Thursday, December 23, 1915. Villa defeated again.

 

The news reported a Villa defeat.

Henry Ford Abandons His Peace Ship

Last edition:

Wednesday, December 22, 1915. Hartmannswillerkopf ends.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Alsace-Lorraine, Battle of Hartmannswillerkopf, Mexican Border War, Mexican Revolution, World War One

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.

Saturday, April 4, 1925. Recalling Lexington and Concord.

It was Saturday.

Issued on this day in 1925.

Retired Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg agreed to run in the second round of the German presidential election in the place of Karl Jarres, who had won the first round.  He was 77, and would be enfeebled by the time Hitler was ready to push him aside a few years later.

Western Australia rejected prohibition at the polls.

The Nazi Party founded the SS as a bodyguard for Hitler.

Last edition:

Thursday, April 2, 1925. Oklahoma.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Diplomacy, France, Ireland, It was because of World War One, Oklahoma, police, Syria, Turkey

Monday, February 2, 1915. Serum run concludes.

The serum run ended in success with Balto and Kassen, and team, coming in at 5:30 a.m.

President Coolidge signed the Air Mail Act of 1925 turning over air mail to private contractors, which in turn was a boon for US civil aviation.

Up to then mail order entity Sears, Roebuck, & Co. opened its first department store at 8:30 a.m. in the morning at its its headquarters at Homan Avenue and Arthington Street in Chicago. 

Actress Elaine Stritch was born in Detroit.

I don't think there's any thrill in the world like doing work you're good at.

Elaine Stritch

M'eh.

Last edition:

Sunday, February 1, 1925. Balto, the future King Zog, wild party in Laramie.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 Serum Run, Agriculture, Alaska, Albania, Crime, Disease, Food, Ireland, Irish Free State, j, Laramie Wyoming, Personalities, Women, Wyoming (Laramie)

Friday, January 5, 1945. They gave all.

British forces prevailed in the Battle of Bure.

The Navy shelled Iwo Jima, Haha Jima and Chichi Jima. The USAAF also hit them with B-29s.

Suribachi Wan in the Kurils was bombarded by surface vessels.

Shwebo was taken by the British 2nd Division of British 33rd Corps (Stopford).  Indian paratroopers were dropped south of Rangoon.

The opening mission of Operation Cornflakes, an attempt to distribute propoganda via the German mail system, opened with a mail train being bombed followed by an air drop of fake mail to German homes.

Ala Gertner, age 32, was executed at Auschwitz for her role in the Sonderkommando revolt of October, 1944.

Julies Leber, age 53, was also executed by the Germans for his role in being an opposition politician and German resistance member.  An Alsatian who had originally chosen a career in the German Army, he was wounded in World War One and resigned from the army after the Kapp Putsch, which he opposed.  He was a member of the July 20 plot and was anticipated to have a future role in the replacement German government.

The Soviet government recognized the Communist Provisional Government, which the UK and US did not.

Pepe Le Pew debuted in "Odor-able Kitty".

Last edition:

Thursday, January 4, 1945. Fighting in snowy Belgium.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Battle of the Bulge, Belgium, British Army, Burma, German Wehrmacht, Indian Army, Luzon, U.S. Air Force, World War Two

Friday, May 9, 1924. Scottish question results in chaos.

Portrait taken on this day in 1924.

President Coolidge's attempt to delay the implementation of restrictions on Japanese immigration was defeated by the House of Representatives.

George Buchanan introduced a Scottish Home Rule bill, but the debated descended into chaos and Parliament adjourned for the day.

Administrative devolution was granted to Scotland in 1885.  Home rule in the form of the Scottish Parliament was granted in 1999.

In the US, Washington D.C. has home rule, unfortunately.

The Westland Dreadnought was destroyed in a crash.

Air mail service from Belfast to Liverpool was established.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 7, 1924. Liberty.

1920s, 1924, German Weimar Republic, Labor unrest, Mexico, Mining, Peru, Politics, Ruhr, