Showing posts with label Croatia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Croatia. Show all posts

Friday, September 11, 2026

Wednesday, September 11, 1946. Longest scoreless tie.

The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds played the longest scoreless tie in Major League Baseball history.  Nineteen innings in 4 hours, 40 minutes,

The game was called because of darkness.

The United States turned over $1,121,400,000 worth of surplus U.S. Army property to the Philippines.

Ida Stover Eisenhower, mother of Dwight Eisenhower, Milton S. Eisenhower, Edgar N. Eisenhower, Arthur Bradford Eisenhower, Paul Dawson Eisenhower, Roy Jacob Eisenhower, and Earl D. Eisenhower. died at age 84.

Dwight was, of course, Commander of SHAEF in World War Two, and later President of the United States.  The military had actually been a default career for him, and not his first intention.  Milton S. Eisenhower was an accomplished academic. Edgar was a lawyer. Earl an engineer and Kansas legislator.

Ida was a runaway.  Family deaths and circumstances had left her in the care of an aunt and uncle who did not believe in female education, so she took off in order to go to high school.  Her husband, David, was an engineer by training, but his personality left him impoverished and withdrawn.

She was a pacifist.

Blessed Francesco Giovanni Bonifacio was brutally murdered by Yugoslavian Popular Guards for being a Catholic Priest.

He was ethnically Italian, although the region of Italy he was born in was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire at the time of his birth.  The region he was killed in was part of Italy at the time, but became part of Yugoslavia, and is now part of Croatia.

Johnny Allen Hendrix was renamed by his father to James Marshall Hendrix.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 10, 1946. The call within a call.


Thursday, September 10, 2026

Friday, September 10, 1976. A bad day for aviation.

176 people were killed in a collision between a British Airways Trident and a Yugoslavian DC-9 near Zagreb.

The Fighters for Free Croatia hijacked TWA Flight 355 that was flying between New York and Montreal.  A different group hijacked an Indian Airlines flight between New Delhi to Mumbai.

South Africa relaxed rules applying to "coloureds" but not black Africans.

Dalton and Cleo Trumbo at House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, 1947. 

Dalton Trumbo, blacklisted screenwriter who was originally from Colorado, died at age 70 in Los Angeles.  A Communist, some of his screenplays were credited to fronts during the McCarthy Era.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 7, 1976. Mao dies.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Monday, July 20, 1925. Salkhad.

Druze rebels captured the French Army garrison at Salkhad.

Sheikh Sultan el-Atrash, leader of Druze revolt in October, 1925.

The Druze have been in the news recently given a conflict between the Druze, who tend to be allied to Israel, and Bedouins.  

Nobody ever wanted the French in Syria, excepting of course, the French.

Italy and Yugoslavia signed the Treaty of Nettuno.  The treaty allowed Italians to emigrate to Dalmatia, and was opposed by the Croatian Peasant Party, causing Yugoslavia to take three years to ratify it.

Boise City, Oklahoma, was incorporated.


Last edition:

Saturday, July 18, 1925. Nazi tome and Scopes trial.

Sunday, May 25, 2025

Friday, May 25, 1945. The Clock.

"A Battery, 465 FA Bn) located near Ballette Pass, Luzon, P.I.) in the 25th Div, one of action. Pfc R. Duffy; Pfc T. McDonald; Pfc A. Mullins; Pfc T. Kaskie; Pvt A. Rossetti; Capt H. W. Berberian; T/4 F. Grogorowich; Cpl D. Marcus; Cpl K. Cameron; Pfc J. Sullivan; Pfc E. Colby all of Boston, Mass, load the prepare to fire an 8 in gun. The Japs are located on a ridge about, 500 yds forward this position. 25 May, 1945.  465th Field Artillery Battalion."   This gun appears to be a 155mm "Long Tom", a long range artillery piece.  If this caption is correct, it's a freakish situation in that the gun is so close to the front lines.

The Battle of Odžak between Yugoslav (communist) partisans and the fascist Croatian Armed Forces ended in a Yugoslav partisan victory.  Fighting ended in Europe.

