Hitler was banned from speaking to crowds in Bavaria.
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Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
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The United States and Canada signed the Lake of the Woods Convention and Protocol, defining the lake's boundary line more accurately, regulating its water level, and arranging for the settlement of port damages caused by overflowing that arose from work done on the Canadian side.
This, obviously, before our currently demented occupant of the Oval Office decided that throwing rocks at Canada was fun.
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There used to be an era when Republicans cared about conservation.
Declaring American Forest Week
Date: February 21, 1925
In proclaiming American Forest Week, I desire to bring to the attention of all our people the danger that comes from the neglect of our forests.
For several years the Nation has observed Forest Protection Week. It is fitting that this observance be enlarged. We have too freely spent the rich and magnificent gift that nature bestowed on us. In our eagerness to use that gift we have stripped our forests; we have permitted fires to lay waste and devour them; we have all too often destroyed the young growth and the seed from which new forests might spring. And though we already feel the first grip of timber shortage, we have barely begun to save and restore.
We have passed the pioneer stage and are no longer excusable for continuing this unwise dissipation of a great resource. To the Nation it means the lack of an elemental necessity and the waste of keeping idle or only partly productive nearly one-fourth of our soil. To our forest-using industries it means unstable investments, the depletion of forest capital, the disbanding of established enterprises, and the decline of one of our most important industrial groups.
Our forests ought to be put to work and kept at work. I do not minimize the obstacles that have to be met, nor the difficulty of changing old ideas and practices. We must all put our hands to this common task. It is not enough that the Federal, State, and local governments take the lead. There must be a change in our national attitude. Our industries, our landowners, our farmers, all our citizens must learn to treat our forests as crops, to be used but also to be renewed. We must learn to tend our woodlands as carefully as we tend our farms.
Let us apply to this creative task the boundless energy and skill we have so long spent in harvesting the free gifts of nature. The forests of the future must be started to-day. Our children are dependent on our course. We are bound by a solemn obligation from which no evasion and no subterfuge will relieve us. Unless we fulfill our sacred responsibility to unborn generations, unless we use with gratitude and with restraint the generous and kindly gifts of Divine Providence, we shall prove ourselves unworthy guardians of a heritage we hold in trust.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, do recommend to the Governors of the various States to designate and set apart the week of April 27 – May 3, inclusive, 1925, as American Forest Week, and, wherever practicable and not in conflict with State law or accepted customs, to celebrate Arbor Day within that week. And I urge public officials, public and business associations, industrial leaders, forest owners, editors, educators, and all patriotic citizens to unite in the common task of forest conservation and renewal.
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 twenty-first day of February in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-ninth.
The New Yorker premiered.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Tsankov declared that an internal state of war existed in the country.
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was born in Fresno, California. Growing up in a family that had strong rural Californian roots, he was haunted in some ways by passing eras, which shows itself in his films. He was a film making genius whose works were nonetheless flawed by his wreckless demeanor and drug and alcohol abuse.
It was, of course, a Saturday.
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Kurdish rebels declared Diyarbekir as the capital of Kurdistan.
From the Reading Times, February 14, 1925.
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Diphtheria antitoxin ran out in Nome. The serum run had reached Kaltag.
Turkey exiled Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Constantine VI to Greece
The Khost Rebellion in Afghanistan ended with the reign of King Amanullah Khan intact.
A national news media frenzy started when Cave explorer Floyd Collins became trapped in Sand Cave, Kentucky. The story went on for days, but did not conclude happily.
High winds blew a train off of a viaduct in County Donegal, Ireland, killing four people.
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About 20 people were killed when representatives of the Fengtian Clique met resistance attempting to disarm about 1,000 defeated Jiangsu troops, who apparently weren't quite as defeated as thought.
Flapper Fanny Says was on day three of its new syndicated run. The cartoon would run until 1940, during which time Fanny ceased being a flapper. It had two different cartoonist illustrate it, both of them women.
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Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, premiered.
Japan and the Soviet Union signed an agreement for a joint venture of drilling for oil on Sakhalin Island in which Japan was to receive "a significant discount on half of the pumped oil" for ten years in exchange for funding the project.
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Italian prefects were ordered to control "suspect", i.e., non fascist, political organizations. Mass searches resulted.
Adolf Hitler pledged his loyalty to Bavarian Minister President Heinrich Held.
