malcom's death by writing that "even his sharpest critics recognized his brilliance—often wild, unpredictable and eccentric, but nevertheless possessing promise that must now remain unrealized."

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

http://www.criticalreading.com/malcolm.htm

Directed by Spike Lee, 1992.

Pictures:

Malcom X =
http://www.africawithin.com/malcolmx/malcolm_gallery.htm

Malcom as a young man =
http://www.malcolm-x.org/media/pic_01.htm

Malcom X as orator =
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-american-unity

Assassination =
http://dingeengoete.blogspot.com/

FEBRUARY 19 = The United States Marine Corps Lands on Iwo Jima

2012-02-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

"You were sacred to death. You just wanted to dig deeper into the sand. But on Iwo, you couldn't. It was this damned black volcanic stuff. Besides, you had a job to do. We tried to pull our guns into position, but it was impossible by mechanized means. We just had to muscle them up to their place. It was crazy."

This was one of the memories of John P. Bolten, Battery A, 14th Regiment, Fourth Marine Division of his experience on Iwo Jima. On today's date, February 19 in 1945, the Fourth marines were part of an invasion force which landed on that island with the intention of taking it from it's Japanese defenders. The ultimate objective was to construct a forward air base for operations directed against the Japanese homeland. The next month would witness one of the most murderous crossfires which human beings have ever unleashed upon each other, but it would also be the site of the most iconic and heroic images of the war, and perhaps the most reproduced photograph of all time.

Iwo Jima - Japanese Home Soil

Iwo Jima, a largely barren volcanic rock in the Pacific ocean was home to a small civilian population, all of which had been evacuated long before the battle that February. But it was the first of what was considered to be a part of the Japanese home islands to be attacked by the Americans, so the Imperial Japanese Army was prepared to defend it tenaciously. There really was no way for them to prevail, but they were prepared to make the Americans pay a very heavy price in blood for every foot of ground, and in this effort they were indeed successful. The Japanese Commander, Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribiyachi had decided to break with established Japanese

practice in not contesting the landings themselves. Instead, he elected to wait until the beaches were crowded with men and materiel before opening fire. Further, he built strong defensive positions a bit further into the island's interior. Towards this end, he created interlocking fields of fire with machine guns, tanks in fixed positions, plus thousands of land mines and hidden mortar positions all over the island. The positions were mutually supporting via a network of tunnels which the Japanese had had years to prepare, and which therefore had survived the massive bombing and naval artillery barrage that preceded the assault. B-24's launched from bases in the Marianas had been pounding Iwo for 74 full days. But intelligence reported that this was having little effect. The top Marine at Iwo was Lt. General Holland "Howlin' Mad" Smith, who had wanted a more extensive naval action. Smith had wanted the Navy to hit Iwo for a full ten days, but the Navy, saying it needed to conserve ordinance for the coming assault on Okinawa, begged off, and bombarded the island for three days instead.

The Raising of the Flag on Mt. Suribachi

At 8:59 a.m., the landings began. The scene at the very beginning was eerily quiet. It was only as that first wave advanced to the first line of Japanese bunkers that they took withering enemy fire. The black volcanic sand on Iwo proved to be a double-edged sword. While it made for very poor cover for the advancing marines, and provided equally poor traction for the U.S. tanks and other heavy equipment, it also absorbed a considerable portion of the fragments from Japanese shells. Artillery positions dug into the interior of Mt. Suribachi, the mountain which dominated the south end of the island eventually opened fire on the beaches once they had become clogged with marines and equipment. Due to heavy naval, air and ground bombardment, the marines were eventually able to cut Suribachi off from the rest of the island, but only by the fifth day was it possible to get to the summit of the heavily defended peak. Most of it's defenders remained in caves, so actually reaching the top was not nearly so difficult as securing the entire mountain. Nevertheless, a first flag was placed in the ground, the first American flag to fly on Japanese soil (below).

But this flag was replaced by a larger version, when Navy Secretary James Forrestal, who had just arrived on the island wanted the first one for a souvenir. This resulted in the famous photograph of the second flag raising by photographer Joe Rosenthal. It became the very image of the war, the only photo to win the Pulitzer Prize in the same year in which it was made.

John P. Bolten Remembers

But the rest of the island would not be taken for over three more weeks. The infantry units took dreadful casualties, having to fight desperately, sometimes for just a few yards at a time. They would observe a position, and then call in artillery barrages from the Marine guns that had been landed. John Bolten remembered this carnage all too well, including the particular view that he and the men of Battery A had from their emplacement of a 105 MM artillery gun:

"They took a beating in those infantry units. One of my friends, Marty Fiorie - his brother was a boxer, and while he wasn't big - he was built like a battleship - kept saying that he got into the war to kill Japs, and he never got to see one. So he transferred to a recon unit, and had one of those big damn radios attached to his back while he called in Jap positions. He got killed. And then later, right in front of (our fox hole) was a severed leg, still wrapped in it's legging. There was a rosary wrapped around it. It was about 50 yards in front of our machine gun and we had to look over it. Those guys in the infantry really took it in the teeth. If I had had to go in on the first wave like they did, I wouldn't be here today."

The Heavy Casualties on Iwo Jima

By the time Iwo Jima was officially declared secured in March, the USMC had suffered 26,038 casualties, with 6,821 of those
having been men who were killed in action -- a larger casualty list than

the total Allied losses on D-Day itself in Europe. In fact, it was also the only operation in which the total American casualties exceeded those of the Japanese. Of the 22, 786 Japanese soldiers defending Iwo Jima, only 216 survived to be captured. The Japanese soldier's code of Bushido made surrender a disgrace. Thus many, perhaps 3,000 or more committed ritual suicide rather than surrender. The last two stragglers hid out in caves and eventually surrendered in 1951. Heroes? In my opinion, yes. We owe our safe comfortable lives to these men who were willing to put their own lives on the line to protect us -- these and all of the men and women who have been willing to do this from Lexington and Concord back in 1775, on through to Afghanistan and Iraq in the last few years. But I suspect that they never did and never will look upon themselves as heroes, but rather as men and women who simply had a job to do, and who were lucky enough to survive where others were not. Whatever the case, may God Bless them all!!

Sources:
by Bill D. Ross, Vanguard Press, New York,1985.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima

The Wartime Memories of John P. Bolten, unpublished, possession of the author.

"Marines Remember the Bloodiest Battle" - Lew Moores, Cincinnati Enquirer, Feb. 19, 1995

Pictures:

THE Flag Raising =
http://www.survival-spanish.com/IwoJimaMyring.htm

Map =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iwo_jima_location_map.png

The first Flag raising =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_Iwo_Jima_Flag_Raising.jpg

Marines on the beach =
http://olive-drab.com/od_history_ww2_ops_battles_1945iwojima.php

FEBRUARY 17 = It's Jefferson in the House!!

2012-02-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

NOTE = due to computer difficulties (AGAIN!) this posting really should have been published yesterday - the 17'th of February)

Jefferson Prevails in the Election of 1800
On this date, February 17, 1801, after one tie vote in the Electoral College and 35 indecisive ballot votes in the House of Representatives, Vice President Thomas Jefferson was elected the third president of the United States over his running mate, Aaron Burr. This difficult and confusing election, which ended just a fortnight before a new president was to be inaugurated, exposed some serious defects in the presidential electoral machinery as set forth by the framers of the U.S. Constitution. But in the end, the principle of the peaceful transfer of power, this time from one political party to another prevailed, and our young republic survived yet another threat to her existence.

From Adams to Jefferson

To attempt making a long and confusing story short: John Adams' presidency had been controversial. While the principle of peaceful transfer of power from one LEADER to another had indeed been established with his succession of the great George Washington, that was not the last trial faced by the infant American republic. Our country's father had worried about the formation of political parties, but such things had inevitably arisen. This election of

1800 saw the first contest between these two political parties. And whether or not our system could survive the transfer of power from one political party to another remained an open question. Adams had faced the difficult question of how to handle the newly and violently emerged French Republic. Actual combat had in fact broken out on the high seas between ships of the Revolutionary French Navy, and the magnificent ships of the new American Navy, which John Adams had fathered (Pictured above is an action from that war... Feb. 6, 1799 the French frigate "L'Insurgente" is shot to pieces by the American frigate, "U.S.S. Constellation"). But Adams had managed to keep this undeclared Naval conflict from erupting into a full-blown war.

Adams/Hamilton, Jefferson/Burr....

Nevertheless, Adams suffered the fate of all those who dare bravely to steer a middle-course between two extremes: he wound up being loathed and despised by both. But the Federalists who were nominally the party of Adams swallowed hard and nominated him against his one-time friend Thomas Jefferson, who was nominated by the Democrat-Republican Party. Far from being the blatant mockery that this has been called by some of todays more advanced political thinkers, it was actually the forerunner of

the modern day Democratic Party. Jefferson had favored avoiding conflict with the French Republic. Alexander Hamilton (left), who had been Washington's Secretary of the Treasury had come to loathe Adams even more than he hated Jefferson, not only because he favored conciliation with France over war, but to no small degree because Adams refused to recognize Hamilton as the leader of the Federalist Party. Not only were there two would be "heads" of the Federalists there were two for the Republicans -- Aaron Burr had been nominated by them as Jefferson's running mate, which he publicly touted as his role. Back in these early days of Presidential elections, the man who was running for President would be nominated for that, and his Vice- president would also run for President with the idea that the Vice president would get the second highest total. But sometimes it did not work out that way. The Vice Presidency would actually go to whomever would come in second. It is not like it is now wherein the President are nominated specifically for those spots and run for them on the same ticket. Burr ran with the understanding that he was to be President. But secretly, he longed for the top spot. And while he did not actively ENcourage those who so believed with him, neither did he DIScourage them.

Thirty SIX Ballots later....

SO the Presidential Electors were chosen that November, and on Dec. 3 it became apparent that the improbable had happened. Hamilton had discouraged enough votes for Adams and his running mate Mr. Pinkney to land them out of the running with 64 and 63 electoral votes respectively. But this left Jefferson and his running mate, Burr with 73 votes each for the top spot. So the Federalists were definitely getting the boot, and it only remained for the House of Representatives to decide which of the top two - Jefferson or Burr would get the nod. This is where the unhappiness

of the losing Federalists, and the deviousness of Aaron Burr (pictured, right) came into play. As said, he wouldn't say "yes", but neither would he say "no." And the Federalist electors were inclined to go with Burr just to stick it to Jefferson. On Feb.11, they got together in the new and unfinished capitol building in Washington D.C. to make their choice. The vote was to be by state, each state being decided by majority vote within the delegation, a minimum of nine states being required for the election to be won... if the state tied, then that was cast as a blank vote. On the initial ballot Jefferson got eight, six for Burr, and two states tied, so they cast no vote. So they tried again. The second try was not successful. Nor was the third, the fourth, the twenty second nor the thirtieth. The ballots kept on coming with no change. Congressmen slept on cots in the hallways to stay in touch. One ill congressman had his sick bed moved into a committee room and his ballot brought in for him to sign. Deals were attempted. One group of Federalists offered to go with Burr if he would agree to support their policies. Burr refused, but neither would he take his name out of the running. Finally Alexander Hamilton stepped forward and convinced enough of the Federalist electors to go for Jefferson to throw the vote in his favor. It wasn't that he liked Jefferson, he just hated Burr more. On the morning of Feb. 17, on the thirty SIXTH ballot Jefferson was elected with ten states voting his way to four for Burr.

Adams and Jefferson Reconcile, Burr and Hamilton Do Not

Burr wound up as Vice President, and Hamilton wound up six feet under when Burr settled the score with him, killing Hamilton in a duel in in 1804 (pictured below). Burr, for his part was dropped from the ticket, and left the Vice Presidency in 1805. He was charged and brought to a public trial for treason in 1807 for

having suppos- edly schemed to raise a private army to invade the Florida territory, and encourage the secession of some western states from the Union. He was acquitted of all charges, but his political career was wrecked, and he lived on ignominiously before dying in 1836. Hamilton is now enshrined on the ten dollar bill. Thomas Jefferson left the presidency after his two terms were up having grown to hate the office. This man of so many profound contradictions - he authored the famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence "All men are created equal" yet he owned slaves and never freed them -- not even in his will -- this man believed in a weaker president yet strengthened the office significantly with the Louisiana Purchase. He would never regard the presidency as a high point in his career. During the strain and bitterness of his political years he had become estranged from his one time friend John Adams. But during their long retirement, he and Adams rekindled their old friendship. They conducted a long correspondence which stands as likely their greatest gift to their country. Then on July 4th, 1824 - exactly 50 years to the day that the Declaration, which Adams had talked a reluctant Jefferson into writing was adopted, John Adams died. His last full sentence was: "Thomas Jefferson survives." He was unaware that Jefferson had in fact died -- on that very same day, just a few hours earlier.

Sources:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=189

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Burr

"A History of the Democratic Party" - Gary L. Hilliard, Cincinnati, 1978, Unpublished,

by Paul F. Boller Jr. , Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 1984.

by David Mc Cullough Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001.

Pictures:

John Adams =
http://www.librarything.com/profile/JohnAdams

Thomas Jefferson =
http://www.liberty1.org/defense.htm

Naval war =
http://www.oldgloryprints.com/connie.htm

Alexander Hamilton =
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlexanderHamilton

Aaron Burr =
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=151

Burr/Hamilton Duel =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hamilton-burr-duel.jpg

FEBRUARY 16 = "The most bold and daring act of the age..."

2012-02-16T16:40:00.000-08:00

"I boarded her with sixty men and officers leaving a guard on board the ketch for her defense; and it is with the greatest pleasure that I inform you that I had not a man killed in this affair, and but one only slightly wounded...and as each of their conduct was so highly meritorious.. permit me sir to speak of the brave fellows I have the honor to command, whose coolness and intrepidity was such, as will ever characterise the American Tars."

So wrote Lieutenant Stephen Decatur on Febraury 16, 1804 in a dispatch to Captain Edward Preble. Earlier that evening, Decatur had lead a team of sailors and U.S. Marines into the harbour at Tripoli, and the team managed to board and destroy the recently captured frigate U.S.S. Philadelphia before she could be put to use by the Barbary Pirates. When news of the success of this daring commando raid leaked out, it electrified the world. Horatio Nelson, the hero of the British navy called it "the most bold and daring act of the age.."