The American armed forces Chiefs of Staff set November 1, 1945 as the start date for the invasion of Japan.

USS Bates (APD-47) burning off Ie Shima, Ryukyu Islands, after being hit by three kamikazee.  May 25, 1945.

MGM released the wartime romance, The Clock.


The plot centers around a whirlwind romance of a soldier on leave and a woman he meets, taking place in 48 hours.  They meet and marry in that time frame.

Suffice it to say, a marriage contracted that rapidly would be risky.

The Post World War Two increase in divorces. . . maybe.*


On this general topic, I rewated The Best Years of Our Lives Friday night.  What struck me in rewatching it was the casual acceptance of divorce in the film.  Perhaps that's stretching it, but two of the central characters are involved, in a way, in a sort of semi illicit love affair, and are portrayed sympathetically.

The other thing that struck me, which has before, is that Cpt. Derry is shown to have nothing beyond a (presumed) high school education. That would be correct for his wartime role, but it would not have occurred very often any time post war, after which college educations became the norm for officers.

Last edition:

Thursday, May 24, 1945. Japanese paratroopers on Okinawa.

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Thursday, May 17, 1945. The emerging post war world.

The 43d Infantry Division captured the Ipoh Dam near Manila. 100,000 gallons of napalm were used in the American effort.

There was hard fighting again on Okinawa.

 Aircraft from the USS Ticonderoga attacked targets on Taroa and the Maleolap atoll, encountering limited resistance.

Dutch troops landed on Tarakan Island, reinforcing the Australian forces.

Denmark severed relations with Japan.

French forces landed in Beirut to reassert control of Lebanon.

A British white paper addressed post war independence for Burma.

Archbishop Stepinac of Croatia was arrested for the first time by the incoming Communists in Yugoslavia.

Last edition:

Wednesday, May 16, 1945. The Haguro sunk, U-boats surrender.

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Thursday, April 19, 1945. Broadcasting from Belsen.

Army machine gunners on Okinawa, April 19, 1945.  Not the visible rear sight on the M1917 machine gun and the high angle the gun is being used at.

The Battle of the Seelow Heights ended in Soviet/Polish victory.

The US 1st Army took Leipzig.

Robert Cappa, the famous photographer, took a series of photos in an event that occurred in this battle, in which a tank crewman who was manning a machinegun in a building was killed by a German sniper.  The bloody scene and the soldier's lifeless body is the recalled photograph.  A nearly as dramatic photo of another crewman stepping over him to man the gun is not as well recalled.


Richard Dimbleby broadcast the conditions of Belsen on the BBC.

The Battle of Odžak began in Croatia between Yugoslav Partisans and the Axis aligned Croatian Armed Forces.  The last battle to be fought in the Second World War in Europe, it would continue until May 25.

Pyinmana, the base of the Japanese aligned Burma Defence Army, fell to the 5th Indian Division.


Japanese Gen. Sōsaku Suzuki, age 53, was killed in action in the Philippines.

Nazi Party member Fritz Wächtler,  age 54, was executed by the Nazis for desertion over the surrender of Bayreuth. The charge was unjust and due to rivalry on the part of other Nazis.  

It's amazing to think of this sort of infighting when it should have been obvious they'd all be facing trials by the victors soon.

The U-251, U-548 and U-879 were sunk.

Johnny Kelley won the Boston Marathon.

Last edition:

Wednesday, April 18, 1945. The death of Ernie Pyle.Labels: 

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Sunday, April 8, 1945. Cebu City.

"Sam Yoshihana, Chicago, Ill., leads a bunch of German prisoners taken by the 100th Bn., through the village of Valecchia to a PW cage. 8 April, 1945. Valecchia, Italy. 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Photographer: Bull, 196th Signal Photo Co."  Yoshihana is armed iith a Thompson submachinegun.

British and French forces prevailed in Operation Amherst.

The US won the Battle for Cebu City.

