Showing posts with label Ethnicities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethnicities. Show all posts

Thursday, October 23, 2025

Tuesday, October 23, 1945. Signing Robinson.

It was announced that Jackie Robinson had signed with the Kansas City Royals, although he was not to play under the arrangement for a full season, going to the Montreal Royals for the 1946 season.

Robinson in 1946 as a Montreal Royal.

Robinson was a great man, and is justly celebrated, but there's a fair number of myths regarding his pioneering role in integrated baseball.  He was not, for one thing, the first black player in the major leagues.  That honor would inaccurately go to Moses Fleetwood Walker, although he had played in the 19th Century, and is inaccurate itself as William Edward White had played a single major league game prior to that.  White didn't reveal  his race, and therefore is often not credited, but Walker's brother Weldy Walker did, and he also played major league baseball

Moses Fleetwood Walker.

So, in reality, Robinson was the fourth African American ball player known to have played in the majors and the third to acknowledge his racial identify.

Weldy Walker.

1883 letter to editor by Weldy Walker.

Additionally Robinson was not the only black player in the majors in 1947, Larry Doby appeared in the American League two months later, something that has also been planned as far back as 1945.  His appearance, however, had not been accompanied by advance press, as Branch Rickey had done with Robinson.  It just happened.

A surprising part of the story is that Robinson being picked upset a fair number of players in the Negro Leagues who well knew that their talents were superior to Robinson's.  It was Robinson's character, of course, that had lead Ricky to pick him.

If the entire story is pieced together, it makes for an interesting focus on racism in the United States following the Civil War and before the Civil Rights Era.  Racism was intense the entire time, but it can be argued it actually got worse towards the end of the 19th Century.  The Navy had been integrated going into the Spanish American War but forces were at work to end that, and soon did.  Breaking the color barrier was hard for athletes in team sports, but was possible in the 19th Century up until the late 1880s when it became much harder, with it being harder in baseball, where the color barrier was absolute, as opposed to football, where a few men crossed it here and there before the 1946 groundbreaking season.  

World War Two had a lot to do with the color barrier fracturing.

Considerations were being made about the post war military, including a proposal to have a single service (something the Canadians in fact did).  Also proposed was something akin to the pre war German system, a small professional army with a large conscript reserve.


Neither proposal found favor at the time.

Of course, in just a couple of years conscription would in fact be revived, and would remain a feature of American life until 1973.  Watching current events, however, a good argument can be made for just what Truman had proposed here, a very small professional Army with a conscript reserve.  Conscripts are a lot less likely to fire on their friends and neighbors than professionals or volunteers are.

Last edition:

Monday, October 22, 1945. The Handan Campaign (邯郸战役) launched.

Sunday, October 19, 2025

How Super Bowl LX should be informing American Catholics why the populist far right will betray them as soon as it gets a chance.

Last weekend we ran Catholic Ross Douthat's interview with Doug Wilson.  In his interview Douthat kept trying to pin Wilson down on whether there was a place for Catholics in Wilson's vision of a Calvinist theocratic United States. Wilson came down on yes, but he hedged his bets a fair amount.

The real answer to whether members of the New Apostolic Reformation feel that was has been provided by Super Bowl LX.

I don't like football at all.  I won't be watching the halftime game which I always find to be much like professional football itself, grossly overblown.  But it does provide a weathervane to the culture.  The music associated with professional football shows very much who football feels to be the up and coming audience.

The performer chosen was "Bad Bunny".

Bad Bunny is one Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio.  He was born in Puerto Rico.  He sings in Spanish.

Well the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA is having none of it.  It's going to offer its own  “All American Halftime Show”.

Oscasio is an American.  Puerto Ricans have been since March 2, 1917.  They're fully American, and frankly, Puerto Rico ought to be granted statehood, there being absolutely no good reason for it not being a U.S. State at this point.  And, Oscasio is a Christian.  He's a Catholic, whose mother is apparently very devout.

Here's the thing.  Turning Point USA is exhibiting a populist far right Freudian Slip.  Some members of the organization are just too ignorant to know either of these points, but some know them and don't believe that Puerto Ricans are "real" Americans, or that Catholics are Christians.

The last point is particularly ironic.  Lots in the Evangelical far right like to say they're "Bible Believing" Christians, by which they mean sola scriptura Christians. Sola Scriptura is itself Biblically indefensible as St. Paul informed the Thessalonians that they should stand firm in the "traditions" that they had been brought, indicating that there were in fact traditions already.  We know now what those traditions were, as Christians had been writing many of them down in other texts  that didn't end up in the Bible almost from the very beginning.  But more ironic yet is this, the Bible is a Catholic book.

This isn't a matter for debate.  It just is.  We know how the books of the Bible came about, who wrote them, and what they believed.  There was, at the time, just one "holy, catholic and apostolic church", and that was the Catholic Church.  You can add the Orthodox churches to this list today as they directly descend from it.  But in a strict sense, members of various Evangelical churches don't fit into this category.  Indeed, fear of not fitting into it by various Protestant groups has lead some of them to claim membership all along, such as various branches of the Lutheran, Anglican and Methodist churches. They don't dispute that the Catholics and Orthodox are direct descendants of the original Catholic Church, and indeed, they agree that the Catholic Church is the uninterrupted Christian church that Christ founded.  Evangelical churches that don't hold that view are frankly ignorant on this point.

But they are persistent in their ignorance.  So much so, that many of them don't believe that the original Christians, the Catholics, are Christians at all.

We put the Bible together, and the New Testament was written by inspired Catholic authors, but they ignore that.

As I've noted before, and as Wilson conceded, this is a Protestant nation and moreover Wilson was also right that it was founded as a Calvinist one.  That's a major reason that for much of this country's history the Irish, Italians, and other Catholics were detested and even regarded as a separate race.  It's part of why Hispanics are regarded as a separate race today.  Stripped of his fishing tackle piercings, Bad Bunny could look like a Spanish Conquistador. . . not a "Pilgrim".   

Something about the election of Barrack Obama really brought out latent racism in this country.  The Obergefell decision really unleashed a deep dormant conservatism in the population, but one that followed the American Civil Religion rather than real Christianity.  The New Apostolic Reformation took advantage of that and has been advancing its cause under the radar, until recently, when it started doing it more openly, although still not so openly that the fact that we're in the midst of a Christian Nationalist coup right now is appreciated.  Quite a few conservative Catholics, not really well schooled in what far right Evangelical Christians believe, or just badly catechized themselves, have joyously gone along with it, as it seems to address, and to some degree if fact addresses, the cultural rot that has set in, in the Western world.

But it will catch up with us.

Welcome back to the Ghetto.

Blog Mirror: In Anti-Catholic Crusade, Trump's ICE Targets Holy Mass in Chicago

 

In Anti-Catholic Crusade, Trump's ICE Targets Holy Mass in Chicago

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Thursday, October 11, 1945. Racism in "the good old days".

The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Trinidadian-born pianist Hazel Scott to give a concert at Constitution Hall in Washington because of her race.

It's worth remembering that the "good old days" some would return us to, weren't so good.

Chile and the Philippines ratified the United Nations Charter.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 10, 1945. Uncle Mike: "The World's Worst Series".

Sunday, October 11, 1925. The line of duty.

The China Zhi Gong Party as founded in the United States in San Francisco by a pair of exiled former warlords who opposed the the Kuomintang.  It remains today as one of the eight minor Chinese political parties currently permitted to exist as flunkies.

M'eh.


FBI agent Edwin C. Shanahan, was fatally shot after following a suspected car thief, Martin James Durkin, to a garage.  He was the first FBI agent to die in the line of duty.

It was a bit of an immigrants take.  Dunkin was an Irish American, and so was Shanahan.  Cop, and cop killer, both of recent immigrant stock, a story that was not uncommon.

Dunkin was convicted and remained in prison until 1954.  He died in 1981.

The Senators beat the Pirates 6 to 3 in game four of the 1925 World Series.

At Locarno delegates agreed that due consideration would be given to Germany's special military status until such time as a general arms reduction plan could be implemented across Europe. This was thought to secure Germany's entry into the League of Nations.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 10, 1925. The Chinese Imperial Collection.

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

In Memoriam. Claudia Cardinale

Tunisian born Claudia Cardinale has died at age 87.  Her entry into film came after being chosen as the most beautiful girl in Tunisia, where her Sicilian parents were immigrants.

One of the Italian (in her case Sicilian) bombshells of the 1960s, Cardinale is famous for a series of well regarded Italian movies, but perhaps best known in the US (outside of film aficionados) for her unlikely role as the Mexican heroin in The Professionals and again as the heroin in Once Upon A Time In The West8 1/2 may be her best known Italian film.

She was married once, and had two children, the first of whom when she was a teenager and whom was the result of a rape.  Her parents raised that child as her brother until her true mother was revealed to him when he was eight years old.

In addition to Sicilian and English, she spoke French.

Overshadowed in the US by Sophia Loren, she was known as "Italy's girlfriend".

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Tuesday, September 9, 1975. Welcome Back Kotter.

Albania issued a decree requiring minorities to adopt names reflecting a Muslim origin, which of course they did not have.  It impacted Catholic and Orthodox minorities.

Welcome Back Kotter premiered.  Set in a gritty high school class in Brooklyn, it was one of the best television series of the 1970s.  It ran until 1979, and debuted John Travolta.

Last edition:

Monday, September 8, 1975. Leonard Matlovich on Time and the UFW.

Thursday, August 28, 2025

Tuesday, April 28, 1945. U.S. Troops in Japan.

Flag of the Allied Occupation forces, Japan.

U.S. troops disembarked at Atsugi airfield and the occupation of Japan commenced.

The Red Army completed the occupation of Sakhalin.

Japanese forces surrendered in Burma.

Various Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring, and Ribbentrop, were indicted as war criminals.

Ho Chi Minh announced his provisional government for Vietnam with all the main posts held by communists.

Gee. . . what a surprise.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Health was founded.




The Southern Jiangsu Campaign ended in communist victory.

Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey held a three-hour meeting with Jackie Robinson on his signing up with the Dodgers.

Last edition:

Sunday, August 3, 2025

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th edition. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes.

Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle denim, part of the ad campaign causing all the furor.  The outfit itself is very 1970s retro, which is more than a little ironic in context.  Given the commentary, this is posted with the fair use exception.
Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.

Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle ad.

Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad shows a cultural shift toward whiteness.

CNBC headline.

Q: Your administration has been very open about the fact that American women are not having enough babies. There was an ad this week. Sydney Sweeney, an actress, was in an ad for Blue Jeans. Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?

Rob Finnerty in an interview of Donald Trump.

First, let us state something plainly.

Sydney Sweeney is hot.

Way hot.

And she looks good in the American Eagle Jeans, which are sort of retro 1970s denim really.  

Really good.

So why are people having a fit?

Well, it's a really interesting tour through the culture, really.

Using attractive women to sell clothing is nothing new.  Shoot, using attractive women to sell anything, is in fact not new.  

So what's the big deal.

Basically, when you get right down to it, the big deal is two things.  First of all, Sweeney is white.  Secondly, this is a return to an obvious sex sells approach to selling that we haven't seen since the early 1990s.

The peak of the sex sells approach was really the 1970s.  Coincident with the rise of feminism was the absolute exploitation of women in advertising.  Calvin Klein really went to town with Brooke Shields, who was sexualized so young in her career that her image, in the movie industry, was basically a near example of child pornography.  But in advertising, he wasn't the only one.  There were in fact advertisements that would outright shock most Americans now as they used young teenage girls in sexualized poses.  It was repulsive. 

That seemed to have run its course by the mid 1980s, but even then, in the 1990s, Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith modeled jeans, in her case Guess jeans.  

The 90s, however, also saw the really fruity elements of the American come into cultural power, and a lot of that gave us, unfortunately, what we have today in terms of a massive right wing populist reaction.  In modeling, left wing media masters insisted that models not be, if possible, smoking hot young women and that instead they should be culturally diverse, and in some cases, fat.

Now comes this, in the midst of a real swing to cultural conservatism, but not culturalism of the Patrick Dineen type, but of the Dukes of Hazzard fan type.

What Sweeney said, quite frankly, is actually completely true. Genes are passed down from parents to offspring.  Genes in fact determine external traits like hair color and eye color.  That is a fact.

