Tuesday, July 27, 1943. Storms.

Major Joseph Duckworth, together with Lt. Ralph O'Hair, of the U.S. Army Air Force flew an AT-6 into the eye of a hurricane, becoming the first people to do so on purpose.

Duckworth was an advocate for training on instruments.  He had been an Army Air Corps flyer, originally starting in 1927, and recalled to service during World War Two.

The hurricane bore the name The Surprise Hurricane due to weather censoring during World War Two, which the storm would end due to killing 19 people and causing $17,000,000 in damage.

Croatia became a republic, for a time, after Prince Aimone, the Duke of Astsoria, who had been made king of Croatia by Mussolini, resigned, deciding that desertion was the better part of valor.

The Fascist Grand Council and the Fascist Party were abolished.

Sarah Sundin notes, on her blog:

Today in World War II History—July 27, 1943: Flight nurse Lt. Ruth Gardiner (805th MAETS) is killed in a plane crash in Naknek, Alaska; the first US Army nurse to die in WWII.

She also notes the horrific Hamburg firestorm of the night of July 27, 1943, which resulted from the RAF's Operation Gomorrah bombing raid that evening.

Unloading a P-47 at Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Friday, July 21, 1972. Bloody Friday

By IrishBriton - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48182855

The Provisional Irish Republican Army carried out 22 bombings in Belfast, killing nine people in what became known as Bloody Friday.  The actions sparked a renewed British offensive against the IRA, which commenced the next day.

The "Provos" in some significant ways were able to conduct this sort of activity due to romanticized backing by Irish Americans.  It claimed lineage from the Irish Republican Army of the Irish Civil War period, but it had an evolved Socialist agenda that put it in the far left political sphere, which would partially explain how it obtained backing from Libya at the time.

The IRA itself did in fact carry on in existence after the Irish Civil War, even conducting a bombing campaign in 1939 against the United Kingdom.  In 1969, after the Troubles had commenced, the IRA split in two over the issue of abstentionism and forming a National Liberation Front with other left wing groups.  The group that became the Provos refused to vote on the second item, and opposed the first.  Sein Finn likewise split.

December 4, 1971. Smoke On the Water

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

This day in history is recalled for a tragedy, that being the destruction of the Montreux Casino in Switzerland during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention concert. 

The event was the topic of Deep Purple's song, Smoke on the Water.

We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground

Smoke on the water
A fire in the sky
Smoke on the water

They burned down the gambling house
It died with an awful sound
Uh, Funky Claude was running in and out
Pulling kids on the ground
When it all was over
We had to find another place
But Swiss time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race

Deep Purple in 1968.

Deep Purple had planned to record there, but had to find another venue.

On the same day, McGurk's Bar, a Catholic tavern in Belfast, was bombed, killing fifteen people, including two children.  And the Indian Navy attacked the Pakistani Navy at Karachi.

Sunday July 10, 1921. Bloody Sunday.

This day became known as "Bloody Sunday" in the Anglo Irish War, but its just one of several days termed that in association with Irish conflicts

Tensions were high leading into the agreed to July 11 cease fire between the UK and the leadership of Dáil Eireann, the putative legislative body of Ireland, with some protestants in Northern Ireland feeling they'd been sold out as the British clearly intended to come to an agreement resulting in Irish independence.  In the early morning hours of the 10th the Royal Irish Constabulary attempted to launch a raid on Republican sites in advance of the truce, but the Irish tactic of blowing whistles and banging on things, used for decades, frustrated the attempt and the IRA ambushed a RIC truck.  General violence broke out in the city thereafter.

Elsewhere, and unconnected with Belfast, a group of IRA men caught and executed four British soldiers in what seems to have been a reprisal for an earlier British killing of an IRA man.

The events perhaps indicated that while arriving on a negotiated treaty giving Ireland independence was now inevitable, in some quarters of the country some level of violence might occur in the future.

Also, like a lot of events of the Anglo Irish War, while the occurrences were really horrific, the level of death that's associated with them by myth isn't as high as it was in reality, which none the less doesn't reduce its tragic nature.

April 4, 1941. Reversals

O'Connor in captivity.

Symbolizing the sudden reversal of fortune in the Desert, a German patrol captured Gen. Richard O'Connor, the commander of the British forces in Egypt.  On the same day the Germans took Derna, Libya.

The British had already striped British forces in North Africa to supply them to the mission to Egypt, and that was followed by German gains in Libya.  O'Connor's capture somewhat symbolized the reversals the British were now seeing.

O'Connor would remain a prisoner of the Italians until their surrender, at which point he was reincorporated into the British command structure and held significant commands until the war's end.  He retired in 1948, but lived a very long life after the war, dying in 1981 at age 91.

O'Connor was Anglo Irish, of a military family, and had been born in India.

On the same night, British Ireland was struck by the Luftwaffe on the first of its prolonged raids on Belfast.

Clearing rubble in Belfast.

The British government introduced a budget which dramatically increased taxes and forced savings in an application of Keynesian economics.  It was an effort to address inflation. The British public took it well.

The British also broke diplomatic relations with Hungary.

Wednesday, March 31, 1909. Common Cup.

The Kansas State Board of Health banned the "common drinking cup" on trains and in public schools.

1919 Red Cross poster instructing parents to teach their children to never use a common drinking cup.

Common drinking cups were very common and it would take years to really fully prohibit their use.  Their elimination gave rise to the water fountain, which had no cup, and to disposable cups.

Georgian ended its "convict lease system" with 1,200 convicted felons thereby returned from private stockades to county jails.

The Serbian ambassador to Austro Hungaria presented his government's formal acceptance of the Austrian annexation of Bosnia.

Hull No. 401, the keel of the RMS Titanic, was laid at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast.

The company still exists and still has a shipyard in Belfast.  Founded in 1861, it was nationalized in 1977, and then privatized again in 1989.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, March 30, 1909. The Army abandons Ft. Washakie.

1900s, 1909, Arapaho people, Army, cavalry, Ethnicities, Frontier Wyoming, Shoshone people, The Frontier West, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming