Showing posts with label Denver Colorado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denver Colorado. Show all posts

Saturday, January 6, 2024

Sunday, January 6, 1924. Frigid weather and Rebel offensives.

A cold wave was causing grief, and rebels were trying to take the offensive in Mexico.


A story that would repeat many times in Casper was playing out, with oil companies moving their headquarters from Casper to Denver.  By 2000 it had pretty much set in that headquarters were no longer in Wyoming, with Marathon being perhaps the last major producer to relocate.  Denver remains a major oil headquarters city, but Houston has eclipsed it.  Presently, all that really remains of the major petroleum headquarters that were once in Casper are three office buildings, The Ohio Building, the Pan American Building and the Consolidated Royalty Building. 

Atatürk survived a bomb attack on his home by an uninvited visitor which did, however, injury his wife Latife Uşşaki. 

The Catholic Church in France was allowed to reoccupy former Church property under the "diocesan associations" system.

On the same day, the flood of the Seine peaked at over 7 meters.

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Denver sucks.


Best cities to raise a family


Denver ain't one of them, which is no surprise if you've been to Denver.

Indeed, according to this study, it's the worst place to raise a family in the United States.

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Painted Bricks: Prairie mural, downtown Denver

Painted Bricks: Prairie mural, downtown Denver:  

Prairie mural, downtown Denver



What's it mean to paint a mural of the prairie in the middle of a city?

Perhaps that we're not so happy with what we created there.

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Friday, June 28, 1923. Turkey's first election, Hi Power patent, Osage Murders in Oklahoma, Klan in Glenrock, Bert Cole accident.

Turkey's first general election was held, which chose secondary electors who then would choose the Grand National Assembly.  Only the Republican People's Party was allowed to exist, but the number of candidates was unlimited.

John Browning, the legendary and massively influential firearms designer, many of whose designs are still in use, unabated in their utility and not regarded as old, filed for his patent application for the Hi Power.  He would die before it was granted in 1927.

British in Oosterbeek  Left to right Pvt Ronald Philip Walker Pvt John Dugdale 10pin C.co 156 Para L.Cpt Noel Rosenberg 10 pin C.co 156 Para Pvt Alfred J Ward HQ Para Brgd. Driver for Hackett.  Dugdale carries a Hi Power.  Rosenberg might be.  The Canadian manufactured John Ingleiss Hi Powers were adopted for British and Canadian airborne, that introducing the design to British troops.

The design went on to widespread use, seeing military use with every country in the British Commonwealth or which was formerly part of the late British Empire, as well as World War Two use by China and, ironically, Nazi Germany.  Germany produced the pistol in occupied Belgian plants.  It saw very limited experimental use with the US in the 1960s.  I knew a Navy pilot, for instance, who was issued one.

Canadian troops training with Hi Power.

Regarded as obsolete, in recent years it has been phased out of British service, which commenced during World War Two with airborne troops, and most recently out of Canadian service.  Canada chose to take this step as its World War Two manufactured pistols no longer had a reliable parts source.  Ironically, just as they made their decision, a boom in manufacture of Hi Power pistols resumed, starting off a story in civilian, and perhaps military, markets much like that experienced by the M1911, which went through a similar story. The M1911 is, of course, also a Browning design.

Uruguayan marine with Hi Power.

The Hi Power is the pistol the U.S. should have adopted when it went to 9mm (and it shouldn't have gone to 9mm).  The pistol was so widely used that at one time US special forces of various types would carry it on certain missions because, if one was dropped, it was evidence of who had been there.

Osage oil millionaire George Bigheart summoned Pawhuska Oklahoma lawyer W. Watkins Vaughn to his hospital deathbed, where he was receiving treatment for poisoning.  Bigheart died the following day, and Vaughn was murdered on his way home, his body being found in Pershing, Oklahoma.

The Osage Indian Murders are the subject of the recently released movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on the 2017 book investigating the same.

The Glenrock Gazette reported on the recent KKK demonstration n that town.


The Glenrock Gazette, in its reporting, basically endorsed the racist organization as being one for law and order.

Bert Cole, famous local pilot, but one already known for a tragic airborne death in Evansville, died in an airplane accident himself.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub, the inquiring photographer was out again.  I was surprised how uniform these answers were.