And, more than we like to admit, they determine a massive amount of our personality traits.  If you hang around a family gathering and don't find people who have the same deep interests as you do, the same sense of humor, etc., you might wish to check to see if you are in the right place. Sure, some of that might be due to environment, you are all from the same family, but some not.  It's well known that many of the traits that impact our personalities are in fact genetic.

So what's up with the upset.

Well she's white, as are 60.5% of the American population.  That is who you are trying to sell to much of the time. The liberal left just can't have that.

If the same clothing promotion was being done by Anok Yai, the left wouldn't be having a fit, the right would be, and for the exact same reason.

Which is exactly why, if I ran American Eagle, I'd have Anok Yai join in the campaign.

Of course, that isn't the only reason people are enjoying being upset.  They're also upset as the ads openly focus on Sweeney's assets, including having the camera in the jean jacket ad focus on her boobs until she intervenes to instruct the viewer to look at her face.

Well, gentle reader, that portrays reality.  All the feminist reactions in the world are never going to stop men from observing cleavage when its right there.  We're wired that way, and for a reason.

Which brings us to the next point.  In the right wing defense, Trump, in a friendly Fox interview, was asked the bizarre question "Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?" after the pronatalist views of the far right were referenced.

That was weird.  

The US, and for that matter the entire Western World, does not have a demographic crisis like the far right pronatalist like to imagine.  But the suggestion that men are going to look at Sydney Sweeney and suddenly feel aroused and go out and procreate is truly odd.

But even this does give us a glimpse into how modern Western society has really gone off the rails  No man who wants to "transition" is ever going to look like Sydney Sweeney.  Nor will any of them suffer from the Girl Flu every month.  That's reality.

Anyhow.  Givc the woman a break.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Third Edition and Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 98th edition. The Perverts and Fellow Travelers Issue.

Friday, August 3, 1945. The end for Japan in Burma.

The US announced the complete mining and hence blockade of Japanese and Korean harbors.

Organized Japanese resistance in Burma came to an end.

Germans and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia were stripped of their citizenship.

The French cruiser Strasbourg, scuttled in 1942, was refloated, but found to be beyond repair.

Last edition:

Thursday, August 2, 1945. Potsdam concludes.

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Friday, June 1, 1945. The Levant, the fate of the German Cossacks, and of Danish collaborators.

Twenty seven P-51 Mustangs out of 148 escordging B-29s were lost in a thunderstorm en route to Osaka.

Charles de Gaulle accused the British of meddling in French affairs in the Middle East. In response, the British accused the French of using Lend-Lease equipment to fight the Syrians and Lebanese in violation of the agreement with the United States, which the French were almost certainly doing.  The British meanwhile complete the occupation of Lebanon and Syria.

Cossack cemetery in Peggetz.  By He96848 - own work (transferred from de:Image:Kosakenfriedhof2.jpg), GPL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5447806

British troops reluctantly began the forcible repatriation of approximately 40,000 members of the Cossack Corps and their families.  Conflict broke out resulting in 700 Cossack deaths from gunshots, panic, and suicide.

The repatriated Cossacks would meet with death in their home countries.  The few who managed to avoid repatriation tended to immigrate to the United States, where they spent the rest of their lives in an understandably insular manner.

Cossacks had suffered as an ethnicity under Communism and largely joined the Germans, as many other Soviet citizens did, hoping to overthrow the Communist government while not really giving much thought to what the Germans stood for.  The Nazis proved to be oddly fascinated with them, so much so that they were given a false ethnic identity to make them more "Aryan".  

Sarah Sundin's blog also discusses their fate today, and that of Danish collaborators:

Today in World War II History—June 1, 1940 & 1945: Denmark decrees prison for war profiteers and for those who aided Germans or joined German military or police units, and the death penalty for those in Danish Nazi terror organizations.

Japanese troops began to grow upset with the war on Okinawa.

Last edition:

Thursday, May 31, 1945. Intervening in Syria.

    Friday, May 2, 2025

    Wednesday, May 2, 1945. Berlin taken.

    The Red Army took Berlin.