The Barbary Pirates

By this point in time, the coast of North Africa was home to four states, Morroco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. The head of each of these states was a semi-hereditary monarch called “the Dey”, or "the bashaw". These states had for years been allowing their ships to raid the commerce of the entire Mediterranean Sea for plunder, and for the purpose of taking the sailors of the merchant ships hostage in return for tremendous ransom payments. The major powers of France, Spain, Portugal and Great Britain all had the necessary naval muscle to put an end to this, but they were continuously at war with each other, so they let it go on, each to make life difficult for the other. While we were a set of thirteen colonies our merchant ships enjoyed the protection afforded by the great British Navy. But once we had acquired independence from Great Britain following our Revolution, and we became the United States, our ships began falling victim to increasingly brazen acts of piracy. The United States was at first governed by the weak Articles of Confederation, and thus had no standing navy, and only the weakest national government with which to contest these piratical seizures. By 1789, the United States had written and ratified a new Constitution. In 1798, President John Adams created a Department of the Navy, and six magnificent new frigates were being built. But it would take time for these ships to be built, and still more time for them to become an effective fighting force. So for the present at least, diplomacy and ransom were still the only means available for dealing with the Barbary States. A crew of a U.S. vessel, "the Betsey" was taken hostage in October of 1784 and their release could only be effected in February of 1797, after twelve years of captivity and slavery.

The U.S.S. Philadelphia
Runs Aground and is Captured

The United States had finally had enough and went to war with the Barbary States. President Thomas Jefferson ordered a squadron of U.S. Naval vessels to enter the Mediterranean Sea and to put an end to this threat. But the first Squadron he sent accomplished little towards this end, with a commander who was too timid in using force. A second squadron was sent into the area to take

more direct action. The Squadrons Comman- der, Commo- dore Edward Preble was determined to show America was not to be trifled with. But unfortunately, disaster struck. On (appropriately enough) October 31, 1803, the U.S. 44 gun frigate "Philadelphia" was chasing a Tripolitan ship when when she ran aground (her bottom became stuck on a sand bar) in the harbour of Tripoli. Commanded by Captain William Bainbridge, the crew of the "Philadelphia" tried furiously to break her free. They chopped down her foremast, and threw almost all of her cannons overboard along with almost every other heavy item on board. But it was no use. Before they knew it, the crew of the Philadelphia found themselves overwhelmed by a swarm of smaller Tripolitan vessels. The U.S.S. Philadelphia had been captured by the enemy.

Stephen Decatur Leads a Raid on the Philadelphia

While the capture of this magnificent U.S. vessel was a tremendous blow to U.S. prestige, it was worse: the Dey of Tripoli immediately began trying to sell her to one of his neighbors becuase he lacked the skilled crew necessary to use her effectively. But the U.S. had no intention of having to fight one of her own ships. By mid-December Preble, in consultation with the captured Bainbridge (communicating with his commander from captivity via the use of lime juice mixed with water - invisible ink!!) had decided that attempting to board the Philadelphia and sail her out would be too difficult. She would have to be destroyed. He had at hand just the man to lead such a mission. Lieutenant Stphen Decatur Jr. (below) was the Maryland born son of a veteran of naval service during the Revolution. Decatur, one of two brothers in the U.S. Squadron, had early on acquired a reputation as a duelist, and a daring

adventurer. He was commanding the U.S. sloop of war, the U.S.S. Enterprise when the plan to re-take the Philadelphia was hatched and naturally volunteered for the mission.

It was while reconnoitering at the edge of the habour for the best way in, that Preble and Decatur aboard Enterprise ran across the perfect vessel for the mission. A Triplolitan Ketch (a small two masted vessel of war) named the Mastico was captured on December 23, 1803, and taken back to the U.S. base at Syracuse. For the mission, she was renamed the "Intrepid." On the evening of February 16, at twilight, the Intrepid, flying the crescent flag of the Ottoman Empire silently glided into the harbour at Tripoli, guided by her Sicilian pilot, Salvador Caralano. On the deck was Decatur and about a dozen men disguised as local fisherman. Hidden on the decks below were several dozen men armed with swords and cutlasses, ready to spring into action. The password for the mission was "Philadelphia". They pulled up alongside "Philadelphia" and after exchanging some remarks with the Tripolitans guarding her, Caralano, speaking in the local dialect convinced the guards that it was safe for "Intrepid" to run a line to "Philadelphia". It was about 9;30 p.m. .

"AMERICANOS!!"

Suddenly, the blood curdling cry of "AMERICANOS!!" pierced the darkness. One of the Tripolitan guards finally recognized what was happening. But it was too late. The Ameicans poured out of hiding and swiftly invaded the deck of the Philadelphia. Midshipman Ralph Izard wrote:

"...we then hauled up alongside her and about 50 of our men and officers boarded her instantly. The Tripoliatns on board were dreadfully alarmed when they found out who we were. Poor fellows! About 20 of them were cut to pieces & the rest jumped
overboard. We set fire to her in less than 15 minutes from the time we first borded her, the flames were bursting out of her ports."

Decatur himself further recorded:

"The noise occasioned by boarding and contending for possession (although no firearms were used) gave general alarm on shore, and on board their cruisers which lay about a cable and a half's length from us, and many boats filled with men lay around from whom we received no annoyance. They commenced fire on us from all their batteries on shore, but with no other effect than one shot passing through our topsail."

In the words of historian Joseph Wheelan:

"With seamless precision, the Americans had captured and destoyed a frigate in an enemy harbour, within range of 115 fortress guns and two warships and escaped -- all inside twenty-five minutes with only one man slightly wounded. They had killed at least twenty enemy soldiers and taken one prisoner. The exploit would have embroidered the record of any commando unit in any era."

And, I have to think that todays Navy Seal teams could not possibly have done it better. As we can see, the tradition which resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden was begun way back in 1804!

Sources:

by Joseph Wheelan, Carroll & Graf Publishers, new York, 2003.

A Picture History of the U.S. Navy by Theodore Roscoe & Fred Freeman Bonanza Books, New York, 1956

Naval Documents Related to the Wars with the Barbary Powers, Volume III, Sept., 1803 - March, 1804. Navy Department, Supervised by Capt. Dudley Knox, Washington D.C., 1941

"Regime Change in Tripoli? Part 1" - by Brian T. Bolten
http://brian-t-bolten.suite101.com/regime-change-in-tripoli--part-one-a385921

Pictures:

The burning of the Philadelphia =
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/barb-war/burn-phl.htm

The capture fo the Philadelphia =
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h01000/h01071.jpg

Stephen Decatur =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StephenDecatur.jpeg

Decatur on board the Philadelphia =
http://history1800s.about.com/od/americanwars/tp/barbarywars.htm

FEBRUARY 14 = Valentines Day.

2012-02-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

Valentines Day in modern times is a day to express your love and affection to your sweetheart, IF you have one, or to your wife or your husband IF you have one of those. Failing that, even unattached boobs like myself make an effort to have some fun with the holiday, every year. Back when I was a member of the Austin Symphony Orchestra, the young ladies of SAI, the music sorority of which I was later very proud to be made an honorary member:

would prepare a very nice little reception for a rehearsal break during Valentines week with all kinds of cakes and little dainties to munch on. And I would always send a card or some candy to my Mom, my sisters, and to my female friends. While this occasionally caused a bit of trouble, it was usually taken as the bit of good fun that it was meant to be.

Valentines Day does have some historical origins, and I discuss these below. However, all of the fun, and card writing notwithstanding, there have been some very serious events that have happened on this day. But just for the sake of FUN... here is the lighter side of Valentines Day......

Some of the History Behind "Valentines Day":

Valentines Day has it origins in the (usually successful) efforts of the early Catholic church to eradicate pagan religions by co-opting pagan practices and holidays, and replacing them with Christian versions. In the fourth century B.C. the Romans conducted a young man's right of passage to the god Lupercus. The festival of Lupercus is described thus by the ancient historian Plutarch in his “Life of Julius Caeser”

“At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.”

According to Charles Panati, teenage girls would put their names in a box. Teenage boys would then take a name from the box at random, and the young lady whose name he drew would become his “companion for the year” for the purpose of providing "mutual entertainment and pleasure (often sexual)." At the end of the year another such lottery would be held, and so on. Needless to say the fathers of the church were determined to snuff this randy sort of business out, so they looked for a lover's figure with whom they could replace the pagan deity of Lupercus, and the whole Lupercalia – the practices associated with him.

Bishop Valentine of Interamna

They found their man in a Valentine, a martyred bishop from two centuries past. In 270 A.D., the mad Roman Emperor Claudius II (NOT the same character as depicted in Robert Graves' "I, Claudius") came to the conclusion that marriage undermined the morale of his soldiers by making them loath to leave their families on campaigns on the long campaigns needed to maintain the Empire. So instead of making enlistments shorter, or some other solution he decided to issue an edict banning the institution of marriage altogether.

Valentine, the bishop of Interamna decided that he would make it possible for young lovers to pledge life-long devotion to each other by inviting them to be married by him in secret. The Emperor found out about this, and had Valentine arrested. But Claudius found himself impressed by the piety of the young priest, so he tried converting him to Roman pagan beliefs in order to save him from execution. (Above - Saint Valentine baptizing Saint Lucilla by Jacopo Bassano)Valentine of refused to renounce Christianity, and attempted instead to convert the Emperor from paganism to belief in Christ. This of course did not work out and reinvigorated the Emperor’s scorn. So he had Valentine executed on February 24,270 (the exact date of his death is in dispute, it may have been in 269, or 273 AD). Legend has it that while he was imprisoned, Valentine fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, and by his devout faith miraculously restored her sight. His farewell message to her was signed "From your Valentine".... a phrase that would live on.

The Bishop Becomes the Saint

Needless to say the church viewed this man as the ideal replacement for Lupercus. So in 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius outlawed the Lupercan festival, which took place during that second week in February. But, his Holiness knew that he would have to keep some facet of the old Lupercan practice around in order to keep the Romans, who still loved a game of chance interested in a Chritian version of the old festival. So, the names of young ladies in the box were supplanted by the names of saints whose lives the drawer was to emulate for a year. This was of course, a rather stuffy way to replace the old fun festival, and adolescent young men of the time were likely much disappointed by this change. But eventually the old practice gave way and the new festival, whose spiritual overseer was it's patron saint - Valentine, caught on. The old pagan time-frame of mid-February was also kept, hence the present Valentines Day on February 14. There is in fact scholarly debate on this link; some have said that prior to this reference by Geoffrey Chaucer, in his poem "Parlement of Foules" (1382):

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day_
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make."

there is no association of Valentines Day with romantic love. Whatever the actual origins of the association, the young men of Rome began offering the young ladies of their choice greetings of affection written by hand on Feb. 14, and in time the greetings became more decorative, often by the inclusion of the little character of Cupid, the naked cherub floating about and striking victims with his arrows dipped in love potion. This came about because in Roman mythology, Cupid (Latin cupido, meaning "desire") is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of goddess Venus the goddess of love and beauty and the god Mars.

Valentines Cards, and Naughty Business

This eventually morphed into the production of Valentines cards. In 1797, a British publisher issued "The Young Man’s Valentine Writer", which contained scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own. Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches, called “mechanical valentines,” and a reduction in postal rates in the next century ushered in the less personal but easier practice of mailing Valentines.

That, in turn, made it possible for the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden appearance of racy verse in an era wherein such matters were considered neither fitting nor proper for open communication, even between married folk, let alone the unmarried kind!! This rather disreputable business got to the point where in the 1890’s the Chicago post office rejected over 25,000 cards from its delivery service, because they were deemed sufficiently immoral to make them unfit to be carried through the U.S. Mail!! However, X-rated greetings notwithstanding, the U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately 190 million valentines are sent each year in the US. Half of those valentines are given to family members other than husband or wife, usually to children. Some of those more innocent cards are pictured below. On top is a “Buster Brown” card from the early 1900’s, and below, an effort from the 1960’s.

Sources:
by Charles Panati, Harper & Row, New York, 1987

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentines_Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Valentine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlement_of_Foules

Pictures:

Kids on Valentine's Day =
http://utschoolswire4u.blogspot.com/2011/02/valenntine-day-celebrations-at-golden.html

Brian with SAI =
Personal files of the author

St. Valentine =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St-valentine-baptizing-st-lucilla-jacopo-bassano.jpg

Statue of Cupid =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cupido4b.jpg

Valentine's Card =
http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-22683-the_unofficial_histo.html

Buster Brown Card =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Buster_Brown_valentine.jpg

1960's Card =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anthropomorphic_Valentine,_crica_1950.JPG

FEBRUARY 12 = "Rhapsody in Blue" Premiers

2012-02-13T14:30:00.001-08:00

NOTE = This posting is coming out on Feb.13 due to computer diffculties. But the CORRECT date for this posting is Feb. 12, 2012.

"This composition shows extraordinary talent, as it shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk, struggling with a form of which he is far from being master... In spite of all this, he has expressed himself in a significant and, on the whole, highly original form.... His first theme... is no mere dance-tune... it is an idea, or several ideas, correlated and combined in varying and contrasting rhythms that immediately intrigue the listener. The second theme is more after the manner of some of Mr. Gershwin's colleagues. Tuttis are too long, cadenzas are too long, the peroration at the end loses a large measure of the wildness and magnificence it could easily have had if it were more broadly prepared, and, for all that, the audience was stirred and many a hardened concertgoer excited with the sensation of a new talent finding its voice... There was tumultuous applause for Gershwin's composition."

Paul Whiteman Commissions "Rhapsody in Blue"
This was the review of Olin Downes in the New York Times for George Gershwin's work "Rhapsody in Blue" which premiered on this date, February 12, in 1924. The "young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk" was a theme that Gershwin had frequently to deal with. Jazz was still an up and coming art form back in the early 1920's, and it had yet to win broad acceptance within the world of the arts, particularly the rarefied world of the concert hall. To base what was effectively a symphonic concert piece on something as modern and free-wheeling as Jazz was a decidedly bold step on the part of the young composer. But band leader Paul Whiteman thought that the time was right for such a move. Whiteman had performed in a classical/jazz concert the previous November with the Canadian-French singer Eva Gauthier and it had been a success. Now he wanted to try something more ambitious. He convinced Gershwin with whom he had worked before to compose a Jazz Concerto for piano and orchestra.

Gershwin Composes "Rhapsody in Blue"
It was during a train trip to Boston that Gershwin came up with most of his ideas for the piece.

"It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece."

"Rhapsody in Blue" is a Success
Gershwin's piece proved to be an immediate success. From the very start, with it's clarinet 16-note slide into the opening theme, the audience was electrified. Michael Tilson-Thomas has said of the work that it "expressed what it was to be alive at that moment as an American .... to let people know what it feels like to stand right here on this street corner and hear this elevated train go by and hear this building being built and hear this wail from a jazz club."

Author Peter Gammond has said that "It is only the fact that Gerhwin's music is tinged with the colours of Jazz that makes both his songs and his other music seem slightly to come from the other side of the tracks to the classical world. And strangely for th jazz world as well. Ever since it burst upon new York in 1924, Rhapsody in Blue has had a cool reception from purists on either side of the musical fence. This has never prevented it from being played and recorded incessantly."

