Wednesday, November 23, 1910. Provisional President of Mexico.

Undeterred by an unimpressive start to his attempt to overthrow the Mexican government three days prior, Francisco Madero proclaimed himself, with some justification, as "President of the provisional government of Mexico".

President Taft returned to the United States after visiting Panama and Cuba.

Visitor II, a yacht owned by Commodore W. Harry Brown, became the first vessel to travel the Panama Canal, which was completed as far as the Gatún lock.

The Army and Navy Academy, a prep school, opened in Carlsbad California.  I've never heard of it, but it's still in operation, and has beachfront property.

It's interesting how many of these there were at one time, or for that matter, still are.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 20, 1910. Madero crosses. . . and then returns.

Labels: 1910, 1910s, Francisco I. Madero, Leo Tolstoy, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Personalities, Porfirio Díaz, Russia, Texas, Texas (Eagle Pass), Texas (Laredo), The written word

Saturday, November 17, 1900. British barbarity in the Transvaal.

Field Marshal Kitchener announced a plan that would result in Boer concentration camps in the Transvaal., following a policy of rural depopulation first explored by the Spanish in Cuba.

The campbs would end up housing 111,619 white and 43,780 black citizens residents of the Transvaal.  They'd feature a 34% death rate.

Dr. Ernest Reynolds discovered the cause of an outbreak of alcoholic neuritis in the United Kingdom.  It was traced to  a manufacturer of contaminated glucose used in the brewing process, and then to impure sulfuric acid used in processing the glucose.   Seventy people died as a result, 36 of those people in Manchester.

The U.S. Navy completed tests on 12 inch naval guns.

Last edition:

Friday, November 16, 1900. The lynching of Preston Porder.

Labels: 1900, 1900s, Advertising, Alcohol, Colorado, Colorado (Limon), Crime, Racism

Monday, October 20, 1975. Grain, Cubans, Primates, and AIDS.

The US and USSR entered into a five year grain sale agreement by which the US agreed to sell 6,000,000 tons of grain to the USSR each year, as its collective agricultural system tanked, and by which the US accidentally screwed Canadian farmers.

The Cuban Navy's El Vietnam Heroico, El Coral Island and La Plata brought the first Cuban soldiers to Angola to support the MPLA..

Presumably the El Vietnam Heroico didn't celebrate the numerous South Vietnamese who gave their lives in order to attempt to hold the Communist back South East Asia.

Cuban military support to Angola would lead to the introduction of AIDS into Cuba, that region of Africa having been ground zero for the disease.  Myths about the origin of the horrific disease, and a supposed ground zero in New York City, have abounded for years, but in reality SIVcpz, the strain in chimpanzees, was transmitted to humans via contact with infected blood, most likely during the process of hunting and butchering chimpanzees for meat.  It was a "crossover disease."  It spread undetected for some time in Central Africa, notably by hetrosexual sex, and into the Cuban population by that means of transmission.  In much of the Western World, of course, it spread through homosexual sex at first, and then by infected needle transmissions. 

FWIW, eating primates is a really bad idea. They're too closely related to us, giving rise to things like this.

It's an interesting example of how war brings plagues of all types.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 14, 1975. Operation Savannah.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Angola, Columbus Day, Namibia, Native Americans, Operation Savannah, South Africa, South African Army, Washington (Seattle)

Wednesday, October 17, 1910. The 1910 Cuba Hurricane,

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: October 17, 1910: Of Kiddo the wonder cat: Kiddo the cat jumped out of the dirigible America but was fished out of the sea.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 15, 1910. Episcopal concept.

Labels: 1870s, 1875, 1910, 1910s, Agriculture, American Revolution, Imperial Japanese Navy, Lighter than air aircraft, Ohio (Cincinnati), Oxford Movement, Protestant, religion

Sunday, August 16, 1925. Cuban Communists, Big Beer Haul, Dainty Ankles.

Backed with Soviet money the Cuban Communist Party was founded.  It became the Popular Socialist Party in 1939, and merged with Castro's Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas in 1961, the two becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965.

The Herald noted a big beer haul, and that dainty ankles were passe.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 15, 1925.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Art

Tuesday, August 5, 1975. Ford restores Lee's citizenship. South Africa enters Angola.

President Ford signed a Senate resolution restoring the citizenship of traitor Robert E. Lee.

South African forces drove ten miles into Angolan territory in reaction to the increased presence of Cuban troops in the country.

