On This Day in History

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 6, 1683, encouraged by William Penn’s offer of 5,000 acres of land in the colony of Pennsylvania and the freedom to practice their religion, the first Mennonites arrive in America aboard the Concord. They were among the first Germans to settle in the American colonies.
The Mennonites, members of a Protestant sect founded by Menno Simons in the 16th century, were widely persecuted in Europe. Seeking religious freedom, Mennonite Francis Daniel Pastorious led a group from Krefeld, Germany, to Pennsylvania in 1683 and founded Germantown, the pioneer German settlement in America and now part of the city of Philadelphia. Numerous other German groups followed, and by the American Revolution there were 100,000 Germans in William Penn’s former colony, more than a third of Pennsylvania’s total population at the time.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 6, 1973, the surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces on Israel in throws the Middle East into turmoil and threatens to bring the United States and the Soviet Union into direct conflict for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Though actual combat did not break out between the two nations, the events surrounding the Yom Kippur War seriously damaged U.S.-Soviet relations and all but destroyed President Richard Nixon’s much publicized policy of detente.
Initially, it appeared that Egypt and Syria would emerge victorious from the conflict. Armed with up-to-date Soviet weaponry, the two nations hoped to avenge their humiliating defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel, caught off guard, initially reeled under the two-front attack, but Israeli counterattacks turned the tide, aided by massive amounts of U.S. military assistance, as well as disorganization among the Syrian and Egyptian forces. The Syrians were driven back, with Israeli troops seizing the strategically important Golan Heights. Egyptian forces fared even worse: retreating back through the Sinai Desert, thousands of their troops were surrounded and cut off by the Israeli army. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, together with his Soviet counterparts, eventually arranged a shaky cease-fire. When it became clear that Israel would not give up its siege of the Egyptian troops (low on food and medicine by this time), the Soviets threatened to take unilateral action to rescue them. Tempers flared both in Washington and Moscow; U.S. military forces went to a Stage 3 alert (Stage 5 is the launch of nuclear attacks). The Soviets backed down on their threat but the damage to relations between the two nations was serious and long lasting.
Kissinger worked furiously to bring about a peace settlement between Israel and Syria and Egypt. In what came to be known as “shuttle diplomacy,” the secretary of state flew from nation to nation hammering out the details of the peace accord. Eventually, Israeli troops withdrew from some of their positions in both the Sinai and Syrian territory, while Egypt promised to forego the use of force in its dealings with Israel. Syria grudgingly accepted the peace plan, but remained adamantly opposed to the existence of the Israeli state.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 6, 1981, Islamic extremists assassinate Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, as he reviews troops on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Led by Khaled el Islambouli, a lieutenant in the Egyptian army with connections to the terrorist group Takfir Wal-Hajira, the terrorists, all wearing army uniforms, stopped in front of the reviewing stand and fired shots and threw grenades into a crowd of Egyptian government officials. Sadat, who was shot four times, died two hours later. Ten other people also died in the attack.
Despite Sadat’s incredible public service record for Egypt (he was instrumental in winning the nation its independence and democratizing it), his controversial peace negotiation with Israel in 1977-78, for which he and Menachem Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize, made him a target of Islamic extremists across the Middle East. Sadat had also angered many by allowing the ailing Shah of Iran to die in Egypt rather than be returned to Iran to stand trial for his crimes against the country.
Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi, who sponsored Takfir Wal-Hajira, had engineered his own unsuccessful attempt on Sadat’s life in 1980. Despite the well-known threats on his life, Sadat did not withdraw from the public eye, believing it was important to the country’s well-being that he be open and available.
Before executing their plan, Islambouli’s team of assassins took hits of hashish to honor a long-standing Middle Eastern tradition. As their vehicle passed the reviewing stand, they jumped out and started firing. Vice President Hosni Mubarak was sitting near Sadat but managed to survive the attack. Taking over the country when Sadat died, Mubarak arrested hundreds of people suspected to have participated in the conspiracy to kill Sadat.
Eventually, charges were brought against 25 men, who went to trial in November. Many of those charged were unrepentant and proudly admitted their involvement. Islambouli and four others were executed, while 17 others were sentenced to prison time.

