1. Skylab was the first spacecraft to be inhabited for over 100 days. The crews that visited Skylab remained in orbit for a total of 171 days. They proved that humans could remain in space for an extended period of time.
2. Each Skylab crew set a new spaceflight duration record. The first crew was the first to remain in orbit for four weeks, the second crew was the first to remain in orbit for eight weeks, and the third crew was the first to remain in orbit for twelve weeks.
3. The commander of the first manned Skylab mission was also the 3rd person to walk on the moon. Paul Pete Conrad, commander of the Skylab-2 mission was also the commander of the Apollo 12 mission, which was the second trip to the moon.
4. Skylab was NOT the world’s first space station. The Soviet Union launched Salyut-1, the first manned space station, in 1971. As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union built four space stations before the United States launched Skylab in 1973. One failed to enter orbit and two failed to remain in orbit long enough to send a manned mission to them.
5. Skylab re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere prematurely. Skylab was supposed to remain in orbit for 8-10 years after the last mission in 1974. However, due to unexpectedly high solar activity, Skylab re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in 1979. When it re-entered, it scattered debris across Western Australia and the eastern part of the Indian Ocean. The Shire of Esperance, a municipal area of southwest Australia, issued NASA a $400 fine for littering, a fine which remain unpaid until 2009.

Skylab is a monument to human achievement. It proved that people could survive in weightlessness for extended periods, and many of the principles of Skylab have been used in successive space stations, including Mir and the International Space Station.

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UPDATE: I’ve received a number of comments about Tesla’s ethnicity, so let me clarify. I said he was from Serbia, but he was actually born in Croatia. Tesla was, in fact, an ethnic Serb, though.

1. Radio: Nikola Tesla first demonstrated radio in 1894. The world quickly took notice as a means to gossip with others from a distance. However, Tesla had other ideas in mind. In the late 19th century, Tesla demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the U.S. military, expecting them to jump at the chance to control their equipment remotely. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and the world didn’t start taking radio-control vehicles seriously until the 1960s. Just imagine how different the World Wars might have been if the vehicles were controlled by radio…
2. 

   Tesla with one of his inventions, a wirelessly powered light bulb

   Wireless Energy Transfer: Tesla promoted the idea of being able to power machinery without the hassle of wires. I’m no electrical engineer, so I have no idea how it worked, but he was able to wirelessly power light bulbs as early as 1891. By 1899, Tesla was able to power 200 light bulbs using one electric motor 26 miles away! Here we are over 100 years later, and the closest we’ve come is an overpriced mat that requires special adapters to charge our electronic toys.

3. Free Energy: Tesla also worked on the idea of using renewable energy in order to create electricity. He believed that energy could be harnessed from anywhere in the universe, such as the sun, and even the Earth itself. One of his more ambitious ideas was to utilize the environment in order to wirelessly power planes and boats. His ideas laid the groundwork for the current field of ocean thermal energy conversion, which includes technologies such as desalinization. With cheap and easy access to fossil fuels, though, Tesla’s contemporaries just didn’t see the need to research this innovation further.
4. VTOL Aircraft: Long before the F-35 or the Harrier Jump Jet, Tesla came up with the idea for a plane that could take off and land vertically. You’d think his idea would be awkward, with rotors and such, making it look like the bastard child of a jet and helicopter. However, his idea is the basis of current versions of VTOL aircraft. What’s even more amazing is that Tesla patented his VTOL aeroplane in 1928, yet it didn’t enter into serious development until the 1960s.
5. Death Ray: In 1934, Nikola Tesla claimed to have built a directed-energy weapon that he called a teleforce. Tesla’s teleforce was a charged particle beam projector which was intended for military use. Nobody invested in his idea at the time, so he never got to actually build it. To this day, though, the U.S. government is doing experiments related to Tesla’s “death ray.”

