A short thread just pondering some things in the news, or the zeitgeist, that are portrayed as "new".
1. A war between Russia and Ukraine?
This is a horrible event, to be sure, but Russia's been trying to shove itself on Ukraine since 1917, or probably well before.
Russia is really like a giant bully in its neighborhood, which is why this is important. It's not new. Russia grabbed Ukraine back after the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and then fought its guerrillas in the early 20s. It fought guerrillas again from 1943 into the 1940s. Ukraine wants to be an independent state. Russia doesn't like any of the neighboring countries to have that status.
2. Adult children living at home.
This is constantly portrayed as new, but it's the historical norm due to limited resources.
It really only began to change in the 1930s, at first due to economic desperation. That trend was amplified by World War Two, and the massive economic boom after the war really changed the situation.
A constructing economy has reversed it, as it has. . .
3. Delayed marriage
Marriage ages have traditionally been higher than they were in the1940s to 1970s time frame. The reason is noted above.
The United States Supreme Court held that a Federal Minimum Wage was unconstitutional, ruling to that effect in Adkins v. Children's Hospital.
The holding was, rather obviously, later overruled.
On the topic, it's worth noting that generally wages, even the lowest paid wages, tend to be well above minimum wage. The minimum wage is near and dear to the hearts of political liberals, but it basically ceased to function as a floor years ago.
The Tribune had some notable headlines:
Harvard University passed a resolution that whites and blacks (all men) could not be compelled to live or eat together, but that no man could be excluded by reason of color
Los Angeles won its bid to host the 1932 Olympics, a bid made easy by the fact that it was the only city to put in for it.
Smith was a musical giant in her day, but was buried in an unmarked grave when she died due to injuries from an automobile accident in 1937. In 1970s ,that was addressed and a new tombstone was erected.
The inner chamber of the Tomb of Tutankhamun was opened by Howard Carter's archeological party.
The Conference of Ambassadors of the Allied Powers, which did not include the US, as the US had gone into international hiding on the basis that ignoring the world makes you safe from it, approved the transfer of Memel to Lithuania. We dealt with this previously and the nature of this oddly disputed small Baltic territory.
Italy ratified the Washington Naval Treaty and the Treaty of Santa Margherita, the latter of which settled a territorial dispute with Yugoslavia,
Reich claims that Joe Biden has restored the economic paradigm that governed from 1932 until the Reagan Administration. He's certainly correct that that Democratic Capitalism, or Market Democracy as it is sometimes called, governed American economic thinking in that period, and he's also correct that Reagan attacked it upon coming into office.
And he's also correct that Milton Friedman, when he was head of the Fed, aggressively attacked inflation. Indeed, Friedman was absolutely correct to have done so, and I wouldn't hold that Reagan's economic policies were wrong at the time.
Of note, some will site to St. Pope John Paul II the Great's encyclical Centesiumus Annus, issued in 1991, as support for a sort of Democratic Capitalism.
Reich's argument, while I'm not wholly convinced by any means, is an interesting one. In essence he argues that the economic system of 1932 to 1980 was the correct one, and the one we went to since that time is unjust.
Lex Anteinternet: A normal winter.: A normal winter. That's exactly what we're having. The weather here has been normal. And in Central Wyoming, that means multiple be..
After I posted the item above, it occurred to me that part of the complaining people do about winter is because they've so been able to defeat natural conditions in their daily lives and then, although only rarely, nature comes along and reminds you it's dominant for the most part. So far, our means of defeating it only do so in fairly average conditions.
Now, these are fairly average conditions, but people aren't used to them. And there are some things you can't get around. Six foot drifts on the Interstate highway, for example, are one such thing.
Anyhow, this caused me to recall that there was a time when people just basically endured these things. It's always easy to say that, but it's true.
Thinking back to when I was a teenager in high school, and fewer people lived on the mountain, it was the case that the county used to annually simply inform people that the mountain road was not its first priority. So if you lived up there, they'd get around to the road after they'd cleared every other country road. It was last. If you didn't like it, don't live there, was the message. People still complained, but not as much, and they didn't receive much sympathy either.