[Schmidt Meister]

October 6th In Music

1979 - Led Zeppelin's ‘In Through The Out Door’ was at No. 1 on the US album chart. Six versions of the cover were released, each depicting the same bar scene photographed from one of six different angles.

Birthdays:

1951 - Kevin Cronin. Lead vocalist for REO Speedwagon who had the 1981 US No. 1's 'Keep On Loving You' and 'Can't Fight This Feeling'. They named the band REO Speedwagon, from the REO Speed Wagon, a flatbed truck. Born in Evanston, Illinois.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 7, 1913, for the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis, the automobile’s frame, is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one “Model T” from 12-1/2 hours to six. Within a year, further assembly line improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes. The staggering increase in productivity effected by Ford’s use of the moving assembly line allowed him to drastically reduce the cost of the Model T, thereby accomplishing his dream of making the car affordable to ordinary consumers.
In introducing the Model T in October 1908, Henry Ford proclaimed, “I will build a motor car for the great multitude.” Before then, the decade-old automobile industry generally marketed its vehicles to only the richest Americans, because of the high cost of producing the machines. Ford’s Model T was the first automobile designed to serve the needs of middle-class citizens: It was durable, economical, and easy to operate and maintain. Still, with a debut price of $850, the Model T was out of the reach of most Americans. The Ford Motor Company understood that to lower unit cost it had to increase productivity. The method by which this was accomplished transformed industry forever.
Prototypes of the assembly line can be traced back to ancient times, but the immediate precursor of Ford’s industrial technique was 19th-century meat-packing plants in Chicago and Cincinnati, where cows and hogs were slaughtered, dressed, and packed using overhead trolleys that took the meat from worker to worker. Inspired by the meat packers, the Ford Motor Company innovated new assembly line techniques and in early 1913 installed its first moving assembly line at Highland Park for the manufacture of flywheel magnetos. Instead of each worker assembling his own magneto, the assembly was divided into 29 operations performed by 29 men spaced along a moving belt. Average assembly time dropped from 20 minutes to 13 minutes and soon was down to five minutes.
With the success of the magneto experiment, Ford engineers put the Model T motor and then the transmission on moving assembly lines. On October 7, 1913, the chassis also went on the moving assembly line, so that all the major components of the Model T were being assembled using this technique. Ford rapidly improved its assembly lines, and by 1916 the price of the Model T had fallen to $360 and sales were more than triple their 1912 level. Eventually, the company produced one Model T every 24 seconds, and the price fell below $300. More than 15 million Model T’s were built before it was discontinued in 1927, accounting for nearly half of all automobiles sold in the world to that date. The affordable Model T changed the landscape of America, hastening the move from rural to city life, and the moving assembly line spurred a new industrial revolution in factories around the world.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 7, 1949, less than five months after Great Britain, the United States and France established the Federal Republic of Germany in West Germany, the Democratic Republic of Germany is proclaimed within the Soviet occupation zone. Criticized by the West as an un-autonomous Soviet creation, Wilhelm Pieck was named East Germany’s first president, with Otto Grotewohl as prime minister.
Approximately half the size of West Germany, East Germany consisted of the German states of Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Lusatia, Saxony and Thuringia. Berlin, the former German capital, remained divided between West and East German authorities, even though it was situated deep within the communist Democratic Republic of Germany. East Germany ceased to exist in 1990, when its land and people were absorbed into the democratic Federal Republic of Germany.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 7, 1943, Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, orders the execution of 96 Americans POWs, claiming they were trying to make radio contact with U.S. forces.
In late December 1941, the Japanese reinforced existing forces on Wake Island, part of a coral atoll west of Hawaii, in massive numbers after being unable to wrest the island from a small number of Americans troops earlier in the month. The Japanese strength was now overwhelming, and most of those Americans left alive after the battle were taken by the Japanese off the island to POW camps elsewhere. Ninety-six remained behind to be used as forced labor. The Allied response was periodic bombing of the island, but no more land invasions, as part of a larger Allied strategy to leave certain Japanese-occupied islands in the South Pacific to basically starve in isolation.
The execution of those remaining American POWs, who were blindfolded and shot in cold blood, remains one of the more brutal episodes of the war in the Pacific.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 7, 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States “war on terror” and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. The conflict in Afghanistan would span two decades and become the longest war in U.S. history.
Dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom” in U.S. military parlance, the invasion of Afghanistan was intended to target terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization, which was based in the country, as well as the extreme fundamentalist Taliban government that had ruled most of the country since 1996 and supported and protected al-Qaeda.
The Taliban, which had imposed its extremist version of Islam on the entire country, also perpetrated countless human rights abuses against its people, especially women, girls and ethnic Hazaras. During their rule, large numbers of Afghans lived in utter poverty, and as many as 4 million Afghans are thought to have suffered from starvation.
In the weeks prior to the invasion, both the United States and the U.N. Security Council had demanded that the Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden for prosecution. After deeming the Taliban’s counteroffers unsatisfactory, among them to try bin Laden in an Islamic court, the invasion began with an aerial bombardment of Taliban and al-Qaeda installations in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Konduz and Mazar-e-Sharif. Other coalition planes flew in airdrops of humanitarian supplies for Afghan civilians. The Taliban called the actions “an attack on Islam.”