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/horizon/nov98/gershwin.htm

by Peter Gammond, Colour Library Books Limited Godalming, Surrey, 1994.

Picture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rhapsody_in_Blue_cover.png

FEBRUARY 10 = U2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers is Released.

2012-02-10T10:21:00.039-08:00

"Powers was a man who, for adequate pay, would do it and as he passed over Minsk, would calmly reach for a salami sandwich."

- C.I.A. Lawyer James Donovan on U2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers

Francis Gary Powers. Now there's a name that is a blast from the past. His look is that of any man from the period... a Korean War veteran, a man with a wife and children, and hopes for the future. Yet this relatively unassuming looking man was at the center of one of the most notorious incidents of "the Cold War", and in spite of the many people who thought he was just a C.I.A. patsy, he was a man who actually did very well under the circumstances. His release on today's date in 1962 in a trade for a Russian spy, one Rudolf Ivanovich Abel marked the end of Power's incarceration by the Soviet government, but many questions which lead to that incarceration remain un-anwered to this day.

The U2 Spyplane - the Ultimate Espionage Weapon

By the early 1950's Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were on the rise. In these days before the advent of precise Sattelite imagery such as we commonly have now, planes - aircraft with a living human pilot (unlike the unmanned drones that we have now) - had to do the work of sneaking over the terrtitory of nations on whom we wished to have a little unauthorized peak, and taking photographs of military installations, and the like. Previously, this sort of thing had been done by bombers converted for the purpose. But these could only fly so high, and were vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire from the ground. So a plane was devleoped which combined the long sleek fuselage of the Lockheed Starfighter with very long, light glider-like wings (pictured below). This produced a plane which could easily fly at the then unheard of altitude of 70,000

feet, which was well outside of the maximum range of Soviet anti-aircraft missiles, or so it was thought. Unfortunat- ely, those very features which made the "U2", as the plane was designated, a high-flying marvel also made it unstable and difficult to control at times.

Cold War Realities, and Eisenhower's Wish for Detente

Occupying the White House at this time was, in my view the sharpest man to hold the office in my lifetime, former General Dwyght David Eisenhower. "Ike" (below) as he was known, had lead the nation through some of her most perilous times, as the

Supreme Com - mander of the Allied Forces in Europe during the recently concluded Second World War, and during the later half of the Korean War. He was a much beloved and greatly trusted leader of the nation. Now nearing the end of his two terms in office, he was deeply worried that the U.S. and the Soviets were moving inexorably towards a costly and destabilizing arms race. He was determined to head that off by estbalishing a less-contentious relationship with the feisty and pugnacious Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev. Towards that end he had invited the Soviet leader to make a tour of the United States, complete with stops in Hollywood and Disneyland. It was planned for Eisenhower to make a return visit to the Soviet Union, and talks were planned for Paris later in 1960.

Unfortunately for Ikes grand vision of a Detente bewteen the Soviets and the U.S. there was still the need to keep track of what the Soviets were up to militarily. The U2 overflights provided what was needed to assure Ike that the U.S. had a significant advantage over the Soviets in Missiles. This was important because the presidential campaign of 1960 was under way and the democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts was saying that the U.S. was falling into a disadvantage to the Soviets in numbers of missiles, a "missile gap". Ike knew very well that no such thing was the truth, because he had the U2 photos to prove it. But at this point in time, it was not known to the general public that the two superpowers were spying on each other. Further, it was embarrassing for the Soviets to admit that the U.S. was engaged in regular overfights of their territory, because the U.S. had a plane in the U2 that the Soviets were unable to shoot down because it flew so high.

A U2 Piloted by Powers is Shot Down.

Ike had been assured by his C.I.A. Director, Allen Dulles that the U2 flights were safe because the Soviets could not reach them with their anti-aircraft missiles, and even if by some chance they did, the plane would be destoyed on it's crash and the pilot would certainly be killed. Dulles proved to be quite wrong about this when on May 1, 1960 a U2 Spyplane piloted Franics Gary Powers was in fact shot down, or crashed because of some malfunction. To this day the real reason Powers' plane tumbled to the earth remains a mystery. Clearly the Soviets fired at it although whether or not they hit it is unclear. Powers remembered a "flash of light" so they may have scored near miss which caused the unstable U2 to go out of control. In any event the plane did crash near the town of Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains. And worse yet, the pilot, Francis Gary Powers had actually survived the wreck.

This was a HUGE problem. First reaction from the White house to the reports were that the plane had simply been a peaceful weather observation craft. Ike knew very well that this was not true, but care was taken to see to it that Ike himself did not ever make this claim (it was taken for granted in this more innocent time that the President would NOT lie). Of course, Kruschev (below), caught between his hardliners wanting a more hostile stance with the U.S. was obliged to announce on May 7: "I
must tell you a secret. When I made my first report I delib- erately did not say that the pilot was alive and well… and now just look how many silly things [the Americans] have said." He wanted to preserve the hope of a Detente with the U.S., so he was willing to go with the belief (publically anyway) that Eisenhower had been ill-served by his own hardliners, who had probably ordered this without his knowledge. "The American militarists have placed me in a very difficult position." he said. Indeed, Ike had been warning his advisers that these U2 flights would be seen as acts of war. But this was more than Ike was willing to bear. He was not about to let it be thought that something so important was going on in his administration without his knowing about it. In a Press Conference on Wednesday, May 11, 1960 he asserted:

"I'll tell you this: the United States and all of its Allies that I know of have engaged in nothing that could be considered honestly provocative. We are looking to our own security and our defense and we have no idea of promoting any kind of conflict and war. This is just -- it's absolutley ridiculous and they know it is."

Powers is Given a Public Show Trail

After this, Kruschev felt as if Eisenhower had cut the rug from under him. So the Soviets went ahead with a public show trial of Powers. The fact is that Powers during his imprisonment by the Soviets had kept a lot of important information from them, for example fudging the numbers on how high he had been flying, saying that it had been 68,000 miles or lower when it had in fact been at least 70,000. Nevertheless, pundits and commentators around the world lined up in camps both pro- and anti - Powers. Some said that he had been a sort of ignorant boob who had gotten into flying the U2 as a way of paying off his debts, and didn't know that he was spying. This was in fact the line taken by Soviet propagandists. But Powers knew very well what he was doing and did a remarkably good job of keeping a lot of important information out of the hands of the Soviets during their nearly two year imprisonment of him.

The Plans for Detente All Come Crashing Down

The U2 incident wound up breaking any hopes that Ike had for a Dentente between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. At the Four Power Summit in Paris on May 16, 1960 between Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev, Harold Macmillan and Charles de Gaulle, Kruschev walked out, in large part because Eisenhower refused to accede to

Khrushchev's demands that he apologize for the incident. On May 20'th on returning to the U.S., Ike blinked back tears as he strode down the ramp of Air Force One. Wrote Newsweek: "This had been the bigest disappointment of his life and he made no attempt to hide it."
The Soviets convened a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on May 23 to tell the world their own side of the events. The meetings droned on for four days with other charges of spying being exchanged, along with recriminations over the Paris Summit, and a US offer of an "Open Skies" proposal to allow reciprocal flights over each other's air space. In the end of the Soviets overwhelmingly lost a vote on a concise resolution which would have condemned the incursions and demanded the U.S. pledge that they would not happen again.

Powers is Sentenced and Later Released in a Spy-Swap

Meanwhile, Powers pleaded guilty and was convicted of espionage on August 19. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment and seven years of hard labor. He served one year and nine months of the sentence before being exchanged for Rudolf Abel on February 10, 1962. The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge connecting Potsdam, East Germany, to West Berlin. Powers had been told by his Russian handlers that if anyhting went wrong, he was to return to the Russian side of the bridge. But he had silently resolved that if anything went wrong, he was going to make a run for the west, even if it meant dodging bullets. Happily for Powers

this did not prove to be necessary. On the way back he was given the first of what would prove to be numerous debriefings. The C.I.A. lawyer quoted at the beginning of this posting, James Donovan, had been one of those who had criticized Powers for what appeared to be his cooperation with the Soviets. But now, as a member of the debriefing team he concluded differently. Powers was just the sort of man that our government would want to have flying a none-too stable glider over the heart of Soviet air space. Powers was returned to the United States wherein he was grilled over and over again by the C.I.A. on his Soviet captivity. He was evetually granted his back-pay for thta period, but went un-employed for years. Finally he found work as a helicopter broadcast pilot for station KNBC in Los Angeles (above). He was killed in August, 1977 when his helicopter crashed.

Sources:

by Micheal R. Beschloss, Harper & Row Publ. , New York, 1986.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

Pictures:

Powers on the cover of "Time" =
http://kcmeesha.com/2010/01/16/old-photosthe-u-2-incident/

The U2 Spyplane =
http://www.militaryfactory.com/imageviewer/ac/pic-detail.asp?aircraft_id=51&sCurrentPic=u2_2.jpg&sCurrentDescriptor=

Eisenhower =
http://www.historicalstockphotos.com/details/photo/1092_dwight_d_eisenhower.html

Kruschev =
http://chuck.hubpages.com/hub/Marco-Polo--If-You-Can---Book-Review

Newspaper headline =
http://dailyperspective.newspaperarchive.com/history/2008-12-31/summit-paris-collapses

Powers, 1977 =
http://www.coldwar.org/pictures/powers/gary_powers_senior2.jpg

FEBRUARY 8 = "The Birth of a Nation" Premiers.

2012-02-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

On February 8 in 1915, D.W. Griffith's film "Birth of a Nation" had
it's premiere at Clyne's Auditorium in Los Angeles. This event is important for the history of the Cinema because the silent movie was America's first feature length film, lasting over three hours. It was also a huge box-office hit in which Griffith pioneered many film-making techniques which are central to the art today.

Birth of a Nation Creates and Perpetuates Racial Stereotypes

It is also an important event for African American history, but for very negative reasons. While it was indeed cinematically ground-breaking, in terms of it's racist depiction of the post-Civil War era, it is also regarded as one of the offensive films ever made. Based on Thomas Dixon's novel "The Clansman", the film follows the 1860's history of two fictional families from the North and South. While it is meticulous in it's attention to detail in some scenes such as Civil War battles, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, it is thoroughly malicious in it's depiction of African Americans, who are uniformly portrayed as degenerate, lazy, and dangerous. For this reason, while it was seen by millions, and lauded by many - no less than President Woodrow Wilson called the film "History written with lightening"- it also caused a storm of controversy with the recently formed NAACP campaigning to have it banned. A sampling of some of the reaction:

The "Critical" Reaction:

"Griffith struck it right when he adapted the Dixon story for the film. He knew the South and he knew just what kind of picture would please all white classes. Some places the censors are going to find fault. That's a persistent way some censors have. The scene of the "black congress" and the negro removing his shoe may be censured, but it's drawn from reported facts. It's worth seeing anywhere. Many will see it twice, yea thrice and still obtain much satisfaction and entertainment." - Mark Vance, "Variety" issue of March 12, 1915.

"We do not, in any state of the Union, grant to the Negro economic and political economy. No white man of proper feeling can be proud of the record. The wonder is that the negro is as good as he is. The to the injury is added slander. To make a few dirty dollars men are willing to pander to depraved tastes and to foment a race antipathy that is the most sinister and dangerous feature of American life." - Editorial in "the New York Globe" issue of April 6, 1915.

"Your editorial is an insult to the intelligence and human kindness of nearly 100,000 of the best people in New York City who have viewed this picture from artistic interests and not through any depraved taste such as you indicate. Included in this list is your own able critic, Edwin Sherwin of the Globe." - D.W. Griffith replying in "the Globe" on April 10, 1915. (Right: D.W. Griffith)

"Whatever happened during Reconstruction, this film is aggressively vicious and defamatory. It is spiritual assassination. It degrades the censors that passed it and the white race that endures it." - Francis Hackett in "The New Republic", March 20, 1915.

"In view of the fact that the film play known as "Birth of a Nation" is creating strenuous objection to it's presentation by the citizens of Dayton, Ohio, and in view of the fact that it is considered and recognized as a hatred breeding film as opposed to amicable relations between the white and colored citizenship, be it resolved that out of deference to the well-being of all citizens, the Commissioners of Dayton, Ohio condemn the presentation of the film "Birth of a Nation" at this time, and lend their influence both severally and collectively, in an effort to prohibit it's exhibitions." - Resolution of Dayton, Ohio Commissioners, March 7, 1915.

Sources:

by Melvyn Stokes, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007.

FEBRUARY 6 = France and The U.S. Become Allies in Revolution!

2012-02-06T16:42:00.000-08:00

On today's date in 1778, the King of France, Louis XVI, signed a Treaty of Alliance with the rebellious colonies of the United States (pictured, right), thus recognizing their self declared independence, and committing his countries resources to their cause:

"The most Christian King and the United States of North America, to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay.... having this Day concluded a Treaty of amity and Commerce, for the reciprocal advantage of their Subjects and Citizens have thought it necessary to take into consideration the means of strengthening those engagements and of rondring them useful to the safety and tranquility of the two parties, particularly in case Great Britain in Resentment of that connection and of the good correspondence which is the object of the said Treaty, should break the Peace with france, either by direct hostilities, or by hindring her commerce and navigation, in a manner contrary to the Rights of Nations, and the Peace subsisting between the two Crowns; and his Majesty and the said united States having resolved in that Case to join their Councils and efforts against the Enterprises of their common Enemy, the respective Plenipotentiaries, impower'd to concert the Clauses & conditions proper to fulfil the said Intentions, have, after the most mature Deliberation, concluded and determined on the following Articles."

WHEW!! Talk about a loooong sentence! But such are the vagaries of diplomatic-speak that such phrasing is or was quite normal in diplomatic documents. And the meaning of this treaty was quite clear indeed: the Kingdom of France was throwing her support behind the colonists in their rebellion against their mother country of Great Britain.

France -vs- England - the Mongoose and the Cobra!!

France had effectively been kicked out of North America by the Brits as a result of the French and Indian War of 1754 to 1763, and had been smarting from this unceremonious ejection ever since. The outbreak of war between Britain and her colonies provided just the sort of trouble that the French had been wishing upon her natural enemies in England. In fact the Comte de Vergennes, France's Foreign Minister wrote a letter to King Louis shortly before Franklin arrived stating:

"England is the natural enemy of France; and she is an avid enemy, ambitious, unjust, brimmimg with bad faith; the permenant and cherished object of her policy is the humiliation and ruin of France."

But France had a treasury which was limited, and taking on England again was an iffy proposition. Would France come out fully in favor of America?

