Tuesday, August 6, 1901. Lawton, Oklahoma.

Lawton, Oklahoma, August 16, 1901

Lawton Oklahoma came into existence when the United States Land Office began auctioning lots divided from a 320-acre townsite located near Fort Sill. The auction "drew an overnight population of ten thousand of men", with their families, who had failed to secure homesteads in the lottery of August 1 and came to the townsite in the hope of bidding successfully at the sale of lots. By this date it already had a newspaper.

Ft. Sill is a location I spent a memorable, if brief, part of  my 18th and 19th year in.

Ft. Sill was founded in 1869, so there must have been some nearby community before that to service the post and its soldiers.  To my surprise, it comprises of only 94,000 acres.  It seemed so much bigger to me then.  

FWIW, as I found out several years ago (probably a decade or more) I can recognize it from the air.

Lawton, as a city, didn't impress me all that much, but I never saw that much of it. A good friend of mine retired near there, something fairly common for people with a career association with the military.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott of the Royal Navy and the research ship RRS Discovery, set sail from the port of Cowes, Isle of Wight, to start the British National Antarctic Expedition.

Prince Albert of Monaco's yacht Princess Alice II, loaned for scientific exploration, set a record for the greatest depth at which bottom trawling had taken place, collecting plankton and other undersea life at a depth of 6,035 meters (19,800 ft), southwest of the Cape Verde Islands.  The record would hold until 1947.  

Last edition:

Saturday, August 3, 1901. Muscular Christianity and Manly Men.

Labels: 1900s, 1901, boats and ships, Canada, Christianity, Men, Mountain Climbing, Mountaineering, Muscular Christianity, Protestant, religion, Royal Navy, Work

Friday, August 4, 1876,. Death of an American commander in Cuba.

Henry Mike Reeve Carroll, who went by Henry Reeve, died in combat against Spanish troops in Cuba at age 26, where he had gone from revolutionary volunteer in 1869 to the rank of general in a Cuban revolutionary army.  He was a prior child soldier in the Civil War, in which he's served as a drummer.

The Ten Years War was the cause he died in, which lasted from 1868 to 1878.  The Cuban revolutionaries would lose the war and Cuban independence would come about, instead, as a result of the later Spanish American War, which up until the current war with Iran stood as the war fought by the US on the least justifiable grounds.

The 5th Cavalry arrived at Goose Creek in Wyoming to reinforce a resting up Crook's command.

Last edition:

August 3, 1876. All were invited to attend.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, 2020s, 2026, 44th Congress, Colorado (Durango), Colorado (Leadville), James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, National Rifle Association, Panama, Personalities, South Dakota, South Dakota (Deadwood), The Frontier West

Wednesday, July 31, 1901. Ascending.

Reinhard Süring and Arthur Berson ascended in a hot air balloon to a height of  35,500 ft breaking the official record for the highest distance away from the Earth at the time.  They took off at  Tempelhof on the Preussen and landed at Cottbus.

Henry Tracey Coxwell and James Glaisher claimed to have reached 37,100 ft on September 5, 1862, after losing consciousness after recording a barometer reading at 8,800 metres.

The RRS Discovery departed London from the East India Docks to take on supplies and to await the visit of King Edward and Queen Alexandra before its departure on the British National Antarctic Expedition.

The House of Commons voted a grant of 100,000 pounds to Lord Roberts in appreciation of his service in the Second Boer War.

Last edition:

Tuesday, July 30, 1901. Limiting voting.

Labels: 1900s, 1901, Alabama, Boxer Rebellion, China, Civil War, Confederate States Of America, Donald Trump, fishing, German Army, Qing Dynasty, Racism

Little Bighorn Equipment from the Civil War?

 

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 134th Edition. Paying the cost of failed Reconstruction.

Henry Mosler's painting "The Lost Cause", depicting an uneducated Southern dupe returning to his destroyed home after having fought for rich Southerners who wanted to keep human beings in barbours slavery.

Two related items:

Tennessee's Redistricting Fight and the Long Shadow of the Civil War

and this one:

The Confederacy rises again

The biggest political mistake the US has ever made was not engage in radical reconstruction after the American Civil War.  To have served in an officer, or frankly even as a volunteer, in the Confederate Army should have been regarded as fully treasonous and never forgiven. Those who did should have been tried and given heavy sentences.  Men like Robert E. Lee should never have been allowed to walk the streets as free men again.  