By Sam van den Berg - Image courtesy of Sam van den Berg, from Port Elizabeth, CC BY 2.5 za, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38327611

This is one of those news stories I can recall watching on the nightly news when I was a kid.

Fairfax County, Virginian K9 Officer Bandit was killed in the line of duty chasing a suspect.

Last edition:

Friday, August 1, 1975. The Helsinki Accords.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Angola, Angolan Civil War, Diplomacy, Europe, Finland, Helsinki Accords, Homo Erectus, India, It was because of World War Two, television

Tuesday, July 29, 1975. A Nigerian Coup.

The Nigerian government was overthrown in a coup.

The Chinese Army, the Communist one, killed hundreds of rebels and civilians in the Yunnan Province.  Most of those killed were Muslim Hui's, of which 900 were killed in the village of Shadian.  400 Red Chinese soldiers were killed in the action.

The OAS voted to lift its embargo on Cuba.

Turkey took control of remaining US facilities in the country.

The US made its first delivery of weapons to UNITA in Angola.

Last edition:

Monday, July 28, 1975. Turkey acts.

Labels: 1930s, 1937, 1970s, 1975, Art, Indiana, Turkey

Friday, March 13, 1925. Tennessee prevents evolution in schools.

In a uniquely American struggle, due to the strong influence of Evangelical Protestantism in the country, the Tennessee General Assembly approved the Butler Act, which prohibited public schools from teaching evolution.

CHAPTER NO. 27

House Bill No. 185

(By Mr. Butler)

AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the violation of this Act, Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ (100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense.

Section 3. Be it further enacted, That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.

Passed March 13, 1925

W. F. Barry,

Speaker of the House of Representatives

L. D. Hill,

Speaker of the Senate

Approved March 21, 1925.

Austin Peay,

Governor.

Calvin Coolidge held a press conference.

The Hay-Quesada Treaty between Cuba and the United States was ratified by the U.S. Senate, recognizing that the Isla de Pinos was the territory of Cuba.

Last edition:

Thursday, March 12, 1925. Passing of Sun Yat-sen. British rejection of the Geneva Protocol.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, China, Crime, Ireland, Isolationism, League of Nations, Nazi Party, Populism, Sex, Sun Yat-sen, The relationship between men and women, United Kingdom

Monday, May 5, 1924. Cuban revolt spreads.

The ongoing Cuban revolution spread to Oriente Province.

The Pusan Public Industrial Continuation School, later the Busan National University of Technology,  now part of Pukyong National University, was established in Japanese occupied and ruled Korea.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, May 4, 1924. Summer Olympics. Not ousting councilman over booze.

1920s, 1924, 1924 at the Movies, 1924 Olympics, Calvin Coolidge, Casper Wyoming, German Weimar Republic, Movies, Newspapers, Olympics, Prohibition, Protestant, religion, Society of American Wars, Wyoming (Casper)

Friday, May 2, 1924. Craters of the Moon.

President Coolidge placed an arms embargo on Cuba at the request of its government.  

Craters of the Moon National Monument was established.

WHEREAS, there is located in townships one south, one and two National Monument, north, ranges twenty-four and twenty-five east of the Boise Meridian, in Butte and Blaine Counties, Idaho, an area which contains a remarkable fissure eruption together with its associated volcanic cones, craters, rifts, lava flows, caves, natural bridges, and other phenomena characteristic of volcanic action which are of unusual scientific value and general interest; and

WHEREAS, this area contains many curious and unusual phenomena of great educational value and has a weird and scenic landscape peculiar to itself; and

WHEREAS, it appears that the public interest would be promoted by reserving these volcanic features as a National Monument, together with as much land as may be needed for the protection thereof.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, by authority of the power in me vested by section two of the act of Congress entitled, “An Act for the preservation of American antiquities,” approved June eighth, nineteen hundred and

six (34 Stat., 225) do proclaim that there is hereby reserved from all forms of appropriation under the public land laws, subject to all valid existing claims, and set apart as a National Monument all that piece or parcel of land in the Counties of Butte and Blaine, State of Idaho, shown as the Craters of the Moon National Monument upon the diagram hereto annexed and made a part hereof.

Warning is hereby expressly given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, injure, destroy or remove any feature of this Monument and not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.

The Director of the National Park Service, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, shall have the supervision, management, and control of this Monument as provided in the act of Congress entitled, “An Act to establish a National Park Service and for other purposes,” approved August twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred and sixteen (39 Stat., 535) and Acts additional thereto or amendatory thereof.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

DONE in the City of Washington this 2d day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty – eighth.

