Wednesday, February 17, 1915. Putting a mutiny down.

French, Japanese and Russian sailors and marines landed in Singapore to help the British quell a rebellion by troops of the Indian Army.

Two German Zeppelins went down in Denmark.

Last edition:

Monday, February 15, 1915. The Singapore Mutiny.

Labels: 1900s, 1915, Indian Army, Singapore, Singapore Mutiny, World War One

Tuesday, November 25, 1924. Radio station test, USS Los Angeles commissioned, Chaplin marries a second teenager.

US radio stations stood silent between 10:00 and 11:00, EST, for international broadcasting tests.  Radio broadcasts from the UK, France and Spain were heard as far west as the American Midwest.

The USS Los Angeles was commissioned.

Lita Grey (Lillita Louise MacMurray), actress, age 16, married Charlie Chaplin, age 35.  She was pregnant.  Grey was his second wife, and it was the second time he's married a teenager, Mildred Harris of Cheyenne Wyoming being 17 when they wed following a pregnancy scare.

Had the couple not married, Chaplin faced the possibility of being arrested for statutory rape.

They would have two children during their troubled marriage.

She'd go on to have three more marriages before dying in 1995 at the age of 87.

Last edition:

Monday, November 24, 1924. Australopithecus africanus

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Australopithecus africanus, Chinese Warlord Era, Evolutionary Biology, Japanese Empire, Korea, Republic of China, South Africa

Wednesday, October 15, 1924. Airship and a proclamation.

Proclamation, October 15, 1924

Purpose: To declare historic landmarks on military reservations as national monuments

Date: October 15, 1924

WHEREAS, there are various military reservations under the control of the Secretary of War which comprise areas of historic and scientific interest;

AND WHEREAS, by section 2 of the Act of Congress approved June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225) the President is authorized “in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected”;

NOW THEREFORE, I, as Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, under authority of the said Act of Congress do hereby declare and proclaim the hereinafter designated areas with the historic structures and objects thereto appertaining, and any other object or objects specifically designated, within the following military reservations to be national monuments:

FORT WOOD, NEW YORK

The site of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, the foundations of which are built in the form of an eleven-pointed star and clearly define the area comprising about two and one-half acres.

CASTLE PINCKNEY, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

The entire reservation, comprising three and one-half acres situated on Shutes Folly Island at the mouth of Cooper River opposite the southern extremity of the city of Charleston and about one mile distant therefrom.

FORT PULASKI, GEORGIA

The entire area comprising the site of the old fortifications which are clearly defined by ditches and embankments, which inclose about twenty acres.

FORT MARION, FLORIDA

The entire area comprising 18.09 acres situated in the city of Saint Augustine, Florida.

FORT MATANZAS, FLORIDA

An area of one acre comprising within it the site of the old fortification which is situated on a marsh island south of the present main channel of the Matanzas River in the southeast quarter of section 14, Township 9 South, Range 30 East, about 15 miles from the city of Saint Augustine, and about one mile from Matanzas Inlet.

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

Done at the city of Washington this fifteenth day of October, 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-ninth.

Calvin Coolidge.

The German built dirigible USS Los Angeles arrived at Lakehurst Naval Station.  It took 81 hours for the airship to travel there from Germany.

The Prince of Wales traveled from Detroit to Toronto and participated in a fox hunt.

Toronto was a very English town at the time.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 14, 1924. The 1924 Wyoming Special Election takes sides.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 Wyoming Special Election, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Tajikistan, USSR, William B. Ross, Wyoming

Wednesday, August 27, 1924. Color photos over the wire.

AT&T announced that a color photograph had been successfully transmitted from Chicago to New York via Wirephoto.

The German built, due to reparations, USS Los Angeles made its first flight.

The Lost Angeles over Berlin, 1924.

She was the longest serving rigid airship, serving, with interruptions, until 1939.

Last edition:

Monday, August 25, 1924. Ratifying the Dawes Plan and questionable movies.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 at the Movies, Camping, Dawes Plan, Diplomacy, German Weimar Republic, Movies, Politics

Thursday, June 1, 1944. Chanson d'automne.

 

LST's loading for Overlord, June 1, 1944.

Today in World War II History—June 1, 1944: Countdown to D-day: BBC sends first coded message to warn French resistance of the coming invasion. US Fifth Army opens final offensive for Rome.

