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1715 - Edmond Halley observes total eclipse phenomenon "Baily's Beads" 1802 - Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city 1851 - Sixth major fire in San Francisco destroys 1500-2000 buildings 1916 - Irish Nationalists Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas Clarke are executed by firing squad following their involvement in the Easter Rising 1932 - 24 tourists begin 1st air-charter holiday (London-Basle, Switzerland) 1956 - Frank Loesser's musical "Most Happy Fella" opens at Imperial Theater NYC for 678 performances 1959 - Tiger's Charlie Maxwell hits 4 consecutive HRs in a doubleheader 1980 - Giants 1st baseman Willie McCovey hits his 521st and final HR 1981 - "Moony, Shapiro Songbook" opens and closes at Morosco Theater NYC 1992 - NY Met Eddie Murray is 24th to hit 400 HRs

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from Historical Events | OnThisDay.com https://ift.tt/2YucV3k May 03, 2020 at 09:33AM

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1776 - France and Spain agreed to give weapons to American rebels 1876 - Ross Barnes hit 1st home run in National League 1943 - German troops vacate Jefna, Tunisia 1947 - Eugene O'Neill's "Moon for the Misbegotten" premieres in NYC 1967 - Stanley Cup Final, Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, ON: Terry Sawchuk makes 40 saves as Toronto Maple Leafs beat Montreal Canadiens, 3-1 in Game 6 to take title, 4-2 1983 - 6.7 earthquake injures 487 in Coalinga, California 1997 - Police arrest transsexual prostitute Atisone Seiuli with Eddie Murphy 2002 - Marad massacre of eight Hindus near Palakkad in Kerala 2011 - The 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak strikes Europe, mostly in Germany, leaving more than 30 people dead and many others sick from the bacteria outbreak. 2019 - Drone delivers a kidney for transplant surgery in Baltimore, Maryland, for the first time

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from Historical Events | OnThisDay.com https://ift.tt/2KTDJC0 May 02, 2020 at 09:33AM

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NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station. from NASA Breaking News https://ift.tt/3d7BQ0x May 02, 2020 at 01:37AM

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NASA has awarded a contract to Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California, to manufacture 18 additional Space Launch System (SLS) RS-25 rocket engines to support Artemis missions to the Moon. from NASA Breaking News https://ift.tt/2WiLrut May 02, 2020 at 12:12AM

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After being hit by a Japanese suicide plane, the crew of the USS Comfort were forced to tend to their own.

Through war and peace, American hospital ships have served the country since 1804 and the First Barbary War. Although these floating hospitals embark on missions of mercy, they have also become casualties of war. During World War II, two dozen hospital ships were sunk by enemy fire, and a critical hospital ship sustained a damaging attack in the war’s waning weeks.

Commissioned in 1944, the second USS Comfort ferried injured servicemen from the Pacific Theater battlefields to field hospitals in Australia, New Guinea and the United States. As Allied forces made their final push toward Japan in April 1945, the U.S. Navy hospital ship joined the invasion force at the Battle of Okinawa.

Doris Gardner Howard, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, witnessed World War II’s final bloody battle unfold through the ship’s portholes. The awful reality of the battle manifested itself in the endless parade of ambulances delivering servicemen with battered bodies and shattered souls. 

Taking a break onboard the U.S.S. Comfort, the nurses were teaching themselves to play bridge. Doris Gardner is pictured second from the left.

The 25-year-old Wisconsin native nursed patients who required limbs to be amputated and shrapnel to be removed as well as those badly burned in kamikaze strikes on the Fifth Fleet. Although the Geneva Conventions declared hospital ships off-limits from attack, the war’s carnage soon invaded the inner depths of the USS Comfort.

Explosion Rocks the USS Comfort

The hospital ship’s bright white paint glistened in the glow of a full moon as it sailed 50 miles offshore from Okinawa on the night of April 28, 1945. Inside the post-surgical ward of the USS Comfort, Howard began her 12-hour night shift treating some of the 517 patients aboard the ship.

She had become used to hearing enemy planes roar overhead and feeling the vessel quake so violently it felt like it might overturn when nearby ships sank beneath the roiling waters. But as she was standing near her medicine cabinet loading a syringe with penicillin, she felt a jolt unlike any before. 