Sen. Robert Howell (R-Neb.) proposed that the Senate broadcast its proceedings via radio. 

Doing so would have cost $3,300,000 in 1924 dollars, which would be $100,000,000 now, thanks to inflation. The initiative died.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 1, 1924. Salt.

1920s, 1924, Automobiles, German Weimar Republic, Germany, Labor unrest, May Day, Medicine

Wednesday, April 30, 1924. More tornadoes.

Tige, the Coolidge's cat.

Tornadoes killed 111 people in five southern states.

The lead plane in the transglobal flight effort, the Seattle, crashed in fog near Port Moller, Alaska. The crew was unharmed.

A short-lived rebellion broke out in Cuba under Gen. Laredo Bru.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 29, 1924. The Townsend Fire.

1920s, 1924, British Empire, Casper Wyoming, Disaster, Prohibition, Rhodesia, The American South, Weather, Wyoming (Casper), Zimbabwe

Monday, February 4, 1974. Patty Hearst kidnapped.

Patty Hearst, a grandchild of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California by the  Symbionese Liberation Army.  She was 19 at the time.

Hearst right during later bank robbery.

The group had first appeared in November when it had murdered Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounded his deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn.

The name of the entity, it might be noted, came from this, according to the organization:

The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.

It's hard to seem how murdering public school superintendents fits that supposed goal.  Robert Blackburn, who survived his wounds, noted:

These were not political radicals, They were uniquely mediocre and stunningly off-base. The people in the SLA had no grounding in history. They swung from the world of being thumb-in-the-mouth cheerleaders to self-described revolutionaries with nothing but rhetoric to support them.

Emblematic of the times, the goof ball entity was a kind of sort of Communist terrorist cell that rapidly became disenchanted with "the people" after distributions of food, which it had demanded as a ransom in Berkeley, didn't go well.

In April, the group raided a bank in San Francisco, in which Hearst seemed to take part, although she denied doing so willingly. She nonetheless was convicted due to the actions and served two years out of a seven-year sentence before Jimmy Carter, ever the kind man, had her released.  Bill Clinton pardoned her.

In May the organization moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where they got into a shootout at a sporting goods store where Hearst, on guard duty, fired shots.  A shootout a couple of days later at a supposed safe house killed six of them.

Hearst was arrested in September 1975, back at a San Francisco safe house.

Hearst, as noted, was convicted, but she claimed she had never participated willingly, and had been raped and threatened while a captive.  Given the nature of the SLA, that's certainly possible. Early on, however, after her arrest she had said that she comported her thoughts to theirs and was given a choice of being freed or fighting with them, and she elected to fight.

After her release, Hearst married Bernard Lee Shaw, a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail.  They had two children.  He died in 2013.

The Provisional IRA bombed a bus on the M62 Motorway in England, killing nine solders and three civilians, including two children.

The Yom Kippur War resumed, but only as between Syria and Israel, with 500 Cuban soldiers joining a Syrian tank unit.  Fighting resumed in the Golan Heights.

Time Magazine featured Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil on the cover, with the caption "The Impeachment Congress.

Last edition:

Monday, January 28, 1974. End of the Siege of Suez.

Labels: 1970s, 1974, Bolivia, boxing, Egypt, Indonesia, inflation, Israel, pornography, Siege of Suez, Sports, Suez Canal, Suez Egypt, The Great Inflation, Watergate, Yom Kippur War

Friday, January 11, 1974. Births.

Long Suffering Wife was born.

The first surviving sextuplets in human history, David, Elizabeth, Emma, Grant, Jason and Nicolette Rosenkowitz, were also born in South Africa to Susan and Colin Rosenkowitz. The couple already had two children.

There have been, of course, massive changes in South Africa since 1974 and the history of these siblings demonstrates that, as they later moved, respectively to locations around the English-speaking world, with three remaining in Cape Town.

Their father, Colin, was raised in an orphanage, although he was not an orphan.  He'd been placed there, as would occur in those days, due to the financial distress of his parents. In 1989 Colin and Susan divorced with Colin obtaining custody of all of their children.  Susan, who was from the UK, seems to have returned to the UK.  The children were teens at the time, but the large family obviously put Colin in financial distress, and he worked until he was 83 years old.  He died in 2021.

Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba and Libya's President Muammar Gaddafi signed the Djerba Declaration, committing Tunisia and Libya to a merge as the Arab Islamic Republic, one of many various effort of Arabic nations to merge, all of which have failed.