[Schmidt Meister]

October 7th In Music

1939 - Judy Garland, 16, records "Over The Rainbow" for the movie The Wizard of Oz.

1969 - The Youngbloods' "Get Together" is certified gold.

1971 - Led Zeppelin II was enjoying its 100th week on the UK album charts. It was the band's first album to hit No. 1 in the US where it remained for seven weeks. When first released the album had advance orders of 400,000 copies in the USA.

1988 - Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side Of The Moon finally left Billboard's Hot 200 Album Chart after a record breaking 741 weeks.

Birthdays:

1939 - Colin Cooper. Vocalist, saxophonist and harmonica player for The Climax Blues Band, who had the 1977 US No. 3 single 'Couldn't Get It Right'. Born in Stafford, England. Cooper died on 7.3.2008 aged 69 .

1941 - Tony Silvester. Singer with American soul and R&B group Main Ingredient, best known for their 1972 hit song 'Everybody Plays the Fool'.

1945 - Butch Rillera. Redbone, who had the 1974 US No. 4 hit single, 'Come and Get Your Love.' Redbone are accredited in the NY Smithsonian as the first Native American rock/Cajun group to have a No. 1 single in the United States and internationally.

1945 - Kevin Godley. Drums, vocals, 10cc, 1975 US No. 2 single 'I'm Not In Love'. Godley And Creme, 1981 UK No. 3 single 'Under Your Thumb'. Born in Prestwich, Lancashire, England.

1949 - David Hope. Bass guitarist for Kansas who scored the 1978 US No. 3 single 'Dust In The Wind', and the 1978 hit single 'Carry On Wayward Son'. which was the second-most-played track on US classic rock radio in 1995 and No. 1 in 1997. Born in Topeka, Kansas.