“I had to grab a stool because the ship was shaking,” recalls Howard, who turned 100 years of age in 2020. “And over the loudspeaker came the call, ‘Abandon ship! Abandon ship!’”

Army Nurse First Lieutenant Mary Jensen of San Diego, California, looks up through the hole in the concrete and steel deck of the Navy hospital ship Comfort, punctured when a Japanese suicide pilot dive-crashed into the ship off Okinawa with his bomb-laden plane.

The USS Comfort had been hit by a Japanese suicide pilot who had directed his plane at the massive Red Cross emblem painted on the ship’s hull as if it were a bullseye. The kamikaze attack struck the heart of the floating hospital, plunging through its decks and into the surgery unit, instantly killing six nurses, four surgeons and seven patients.

When the gasoline in the plane caught fire, it ignited a massive explosion that sent Howard flying, as she recalls. “I was blown right off my feet. I only weighed 85 pounds. I was thrown about two yards against a bulkhead and landed with my entire spine against the bulkhead and cracked my head hard. I struggled to get up.” When help arrived, Howard also discovered that she had lost her hearing.

In spite of her injuries, Howard refused to abandon her post or the servicemen in her care, even with the orders to abandon ship. She might not have been able to save them, but she wasn’t about to leave them to die alone either. “We knew we didn’t have enough lifeboats,” Howard says. “I kept telling the young man next to my desk that I wouldn’t leave. I had a vision of us going down with the ship.”

Hospital Ship Was Deliberately Targeted

As rescue teams searched the wreckage and doused the fires, the abandon ship order was rescinded. With their surgical, X-ray and laboratory facilities destroyed, the medical staff aboard the USS Comfort converted the mess hall into an operating room and the barber shop into a first aid station. 

According to a U.S. Navy report, the casualties among the ship’s 700 passengers included 30 deaths, 48 injuries and one service member missing in action. Howard’s hearing gradually returned, and she continued on her regular shifts. Now wounded itself, the crippled hospital ship sailed to Guam and received temporary repairs before continuing on to California.

Although international law forbade attacks on hospital ships, it appeared the USS Comfort was deliberately targeted, perhaps in retaliation for the torpedoing of the unarmed Japanese vessel Awa Maru, which had been declared a Red Cross relief ship. 

USS Comfort docked in May, 1945, after being hit by a Kamikaze plane off Okinawa.

The incident on April 1, 1945, in which an American submarine mistook the relief ship for a destroyer killed 2,000 Japanese merchant sailors and military personnel and led a Radio Tokyo broadcast to declare a week later, “We are justified in bombing hospital ships as they are being used as repair ships for returning wounded men back to the fighting front.”

As the forward hospital ship at Okinawa, the USS Comfort was a natural target. According to a U.S. Navy report, a kamikaze had been shot down within 75 yards of the bow of the ship on April 6 and three bombs were dropped near the ship on April 9 but missed their mark. It appeared the kamikaze pilot had hit his mark, however, since a document found with his body listed potential targets that included hospital ships.

READ MORE: How Japan's Kamikaze Attacks Went From Last Resort at Pearl Harbor to WWII Strategy

Decommissioned in 1946, the USS Comfort received two battle stars for its participation in the Leyte and Okinawa campaigns. Howard earned a Women’s Army Corps Service Medal and Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal for her service, which left her with permanent pain in her spine and damage in her left ear.

The actions of Howard and her fellow service members also earned the praise of Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S Pacific Fleet, who declared, “The cool and efficient manner with which the Comfort met the situation when a Japanese plane attacked her while on a mission of mercy is a source of pride and gratification.” 

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/35pf5lS May 02, 2020 at 12:14AM

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Educators from across the nation will have an opportunity next week to talk with a NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station. from NASA Breaking News https://ift.tt/2KNDng4 May 01, 2020 at 10:29PM

[topworldhistory]

Abraham Lincoln was disappointed by most of his generals—but not Ulysses S. Grant.

President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant didn’t meet often in person. But their mutual respect and trust grew deep over the final year of the Civil War as they together steered America and its armies through the most convulsive period in the nation’s history.