    Yevgeny Khaldei took the staged Raising a Flag over the Reichstag photograph, showing Soviet troops raising the flag of the Soviet Union atop the Reichstag.  The unretouched variant is shown above, i which one soldier is wearing two watches, which was later edited out of the photo as at least one of them was no doubt picked up somewhere.

    The Nisei 552nd Field Artillery Bn liberated a Dachau death march.

    The Germans surrendered in Italy and Southern Austria. Among those going into Allied captivity is Dr. Wernher von Braun.

    Admiral Dönitz's formed the Flensburg Government.

    Eamon de Valera paid a visit to Dr Eduard Hempel, the German minister in Ireland, to offer his condolences on the death of Hitler.  Nobody has ever been able to grasp this.

    Erich Bärenfänger, 30, German Generalmajor, Martin Bormann, 44, German Nazi official; Wilhelm Burgdorf, 50, German general; Walther Hewel, 41, German diplomat; Hans Krebs, 47, German general; and Franz Schädle, 38, German commander of Hitler's personal bodyguard, killed themselves.

    Peter Högl, 47, German SS-Obersturmbannführer, Ewald Lindloff, 36, Waffen-SS officerMartin Strahammer, 54, German Generalmajor; and Joachim von Siegroth, 48, German Generalmajor were killed in action.

    The British landed on Rangoon.

    Last edition:

    Tuesday, May 1, 1945. German radio reports Hitler dead.



    Wednesday, April 23, 2025

    Monday, April 23, 1945. Where's Hitler?

    German radio broadcast that Adolf Hitler was in the "main fighting line" in Berlin and would "remain there despite all rumors." 

    The Allies suspected he was in Bavaria organizing resistance there.

    Göring sent a telegram asking for permission to assume leadership of the Third Reich which Hitler regarded as treason, ordering his arrest.

    The Flossenburg concentration camp was liberated by the U.S. Army.

    The U-183 was sunk off of Borneo by the U.S. submarine Besugo.

    The Navy deployed Bat air to ship missiles against Japanese ships in Balipapan Harbor in Borneo, marking their first use.

    Those arrested in the Freeman Field Mutiny were released.

    "Lt. Richard K. Jones, OIC 3235th Sig. Ser. Det. of Hollywood, Calif., feeds Japanese children found in a tomb 50 yards from front line on Okinawa. 23 April, 1945."

    Last edition:

    Sunday, April 13, 2025

    Movies In History, The Six Triple Eight.

    This will be the third time I've tried to publish this review. The prior two times it outright disappeared.

    Uff.

    The 6888 on parade in honor of Joan d'Arc.

    The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion is a unique U.S. Army unit that served in Europe during World War Two.  Deployed in February, 1945, the unit was tasked with straightening out a massive mail backlog in the ETO, and by all accounts did yeoman's work doing it.  The unit was all female, and all black, including its officers the only such unit to be deployed to Europe during the war.  The unit not too surprisingly encountered racist opposition, which is a large part of the theme of the film.

    The film is quite well done, featuring dramatizations of real characters for the most part.  The story, as noted, is dramatized, but with one exception, it does not depart massively from the actual events. The sole exception is a romance between a  rich white Jewish young man and one of the black female characters, before they join the service, which seems to take place in the American South, and which features a desegregated high school.  Desegregated high schools would not have existed in the South, making this an odd error, and while such a romance could have occurred, it would not have taken place more or less openly as depicted.

    Material details are very well done, including the depiction of M1943 Field Jacket Liners in use as jackets, which did occur but which is rarely depicted in film.  Indeed, I can't recall it ever being depicted in another film.

    Well worth seeing.

    Thursday, April 10, 2025

    Thursday, April 10, 1975. A request, and a denial, for aid.

    President Ford requested Congress to provide South Vietnam: $722 million in military aid and $250 million for economic aid, an absolutely massive amount in 1975 dollars.  He also asked for the lifting of Case-Church restrictions in the event U.S. military intervention became necessary to help American citizens in Vietnam. He asked for a response by April 17. . Congress declined and expressed doubt that the aid could arrive in time to be useful, which, quite frankly, absent direct American intervention, was probably correct.