1953 - Tico Torres. Drums, Bon Jovi. 1987 US No. 1 single 'Livin' On A Prayer.’ 1986 US No. 1 album 'Slippery When Wet' has sold over 8 million copies world wide. Born in New York.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 8, 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million (in 1871 dollars; roughly $4 billion in 2020 dollars) in damages.
Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O’Leary barn and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans or even a comet may have been responsible for the event that left four square miles of the Windy City, including its business district, in ruins. Dry weather and an abundance of wooden buildings, streets and sidewalks made Chicago vulnerable to fire. The city averaged two fires per day in 1870; there were 20 fires throughout Chicago the week before the Great Fire of 1871.
Despite the fire’s devastation, much of Chicago’s physical infrastructure, including its water, sewage and transportation systems, remained intact. Reconstruction efforts began quickly and spurred great economic development and population growth, as architects laid the foundation for a modern city featuring the world’s first skyscrapers. At the time of the fire, Chicago’s population was approximately 324,000; within nine years, there were 500,000 Chicagoans. By 1893, the city was a major economic and transportation hub with an estimated population of 1.5 million. That same year, Chicago was chosen to host the World’s Columbian Exposition, a major tourist attraction visited by 27.5 million people, or approximately half the U.S. population at the time.
In 1997, the Chicago City Council exonerated Mrs. O’Leary and her cow. She turned into a recluse after the fire, and died in 1895.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 8, 2001, The Office of Homeland Security is founded on October 8, 2001, less than one month after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
President George W. Bush announced the creation of a new office to “develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks” a mere ten days after September 11. On October 8, former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge assumed his role as director and the office opened. Despite concerns about adding to the federal bureaucracy and dramatically re-organizing the security state, Congress officially voted to make the office a cabinet-level department in November of 2002. The Department of Homeland Security eventually absorbed no fewer than 22 agencies into its fold.
Now a cabinet department, Homeland Security is now one of the largest organs of the federal government, charged with preventing terror attacks, border security, immigrations and customs, disaster relief and prevention and other related tasks.  Entities absorbed by DHS included the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection and even Coast Guard.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 8, 1967, a Bolivian guerrilla force led by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is defeated in a skirmish with a special detachment of the Bolivian army. Guevara was wounded, captured and executed the next day.
Born in Argentina, Guevara believed that a man of action could revolutionize a people. He played a pivotal role in the Cuban Revolution of 1956-59 and encouraged Fidel Castro to pursue his communist, anti-American agenda.
After holding several positions in Castro’s government, he disappeared from Cuba in 1965. He secretly traveled to the Congo, where he trained rebels, and in 1966 resurfaced in Bolivia as leader of another guerrilla group.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 8, 1918, United States Corporal Alvin C. York reportedly kills over 20 German soldiers and captures an additional 132 at the head of a small detachment in the Argonne Forest near the Meuse River in France. The exploits later earned York the Medal of Honor.
Born in 1887 in a log cabin near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, York was the third of 11 children in a family supported by subsistence farming and hunting. After experiencing a religious conversion, he became a fundamentalist Christian around 1915. Two years later, when the United States entered World War I, York was drafted into the U.S. Army. After being denied conscientious-objector status, York enlisted in the 82nd Infantry Division and in May 1918 arrived in France for active duty on the Western Front. He served in the successful Saint-Mihiel offensive in September of that year, was promoted to corporal and given command of his own squad.
The events of October 8, 1918, took place as part of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, what was to be the final Allied push against German forces on the Western Front during World War I. York and his battalion were given the task of seizing German-held positions across a valley; after encountering difficulties, the small group of soldiers, numbering some 17 men, were fired upon by a German machine-gun nest at the top of a nearby hill. The gunners cut down nine men, including a superior officer, leaving York in charge of the squad.
As York wrote in his diary of his subsequent actions: “[T]hose machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful…. I didn’t have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush, I didn’t even have time to kneel or lie down…. As soon as the machine guns opened fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them. In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me, the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off. All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn’t want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.”
Several other American soldiers followed York’s lead and began firing; as they drew closer to the machine-gun nest, the German commander, thinking he had underestimated the size of the enemy squadron, surrendered his garrison of some 90 men. On the way back to the Allied lines, York and his squad took more prisoners, for a total of 132. Though Alvin York consistently played down his accomplishments of that day, he was given credit for killing more than 20 German soldiers. Promoted to the rank of sergeant, he remained on the front lines until November 1, 10 days before the armistice. In April 1919, York was awarded the highest American military decoration, the Medal of Honor.
Lauded by The New York Times as “the war’s biggest hero” and by General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), as “the greatest civilian soldier” of World War I, York went on to found a school for underprivileged children, the York Industrial Institute (now Alvin C. York Institute), in rural Tennessee. In 1941, his heroism became the basis for a movie, Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper. Upon York’s death in 1964, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson called him “a symbol of American courage and sacrifice” who epitomized “the gallantry of American fighting men and their sacrifices on behalf of freedom.”

[Schmidt Meister]

October 8th In Music

Birthdays:

1945 - Butch Rillera. Redbone, who had the 1974 US No. 4 hit single, 'Come and Get Your Love.' Redbone are accredited in the NY Smithsonian as the first Native American rock/Cajun group to have a No. 1 single in the United States and internationally.

1945 - Ray Royer. Guitarist, Procol Harum, 1967 UK No. 1 & US No. 5 single 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' (one of the few singles to have sold over 10 million copies) and scored the hits 'Homburg', 'Conquistador'. Born in the UK.