The Battle of Lijevče Field ended in victory for the forces of the Independent State of Croatia which wasn't to be independent for very much longer.

"C and D Troop, 10/65 Field Btry., 4/22 Field Regt., South African arty., 6th South African Arm'd Div., firing a mission. They are equipped with "sextons", self-propelled 25 pounder cannons. 8 April, 1945. Pian Di Setta area, Italy. Photographer: Thomas, 196th Signal Photo Co"

Last edition:

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Friday, March 30, 1945. Mère Marie Élisabeth de l'Eucharistie gassed at Ravensbruck. Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose killed in action.


Algerian born Élise Rivet, whose father was a French Naval officer and whose mother was Alsatian, also known as Mère Marie Élisabeth de l'Eucharistie was gassed at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp after volunteering to take the place of a mother who was slated for that fate.  She had been arrested in 1944 for harboring refugees fleeing the Germans and for allowing her convent to be used to store weapons for the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance at the request of Albert Chambonnet.

She was 55 years of age.


Commander of the 3d Armored Division, Maj Gen. Maurice Rose was killed in action near Paderborn, Westphalia, where many of many ancestors immigrated from in the 19th Century.

Rose was cut off in a forested area near the city and his part attempted to escape in their Jeeps, which one Jeep managed to do.  Stopped by a tank, a Waffen SS tank commander emerged from the hatch with a submachinegun and Rose's hand went for his sidearm.  He was machinegunned and left.  The remainder of his party hid in the woods overnight, and recovered his body, which contained operational orders that had not been disturbed, that night.

He was the highest ranking U.S. Army officer to be killed in direct action by enemy forces during World War Two.

Rose was Jewish by descent and grew up in a Jewish household in Denver.  His father was a businessman who later became a rabbi.  Rose himself could speak Yiddish and read Hebrew.  He joined the Colorado National Guard before he was legally old enough to do so, hoping for a military career early on, and hoping to serve in the Punitive Expedition, but was discharged six weeks later when his age was discovered.  He enlisted again during World War One at age 17 with his parents permission, and went to OCS, which says something about how different things were in regard to educational requirements at the time.  He was briefly out of the service in 1919, but returned to the Army as an officer in 1920.

Rose was married for about ten years, from 1920 to 1931, to Venice Hanson of Salt Lake City.  although the marriage ended in divorce.  Their son served as a career Marine Corps officer and also served in World War Two, as well as the Korean and Vietnam Wars.  He later married Virginia Barringer in 1934.

While born and raised Jewish, Maurice identified as an Episcopalian as an adult, which has lead to speculation on whether his conversion was real or political, it being difficult at the time to advance in American society, and the Army more particularly, while being outwardly Jewish.  Not that much is known, however, about his personal religious convictions.

He was 45 years of age.

"he rabbi of the Jewish Inf. Brigade visits the aid station and distributes newspapers. 30 March, 1945. Photographer: Levine, 196th Signal Photo Co."

The Battle of Lijevče Field began near Banja Luka between Croatian and Chetnik forces in what would soon be incorporated into communist Yugoslavia.

The Red Army took Danzig.  The Danzig Corridor, of course, had been one of the things the Germans claimed they required that lead to World War Two.

Anyone else make a connection to Greenland today.. . . ?

Eric Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey to 16 year old Patricia Molly Clapton and 25 year old Canadian soldier Edward Walter Fryer.  He was raised by his grandparents, whom he thought to be his parents until he was nine years old.  He thought, at that time, his mother was his older sister.  She'd marry another Canadian soldier later on and his grandparents would continue to raise him.

He was performing the blue professionally by age 17.

Last edition:

Thursday, March 29, 1945. The first Public Passover Sedar in Germany since 1938.

Monday, November 11, 2024

Saturday, November 11, 1944. Ghastly Japanese losses at Ormoc Bay.

The Battle of Ormoc Bay began in the Camotes Sea off of the Philippines.  It would carry on well into December and result in disproportionate Japanese losses as they attempted to reinforce ground elements on Leyte.  On this day, four destroyers, 1 minesweeper and 5 transports carrying nearly 10,000 troops were sunk in heavy Japanese losses.