    His appeal reinforced by recent successes by the ARVN at Xuan Loc and in IV CORPS.  Units of the ARVN were fighting well.

    We also start today with a surprising recollection by the Department of Defense recalling events that commenced on this day in 1975.

    Operation Eagle Pull Demonstrates Successful Evacuation of Noncombatants

    April 8, 2025 | By David Vergun

    U.S. citizens and local nationals were evacuated by helicopter from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, during Operation Eagle Pull, which occurred 50 years ago, April 12, 1975.

    The operation became necessary as the communist military group Khmer Rouge surrounded the capital of Phnom Penh to overthrow the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic government. 

    Planning for the evacuation started months earlier. On Jan. 6, 1975, the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit, part of the amphibious ready group, was alerted to sail to the Gulf of Thailand near Cambodia to prepare for an evacuation. Three months later, on April 3, 1975, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia John Gunther Dean requested the deployment of an Operation Eagle Pull command element, which landed at Pochentong International Airport near Phnom Penh. The command element supervised the fixed-wing aircraft evacuation of more than 750 Cambodians over the next seven days.

    By April 10, 1975, artillery and rocket fire directed at the airport by the Khmer Rouge became so intense that the fix-wing evacuation was stopped. 

    As a final option, the command group selected a soccer field close to the U.S. Embassy as a helicopter landing zone for further evacuation.

    The embassy staff prepared to leave April 11, 1975, but the evacuation was delayed a day, allowing the USS Hancock, a World War II-era aircraft carrier, to join the evacuation fleet.

    In addition to the Hancock, the fleet consisted of the amphibious assault ship USS Okinawa, which carried CH-46 Sea Knight, CH-53 Sea Stallion, AH-1J Sea Cobra and UH-1E Iroquois helicopters; the amphibious transport dock ship USS Vancouver; and the dock landing ship USS Thomaston. 

    The destroyer USS Edson, the guided missile destroyer USS Henry B. Wilson, the destroyer escorts USS Knox and USS Kirk, and the frigate USS Cook provided escort and naval gunfire support.  

    At 6 a.m., April 12, 1975, helicopters began launching from the USS Okinawa and USS Vancouver, with a security force of 360 Marines. 

    Around 8:45 a.m., the first wave of helicopters made it to the landing zone, where Marines established perimeter security and began evacuating 84 Americans, 205 Cambodians and other foreign nationals.

    The U.S. Embassy was shuttered by 9:45 a.m., and at 11:15 a.m., the combat control team and Eagle Pull command element were safely extracted. 

    The last Marine helicopter landed on the USS Okinawa at 12:15 a.m. 

    On April 13, 1975, the evacuees were flown to U-Tapao Air Base in Thailand, and the amphibious ready group set sail to the South China Sea to participate in the Saigon, South Vietnam evacuation, which occurred at the end of the month.  

    Eagle Pull was a tactical success because everyone evacuated made it safely out. However, it was not considered a political strategic success because the U.S.-backed government would soon fall. 

    On April 18, 1975, the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh and soon after began executing perceived political opponents and minority groups, resulting in the deaths of up to 2 million people, which was about 25% of Cambodia's population. 

    The U.S. Embassy in Cambodia reopened, and normal relations resumed in May 1994. 

    With the passage of the 1971 Cooper-Church Amendment, which cut off funding for U.S. military operations in Laos and Cambodia, it was only a matter of time before the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, according to Sydney H. Batchelder and D.A. Quinlan, authors of "Operation Eagle Pull," a May 1976 article published in the Marine Corps Gazette magazine. 

    This amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1970 was named for Senators John Cooper and Frank Church, who sponsored it. 

    Eagle Pull was an early example of noncombatant evacuation operations, or NEOs, by helicopter. The Marine Corps and the other services participated in many subsequent NEOs around the globe, using a blueprint similar to Eagle Pull. Some were considered successful, and others less so. 

    Eagle Pull also demonstrated the utility of an amphibious ready group in operations, both military and humanitarian. 

    The legislature of the Kingdom of Sikkim voted to become part of India.

    Lee Elder became the first African American to play in the Masters.

    The Masters must be played surprisingly early in the year.

    Last edition:

    Wednesday, April 9, 1975. Holding out.