In his memoirs, Grant confessed that he was “by no means a ‘Lincoln man’” in the years before the firing of the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. By the time General Grant accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, however, the cauldron of four years of war had forged a strong partnership between Grant and Lincoln—one that, for all intents and purposes, saved the Union.

“I think it was Grant’s aggressive, fighting spirit that endeared him to Lincoln,” says Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Grant. Not only was the general a self-starter, but he had a quiet self-confidence and a refreshing willingness to accept full responsibility for his battlefield defeats. “Too many of Lincoln’s generals were quick to scapegoat him for their failures,” says Chernow, “whereas Grant, as a matter of both pride and honesty, never blamed the president.”

GRANT, a three-night miniseries event, premieres Memorial Day at 9/8c on HISTORY. Watch a preview:

Similar life stories bonded the men as well. Both overcame hardscrabble upbringings in the American heartland, married into slaveholding families and suffered periodic bouts of depression. With their modest Midwestern backgrounds came a shared democratic ethos: “Grant put on no airs with his men and treated officers and ordinary soldiers with similar courtesy,” Chernow says. “This appealed to Lincoln, who also showed a common touch with soldiers.”

Grant’s ascent in the west

With his prairie roots, Lincoln knew that the Civil War’s western theater and control of the Mississippi River would be vital to Union success, so Grant’s early victories in the region caught the president’s eye. While Lincoln seethed during 1862 at the plodding pace of General George McClellan and the Army of the Potomac, he admired Grant’s swift action in capturing Fort Donelson and Fort Henry in Tennessee.

When his troops were taken by surprise at the bloody Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 and floundered for months outside Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant faced sharp charges of incompetence—and rumors of inebriation. A Republican senator denounced Grant to Lincoln as “bloodthirsty, reckless of human life and utterly unfit to lead troops.” The president stood by Grant and, by some accounts, even joked about sending a barrel of whatever Grant was drinking to the other generals. Nonetheless, Lincoln made sure to have his assistant secretary of war, Charles Dana, personally confirm his competence and sobriety.

General Grant receiving his commission as Lieutenant-General from President Lincoln.

In a possibly apocryphal tale, Republican politician and newspaper editor Alexander McClure reported that after he argued for Grant’s removal, Lincoln told him, “I can’t spare this man. He fights.” Real or not, the line has endured, largely because it so aptly captures why the president valued Grant. “Many Union generals temporized and put off battles until their troops were better trained and equipped,” says Chernow. “Grant recognized that such delays would benefit equally his Confederate opponents and preferred to strike quickly and capitalize on the element of surprise even when his troops weren’t perfectly ready.”

READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About Ulysses S. Grant

Victory at Vicksburg

With his capture of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, Grant seized the Confederacy’s last bastion on the Mississippi River. After Grant’s subsequent capture of Chattanooga and Knoxville, Lincoln initially resisted calls to give the general command of all Union forces because of the growing chatter that he coveted the White House for himself.

Lincoln made Grant general in chief of the Union Army in March 1864.

Once Grant made it known that he had no interest in political office, however, Lincoln elevated him in March 1864 to the position of lieutenant general, a rank previously held only by George Washington and Winfield Scott (who had received a temporary brevet promotion to that rank before the war). Not until three years into the Civil War did the two men meet for the first time when Grant came to Washington, D.C., to receive his new commission. Grant recalled that Lincoln told him at their first encounter that “all he wanted or had ever wanted was someone who would take the responsibility and act.”

Grant and Lincoln maintained frequent contact through the final year of the Civil War. If the taciturn general was ever critical of the commander-in-chief, he bit his tongue. “No general could want better backing, for the president was a man of great wisdom and moderation,” Grant recalled. When he decided to pursue Lee’s army after brutal losses in the Battle of the Wilderness, he dispatched a New York Tribune reporter with a message for Lincoln. “He told me I was to tell you, Mr. President, that there will be no turning back,” the correspondent reported. Thrilled to finally have a general he believed was taking the fight to the enemy, Lincoln kissed the reporter.

READ MORE: President Ulysses S. Grant: Known for Scandals, Overlooked for Achievements

The near miss

While Grant and Lincoln had a warm relationship, the same could not be said about their wives. When Mary Todd Lincoln flew into a jealous rage at the wife of General Edward Ord for the attention she bestowed upon the president in late March 1865, Julia Grant found herself on the receiving end of the First Lady’s acid tongue when she tried to intervene.