Hitler's pledge, of course, would turn out to be a lie. Held maintained Bavarian state sovereignty until the end, but ultimately the Bavarian government was removed in 1933 by Hitler. Held's pension would be revoked by the Nazis. He died in 1938.
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Civil air service returned to London. It had been stopped in September, 1939.
The Akebono, Akishimo, Hatsuharu, Kiso and Okinami was sunk in Filipino waters by the U.S. Navy. The I-12 was sunk east of Hawaii.
The Bulgarian 1st Army captured Skopje.
SSgt Junior J. Spurrier performed the actions that resulted in his receiving a Medal of Honor.
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy at Achain, France, on 13 November 1944. At 2 p.m., Company G attacked the village of Achain from the east. S/Sgt. Spurrier armed with a BAR passed around the village and advanced alone. Attacking from the west, he immediately killed 3 Germans. From this time until dark, S/Sgt. Spurrier, using at different times his BAR and M1 rifle, American and German rocket launchers, a German automatic pistol, and hand grenades, continued his solitary attack against the enemy regardless of all types of small-arms and automatic-weapons fire. As a result of his heroic actions he killed an officer and 24 enlisted men and captured 2 officers and 2 enlisted men. His valor has shed fresh honor on the U.S. Armed Forces.
Spurrier had an extremely difficult time adjusting to post World War Two life and rejoined the Army during the Korean War, where he proved to be a difficult soldier. He was by that time an alcoholic and after his second period of service had numerous run ins with the law. He ultimately became a teetotaler and ran an electronics repair service, dying at age 61 in 1984.
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Next year with be a Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church. For some reason, the Church felt it needed a mascot for this.
This is what it came up with:
How does a 2,000 year old institution in possession of much of the Western World's great art, come up with something so juvenile, and indeed something that looks like its out of Pokemon?
In announcing this, Archbishop Rino Fisichella stated that the cartoon imagine, titled "Luce" (light in Italian) was inspired by the Church's "to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth." This presents the classic problem of the elderly, now the Baby Boomers, recalling the desires of "youth" in terms of when they were fairly youthful themselves. Indeed, in my mind it brings to mind attending the "Teen Life Mass", or whatever it was called, that used to be held on Sunday evenings. I generally tried to avoid it, but when I did, you'd find a guitar band with bongos for the music, lead by a Boomer, and a bunch of aged Boomers who would sway and whatnot to the music.
In contrast, if you hit some Masses with a lot of young people, you'd find young women, some down in their teens, wearing mantillas.
I'm pretty convinced that in 2024, with ready access to the Internet, and all the news that's on it, combined with all the sewage that's washed up with it, such as horrific political arguments, the revival of racism, far right and far left extremist, Hamas murder and rape of young people in Israel, an aged geezer in the Kremlin trying to revive the Soviet Union, and young women prostituting themselves on TikTok, a childish cartoon from the 1980s isn't really going to win hearts and minds. Indeed, its even worse than the Comic Sans Serif font and 1970s vintage art that was officially used for the Synod on Synodality. And it gives emotional support to the Orthodox who are looking for reasons not to come back into the Church, even if superficially. This sure doesn't look like something Saints Cyril and Methodius would have passed out.
I've long held, and have stated it here, that Western culture had experienced Post World War Two materialism and found it lacking, and that the generations that have come up in the wake of the Baby Boomers are struggling to through the cultural innovations of the 1960s and 1970s off. We don't believe that "Greed is good" or that the Sexual Revolution was freeing. The problem is that so much was destroyed that recovering is hard, particularly when the aged hand remains on the tiller. Often that aged hand reaches out with what it thinks the young want, not grasping what that is, and actually making things worse.
This cartoon is really bad. Somebody should look around the Vatican and see if something serious might be available. The young Catholics in blue jeans, the mantilla girls, and myself, will all be thankful.
Postscript
I'm hating this image slightly less after some Twitter person made some interesting riffs off of it, but I still don't like it.
Soviet, Yugoslav Partisan, and Bulgarian forces, the latter now in league with the USSR, began the Belgrade Offensive.
Polish Home Army General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski sent a last telegraph requesting help from the Red Army command for the fighters at Warsaw. He received no reply.
Churchill announced the formation of a Jewish Brigade.
The US lands on Negesbus and Kongaruru near Peleliu.