Nikola Tesla was a brilliant man, considered by some to be a mad scientist. However, upon his death in 1943, the U.S. War Department confiscated his materials, classifying them Top Secret. They then spent the following two years making copies of everything Tesla had on file, proving the value of his ideas. Tesla was truly one of the greatest inventors in history, and I’m not just saying that because I’m submitting this via wi-fi.

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Nodar Kumaritashvili

Moment of Silence

Nodar Kumaritashvili, a luger from Georgia, died on the opening day of the Olympics during a training run. He lost control during a practice run and was thrown from his luge, striking an exposed medal beam. He is the 4th person ever to have died while prepping for the Winter Olympics. He was only 21 years old.

O’ Canada!

• Canada won gold at a self-hosted Olympics for the first time ever, having failed to do so in the 1976 Summer Olympics or the 1988 Winter Olympics.
• Canada became the first host country since Norway in 1952 to win the overall gold medal count.
• Canada broke the record for most gold medals in a single Winter Olympics, with 14. The previous record was 13, set by the Soviet Union in 1976 and tied by Norway in 2002.

USA! USA! USA!

• The United States won the overall medal count, bringing home a record 37 medals, the most in Winter Olympic history.
• The United States won a record 13 bronze medals and was one silver medal away from tying that record set by Germany in 2002.

Proud Moments

• Anastazia Kuzmina won the first Winter Olympic gold for her home country, Slovakia. She beat heavily favored Magdalena Neuner in the 7.5km biathlon by 1.5 seconds to take home the gold.
• Alexei Grishin won the first Winter Olympic gold for his home country of Belarus.
• Billy Demong, of Lake Placid, NY, became the first gold medalist in U.S. history in the Nordic Combined discipline.

Random Fact

• The men’s hockey gold medal game, between the U.S. and Canada, was the 2nd most watched Olympic hockey game in history. The Miracle on Ice, in 1980, is still #1.

What say you?

What was your favorite moment of the 2010 Winter Olympics?

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• Black History Month is based on arcane notions about race that are only held in North America, most notably, the one-drop rule. If you’re not familiar, the one-drop rule is the idea that if you have just one ancestor of African descent in your family tree, you are automatically black. It’s a stupid rule because based on that logic, almost everybody in North America is black and February isn’t long enough to recognize everybody.
• Negro History Week, the predecessor to Black History Month, was conceived as a means to promote African-American accomplishments at a time when we were not considered equals under the law. Furthermore, black history was not even a component of American history in academia, and I like to think that we have come a long way in rectifying that.
• Even Carter Woodson, founder of Negro History Week, believed that this was a temporary convention. He wanted black history to become a part of American history, as evidenced by this quote:
  

  Courtesy of wageslaves/Flickr

Do you think Black History Month is obsolete? Why?

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1. J.C. Watts was born on November 18, 1957 in Eufala, Oklahoma. He was one of the first children to attend an integrated elementary school in Oklahoma, and was the first black quarterback at Eufala High School.
2. Watts took his football skills to the next level, where he was the starting quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners from 1979-1980. He led the Sooners to two straight Big 8 Championships and two straight Orange Bowl victories. He was elected to the Orange Bowl Hall of Fame in 1992.
3. Watts decided to enter politics in the 1980s, citing discontent over government regulation of his business. His family were lifelong Democrats, but J.C. decided to switch to the Republican Party, as he supported their views on fiscal and social conservatism. About his party affiliation, he his father said:
   

   A black man voting for the Republicans makes about as much sense as a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

4. In 1990, J.C. Watts was elected to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state’s public utilities commission, becoming the first African-American elected to statewide office in Oklahoma history. He decided to take his political success to the next level in 1994 when he ran for Congress. Watts won the election, becoming the first black Representative from a southern state since Reconstruction. Watts remained in office for four consecutive terms before announcing his retirement in 2002 due to a desire to spend more time with his family.
5. Another of Watts’ accomplishments during his Congressional tenure, was the delivery of the Republican response to the 1997 State of the Union Address. He is the only African-American to ever deliver a party’s response to the State of the Union. Also, up until Virginia Governor Tim Kaine delivered the 2006 response, Watts was the youngest (although he’s only 3 months older than Kaine).