The coded message was taken from lines of Chanson d'automne and the Germans were aware of its meaning, but failed to respond to it.

The poem:

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l'automne

Blessent mon cœur

D'une langueur

Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

Sonne l'heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

Et je pleure;

Et je m'en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m'emporte

Deçà, delà,

Pareil à la

Feuille morte.

 

Rangers file through a Red Cross canteen prior to embarking on landing craft, June 1, 1944.

Quarantined U.S. troops cleaning small arms, June 1, 1944.

The British took Frosinone in Italy.  They also dropped 60 men of the 2nd Parachute Brigade behind German lines in the Abruzzo region in order to interdict supply lines, which met with an oversized German response.

Allied advances caused Kesselring to order a withdrawal from Rome to defensive positions north of the city.

Adolf Hitler dissolved the Abwehr and transferred its functions to the Reich Security Main Office.  This placed its duties under Heinrich Himmler.

German forces that were on the attack near Jassy were pushed back by counterattacks of the Red Army, which regained ground recently lost.

A German convoy bound to Crete from Greece was attacked from the air, losing several ships.

On Biak US forces began to gain ground with armored support, while around the Aitape beachhead US forces continued to fall back under heavy attack.

The USS Herring was sunk by Japanese coastal batteries on Matua Island, in the Kuril's.

Two U.S. Navy K-class blimps completed the first transatlantic crossing by non-rigid airframe, flying from the US to Morocco in 80 hours.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 31, 1944. Advances in Italy.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, Blog Mirror, boats and ships, Canadian Army, India, Italy, Operation Overlord, Polesti Romania, Royal Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, World War Two

Wednesday, December 26, 1923. Acknowledging disaster.

The Dixmude was lost, there was no doubt, but the French were making that known.

Totally unrelated, France ran a budget surplus of 568 million francs, determined as of this date.

Dietrich Eckart, German writer and Nazi, and a major influence on Adolf Hitler, died of a heart attack at Berchtesgaden at age 55, too early to see the horror that Nazi ideas would bring upon the world and Germany.

Friday, December 21, 1923. Tabasco Rebels.

The Mexican Revolution was showing, once again, just how brutal it could be.  Peubla was taken back by the Federal Government.

The French airship Dixmude exploded in a thunderstorm over the Mediterranean.  

The British and Nepalese government signed the Nepal-Britain Treaty.  The treaty, which recognized Nepal's status as an independent nation, stated:

1) Nepal and Britain will forever maintain peace and mutual friendship and respect each other's internal and external independence.

2) All previous treaties, agreements and engagements, since and including the Sugauli Treaty of 1815, which have been concluded between the two Government are hereby cancelled, except so far as they may be altered by the present Treaty.

3) As the preservation of peace and friendly relations with the neighbouring States whose territories adjoin their common frontiers is to the mutual interests of both the High Contracting Parties, they hereby agree to inform each other of any rupture such friendly relations, and each to exert its good offices as far as may be possible to remove such friction and misunderstanding.

4) Each of the High Contracting Parties will use all such measure as it may deem practicable to prevent its territories being used for purpose inimical to the security of the other.

5) In view of the longstanding friendship that has subsisted between the British Government and the Government of Nepal and for the sake of cordial neighbourly relations between them, the British Government agrees that the Nepal Government shall be free to import from or through British India into Nepal whatever arms, ammunition, machinery, warlike material or stores may be required or desired for the strength and welfare of Nepal, and that this arrangement shall hold good for all times as long as the British Government is satisfied that the intentions of the Nepal Government are friendly and that there is no immediate danger to India from such importations. The Nepal such arms, ammunition, etc., across the frontier of Nepal either by the Nepal Government or by private individuals. If, however, any convention for the regulation of the Arms Traffic, to which the British Government may be a party, shall come into force, the right of importation of arms and ammunition by the Nepal Government shall be subject to the proviso that the Nepal Government shall first become a party to that Convention, and that such importation shall only be made in accordance with the provisions of that Convention.