Ranchers, much like now, really didn't expect to get plowed out at all. During the famous Blizzard of 1949 there were instances in which aircraft were ultimately flown over some ranches to see if the occupants of them were in trouble. They didn't have phones or their lines were down. Having known some of the ranchers who experienced that when I was young, their reaction was surprise. They didn't expect anyone to send out an airplane, and they didn't figure they'd be regarded as imperiled for the most part. There were excepts that year, I should note, which resulted in the Wyoming Air National Guard dropping hay for cattle.
This blog started off with the pre World War One era. What about these environs, then?
Cars already existed, and the predominant car of the era, the Model T, would actually have been a fairly good car for the conditions. It has high clearance, thin wheels, low gearing, and it was fairly heavy for its size. Therefore, it was a good car, to some degree, for snow.
It wasn't a four-wheel drive, of course, and the snow we've been getting has been phenomenal.
Snow removal wasn't a thing anywhere before Milwaukee started doing it in 1862. For the most part, most municipalities didn't do it, however, until the automobile era. Quite a bit of plowing originally was done with draft horses, and this continued on until after World War Two to some extent. When streets started to be plowed I don't know, and it's a little difficult to tell, without going through piles of old newspapers to find out. The oldest example I could find was a municipal truck plowing snow in Washington, D.C. in 1916, which is frankly earlier than I would have guessed.
You don't have to have paved roads to have roads that are plowed, but it helps. In 1916, Washington had paved streets. Photographs of Casper show it having maintained dirt roads in the early 1920s. I'm sure that by the 1930s, they were mostly paved. What I don't know is when the city started plowing the snow. A photograph that's online from the Wyoming State Archives shows the Wyoming Highway Department's first snow plow, when it was purchased, which has a date of 1923, just one hundred years ago coincidentally enough. It's probably safe to assume the State didn't plow any highways prior to that. Another photo from the same source shows the local high school's snowplow, which is mounted to a tractor, and has a date of 1930. All in all, plowing the streets and highways must have come on during the 20s and 30s.
Older newspapers also show that in the 20s, the State simply closed more highways than it does now. Some highways are still closed for winter, but at least in the early 1920s the State simply closed, for example, the highway between Shoshone and Thermopolis. Of course, you could, at that time, still make that trip by train.
That brings up this, which we've addressed before. Prior to World War Two, 4x4 vehicles were a real rarity and tended to be confined to industrial operations or logging. Ranchers didn't have 4x4 vehicles, and regular people certainly did not. For that matter, early 4x4s were a real slow moving off-road affair, and they wouldn't have been very useful for most people. It was the U.S. Army that really started the development of the road capable all wheel drive vehicle and it took World War Two to really make them common. Even after the war, it took a long while before very many town residents owned a 4x4.
This meant that once winter came, winter travel in and out of towns became much more limited. Sure, in the 20s, when the weather improved, you could venture out, and people no doubt did. But busting drifts and the like became a post-war thing, and wouldn't have really become common until the 1960s for town residents. Ranchers, for that matter, kept more employees at the time and some of them were stationed in the remoter areas of larger ranches so that they could take care of necessary chores during the winter. In some instances, that meant that cowhands were stationed in remote cabins all winter long, and were checked on rarely, if at all. And they spent the winter there without television or the internet, or for that matter, electricity.
Of course, the other thing this meant is that people whose livelihoods were in town, lived in town. People didn't live on small acreages outside of town, for the most part, if they had jobs in town. If you needed to be in the office, you needed to be within a reasonable distance, which often meant walking distance, of the office. For that matter, people with industrial employment tended to live near it.
The point of all of this, other than things were different then? Well, they were different then.
They were different, for that matter into the 1980s.
And maybe folks need to have a little patience now.
For the first time in history, a National Hockey League match concluded with no penalties having been imposed. The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Hamilton Tigers, 5 to 4.