Several weeks later, on the morning of April 14, 1865, after Lee’s surrender, the president invited the Grants to accompany him and the First Lady to a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln wanted the public to see the victorious president and general together. Julia’s desire to avoid spending any more time with Mary Lincoln sealed Grant’s inclination to decline the invitation, and the general was not at the president’s side when he was assassinated.

Tears flowed down Grant’s cheek as he stood at attention next to the commander-in-chief’s coffin inside the White House and mourned the loss of a friend. “My personal relations with him were as close and intimate as the nature of our respective duties would permit,” Grant wrote. “To know him personally was to love and respect him for his great qualities of heart and head, and for his patience and patriotism.” Grant clearly had become, by all means, a “Lincoln man.”

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/3aY6Mie May 01, 2020 at 09:05PM

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A weekend of escalating tensions exploded into 13 seconds of gunfire—and four dead in Ohio.

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard trying to disperse a crowd of student demonstrators at Kent State University opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others.

More than any other single event, the Kent State shootings would become a focal point of the ongoing, bitter divisions among Americans over the Vietnam War. The deadly outburst marked the culmination of several days of confrontations between law enforcement and protesters, which had begun after President Richard M. Nixon announced in a TV broadcast that he had authorized U.S. troops to invade Cambodia.

Nixon’s decision, which expanded the Vietnam War at a time when the United States had been in the process of withdrawing its troops, immediately sparked anti-war protests at colleges across the country—including Kent State.

Nixon's Invasion of Cambodia Triggers Protests

President Richard Nixon during a television address regarding military actions in Cambodia, 1970.

May 1, 1970

Around noon on the day after Nixon’s speech, some 500 Kent State students and faculty gather on the Commons, a large, grassy area in the middle of campus. They bury a copy of the Constitution to symbolize Nixon’s “murder” of constitutional principles by invading Cambodia without a declaration of war or consultation with Congress. A second rally that afternoon also ends peacefully.

That Friday night, a crowd of drunken protestors form in downtown Kent and begin taunting local police and breaking some store windows. The town’s entire police force mobilizes, forcing the demonstrators back to campus after Ohio Mayor LeRoy Satrom declares a state of emergency. Things finally quiet down by 2:30 a.m.

READ MORE: How Nixon’s Invasion of Cambodia Triggered a Check on Presidential Power

National Guard Arrives at Kent State

May 2

Worried about more unrest, Satrom asks the governor, James Rhodes, to mobilize the Ohio National Guard. When Guardsmen begin arriving on the Kent State campus that evening, they find the school’s Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) building has been set on fire. A crowd of some 1,000 people surround the building, many of them cheering and confronting firefighters to prevent them from extinguishing the blaze. Using tear gas and bayonets, the National Guardsmen clear the campus by midnight, ordering students into their dorms.

The Kent State Shootings (TV-PG; 5:23)

WATCH: The Kent State Shootings

May 3

By Sunday, more than 1,000 National Guardsmen have arrived on campus. Governor Rhodes flies to Kent that morning, and holds a press conference calling the demonstrators “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.” With Rhodes’ support, Kent State administrators announce they are banning a protest rally planned for the next day. Further confrontations between students and Guardsmen break out that night after demonstrators assemble on the Commons near the Victory Bell, which is normally used to celebrate football victories.

Tear Gas, Thrown Rocks, Then Guardsmen Open Fire

May 4

Defying the ban, people begin gathering on the Commons around 11 a.m. By noon, some 3,000 people are there, including a core group of some 500 demonstrators around the Victory Bell, and many more onlookers. The target of their protests shifts from Nixon, Cambodia and the Vietnam War, to the National Guard and its occupation of Kent State.

After the demonstrators refuse to disperse, some 100 of the National Guardsmen begin to march across the Commons. They push the crowd up a slope known as Blanket Hill and down the other side into a parking lot.

Following the crowd into a nearby practice football field, the Guardsmen find themselves blocked in by a fence. They throw tear gas canisters and point their guns at the demonstrators, who yell and throw rocks and other debris at them. After about 10 minutes of this, the Guardsmen begin to move back up Blanket Hill. The crowd cheers their retreat and continues throwing things at them.