6) No Customs duty shall be levied at British Indian ports on goods imported on behalf of the Nepal Government of immediate transport to that country provided that a certificate from such authority as may from time to time be determined by the two governments shall be presented at the time of importation to the Chief Customs Officer at the port of import setting forth that the goods are the property of the Nepal Government, are required for the public services of the Nepal Government are not for the purpose of any State monopoly or State trade, and are being to Nepal under orders of the Nepal Government, The British Government also agrees to the grant in respect of all trade goods, imported at British Indian ports for immediate transmission to Kathmandu without breaking bulk en route, of a rebate of the full duty paid, provided that in accordance with arrangements already agreed to, between the two Governments, such goods may break bulk for repacking at the port of entry under Customs supervision in accordance with such rules as may from time to time be laid down in this behalf. The rebate may be claimed on the authority of a certificate signed by the said authority that the goods have arrive at Kathmandu with Customs seals unbroken and otherwise untampered with.

7) This Treaty signed in the part of the British Government by Lieutenant-Colonel W.F.T. O'Connor, C.I.E., C.V.O., British Envoy at the Court of Nepal and on the part of Nepal Government by General His Highness Maharaja Sir Chandra Shumsher Junga Bahadur Rana, G.C.B, G.C.S.I., G.D.M.G., G.C.V.O., D.C.I., Thong-lin Pimma Kokang- Wang-Syan, Prime Minister and Marshal of Nepal, shall be ratified and the ratification shall be exchanged at the Kathmandu as soon as practicable.

 

Thursday, December 20, 1923. Setback in Mexico.

 Mexican revolutionaries were suffering a set back.

And Congress went on vacation.

The German arms manufacturing company, which also manufactured other things, started finding workers who refused to work a ten-hour day.

The Dixmude, a war prize German Zeppelin in French service, exploded in midair, with all hands lost.

Sunday, September 23, 1923. The Call of the Wild.

The first version of The Call of the Wild was released.

Lightening killed five competitors at the Gordon Bennett Cup balloon race. Those killed were U.S. Army lieutenants John W. Choptaw and Robert S. Olmsted, whose S-6 balloon crashed in the Netherlands near Loosbroek; two people on the Swiss balloon Génève which burned after being hit by lightning; and a person on the Spanish balloon Polar.

The event is still held annually.

King Boris of Bulgaria dissolved he Bulgarian Parliament, which wasn't meeting anyway.  He further declared a state of emergency.

Saturday, Sepember 22, 1923. Henning Hotel Robbed.

A major raid in Chicago on speakeasies resulted in the jails being filled to capacity.

Crime was a major story in Casper as well:

And the Governor of Oklahoma caught a dragon.

The Navy's ZR-1 dirigible flew over Washington, D. C.

Monday, August 20, 1923. Shenandoah launched.

The Kimes-Terrill Gang and the Al Spencer Gang robbed a train on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railorad near Okemah, Oklahoma.

It was one of the last train robberies in the U.S.

The USS Shenandoah was launched for the first time, but was tethered and not under power.  It was the first US rigid airship to use helium.

Strikes broke out in the Ruhr and Rhineland.  German inflation, it might be noted, was now massively out of control.

Stretching a decline in public morals, Broadway began a 312 performance run of Artists and Models which featured nude and seminude female subjects.  Rather obviously, going to peep at the nude subjects was the only purpose to go to the "review".

It's sometimes noted that The Roaring Twenties was as prelude to the 1960s in lots of ways.  More accurately, the 1930s and the Great Depression interrupted trends started in the 20s which revived in the 60s, including this one.

Sunday, July 18, 1943. Alexander appointed governor of Sicily.

Showing how far the invasion of Sicily already gone, British Gen. Harold Alexander was appointed the Allied Military Governor of Sicily. 

For his first act, he banned the Fascist Party.

The U.S. airship K-74 depth charged the German U-134, which returned fire with its 20mm deck guns. The K-74 was shot down.  The unsuccessful attack was the only such instance of an airship attacking a submarine during World War Two.

K class airship.

Japan's counteroffensive on New Georgia ended in failure.

MGM released Stormy Weather, showcasing a host of African American talent. The movie featured 20 musical pieces in 77 minutes.

Wednesday, June 6, 1923. Defeat, no, explosion.

The Red Army defeated the Whites at Okhotsk in the last major battle of the Russian Civil War, although at least one more engagement would occur.  The results, at this point, were a foregone conclusion.

France and Belgium released a joint statement refusing to consider the new reparations proposal of Weimar as long as passive resistance to occupation was ongoing in the Ruhr.