Slave holders, no matter how small they were, should have had to compensate their former slaves or their decedents heavily.  On the principal that the land belongs to he who works it, a means of transferring agricultural land to the former slaves should have been devised.

This is, I'd note, the second time the country has gone through this Lost Cause crap.  The cause of the Southern States during the Civil War ranks right up with that of Nazi Germany as one of the worst causes people have every fought for.  The South should have been made to hang its head in shame, as the Germans were after World War Two.  And  yet, here we go again.

If there's any good thing about any of this is that the rise of the Lost Cause yielded to the Civil Rights Era.  Americans thought they'd finally one the promise of the country, although Liberals and Progressives certainly took that claimed victory beyond what it meant and should have mean in other ways.  Everyone has been reminded of that, now that the fulfillment of the result of Reagan's Southern Strategy has been afflicted upon the nation in form of the Trump Administration.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 133d Edition. What happened to that Board of Peace?

Labels: children, Chuck Gray, Health, Jillian Balow, Lies, Music, Post Office, The Press, The Second Trump Administration, United Nations, United States and Israel v. Iran, Zeitgeist

An Analysis of Modern Republicanism | Explainer

 

Blog Mirror: We Are Not Living Through the 1850s or Headed Toward Another Civil War

 

We Are Not Living Through the 1850s or Headed Toward Another Civil War

Friday, March 5, 1875. The death of Andrew Johnson.

 Lincoln's' Vice President who failed the nation by not pressing forward with Radical Reconstruction.

Johnson was the first U.S President to be impeached and the the first to serve in the Senate after his Presidency.

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 3, 1875. The first indoor hockey match.

Labels: 1870s, 1875, Canada, Ethnicities, Hockey, Immigration, Montreal Quebec, Quebec, Women

Saturday, January 9, 1875. Officers' Quarters Fire at D. A. Russell.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 9: 1875  The officer's quarters at Ft. D. A. Russell were destroyed by fire.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

D. A. Russell is now F. E. Warren AFB, and is located just outside of Cheyenne, which of course it also was at that time, Cheyenne dating back to the 1860s.

Last edition:

Tuesday, December 29, 1874. King Alfonso XII of Spain.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Democracy, Monarchy, Spain

The 2024 Legislative Sessions of other states.

January 20, 2024.

Utah

Utah's house has passed a bill to ban public transgender bathrooms.

January 25, 2024

Ohio

Ohio's legislature over road a veto and banned gender mutilation of minors and restricted those who have undergone gender mutilation from participating in athletic teams of the opposite gender.

January 31, 2024

New York

New York expanded the definition of rape, which apparently was narrowly defined by the previous law. The new law states:

 Section  1.  Sections  130.40,  130.45 and 130.50 of the penal law are

 REPEALED.

   § 2. Subdivisions 1 and 2 of section 130.00 of the penal law, subdivision 2 as amended by chapter 264 of the laws of  2003,  are  amended read as follows:

   1.  "[Sexual  intercourse]  VAGINAL  SEXUAL CONTACT" [has its ordinary meaning and occurs upon any penetration, however slight]  MEANS  CONDUCT BETWEEN  PERSONS  CONSISTING OF CONTACT BETWEEN THE PENIS AND THE VAGINA OR VULVA.

   2. (a) "Oral sexual [conduct] CONTACT" means conduct  between  persons consisting of contact between the mouth and the penis, the mouth and the anus, or the mouth and the vulva or vagina.

   (b)  "Anal  sexual  [conduct]  CONTACT"  means conduct between persons consisting of contact between the penis and anus.

   § 3. Section 130.25 of the penal law, as amended by chapter 1  of  the laws of 2000, is amended to read as follows:

 § 130.25 Rape in the third degree.

   A person is guilty of rape in the third degree when:

   1.  He  or  she engages in [sexual intercourse] VAGINAL SEXUAL CONTACT with another person who is incapable of consent by reason of some factor  other than being less than seventeen years old;

March 5, 2024

2024 UTAH LEGISLATIVE SESSION RECAP & IMPACTS

March 6, 2024

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill that would have made it a crime for noncitizens to enter the state through Mexico at any location other than a port of entry

New Hampshire

The state has banned men mutilated to appear as women from appearing in women's sports.

March 22, 2024

Arizona

Arizona had declared Pluto as the official state planet.

March 31, 2024.

Oregon

Oregon recriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs after botching a decriminalization effort.

April 2, 2024.