Bonus: Despite his conservative views, Watts endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, citing his belief that the Republican party ignored black voters. Also, Watts fathered two children by two different women while he was in high school. However, he did marry the mother of one of the children, and they remain married to this day.

“I wasn’t raised to be a Republican or Democrat. My parents just taught by example. They taught me and my brothers and sisters that if you lived under their roof, you were going to work.”

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1. Born James Mercer Langston Hughes in 1902, he was named after his father, James Hughes, and his great-uncle John Mercer Langston. Hughes’ great-uncle was the first African-American elected to Congress for the state of Virginia. He was also the first dean of the Howard University School of Law.
2. Hughes’ maternal grandmother was one of the first women to attend Oberlin College, while his paternal grandfather participated in John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.
3. In grammar school, Hughes was elected class poet. As an adult reflecting on that experience, he said:
   

   “I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everyone knows — except us — that all Negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet.”

4. Hughes had various odd jobs in the early 1920s while trying to support his writing habit. One of the jobs he landed in 1925 was personal assistant to Carter Woodson, the founder of Negro History Week, the predecessor to Black History Month. Hughes quit to become a busboy because the time constraints as Woodson’s assistant took away from his time to write.
5. Hughes attended Columbia University from 1921-1922 but left because of what he felt to be institutional racism. It was during his time at Columbia that he was drawn to Harlem. Hughes did eventually return to college, attending Lincoln University from 1926-1929. While he was at Lincoln, he was a classmate of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

Bonus: Like many early civil rights activists, Langston Hughes was a Communist sympathizer. This is evidenced in some of his work, including his poem “A New Song,” which you can read below. Because of his political leanings, Hughes was called before Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, during the Second Red Scare.

“A New Song”

I speak in the name of the black millions
Awakening to action.
Let all others keep silent a moment
I have this word to bring,
This thing to say,
This song to sing:

Bitter was the day
When I bowed my back
Beneath the slaver’s whip.

That day is past.

Bitter was the day
When I saw my children unschooled,
My young men without a voice in the world,
My women taken as the body-toys
Of a thieving people.

That day is past.

Bitter was the day, I say,
When the lyncher’s rope
Hung about my neck,
And the fire scorched my feet,
And the oppressors had no pity,
And only in the sorrow songs
Relief was found.

That day is past.

I know full well now
Only my own hands,
Dark as the earth,
Can make my earth-dark body free.
O thieves, exploiters, killers,
No longer shall you say
With arrogant eyes and scornful lips:
“You are my servant,
Black man-
I, the free!”

That day is past-

For now,
In many mouths-
Dark mouths where red tongues burn
And white teeth gleam-
New words are formed,
Bitter
With the past
But sweet
With the dream.
Tense,
Unyielding,
Strong and sure,
They sweep the earth-

Revolt! Arise!

The Black
And White World
Shall be one!
The Worker’s World!

The past is done!

A new dream flames
Against the
Sun!

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Days after the Medal of Honor actions cited previously, during the Battle of El Caney, another black regiment, the 25th US Infantry, was honored:

The American assault began at dawn, as the artillery opened fire. The earth trembled as the explosive shells landed in and around the Spanish positions. Huge sections of earth were tossed every which way as the defenders tried to find cover. Whistles screeched and bugles blared, signaling for the American troops to advance. They moved forward, in skirmish lines; the uphill climb was over ground of various types, from plowed fields, to rock strewn areas of dense brush, often with barbed wire entanglements. It was not a “walk in the park” by any stretch of the imagination. The assault force, and the Spanish defenders, increased their volume of rifle fire. Soldiers could be seen dropping to the ground; some were falling to get away from the gunfire, but others were suffering with wounds. Orders could be heard prompting the men to continue on. A depression, or sunken road, offered a place of safety for several soldiers of the 7th Infantry. The exhausted troops were reluctant to advance through the storm of enemy fire. Officers were frantically trying to get them up and moving forward again.

