Last prior edition:
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
National Barn Dance, a direct precursor to the Grand Old Opry, premiered on Chicago's WLS, running a whopping four hours every Saturday night. It would run until 1968.
The Washington Post depicted Coolidge holding fast in a political cartoon.
Democrats were attacking Theodore Roosevelt, Jr's supposed role in Teapot Dome. This Theodore Roosevelt was serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, that position now effectively being a Roosevelt one, with he being the third Roosevelt to occupy it.
Imperial Airways was founded by way of the merger of the Handley Page Transport, Instone Air Line, Daimler Airway and British Marine Air Navigation Co Ltd. airways.
Last prior edition:
Industrial History: 1977-2024 I-695 Lost Francis Scott Key Bridge over...: ( Archived Bridge Hunter ; no Historic Bridges; Satellite ) A ship alliding with this bridge and causing a catastrophic failure has upped ...
A good account of actual events in this matter.
I have to say that this disasters demonstrates how truly moronic social media has become. Within mere minutes of the disaster, some people who really need to go to some sort of Moron Reeducation Camp were spinning wild conspiracy theories about this disaster.1
The ship lost power. The pilot, who is a licensed pilot for the harbor, did everything he could to address the situation. The crew immediately radioed, which kept this from being a much worse disaster than it turned out to be.
Footnotes:
1. The absolute stupidity of the conspiracy theories should cast a little light on how people have spun moronic conspiracy theories about all sorts of things, from Pearl Harbor to the assassination of JFK, in the past. People like to imagine that things have to be intentional, or it could happen to anyone.
Wyoming Delegation: Everyone Wants Internal Combustion Engines, Enough With EV Nonsense
Wyoming Delegation: Everyone Wants Internal Combustion Engines, Enough With EV Nonsense
There is a real holding back the tide aspect to this. Electric vehicles are coming, and soon.
Indeed, they aren't really new.
California insists it's “speculative” to assume EVs will remain heavier than gas cars.Public policy should reflect reality, not the baseless future dream of featherweight electric cars.What’s speculative, obviously, is assuming with no evidence that their weight will change.
Heavy? Great. We used to complain that fuel efficient vehicles were too light.
To read the GOP propaganda in some quarters, Electric Vehicles travel in rogue bands, cross the Rhine, sack and loot villages, and take your daughters.
It's really absurd.
The former barred that if a person had a great-grandparent who was black, they were black, and were barred from marrying outside of that racial category. The Pocahontas Clause" provided an exception for Native American heritage, sort of, in that if a person had 15/16th European heritage, they would be deemed white.
An emergency existing, this act shall be enforced from its passage.
Chap. 394. - An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases. [S B 281]
Approved March 20, 1924.
Whereas, both the health of the individual patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives under careful safeguard and by competent and conscientious authority, and
Whereas, such sterilization may be effected in males by the operation of vasectomy and in females by the operation of salpingectomy, both of which said operations may be performed without serious pain or substantial danger to the life of the patient, and
Whereas, the Commonwealth has in custodial care and is supporting in various State institutions many defective persons who if now discharged or paroled would likely become by the propagation of their kind a menace to society but who if incapable of procreating might properly and safely be discharged or paroled and become self-supporting with benefit both to themselves and to society, and
Whereas, human experience has demonstrated that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of sanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime, now, therefore
1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That whenever the superintendent of the Western State Hospital, or of the Eastern State Hospital, or of the Southwestern State Hospital, or of the Central State Hospital, or the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, shall be of opinion that it is for the best interests of the patients and of society that any inmate of the institution under his care should be sexually sterilized, such superintendent is hereby authorized to perform, or cause to be performed by some capable physicians or surgeon, the operation of sterilization on any such patient confined in such institution afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy; provided that such superintendent shall have first complied with the requirements of this act.
2. Such superintendent shall first present to the special board of directors of his hospital or colony a petition stating the facts of the case and the grounds of his opinion, verified by his affidavit to the best of his knowledge and belief, and praying that an order may be entered by said board requiring him to perform or have performed by some competent physician to be designated by him in his said petition or by said board in its order, upon the inmate of his institution named in such petition, the operation of vasectomy if upon a male and of salpingectomy if upon a female.
A copy of said petition must be served upon the inmate together with a notice in writing designating the time and place in the said institution, not less than thirty days before the presentation of such petition to said special board of directors when and where said board may hear and act upon such petition [10]
—Virginia General Assembly, March 20, 1924
Finnair commenced commercial flights.
On oil, the issue had an Autocar Truck advertisement advertising gas and electric trucks. . . the latter being something that locals now insist just can't happen.
Independent truck drivers, whom share nothing in common with Donald Trump whatsoever, are claiming they'll boycott New York State today due to the judgment against the serially indicted former President.
In the Gene Shepherd classic A Christmas Story, Ralphie imagines that he'll get "soap blindness" and live on the streets, to the regret of his parents, for having his mouth washed out with soap. No such thing exists, of course, but in reality, if it did, it'd be worse than the remorse the parents would feel for the person enduring it.
In other words, a person needs to be careful for what they wish for.
Truck drivers, or at least American independent truck drivers, are heavily invested in the belief that "America needs us". They're also heavily invested in a myth of manly, rugged independence. The reality of the situation is quite different, however.