Ben Franklin Schmoozes His Way Into the French Court

It was with the hope of convincing the French to do just that that Benjamin Franklin was dispatched to France. Franklin was by this time 70 years old, so he was quite an elder statesman when he arrived in France in November of 1776. As a result of his experiments in science (the discovery of electricity with his kite) and also because of the international fame accorded to his "Poor Richards Almanac", he was the most faomous American in the world. So his arrival in France caused an immediate sensation. Balls were given in his honor, and miniatures of his famous visage wearing the fur cap of the simple , but wise rustic philosopher (pictured below) were distributed everwhere. Franklin, the original "Spin Doctor" was in fact anything but rustic or simple, but he recognized the value of projecting this image, so he obligingly played the role.

And he used his considerable powers of persuasion upon the eminent members of France's government and society to get them to support the Ameriacn cause. He would frequently relax with the French aristocrats in ways which made him seem like a frivolous ladies man. Now this was not entirely out of his character... the man did indeed have his randy side. Living with him in the village of Passy, his grandson would write:

"The air of Passy and the warm bath three time a week have made quite a young man out of him. His pleasing gaiety makes everybody in love with him, especially the ladies, who permit him always to kiss them."

Franklin Blends Realism With American Exceptionalism

But Franklin was devoted to securing French aid to his country and knew how to make it happen. He knew and very shrewdly understood where he could make France go for the American cause. He wrote a letter to the aforementioned Comte de Vergennes emphasizing the French interest in the outcome, that if France and Spain were to enter on the American side, the Brits would lose their colonies and her possessions in the West Indies, and "the commerce that has rendered her so opulent.." which would then relegate her to a "State of weakness and humiliation..." precisely what Vergennes had declared to be Britain's plan for France in his letter to King Louis. But as Franklin's biographer Walter Issacson has written:

"Frankin realized that appealing to the cold calculus of interests was only part of the equation. Better than most other diplomats in the nation's history, he understood that America's strength in world affairs would come from a unique mix that included idealism as well as realism. When woven together, they would later be in policies ranging from the Monore Doctrine to the Marshall Plan, they were the warp and woof of a resilient foreign policy. 'America's great historical moments ,' writes historian Bernard Bailyn, 'have occurred when realism and idealism have been combined, and no one knew this better than Franklin.' "

In effect, Franklin understood that it was by emphasizing America as a land of freedom and opportunity, who not only could be free of British domination, but should be, that he could ignite a real enthusiasm for the American cause that would be lacking for just another armed conflict.

The Alliance Comes to Life

So it was when the final obstacle to the French Alliance was overcome. France had indeed been ready to lend her full support to the Americans, but it was only the victory of the Americans in the battle of Saratoga (Sept. 19 & October 7, 1777) that convinced France to go ahead and sign on with us for good and all. It was because of the American victory over the forces of General Burgoyne in that battle that the French government, the Comte de

Vergennes in particular were at last convinced that the Americans had a chance of defeating a major British force in the field. With her need for realism thus satisfied, France went ahead and signed up to our side. This alliance would prove to be the decisive factor in securing American victory in the war. For it was during the Battle of Yorktown (September 28 – October 19, 1781) that a French fleet under Admiral Comte de Grasse defeated a Britsh fleet. This trapped the Army of Lord Cornwallis on the Yorktown Peninsula in Virginia and forced them to surrender (above) to the surrounding American forces under Goerge Washington and the French forces under the Comte de Rochembeau.

Sources:

The American Heritage History of the American Revolution by Bruce Lancaster, Bruce Catton and Thomas Fleming; American Heritage Publ., New York, 2004.

"Benjamin Franklin; An American Life" by Walter Issacson, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2003.

Posted By Blogger to Today in History at 2/06/2012 04:42:00 PM

FEBRUARY 3 = The Day the Music Died

2012-02-03T13:26:00.000-08:00

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.

But february made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep;
I couldn’t take one more step.

I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

Don Mc Lean Writes of the Change in Rock and Roll...

On a cold morning in February of 1959… on the morning of today’s date during that year, a young man, a singer and an aspiring young rock and roll musician named Don Mc Lean was thinking about the music he wanted to play. Rock and Roll had, up to that point in time been played primarily to provide people – mostly young people -- music to dance by at social events, and Mc Lean had been looking forward to playing that kind of music; to providing the music that would for other young people bring the happiness and enjoyment that he had always gotten from it. But that morning he was tending his only job other than full-time writing of his music. That job was delivering papers. And on that morning the

news included accounts of the plane crash that had taken the lives of three of the brightest young stars of rock, J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson ("Chantilly Lace"), Ritchie Valens ("La Bamba"), and his idol, Buddy Holly ("That'll Be the Day").

Mc Lean thought of Holly and all he had meant to him as a young writer of his own tunes, just as Buddy Holly had been. He thought of Holly’s young wife, Maria Elena, now a widow. Maria had been carrying Holly’s child, but miscarried the next day, possibly as a result of the stress of losing her husband. Mc Lean was writing the famous song, the lyrics of which are quoted above, in 1971, and was thinking of all that had occurred since that crash. The crash had happened right at the end of what was thought by many to be a decade and a period of comparative innocence. The civil unrest which was to permeate so much of the decade of the 60’s and which came to infect that generation of America’s youth had not set in yet. But that decade did come and thereafter the music which Mac Lean had so loved became infected with the social disillusion, and political radicalism of that period. The Brits such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and Americans such as Bob Dylan had risen to prominence, and had changed the face of rock and roll forever. The era of sex, drugs, and free love had taken over, and now was the face of rock and roll. For Mac Lean, that wreck had indeed been the day that the music died.

The Final Concert for the Three, and Their Ill-Fated Flight

On February 2, 1959, Holly, Valens and Richardson were on the eleventh night of their Winter Dance Party tour through the a Mid-west that was as choked with snow as it could be. It was a Monday — a school night — but 1,100 teenagers had jammed Clear Lake, Iowa's Surf Ballroom for two shows which had been sold out. Between sets, Holly tried getting other people to join him on the airplane which he had chartered to fly to the next show in Moorehead, Minnesota. The musicians had been riding the bus on their tour for over a week, and were very weary. The plane ride to their next destination offered some relief to the monotony of the bus, and might get them to Minnesota early enough to allow them some rest before their next show.

Roger Peterson, a 21 year old pilot had agreed to fly the singer to Fargo, North Dakota — the closest airport to Moorehead. Peterson was himself at the end of a long work day – he had put in 17 hours of work already. But he was a fan, and wanted to fly Buddy Holly to his next job. Holly's bass player, Waylon Jennings, was scheduled to fly on the plane but gave his seat to the Big Bopper, who was running a fever and had trouble fitting his stocky frame comfortably into the bus seats. When Holly heard that Jennings wasn't taking the flight, he said, "Well, I hope your old bus freezes up." To which Jennings replied, "Well, I hope your plane crashes." This friendly banter of friends would haunt Jennings for years. Holly's guitarist Tommy Allsup flipped a coin with Richie Valens for the remaining seat. Valens “won”, and the three musicians boarded the red and white single-engine Beech Bonanza around 12:30 on Feb. 3. Fans crowded the tarmac, waving and clamoring for autographs. The plane taxied down the windswept, snowy runway and took off. The sky had been clear, and Peterson received clearance from the control tower to go. Regrettably, he had not been told of two weather advisories that warned of an oncoming blizzard.

After remaining airborne for only a few minutes, Peterson apparently flew directly into the blizzard, losing visual reference and accidentally flew the plane down instead of up. The four-passenger plane crashed headlong into a cornfield at over 170 mph, flipping over on itself and throwing all of it’s passengers into the air. Their bodies came to rest some yards away from the wreckage. All of them were killed. Their remains stayed there for over ten hours because in the blizzard conditions, nobody could reach the crash site until later that same morning. The Winter Dance Party tour went on, with Waylon Jennings singing Holly's songs and other well known singing phenoms, including 18-year-old Frankie Avalon, brought in to finish the tour. Holly's body was shipped back home to Lubbock, Texas, wherein his Baptist family, who had never approved of his music would not play any of his songs at his funeral.

Holly's Fame and Influence Rise Posthumously

Holly had indeed been enjoying some success at the time of his death at the far too young age of 22. But this was nothing compared to the way his music and his techniques skyrocketed into prominence after he died. The sale of his records continued to rise in the months following his death, with one of his singles, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” rising to # 13 on the charts. His songs really went up in England where a young John Lennnon and George Harrison would learn about guitar playing in part by listening to his albums. Don McLean's 1971 single "American Pie" memorialized the plane crash as the moment Rock and Roll in America left it’s youth behind, and entered the world of psychadelia, and youth rebellion. As Claire Suddath wrore in "Time" Magazine in 2009:

"He wrote of teens wearing pink carnations and driving pick-up trucks, dancing and falling in love and dancing some more. The snow fell silently outside as the country teetered on the brink of the 1960s; no one in the ballroom had any idea what would happen next."

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Music_Died

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1876542,00.html

Pictures:

The Trio =
robbiedisme.blogspot.com

Buddy Holly Band =
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1876542,00.html

Newspaper =
jalopyjournal.com

Crash site =
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2443345/posts

FEBRUARY 1 = The USMC Lands on Roi Namur

2012-02-01T15:29:00.001-08:00

John P. Bolten Lands on Roi Namur

February 1 -
"As I approached the island, in fact immediately after I touched land, I noticed the queer atmosphere of the place. It wasn't the coconut palms which had been blasted by the terrific naval gunfire and hung broken down and lifeless. Nor was it the crumbling, smoking ruins of the Jap buildings. It was the Marines. They were everywhere, and even as I saw the first group I knew that they were not the same as those Marines which had left the ship talking and laughing. They were all scattered out with no organiztion whatsoever. They lay or sat in groups talking very low if at all. Mostly,they were silently grim. This was not what I had expected."

The 4'th Marines on Roi Namur

This was the scene as recorded by a young marine private, John P.Bolten, on February 1, 1944, the first time he took part in combat operations during his stint with the U.S. Marines in the South Pacific. Bolten was a part of the Fourth Marine Division, which saw it's first action as a part of American operations against Japanese positions on Roi-Namur, part of the Kwajalein atoll of the Marshall Islands. In order to set up forward air bases capable of supporting operations across the mid-Pacific, to the Philippines, and into Japan, the U.S. needed to take the Marshalls. The Fourth Marines had commenced their attack against the airfield on Roi, the eastern half of the island pair on January 31, and attacked and overtook the stronger defences on Namur on that first day of February. After the huge losses suffered in action against Tarawa the previous November, the operation against the Kwajalein atoll had seemed to come off fairly easily. The use of overwhelming force, and better cooperation between naval and ground forces, as well as better communication between the various components of those ground forces were all lessons that were paying off. Nevertheless, the cost of war was not lost on the young marine from Cincinnati, Ohio as he and his fellow artillerymen moved to set up their guns:

"The Smell of Crushed Jungle Vegitation...."

"The smell of crushed jungle vegetation mixed with powdered concrete and gunpowder hung like a fog over the island in the gathering gloom. Scattered Marine equipment lay strewn all over the beach where it had fallen when the assault (team) had discarded it. This was a mere inkling of what I was to learn of the cost of war and the waste. My first glimpse of a Jap came.... as we rounded a clump of jungle vegetation. I saw a Marine dragging a dead Jap by the leg into the underbrush to be piled with the rest I supposed. It shouldn't have affected me since I was used to dealing with stiffs, even handling them. But it did. I stopped for a second and watched as the dead man - one leg dragging - made tracks in the wet coral sand. As I looked, I saw that we artillery men were the only ones staring at the disappearing Jap. The infantry men were sitting silently on the beach, cradling their rifles with dirty dungaree clothed arms. (They) were looking out at the water, and looking glasssily at us as if to say "Hell, Mac you can go back now (that) all the dirty work is done!"

By February 4, American losses totalled 372 killed and 1,582 wounded out of the more than 42,000 men who took part in the operation. Out of 3,500 Japanese defenders of Roi-Namur, only 51 survived to be captured.

Sources =

The Wartime Journal of John P. Bolten - February, 1944. Unpublished. Possession of B.T. Bolten

http://www.nps.gov/archive/wapa/indepth/extContent/usmc/pcn-190-003124-00/sec3.htm

JANUARY 30 = The "Tet" Offensive Begins.

2012-01-30T16:31:00.000-08:00

Above: A supected Viet-Cong operative is summarily executed by Col. Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese Chief of Police. A film version of this moment was shown on TV in America, shocking American audiences.

"In all honesty, we didn't achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the south. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans and their puppets, and that was a big gain for us. As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention --- but it turned out to be a fortunate result." - Tran Do, North Vietnamese General.

The "Tet" Offensive

On today's date in 1968, in coordinated attacks all across South Vietnam, communist forces launched their largest offensive of the Vietnam War against South Vietnamese and U.S. troops. Because it came on the first day of the Lunar New Year, "Tet", it came to be known as the "Tet Offensive". The "fortunate result" of which General Tran speaks above was no less than the unseating of an incumbent U.S. President, the unleashing of the worst civil unrest in the United States in a century, and the turning point of the war in favor of the Viet Cong and their sponsors in North Vietnam.

The Viet Cong Are BEATEN by the U.S. Marines & Army....

On January 30, 1968-during the Tet holiday cease-fire in South Vietnam-an estimated 80,000 troops of the North Vietnamese Army

and the Viet Cong attacked cities and military establish- ments throughout South Vietnam. The most spectacular episode occurred when a group of NLF commandos blasted through the wall surrounding the American embassy in Saigon and unsuccessfully attempted to seize the embassy building (some of that fighting is pictured above). Most of the attacks were turned back, with the communist forces suffering heavy losses.

But the Communists WIN the Political Battle

Battles continued to rage throughout the country for weeks--the fight to reclaim the city of Hue from communist troops was particularly destructive. American and South Vietnamese forces lost over 3,000 men during the offensive. Estimates for communist losses ran as high as 40,000.While the communists did not succeed militarily, the impact of the Tet Offensive on public opinion in the United States was staggering. The American people, who had been told a few months earlier that the war was successful and that U.S. troops might soon be allowed to withdraw, were stunned to see fighting taking place on the grounds of the U.S. embassy -- right there on their televisions during the evening news.

LBJ Goes Down as the U.S. Erupts

Despite being told by Johnson administration that all was well, the Tet Offensive led many Americans to begin seriously questioning the war, and to wonder whether American power could prevail over the communist threat in foreign lands. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, support for the U.S. effort in Vietnam began steadily to erode, and public opinion turned sharply against President Johnson (pictured, left). The 1968 presidential campaign was under way, and in early March, LBJ, whose name was not even on the ballot did indeed win New Hampshire's "first-in-the-nation primary". But Senator Eugene Mc Carthy, who had opposed the war came in second by only 300 votes. This was viewed as a stunning rejection of the President. Studies later showed that most of the McCarthy voters actually favored the war, but intended their vote to be a protest of the LBJ administration. But it was seen as being against the war. Soon after, Robert F. Kennedy entered the race, strongly opposing the war. And on March 31, LBJ surprised everyone by pulling out of the presidential campaign.