The Capture of El Caney

Despite the lack of machine guns and artillery, and being denied promised reinforcements, General Vara del Rey and his soldiers held over eight thousand Americans from their position for nearly twelve hours, preventing them from sweeping through and overwhelming the defenders of San Juan Hill. It had been thought that Lawton’s Second Division would take El Caney in a short time, and move on to San Juan Hill. The assault division consisted of the 7th, 12th, and 17th Infantry Regiments, with Miles’ Brigade in reserve.

With bullets and shells flying through the air, the noise was deafening; this in addition to the cries of the wounded. The smell of death, the acrid odors from the shellfire, combined with the blood lost by those wounded and killed, was disconcerting to many. To the rear of the American lines, the field guns were belching out great clouds of smoke, and the Gatling guns kept up a staccato rhythm. Early in the fight, Major Augustus W. Corliss, 7th Infantry Regimental Adjutant, was wounded and removed from the field of battle. Harry Bandholtz was ordered to fill the post, which he performed with great bravery. He wanted to perform well, knowing many of the soldiers in his regiment were much more experienced in warfare. A few of the “old-timers” saw skirmishes during the Indian Wars. Others, of foreign birth, had experienced battles with the armies of their native lands. In a letter written at the time, Captain George S. Young, Harry’s immediate supervisor wrote, “his (Bandholtz) conduct on that occasion was conspicuous for bravery and fearlessly exposing himself under heavy fire.” For his actions on this day, Harry was brevetted a Captain. Years later, he would be recognized for his valor, through the award of a Silver Star Citation. Unfortunately this award was made posthumously. Two other 7TH Infantry soldiers, Sergeant Major Samuel W. Shaffer, and Corporal Frank P. McMurphy received the Distinguished Service Cross.

A fellow officer in the 7th Infantry, Captain George Wilcox McIver, Company B, writes in his memoirs that the 7th Infantry led the movement to El Caney. The American Battle Line advanced across open ground, while the Spanish defenders were concealed in houses, behind walls, in blockhouses, and a stone fort called El Viso. Casualties were heavy, but elements of the 12th Infantry, were able to capture the stone fort. With its capture the Spanish firing seemed to subside.

However, the New York Times, on July 18, 1898, in an article entitled “Battle of El Caney,” credits the 25th Infantry Regiment, a negro unit, of actually capturing the stone fort, describing in some detail the heroics of the soldiers of that regiment. The 12th Infantry is also mentioned as taking part in that particular action.

Charge of the 24th and 25th Colored Infantry at San Juan Hill,July 2, 1898

The story relates Colonel Miles’ Brigade, being held as reserve, was ordered forward, with the 4th and 25th Infantry Regiments in the lead. The 4th was soon under extreme fire, and pinned down. Sending forward reserve companies to protect their flank, the 25th continued the advance. These fresh troops passed through the battle weary 7th and 12th Regiments, and stormed forward. The men of the 25th, followed by several companies of the 4th and 12th, forced their way through the Spanish lines, then rushed into the fort. The Spaniards fled in disarray, and the battle ended shortly thereafter.

The 25th Infantry Regiment was organized at Jackson Barracks, Louisiana in April 1868 from African American recruits who had served in the US Army during the Civil War. Colored Regiments were typically and almost without exceptions officered entirely by white officers, however the non-commissioned officers were drawn from the ranks. It is an accepted fact that the long serving sergeants of the black regiments were professional soldiers of the highest quality.

To this day the 12th is credited with capturing the blockhouse, even making it part of their unit insignia. This was done even under official protest from Lieutenant Colonel A. S. Daggett, the commander of the 25th at the Battle of El Caney. However, the Fortress of Al Caney is also depicted on the unit insignia of the 25th.