1947 - Tony Wilson. Bassist for Hot Chocolate, who had the 1975 US No. 3 single 'You Sexy Thing' the 1977 UK No. 1 single 'So You Win Again' and over 25 other Top 40 hits. Born in Trinidad.

1950 - Cliff Adams. Trombonist for Kool And The Gang. Born in Trenton, New Jersey.

[Silentpoet]

1 hour ago, Schmidt Meister said:

On October 8, 1967, a Bolivian guerrilla force led by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is defeated in a skirmish with a special detachment of the Bolivian army. Guevara was wounded, captured and executed the next day.
Born in Argentina, Guevara believed that a man of action could revolutionize a people. He played a pivotal role in the Cuban Revolution of 1956-59 and encouraged Fidel Castro to pursue his communist, anti-American agenda.
After holding several positions in Castro’s government, he disappeared from Cuba in 1965. He secretly traveled to the Congo, where he trained rebels, and in 1966 resurfaced in Bolivia as leader of another guerrilla group.

SO tomorrow is the anniversary of him becoming a good communist?

[janice6]

On 7/27/2022 at 11:07 PM, Schmidt Meister said:

On July 28, 1868, following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution despite repeated, desperate attempts by Democrats to defeat it. Secretary of State William Seward issues a proclamation certifying the amendment.
Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.” The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the “equal protection of the laws.”
In the decades after its adoption, the equal protection clause was cited by a number of African American activists who argued that racial segregation denied them the equal protection of law. However, in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that states could constitutionally provide segregated facilities for African Americans, so long as they were equal to those afforded white persons. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which announced federal toleration of the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine, was eventually used to justify segregating all public facilities, including railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals, and schools. However, “colored” facilities were never equal to their white counterparts, and African Americans suffered through decades of debilitating discrimination in the South and elsewhere. In 1954, Plessy v. Ferguson was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Civil rights, fought all the way by Democrats, now sees Blacks as dedicated voters for the Democrats.  The mouse doesn't care why the Cheese is free.

[janice6]

On 10/2/2022 at 11:15 PM, Schmidt Meister said:

On October 3, 1942, German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun’s brainchild, the V-2 missile, is fired successfully from Peenemunde, as island off Germany’s Baltic coast. It traveled 118 miles. It proved extraordinarily deadly in the war and was the precursor to the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) of the postwar era.
German scientists, led by von Braun, had been working on the development of these long-range missiles since the 1930s. Three trial launches had already failed; the fourth in the series, known as A-4, finally saw the V-2, a 12-ton rocket capable of carrying a one-ton warhead, successfully launched.
The V-2 was unique in several ways. First, it was virtually impossible to intercept. Upon launching, the missile rises six miles vertically; it then proceeds on an arced course, cutting off its own fuel according to the range desired. The missile then tips over and falls on its target, at a speed of almost 4,000 mph. It hits with such force that the missile burrows itself into the ground several feet before exploding. It had the potential of flying a distance of 200 miles, and the launch pads were portable, making them impossible to detect before firing.
The first launches as part of an offensive did not occur until September 6, 1944 when two missiles were fired at Paris. On September 8, two more were fired at England, which would be followed by more than 1,100 more during the next six months. More than 2,700 Brits died because of the rocket attacks.
After the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union captured samples of the rockets for reproduction, they also captured the scientists responsible for their creation.

After the war, discussion of the rocketry program was often punctuated with the claim by both Americans and Russians that,  "Our German scientists are better than your German scientists!".  In actuality, Americans got more Scientists and Russia got more Technicians.

[Schmidt Meister]

32 minutes ago, Silentpoet said:

SO tomorrow is the anniversary of him becoming a good communist?

Exactly ... here's a picture taken of Che moments after becoming a 'good' communist.