I would not have guessed that there would be uniform answers.  The fact that there is, speaks volumes of how women perceived their status at the time.

Indeed, in much of the US women had only recently received the vote, but it is true that they were highly restricted in what was regarded as appropriate work.  That wouldn't really start changing for another fifty years, although that's probably a topic for a separate entry.  Also clear here, however, social rules bothered some women.  The really fascinating thing here is that it seemed not to be something vaguely in the background, but something that caused a lot of women, all the women in this sample, to hold deep seated resentments.

Monday, March 6, 2023

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 5, 1923. The Thomas, Collins, affair.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 5, 1923. Reds.

Yesterday, we noted this item, amongst other:


If ever there was a story that there must be a lot more to, this is it. And yet, it's impossible, based on the limited resources available, to learn much more.

Thomas, I'd note, didn't merely state that she wished Cornish dead.  He was a "persistent wooer", as the article indicates, and apparently the couple had engaged in some prior wooing.  She also reported to the police that he was consistently abusive and had been that day.  That's likley why Thomas shot Cornish.  He not only wanted her ardently, but he was, she thought, or stated, abusive.

Thomas packed a pistol, we'd also note, which while it's something we'd expect of Lauren Boebert of Colorado today, wasn't average lady like behavior in Colorado in 1923.  Heck, my paternal grandparents were married and living in Denver at the time, and my guess is that neither of them routinely packed pistols.  Indeed, as far as I know, the only firearms my material grandfather routinely used were shotguns, which he was reportedly very skilled at.  My uncle reported to me that when he was a boy, and they were living in Scottsbluff, my grandfather would take just the number of 410 shells necessary to fill his pheasant limit, and come back with the limit.  Here in Wyoming, he hunted ducks.

Seems that's genetic.

Anyhow, I'll bet my grandmother didn't pack heat.  Either Thomas figured she needed to, due to Cornish's nature, or she routinely did.  We'll never know.  She had a pistol anyhow.

A Coroners Jury found Thomas acted with premeditation, which doesn't mean what people think it does.  It just means she had sufficient time to know what she was doing.

Well, they're all gone now.  My God rest their souls, and I hope Thomas's time in the pokey wasn't too hard.

Sunday, January 29, 2023

Monday, January 29, 1923. Colorado Rangers disbanded.

Governor William E. Sweet of Colorado defunded the Colorado Rangers.  

The move was made to thwart Prohibition enforcement, even though Colorado had adopted prohibition (like marijuana prohibition) before the Federal Government had, as well as to prevent its use in mine disputes.  They were officially disbanded in 1927, but thereafter became a reserve police force for Colorado.

Sweet was a Democrat from Chicago who came to Colorado with his parents as a small child.  He was a investment banker by profession, and good at it.  He retired from the occupation before entering politics in 1922 at age 54.  As governor, he was a strong opponent of the Klu Klux Klan, which was strong in Colorado, and which he attributed his subsequent defeat in a reelection bid in 1925.  He later moved to the second variant of the Progressive Party, the one that was formed by Robert LaFollette.

He died in 1942 at age 73.

Of note, my grandmother and grandfather, on my father's side, were married and living in Denver, Colorado at this time.  My grandmother, of Irish extraction, was a lifelong Democrat.

The Colorado Rangers originally formed in 1861, modeled on the Texas Rangers.

To the north of this story:

1923  Casper's legislative delegation proposed moving the capital to Casper from Cheyenne.  Wyoming State Historical Association.

This was still an idea that was threatened, from time to time, when I was a kid.

Edward Terry Sanford was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Ataturk, married Latife Uşaki.  The marriage lasted only until 1925, although it did see her active in the emancipation of Turkish women.  She lived in Istanbul after their divorce, dying in 1975.

Senate Carpentry Shop, January 29, 1923.

Thursday, January 5, 2023

Tuesday, January 5, 1943 First use of the VT Fuse.

The first use of the revolutionary VT fuse in combat occurred when the USS Helena shot down a Japanese dive bomber with a projectile equipped with the fuse.

1953 variant of the VT "proximity" fuse.


Designed for surface-to-air and ground to ground use, the VT used radar to detonate when close to the target. The Navy's use came first, as it was feared that the fuse would fall into enemy hands if used in ground combat.  Amazingly, use by ground forces of the joint British-American fuse would not come until late 1944 when it was deployed during the Battle of the Bulge.  There was some reluctance to use it even then, but its revolutionary features were never discovered by the Germans or Japanese.