Hockey, unlike football, is not boring.
Italy required public school students to start using the extended arm fascist salute, claimed to have been derived from Rome, but with little historical support for the proposition.
The general gesture was in vogue at the time, having been popularized in the United States as the Bellamy Salute. It's co-opting by fascism, forever associated it with fascist movements.
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr., occupying the position that his father had leading up to the Spanish American War, and his cousin had during World War One, addressed the midyear graduating class of the Peter Force School, a school he had attended during his father's occupancy of the office. The class planted a Lombardy Poplar in memory of Quentin Roosevelt, aviator, who had died in action in World War One.
The school had been founded in 1879 and was named for a former Washington, D.C. mayor. Many children of important personages attended the school, including the late Quentin Roosevelt and Charles Taft, the son of President Taft.
The school would not have a much longer run. It was abandoned in 1939 and demolished in 1962 in order to make way for the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.
Vice Pres. Coolidge and House Speaker Gillett exercising in House gym. Jan. 31, 1923
This impressive art deco courthouse was built in 1937 and serves Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. Apparently it was loosely inspired by Mayan temples, which is unusual.
The Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro broadcast on German radio that all men from 16 to 65 years of age and all women from 17 to 45 years of age were to be conscripted for labor.
Adolf Hitler had been Chancellor for nine years and 364 days. 1
The Battle of Rennell Island saw the Japanese commit significant air assets against the U.S. Navy in an effort to protect the Japanese withdrawal from Guadalcanal. The heavy cruiser USS Chicago was sunk in the action.
The Battle of Wau also began on New Guinea where the Japanese outflanked the Allies to land at Lae and advance on the Australian base at Wau.
Attila Peschauer, Hungarian Olympic fencer and gold medalist in 1928 and 1932, is commonly thought to have died in the Davidovka concentration camp in Ukraine where Hungarian Jews had been deported by Nazi Germany, an act which required cooperation of Hungary.
It's commonly misunderstood by those in the West that all the victims of the Holocaust were gassed in camps, which is far from true, and in the few camps whose names are in common circulation in the West. In reality, bullets and starvation were the most common means of death and most of the killing took place in the Poland, Ukraine and Belorussia in those areas where they were occupied by the Germans.
While, as noted, it's been commonly thought that Peschauer died in a concentration camp, and may even have been ordered into execution by a fellow Hungarian serving the Germans, some recent information is that he actually died in a Soviet POW camp. The irony here would be that Hungary was a German ally during World War Two. This might actually be more likely as while Hungary was repressive towards its Jewish citizens, it didn't deport those who actually held Hungarian citizenship, that being done to Jews who lived in areas that Hungary took in after it invaded the Soviet Union.
By this point in the war, it should be noted, countries like the Kingdom of Hungary should have been seriously reconsidering their role in the war as, at least to an astute advisor, there was no way for them to come out on the winning side. Of course, they were also captive to their earlier decision to side with the Germans.
The Luftwaffe bombed the Sandhurst Road School in a daytime raid of the London suburb of Catford, killing 41 school children. By this point in the war, Luftwaffe raids over the UK were increasingly rare. Six teachers were also killed. Eleven of the German aircraft were downed by Typhoons.
The Red Army continued to advance, with the New York Daily Post noting that the Germans were now back on their 1941 line as a result. The British took Homs and Tarhuna in Libya. The Germans advanced in Tunisia. Chile broke diplomatic relations off with Germany, Italy and Japan.
Most of us know the song, House of the Rising Sun. Probably most people who think of it, when they do, think of the version by Eric Burdon and the Animals.
It's a great song.
Anything ever seem a little off about it, however?
The song is about a house of prostitution, which most people familiar with the song are aware of. As Burdon sings it, the lyrics are:
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one
My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new blue jeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans
Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's all drunk
Oh mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun
Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain
Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one
Now, it is a great song. And I like this version of it, which was released in 1964.
The interesting thing, however, is that song from a male point of view, which it is, it's sort of way ahead of its time. Not that it isn't relevant, it's just a point of view that I can't think of any other song from the mid to late 20th Century expressing that view. Basically, the protagonist is confessing that he's a sex addict and addicted to frequenting the prostitutes of The House Of The Rising Sun.
The song wasn't written by Eric Burdon, or any of his band. They were covering a song, which many are unaware of, that had already had a successful recording run when sung by Woodie Guthrie and Hudey Ledbetter (Leadbelly). Indeed, I thought Leadbelly had written the wrong, but I was in error on that.
The Guthrie version, from 1941, has the following lyrics:
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new bluejeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans
Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk
Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House Of The Rising Sun
Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain
Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
Identical. What about Leadbelly? Well, he recorded it twice, first in 1944, which had these lyrics:
There is a house in New Orleans
You call the Rising Sun
It's been the ruin of many a poor soul
And me, oh God, I'm one
If I'd listened to what mama said
I'd be at home today
Being so young and foolish, poor girl
I let a gambler lead me astray
My mother she's a tailor
Sews those new blue jeans
My sweetheart, he's a drunkard, Lord God
He drinks down in New Orleans
He fills his glasses to the brim
Passes them around
The only pleasure that he gets out of life
Is a hoboin' from town to town
The only thing a drunkard needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk
The only time that he's half satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk
Go and tell my baby sister
Never do like I have done
Shun that house down in New Orleans
That they call that Rising Sun.
It's one foot on the platform,
One foot on the train.
I'm going back down to New Orleans
To wear my ball and my chain
My life is almost over
My race is almost run
Going back down to New Orleans
To that house of the Rising Sun
Oh, now wait a moment, that's a lot different. In this version, which is earlier, the protagonist, while sung through Leadbelly's male voice, is a girl entrapped in prostitution. Frankly, the song makes a lot more sense all the way around.
Leadbelly's 1947 version of The House of the Rising Sun.
In the second recording, which is the one people normally here, Leadbelly had followed Guthrie's lead, and the protagonist was male.
The first one presents a really grim warning. The girl who is the subject of the song has obviously left the house, and now is returning? Why? Well, contrary to the way prostitution is portrayed in film, her reputation would have been completely ruined and by this point that probably would have been her only option to try to make enough money to stay alive. Not only that, she's noting that she's expecting an early death.
More on that in a moment.
Leadbelly, it should be noted, didn't get around to recording until very near the end of his life. He died in 1949, and was first recorded in 1933. He was born in 1888 and was preforming professionally by 1903. Indeed, at first he preformed in Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, its red-light district, with his career interrupted by stints in jail, which are referenced in some of his most famous songs. He was in fact discovered, and truly was a great musical talent, by Alan Lomax while serving a prison stint.
Leadbelly preformed so early that some have speculated to what degree he was an indeterminable influence on the blues. He definitely was, but he also was unique in that he played a twelve-string guitar, very unusual for bluesmen, and his songs were always in the blues format but in sometimes in a near blues, ten bar, format. Indeed, some of those were converted to eight bar blues formats by later recording artists, probably basically by accident.
Anyhow, Leadbelly's songs often had a really old origin. This seems to be one. And the fact that the first version he recorded was sung from a female point of view is telling. Taht's probably how he learned it.
How early is that version?
Well, the song first makes its appearance by reference in 1905. By that time, it was being sung by miners in Appalachia, which means that one of the references doesn't quite fit unless the song had really travelled in the South. I.e., a song about somebody in New Orleans is out of regional context. The first printed version of the lyrics appear in 1925, with this:
There is a house in New Orleans,
it's called the Rising Sun
It's been the ruin of many poor girl
Great God, and I for one.
Just like Leadbelly had it.
The first recorded version came in 1933, later than I would have supposed, but still pretty early in the recording industry. It was by Applachain artist Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster. Ashley claimed to have learned it from his grandfather, which pushes the song back to the mid 19th Century. Ashley's version has a male protagonist:
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
Where many poor boys to destruction has gone
And me, oh God, are one.
Note, this one has a blunter warning than any others with a male protagonist. The male vocalist hasn't gone to "ruin", but to "destruction".
Hmmmm. . . . so was it a male or female song?
My guess is that it was originally a female one, but because of its compelling popularity, it's been switched back and forth from its near onset.
So, was there a House of the Rising Sun that induced poor girls into lives, and probably shortened ones, of prostitution?
Nobody really knows for sure, but applying Yeoman's Eighth Law of History, as we should, would suggest it's likely. That law, as you'll recall, stated the following:
While that eight law mostly referred to old myths, it applies to more recent ones as well, as the basic principle is the same. The song clearly came out of Louisiana, and it traveled the South pretty extensively while persistently retaining its references to a House of the Rising Sun. There likely was such a place in Louisiana, or at the chances that there was are pretty good.
Indeed, a whole series of theories hold that it was on Conti Street in the French Quarter or on Ursulines Street or on St. Louis Street. In 2016 however, the New Orleans Times Picayune ran an article about an advertisement they'd found in which a hotelier was advertising the Mechanics Hotel, just outside of town, and with obviously pretty good rooming accommodations, which was noted to have formerly been "the old establishment of the Rising Sun".
Hmmm. . . .
The owners of the Mechanics Hotel wanted his potential guests to note that the hotel had a variety of rooms and offered a variety of services and accommodations, none of which included prostitution. The prior role of the Rising Sun wasn't mentioned, just that the Mechanics Hotel was where it formerly was, or rather that it was being rebranded. Perhaps it was also being repurposed. If so, that advertisement would have served two purposes, one being "don't stay away if you would have avoided the old Rising Sun", and the second being "don't come around if you are expecting the old services of the Rising Sun".
That advertisement, by the way, ran in 1828, which would mean that the song would have to have dated back to at least that approximate time.
So, what's the moral of the song? It clearly has one.
The basic warning is against living a life of depravity, that's clear enough. More than that, it was a direct warning about living a life of sexual depravity. Further, it warns the audience that the vocalist can't get out of it, now that the protagonist is in it, even though it would see, that the protagonist has tried. In the male variant sung by Guthrie, and in the female variant sung by Leadbelly, the protagonist informs the audience that the subject is at a railroad station with one foot on the platform, and one on the train, and is going back to New Orleans "to wear that ball and train". That tells us that the male protagonist is going back to New Orleans where he intends, seemingly against his will, to resume visiting the House of the Rising Sun. In the female protagonist version, she's going back to be a prostitute.
The female version is even grimmer. In that version, not only does the lyrics indicate that the subject is a slave to the situation, she's a different sort. Her slavery, in essence, is implied to be economic. Her reputation is ruined and she can't do anything else at this point. Moreover, she knows that she's going to die young, either at the hands of one of her clients, or more likely through disease.
Which takes us to this. That in fact was then and is now the thing that kills prostitutes early. It's odd how in Western movies like Lonesome Dove or Open Range this is ignored. Prostitutes were nearly guaranteed to get a venereal disease at the time, and it was probably going to kill them. Regular clients were likely to get a "social disease" as well, and the number of men who came down with one even where they were not regular customers, but who had made a visit a few, or perhaps even one, times were likely to as well.
Indeed, it wasn't really until after World War Two that it was the case that VD could really be effectively treated. . Nearly all of the treatments before then were ineffective to varying degrees. But that's not the last of it. Girls who fell into prostitution didn't simply think it an economic option, but were often victims of what was termed "white slavery". Kidnapped and drugged, or kept against their will in some fashion, sometimes by force, sometimes by addition. This is also still the case.
It's worth noting, in addition, that modern pornography has its origin in prostitution and indeed the word stems from it. "Graphy" indicates depiction, and pornea is Greek for of or pertaining to prostitutes. Very early pornography, going back to the first really easy to use cameras, came from photographing prostitutes to expand on their marketability. I.e., the working girls were basically captives of their procurer, and those people expanded their profits, not the girls profits, by photographing and selling their images, which had the added impact of being a species of advertising. This aspect of pornography was very heavy in the industry up until the mid 20th Century, when some of the subjects limited themselves to selling their own images in some fashion, but it's apparently returned in spades since the Internet, with many, apparently, of the images around now being once again of young girls trapped most likely by drug addiction.
The whole thing is pretty bad, suffice it to say.
Okay, we went down sort of a rabbit hole here, and for an odd reason. The trip to House of the Rising Sun started off as it refers to the mother of the subject sewing his blue jeans. We'll explain that in the other thread, but we would note that the song has one final aspect. It's a warning about the decay of a family.
That meant a lot of parties. Parties occurring during Prohibition. A fair number of them were dry, but a fair number were not.
French Prime Minister Raymond Poincare rejected German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno's proposal for a non-aggression pact with Germany, which would have replaced French troops in the Rhineland with an international disinterested force.
Frankly, were I Poincare, I would have rejected it also. What international force, following the Great War, would have even qualified as disinterested?
We mentioned Cuno here the other day, he was an economist. Of some interest, he was born in 1876 and would die in 1933. Poincare was born in 1860, and would outlive him, dying in 1934.
The Nine Power Treaty went into effect. We've run the text of the treaty, signed by the U.S. France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and China previously.
United States Supreme Court Justice Mahlon Pitney retired following his having suffered a stroke.
Justice Pitney.
Pitney was conservative, but also a libertarian, and has received praise in the modern era for being consistently libertarian. He hailed from New Jersey, where his family had been located since colonial times, and only served for ten years before his stroke idled him. He died in 1924 at age 66.
The Casper Daily Tribune had a cartoon on the cover regarding the Hays of the Hays Production Code, which we just discussed.
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.
Today in World War II History—December 14, 1942: US and Australian troops occupy Buna, New Guinea. On sub USS Grayback in the Bismarck Islands, an appendectomy is performed by a pharmacist's mate.
Reports Sarah Sundin.
Ethiopia declared war on Germany, Italy and Japan.
The country had lost a bitter war against the Italians prior to World War Two, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, but then was liberated by the British Army in 1941, after which the remaining Italian forces launched a forgotten guerilla war that continued on into 1943, ending with the Italian surrender to the Allies.
Ethiopian head of state, Emperor Haile Selassie I at Jubilee Palace in 1942.
Royal Navy cruiser Argonaut was torpedoed and heavily damaged in the Mediterranean by Italian submarine Mocenigo.
Unlike the entry for 1942, I can't give any personal recollections for my parents, or speculations on what they did, as they weren't born yet.
President Harding had earlier made a proclamation in advance of and in recognition of the day.
THANKSGIVING - 1922
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - A PROCLAMATION
In the beginnings of our country the custom was established by the devout fathers of observing
annually a day of Thanksgiving for the bounties and protection which Divine Providence had
extended throughout the year. It has come to be perhaps the most characteristic of our national
observances, and as the season approaches for its annual recurrence, it is fitting formally to direct
attention to this ancient institution of our people and to call upon them again to unite in its
appropriate celebration.
The year which now approaches its end has been marked, in the experience of our nation, by a
complexity of trials and of triumphs, of difficulties and of achievements, which we must regard as
our inevitable portion in such an epoch as that through which all mankind is moving. As we survey
the experience of the passing twelve-month we shall find that our estate presents very much to
justify a nationwide and most sincere testimony of gratitude for the bounty which has been
bestowed upon us. Though we have lived in the shadow of the hard consequences of great
conflict, our country has been at peace and has been able to contribute toward the maintenance
and perpetuation of peace in the world. We have seen the race of mankind make gratifying
progress on the way to permanent peace, toward order and restored confidence in its high destiny.
For the Divine guidance which has enabled us, in growing fraternity with other peoples, to attain so
much of progress; for the bounteous yield which has come to us from the resources of our soil and
our industry, we owe our tribute of gratitude, and with it our acknowledgment of the duty and
obligation to our own people and to the unfortunate, the suffering, the distracted of other lands. Let
us in all humility acknowledge how great is our debt to the Providence which has generously dealt
with us, and give devout assurance of unselfish purpose to play a helpful and ennobling part in
human advancement. It is much to be desired that in rendering homage for the blessings which
have come to us, we should earnestly testify our continued and increasing aim to make our own
great fortune a means of helping and serving, as best we can, the cause of all humanity.
Now, therefore, I, Warren G. Harding, President of the United States of America, do designate
Thursday, the thirtieth day of November, as a day of Thanksgiving, supplication and devotion. I
recommend that the people gather at their family altars and in their houses of worship to render
thanks to God for the bounties they have enjoyed and to petition that these may be continued in
the year before us.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be
affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this second day of November, in the year of our Lord, one
thousand nine hundred and twenty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America
the one hundred and forty-seventh.
Liam Lynch, the Chief of Staff for the Irish Republican Army, issued orders to the IRA authorizing the assassination of Irish Free State officials in retaliation for the execution of those caught with handguns contrary to an Irish emergency law earlier in the week. The order further provided:
All members of the Provisional 'Parliament' who were present and voted for the Murder Bill will be shot at sight. Houses of members... who are known to support Murder Bill will be destroyed. Free State army officers who approve of Murder Bill will be shot at sight; also all ex-British army officers and men who joined the Free State army since 6 December 1921.
Lynch was shot by Free State troops himself on December 6, 1923.
On the same day, oddly enough, the British announced the withdrawal of its remaining troops from Ireland, starting on December 12 and to be completed by January 5. The UK also closed its post offices in China, something that had been operating for fifty years.
A riot over rationing in Mexico resulted in the deaths of seventeen people in clashes with police in Mexico City.
Aisin-Gioro Puyi (溥儀) age 17, the former Emperor of China, and future Emperor of collaborationist Manchucko, married Gobulo Wanrong (郭布羅·婉容), age 16, in an elaborate ceremony in the Forbidden City.
Wanrong.
In spite of the termination of the monarchy, some of its traditions were still strong, and Puyi had been ordered to marry by the Dowager Empress. Wanrong was chosen from a collection of photographs he was given and was in fact his second choice after being informed that his first choice was suitable only to be a concubine. A marriage to the first choice, Erdet Wenxiu 額爾德特·文繡, was performed later that night in an example of hopeless oddity.
Wenxiu.
The Chinese royal family was quite frankly extraordinarily weird in many ways by this time, and its maintenance after its fall preserved its oddities. The marriages may not have been consummated, but if they were they were certainly not happy in numerous ways. Puyi himself noted that they were strained as the two women were effectively slaves, rather than real spouses. There is some fairly serious speculation that Puyi was homosexual, in spite of having at least one other concubine.
Wanrong smoking a cigarette in the 1930s.
Wanrong lived a miserable life in spite of being the claimant to the title of Empress. As Empress of Manchuko she entered into affairs and became pregnant by a court chauffeur. The baby was murdered after birth. She would have divorced Puyi, but the Japanese precluded it. She was taken prisoner towards the end of the Second World War by the Red Chinese. She died in their captivity at age 39 in June, 1945.
Not too surprisingly, Wenxiu was also unhappy in her role as a second class wife and had a troubled relationship with Wanrong and Piyu. She divorced him in 1931 and latter married Major Liu Zhendong in 1947. He later became a car dealership and then the two of them lived in poverty following the Red Chinese victory in the Chinese Civil War. She died in 1953.
Yuling.
As if this isn't odd enough, and in spite of the questions this raises, Puyi would take two more consorts over time, Tatara Yuling 他他拉·玉齡 and Li Yuqin. Puyi grew to be very fond of Yuling, who died undergoing medical treatment in 1942 at age 22. There are some suspicions regarding her death as her physician was Japanese and she was known to harbor negative thoughts about the Japanese. Puyi kept a picture of her with him until his death. Yuling was half Korean.