The United States went to a semi tractor supply distribution system through the short sightedness of Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the massive Federally funded expansion of the US highway system during his administration. Eisenhower, impressed with the Autobahn, which he'd seen while the Supreme Commander of Allied Expedition Force in Europe, wanted them here. It was really an example of the American System at work, and while I'm generally a proponent of the American System, it shouldn't have happened in this example.
Coming right at the same time that the American love of automobiles really took off, it caused a massive ongoing subsidy of the highway system, and by extension, the expansion of over the road trucking, at the detriment of the railroads. I've posted on that here before, stating:
It's doing that fairly inefficiently compared to rail. Rail is incredibly cheap on a cost per mile basis, and it's actually incredibly "green" as well. It's efficient. Trucks are nowhere near as efficient in any fashion. Not even in employment of human resources. Trains have, anymore, one or two men crews, the same as semi trucks, but they're hauling a lot more per mile than trucks are with just two men.
And, as we also stated:
One semi truck does as much damage to the highways as 2,000 passenger cars, or some I'm told. I was told that by the owner of a company that has semi trucks.
On top of it, truck driving isn't something Americans want to do anymore, something the independents who are protesting seem to be missing. As we earlier noted:
And laborers are also demanding better wages and benefits in order to do the work they're doing.
I can blame the nation for putting itself in this situation, however.
Drivers can make a lot of money, for sure, but their paychecks often go towards paying for their trucks and the like. Modern trucks are automatic transmission vehicles and the days of really highly skilled teamsters who knew how to double clutch and shift two gear shifts at once (which I've seen done), are long gone. The job has become one where temporary immigrants and immigrants from the Third World are incredibly common.
So sure, while there are Trump loving independent teamsters out there, there are a lot of drivers from India, Somalia, Russia or Mexico who no doubt have little Trump love.
And motorists have little truck love. That's part of the reason that teamsters feel compelled to attempt to remind people that things move by truck. The problem is, they don't have to.
Had the Defense Highway System not been built, things would move by rail, except locally. There's no reason that couldn't happen again, and if the Federal Government suddenly decided, for whatever reason (and expense would be a good one) to end the funding system, the result would be just like what happened when it quite subsidizing housing the mentally ill back in Reagan's day. States wouldn't pick it back up. It'd take awhile, but not as long as supposed, before rail picked its old role back up, but it could and would.
Beyond that, rail transportation is already very "green", as noted above, compared to truck transportation. It could be made much more so by electrifying the system, which is a proven system. Trains engines are also more capable of readily being made in alternative fuels than semi trucks are. Short haul trucks, from rail to consumer, are also relatively easy to make the conversion to electricity.
Up until after World War Two, most things moved by rail, and trucking was local. The highway system, while the Federal Government was already in it, was much more local.
So, want to show how valuable you are to the economy? Going on strike or into a boycott may do it. Perhaps you are like the railroader of World War One and World War Two and can't be ignored. Perhaps you are an economic Lysistrata and people won't want to ignore you.
Or perhaps people figure they're better off without you and they don't want to be taxed to support your industry anymore and they'll look forward to not seeing trucks in their rear view mirror.
Related Threads:
The landing at Saidor concluded on January 2, Operation Michaelmas, resulted in an Allied victory on this date. The Australians and the Americans had linked up, and the Huon Peninsula was mostly occupied.
The Minekaze was sunk off of Formosa by the USS Pogy.
Sarah Sundin notes:
Today in World War II History—February 10, 1944: Japanese surround Indian 7th Division on the Arakan peninsula in Burma; Allies keep the 7th Division supplied through air drops.
The Red Army took Shepetovka, Ukraine.
The U-545 was scuttled after being crippled west of the Hebrides by a Vickers Wellington. T he U-666 disappeared in the North Atlantic.
On the same day, American Airlines Flight 2 crashed into the Mississippi River. All twenty-four passengers and crew were killed. The cause of the crash was never determined.
Air travel between Miami and Key West was initiated.
All good advice.
I'd add, here in Wyoming, a winter coat for sure.
And a blanket that will suffice for cold weather without electricity, as you might not have your car electricity all that long.
And some food for a few days is a good idea, also.
I'd also add, for at least off roady and over the road vehicles, a two-way radio. I have GMRS radios in both of my regular 4x4s, which are also my regular daily drivers. Personally, I much prefer GMRS over CB, which has a more limited range.
Today In Wyoming's History: December 29: 1943 Wartime quotas of new adult bicycles for January cut in half, with 40 being allotted to Wyoming.Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
This was no small matter. Bicycles had increased enormously in importance due to the war. The National Park Service notes:
Leo Pasvolsky of the State Department finished the draft for the United Nations Charter.
Gen. Eisenhower ordered Allied Commanders to avoid attacking historic Italian monuments to the extent that this was possible; stating:
We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows. If we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men's lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go. But the choice is not always so clear-cut as that. In many cases the monuments can be spared without any detriment to operational needs.
The Royal Air Force resumed bombing Berlin, its Christmas hiatus having ended.
The Red Army took Korosten in Ukraine.
The Italian submarine Axum was scuttled after running aground off of Morea, Greece. The boat had a very successful war record.