What? No scenes of wild December 31, 1918 New Years Celebrations. And none for 1968 either. And New Year's Eve 2018-2019.

 Yup, it's December 31 all right.

Nope, couldn't find any.

And I was surprised.

Cameras were obviously in fairly common circulation by then, although frankly the defeated Germans were the masters of snap shots as they already had a lot of personally owned cameras, whereas that would have been unusual for soldiers from other countries. Still, press photographers were common already, as were military photographers and photographers from organizations, such as  the Red Cross.  

I'm sure somebody took photos, but I didn't find anything for this New Years Eve.

I'm sure celebrations were held too, but I didn't find any record of them.  Indeed, outside of one of the Casper newspapers, even the papers didn't really note it.  The Saturday Evening Post did run a Leyendecker illustration for the New Year on its issue from the last week of December that was New Year's themed, but oddly enough I couldn't find a copy of the cover either.

Anyhow, I'm sure they occurred, and I'm sure relief over the end of the war featured in a lot of those celebrations in the U.S. and the Allied nations.  

Of course in a lot of the U.S. that celebration would have been dry, or if not dry, it would have featured the anticipated last of the suds.  Prohibition was coming in strong and it had the force of public sentiment behind it.  Indeed, in the same Casper paper I noted the first of the counter waive on that movement appeared with a notation that Tennessee was already becoming the center of bootlegging, and openly so.  Anyhow, in a lot of homes the celebrations may already have been dry, in contrast to the way New Years has become, and for many establishments in many states it would have to have been.  

It wouldn't have had to have been in Wyoming, but the press was pretty steady in its drumbeat to bring Prohibition on, so the seeming tide of history seemed pretty clear.

But I'm sure a lot of people gathered and celebrated at homes, or in bars and restaurants that evening.  Lots of Americans, over one million, were still overseas, and they likely celebrated in barracks rooms, with those on occupation duty in Germany probably restricted to post, I'll bet.

Of course, some took note of the changing of year from posts in Russia, where I'll bet that change, which would probably not have been observed by locals at all, most still acclimated to the Old Calendar, was probably a little somber.  Troops stationed near British troops, as some were, I suspect celebrated a bit more.  Those in the Navy no doubt celebrated however that's done in the Navy, which I'm not familiar with but as the Navy is long on tradition, not doubt something occurred.

Of course, if you were a German, except perhaps, ironically, if you were in the Occupied Zone, this was a pretty bad New Years, and not just because your army had been defeated in a four year long war that killed huge numbers of your countrymen. The country was in revolution and falling apart, at war with itself and facing a rebellion in Posen.  It was bad.  Your trip to Mass, if you were in southern Germany or western Germany, was probably pretty somber.

Which it also would have been in you were anywhere in what became Poland or any of the Baltic States, all of which were aflame.  And while this was New Years in Russia, probably few observed it both because the peasantry, which most Russians were, were still on the Old Calendar for observances but also because a massive civil war was raging in the country.

And so ended 1918.  But it's reached continued on. Even until now.

I didn't bother to look to hard for anything from 1968, for which I've been running some dates.  I'm not going to do a  continual1969 retrospective.  1968 was run specifically as it was such a pivitol year in history but I'm finding myself no more informed on that than I was before I started doing that, and my inquiries here and there as to why it turned out to be remain unanswered.  It was, with turmoil in the United States, France, Germany and elsewhere.  Something was going on, but what?  I was around for the 1968 to 1969 New Year but don't recall it, I think, and if I do its from a child's prospective.  Had I been older in 1968, I think I would have been glad that year was over but dreading 1969.

Which is sort of how I feel about this New Years.

It's not like 2018 has been a super bad year for me by any means whatover. Quite the contrary by most measures.  But it has been stressful on a personal level and it featured near its end the terminus on something that I had long hoped would have worked out which did not and the fixation of something to the contrary thats has a real element of bitterness about it.  I'll continue to deal with that in early 2019 until I become fully used to it (the most likely thing), accept it (ditto), or become just very bitterly disgruntled about it.   

And politically the past three years or so  have been about all I can take on the nation's politics, which just seem to get wackier and wacker, and which have spilled over a bit to the local.  There's really serious things to be done that haven't been done.  Maybe 2019 will surprise me and people will start to get to work on them, but right now a person predicting that would have to be doing it based on sheer unsupported optimism.