Colorado

A bill in Colorado that aims to protect the data found in a person's brainwaves was signed into law.

Colorado's Democratic House passed a bill that bans a wide variety of "assault" firearms. 

Inaccurately reported on as banning semi-automatic firearms, which it does not, it does take on a lot of popular longarms with military type features.

It's doubtful that it will pass Colorado's Senate, and if it does, it's likely unconstitutional.

April 18, 2024.

Montana

Two genitals mutilated men have filed suit in Montana over a new Montana law that keeps them from having their actual gender changed on government issued identification.

April 19, 2024.

Arizona

Arizona has repealed an 1864 territorial law that banned most abortions. Press reporting on this has been unclear, so it's not clear if it repealed and replaced the statute or what, but a review of the text of the very short law shows it simply repealed the law.  Some digging shows a a 2002 statute banning abortion after 15 weeks will become the law.

Florida

Florida has banned artificial meat.

May 3, 2024

Florida

Gov. DeSantis signed into law a bill that de-emphasizes climate considerations in Florida's energy considerations.

May 17, 2024

Louisiana

Louisiana has passed and signed in to a law a requirement that the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms.

June 20, 2024

New Hampshire

New Hampshire has banned gender mutilated boys in grades 5 through 12 from participating in girls' sports.

July 21, 2024.

Monday, July 10, 1944. The Third German Palestinian Exchange.

242 Jewish individuals arrived in Palestine under the Third German Palestinian Exchange, a peculiar event that's almost forgotten.  Under the odd arrangement, Jews in occupied Europe were exchanged for Germans in Palestine, most of whom were "Templer Germans".

The Templer Germans were residents of settlements that had been established in Palestine during Ottoman rule in 1868 and continued on into the 20th Century.  Originally part of the German Pietist Templer movement, the Nazi Party made a heavy effort to Nazify the colonies after they came to power in Germany.  Their numbers decreased over time, and never numbered more than 2,000.  They were declared enemy aliens by the British at the start of World War Two, and many were interned in Australia.  The British, however, brokered a deal in which 1,000 Templers were exchanged for 550 Jews, most of whom had Palestinian connections.  After the Second World War, the remaining members came under heavy pressure, with their leader at the time being assasinated, to leave newly founded Israel.

I have to note that being deported to Germany in this time frame would be an epic bummer, although like Italian colonies in Libya, and French ones in Algeria, the small German settlements in Palestine were not long for the world.

Enduring a second blitz, 41,000 mothers and children left London for countryside billets to avoid V1 bombs.

Having taken D-Day objective Caen, the British moved towards expanding their lines under stuff resistance.

The Finns won a second battlefield victory in two days, this time prevailing at Vyborg Bay.

The Battle of Driniumor River began near Aitape, New Guinea with a Japanese assault of Allied positions there.

The SS Duilio, interned at Trieste, was sunk by Allied aircraft.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 9, 1944.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Battle of Saint-Lô, Battle of Tali–Ihantala, British Army, Caen France, Canadian Army, Continuation War, Italy, Operation Charnwood, Operation Forager, Operation Overlord, Saipan, World War Two

Sunday, March 15, 1874. The Second Treaty of Saigon.

Contemporary seal of Vietnam.

The Third French Republic and the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam executed the Treaty of Saigon.  The treaty granted economic and territorial concessions to France. France waived a previous war indemnity award from Vietnam in the treaty from 1862 and promised military protection against China.  Vietnam was reduced to a French protectorate.

France already occupied three provinces south and east of the Mekong and had since 1867.  They became the French colony of Cochinchina.  The  Red River, Hanoi, Haiphong and Qui Nhơn were opened to international trade.  France recognized "the sovereignty of the king of Annam and his complete independence from any foreign power" (la souveraineté du roi d'Annam et son entière independence vis-à-vis de toute puissance étrangère). France understood this to mean independence from Chinese influence, although neither Vietnam nor China understood the terms in that fashion.

Last prior:

Tuesday, March 10, 1874. Clemson hand saw.

February 4, 1824. Thomas Jefferson to Rev. Jared Sparks.

 

The topic was African slaves in the United States, and what to do about/with them.  Jefferson advocated for establishing an American colony in Africa.

Sparks was a very early Unitarian minister who had served as the Chaplain for the House of Representatives, and who would go on to serve as the President of Harvard.  He died in 1866 at the age of 76, having therefore had a life span which would have overlapped the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the Civil War.  Fairly typically for the era, he'd been married twice, his first wife having been taken by death when they'd been married only three years.