The Army's TC-1 hydrogen filled dirigible was destroyed in a storm when winds blew it into a steel mooring tower.

Tuesday, October 17, 1922. Aviation first, and an aviation disaster.

This Day in Aviation: Lieutenant Commander Virgil Childers (“Squash”) Griffin, Jr., United States Navy, made the first takeoff from an aircraft carrier of the U. S. Navy.

This Day in Aviation: Lieutenant Commander Virgil Childers (“Squash”) Griffin, Jr., United States Navy, made the first takeoff from an aircraft carrier of the U. S. Navy.

Vought VE-7 approaching the USS Langley in October 1922.  This is the same ship, with the same sort of aircraft, involved in the item noted above.

On the same day, the Army's C-2 dirigible, filled with hydrogen, exploded at Brooks Field, Texas, injuring seven.

Saturday, September 23, 1922. Unintended paths.

The Saturday Evening Post went to the stands with a Coles Phillips illustration entitled "The broken heel hop".  The woman in the illustration still looked more cheerful than Muriel MacSwiney, who was photographed in New York City on the same day.

Mrs. Muriel MacSwiney appeared in the photograph with the then Miss Linda Kearns.  Both of them had been involved in a jailbreak that freed Irish prisoners, something that the British tended to suffer with such frequency that it raises real questions about the extent to which they were actually trying to retain them

MacSwinney was the widow of the Lord Mayor of Cork, who had died in a hunger strike.  She was the first woman to be given the Keys (Freedom) of New York.  She never recovered from her husband's death, even becoming estranged from her young daughter, Máire. She remained an activist for the rest of her long life, becoming increasingly left wing as time went on.  In the early 1920s, after this period of time, she left her daughter Máire, in Germany while she traveled Europe, losing custody of her in 1932 to the girl's aunt, who saw the completion of her education in Ireland and Germany.  In the meantime she took up with left-wing French intellectual Pierre Kaan, which produced a second daughter, Alix in 1926.  Kaan died in a German concentration camp during World War Two.

She remained an activist until the end of her life in 1982 at age 90, and ironically died in England, where she had taken up residence near her second daughter Alix.  Máire MacSwiney, went on to marry a significant Irish politician and died in 2012 at age 93.

MacSwiney's life isn't atypical of revolutionaries of the period, who often started off basically in the middle of a movement and then evolved into leftwing movements in general, losing themselves to the movement.  She started off as a Catholic Irish nationalist, which she likely would have remained, had her husband not died of the dubious revolutionary act of self starvation.  From there, she ended up becoming so involved in increasingly left wing causes that she more or less removed herself from the life of her daughter with her husband, and had a second by a left-wing intellectual whom she ultimately did not make a life with.  It's hard to admire her.

Kearns was an Irish nurse and Fianna Fáil politician.  She died at age 62 in 1951.

The C-2 airship completed the first transcontinental airship flight across the United States, landing at Ross Field in Arcadia, California.  The trip had started on September 14.

Allied representatives sent Turkey a proposal to hold a conference to resolve the Chanak Crisis.

Tom Lovelace of the Pittsburgh Pirates made his first, and only, appearance in Major League Baseball, breaking his leg sliding into first base in the ninth inning.  He went back into the minors, where he played until 1932.

Sunday, August 16, 1942. The mystery of the L-8.

The Navy blimp L-8, put out earlier that day in search of Japanese submarines, coasted into Daly California without its crew.

The blimp and its crew of two had taken off at 06:03 from Treasure Island off of San Francisco.  At 07:38 its crew radioed that they had seen an oil slick off of Farallon Islands, Point Reyes.  A Liberty ship and a fishing boat both later reported that the blimp descended to about 30 feet above the slick and then headed east, rather than its planned route, which would have taken it northwest.  It was next spotted at 11:15 off of Ocean Beach, by which time it lacked a crew.  The blimp contained its parachutes and life raft, so the crew had not bailed out.

They've never been found.

Official speculation is that they were trying to deploy a smoke signal when one slipped out and the other went to rescue him, with both going into the ocean, or some variant of that. This seems fairly likely, although other theories abound.

The 101st Airborne Division, provided with cadre from the 82nd Airborne Division, was activated.  The 82nd had been converted organizationally from a conventional infantry division to an airborne division the day prior.