Oh well.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

Chorus.-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o'kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
Sin' auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.

And there's a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

Apollo 8 - Book Of Genesis Reading (December 24, 1968)

Apollo 8: Live from the Moon - December 24, 1968

Today In Wyoming's History: November 17, 1968. A date which lives in television infamy.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 17:

1968     NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the final minutes of a game to air a TV special, "Heidi," on schedule.

November 5, 1968. Election returns.

1.  From our companion blog, Today In Wyoming's History for November 5:

November 5

1968  Richard M. Nixon elected President of the United States.

Wyoming voted for Nixon, as it has for every Republican Presidential candidate after Lyndon Johnson.

1968  Republican John Wold elected as Congressman from Wyoming.  The Casper based oilman served one term as he gave up this seat to run unsuccessfully against incumbent Senator Gale McGee.

2. Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn became the first African American woman elected to Congress, running on a Democratic ticket and defeating the heavily favored Liberal Party (but backed by the Republicans) candidate James L. Farmer, Jr.  In 1972 she ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination.

3.  Luis A. Ferre was elected Governor of Puerto Rico on a plat from seeking statehood.

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: Our Lady of Light (Loretto) Chapel, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Churches of the West: Our Lady of Light (Loretto) Chapel, Santa Fe, New Mexico 

These photographs depict the Our Lady of Light (Loretto) Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Built from 1873 to 1878 for the Sisters of Loretto, who ran a school nearby, the chapel is famous for its spiral staircase, which has perplexed observers for decades. The staircase lacks a visible means of support, was built with only hammer and saw, and features only wooden nails.  The builder of the staircase is unknown, and left before being able to be paid.  Some claim the staircase as miraculous.  

The chapel was deconsecrated in 1971, following the closure of the school in 1968.  Today it is privately owned and features a museum and is used for a wedding chapel.

This chapel was built basically next door to the  Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, and was built while the cathedral was under construction.

November 1, 1968: Operation Rolling Thunder ceases, the death of a Greek democrat, the alphabet at the movies.

1.  Aerial bombardment of North Vietnam by the United States was stopped at 21:00.   Also ceased was naval and ground bombardment into North Vietnamese territory.

Naval air strike in North Vietnam.  Note downed bridge.

2.  The Motion Picture Association of America's moving rating system, which at that time provided letter ratings of G, M, R or X, went into effect.

3.  Former Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou, recently arrested from house arrest which was imposed upon him following a 1967 military coup, died following surgery for a perforated ulcer.  He had been Prime Minister of Greece three times, including during part of World War Two (in exile) and had been an important Greek political figure dating back to World War One, where he was in the pro Allied, anti Monarchy, camp.

October 31, 1968 Peace talks, bombing halts, UFOs, and elections.

1.  Lyndon Johnson announced that actions over North Vietnam would cease the following day, citing progress in the Paris Peace talks.  Air operations had been going on over North Vietnam since 1965.

 F-105s bombing and being lead by a B-66.

2.  The University of Colorado's UFO Project issued a report that UFO's were bumpkis and that further pondering them was a waste of time.  It's conclusion that "Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby." was guaranteed not to be accepted by those who held contrary opinions in spite of the evidence.

3.  The Harris Poll revealed that Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey was within 3% points of Nixon's 40% as the country headed to the polls.  George Wallace was commanding 16% and 7% hadn't made up their minds.

October 30, 1968: the Uljin-Samcheok Landings

On this day in 1968 the North Koreans landed a commando force on South Korean shores in an attempt to establish guerrilla bases in South Korea.  The attack was part of a delusional series of increasingly aggressive moves that grossly underestimated the lack of support for communists in South Korea.

The landings promoted a massive reaction in the South with 70,000 troops being deployed to counter the 124 commandos who landed and attempted to infiltrate South Korean villages.  110 of the force were killed.  Under 70 South Koreans, of which 23 were civilians, died in the event.  Three Americans lost their lives.

Coming in the hottest year of the war in Vietnam, and dating back to an attempted raid in January that coincided with the Tet Offensive, this event served to remind that the Korean War had ended in an armistice, not a true peace, and the North Korean effort continued; even violently.