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I can't post it, due to copyright concerns, but the September 10, 2024 Pearls Before Swine, a cartoon, really needs to be read.
The White House released transcripts of subpoenaed tape recordings. The tapes demonstrated that President Nixon and his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman had discussed a plan in June 1972 to use the CIA to thwart the FBI’s Watergate investigation. They also showed that Nixon had ordered the FBI to halt investigation of the Watergate matter.
Nixon then issued a statement acknowledging guilt, and that matters would go to the Senate for an impeachment trial. Congressional supporters of Nixon began to rapidly change their view.
The first Tank McNamara comic strip was printed.
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A party of buffalo hunters left Dodge City, bound for the abandoned trading post of Adobe Walls in Texas.
Rose O'Neill, creator of Kewpies, was born.
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Just a few days after U.S. ships shelled US Army troops at Slapton Sands in Operation Tiger in a friendly fire incident, the PT-346 was sunk, killing nine sailors and wounding nine, by Marine Corps Corsairs.
Lieutenant James Burk ordered medic John Frkovich to take his Burk's life jacket so he could survive and treat the wounded. Wilbur Larsen, USNR, received the Navy Marine Corps medal for saving wounded non-swimmer Forrest May's life.
An American air raid on Truk destroyed most of the island's Japanese aircraft.
On New Guinea, the captured Japanese airfields at Hollandia and Aitape become operational for Allied aircraft.
The HMCS Athabaskan was sunk in the English Channel by the T24, once again showing active Kriegsmarine activity in the Channel. The T24 picked up 83 men as prisoners, 44 were rescued by the Allies, and 123 went down with the ship.
The I-183 was sunk off the Bungo Strait by the USS Pogy.
The U-421 was sunk at Toulon in an American air raid.
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The Nazis offered Hungarian rescue worker Joel Brand an offer which has been termed the "Blood for Goods" deal. It was an offer to free 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews, releasing them to an Allied country, save for Palestine (oddly) for goods. The offer was extended through Adolf Eichmann to Brand, who was a pre-war Hungarian Zionist.
Brand carried the message to the Allies, making his way through Turkey to Egypt, where he was arrested by the British. The British did not take the offer seriously and believed it was a trick. The US was cautious about the offer but less hostile to it. British opposition to exploring it ended the matter, and the British press leaked it and termed it blackmail by the fall.
At this point in the war, members of the SS were not completely loyal to Hitler and there is some reason to believe that this was a camouflaged effort to open up communications with the Western Allies in order to advance a separate peace, a delusional prospect of that is what they were thinking.
Brand moved to Israel after the war and was haunted the rest of his life by the failure of the proposal. He died visiting Germany in 1964, at age 58.
A Royal Air Force variant of the B-24, a Liberator B Mark VI crashed into the Griffintown neighborhood of Montreal after taking off from Dorval Airport. The crew and ten civilians were killed.
My mother, then 19 years of age, would have been working in the city at this time, so was likely on the Griffentown side of the river when the accident occured.
The first combat helicopter evacuation completed in the CBI:
The Luftwaffe raided shipping at Portsmouth and Plymouth-Devonport in a nighttime raid. The same night, the HMS Black Prince and three Canadian destroyers engaged German warships in the English Channel, sinking the T-29 and damaging the T-24 and T-27.
The T-39 series of German ships were torpedo "boats", but due to their size they were more in the nature of corvettes.
Allied forces landed at Humboldt Bay, New Guinea.
The British government announced that it had a £2.76 billion deficit, £89 million smaller than anticipated.
The United Negro College Fund was established.
George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat, died at age 63.
Herriman was creole and born in New Orleans, although he speant much of his adult life in Los Angeles. The Creole are their own distinct ethnicity, with some noting that means by default that they are of "mixed race", something that a lot of non Louisianians don't realize as they confuse creole with Cajun, the two not being the same. Under the bizarre rules of American culture, Herriman would have been regarded as "black" in some regions of the United States, although legally, and equally bizarrely, he could at the time choose to self identify as white or black, neither of which really describes his ethnic heritage. He self identified as white, which makes sense, as to do otherwise would have hindered his career.
Herriman was a shy and gentlemanly man. A Catholic, he married his childhood sweetheart and had two children, as well as a lot of pets, of which he wsa very fond.
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