From left to right: William Schroeder, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, and Sandra Scheur, the four Kent State University students killed on campus when students battled with Ohio National Guard troopers.

At 12:24 p.m., just after reaching the top of the hill, the Guardsmen turn back and fire their M1 rifles and pistols, some of them aiming directly into the crowd. In 13 seconds of shooting, they fire between 61 and 67 shots. Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheur are killed, and nine other students are injured, including Dean Kahler, who is shot in the back and left permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

In the stunned aftermath of the shootings, Kent State faculty marshals persuade the angry crowd to leave the Commons and avoid further confrontation with the nervous Guardsmen. The administration immediately shuts down the campus, and it remains closed for the rest of the spring semester. Meanwhile, anger over the shootings triggers a nationwide student strike that shuts down hundreds of high schools, colleges and universities.

National Guardsmen Sign Statement of Regret

Even decades later, it remains unclear exactly why the Guardsmen opened fire on the crowd of students at Kent State on May 4, 1970. In subsequent investigations and federal court testimony, many of them testify that they had feared for their lives, and were acting in self defense.

Nixon Responds to the Kent State Shooting (TV-PG; 1:56)

LISTEN: Nixon Responds to the Kent State Shooting

Many people question whether the crowd posed that serious a threat, but criminal and civil trial verdicts accept the Guard’s position. In January 1979, a civil settlement is reached by which the Ohio National Guard pays those injured in the shootings a total of $675,000.

As part of the settlement, 28 Guardsmen sign a statement expressing regret—but not an apology—over how things went down on May 4, 1970.

“Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger,” the statement reads. “Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation.” 

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/3aRAKUX May 01, 2020 at 07:51PM

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The Rise of the Working Wife

Helen McCarthy

A momentous change in the status of women began in the 1950s.

from History Today Feed https://ift.tt/2YnNobZ May 01, 2020 at 01:13PM

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1751 - The New York Gazette carries the first public report of a cricket match played in America (New York) 1863 - Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled first opens its doors 1883 - Bob Rogers is acknowledged as the first American pro sports trainer when he is hired by the NY Athletic Club 1909 - Netherlands begins unity with Belgium 1961 - Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba 1976 - 102nd Kentucky Derby: Angel Cordero Jr wins aboard Bold Forbes, the second of 3 Derby successes 1989 - 135 acre Disney's MGM studio officially opens to public 1994 - "Rise and Fall of Little Voice" opens at Neil Simon NYC for 9 performances 2000 - President of the Philippines Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declares existence of "a state of rebellion", after thousands of supporters of her arrested predecessor, Joseph Estrada, storm towards the presidential palace at height of EDSA III rebellion 2008 - The London Agreement on translation of European patents, concluded in 2000, enters into force in 14 of the 34 Contracting States to the European Patent Convention.

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from Historical Events | OnThisDay.com https://ift.tt/3aQl2cH May 01, 2020 at 09:33AM

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A new high-pressure ventilator developed by NASA engineers and tailored to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) patients today was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use under the FDA’s March 24 ventilator Emergency Use Authorization. from NASA Breaking News https://ift.tt/3aUN2vQ May 01, 2020 at 12:43AM

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Prohibition proved no match for the deadly virus—at least for a while.

When influenza began to sweep through the U.S. in 1918, a frightened nation looked to an unproven but familiar remedy: whiskey. There was just one problem. More than half the states had passed Prohibition laws by then, making liquor difficult, sometimes impossible, to legally obtain.

As citizens in the so-called dry states pleaded for whiskey to prevent or treat the deadly virus, some resourceful officials hit on a solution: Liberate the vast stores of bootleg liquor that had been confiscated since the statewide laws went into effect. While some of that contraband had simply been poured down the sewers, much of it remained locked away as evidence or perhaps with an eye toward eventual repeal.

Newspapers across the U.S. reported that military doctors were administering confiscated whiskey in Army camps, which had been hard hit by the flu. In Richmond, Virginia, two railroad cars of it reportedly rolled into beleaguered Camp Lee. At Camp Dodge, Iowa, where more than 500 soldiers had already died, hundreds of quarts had been dispatched to fight the influenza, the papers reported.