October 24, 1968. The last flight of the X-15

The final flight of the fastest airplane ever built, the rocket propelled X-15, took place on this day, with the plane achieving Mach 5.38.

The North American X-15.

The plane was piloted by NASA pilot William Dana. NASA's logo can be seen on the side of the plane's fuselage in the photograph above.  The plane achieved altitudes of 50 miles high in some flights, qualifying the pilots of those flights for astronaut wings as the flights technically achieved space flight.

October 22 , 1968. A Treasonous Act

On this day in 1968, an event that would not come to light until 2016 occurred in which then Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon called H. R. Halderman, then an aid of his, and ordered him to have intermediaries persuade South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to refuse to participate in the Parish Peace Talks.

Thieu.

It seems likely that Thieu was already of the mind to refuse to participate, in which case Nixon's action, which asserted that, through intermediaries, that he was likely to win the election, which was in fact correct, had no real impact. Still, the action, designed to aid his position in the election, is shocking and far worse than his support of the cover up of the break in of the Watergate Hotel some years later.  It seems that President Johnson was aware of the action and ordered Nixon's campaign staff's phones bugged but he chose not to reveal the story, which makes sense in context. 

Also on this day the still controversial Gun Control Act of 1968 was signed into law by President Johnson. The act came about in the wake of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.  It's provisions remain in effect today and in spite of the common claim to the contrary about American firearms legislation, it created universal registration, at the manufacturer level and the original retail level, of all firearms.  It also included other restrictions that remain including the necessity of new firearms being transferred only through licensed dealers and a restriction on the age of purchase, which was at two different ages for long guns and handguns.  Ammunition sales were likewise restricted.

On the same day the crew of Apollo 7, all of which had the common cold, returned to Earth.

October 17, 1968. Jackie Kennedy and Steve McQueen in the news.

1.  The Press Secretary for Jacqueline Kennedy, the widow of John F. Kennedy, announced her engagement to Aristotle Onassis.

The announcement would prove to be controversial.  Kennedy was to be married the next week and came less than one week after Mrs. Kennedy had been granted Secret Service protection.  The marriage would result in the end of that protection, but not of the controversy.

Onassis was one of the richest men in the world and had been a long time friend of Mrs. Kennedy's. The marriage brought an element of security to her, which was lacking in part to the violence of the times, but the extremely wealth Onassis was a controversial figure.  Jackie Kennedy was his second marriage, his first being to Athina Lavanos when he was 40 and she was 17 years old.  The couple's marriage had started out as a very happy one but had declined and ended in divorce which meant that questions were raised about the legitimacy of his later marriage to Kennedy from a Catholic prospective in an era when there was much less public tolerance of such things than there is now, particularly given the enormous attachment of American Catholics to John F. Kennedy (his own departures from morality were not publicly known and were shielded by the press at the time).  Onassis, additionally, ended a relationship with Maria Calles in order to marry Kennedy.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis would outlive her second husband who died of natural causes in 1975.  Calles was reportedly devastated by his death and never recovered from it.

The degree to which Jackie Kennedy Onassis was followed by Americans, particularly American women, is hard to imagine at the present time.  She had a degree of following which is really only analogous to members of the British royal family and her treatment was quite similar.

2,  The Steve McQueen film Bullitt, with its legendary car chase film, was released.

October 16, 1968. The Black Power Salute and the Ratification of the Soviet Occupation of Czechoslovakia.

1.  On this day in 1968, African American Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the infamous Black Power Salute in their medal ceremony. They were later stripped of their medals.

Their action at the Mexico City Olympics remain extremely controversial, making the entire "taking the knee" drama in football appear quite minor in comparison. An act in support of civil rights for black Americans, it also came at a time during which the United States was at war in Vietnam and the clenched fist was associated with the extreme left.  It also came in a location, Mexico City, which had only recently seen violence committed by the government against students.

2.  Czech Prime Minister Oldrich Cernik, against his real wishes, signed a treaty with the USSR recognizing the Soviets right of occupation of his country.

Apollo 7 launched, Coup in Panama. October 11, 1968

Florida as viewed from Apollo 7.