Yuquin married Puyi in 1943 and was with Empress Wanrong when she attempted to flee at teh endo fthe Second World War. She was released from capitivy in 1946 and became a textile factory employee and a library employee. She sought a divorce from Puyi in 1955 but oddly was ordered to reconcile with him by the Red Chinese government. They none the less divorced in 1958 and she latter married technician Huang Yugeng (黃毓庚). She died in 2001 in Changchun.
Puyi lived until 1967, dying in Red China. The Soviets saved his life by refusing to extradite him to the Republic of China, which viewed him as a traitor.
President Harding nominated Democrat Pierce Butler to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace William R. Day. Nominating a Democrat assured Harding that he could get his nomination past the then Democratic U.S. Senate.
Gee, it's almost like politics played a role in Supreme Court nominations back then. . .
While he was a Democrat, he was also a staunch conservative, this being a day when conservatives still existed in the Democratic Party. He was one of the justices that proved to be trouble for Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.
Butler was also a devout Catholic. Today he's partially remembered for issuing the only dissenting opinion in Buck v. Bell, a case which permitted compulsory sterilization of the intellectually disabled and which is regarded now as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Bell's dissent, was, interestingly, without a dissenting opinion, but it was a dissent. Oliver Wendell Holmes attributed his dissent to his Catholicism.
Butler also dissented from Olmstead v. United States, which upheld Federal wiretapping.
He died at age 73 in 1939.
Võ Văn Kiệt, a North Vietnamese Communist figure who later played a prominent role in opening the Vietnamese economy back up, and who served as the Prime Minister of the country in the 1990s, was born.
A mine explosion in Dolomite, Alabama killed 90 people.
Wilhelm Cuno.
Businessman Wilhelm Cuno was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Friedrich Ebert. It was an appointment, not an elective, commission.
An independent politician, Cuno would serve in the role for less than a year and then retire from politics. He'd become an economic advisor to Hitler in 1932, which he didn't do long either, given his death in 1933.
The Greek Army rebelled in the 11 September 1922 Revolution (Επανάσταση της 11ης Σεπτεμβρίου 1922) so named as Greece remained on the Julian calendar at the time.
This confusing event followed in the wake of public upset at the loss of the Greek effort in Anatolia, proving if nothing else that defeated armies are dangerous to their own governments, if to nobody else.
The rebellion led to the abdication of the king, who was on his second reign, having suffered from military discontent during World War One as well. He'd opposed entering the war. The Greek monarchy would be restored a few days later and King George II would take over, who would also have two reigns, one ending in 1924, and a second running from 1935 to 1947.
Turkey stated a demand for East Thrace, which had been ceded to Greece in 1920.
East Thrace.
This meant that Turkey was declaring that it wanted to reclaim recently lost territory, lost to Greece, across the Bosporus. This would of course give it completely control of the straits, and hence entry into the Black Sea.
Greeks had comprised about 38% of the population there before the Greco Turkish War, and Bulgarians about 4.3%. Bulgarians had been subject to a pre-war set of expulsions and violence due to the Balkan Wars that foreshadowed World War One which, at the same time, increased the Muslim population as Muslims fled into the area for refuge due to Ottoman lands being lost elsewhere. Greeks would now be subject to the coming population exchange between Turkey and Greece, which also impacted the remaining Bulgarians. In 1934 the Jewish population was expelled in the Thrace Pogroms.
Today, 15% of the Turkish population lives in the region.
Dealing with speed of a different type, motorcycle racer Billy Denham was photographed at a motorcycle race.
Denham is wearing elements of the wool U.S. Army uniform of the period, to at least the extent that he's wearing a wool service shirt. Note also that he's wearing a tie, something you wouldn't see a motorcycle racer wear now, and for good reason.
_underway_off_New_York_City_on_31_May_1934_(NH_715).jpg)
.jpeg)