Iwo Jima was bombarded by the U.S.Navy.

Remaining German troops in Greece withdrew.

The Battle of Batina began in Croatia.

US troops in France.  Note many are wearing L. L. Bean style "Maine Hunting Shoes", which were adopted for cold weather use by the  U.S. Army.

The U-771 and U-1200 were sunk by the Royal Navy.

The 1942-44 musicians strike ended with RCA Victor and Columbia Records agreeing to union demands.

Last edition:

Friday, November 10, 1944. The Explosion of the Mount Hood.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Sunday, January 27, 1924. Lenin's funeral.

Entertainer Mary Bay driving a miniature car, Janaury 27, 1924.

The murderous Communist state held a state funeral for the chief gangster, Vladimir Lenin. Temperatures were brutally cold.

Action was pledged on the Teapot Dome scandal


The murderous Communist state held a state funeral for the chief gangster, Vladimir Lenin. Temperatures were brutally cold.

Representatives of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rome, providing that Fiume would be annexed to Italy and Susak to what would become Yugoslavia.

Fiume today is in Croatia, as is the island of Susak.

Thursday, July 27, 2023

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.

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Croatia is banning shopping on Sundays

Tourism-Dependent Croatia Moves to Ban Shopping on Most Sundays



A Bloomberg headline.

Good for them.

A government spokesman stated; "We want to make it possible for retail employees to spend Sundays with their families”

More than 85% of Croatians are Roman Catholics.  Sunday is, of course, the Christian day of rest, and Christians are supposed to take this seriously.  Catholics, although they frequently don't, are definitely supposed to take it seriously, save for good reason to the alternative.

Here's out this shakes out in Europe, but as to large supermarkets:

By Imre Kristoffer Eilertsen - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107694359

Red on this map generally means closed. Green means wide open. Blue means that supermarkets hours are restricted to around six hours.

What all can we tell from this?  Well, perhaps not too much.  Some of the results are surprising.  The countries that are in red don't surprise me.  All but two of the geographic areas depicted are Catholic or Orthodox, and that's part of their cultural heritage.  But some of the green areas are too.  And Norway is a highly secularized Lutheran country, albeit one with a very strong social conscience that they inherit from their Medieval Catholicism, even if they would prefer to pretend it come from their Reformation Lutheranism.

Partial restrictions in France don't surprise me, but in England they do, given as the UK is the birth place of the corporate capitalist economy.

In North American, "blue laws" are state by state, and province by province, but it would be rare to find restrictions in our "you are a consumer" shot 24 hours a day culture anymore.  And of note, South American has no restrictions, even though you might guess that it would.

Well, kudos to Croatia.

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Tuesday, July 28, 1942. Not one step back.

Postage stamp commemorating the phrase coined in Order 227.

Stalin issued his "not one step back" order in the face of advancing Axis forces near Stalingrad.  The order, which was actually quite lengthy and detailed, read in part:

Moscow, Nr. 227, July 28, 1942

The enemy throws new forces to the front without regard to heavy losses and penetrates deep into the Soviet Union, seizing new regions, destroying our cities and villages, and violating, plundering and killing the Soviet population. Combat goes on in region Voronezh, near Don, in the south, and at the gates of the Northern Caucasus. The German invaders penetrate toward Stalingrad, to Volga and want at any cost to trap Kuban and the Northern Caucasus, with their oil and grain. The enemy already has captured Voroshilovgrad, Starobelsk, Rossosh, Kupyansk, Valuyki, Novocherkassk, Rostov on Don, half Voronezh. Part of the troops of the Southern front, following the panic-mongers, have left Rostov and Novocherkassk without severe resistance and without orders from Moscow, covering their banners with shame.

The population of our country, who love and respect the Red Army, start to be discouraged in her and lose faith in the Red Army, and many curse the Red Army for leaving our people under the yoke of the German oppressors, and itself running east.