The Spanish Flu Was Deadlier Than WWI (TV-PG; 5:42)

WATCH: The Spanish Flu Was Deadlier Than WWI

The Army was largely mum about what it was doing, while pro-Prohibition forces maintained that those stories were exaggerated, if not downright false. Some called them German propaganda, branding the reports a “Diabolical Hun Plot” meant to put American soldiers at risk from deadly alcohol.

But before long, officials were breaking out their bootleg whiskey for civilian hospitals, too. Hospitals in Omaha, Nebraska received 500 gallons, courtesy of the local sheriff. The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, meanwhile, ordered his revenue agents in North Carolina to distribute their confiscated whiskey to hospitals around the state.

See all pandemic coverage here.

Doctors debate whiskey’s medicinal merits

The medical community was divided on whether whiskey was of any real use in fighting the influenza or anything else. The highly regarded United States Pharmacopeia, which published standards for prescription and over-the-counter medicines, had dropped whiskey, brandy and wine from its listings in 1916. The following year, the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association had thrown its weight behind Prohibition, resolving, over the objections of some delegates, that “the use of alcohol as a therapeutic agent should be discouraged.”

A revenue agent wearing a waistcoat designed to hide whisky during the prohibition era in America, circa 1923.

Still, many doctors continued to recommend and prescribe whiskey for the influenza pandemic and a wide range of other ailments. When the AMA got around to surveying physicians on the matter in 1922, 51 percent said they considered whiskey a “necessary therapeutic agent.” Some physicians believed alcohol helped stimulate the heart and respiratory system of patients weakened by illness, while others thought its sedative effects made suffering patients more comfortable. 

Even in states where alcoholic beverages were prohibited, doctors could often write prescriptions for medicinal whiskey and pharmacists could dispense it—with certain restrictions. In Colorado, for example, doctors had to obtain numbered prescription forms from the state, and prescriptions were limited to four ounces. In Michigan, doctors could prescribe up to eight ounces, but had to indicate how many prescriptions that patient had already received in the preceding year; the druggist then had to forward the form to the county prosecutor. In Indiana, doctors could only prescribe pure grain alcohol.

Cities with whiskey on hand sometimes gave it out directly to anyone with a doctor’s prescription. In Burlington, Vermont, for example, the local police department filled prescriptions free of charge thanks to the city’s epidemic emergency fund. In Nashville, local authorities dispensed 10,000 half pints of whiskey to residents with prescriptions.

Some doctors seemed only too eager to reach for the prescription pad. In Pittsburgh in 1919, four doctors and a druggist were arrested in a scheme to sell whiskey to “patients” who hadn’t even been examined. The doctors earned $1 for each prescription, while the druggist got $5 a bottle for the whiskey. The scheme was so successful, newspaper reports said, that local bootleggers had been forced to cut their prices in order to compete.

In the wet states, of course, people were still free to buy whiskey and other spirits as they saw fit. The president of a Baltimore roofing company, concerned about the toll the influenza pandemic could take on his workforce, purchased a huge bottle of rye whiskey and told his workers to help themselves “whenever, in their individual estimation, it might be indicated.” He reported that not one of his more than 200 men had fallen ill. Whether they fell off any roofs, he didn’t say.

PHOTOS: See All The Crafty Ways Americans Hid Alcohol During Prohibition

Prohibition was more popular in rural areas than in cities, which saw a proliferation of secret saloons and nightclubs called “speakeasies.” The exact origin of the term is unknown, but it may have come from the need for prospective patrons seeking entry to whisper—or “speak easy”—through peepholes in the front doors of the illegal establishment, such as the one in this photograph from the 1930s. 

View the 10 images of this gallery on the original article

No prescription, no problem

The makers of over-the-counter patent medicines, which had yet to be fully regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, also saw a money-making opportunity. In addition to newcomers like Influenzene and Spanfluenza tablets, many widely advertised concoctions that had been around for years simply added Spanish influenza to the list of ills they purported to prevent, treat or even cure. What many had in common—aside from being of little or no medical value—was a substantial alcohol content.

For example, Tanlac, an elixir that billed itself as the “Master Medicine” and claimed to cure just about everything, contained 17% alcohol. And Peruna, one of the most successful patent medicines of the day, contained a reported 28 percent.