Sources:

by Stanley Karnow, Viking Press, New York, 1983.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tet_Offensive

Pictures:

Saigon =
http://historyimages.blogspot.com/

LBJ =
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/vietnam/vietnam_lessons.cfm

JANUARY 28 = The Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes.

2012-01-28T15:23:00.000-08:00

On today's date, twentyfive years ago, January 28, in 1986 the Space Shuttle "Challenger" was nine miles above the earth, and seventy-three seconds into her mission, when as a result of a design flaw in her rocket boosters, she exploded. Owing to the presence on board of school teacher Christa McAuliffe, the launch was being broadcast into schools all over the United States, and the disaster in all of its dreadful finality
happened in full view of thousands of school children. All seven crew members were killed. William Harwood, United Press International's Cape Canaveral bureau chief witnessed the event in person:

William Harwood Witnesses the Disaster:

"Four miles away, 'Challenger' was climbing majestically into a cloudless blue sky. We could not see the initial puffs of smoke indicating a fatal booster flaw. A few seconds, the crackling roar of those booster swept over the press site and the UPI trailer started shaking and rattling as the ground shock arrived. I marveled at the view, describing it (over the phone
to desk editor Bill) Trott in Washington.

And then, in the blink of an eye, the exhaust plume seemed to balloon outward, to somehow thicken. I recall a fleeting peripheral impression of fragments, of debris flying about, sparkling in the morning sunlight. And then, in that pregnant instant before the knowledge has happened settled in, a single booster emerged from the cloud, corkscrewing madly through the sky. I sat stunned. I couldn't understand what I was seeing. 'Wait a minute....something's happened....' I told Trott. A booster? Flying on it's own? Oh my God. 'They're in trouble,' I said, my heart pounding. For the next two hours or so, I don't remember anything but the mad rush of reporting. Subconsciously, I held the enormity of the disaster at bay; I knew if I relaxed my guard for a minute, it would paralyze me. I was flying on some mental auto-pilot. And then around 2 p.m. or so, there was a momentary lull. My fingers dropped to the keyboard, and I stared blankly out the window to the launch pad. I remembered Christa McAuliffe's and Judy Resnik's flashing eyes. Tears welled up. I shook my head, blinked rapidly and turned back to my computer. I'll think about it all later, I told myself. I was right. I think about it at every launch."

My Own Memories of That Day.

I was working at "Jones the Florist" on Mc Millan St. in Cincinnati when I heard about the death of "Challenger". I was watering some plants when I heard Mrs. Gustin, the store's owner come in and say "The Space Shuttle 'Challenger' has exploded." I was stunned. I asked around of my fellow employees, "What happened to the crew? Had they survived?" But nobody knew. My lunch break came up, and I went out in my car to listen to the radio reports. All of them were very grim. There was apparently no way that the crew could have survived. I can recall later in the day the comments from Colonel John Glenn, a former astronaut and by then a U.S. Senator saying that people had forgotten how very dangerous space travel was. Hurtling through the atmosphere at a rate of five miles per second, it was an extremely perilous undertaking, the senator reminded us. I can remember my father, a retired Cincinnati Fireman, who was familiar with the University area saying that the distance between Hughes High School (of which he was a Class of '42 Graduate) and the Firehouse at the corner of Clifton and Ludlow Ave. was exactly one mile. "Imagine" he said "traveling FIVE TIMES that distance in one second!" I can also recall the local classical music station WGUC playing music the rest of the day dealing with explorers, "Scott of the Antarctic" and pieces like that. All of this is burned into my memory as well.

President Reagan Pays Tribute to the Astronauts of "Challenger".

(Above: President Reagan and aides watch news of Challenger on TV.)

On the night of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan had been scheduled to give his annual State of the Union Address. He initially announced that the address would go on as scheduled, but then postponed the State of the Union Address for a week and instead gave a national address on the Challenger disaster from the Oval Office of the White House. It was written by Peggy Noonan, and finished with the following statement, which quoted from the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.:

"We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.'”

Three days later, President Reagan with his wife Nancy traveled to the Johnson Space Center to speak at a memorial service honoring the astronauts and he stated “Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain.” The memorial service was attended by the families of the crew, and by 6,000 NASA employees and 4,000 guests. The U. S. Air Force band led the singing of "God Bless America" as NASA T-38 Talon jets flew directly over the scene, in the traditional missing-man formation. The Space Shuttle program would indeed go on, but not until several years later.

Sources:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger

tct.murrieta.k12.ca.us/reading/grade6/ph7/challenger

JANUARY 26 = "Australia Day" and "Waltzing Matilda".

2012-01-26T18:30:00.000-08:00

"Australia Day is a day where we celebrate our country and appreciate how lucky we are to live in such a great place, thats why we all get a day off work and have parties haha."
- My friend Sara Cuthbertson

"Australia Day (previously known as Anniversary Day, Foundation Day, and ANA Day) is the official national day of Australia. Celebrated annually on 26 January, the date commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788 and the proclamation at that time of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of New Holland. Although it was not known as Australia Day until over a century later, records of celebrations on 26 January date back to 1808, with the first official celebration of the formation of New South Wales held in 1818. It is presently an official public holiday in every state and territory of Australia and is marked by the presentation of the Australian of the Year Awards on Australia Day Eve, announcement of the Honours List for the Order of Australia and addresses from the Governor-General and Prime Minister. With community festivals, concerts and citizenship ceremonies the day is celebrated in large and small communities and cities around the nation. Australia Day has become the biggest annual civic event in Australia."
- the online encyclopedia, "Wikipedia"

"Waltzing Matilda"

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."

So go the lyrics to a song which stands as the unofficial National Anthem of Australia, a fine and beautiful country which celebrates her national day today. And in spite of the fuss which may have been raised by some folks trying to break up the Prime Minister's speech, it is still a day of relaxation and celebration for the good people of that country, as my friend, Mrs. Cuthbertson makes clear enough above. I say that Australia is a beautiful country, but the fact is I have never been there myself. But I have known several fine ladies from that place in the course of working at the University of Texas at Austin. Lisa Maynard Tittle, Jacinta van Lindt, and Sophia Osterloh (of Tasmania) all came from that wondrous land. And of course so did my friend Sara Cuthbertson, whom I've known only through e-mail. They have all been fine and engaging people to know, and the way in which they have enriched my life, as well as the lives of those of us lucky enough to know them, has always spoken very well of the people of Australia, as well as of the beauty of the continent itself.

But that song.... "Waltzing Matilda" has always exercised a hold on me. Ever since I first learned it as a grade schooler at Westwood Elementary School here in Cincinnati as a part of "Social Studies" and learning about Australia and the other countries of the world. It has always struck me as being a very sweet, and touching tune, and I've always thought that the people of Australia had a remarkable gem of a national anthem, even if it is "unofficial". If you click on the words "Waltzing Matilda" where they are highlighted (in bold) above, you will get a "YouTube" video of the song being played at "Australia Day" celebrations in 2009. Another very sweet and moving version of the tune is woven throughout film composer Ernest Golds score to the 1959 Stanley Kramer film "On the Beach" which deals with the effect an onrushing nuclear cloud has on the lives of some of the people who go to Australia as the last place where the doomsday shroud will arrive. If you click on the highlighted words "On the Beach" above, you will go to a "YouTube" video which features that score.

A Bit of the Song's History....

The title is a kind of old Australian slang for traveling around by foot with all of your belongings in a "Matilda" (bag) slung over your back (just as an old American slang refers to carrying your stuff around in a "poke"). The song tells the story of a migrant worker, or "swagman" (left, circa 1901), making a drink of tea ("waiting till his billy boiled") at a bush camp and catching a "jumbuck"(sheep) to have for lunch. When the sheep's owner arrives with three "troopers" (police officers) to arrest the worker for the theft, the worker commits suicide by drowning himself in the nearby "billabong" (watering hole) and then goes on to haunt the site. The original lyrics were written in 1895 by poet and nationalist Banjo Paterson. It was first published as sheet music in 1903. All manner ot folklore surrounds the song and the way in which it was written. In fact, the song has its own museum, "the Waltzing Matilda Centre" in Winton, Queensland.

The words to the song were written in 1895 by Banjo Paterson, a famous Australian poet. The music was written by Christina Macpherson. Paterson wrote the piece while staying at the Dagworth Homestead, a bush station in Queensland. While he was there his hosts played him a traditional Celtic folk tune called "The Craigeelee" and Paterson thought that it was a good piece to set lyrics to, so he wrote the song while he stayed at Dagworth. It is widely believed that the story is based on an incident that took place during the Great Shearers' Strike in 1894, wherein a man named Samuel Hoffmeister was killed by authorities. There has been some recent scholarship that casts doubt on this long-held belief in the song as a kind of socialist anthem. Nevertheless, the story of the swagman and his sheep lives on....

The Rest of the Tale:

Down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?",
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong,
"You'll never take me alive", said he,
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltzing_matilda

http://www.youtube.com/

JANUARY 24 = GOOOLLLLLDD!!

2012-01-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

GOLD is Discovered at Sutter's Creek

Early on the morning of this date of January 24 in the year 1848, a millwright working on Sutter's Creek in California made a discovery that changed the history of the United States. Sutter's Creek was a tributary of the America River in the Sacramento Valley east of San Francisco, and it was named for the Swiss immigrant John Augustus Sutter. Sutter had settled in California in 1839, and utilizing the labor of local Indians whom he treated little better than slaves he had built farms and ranches as the center of what he hoped would be a thriving agricultural colony which he named "New Helvetia". On that fateful January morning, mill wright James Marshall was supervising the excavation of a shallow millrace on Sutter's Creek when he noticed a sparkle of light in the dark earth. When he examined the earth closely, he discovered that much of it was speckled with what appeared to be small flakes of .....GOLD!! He dashed off to tell Sutter, and the find was soon confirmed. Sutter tried to quietly gather up as much as he could, hoping to keep the find a secret.

The Gold Rush of '49 Is ON!!

But word got out (of course!) and the largest gold rush in world (and in United States)history was on. This discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley in 1848 set off what was doubtlessly one of the most significant events in the formation of American history during the 19th century. News of the discovery spread like wildfire, and tens of thousands of eager prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area. This rush happened mostly in 1849, hence the term for these gold-seeking adventurers (and MUCH later, the football team),

"the Fortyniners." This was a massive population shift to this far western end of our country. Indeed, by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory, which had been about 1,000 had ballooned to over 100,000. A total of $2 billion worth of precious metal was taken from the area during the Gold Rush, which peaked in 1852. The California territory became a state in 1850, and as more and more people wanted to go to this rich, but highly inaccesssible area, talk of an Intercontinental Railroad began. But, it would all prove to be a disaster for Sutter (pictured above). Thousands of prospectors swarmed to California and soon overran Sutter's property, slaughtering his herds of livestock for food, and trampling his fields. By 1852, his "New Helvetia" was ruined. He died in 1880 after years of futile efforts to gain governmental compensation for his losses.

Sherman Observes the "Gold Fever"

William T. Sherman (right, circa 1855) who would go on to Civil War fame was a young Lieutenant in the U.S. Army who was stationed in California during the Gold Rush years. In his memoirs published in 1875, he recalled the effect that "Gold fever" = the prospect of quick riches had on everyone, soldiers included:

"...at that time so demoralizing was the effect of the gold mines that everybody not in the military justified desertion, because a soldier, if free, could earn more money in a day than he received (in the army) per month. Not only did soldiers and sailors desert, but captains and masters of ships actually abandoned their vessels and cargoes to try their luck at the mines. Preachers and Professors forgot their creeds and took to trade, and even to keeping gambling houses. Soldiers and sailors who could reach the mines were universally shielded by the miners, so it was next to impossible to attempt their recapture. "

Sources:
"The History Channel" website -
http://www.historychannel.com/

- William T. Sherman, Library of America,
New York, 1990, page 95.

JANUARY 22 = Queen Victoria Dies.

2012-01-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

The Death of Victoria R.I.

On January 22 in 1901, Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the seas, Empress of India, and the longest reigning sovereign in British history died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Present at her bedside were members of her family, including her heir, the Prince of Wales (who would shortly take the title of King Edward VII). And on either side of the bed, lifting up her pillow so she could see who was there were her other surviving son, Prince Arthur, and of all people, Germany's Kaiser William II, who was her oldest grandchild.

Kaiser William II Invites Himself

The German Emperor had not been invited, but upon the hearing news that his grandmother was, after a long life nearing her
end, he took the liberty of inviting himself. History tends to remember Kaiser as a kind of boastful, swaggering charlatan. And while most of the time, he was indeed just that, he also had it in his character to behave with the utmost tact, and even charm when he chose to. And by all accounts, his behavior at the time of Queen Victoria's death was one such time. In his 1991 book "Dreadnought - Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War", historian Robert K. Massie asserts that it was the Kaiser for whom Queen Victoria's death held the most significance:

The Effect of Victoria's Death on the Kaiser

"Queen Victoria had reigned for almost sixty-four years, only subjects nearing seventy could remember another monarch. More than a sovereign, she was an institution, and most of her people thought of her as permanent, like the Houses of Parliament, or the Bank of England..... the sense of loss was many-sided: loss of permanence, loss of authority, loss of security. On no one -- not even on her heir --did this loss have a greater impact than on the Kaiser. In spite of all, the emotional link between them had never been broken. He was her eldest grandchild, she was his august, but also warmhearted Grandmama. The happiest days of his youth had been spent in the relatively informal atmosphere of Osborne and Windsor, an atmosphere dominated by the personality of the Queen. As the years went by, he never gave up his feeling of tenderness for his aging grandmother, and respect for the Queen-Empress. She scolded him, but she also showed him affection and understanding. She criticized him to her ministers, but she also stood up for him, advising Lord Salisbury and others on how to deal with him. In many ways, she was like him: both were sentimental, subject to strong likes and dislikes, capable of gushiness and sharp anger in writing to subordinates. Because Victoria had had (her late husband, Prince) Albert and a series of independent prime ministers, she had learned to discipline her feelings and language as William never had. As long as she lived, she posed for William a model of how an Imperial sovereign should behave. When she died, that model vanished. His Uncle, King Edward, could not replace her; for too long, Bertie (the name by which Edward VII had been known to his family) in William's eyes had been the frivolous Prince of Wales. And so, at forty-two, the Kaiser was left alone to follow his own path, bereft of the presence, the counsel, and the affection of the one human he admired as well as loved."

Sources:
by Robert K. Massie Random House Publ. Group Inc., New York, 1992.

JANUARY 19 = Edgar Allan Poe is Born.

2012-01-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

"Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant, the party on the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and awe. In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corspe, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon it's head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled up the monstor within the tomb."