Whigs and the GOP. A timely lesson.

Log cabins and cider were the symbols of the Whigs.

The Whig party formed in 1833, making it just a few years younger than the Democratic Party.  It was a center left, anti-Masonic, anti Manifest Destiny, pro American System, party, although most articles will claim it was a "conservative" party.

It opposed populist Andrew Jackson, a Democratic populist.

William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachery Taylor and Millard Fillmore were members of the Whigs.

A lot of its policies were very reasonable in a modern conservative context. What it couldn't adjust to, however, was slavery, and the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act, which nullified the Missouri Compromise, broke it up in 1856.  Those members of the party who came down as solidly anti-slavery formed the new Republican Party, which was also a center left, anti-Masonic, anti Manifest Destiny, pro American System, party, with anti-slavery added to it.

The GOP went from birth to the White House in just four years.

The Whigs drew from the Democratic Republican Party that preceded it, but it drew from other camps as well.  Not only did the old Democratic Republicans come into it, but Democrats did as well as that party became increasingly populist.

Note that.  

The Whigs were a major center left American political party.  The Democrats were a conservative, populist party.  The Whigs of the 1850s would have recognized the Republican Party of the 1950s as their successor.

Note what happened, and perhaps more importantly, how quickly it can happen.

The classic bromide of American politics is that third parties don't succeed.

Some do.

The Whigs came out of a prior political party's period of turmoil. They consolidated around solid, government backed, economics and a policy of what would amount to anti discrimination for the era.  As a result of that, it attracted businessmen, quasi liberals, and (immigrant) Catholics.  It won several elections before spectacularly breaking up.

The GOP has been around much longer, but at least in its early periods up to the Great Depression, and then again from 1950 on, up until Ronald Reagan, it was much like the Whig Party it had replaced, but with civil rights added as an element. Ronald Reagan, as much as he is admired by conservatives, began to dismantle that when the Democrats incorporated civil rights into its makeup starting in the 50s and 60s.  The Democrats had been struggling with its southern membership, which very much reflected the views of the traditional party, since the 1932 election of Franklin Roosevelt.  Southern Democrats stuck with the party as they had nowhere else to go, until Reagan cynically offered them one.

Now that element has taken over the party.

The GOP nearly cracked up in 1912 when the Theodore Roosevelt wing of the party, which wanted to take the party much to the left, and make it much more liberal/populist, bolted.  That same year, the Democratic Party began its evolution into a liberal party by running Woodrow Wilson, drawing in disaffected Republican populists.

Note that.

It took twenty years, but by 1932 TR's cousin FDR put the liberals in the Democratic Party permanently in control, Wilson's bid having transformed the party permanently.  It took roughly 30, but Ronald Reagan did the same thing with the Dixiecrats he incorporated into the GOP, that having also transformed the party permanently.  It took the Democrats 40 years to start shedding the Dixiecrats.  It took about 40 years for the Dixiecrats Reagan invited into the Republican Party to start a GOP civil war.

Conservatives gush about Reagan, and with some good reasons.  He was the country's one and only really conservative President.  Prior Republicans had fit more into the Whig mold.  Those who came after him sort of recalled it, like the first Bush, or fit into a new Neo Con mold that real conservatives tended to despise.  Reagan's Presidency was transformational, however, in that it inserted certain conservative strains of thought into government, while it never got a hold of the nation's budget, which has become increasingly out of whack due to the tax cuts he and Republican successors introduced.

But what he also introduced, Dixiecrats and Rust Belt Democrats, infected the party and now has killed it.  The "Republican" Part of today is the Dixiecrat Party/Rust Belt Democrat Party in a very real sense.  It's populist, but not conservative.

There are holdout Republican elements within it, but they have no hope of taking it back.  The past three years have proven that. Trump Populists don't care that Trump tried to seize power illegally.  They see class enemies everywhere which justify their positions, something Democrats just don't grasp.  Democrats like Robert Reich run around wondering when they'll wake up, not realizing they're wide awake.

When the Whigs broke up, it took the GOP only a few years to become successful.  The Whig collapse in 1856 was followed by the Republican success of 1860.

That's lesson number 1.  New parties can succeed quickly when the old one dies.