Tad Szulc broke the news that the CIA had attempted to finance the assassination of Fidel Castro in 1964 and 1965, to be followed by an invasion of Cuba.

Bootmaker Tony Lama passed away at age 86.

Crisis on the border. Roots, origins, angst, and what is to be done.

May 13, 2023

Mexican Border Crisis

The predicted chaos did not ensue yesterday, which doesn't mean it's not arriving.

Those seeking asylum, FWIW, are required to have first applied in the countries from which they are departing, or online, or if they traveled through another country or countries, those places.  The problem remains of dealing with the requests of those who are allowed in.

Most of the migrants are fleeing economic distress or violence in their homelands, the product of a wide-ranging number of things, and which varies by countries.  Haiti, for example, remains impoverished as a legacy of paying its original French slaveholders upon achieving independence long ago.  Almost all of the Central American and South American states contributing to the human flood also suffer from the legacy of Spanish Colonialism, which saw its original liberators largely act in the name of their own self-interest rather than that of the native populations.  Stable Central American states, looked at with a long lens, have a single stable government example, which also contributes to the flood due to being in an unstable neighborhood.  The existence of multiple Central American states in the first place is nonsensical and is a symptom of failed policies itself. They should really all be part of Mexico, which in fact was at least partially the plan early on.  Repeated efforts to reunite into one state have failed, leaving tiny rump states that have been corruptly ruled and which have fallen into the control of criminal gangs, something the US's unending appetite for illegal drugs, a symptom of its own failed American Dream, fuels.

Marines in Nicaragua, 1932.

Central Americans have lived in fear of US intervention for decades, although that seems to have ceased, as has U.S. intervention.  Unfortunately, the region is terribly governed, with Socialist ineptitude governing in some places (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), to simply featuring failed states in others.  The US has repeatedly tried a "good neighbor" policy of non-intervention, and it retains guilt over supposed "American colonialism"  for intervention.  The US last put troops on the ground in Panama when it deposed the Panamanian leader during the Reagan Administration and then went right on to invade Grenada.

The problem remains that the neighbor analogy may be too appropriate.  It might be neighborly to ignore your neighbor's dissolute living for a while, but when it turns violent, do you?

It's clear something has to be done to address the root problems of what's being seen. But what is that?

Sunday, November 12, 1972. End of the Flight 29 Saga.

The absurd drama of the hijacking of Southern Airways Flight 49, which I haven't reported on, ended after a tense 29 hours as the hijacked DC-9 landed in Havana on orders of the hijackers Henry Jackson, Lewis Moore and Melvin Cale.

DC-9.

They were immediately arrested by the unimpressed Cuban authorities. Southern Airlines picked up the 27 passengers and returned them to the US.  Jackson, Moore and Cale served eight years in a Cuban prison and were repatriated to the US, where they were then arrested for the matter in the US and were sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Monday, November 9, 1942. The Germans invade Tunisia

In reaction to yesterday's landings in French North Africa and Morocco, the Germans invaded French Tunisia.  Vichy forces offered no resistance.  They were offering little resistance to the Allies further to the West, but they had resisted in Syria and Madagascar.

The Germans had no choice, as with the Allies at their back, they had to attempt to protect their rear.  This meant, however, that the Germans were fighting a two front war in North Africa, more or less protected from the south by desert, but open to flank attacks from the sea.

Sarah Sundin, on her blog, notes:

80 Years Ago—Nov. 9, 1942: German planes transport troops to El Aouina Airfield in (Vichy) French Tunisia to combat Allied landings in Algeria.

This means of transportation was frankly remarkable.

It ought to also be noted that at this point in the war, the Western Allies were fighting in Africa and Asia, and therefore overall involved in a massive two front war on the ground.  The Soviets, who were constantly arguing for a second front in Europe, failed to appreciate that there already was one, effectively.   The Western Allies let this go unnoticed.

The French had occupied Tunisia since 1881, governing it as a protectorate.  Its status was at least technically different, therefore, than other African colonies held by the French, and it would ultimately be very much different than Algeria, which became an overseas department of France.

Tunisia had independence movements that predated the war, but it wisely avoided using the war as a means to argue for a change in government, as it did not want Axis control of the country.  The Free French would, however, mess with its government and depose its popular nationalist bey.  The country became independent in 1956.

Sundin also noted:

Germans force Danish King Christian X to appoint collaborator Erik Scavenius as prime minister.