Stephen King? No. H.P. Lovecraft? No. A script from one of the films of M. Knight Shyamylan? NO. These are the final words of the story of "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allen Poe, who was born on today's date - January 19 in 1809. What must have been going on in the mind of this man...how utterly tortured he must have been, to have written such passages of sheer horror! Of course, it does not necessarily have to be so. Other than an awful accident with a van a few years ago, Stephen King has had a happy and normal life. The same for Mssr.s Lovecraft and Shyamylan. But not for Edgar Allan Poe. His life was hard - marked by disappointments, alcoholism, and the deaths of his loved ones, and his own untimely demise under mysterious circumstances at he young age of 40.

Poe's Early Life

Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts, to a pair of theatrical parents, who may have named him for the mad character of Edgar in Shakespeare's King Lear which they had been performing around the time of his birth. Poe's father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died of Consumption (Tuberculosis)a year later. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, a rich merchant couple in Boston. Pictured above is the Edgar Allan Poe House in Boston wherein Poe lived for a time. Although they never formally adopted the young man, Poe's adoptive parents did give him their name - Allan.

Poe's Literary Criticism

Poe was the first American writer to attempt to make a living off of his work alone. He made several attempts throughout his life to work with literary magazines. He had some degree of success in this attempt. In fact he was better known in his time as an astute literary critic than as a writer. Fellow critic James Russell Lowell called him "the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America", though he wondered if Poe used prussic acid instead of ink. Clearly, Poe was seen as a man to be reckoned with, and his abilities were respected by his literary fellows.

Poe's Marriage to Virginia Clemm

But the world of real life was considerably more difficult for Poe. He made a try at army life for a couple of years, but that was a failure. He was eventually cut off from any support by his adoptive father. He married his cousin, Virginia Clemm (left) when he was in his late twenties, and she was merely 13. The marriage was happy and loving, but Poe was unable to sustain himself in regular employment through this time. He published his "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (horror)" containing "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Tomb of Ligea" in 1840 to mixed reviews. His young wife fell ill in 1842, and under the stress of this time, he began to drink more and more heavily.

Poe's "the Black Cat"

In "The Black Cat", published in 1843, he wrote of a man who had once been kind and gentle, but who, under the influence of alcohol gradually became cruel. He centered his loathing and resentment on his cat.

"I grew, day by day, more moody more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.....my disease grew upon me -- for what disease is like alcohol!...Even Pluto(the cat)began to experience the effects of my ill temper."

It is not difficult to imagine Poe experiencing these dark and troubling feelings and writing about them in the guise of the tortured man of his stories. The man in this story took a swing at the cat, and wound up killing his wife instead - hence the line about the creature having "seduced" him into murder. He then concealed her body behind a brick wall, and when the police came calling, the cat, whom he had inadvertantly entombed with his late wife began crying - hence his date with the hangman.

Poe's "The Raven"

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

''Tis some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.' "

These of course are the opening lines of "The Raven" published in Janaury of 1845. This poem about a man's nocturnal visit from a large and mysterious black bird was a rare literary success for Poe, making him a household name. He was sought after for public readings of the work. At one such reading, a spectator remarked at the atmosphere Poe would create for the event:

"to hear [Poe] repeat the Raven... is an event in one's life...He would turn down the lamps till the room was almost dark, then standing in the center of the apartment he would recite... in the most melodious of voices... So marvelous was his power as a reader that the auditors would be afraid to draw breath lest the enchanted spell be broken."

Poe's Mysterious Death
Regrettably Poe would realize but a small amount of money from this success. Even more regrettably for Poe, his wife died almost exactly two years after the Raven's publication. His drinking got worse, and following several attempts at remarriage, he died under mysterious circumstances on October 7, 1849. He had been found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance" in the account of the man who found him. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this condition.

Sources =

- Edgar Allan Poe
A Signet Classic, New American Library Inc., New York, 1960

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe#cite_ref-56

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Edgar_Allan_Poe

JANUARY 17 = The Great "Brinks" Robbery

2012-01-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

The Great Brinks Robbery - the armed robbery of the Brinks Building in Boston, Massachusetts went down on today's date, January 17 in 1950. It was a bold, and a meticulously planned heist, and for six years the culprits managed to evade capture. They managed to bag $1,218,211.19 in cash, and over $1.5-million in checks, money orders and other securities. At the time, it was largest robbery in the history of United States. Cleanly and smoothly executed with very few clues left at the scene, the robbery was called as "the crime of the century". Yet, in spite of the fact that all nine members of the gang wound up in the can, most of the stolen booty has never been recovered.

The Carefully Planned Scheme

Anthony "Fats" Pino (right) was the originator of the heist, which he had carefully planned for over 18 months. He brought in Joseph "Specs" O'Keefe, Joseph "Big Joe" McGinnis and Stanley "Gus" Gusciora. Secretly O'Keefe and Gusciora entered the Brinks depot; they picked the outside lock with an ice pick and inner door with a piece of plastic. Later they temporarily removed the cylinders from the five locks, one at a time, so a locksmith could make duplicate keys for them. They then re-installed the originals, so nothing seemed amiss. Once this was done Pino recruited six other men, including Pino's brother-in-law Vincent Costa, Michael Vincent Geagan, Thomas Francis Richardson, Adolph "Jazz" Maffie and Henry Baker.

The gang waited for the perfect hour for their heist; having studied the schedules of the building staff, they were able to determine what the staff was doing based on the lights in the building windows. O'Keefe and Gusciora even stole the plans for the site alarms. The gang members entered the building on practice runs after the staff had left for the day. Costa monitored the depot from a room of a ruined building nearby.

The Bandits Make Off With the $$$$$$$!!

That night, they put on clothing which appeared to be similar the Brink's guards uniform with Navy pea coats, chauffeur's caps, rubber Halloween masks, gloves and rubber-soled shoes to muffle their footsteps. While Pino and driver Banfield remained in the car, seven other men entered the building 6:55 PM. With their bogus keys they came to the second floor through the locked doors and surprised, then bound and gagged five Brinks employees who were storing and counting money. They missed the General Electric Company pay box but scooped up everything else. The gang then calmly went about their "business" and strolled out of the Brinks building at 7:30 PM. Along with the cash, they had taken four revolvers from the guards. The gang speedily counted their take, gave some of the members part of their cut and agreed not to touch the rest of the money for six years - time enough for the statute of limitations to expire. They then split up and went their separate ways.

The Police and the FBI Begin to Investigate....

It was a devilishly audacious and clever plan. But six whole years is a long time for criminals to keep their yaps shut and stay out of trouble, no matter what the inducement. The Brinks Company offered $100,000 reward for tips on the theft. The only clues police could find to begin with were the rope which the robbers had used to tie the employees and a chauffeur's cap. And informers info was useless at the start of the investigation. The getaway truck - a green 1949 Ford which had been stolen weeks before the heist was found chopped to pieces in Stoughton, Massachusetts, near O'Keefe's home. But in June 1950, O’Keefe and Gusciora were arrested in Pennsylvania for a burglary. These sticky-fingered fools were convicted, O’Keefe got three years in Bradford County Jail and Gusciora 5 to 20 in the State Slammer at Pittsburgh. Through their informers police heard that O'Keefe and Gusciora had insisted on using some of their Brinks loot to fight their convictions. Maffie later claimed that most of O'Keefe's share went to his legal defense. FBI agents tried to talk to O'Keefe and Gusciora in prison but they kept quiet. Gang members had indeed come under suspicion but the FBI and the police just didn't have enough evidence to bring their case. So law enforcement kept putting the screws to the boys. Adolph Maffie was later convicted of income tax evasion and got nine months in the clink.

And the Boys Begin to Blab!!

After O'Keefe got out of jail, he was obliged to stand trial for another burglary and parole violations and was released on bail of $17,000. O'Keefe later claimed that he had never seen his part of the Brinks booty after he had given it to Maffie for "safekeeping". But he needed some of his take and didn't fancy waiting six years to get it. So he kidnapped Vincent Costa and demanded his part of the loot for ransom. Pino ponied up a small ransom but then decided to have O'Keefe rubbed out. After couple of blown tries he hired underworld hitman Elmer "Trigger" Burke to do it right. Burke went to Boston and peppered O'Keefe with a submachine gun but O'Keefe still managed to dodge the bullets, and was seriously wounded, but had not bought it. FBI approached O'Keefe in the hospital and on January 6, 1956 he began to sing like the proverbial bird.

In January 12, 1956 the FBI arrested Baker, Costa, Geagan, Maffie, McGinnis, and Pino. They caught Faherty and Richardson in Dorchester, Massachusetts in May. O'Keefe pleaded guilty January 18. Gusciora died July 9 due to cerebral edema before he could stand trial. Banfield was already dead. Trial began August 6, 1956. Eight of the gang received the maximum sentences of life in the can, but O'Keefe received only 4 years and was released in 1960. So all of the boys wound up dead or in the slammer, but most of the loot was never recovered. According to eh..... legend.... it is all squirreled away in the hills just north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

Sources:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Brink%27s_Robbery

JANUARY 15 = "The Black Dahlia" is Found Dead in L.A.

2012-01-15T10:49:00.000-08:00

"Bette was a porcelain China doll with beautiful eyes -- think of them as blue, but sometimes would change depending on color she wore, and became greenish."
- Anna Dougherty, Medford Classmate

“Elizabeth Short was a pale, pie-faced, blue-eyed, dark-haired Irish Protestant girl from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. She was by all accounts imaginative, flighty, given to prevarication, she may have been a habitual liar; she was certainly a romantic. She was a tormented, sweet natured, love starved, lost little girl who never got the chance to grow up. Her dream was entirely silly, and it was the dream of countless other fatuous girls of the American 1940’s – she wanted to be an actress, she wanted to be a movie star.
We’ll never know if she had talent.”
- James Ellroy, author of "The Black Dahlia"

"It's going to be so wonderful, darling, when all of this is over. You want to slip away and be married. We'll do whatever you wish, darling. Whatever you want. I love you and all I want is you."
- Elizabeth Short, in an un-mailed letter to her "fiance'" dated May 8, 1945.

Elizabeth Short. Her badly mutilated remains were discovered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles on today's date, January 15 in 1947. She soon became known as "the Black Dahlia". Beyond that, what can one say about her? So much of what one can or perhaps cannot say about her is summed up in the fact that I have been obliged to place the word "fiance'" in quotation marks above. So much of what I have read about her in the past few days while researching her story has been stated as clearly settled fact in one seemingly authoritative source, only to be dismissed, or brought into question in another source. So please bear with me as I say a lot of words or phrases like "apparently", or "seems to", etc. in the coming paragraphs. Also: since this subject is primarily about the murder of a young woman and the subsequent mutilation and dismemberment of her body, some of the details which I will be discussing are graphic to say the least, so WARNING: READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Elizabeth Short Moves to Hollywood

Elizabeth Short was born, the third of five girls on July 29, 1924 and grew up in the town of Medford, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was Cleo Short, and her mother was Phoebe May Sawyer. Cleo had a business of building Miniature Golf Courses , and was making enough money to put his wife and children in a decent home. But like many Americans, he lost all his assets in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Unable to support his family, Cleo Short in 1930 drove his car to a bridge and just vanished, a presumed suicide. Her mother had to go to work as an accountant, and move herself and her girls into a smaller apartment. Elizabeth soon developed asthma, and doctors recommended that she spend the winter months in Florida. So for the three years between age 16 through 18, she would spend the winter months in Florida, apparently staying with relatives, and the rest of the year in Medford. Elizabeth, known to her friends as Beth, Betty, or Bette, was a bright, personable and very attractive young girl who loved the movies, and dreamt of going to Hollywood and becoming a movie star. Her father resurfaced in 1942, and wrote to his now ex-wife to tell her that he was alive and working in Vallejo, California (outside of San Francisco). Phoebe wanted nothing to do with him, but Elizabeth begged to be allowed to move out to sunny California and live with him. So in December of 1942, she boarded a train and made the move to the land of sunshine, stars, and shadows.

Beautiful Young Beth Drifts, Looking for Love.

While in Florida, Beth developed a flirtatious manner and a model-like appearance and bearing. With her alabaster white complexion, her flashing blue/green eyes, and her full mane of black hair, she presented a striking picture to the world. Her friendly, easy-going manner, and sweet smile made her very popular with men - a fact which she knew and cultivated. She spent two months living with her father. Cleo was a difficult man, expecting his daughter to be a house-keeper and general servant to him. But Beth was enjoying the company of young men, and spending a lot of time on evenings out with them. So they fought, and either Cleo ordered her to leave, or she had had enough of domestic servitude and she left of her own accord. Either way, she left Vallejo to move to southern California. She acquired a job at the PX at Camp Cooke. Naturally popular with the GIs, she was voted "Camp Cooke's Cutie of the Week" in the Camp Newspaper. But in September of 1943, she was out partying with friends, and was arrested for underage drinking (back then you had to be 21). She was sent back to Medford by the local authorities.

At this point she resumed living in Florida, and earned money as a part-time waitress. She spent as much money as she could on fancy clothes, and spent her evenings out with a dizzying variety of young soldiers and sailors, a different guy almost every night according to friends. It was during this time that Short met Major Matthew Michael Gordon Jr., a decorated Army Air Corps officer who was in training for deployment to China Burma India Theater of Operations. Beth told friends that Matt proposed marriage to her via the mail and that she had accepted. Major Gordon's friends in the Air Corps later confirmed the engagement, although his family denied any connection. But it made no difference, as Gordon survived the war, only to be killed in an airplane crash on August 10, 1945. Elizabeth's search for a place in the world went on.

Elizabeth Short Disappears Into the Night

(Pictured: the Biltmore Hotel)
In July of 1946, Elizabeth returned to Los Angeles. She seems to have embarked on a fairly transient existence, living with friends, boyfriends, and acquaintances, never staying at one residence for more than two weeks. Continuing to date men and hanging around theaters and swanky restaurants and looking for work in the movies, she wound up at the home of her friend Dorothy French. She wore out her welcome though, by staying out late, sleeping into the afternoon, and making no effort to find work. She spent much time with a boyfriend whom she called "Red". One afternoon, a man and a woman came calling for Beth at the French home. Clearly frightened, she refused to answer the door. She would not tell Dorothy what she was afraid of, but called Red to come and get her. Red, who turned out to be a married man named Robert Manley in Los Angeles on a sales trip picked her up and the two then drove around for awhile spending the night in a motel, although Manley later claimed that Short would not sleep with him. On the afternoon of January 9, he dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown L.A. after helping her to check her luggage at the Greyhound Bus station. She told Manley that she was to meet her sister at the Biltmore, although her sister said that she had no such appointment. Manley had to go, so he left her there. She was observed making phone calls before finally leaving at 10:00 p.m.