Lesson number 2 is that opposing parties become complacent.  The Democratic Party after 1912 didn't worry about its southern base and allowed it to go into the Republican Party, which briefly helped the GOP, and then killed it.  The Whigs took not only from the collapsed Democratic Republicans but also from the Democrats themselves.

The current Democratic Party is the legacy of 1912 the same way that the GOP is the legacy of 1980.  Just as the GOP has gone Dixiecrat/Rust Belt Democrat, the Democratic Party has gone Ivy League Pink.  It's nearly as enfeebled as the GOP is right now, it's just not as obvious.

A new party must emerge to replace the GOP, and frankly it now will.  Conservatives have no home and need to find one.  Centrist, however, have no home as well.  People who believed in Reagan's social conservatism aren't the same people who vote for serial polygamist and icky Donald Trump.  Democrats that voted for a guy like Harry Truman aren't comfortable with Joe Biden, at least in the expression he's manifested himself.  49%, at least, of the electorate are independents who have already dumped the GOP or the Democratic Party.

The one, and only, thing the Democrats and the Republicans agree on is that you absolutely must not vote for a third party, as that helps the other guy. That thinking insures that the extremes of those two parties have a free ride.

Well, the party is over and on the GOP side, the people have gone home.  This election, or the next, a new center right party must form, and will form.

If it formed now, with a Manchin or Christie at its head.  It'd take the election, and the GOP would completely collapse.  Quite a bit of the Democratic Party would defect as well.

It should happen.

The Lost Cause and the Arlington Confederate Monument. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 53d Edition.

Laying the cornerstone in 1912.

Coming at a particularly odd time, given the resurgence of the type of views that the monument represents¹, the Federal Government is removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.

A massive allegorical work, the monument by Moses Jacob Ezekiel² portrays the Southern cause heroically, and includes a slave in the "mammy" role, saddened by the departure of her soldier owner.

Probably always offensive, the work was part of the rise of the Lost Cause myth in the early 20th Century, which is when many of these monuments date from.  It's being removed and will be relocated at a park dedicated to Confederate monuments.

This process has been going on for a while. Under President Biden, military posts named for Confederate generals have been renamed, but even before that, monuments in Southern states started coming down on a local basis.  Interestingly, right now the Southern cause is strongly in mind as Donald Trump tacks closer and closer to the secessionist's view of the nation that brought the war about and which preserved racial segregation for a century thereafter.

The monument itself was located in the Confederate Section of Arlington, which was created in 1900 at the request of those who felt that Confederate dead in the cemetery should be located together.  Ironically, the move was opposed by some in the South, who felt that they should be relocated to "Southern soil".  Laying of the cornerstone of the monument came in 1912, and it was dedicated, Woodrow Wilson in attendance, in 1914.

Wilson at dedication of the monument in 1914.

Things like this are particularly problematic in various ways. For one thing, the monument is a work of art, and as such it has its own merits, no matter how dramatically flawed its image of the Southern cause was.  And they have, interestingly, an image of the South which was, while false, sort of bizarrely aspirational in that it depicted, as many such monuments of that period for that cause do, a South which was a yeoman state, when in reality the South was controlled by strong large scale economic interest to the detriment of the Southern yeoman, and certainly to the massive detriment of Southern blacks.

And they also reflect a period of American history, lasting roughly from the end of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Era, when the nation as a whole adopted a false view of itself, or at least a large portion of itself.  They reflect, therefore, the zeitgeist of that time and our own.  Removing the monuments is understandable, but it doesn't cure the massive defect of past racism and slavery.  It does serve to help us forget how racist we once were, and not only in the 1776 to 1865 time frame, but the 1865 to mid 1970s time frame as well.

Footnotes:

1.  Just this past week Donald Trump, whose acolytes sometimes brandish the Confederate battle flat at his events, or in support of him in general, spoke of immigrants "poisoning" the blood of Americans, much like Southern Americans sometimes did in regard to desegregation in the 1960s.  The Nazi allegory has come up frequently, but to my ear, perhaps because I'm old enough to remember the tail end of that era, it sounds more the Southern view of the 60s or even 70s.

2.  This work is by far Ezekiel's best known one.  Interestingly, another major one is an allegorical monument from the 1870s dedicated to and entitled Religious Liberty.

Last Prior Edition:

Lame. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 52nd Edition.

Sunday Morning Scene: Father Thomas H. Mooney, Chaplain of the 69th Infantry Regiment of New York State Militia and Irish American soldiers at a Catholic Mass at Fort Cocoran, Arlington Heights, Virginia on June 1, 1861.