READ MORE: Pandemics That Changed History

Prohibition marches on

Meanwhile, pro-Prohibition forces were reportedly becoming concerned. Would all the news about whiskey’s supposed medical benefits derail their push to ratify the 18th amendment and make Prohibition the law of the land? They needn’t have worried. The amendment had all the states’ votes it needed by January 16, 1919 and went into effect a year later.

Not everyone was pleased by that outcome, to say the least. One soldier on a troopship returning from the war in 1919 spoke for a lot of his comrades when he interrupted a former government official who was giving the men a patriotic speech. “Yes, we fought for democracy,” the soldier reportedly shouted, “but all we got was Spanish influenza and Prohibition.” 

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/3bRZe1R April 30, 2020 at 11:54PM

[topworldhistory]

NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems (HLS) for the agency’s Artemis program, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the Moon by 2024. from NASA Breaking News https://ift.tt/3cWkwvg April 30, 2020 at 08:59PM

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NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) are inviting coders, entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, artists, and technologists to participate in a virtual hackathon May 30-31 dedicated to putting open data to work in developing solutions to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemi from NASA Breaking News https://ift.tt/2YkB2RC April 30, 2020 at 06:59PM

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The conflict in Vietnam ended in turmoil in 1975 with the largest helicopter evacuation of its kind in history.

The dulcet tones of “White Christmas” that crackled over Armed Forces Radio airwaves on April 29, 1975, failed to spread cheer across sunbaked Saigon. Instead, the broadcast of the holiday standard after the announcement that “the temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising” instilled fear and panic in all who recognized the coded signal to begin an immediate evacuation of all Americans from Vietnam.

Although the United States had withdrawn its combat forces from Vietnam after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, approximately 5,000 Americans—including diplomats, marine guards, contractors and Central Intelligence Agency employees—remained. President Richard Nixon had secretly promised South Vietnam that the United States would “respond with full force” if North Vietnam violated the peace treaty. However, after the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign, the North Vietnamese Army felt emboldened to launch a major offensive in March 1975.

“From Hanoi’s point of view, the turmoil leading up to and including Nixon’s resignation was an opportunity to take advantage of a distracted United States,” says Tom Clavin, co-author of Last Men Out: The True Story of America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam. “North Vietnam never intended to abide by the 1973 agreement—its ultimate mission was to unify the country—but the political crisis in America allowed them to move up their timetable.”

North Vietnamese Capture Cities en Route to Saigon

A North Vietnamese armored car crashing through Independence Palace’s main gate in Saigon.

After winning a decisive battle at Ban Me Thuot and capturing the central highlands, the North Vietnamese Army swept south and captured the cities of Quang Tri and Hue with little resistance and no American response. The fall of Da Nang, South Vietnam’s second-largest city, on March 29 unleashed a furious exodus that included desperate residents clinging to the rear staircase and landing gear of a World Airways plane and falling to their deaths as it took flight. After watching news coverage of the incident, President Gerald Ford confided to an aide, “It’s time to pull the plug. Vietnam is gone.”

With little American appetite for re-engaging in the Vietnam War, Congress rejected Ford’s request for $722 million to aid South Vietnam. When communist forces seized Xuan Loc on April 21, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned and fled the country as 150,000 enemy troops stood on the footsteps of Saigon.

U.S. Ambassador Resists

U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Graham Martin, speaking to the press on April 29, 1975 after an evacuation from South Vietnam. 

Inside the South Vietnamese capital, U.S. ambassador Graham Martin rebuffed repeated calls to even consider an evacuation, let alone execute one. Martin, who had been ill for months, was fearful of inciting panic in the city and determined to fulfill the mandate given to him by Nixon upon his appointment two years earlier to preserve South Vietnam’s existence.

“Like the country he was ambassador to, Martin was barely functioning in April 1975,” Clavin says. “The physical and emotional exhaustion of Martin affected his decision-making. Even the most robust ambassador would have been affected by the tremendous strain of representing a failed U.S. policy and walls crashing down all around him.”

Early on the morning of April 29, North Vietnamese troops shelled Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Air Base, killing two U.S. Marines guarding the defense attaché office compound. Corporal Charles McMahon and Lance Corporal Darwin Judge were the last of approximately 58,000 American servicemen killed in action in the Vietnam War. After surveying the air base damage, Martin conceded the time had come to leave Saigon, but with sea lanes blocked and commercial and military aircraft unable to land, the ambassador’s delays forced the United States into its option of last resort—a helicopter airlift.