The body of Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot in the Leimert Park district of L. A. on January 15. Her remains had been left on a vacant lot on South Norton Avenue. The body was found by local resident Betty Bersinger, who was walking with her three-year-old daughter. Mrs. Bersinger thought as she approached that the body was a discarded department store mannequin. The severely mutilated body had been severed at the waist and drained of blood and her face was slashed from the corners of her mouth toward her ears, in a kind of grotesque smile. The body had been washed and "posed" with her hands over her head and elbows bent at right angles. The bottom portion of her body had been placed about a foot away from the rest, and her legs had been obscenely spread apart. The autopsy said Short was 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighed 115 lbs. and had badly decayed teeth. There were marks on her ankles and wrists made by rope, consistant with being tied either spreadeagled or hung upside down. Her skull had not been fractured, but Short had bruising on the front and right side of her scalp consistent with blows to the head. The cause of death was blood loss from the lacerations to the face combined with shock due to a concussion of the brain. The rope marks suggested that Short had been tortured, and also several of her internal organs had been removed after death. There was no sign of sexual assault.

Elizabeth Short Becomes "The Black Dahlia"

At a time when the murder rate was not nearly so high as it is now, the death of this beautiful young woman caused an immediate sensation. The papers started referring to her as "the Black Dahlia" for reasons which remain unclear to this day. It may have been that some of her friends called her that because of her preference for dark clothes contrasting her milky white skin. And it may have been because of the murder having taken place around the time of the release of the film "The Blue Dahlia". Whatever the reason, the application stuck. But the investigation went poorly. Reporters who had rushed to the scene to take pictures of the grisly sight were allowed to trample all over the vacant lot, which was thus hopelessly contaminated as a crime scene. L.A. had five competing newspapers at the time each trying furiously to beat the other to the scoop. Lurid rumors, and increasingly wild stories poured in along with countless phony confessions from cranks. There were reports on one hand that Short had been a prostitute, along with some suggestions on the other hand that she had a deformation of her genitals which made it impossible for her to have normal sexual relations. No evidence has ever been found to label her as a prostitute. And the autopsy made it clear that there was no truth to the genital deformation rumor. Her luggage was later found at the Greyhound terminal, but yielded no substantial clues; only her clothing and some papers. Among these were a newspaper clipping: the obituary of Major Gordon, and letters such as the one quoted above; the sad wreckage of love secured but then lost, and of a search that went on. But the identity of the mysterious couple who called at the French home, whom it was she was calling from the Biltmore, and her whereabouts during the period of her departure from the Biltmore and the discovery of her body - almost a full week - are all things which have never been explained. Her murder remains unsolved. Elizabeth Short sought love and a sense of belonging and never found it. But she also sought fame and sadly, she did achieve that in death.

Sources:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dahlia

by Donald H. Wolfe, Harper Collins Publ. New York, 2005.

JANUARY 13 = The Knights Templar and FRIDAY the 13'th!!

2012-01-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

“The fear of Friday the 13th is called friggat-riskaide-kaphobia, frigga meaning ‘Friday’ and triskaide-kaphobia (or paraske-videkatria-phobia) being a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (meaning ‘Friday’), and dekatreís (meaning ‘thirteen’) attached to phobía (from phóbos, meaning ‘fear’). The word was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953.”

This is what the on-line encyclopedia “Wikipedia” first says about this day – which is traditionally considered the UNLUCKIEST of all days: the infamous, the chilling, the black and horrible FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH!! Yes, there are indeed other, far more important things that happened on this date of January 13, aside from it’s accidental falling this year on a Friday, and thus its association with superstition, not to mention a string of truly forgettable Hollywood horny teenager/slasher movies. But, as mentioned both above and below, the mysterious Knights Templar came into being on this day, and that makes it not only an important event in history, but gives it a significant link with the myths and superstition with which this combination of the Thirteenth and Friday have come to be assocaited.

What is so bad about 13?

First of all, let’s deal with the number 13. Well we’ve all dealt with some form of prejudice against this number: airlines around the world frequently just skip the 13’th row of seats – the row following the 12’th is numbered 14. The same thing often happens with the thirteenth floor of office buildings. Not long ago this sentiment was tested in a psychological experiment: a new luxury apartment building with a floor that had been numbered “13” quickly rented units on all floors except that one. But when that floor number was changed to “12-B”, the units went quickly. How the deuce did all of this silliness get started? The earliest roots seem to be in the Norse mythology of the pre-Christian days. It seems that there was a banquet at Valhalla – the celestial home of the Norse gods. And twelve gods ahd been invited. But Loki(below), the

god of strife and evil showed up uninvited, thus raising the guest list to 13, and in the ensuing food fight, Balder, the favorite of all of the other gods was killed. This MAY have something to do with the term “balderdash” meaning nonsense, but that is a subject for somebody else’s Etymological Blog.

"13" - It Gets Worse!!

Of course, this seeming presentiment against poor old number 13 spread south of Scandinavia like the ash from one of those trouble-making Icelandic volcanoes, and by the Christian era was well set in the Mediterranean world. It was reinforced by the guest list at that most fateful off all dinner engagements - the Last Supper at which the number of diners with Christ and his twelve apostles came to THIRTEEN! And we all know how that turned out for Jesus. Of course, one could say that that lead to the establishment of Christianity, which hasn't been such a bad thing. One of course could also argue that point, but not on MY Blog. Nevertheless, one can see the pattern here. Twelve good gods are there and then Loki the bad guy shows up. Christ and eleven apostles and then there is Judas, the ultimate traitor. Thirteen at the trough is shaping up as

just about the ultimate social faux pas. Naturally once this ball gets rolling folks just start adding to it. In 1798, the British publication Gentleman’s Magazine added more fuel to this fire by quoting actuarial tables of the time that on an average one out of every 13 people in a room would die within a year.

Friday the Thirteenth and the "Knights Templar".

Then there was midevil folklore to contend with. According to one authority:

“The Knights Templar were a monastic military order founded in Jerusalem in 1118 C.E., whose mission was to protect Christian pilgrims during the Crusades. Over the next two centuries, the Knights Templar became extraordinarily powerful and wealthy. Threatened by that power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307.”

In fact, it was on this very day, January 13 in 1128, that Pope Honorius II granted a papal sanction to this military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God. The self-imposed mission of the Knights was indeed to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land during the Crusades, the series of military expeditions aimed at defeating Muslims in Palestine, and retaking the city of Jerusalem from possession of "the infidel".The Templars were in fact required to take strict vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. But as their numbers and power increased over the years, they became a threat to the European Kings and Princes. This was what lead to King Phillips' brutal suppression of them in 1307. But, over the course of the centuries, myths and legends about the Templars have abounded, including the belief that they may have discovered holy relics at Temple Mount, including the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant or parts of the cross from Christ's crucifixion. These imagined secrets and plots and conspiracies involving the Templars have inspired a whole load of books and movies, including the blockbuster novel and film The Da Vinci Code. So you can see why this whole connection between this mysterious Midevil Order, their unhappy fate, and the number THIRTEEN and it's ocurrence on a Friday has added to the whole cloke of suspicion that has come to be associated with this day and date.

But what about "Friday"?

But why on Friday the 13’th? Well in addition to the above difficulty for our friends the Knights Templar, tradition – silly tradition one may say, but tradition nevertheless - holds that all manner of bad biblical stuff came down on the 13’th. Eve getting Adam to bite the apple, Noah setting sail with his pairs of beasts during the great flood, the bonanza for Berlitz that occurred with the whole Tower of Babel collapsing and leaving all of us… well, babbling and of course Christ’s death on the cross – all of these are supposed to have happened on FRIDAY the 13’th. But the actual root of this bad seed of the calender apparently comes once again from our old friends the Vikings. Friday was named for the goddess Frigga (below), the free-

spirited patron saint of love and fertility. When these big old Norsemen converted to Christianity, poor Frigga was banished to a mountaintop, and labeled a witch. It was subsequently whispered that in retribution for her unceremonious banishment, Frigga would call a meeting of eleven other witches plus the devil himself on every Friday, a total bad guys (or girls) council of THIRTEEN to meet every Friday to plot all manner of mischief and deviltry for the coming week. Indeed for a long time in Scandinavia, Friday was called “The Witches Sabbath”.

This whole anti-13 business seems rather odd in America. Our founding colonies number 13, and thus all manner of 13s appear in our currency: the number of steps on the incomplete pyramid on the back of the dollar bill, the number of leaves on the olive branch as well as the number of arrows that the eagle is grasping in his claws all come to 13. And in my own experience 13 hasn’t been such a bad deal: the shortstop for the Big Red Machine (baseball team) of the 70’s was Davy Concepcion, number 13. The same

goes for the Peruvian Powerhouse Gipy Duarte (right) on the Lady Longhorns Volleyball teams of 2000 – 2004. Both were number 13, and both treated me and a lot of other lucky fans to exceptional and exciting careers. How about you, my “Today in History” readers? What has been your experience with the number 13 in general and Friday the 13’th in particular?

Please do write in the comment box at the bottom of this Blog and tell me!! And IF you have difficulty posting a comment here on Blogspot, write to me at my regular e-mail address of krusty1960@yahoo.com, and tell me about your experiences with this "unlucky" day there!!

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th#cite_note-mathworld-2

by Charles Panati, Harper & Row Publ., New York, 1987.

JANUARY 11 = T.R. Declares the Grand Canyon a National Monument!!

2012-01-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

"In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country - to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.

I was delighted to learn of the wisdom of the Santa Fe railroad people in deciding not to build their hotel on the brink of the canyon. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon.

Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see.

We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children's children will get the benefit of it."

- President Theodore Roosevelt, May 6, 1903

These words of TR encapsulate as well as anything his feelings on the grandeur and majesty of nature to be found in America's vast wilderness areas, and it was why, on today's date, January 11 in 1908 that he declared the Grand Canyon in Arizona to be a National Monument, thus making it off limits to development for all time.

Theodore Roosevelt - Conservationist

By the end of the 19th century, the Grand Canyon was drawing many thousands of tourists every year. One of those visitors was President Theodore Roosevelt, a New Yorker who had a very special affection for the American West. After becoming president in 1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley, Roosevelt made environmental conservation a centerpiece of his policy. Reform, particularly progressive reform of the way the nation did it's business was the order of the day in TR's administration. But in one area only did TR get out in front of even the reformers and really take the lead. And this was in the area of conservation.

"I so declare it!!"

After establishing the National Wildlife Refuge to protect the country's animals, fish and birds, Roosevelt turned his vision to federal regulation of public lands. A region could be given the status of a national park --which meant that all private development on such land was illegal--only by an act of Congress, Roosevelt cut out the red tape by startng a new presidential practice of granting a similar "national monument" designation to some of the West's greatest treasures. When asking if there was anything illegal about declaring an area to be a national monument or forest and being told "no", then he simply said "I so declare it!"

TR Puts the Grand Canyon out of the Developers Reach.

In the words of his great grandson Tweed Roosevelt, : “Congress was refusing to make the grand Canyon into a national park, and the reason was the developers were coming along and they were going to improve it. What TR did is he realized that he had the power to make national monuments, and the power to make game reserves, and so he declared the sides of the Grand Canyon a national monument, and the base of it a game reserve, and said that ‘Congress will come to it’s senses eventually.’”

In 1907 his enemies in Congress moved to block any further moves that would close off their access to great areas ripe for mining and logging. In a deliberate and very pointed swipe at Roosevelt’s authority, Congress passed a bill stripping him of the power to designate national forests, opening up millions of acres of timber to loggers and developers. But Roosevelt was too quick for them. Just days before the bill became law, he responded by creating 16 million MORE acres of national forests. TR said "When others dithered, and prevented action I TOOK IT!! Our opponents” turned handsprings in their wrath, and dire were their threats against the executive. But the threats were really only a tribute to the efficiency of our action.”

TR and Nature - A Very Personal Bond

Theodore Roosevelt had been a naturalist all of his life, starting with his bug and insect collection as a boy. He was a nationally recognized authority on various species of wildlife. Indeed it was into the wilds of nature that the young Roosevelt would retreat in 1884 after his wife and his mother died suddenly and unexpectedly on Valentines Day of that year (See "Today in History, Feb. 14). He went to the Badlands of North Dakota to grieve and begin rebuilding his shattered life and his broken heart. It was very much a part of TR's personal credo that only by facing trials and difficulties, be they personal or physical, only in this way could a man live the strenuous life from which he could make something of himself.

In the estimation of historian John Milton Cooper, TR's fight to preserve the wilderness areas of America, and to protect them from development or despoiling was very much a moral matter:
“For him it really was a moral issue. We needed to preserve the wilderness. He believed that when life begun to get too easy, and that when the elements of risk and of danger and hardship were removed, we had to expose ourselves to those again, and we needed to preserve the places where we could do that. We NEEDED the challenge. And he was deeply worried that in a sense we wouldn't be good soldiers – that men especially wouldn't have the opportunity to develop the physical and the moral qualities that will make them soldiers and citizens… and to do the things that in other words would make them be like him.”

"Teddy Was Green!!"

Bt the time he was through, Roosevelt had created five new national parks, eighteen national monuments, 150 national forests, in all placing over 230 million acres of United States land under public protection. These would be Theodore Roosevelt’s most enduring legacy. In the words of Bill O'Reilly: "Teddy was green, setting aside millions of acres of land for public use. His environmental policies, particularly in the west are still benefitting the nation today. Ironically, TR was an avid game hunter. Perhaps he protected nature to benefit himself. But he did protect the land and loved nature in its pristine state."

Sources:

www.theodoreroosevelt.org/kidscorner/Grand_Canyon.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Canyon

Written by David Grubin & Geoffrey C. Ward, PBS, 1996

by Bill O'Reilly, Harper & Collins, New York, 2010.

JANUARY 5 = "The Dreyfus Affair" Tears France Apart.

2012-01-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

"I accuse the War Office of using the press, particularly L'Éclair and L'Écho de Paris, to conduct an abominable campaign to mislead the general public and cover up their own wrongdoing.

Finally, I accuse the first court-martial of violating the law by convicting the accused on the basis of a document that was kept secret, and I accuse the second court-martial of covering up this illegality, on orders, thus committing the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man."

"J'Accuse!"

Thus spake Emile Zola in his stunning indictment of the entire governmental and military establishment in France. French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus was ignominiously stripped of his rank in a humiliating public ceremony in the courtyard of Paris' Ecole Militaire on today's date - Janury 5 in 1895. Four months later, the unfortunate man, who was really guilty of nothing more than being Jewish was packed off to Devil's Island.