 

Mount Blue Sky, was Mount Evans.

That's the story, Mt. Evans in Colorado has been renamed Mt. Blue Sky.

The mountain was named after Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans.  The Civil War era Governor was obviously popular enough at the time, but his association with the Sand Creek Massacre has caused his memory to tarnish over the years.  That association may be noted here:

June 24

1864   Colorado Governor John Evans warns that all peaceful Indians in the region must report to the Sand Creek reservation or risk being attacked.  This set in motion that lead to the chain of events that caused the infamous Sand Creek Massacre, The Battle of Red Buttes, and the Battle of Platte Bridge Station.

The even itself is discussed here:

November 29

1864         Sand Creek Massacre in which Colorado militia attack Black Kettle's Cheyenne band in Colorado.  Black Kettle was at peace, and the attack was unwarranted.  The unit would muster out shortly thereafter.  The attack would drive many Cheyenne north into Wyoming and western Nebraska, where they would link up with Sioux who were already trending towards hostility with the United States.  This would result in ongoing unbroken armed conflict between these tribes and the United States up through the conclusion of Red Cloud's War.

In 2020, current Colorado Governor Polish established The Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board which suggested the new name, which was approved by the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.  Clear Creek County approved the renaming in 2022.

Evans' reassessment is an example of how such reappraisals have occured post World War Two. Evans was forced to resign as a result of the Sand Creek Massacre and was accused of a cover-up in regard to it, but nonetheless, as late as 1963 he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.  Charitable in many things, other than his views on the fate of Native Peoples, various things were named for him, including Mount Evans, a World War Two destroyer and the Evans Chapel at the University of Denver, the latter of which he had built in memory of a daughter.

Monday, August 30, 1943. Hornets

CV-12, the second aircraft carrier of World War Two to be named the USS Hornet, was launched.

CV-12 being launched.

CV-8, the USS Hornet that had been in the Doolittle Raid, was sunk in October, 1942.

CV-12 was the eighth U.S. Navy ship to bear that name, the first being a merchant sloop acquired by the infant U.S. Navy in 1775 and captured by the Royal Navy during the Revolution.  A second USS Hornet, also a sloop, was acquired in the Mediterranean during the First Barbary War, but served for only a year.

CV-8 was named in honor of a sloop of war commissioned in 1805.  She's served in the War of 1812, but had been lost due to a material failure at sea in 1829, going down with all hands.

The foundering of CV-8's namesake.

The fourth was a schooner acquired in 1814 that mostly served the Navy by running messages.

The fifth ship to bear that name was a captured and renamed Confederate steam ship.  Its career with the US Navy was brief, and she then went on to a brief career with filibusters, being renamed Cuba.

The Red Army captured Sokolovskym Yelna, and Taganrog.

In his second act of heroism, Lt. Kenneth Walsh, would push his deeds over the top as a Marine Corp aviator and win the Medal of Honor.  His citation reads:

For extraordinary heroism and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty as a pilot in Marine Fighting Squadron 124 in aerial combat against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands area. Determined to thwart the enemy's attempt to bomb Allied ground forces and shipping at Vella Lavella on 15 August 1943, 1st Lt. Walsh repeatedly dived his plane into an enemy formation outnumbering his own division 6 to 1 and, although his plane was hit numerous times, shot down 2 Japanese dive bombers and 1 fighter. After developing engine trouble on 30 August during a vital escort mission, 1st Lt. Walsh landed his mechanically disabled plane at Munda, quickly replaced it with another, and proceeded to rejoin his flight over Kahili. Separated from his escort group when he encountered approximately 50 Japanese Zeros, he unhesitatingly attacked, striking with relentless fury in his lone battle against a powerful force. He destroyed 4 hostile fighters before cannon shellfire forced him to make a dead-stick landing off Vella Lavella where he was later picked up. His valiant leadership and his daring skill as a flier served as a source of confidence and inspiration to his fellow pilots and reflect the highest credit upon the U.S. Naval Service.

Lt. Walsh had joined the Marine Corps in 1933 and retired in 1962, flying again in action during the Korean War.  He died at age 81 in 1998. 

The Lackawanna Limited wreck occurred when a Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad passenger train, the New York-Buffalo Lackawanna Limited collided with a freight train. Twenty-seven people were killed in the collision, and about twice that number injured, many from steam that poured into the railroad cars.