Friday, June 2, 1899. The Wild Bunch Robs the Overland Flyer at Wilcox and the Philippine Republic declares war on the United States.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 2: 1899   The Wild Bunch robbed the Union Pacific Overland Flyer No. 1  near Wilcox, taking between $30,000 and $60,000.  This robbery is famous in part for the large amount taken, but also for the destruction of a rail car by explosives which were used to open a safe.  This is depicted in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Attribution:  On This Day.

 

The Overland Flyer in 1906.

Longtime Wyoming residents may wonder where on earth Wilcox is.  That's because, it isn't.  It's a named spot on the railroad just north of Rock River.  If this same crime occured today, people would report it as having occured north of Rock River.  It occured very near the junction with the Fetterman Road.

I've driven past this spot thousands of time and never realized where it was. This was a bold action, as Rock Rover was more substantial than it now is (the explosion clearly could have been heard from there) and Medicine Bow not all that far to the north. 

The First Philippine Republic officially declared war against the United States, although clearly the war, which the US termed an insurrection, had been going on for some time.

To recognize it as a war would have required a declaration of war, which in turn would have recognized the sovereignty of the Philippine Republic, which would have made a mockery of the US position on the islands.

Almost always, when people accuse the US of being involved in "colonial wars", they're full of it. This, however, was a colonial war.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, June 1, 1899. White Horse Pass.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Alaska, Yukon Territory

1906 US Army Emergency Ration Preserved Survival Food Testing 24 Hour MRE Review

Wednesday, December 30, 1942. Sinatra breaks out, and Soviets starting to. And, Bobby Soxers.

Frank Sinatra appeared as a solo act for the first time, appearing before a screaming crowed of bobby soxers of 5,000 at the Paramount Theatre in New York City.

Sinatra on the radio with actress Alida Valli.*

Sinatra in some ways was the first example of a phenomenon that would attach to certain male performers of the mid 20th Century in which they were the subject of gigantic teenage female fascination.  We tend to think of personalities like Elvis in this category, but Sinatra had the same adulation prior to their experiencing it.

His appearance at this point in time raises certain interesting questions.

Sinatra was born into an Italian American family that endured rough circumstances, to some degree, but which also saw his father go from being a boxer to a fire captain, and which featured a dominant, highly driven mother.  The mother supported the son's endeavors.  Sinatra, who always performed under his own name, took an interest in music early and started singing professionally with bands at age 20.  He sang with Tommy Dorsey's band in the late 1930s, with his desire to break free from the band resulting in a legal battle and persistent rumors that Mafia boss Willie Moretti, who was Sinatra's Godfather, had held a gun to Dorsey's ear.  That rumor was incorporated by Mario Puzo in the novel, and later the movie, The Godfather to apply to a very much Sinatra like character.

Sinatra was a huge hit in the early 1940s, but being of conscript age, the logical question is why he wasn't drafted.  He was categorized by the Selective Service as 4-F, which provides the reason, due to a perforated ear drum, but Army files later indicated that he was regarded as psychologically unsuitable for military service due to emotional instability.  He did tour with the USA in the latter portion of the war.  A lack of wartime service did not hurt him, as it did not hurt John Wayne, which says something about the culture of the time.

He campaigned for Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.

Sinatra lived a long, and not uncontroversial, life, dying at age 82. As all that would really be too long to go into, will stop here, with the World War Two story told.

Bobby soxers should be noted.

Bobby soxers have come to be erroneously associated with the 1950s, but in fact were a 1940s phenomenon.  They were teenage girls and women in their very early 20s who were an early example of the emerging youth culture of the United States.  Indeed, they were in some ways its real pioneers.  They were called "bobby soxers" as, at the time, they wore short "bobbed" socks with saddle oxfords.

Saddle oxfords are a dress shoe now, but they've always had the reputation of being a semi casual dress shoe.  At some point they became heavily associated with students and young people.  They were introduced as a mass manufactured shoe in the early 1900s by the Spaulding Company, with the first example introduced in 1906. That's the same company, we'd note, famous for basketballs, etc., which says something, as at first, it was an athletic shoe, not a dress shoe.

Probably that origin as a sporting shoe caused its popularity.  It crossed over pretty quickly to dress wear, anticipating a later trend we have seen the past few decades of basketballs hoes in that use.  

The shoe came on the scene just as there was a real expansion of women in sports, so it was ideally timed  It became hugely popular with cheerleading teams.  By the 1930s it was approaching near universal adoption by schools as mandatory footwear for girls academic uniforms, although it remained popular with men.  They began to become school uniform shoes for boys in the period as well.