1.  It was the first of the Apollo missions to be manned.

2.  Panama underwent a military coup.  It would remain controlled by its military for quite some time thereafter.  The democratically elected Arnulfo Arias had been in office twice before, in the 40s and 50s, but was in office for only eleven days on this occasion.

The Motion Picture Rating System introduced, October 7, 1968.

On this day in 1968, Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, announced that the movie industry was introducing a new rating code and rejecting the Hays Production Code.

The move was momentous and frankly has not been a success, even though the American public has become highly acclimated to it.   At the time, Valenti claimed that the movie industry would no longer approve or disapprove the content of a film, but would "now see our primary task as giving advance cautionary warnings to parents so that parents could make the decision about the movie going of young children".  In reality, it was a vehicle for the industry to bypass the restrictions of the Hays Code and introduce more permissive material.

The original ratings were G, M (mature), R and X. R required a parent to attend with a person under sixteen years of age, and X prohibited entry by those under age 16.  Given this, even the original restrictions contemplated allowing entrance to minors to the most restricted films.

The Hays Production Code of 1934 had been a voluntary code that the movie industry had imposed upon itself to prevent further regulation due to outcry of the moral content of early films, some of which were outright pornographic even when aimed at a general audience and even when camouflaged with supposedly religious themes with even such moviemakers as Cecil B. DeMille taking that approach.  The code had imposed eleven items that were outright prohibited in films, including nudity and associated sexual portrayals, but also banned such items as profanity, disrespect to the clergy, childbirth and willful offense to any religion or race.  It also included twenty-five items that filmmakers were required to be careful about in their depictions.

Actual adherence to the code had been breaking down by the 1950s, and the introduction of a new set of standards was likely inevitable.  Critics have noted, however, that the content of films changed extraordinarily rapidly after filmmakers were allowed to openly ignore the earlier restrictions on movie making and essentially make any film, as long as a warning of its content was attached to it.  Movie theater adherence to policing the code has been problematic and the original set of ratings has been changed at least twice in an effort to give them at least some teeth, largely unsuccessfully.

The Start of The Troubles. October 5, 1968

Or at least it is by some accounts.  A precise start to the violence of the 1960s and 1970s that characterized Northern Ireland in the minds of many, indeed even characterized, unfairly, Ireland itself in this period, is hard to define.

Ireland had never accommodated itself to English rule at any point, but dating back to the Middle Ages various English kingdoms and then the Kingdom of England itself had claimed sovereignty over parts or all of Ireland.  For many decades, even centuries, the claim was fairly tenuous as a rule, but starting with the Norman conquest of England in 1066 it became inevitable that the conquering spirit of the barely Francoized Norsemen would lead them on to Ireland.  That path had already been partially laid by the Saxons already and the Normans were on a global path of expansion that would lead them on to install themselves over Sicily.  In that context, Ireland couldn't be avoided.

The Normans landed in Ireland as early as 1169, or perhaps we should say as late as that, given that this was a century after their conquest of England.  This was followed by landings in 1170 and 1171, which ultimately lead to the English King Henry landing that year in an effort to establish his own Anglo Norman sovereignty but also to put a lid on Norman freebooters.  He came and went but came back and in 1175 was self declared the overlord of Ireland, a position that was intended to put himself in loose control of the various Irish kingdoms but to leave them Irish.  This soon failed and in 1177 he declared his son John Lackland the Lord of Ireland and simply co-opted the ongoing Norman invasion.  This would bring to an end the era of independent Irish kingdoms.  The fact that there were, of course, multiple Irish kingdoms doomed the Irish in and of itself, but frankly Norman military capabilities were so advanced at the time that there was really no hope for Irish resistance.

This isn't intended to be a history of Ireland, so we'll simply leap forward and note that the United Kingdom ruled Ireland, over Irish objection, until 1922.  The Irish rebelled from time to time, particularly after the English crown separated the Church from Rome and then took it into Protestantism.  This became particularly pronounced after Cromwell became the English Lord Protector and English law became increasingly hostile to Catholicism.  The Irish became impoverished serfs in their own land and constantly sought to free themselves from England.  By the 19th Century, as the English began to reform their views, slowly at first, and then rapidly later on, things were perhaps so fixed in attitude that efforts towards Home Rule were insufficient to keep a significant minority of Irish from seeking an armed separation from the United Kingdom which came in the form of the Anglo Irish War.

