Thursday, December 21, 1899. Leonard Wood goes back to Cuba.

General  and physician Leonard Wood arrived in  Cuba to serve as its Governor General.

Last edition:

Friday, December 15, 1899. British defeat at Colenso.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Battle of Colenso, Boer Armies, Boer War, British Army

Thursday, August 3, 1899. The San Ciraco Hurricane first observed.

 

The San Ciraco Hurrican, the longest lived Atlantic hurricane of all time and the third longest lived tropical storm in recorded history, was first observed.

It would soon prove to be highly deadly.

Last edition:

Wednesday, August 2, 1899. Newsboy strike ends.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Blog Mirror, Labor unrest, New York, Newsboys Strike of 1899, Newspapers

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.

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

Label Appendix to Growing Up In the 1960s

This post only serves the odd feature, for this blog, for adding in Labels for Growing Up in the 1960s.

The reason is that the labels would otherwise exceed the allowable limit.

Mexico back in the headlines, May 25, 1918

Cuba and Mexico, it seems, were not getting along.

And former President Theodore Roosevelt wasn't getting along with the Postmaster General.

Poncho Villa was making the front page again.

And the nation might need old soldiers who hadn't faded away.

Costa Rica had entered the fray.

And snow was predicted.

May 25, 1918.

The Wyoming Tribune for April 9, 1917. And now Austria. And youth training camp cancelled.

It looked like the United States would be at war with Austria, as well as Germany, soon.  And the news hit about Cuba being at war with Germany.

A training camp for boys at Ft. Russell had been cancelled. . . training for new recruits for the Army was the reason.

The Sunday State Leader for April 8, 1917: Join the Guard, but not the Navy?

The shape of a national Army was beginning to take place in the first days of the wary.  The US would conscript, although there was opposition to it, and the Army was going to be huge.

Americans were joining the National Guard, lining up, as they had in prior wars, to go with their state units rather than the Federal Army.  With conscription that would soon change, but here we see the evolution of the Army.  Joining state units had long been the wartime norm.  It still was, but that was going to change in short order, although conscription had been a feature of the Civil War as well.

Men (and of course now women as well) weren't joining the Navy in the same numbers.  But, as it'd turn out, the role of the U.S. Navy would not be as vast as some had thought.

And Ft. D. A. Russell was going to be busy.

Cuba Declares War on Germany, April 7, 1917

Cuba, on this day, declared war on Germany.

Article I
Resolved, that from today a state of war is formally declared between the Republic of Cuba and the Imperial Government of Germany, and the President of the Republic is authorized and directed by this resolution to employ all the forces of the nation and the resources of our Government to make war against the Imperial German Government with the object of maintaining our rights, guarding our territory and providing for our security, prevent any acts which may be attempted against us, and defend the navigation of the seas, the liberty of commerce, and the rights of neutrals and international justice.

Article II
The President of the Republic is hereby authorized to use all the land and naval forces in the form he may deem necessary, using existing forces, reorganizing them or creating new ones, and to dispose of the economic forces of the nation in any way he may deem necessary.

Article III
The President will give account to Congress of the measures adopted in fulfillment of this law, which will be in operation from the moment of its publication in the Official Gazette.

The Wyoming Tribune for March 9, 1917: State Troops Mustered Out

Wyoming's citizen soldiers were citizens again. . . although not for long.

And the Marines had landed. . . in Cuba.

The Cheyenne State Leader for March 9, 1917: Guardsmen Keep Thier Overcoats

Wyoming National Guardsmen being released from service were relieved to learn they'd be able to keep their overcoats.  A rumor had floated that they were to be taken and burned.  Not so, said the Army, they'd keep them. 

In March, in Wyoming, that was really good news.

The Marines had landed in Cuba.  Out of Mexico and into Cuba?

The false story about Germany broadcasting the Zimmerman note to Mexico by radio was being floated.  That never happened, but the British were circulating the story as cover for how they had learned of the message.  Zimmerman himself was reported to have provided funds for an anti British rebellion in India. 

The Graf Zeppelin passed away, as did the American Ambassador to Japan.

The Cheyenne State Leader for March 8, 1917: Troops Rushed To Protect Border

Juarez was in the news again, and troops were going to the border.

And the Senate was preparing to adopt the cloture rule.