The fuse is widely used today.

Gen. Kenneth Walker led a heavy bomber raid on Rabaul to hit Japanese shipping, the presence of which the US was aware of due to decoding of Japanese radio transmissions.  Eight Japanese merchant ships and two destroyers were hit during the raid by B-17s and B-24s.  Gen. Walker's aircraft, in which he was riding as an observer, was brought down by Japanese antiaircraft fire, and he was killed.

Gen. Walker.

Walker was 44 years old at the time of his death.  Born in New Mexico, he grew up in Denver, Colorado in a home maintained by his mother, as his father left the family.  He attended a variety of schools in Denver.  He entered the Army during World War One and was commissioned as an airman in 1918.

The Department of Agriculture ordered that 30% of all butter production be reserved for the Armed Forces.

George Washington Carver, prominent American scientist and African American, died at approximately age 78.


The Red Army continued to advance in the Caucasus.  British paratroopers and commandos took the high ground near Mateur, Tunisia.  Free French forces advanced in southern Libya.

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Monday, December 18, 1922. The Denver Mint Robbery

 


A deadly robbery of the Denver mint resulted in $200,000 being stolen, and one guard and one thief losing their lives.

$80,000 of the $200,000 was recovered in early 1923 in Minnesota, along with money traced to a prior bank robbery.  No arrests were ever made, although authorities believed they had largely solved the mystery of who committed the robbery about a decade later, by which time most of those who were involved with it, assuming the authorities were correct, were dead or in prison.

Three days of fascists attacks on union members in Turin, Italy, commenced.

The de Bothezat helicopter, nicknamed "the flying octopus", made its first flight


Saturday, December 3, 2022

Rights of Nature

I support reintroducing grizzly bears.

To the Cheesman Park neighborhood of Denver, more specifically.  And nobody can talk me out of it.

Sunday, October 30, 2022

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.

Churches of the West: St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.

St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.


This Catholic Church in North Denver is St. Patrick Mission Church.  The Mission Architecture Church was built from 1907 to 1910, and served the Denver Highlands.  Its architectural style is unusual for Denver.

This Church is also called St. Patrick's Oratory, and has a presence by the Capuchin Poor Clare Sisters.

There's more to this church than I have here, I just don't know what it is, but it may be explained by the Capuchin sisters. The church as a bit of a campus, and therefore as a mission, it might strongly reflect their presence.

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Denver Colorado.

Churches of the West: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Denver Colorado.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Denver Colorado.


This is Our Lady of Mount Carmel in North Denver, Colorado.

Built between 1899 and 1904 for an Italian population, the church is located in a neighborhood known as Little Italy, although its rapidly gentrifying and experiencing a change in neighborhood character.  Nonetheless, one Mass per month is offered in Italian.

Saturday, June 4, 2022

Sunday, June 4 1922. Fred and Ida Goldstein's Marriage.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 41922  Legendary Wyoming oilman and philanthropist Fred Goldstein married Ida Goldberg in Denver.  Goldstein is an example of how a lack of education was not a bar to success in his era.  He only attended school through grade 8 before going to work in American Pipe & Supply, his father's company, in Denver.  This would lead to a career which would make him enormously financially successful and which would also have a dramatic impact on Casper, where he ultimately relocated to direct the company's activities there.

As a slight addition, Goldstein's visage is captured in the Casper Wyoming gateway statute, "Man Made Energy", which depicts a collection of burly oilfield roughnecks working on the floor of an old style rotary rig.  The faces are those of local oilmen.  The monument's always been a bit controversial, and it's likely that Goldstein wouldn't have really approved.

Also, for those curious about a Sunday marriage, Goldstein was Jewish, so the wedding would not have been the Saturday one that most American weddings are.

Monday, April 25, 2022

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Denver County Courthouse, Denver Colorado.

Courthouses of the West: Denver County Courthouse, Denver Colorado.

Denver County Courthouse, Denver Colorado.

This is the Denver County Courthouse, which houses the district, county and city courts in Denver, Colorado.

 

The downtown courthouse was built in 1902 and is a very impressive structure.