The dates for the Anglo Irish War itself are debated, but a person can realistically date it to the Easter Rebellion of 1916.  The rebellion was a failure and indeed rejected by the Irish, but the English overreaction to it was sufficiently harsh that a follow up, more thought out, guerrilla, and indeed terroristic, war that started in 1919 had somewhat broader support.

Still, the mixed views on England were strong enough that the compromise reached with the United Kingdom not only left Ireland as a dominion of the United Kingdom, a status that at the time meant that the United Kingdom retained foreign policy decisions to some degree over a separated Ireland, but it also allowed Northern Ireland to opt out of the Irish Free State, a position bitterly opposed by Irish Republicans and which lead to the Irish Civil War.  Northern Ireland had been a problem in the context of Irish independence for many years as its population was majority Scots and Presbyterian.  Predictably, Northern Ireland voted to opt out of the Irish Free State.

This lead to the Irish Civil War, as noted, and following that lead to a bizarre situation in which the Irish Republic basically did not recognize Ulster as legitimately separate from it but, at the same time, really did nothing about it.  Ethnic Irish in Ulster stewed about the situation but by and large accommodated themselves to it.

In 1960s a non violent civil rights movement seeking to improve the position of minority Catholics in Ulster commenced.  It was not well received in all quarters.  Irish nationalist reacted with protests nad parades in 1966 and actually dynamited an English monument in that year in spite of being quite weak. This was responded to by the formation of Ulster unionist movements that saw the republican challenge as being stronger than it really was.  An organization formed calling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force, recalling similar paramilitary forces from the pre World War One Ulster and soon Ulster unionist terrorist attacked the homes of Catholic residents.

This lead to civil rights protests that occurred into 1968.  These were met with Unionist violence.  

On this day in 1968, once such event occurred.  The Northern Irish government banned an anticipated civil rights protest but it occurred anyhow.  The government sent the Royal Irish Constabulary to confront the marchers and the RUC policemen met them with violence.  The entire thing was filmed and shown on television, sparking Catholic disgust and outrage.  Two days of rioting ensued pitting Irish nationalist against the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Thirty years of violence and the rise of the Provisional Irish Republican Army would follow.

The Peruvian Military Coup of October 3, 1968

On this day in 1968 the Army, lead by Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado, overthrew the civilian government of President Belaunde.  The coup was accomplished without bloodshed and the deposed president was flown into exile in Argentina.

The coup was inspired by a scandal in the national oil industry which lead to fears that the civilian government would fall to a Communist revolution.  Resistance to it was very brief, after which the Army enacted a left wing government that itself acted in a semi socialist manner.  Land reform was a major feature of its efforts.  Overall, its economic policies were, however, a failure and its rule, very authoritarian.

Velasco was overthrown in a subsequent military coup in 1975 and died of natural causes in 1977.

Frenando Belaunde Terry, whom he deposed, returned from exile and was reelected President of Peru in 1980.

The Tlatelolco Massacre: October 2, 1968

On this day in 1968 the Mexican government assaulted a gathering of 10,000 university and high school students assembled in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. The peaceful gathering was part of a series of Mexican protests aimed at the PRI government that had commenced during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

The government reacted by deploying the military and the police.  Efforts to arrest some of those attending turned violent in a yet unknown manner and between 300 to 400 people were killed.

The television series The Monkees ends, Labor Day, September 2, 1968.

It had been running since 1966 and, as odd as it is to consider now, was sufficiently innovative in camera work to have won a couple of industry awards for the same.

Riots at the Democratic Convention. August 28, 1968.

On this day the Democratic Convention in Chicago nominated Hubert Humphrey for President.  The event was overshadowed, however, by riots that occurred on the same day.

Following the liberal Humphrey's nomination, protesters, who had been in Chicago all week, head towards the convention in protest, supporting even more liberal Eugene McCarthy.  Opposition to the war in Vietnam was the source of their motivation.  On the way, they were met by Chicago police, armed with clubs.

In what has sometimes a "Police Riot", the confrontation quickly turned violent leaving an enduring American memory of the disaster of 1968, given as it was televised.