Showing posts with label Boston Massachusetts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston Massachusetts. Show all posts

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Friday, September 8, 2023

Saturday, September 8, 1923. The Honda Point Disaster.

Captain Edward H. Watson ordered a squadron of 14 ships to make a fast passage to San Diego in heavy fog resulting in the USS Delphy, USS S. P. Lee, USS Young, USS Woodbury, USS Nicholas, USS Fuller and USS Chauncey beaching and sustaining irreparable damage. 

It remains the largest peacetime loss in U.S. Navy History.

Watson was court-martialed for the event.  He was not universally condemned for the disaster, which some attributed to a failure in newly developed technology.  He went on to be Assistant Commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District in Hawaii until he left active duty in November 1929.  He died at age 67 in 1942.

After killing innocent people to achieve them, Italy's demands were adopted by the ambassadors appointed to mediate the dispute.


Boston's Logan airport opened.

Monday, November 28, 2022

Saturday, November 28, 1942. Battle of Réunion and the Coconut Grove Fire.

The Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston caught fire, resulting in 492 people losing their lives.  It's the worst such disaster in American history.

The Léopard.

The Léopard landed Free French Troops at Réunion off of the east coast of Madagascar in order to take the island from Vichy, which rapidly occurred.

Thursday, December 26, 2019

December 26, 1919. The Red Sox trade Babe Ruth.

A look at the news in Albany Count, New York, December 26, 1919.

Elsewhere in New York, on this day in 1919 Babe Ruth was sold by the Boston Rod Sox to the New York Yankees.  The price was $125,000, the largest every paid to that date, and an enormous sum in context.


The Red Sox had one five of the first sixteen World Series.  They would not win another one until 1946.

Monday, August 26, 2019

August 26, 1919. Pinto House to Willow Springs on the Motor Transport Convoy.

As the 1919 transcontinental Motor Transport Convoy was being received in Willow Springs, Nevada, the crew of an Italian warship was being received in Boston Commons.

On this day in 1919, the Motor Transport Convoy traveled from Pinto House to Willow Spring, making 44 miles in 8.25 hours.

Mention is made of the Mack "chain drive".  During this period, and for quite some time thereafter, some vehicles used chain drives, like bicycles, rather than drive shafts, to convey the rotation of the engine to the axle.

By and large, however, the vehicles held up that day in spite of the conditions.

Sunday, March 10, 2019

March 10, 1919. The arrival of the USS Nebraska, Anticipating the arrival of Company I in Casper, Tennis in New York, Romantic comedies in the US

The battleship USS Boston, carrying soldiers on their way home from France, arrives in Boston.

People familiar with the efforts to bring the far flung U.S. military home after World War Two are familiar with Operation Magic Carpet. That operation employed sufficiently large U.S. Navy surface ships as troops transports, something they really weren't designed to be, to bring home soldiers and Marines.

Red Cross workers, also in Boston, awaiting the arrival of the USS Nebraska.

Almost forgotten is the fact that the same thing was done after World War One, an example of which we have here in the form of troops that were brought home on the USS Nebraska, a pre dreadnought Navy battleship.  It would have been a quite uncomfortable ride.

Wyoming National Guardsmen from Casper were coming home as well, by train.


The Casper men were set to arrive back in Casper by train on Tuesday, March 11.  The 20 plus men had been part of Company I of the Wyoming National Guard and had been assigned to the 116th Ammunition Train when the Wyoming Guard was busted up and converted from infantry to artillery and transport.

These men had been in service since the Guard had been mustered in the spring of 1917.  They had not been part of the earlier group mustered for the Punitive Expedition, or at least Company I hadn't existed as part of that group, in that form, as Casper had been too small in 1916 to have its own Guard unit.  That tiny status had rapidly passed, however, due to the World War One oil boom which built Casper.  By the spring of 1917 the town was big enough to contribute its own Company and some of those men were back, having just been mustered out of service at Ft. D. A. Russell in Cheyenne.

In New York, where the Nebraska had arrived, things were returning to a peacetime normal.
Betty Baker, who had won round at the indoor national women's tennis championship on this day in 1919.  She was sixteen years old at the time.

Betty Baker, about whom I know nothing else, was a tennis standout in 1919 at age 16.  Does anyone know if that continued?  I don't, but if you do, put in a comment and let us know.

And Monday movie releases continued to be a thing.


The public seemed to be in the mood for romantic comedies.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Teenage Florist Delivery Boy. February 2, 1917


Abe Singer, age fourteen, delivering flowers for Wax Florist in Boston Massachusetts.


Note that, in this pre driving license era, he was apparently delivering these by car.

Continuation School Girls, Age 15, working at the Bonanno Laundry


A continuation school is, apparently, sort of an at risk, or work study, type of high school. All of the girls in these pictures were students of such a school and employed at the Bonanno Laundry, in Boston. They were all photographed on this day, in 1917.





Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Frank DeNatale, Boy Barber


Frank DeNatale, age 12, shaving a customer in his father's barber shop located at 416 Hanover Street, Boston Massachusetts on this day in 1917.  He worked there after school and Saturdays.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

The Office Boy.


15 year old office boy in  the office of N.Y., N.H. & H.R.R. coal yard, January 29, 1917.  My grandfather was doing this same job, about this same year, for the Cunard Steam Ship Company in San Fransisco.  He was 13 years old.  A great grandfather had occupied the same job, a few decades earlier, also as a teenager, in an insurance company.

Teenage labor at the curtain factory, January 29, 1917

Edward McGurin, 14 years old.

Florence Anderson, 15 years old.

Katherine Flanagan, 15 years old.

Sadie McGurin, 15 years old.

Gertrude Belier, 15 years old.

Bessie Blitch, 15 years old.

Helen Whitty, 15  years old.


The Coal Thieves






Boston Massachusetts, on this day, in 1917.

Teenage female Labor in the flower factory. Boston, January 29, 1917

Margaret Reddington, age 14.  Powdering roses at the Boston Floral Supply Company.


Celina Melcionno, 14 years old, waxing flowers at the Boston Floral Supply Company.


Sadie Singer, age 15, Boston Floral Supply Company, racking flowers.

Margaret Ciampa, 14 years old, finishing flowers.

Corinne Le May, 15 years old, bunching sweet peas.

Left to right, Beatrice Sicco, Pauline Steele,and Mary Donahue, all 15 years old, working on flowers.

I can't help but wonder how many of these teenage girls were immigrants themselves or first generation Americans.  Lots of Irish and Italian last names in there.