[janice6]

On 9/29/2022 at 11:07 PM, Schmidt Meister said:

On Sept 30, 1954, the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, is commissioned by the U.S. Navy.
The Nautilus was constructed under the direction of U.S. Navy Captain Hyman G. Rickover, a brilliant Russian-born engineer who joined the U.S. atomic program in 1946. In 1947, he was put in charge of the navy’s nuclear-propulsion program and began work on an atomic submarine. Regarded as a fanatic by his detractors, Rickover succeeded in developing and delivering the world’s first nuclear submarine years ahead of schedule. In 1952, the Nautilus‘ keel was laid by President Harry S. Truman, and on January 21, 1954, first lady Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across its bow as it was launched into the Thames River at Groton, Connecticut. Commissioned on September 30, 1954, it first ran under nuclear power on the morning of January 17, 1955.
Much larger than the diesel-electric submarines that preceded it, the Nautilus stretched 319 feet and displaced 3,180 tons. It could remain submerged for almost unlimited periods because its atomic engine needed no air and only a very small quantity of nuclear fuel. The uranium-powered nuclear reactor produced steam that drove propulsion turbines, allowing the Nautilus to travel underwater at speeds in excess of 20 knots.
In its early years of service, the USS Nautilus broke numerous submarine travel records and in August 1958 accomplished the first voyage under the geographic North Pole. After a career spanning 25 years and almost 500,000 miles steamed, the Nautilus was decommissioned on March 3, 1980. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982, the world’s first nuclear submarine went on exhibit in 1986 as the Historic Ship Nautilus at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut.

De-commissioned nuclear submarines have the bow and stern cut off, since the reactor is an integral part of the hull, this is the way it was separated from the rest of the boat.  Then the remaining reactor part of the submarine is moved to the Hanford Nuclear Site where it is stored on concrete pads on the "high Desert.  

The Hanford Site contains more "nuclear submarines" then any Navy in the world.

It is one of the most dangerous contaminated nuclear sites in the world. It is so contaminated that upon entering the reservation, there are signs that food is not allowed on site because of the contamination.   It also is threatening the Tri-Cities, because of the leakage into the Columbia River and its explosive potential due to the contamination. 

I have been there, and talked with the site management about the degree of contamination.

[janice6]

On 9/24/2022 at 11:06 PM, Schmidt Meister said:

On September 25, 1789, the first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.
Influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Bill of Rights was also drawn from Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason in 1776. Mason, a native Virginian, was a lifelong champion of individual liberties, and in 1787 he attended the Constitutional Convention and criticized the final document for lacking constitutional protection of basic political rights. In the ratification process that followed, Mason and other critics agreed to approve the Constitution in exchange for the assurance that amendments would immediately be adopted.
In December 1791, Virginia became the 10th of 14 states to approve 10 of the 12 amendments, thus giving the Bill of Rights the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it legal. Of the two amendments not ratified, the first concerned the population system of representation, while the second prohibited laws varying the payment of congressional members from taking effect until an election intervened. The first of these two amendments was never ratified, while the second was finally ratified more than 200 years later, in 1992.

It's too bad that these basic principles have now been reduced to being irrelevant due to the actions of our own government and its political parties superiority over the citizens of these United States.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 9, 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and assassinated him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara’s remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna was born to a well-off family in Argentina in 1928. While studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, he took time off to travel around South America on a motorcycle; during this time, he witnessed the poverty and oppression of the lower classes. He received a medical degree in 1953 and continued his travels around Latin America, becoming involved with left-wing organizations. In the mid 1950s, Guevara met up with Fidel Castro and his group of exiled revolutionaries in Mexico. Guevara played a key role in Castro’s seizure of power from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and later served as Castro’s right-hand man and minister of industry. Guevara strongly opposed U.S. domination in Latin America and advocated peasant-based revolutions to combat social injustice in Third World countries. Castro later described him as “an artist of revolutionary warfare.”
Guevara resigned, some say he was dismissed, from his Cuban government post in April 1965, possibly over differences with Castro about the nation’s economic and foreign policies. Guevara then disappeared from Cuba, traveled to Africa and eventually resurfaced in Bolivia, where he was killed.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara After His Execution - Bolivia - October 9, 1967

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 9, 1974, German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, dies at the age of 66.
A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to allow the transfer of his workers to the Plaszow labor camp, thus saving them from deportation to the death camps. In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into allowing him to keep his workers and set up a factory in a safer location in occupied Czechoslovakia. By the war’s end, he was penniless, but he had saved 1,200 Jews.
In 1962, he was declared a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official agency for remembering the Holocaust. According to his wishes, he was buried in Israel at the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 9, 1936, harnessing the power of the mighty Colorado River, Hoover Dam begins sending electricity over transmission lines spanning 266 miles of mountains and deserts to run the lights, radios, and stoves of Los Angeles.
Initially named Boulder Dam, work on the dam was begun under President Herbert Hoover’s administration but completed as a public works project during the Roosevelt administration (which renamed it for Hoover). When it was finished in 1935, the towering concrete and steel plug was the tallest dam in the world and a powerful symbol of the new federal dedication to large-scale reclamation projects designed to water the arid West. In fact, the electricity generated deep in the bowels of Hoover Dam was only a secondary benefit. The central reason for the dam was the collection, preservation, and rational distribution of that most precious of all western commodities, water.
Under the guidance of the Federal Reclamation Bureau, Hoover Dam became one part of a much larger multipurpose water development project that tamed the wild Colorado River for the use of the growing number of western farmers, ranchers, and city dwellers. Water that had once flowed freely to the ocean now was impounded in the 115-mile-long Lake Mead. Massive aqueducts channeled millions of gallons of Colorado River water to California where it continues to this day to flow from Los Angeles faucets and irrigate vast stretches of fertile cropland.
With Hoover Dam, the federal government set out to demonstrate that the aridity of a region once called the Great American Desert need be no serious obstacle to its full settlement and development. However, as rapidly growing western cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix today face increasing difficulties in obtaining the water they need, it remains to be seen if the Great American Desert might still dictate its own limits to western growth.

[Schmidt Meister]

On October 9, 1975, Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who helped build the USSR’s first hydrogen bomb, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his struggle against “the abuse of power and violations of human dignity in all its forms.” Sakharov was forbidden by the Soviet government from personally traveling to Oslo, Norway, to accept the award.
Born in Moscow in 1921, Sakharov studied physics at Moscow University and in June 1948 was recruited into the Soviet nuclear weapons program. In 1948, after detonating their first atomic bomb, the Soviets joined the United States in the race to develop the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be dozens of times more powerful than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sakharov’s concept of the “Layer Cake” bomb showed some promising results, but in late 1952 the Americans successfully detonated the world’s first “super bomb.” The Soviet team rushed to catch up and, with the aid of Soviet espionage, settled on the same winning concept as the Americans, radiation implosion. On November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first hydrogen bomb.
Although Sakharov was decorated with numerous Soviet scientific honors for his achievement, the scientist became increasingly concerned with the implications of the terrifying weapon, and he later regretted his part in its creation. In 1957, his concern about the biological hazards of nuclear testing inspired him to write a damning article about the effects of low-level radiation, and he called for the cessation of nuclear tests. The Soviet government kept his criticism quiet until 1969, when an essay Sakharov wrote was smuggled out of the country and published in The New York Times. In the essay, he attacked the arms race and the Soviet political system and called for a “democratic, pluralistic society free of intolerance and dogmatism, a humanitarian society that would care for the Earth and its future.”
Following the publication of his essay, Sakharov was fired from the weapons program and became a vocal advocate of human rights. In 1975, he was the first Soviet to win the Nobel Peace Prize. After he denounced the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Soviet authorities were quick to respond, exiling him to Gorky, where he lived in difficult conditions. In December 1986, Sakharov’s exile ended when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev invited him to return to Moscow. He was subsequently elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies as a democratic reformer and appointed to the commission responsible for drafting a new Soviet constitution. Sakharov died in 1989.

[Schmidt Meister]

October 9th In Music

1961 - Ray Charles started a two week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Hit The Road Jack’.

1972 - Cream release the Heavy Cream compilation.

1973 - Paul Simon's "Loves Me Like A Rock" is certified Gold.

1976 - One hit wonders Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'A Fifth Of Beethoven’.

1979 - Styx releases "Babe."

Birthdays:

1944 - John Entwistle. English bass guitarist, singer, songwriter from The Who, (nicknamed The Ox). The Who scored 16 US Top 40 singles. Born in London, England.

1944 - Nona Hendryx. Labelle. 1975 US No. 1 single 'Lady Marmalade’. Born in Trenton, New Jersey.