"The Dreyfus Affair" Begins

"The Dreyfus Affair" which would go on to tear apart French society in the closing years of the 19'th Century began on October 15, 1894, when Captain Dreyfus, the first Jewish-French officer ever to serve on the General Staff of the French army was arrested on suspicion of spying for Germany. Although the evidence against Dreyfus was flimsy - an offer to turn over French Military secrets was determined on the basis of handwriting evidence to have been written by Dreyfus - rabid anti-semitism within the French military establishment lead to his conviction in a court-martial, and his subsequent life sentence on Devil's Island in French Guyana. This was intially greeted well by the public. However, two years later, Col. Georges Piquart who was Chief of Army Intelligence discovered new evidence that implicated Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, a neglectful officer who was frequently absent from his post. A coded paper- the "petit bleu" was found with more details of the treason and was addressed to Esterhazy.

The French Military Cover-up in "The Dreyfus Affair"

But the military command refused to admit their initial error, instead opting to cover the whole matter up. Piquart was silenced, and they refused to re-open the case. The whole matter began to break into the public press, with charges and counter-charges being thrown in every direction. France was torn into two factions- those who believed in the innocense of Dreyfus, and those who did not. This placed the poor Dreyfus himself at the center of an intense political struggle. Those who were pro-Dreyfus were anti-clerical liberals, who wanted France to stay a Republic, while those who were against him were generally pro-royalist conservatives. It got to the point that Dreyfus himself and his guilt or innocense were small matters in this political gunfight. The pro wanted the government brought down, whereas the anti were willing to resort to perjury and forgery to keep the government in place.

Dreyfus Is Finally Exonerated

(Pictured: Emile Zola)
Major Esterhazy was eventually tried and acquitted. This brought about the outraged letter to the newspaper by the famous French writer Emile Zola - "J'accuse!" Zola was charged with libel for his troubles, and sentenced to prison. He managed to dodge the gendarmes by fleeing to England. Major Henry, who as it turned out had forged much of the evidence against Dreyfus wound up commiting suicide. Esterhazy followed Zola into British exile. A pro-Dreyfus man became Prime Minister and Dreyfus was retried. This time he was found "guilty, but with extenuating circumstances". This left the public in an even greater outrage. Finally, the President of France - Emile Loubet - stepped in and pardoned Dreyfus. But by this time the scandal had become much too large and calls for the total exoneration of the captain were coming in from all over the country,indeed from around the world. At long last, the man was granted a new trial, and in 1906 he was completely acquited and restored to his former rank.

The Aftermath - The French Army.....HA!

But for a full decade France had been torn apart by the controversy. The right was ultimately done in not by the original mistake, but by their repeated and extended attempts to cover it up. The left came to political power as a result. The French Army had viewed itself as being the finest in Europe. Exactly how it came to that self-view remains mysterious. THAT venerable and brave but dubious institution went on to follow up it's stellar showing in the Franco-Prussian War with an even more ridiculous performance in World War One during which Dreyfus served well, albeit mostly behind the front lines. He died in 1935. As to the Royalists - well happily for France and the world, Louis Napoleon (The "June Days", the "Mexican Empire", the Franco-Prussian War after which he was captured at Sedan) proved to be their last and final hurrah.

Sources:

http://www.chameleon-translations.com/sample-Zola.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dreyfus_affair&printable=yes

by Judy Jones, and William Wilson
Ballantine Books, New York, 1987

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Dreyfus

Pictures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%27accuse_(letter)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Alfred-Dreyfus.jpg

JANUARY 3 = King Tut's Sarcophagus is Uncovered.

2012-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

The Opening of Tut's Tomb
"Slowly, desperately slowly it seemed to us as we watched, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway were removed, until at last we had the whole door clear before us. The decisive moment had arrived. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner. Darkness and blank space, as far as an iron testing-rod could reach, showed that whatever lay beyond was empty, and not filled like the passage we had just cleared. Candle tests were applied as a precaution against possible foul gases, and then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in, Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn [Lord Carnarvon's daughter] and Callender [an assistant] standing anxiously beside me to hear the verdict. At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment - an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by - I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things.'"

The Finding of Tut's Sarcophagus

This was the recollection of Howard Carter (below) of the opening of the long lost tomb of Tutankhamen - "King Tut". This moment as remembered by Carter came on November 26 of 1922. But it was after

carefully excavating the contents of the find for over two years, that on this date - January 3 of 1924 he uncovered the greatest treasure of the tomb--a stone sarcophagus containing a solid gold coffin that holds the mummy of Tutankhamen. The tomb had in fact been entered previously by grave robbers, but they had not gotten to the main burial chamber containing the sarcophagus with the Pharaoh's remains in the fabulous gold mask pictured above. Never before had so much of a royal tomb been found intact. It was the richest such find ever made, and remains so to this day.

The Unrest Leading to Tut's Reign

Tutankhamen came to the throne of Egypt at the very young age of 9. His reign followed a period of tremendous upheaval in the Kingdom of Egypt. His royal predecessor, Amenhotep IV had initiated a monotheistic period - the worship of the Aten, or the physical disk of the sun. He changed his name to Akhenaten ("servant of Aten"), and moved the religious capital from Thebes to the new city of Akhetaten. He then thoroughly shocked the country by attacking Amun, the highest ranking of Egypt's God's, and closing his temples throughout the country. This sent shockwaves through all levels of Egyptian society.

Tut's Reign and Mysterious Death

It must have been a great relief when Tut took the throne and changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutan- khamen ("The image of Amur"). He restored the old religion, and apparently (judging from the reliefs and paintings found in his tomb) underwent the normal activities of a Pharaoh - campaigning with the Army and riding and driving a chariot. Clearly enough given his youth, his death was unexpected. The cause of Tut's death remains a mystery. An X-ray made of his mummy in 1968 revealed the presence of a small hole at the base of his skull. This gave rise to speculation that the young Pharaoh may have been murdered. But a full body CT scan done on the mummy in 2005 gave a more detailed picture of Tut's condition at the time of his death at @ age 19. The hole in the skull was likely casued by the original embalmers. He suffered from no major diseases, and was seemed to be in good health. However his chest cavity was in great disarray. His sternum as well as several of his rib bones were missing. Thus he may have sustained wounds in battle, or perhaps as a result of a chariot accident. The real truth may never be known. Whatever the cause of Tut's death, his reign marked nearly the end of the 18'th Dynasty. Shortly after his reign, Ramses I came to the throne, and began a new royal line.

Sources

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tut.htm

Picture :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tuthankhamun_Egyptian_Museum.jpg

DECEMBER 29 = Massacre at Wounded Knee.

2011-12-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

Eyewitness to Wounded Knee

"During this time a medicine man, gaudily dressed and fantastically painted, executed the maneuvers of the ghost dance, raising and throwing dust into the air. He exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!' as he did so, meaning he was about to do something terrible, and said, 'I have lived long enough,' meaning he would fight until he died. Turning to the young warriors who were squatted together, he said 'Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured their bullets cannot penetrate us. The prairie is large, and their bullets will fly over the prairies and will not come toward us. If they do come toward us, they will float away like dust in the air.' I turned to Major Whitside and said, 'That man is making mischief,' and repeated what he had said. Whitside replied, 'Go direct to Colonel Forsyth and tell him about it,' which I did. "

The "Ghost dance" religion

This was the recollection of Philip Wells, a mixed-blood Sioux Indian who served the U.S. Army as in interpretor of the events on the morning of ths date, December 29, in 1890. It was on this date that a massacre of Sioux Indians occurred at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The "ghost dance" to which Wells refers is a dance to a miraculous vision that an

Indian named Wakova had had. This man, a Paiute mystic had fallen into a trance during an eclipse of the sun that he saw while in Nevada (The "Ghost Dance" is pictured above). When he came out of his trance, he told others that he had been taken up into the world of the spirits. While amongst the spirits, he had received a revelation that a new day was dawning for the indigenous American peoples. He saw a world in which the Indians who had died would return, the vast herds of Buffalo would be restored, and the white oppressors would be vanquished. But this was strictly a religious faith of an afterlife. This new faith had certain tennets, which included behavior that was non-violent; there was to be no lying, no stealing, no cruelty. The dance would enable those who followed this faith to catch a brief glimpse of this paradise. It came to be called the "Ghost dance religion" by whites because it hinged on this belief in reuniting with dead spirits.

The Massacre at Wounded Knee

The Sioux added their own facet to this new faith: the wearing of brightly colored shirts which they said would be impervious to the white man's bullets. This sounded ominous to many of the white men who heard it, and this unease boiled over at Wounded Knee. The recent killing of Chief Sitting Bull had frightened some of the Chief's followers to take refuge in the camp of Big Foot, a Miniconjou Sioux Chief. When Big Foot and his followers were encamped at Wounded Knee Creek, they were surrounded by 470 troopers of the U.S. 7'th Cavalry who were armed with Hotchkiss Guns, a light rapid fire field cannon - a kind of precursor to the machine gun. At 8:00 that morning, the Sioux men came out and sat in a semi circle in front of their tipis. Colonel James Forsyth (pictured below), determined to disarm these men, sent soldiers

into their tipis to accomplish this. This tension quickly exploded into full fledged violence. One young Indian pulled out a gun and began firing. The Hotchkiss guns opened fire and swept the field, cutting down anything that moved. The few armed Indians tried to resist, but it was hopeless. In all, 25 white men were killed as opposed to over 180 Indians. This included Chief Big Foot who died as he attempted to rise from his sick bed. The bodies of the dead, were left to lie until a blizzard subsided. On January 1, they were buried in a common grave, pictured at the top. This was the final "battle" between the indigenous American peoples and white men. The period of conflict was over, and peace - some would say the peace of the graveyard - settled in hereafter.

Sources =

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/knee.htm

Time Life the OLD West Books 24 Volume SET (The Old West) By Time Life Books (Leather Bound - 1977) "The Great Chiefs", text by Benjamin Capps Time Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1975.

The American Heritage Book of Indians - Narrative by William Brandon American Heritage Publ. Inc., New York, 1961.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

Pictures =

Top: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woundedknee1891.jpg

"Ghost Dance" : http://www.swoyersart.com/howard_terpning/ghost_dance.htm

Forsyth: http://sites.google.com/site/thewoundedkneemassacre/american-perspective

DECEMBER 28 = Carrie Nation Strikes!!

2011-12-28T15:55:00.000-08:00

"I was awakened by a voice which seemed to me speaking in my heart, these words, 'GO TO KIOWA,' and my hands were lifted and thrown down and the words, 'I'LL STAND BY YOU.' The words, 'Go to Kiowa,' were spoken in a murmuring, musical tone, low and soft, but 'I'll stand by you,' was very clear, positive and emphatic. I was impressed with a great inspiration, the interpretation was very plain, it was this: 'Take something in your hands, and throw at these places in Kiowa and smash them.' "

This was how Carrie Nation described the heaven-sent vision that sent her into countless bars and saloons across the United States wielding a hatchet to smash the evil demon of alcohol. And she began the hatchet phase of her career on today's date, Dec. 27, 1900 at the Hotel Carey saloon in Wichita, Kansas.

Carrie Nation Grows Up HATING Booze!!

Standing at nearly 6 feet tall and weighing 180 pounds, Carry Amelia Moore Nation, Carrie Nation, as she came to be known, cut an imposing figure. She had been born on November 25, 1846 in Garrard County, Kentucky, to slave owners George and Mary Campbell Moore. For most of her early life she was in poor health and her family experienced financial setbacks, moving several times and finally settling in Belton, Missouri in Cass County.In 1867 she married Dr.

Charles Gloyd, who had a severe drinking problem. They had one child, a daughter, before separating in 1868. Gloyd died a year later, and Carrie attributed her strong anti-liquor sentiments to this poor first marriage. Miss Carrie married David A. Nation, nineteen years her senior—an attorney, minister, and newspaper editor with children, in 1874. The Nations moved to in Medicine Lodge, Kansas wherein he worked as a minister at a local church while Carrie ran a succcesful hotel. (Above, Nation, circa 1874) Nation started a local branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and campaigned for the enforcement of Kansas's ban on the sales of liquor. Her ways of campaigning ranged from from simple protests to singing to saloon patrons hymns accompanied by a hand organ, to yelling to bartenders with such clarion calls as, "Good morning, destroyer of men's souls." But she got poor results from this sort of thing. So she prayed to God for guidance and in 1899 had the epiphany which she described above.

Carrie Has an Ax or a Hatchet to Grind

Nation gathered several rocks – "smashers", in her dry parlance – and went to Dobson's Saloon on June 7. Crying out "Men, I have come to save you from a drunkard's fate," she started wrecking the saloon's stock with her rocks. She smashed two other saloons in Kiowa, after which a tornado hit eastern Kansas. She took this as as divine approval of her actions. And subsequently switched over to a hand held hatchet as her chosen method of dispensing God's wrath. And her first foray into axing the drinks came today in Wichita, wherein she also smashed up a titillating picture of Cleopatra behind the bar. Between 1900 and

1910 she went on a antional tear, and was arrested some 30 times after leading her followers in the destruction one water hole after another while shouting "Smash, ladies, smash!" to her confederates. Saloons took to posting signs saying "All nations welcome except Carrie". Prize-fighter John L. Sullivan was said to have run and hid when Nation burst into his New York City saloon. Self-righteous and formidable, Nation mocked her opponents as "rum-soaked, whiskey-swilled, saturn-faced rummies." All the time she referred to herself as "a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn't like." Author Herbert Asbury in his 1929 book "Christs Bulldag" called her "the most industrious meddler and busy-body that even the Middle West, hotbed of the bizarre and the fanatical, has ever produced."

Carrie Nation's Bottle Crushing Legacy

Although Nation's campaign of saloon wrecking won her national prominence, the immediate results were not what she had hoped. She suceeded in pressurimg Kansas into enforcing its prohibition laws more aggressively, but most of the country still sanctioned the sale of alcohol. Towards the end of her life Nation resided in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where she founded the home known as Hatchet Hall. Having deteriorated both mentally and physically, she collapsed during a speech in a Eureka Springs park, and was taken to a hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas. She died there on June 9, 1911,and was buried in an unmarked grave in Belton City Cemetery in Belton, Missouri. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union later erected a stone inscribed "Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition, She Hath Done What She Could" and the name "Carry A. Nation". Ironically, by the time the U.S. actually did adopt prohibition in 1920, Nation was largely forgotten--but the hatchet-waving Kansas reformer unquestionably helped lay the foundation for America's ill-fated experiment with with a dry society.

Carrie Stops by the Queen City...

Incidentally, Miss Carrie brought her hatcheting crusade to my very own native town of Cincinnati at one point. According to the book "Yesterday's Cincinnati", she took one look at all of the Saloons lining Vine Street and immediately gave up. "I would have dropped from exhaustion before I had gone one block!!"

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Nation

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/1900/peopleevents/pande4.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,752108,00.html#ixzz1hrXtxhHI

by Luke Feck, E.A. Seemann Publishing Inc., Miami, Fla. 1975.