Some stupid people at the front calm themselves with talk that we can retreat further to the east, as we have a lot of territory, a lot of ground, a lot of population and that there will always be much bread for us. They want to justify the infamous behaviour at the front. But such talk is a falsehood, helpful only to our enemies.

Each commander, Red Army soldier and political commissar should understand that our means are not limitless. The territory of the Soviet state is not a desert, but people - workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, children. The territory of the USSR which the enemy has captured and aims to capture is bread and other products for the army, metal and fuel for industry, factories, plants supplying the army with arms and ammunition, railways. After the loss of Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic republics, Donetzk, and other areas we have much less territory, much fewer people, bread, metal, plants and factories. We have lost more than 70 million people, more than 800 million pounds of bread annually and more than 10 million tons of metal annually. Now we do not have predominance over the Germans in human reserves, in reserves of bread. To retreat further - means to waste ourselves and to waste at the same time our Motherland.

Therefore it is necessary to eliminate talk that we have the capability endlessly to retreat, that we have a lot of territory, that our country is great and rich, that there is a large population, and that bread always will be abundant. Such talk is false and parasitic, it weakens us and benefits the enemy, if we do not stop retreating we will be without bread, without fuel, without metal, without raw material, without factories and plants, without railways.

This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan.

The order went on to require unit commanders to form penal battalions and blocking detachments to block, detain, and shoot the non-compliant.

Jewish youth organizations formed the first Jewish combat organizations in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Yugoslav Partisans and Croatian forces started to fight each other at the Bosnian town of Kupres, giving an example of the odd wars within the war feature of the World War Two in the East.

Arthur "Bomber" Harris made a radio broadcast to the Germans, warning them they were about to face around the clock bombing and the only solution to preventing this was to overthrow the Nazis and make peace.

Spike Jones and his City Slickers released their song Der Fuehrer's Face.

Disney would use the song as the basis for a cartoon the following year.

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Friday, January 23, 1942. The Japanese land on Rabaul, Partisans withdraw in Croatia, Dutch aircraft score, the Afrika Korps advances, the Red Army surrounds.

Soon to be added to the nation's fighting forces will be an all black aviation squadron, whose members now are in training at Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama. Some of the cadets at the Basic and Advanced Flying School for Negro Air Corps Cadets are shown here, January 23, 1942, lined up for review with Major James A. Ellison returning the salute of Mac Ross of Dayton, Ohio, as he inspects the cadets." (Source: AP Photo/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

On this day in 1942, the Battle of Rabaul commenced on New Britain, pursuant to Japanese Operation R.

Australian troops in withdrawal in New Britain.

The Battle of Balikpapan began in eastern Borneo.

Yugoslavian partisans withdrew, ending Operation Southeast Croatia.  Perhaps the most notable thing, however, is that it was 1942 and Yugoslavia clearly wasn't under uncontested Axis control.

The Italian submarine Barbarigo sank the Spanish freighter SS Navemar, thereby seeing an event in which an Axis state sank the ship of a putative Axis ally.  

On the same day the Japanese I-72 sank the USS Neches 120 miles west of Pearl Harbor.  This caused the U.S. Navy Task Force 11 to return to Pearl Harbor, as it could not make Wake Island, which it had been detailed to strike, without refueling, and the Neches was an oiler.

USS Neches.

The MS Nana Maru was sunk by Dutch Martin B-10 bombers and Brewster Buffalo's.

A Martin B-10.

Both aircraft would be regarded as nearly obsolescent by this point in the war, and yet they could still give first-rate service in the hands of capable crews.

Brewster Buffalo.

The Germans sink a British and a Norwegian merchant ship in Operation Drumbeat.

The Afrika Korps continues to rapidly advance in North Africa, which didn't keep these coastal artillerymen from getting clean.


Or this Army bakery from doing its work.


The Luftwaffe raided Tobruk.

British anti-aircraft crews near Tobruk on this day in 1942.

The Red Army surrounds 5,500 German troops in Kholm, USSR.