Sergeant Major Frank Pullen, of the 25th, recalled the events of the day, “Finally, late in the afternoon, our brave Lieutenant Kinnison said to another officer: “We cannot take the trenches without charging them.” Just as he was about to give the order for the bugler to sound “the charge,” he was wounded and carried to the rear. The men were then fighting like demons. Without a word of command, though led by that gallant and intrepid Second Lieutenant James A. Moss, 25th Infantry, some one gave a yell and the 25th Infantry was off, alone to the charge. The 4th U.S. Infantry, fighting on the left, halted when those dusky heroes made the dash with a yell that would have done credit to a Comanche Indian. No one knows who started the charge; one thing is certain, at the time it was made excitement was running high; each man was a captain for himself and fighting accordingly.

It has been reported that the 12th U.S. Infantry made the charge, assisted by the 25th Infantry, but it is a recorded fact that the 25th Infantry fought the battle alone, the 12th Infantry coming up after the firing had nearly ceased. Private T. C. Butler, Company H, 25th Infantry, was the first man to enter the blockhouse at El Caney, and took possession of the Spanish flag for his regiment. An officer of the 12th Infantry came up while Butler was in the house and ordered him to give up the flag, which he was compelled to do, but not until he had torn a piece off the flag to substantiate his report to his Colonel of the injustice which had been done to him. Thus, by using the authority given him by his shoulder-straps, this officer took for his regiment that which had been won by the hearts’ blood of some of the bravest, though black, soldiers of Shafter’s army.

Pat Garland is a retired military criminal investigator trained in forensic ballistics. He has a passion for military and law enforcement subjects and is the author of the book, A Forgotten Soldier-The Life and Times of Major General Harry Hill Bandholtz.

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Prior to our invasion of Cuba in July 1898, an expedition by black troopers of the 10th Cavalry landed on the island to meet with Cuban rebels, who were fighting the Spanish.

In a totally separate landing, on June 10th, 1898, members of the all-black 10th Cavalry, left the U.S.S. Florida, and landed at Tayabacoa, to make contact with Cuban nationalist fighters. Their intention was to have the Cuban leaders coordinate their attacks against the Spaniards during the upcoming invasion. The landing site, however, was close to a Spanish garrison, and after a brief firefight, the landing party evacuated the beach. The Spaniards captured sixteen wounded men, who had been left behind. A rescue force, all volunteer, was dispatched from the “Florida,” and consisted of just four men, Privates George Henry Wanton, Dennis Bell, Fitz Lee, and William Thomkins. These four were able to land unnoticed onto the beach and melt into the night.

Making their way to the fort, they crept inside and surprised the few Spaniards, who were guarding the prisoners in a stockade. They had one thing in mind, getting these men back the boats safely, then back to the ships, without stirring the Spanish garrison. The walking wounded were able to help, by carrying the more seriously wounded, and by stealth were able to navigate in the warm and humid darkness to where the boats were beached. Quietly loading the boats, they pushed away from shore, going as far as they could before using the oars. Jubilant troopers on the ships welcomed the adventurers back, and saw to it that the former captives were taken care of. The volunteers were awarded Medals of Honor on June 23rd, 1899, becoming the first four black men to be so honored for this war.

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Click here for a framed, autographed print

On this day in 1980, the U.S. Olympic hockey team stunned the world when they defeated the Soviet team. The Soviets without a doubt, were the best hockey team in the world, having only lost one match since 1960. The Americans on the other hand, were the definition of ragtag and weren’t even expected to medal. I won’t rehash the entire story here because Wikipedia covers it very well, but I would like to leave you with the live call from the game that I found on YouTube. Because of broadcast restrictions and the capacity of the stadium where the game was played, only 8500 people saw this game live, so thank goodness for YouTube. Enjoy!

For even more great “on this day” trivia and events, you gotta check out EiH on Twitter!

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