The same period saw a shortening of skirts. The combination of the shorter skirts, saddle shoes, and short socks lead to Bobby Soxers being the name for young women affecting the style.  The style endured until the 1950s, when it faded, but the shoes themselves retained widespread academic popularity until the decline of clothing standards started to set in during the late 1960s.

While it may seem odd now, the style was somewhat risqué.

President Roosevelt spent the morning visiting with Naval personnel, including Admirals King and Leahy, and the Secretary of the Navy.  He was in New York City at the time, and had a doctor's visit in the afternoon.

The Red Army was generally gaining ground everywhere to the south of Stalingrad.

Footnotes:

*Not really related to this entry but for this photograph, Alida Valli was an Italian actress coined by Mussolini as "the most beautiful woman in the world."  She truly was lovely.

Born to nobility, her real name and title was Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg.  She was born in a part of Italy that is now in Croatia, and which had once been part of Austria Hungary.  She was of mixed heritage, but considered herself Italian.

The photo must have been taken post 1943 as she was active in Italy at this time.  Married three times, her first husband was an Italian fighter pilot who was killed in action at Tobruk.

She was popular in Western films throughout her career, which again says something about the times.  Unlike hugely popular Italian actresses of a certain appearance, Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale, Valli had a more normal figure and rose to popularity in the "dirty" Italy period when Italy was regarded as, and truly was, fairly backwards.

Wednesday November 2, 1921. Rise of the House of Saud

The Emirate of Jabal Shammar, whose territory would comprise at least 30% of modern Saudi Arabia at its height, surrendered to the British backed House of Saud and was incorporated into the Saudi kingdom, which was not yet referred to by that name.   The rise of the Rashidi state had resulted in the elimination of the Second Saudi State, which comprised over 40% of the current country.  It's defeat on this date in 1921 brought the Sauds very close to controlling the entire Arabian peninsula, although their borders did not yet include territories that are now within them.

Emir Abudull-azia muteb Al Rasheed who died in battle against the Saudis in 1906.

The story is complicated and long-running. The Rashidi Emirate was established in 1836 and had feuded with the Saud's from the onset, exiling them to Kuwait.  Constant strife between the ruling family and the Sauds was a permanent feature of its existence, and the emirate had begun to lose ground to the Sauds starting in 1902 as they fought to regain their territory.  The emirates position was both strengthened and imperiled by its decision to ally itself with the Turks, who were unpopular on the Arabian Peninsula, where as the British backed the Sauds for nearly inexplicable reasons. To make matters worse, the  House of Rashidi was incredibly unstable, with no established means of succession.

Following the sitting emir's death in battle in 1906, Mutail bin 'Abulazia succeeded is father but was assassinated by Sultan bin Hammud within a year. That figure then became emir but was unsuccessful in turning back the Saudis and was killed by his brothers in 1907.   Saʿūd bin Hammūd then became emir and lasted until 1910 when he was killed by relatives.  That lead to Saud bin Abdulaziz who ruled for ten years, from age ten until twenty, when he was assassinated by a cousin.  Only twenty at the time, he already had multiple wives.

Following his death,  ʿAbdullah bin Mutʿib ruled for a year as the 7th emir, surrendered to Ibn Saud on this date in 1921.  He, too, was only twenty years old at the time.

The story plays out violently, as we might suppose.  Upon the surrender the wife of one of the grandsons of the original emir, the grandson being Muhammad bin Talāl and his wife being Nura bin Sabhan married Prince Musa'id bin Abdulaziz Al Saud while  Talāl  was imprisoned.  The Prince was the twelth son of Ibn Saud.  The Prince and his wife became the parents of Prince Faisal bin Musa'id who murdered King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in 1975.  So in essence the murderer of King Faisal represented a union between the House of Saud and the Rasheeds.  The reasons for the Ameican educated Prince's actions have never been satisfactorily explained.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Demetrius Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Church. Fairfield, North Dakota

Churches of the West: St. Demetrius Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Church. ...:

Monday, August 14, 2017

St. Demetrius Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Church. Fairfield, North Dakota

This is St. Demetrius Ukrainian Catholic Church which is outside of Fairfield, North Dakota.  The church is over a century old and gives testament to the enduring Ukrainian presence in the prairie states and provinces of the West.

This is one of several Ukrainian Catholic churches in western North Dakota and its the first Ukrainian Catholic Church to be featured here (a prior entry on the topic of the Ukrainian Catholic Church referenced a biritual priest then in Lander Wyoming.  People with a casual familairity with the Catholic Church tend to believe that all Catholic Churches are "Roman" Catholic, but this is far from true.