Shoulder insignia of the 101st Airborne Division.

The 101st had come into the table of organizations during World War One, but just existed for nine days on the charts, having been created immediately before the end of the war.  In contrast, the 82nd "All American" Division had seen action in World War One and included in its ranks the famous Alvin York.

Shoulder patch of the 82nd Airborne Division.

The USS Alabama was commissioned.

The Alabama in 1942.

The ship avoided being scrapped in 1964, which the Navy intended to do, and was acquired by the State of Alabama where she became a museum ship.  In spite of the original scrapping intent, a provision of the Navy's transfer of her ownership was that she could be recalled if needed, and in fact when the Iowa Class battleships were reactivated in the 1980s, some of her engine parts were cannibalized by the Navy as they were needed for those ships and were no longer manufactured.

The German Navy began Operation Wunderland with the goal of entering the Kara Sea, an extension of the Arctic Ocean, in order to attack Soviet ships that took refuge in the region which was iced up ten months out of the year.  The German Navy also sank three ships off of Aracaju, Brazil, operating under the belief that Allied ships were operating in neutral territorial waters off of eastern South America.

The Japanese, operating off of faulty areal reconnaissance, dispatch the 28th Naval Infantry Regiment from Truk to retake what they believe is a mostly abandoned Guadalcanal.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Axis targets in Egypt for the first time.

What started as a Mass to commemorate members of the Begona Regiment who had died in the Spanish Civil War degenerated into a riot between Falangist and Carlist factions in which a Falangist member, who had hand grenades with him, through two resulting in the wounding of thirty people.

Tuesday, February 21, 1922. The crash of the Roma.

On this day in 1922 the Roma, in what should have served as a warning for the later craft the Hindenburg, crashed in a firey explosion after striking electrical lines.  Normally she was filled with helium, but on this day she was filled with hydrogen.

The crash resulted in the deaths of 34 people, with only nine surviving. As a result, the US would never fill an airship with hydrogen again.

January 28, 1921. War orphans, Irish protesters, Lost airships, and Absurd hats.

Admiral McCully's youthful Russian charges visited Secretary of the Navy Daniels on this day in 1921.  We've written about them at length here:

What were their lives like? Admiral McCully's adopted Russian orphans, Eugenia Z. Selifanova and Olga Krundvcher.

Pickets protesting for Irish independence marched in Washington, D.C.  Such demonstrations were now a common thing in the United States, which Irish Republicans were courting.

Irish Pickets, 1/28/21, in Washington D. C.

The British sustained the loss of the airship R34, which flew into the side of a hill and was destroyed.

A couple of elderly Congressman were photographed wearing fairly absurd hats.

 

Congressman Isaac R. Sherwood of Ohio allowed himself to be photographed in this fairly absurd hat.

Champ Clark.

For more on hats:

Caps, Hats, Fashion and Perceptions of Decency and being Dressed.

January 2, 1921. Beaches and Balloons.

 Winter bathing at Miami Beach, Miami, Fla., Jan. 2, 1921.

News came on this day that an Army balloon that had been missing for several days after taking off in New York had been found near Moose Factory, Ontario, not far from Hudson's Bay.

The story was a dramatic one. The balloon had been missing for days and was far from its point of launching.  All of the crew members were found alive by a Cree Indian who thought, at first, that they were revenue agents.

January 2, 1921: The first religious service broadcast on radio

The radio broadcast was of a service of Pittsburgh's Cavalry Episcopal Church which is still there.

Monday, January 25, 1915. The telephone menace spreads.

Lightly armed rebels following John Chilembwe were defeated by the Kings African Rifles.

The Ottomans advanced on Qantara on the Sinai.

Alexander Graham Bell, in New York City, called Thomas A. Watson, in San Francisco, in the first US long distance telephone call.

The German Navy sustained its first Zeppelin loss when an ice up airship went down over the Baltic after bombing Libau, Russia.  The Imperial Russian Navy captured the crew.

The United States Supreme Court determined a pardon is only valid if the person it is the subject of accepts it.

Last edition:

Sunday, January 24, 1915. The Battle of Dogger Bank.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Battle of Dogger Bank, boats and ships, British Empire, German Kriegsmarine, Malawi, Royal Navy, World War One