Scavenius was not a Nazi, but took a down key approach, hoping not to create controversy with the occupying Germans.  He remains a controversial figure in Denmark.

Canada, Cuba and Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with Vichy France.

Another thing noted by Sundin: 

German spy Werner von Janowski is landed by U-boat U-518 at New Carlisle, Québec, but is arrested within hours on a tip from a suspicious hotel clerk.

Von Janowksi was  an odd figure the Canadians tried to turn, and there's some indication he may have ended up a triple agent.  He was eventually sent to the UK in 1943 and repatriated to Germany after the war. As he was from Prussia, he was then homeless, and ultimately ended up working as an interpreter for the German Navy once it was reconstituted.

And on a topic other than the war:

Charles Courtney Curran, noted for his highly romanticized paintings of women, passed away.

Nosotras queremos libertad!

So, they cried, in an open demonstration in Cuba on July 11.

Cuba is not only having riots, but semi violent riots. The Communist government has promised to do whatever it takes to put them down.  Reportedly, a couple of people have been shot.

A crippled economy, and a COVID-19 fueled healthcare crisis, have brought about the immediate crisis, but 60 years of communist rule haven't helped, to say the least.  It's time for Cuba to close that chapter of its history and start a new one.

And it would be a new one, the new one that a lot of Cubans thought they were getting in 1959 when Castro deposed the Batista regime.  Castro had not campaigned against the government as a Communist, although suspicions existed.  The suspicions were uncertain enough that the United States, which had backed Batista during the war, but also quietly supplied some funds to Castro's movement, recognized his government and made some initial attempts to be friendly to it.  Only after it declared itself to be Communist did the rupture occur.

But that rupture was nearly complete.  Only funding from the Soviet Union kept Cuba going during the Cold War, in exchange for which Cuba supplied proxy troops to the Soviet backed effort in Angola during the 70s and 80s. The demise of the USSR dried up direct support of the Cuban economy, and it's limped by on what remains of its infrastructure since that time.  Only 90 miles from the United States, its economy would prosper if opened up, and that won't fully occur without the country's politics also opening up.

Cuba before Castro was corrupt.  Cuba during Castro's regime featured repression, economic stagnation, but a rooting out of the pre-revolution form of corruption.  The country is ready to step into the promise that has always existed for it.

April 11, 1921. Glass Arm Eddie, First Broadcast Lightweight Boxing Match, 67th Congress, Transjordan, Cigarettes in Iowa.

Eddie Brown.

On the same day that Eddie Brown, Centerfielder, was photographed, the first radio broadcast of a lightweight boxing match may, or may not have, been done:

Old Radio: April 11, 1921: The First Lightweight Boxing Match...: April 11, 1921: The first lightweight boxing match on radio between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee was broadcasted live on this day ...

Pity the poor blogger on something like this. . . 

On this Monday of April, 1921, the 67th Congress was sworn in.

The United Kingdom established the Emirate of Transjordan, which today is the Kingdom of Jordan. Abdullah, the future king, was the Emir.  His grandson is the present king. 

The kingdom has been in the news recently as it may be that a case of sibling rivalry has popped up, and is even potentially dangerous.  

Iowa lifted a prohibition on the sale of cigarettes, a retrograde act that shows the could happen.  

Indeed, cigarette prohibition was an early 20th Century thing that shows the dangers of tobacco, while not really fully understood, weren't completely unknown either.  Prior to Iowa three other states had banned the sale, and even the possession, of cigarettes.

World War One, however, hadn't helped matters.  Indeed, while the Great War had helped push alcohol over the top in terms of being passed, the same factors were somewhat at work.  Thousands of men had been exposed to young drinking during the war and to societies in which, at that time, alcohol was simply part of life and a matter of routine daily consumption.  And cigarettes had poured into the trenches during the war in no small part due to the stress of the situation, and the fact that cigarettes were easier to smoke than their competitors.

1919 cigarette advertisement with  youthful smoking veteran.

For whatever reason, cigarettes really are more dangerous than pipes or cigars, health wise, which doesn't mean any of them are safe.  Lung cancer rates would start to spike in the 1930s due to them.

It's odd to think that my father's father, who was from Iowa originally, was a lifelong Camel cigarette smoker, albeit "life long" is deceptive as he died in his 40s.

On the same day, telephone service was established from Florida to Cuba, and as that lays on the path to cell phones, it was also a retrograde movement. A look at somebody in a distant land, from what seems to be the distant past:

April 11, 1921: 'Abdu'l-Baha at Pilgrim House