Just as Catholic as "Roman" (Latin Rite) Catholic Churches, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, to give it its full name, is one of a collection of Eastern Rite Catholic Churches.  The Catholic Church features three major groupings of Rites based on this initial early transmission of the faith. These are the Latin, Antiochian, Alexandrian and Byzantine, with the Byzantine having derived from the Antiochean.  All still survive in spite of the rift created by the Great Schism which caused separate churches that are not in communion with Rome, typically called "Orthodox" churches, to also come into existence which also descend from all but the Latin Rite.  From these four groups come something on the order of twenty three Rites, of which the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is one.

The history of this particular Rite is not well known to me and it is difficult to fully know it without an in depth study.  This is part made confusing because it is one of the two major churches of the Ukraine, both of which use the Eastern Rite liturgical form, but only one of which is in communion with Rome.  The other major Ukrainian Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, is an Eastern Orthodox Church (usually called "the Greek Church" by native Ukrainians) which is regarded as a self governing church by the Russian Orthodox Church, but only by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Ukrainian Catholic Church has an ancient history dating back to the Christianization of the Ukraine itself.  Because of the Ukraine's close association with Russia there has always been some tension between its status and that of the Russian Orthodox Church and this was greatly increased during the life of the Soviet Union as the USSR suppressed and drove underground the Ukrainian Catholic Church while favoring the Russian Orthodox Church.  Today the Ukrainian Catholic Church is claimed to have the allegiance of a minority but growing percentage of the population of the Ukraine, at the expense of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but frankly telling what is what in regards to this history is difficult.

This church predates the establishment of the USSR, of course, and reflects a strong late 19th Century and early 20th Century Ukrainian migration to the prairie regions of North America.  Coming from a wheat growing region and stemming from a population of independent small farmers, Ukrainians were reestablishing that pattern of life on the North American prairie.  It's perhaps telling that so many Ukrainian Catholic Churches are present in this region, rather than Russian Orthodox, and that either says something about the populations that migrated or the allegiance of Ukrainians at that time.

The Ukrainians have proved to be enduring as a culture in North American in these regions, which these churches show.  In terms of their organizational structure, while fully Catholic (any Catholic is free to worship at any Catholic church, irrespective of Rite) they are subject to their own jurisdiction. Therefore, they are not part of the Diocese of Bismarck, but rather the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saint Nicholas of Chicago, which covers over half of the United States and all of the western United States.

Indeed, in recent years the Ukrainian nature of this Eastern Rite church, together with the Slavic and Eastern nature of the second major Eastern Rite Catholic Church in the United States, the Byzantine Catholic Church (sometimes called the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church) have increased.  In the late 19th Century the Church in the United States had a Latinization policy in an attempt to unite all Catholics in North America more fully under the belief that this would help incorporate Catholics into society more ably, but this has been reversed.  At the present time the Catholic Church has sought to preserve the Eastern Rites wherever possible and this has lead to a de-Latinization process and a revival of practices that never diminished in Europe.

Railhead: Former Chicago & Northwester Depot, Lander Wyoming...

Railhead: Former Chicago & Northwester Depot, Lander Wyoming...:

Former Chicago & Northwester Depot, Lander Wyoming.

Up until now, I've somehow managed to miss putting up a photograph of this former Chicago & Northwestern Depot in Lander, Wyoming, which now serves as the Lander Chamber of Commerce building.  That may be because, as these photos suggest, downtown Lander, in spite of Lander being a small town, is pretty crowded in some ways and I missed the depot early on, and had a hard time catching it in a photographic state later.

Indeed, I never really did catch it in an ideal state to be photographed.

Lander was the western most stop on the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad.  The line sometimes called itself the "Cowboy Line" and this lent itself to the slogan "where the rails end, the trails begin".  In 1973 the railroad abandoned the stretch of the line between Riverton and Lander, and since then of course it's ceased operation entirely.  The railroad, which like many railroads, was the product of mergers and acquisitions and was doing that right up to the late 1960s when its fortunes began to change.



In Wyoming its line ran astride the Burlington Northern's in many locations but it alone ran on to Lander.  Starting in the early 70s, it began to contract in Wyoming and then pulled out altogether.  The Union Pacific purchased its assets at some point, although its now the case that all of its old rail has been pulled.  Indeed, unless you know that the CNW had once run to Lander, you wouldn't know that Lander had once had rail service at all, let alone that it had it as far back as 1906.