US Helicopter Airlifts Begins

Desperate South Vietnamese citizens try to scale the walls of the American Embassy in a vain attempt to flee Saigon and advancing North Vietnamese troops . 

Once the “White Christmas” signal was given to launch the exodus, codenamed Operation Frequent Wind, Americans and their Vietnamese allies assembled at pre-arranged locations to board buses and helicopters to the defense attaché office compound where larger helicopters ferried them to U.S. Navy ships 40 miles away in the South China Sea.

Approximately 5,000 escaped from the defense attaché office compound until enemy fire forced the American embassy to become the sole departure point. While plans called for the extraction of only Americans, Martin insisted that Vietnamese government and military officials and support staff also be evacuated.

“Looking past his mistakes, Martin was a good man,” Clavin says. “Martin really cared about the native population, and like many others he expected a bloodbath once the North Vietnamese entered the city. With everything else failing, at least he could save some lives before it was too late.”

While approximately 10,000 people clamored outside the embassy gates, marine guards faced the unenviable task of deciding who would be saved and who would be left behind. Through the day and into the night, helicopters landed at 10-minute intervals on the embassy roof and in an adjacent parking lot.

Meanwhile, South Vietnamese air force pilots commandeered helicopters, loaded their families on board and landed on the decks of American ships. So many South Vietnamese helicopters besieged the fleet that crews were forced to push helicopters into the sea in order to make room for others to land.

The Last Helicopter Leaves US Embassy in Saigon

A CIA employee helps Vietnamese evacuees onto an Air America helicopter on top of a building a half mile from the U.S. Embassy.

Martin repeatedly refused to leave his post to ensure as many people as possible were airlifted. In spite of his wish, however, the Americans simply couldn’t take everyone amassed at the embassy. At 3:30 a.m. Ford ordered Martin out of the embassy and stipulated that only Americans would be evacuated on the remaining flights. Ninety minutes later, Martin departed after being handed the folded embassy flag.

The last marines to vacate the embassy departed just after dawn on April 30, leaving behind hundreds of Vietnamese. As the helicopter carrying the marines vanished from view so did the American presence in Vietnam. (An iconic photograph of Vietnamese evacuees climbing up a rickety wooden staircase to a helicopter on an apartment building roof the previous day is often misremembered as the last helicopter to leave the American embassy.) With some pilots flying for 19 hours straight, the American military had carried out an incredible evacuation of 7,000 people, including 5,500 Vietnamese, in less than 24 hours.

Hours after the departure of the last helicopter from the embassy, North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the gates of the Independence Palace. General Duong Van Minh, who succeeded Thieu as president, offered an unconditional surrender, officially ending the two-decade-long Vietnam War. The new regime rechristened Saigon as Ho Chi Minh City to honor the late North Vietnamese president. 

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/35k4zg3 April 30, 2020 at 06:19PM

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The mobilisation of economic, diplomatic and military resources.

The Key to Success?

from History Today Feed https://ift.tt/2WgyykC April 30, 2020 at 12:25PM

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1671 - Petar Zrinski, the Croatian Ban from the Zrinski family, is executed. 1725 - Emperor Charles VI and King Philip IV of Spain sign Treaty of Vienna 1939 - New York World's Fair opens 1969 - Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jim Maloney records his third MLB no-hitter in 10-0 rout of Houston Astros 1976 - Royal Canadian Mint opens a branch in Winnipeg, Manitoba 1985 - Last edition of Brink Daily Mail and Sunday Express in South Africa 1986 - Bill Elliott sets all-time NASCAR qualifying record, winning pole for the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway; 212.809 mph (342.483 km/h; 44.998 seconds) 1989 - US beats Costa Rica 1-0, in 3rd round of 1990 world soccer cup 1990 - As Met pitcher David Cone argues a call at 1st base, 2 Braves score 1997 - "London Assurance" opens at Criterion Theater NYC for 72 performances

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from Historical Events | OnThisDay.com https://ift.tt/2KHLv1A April 30, 2020 at 09:33AM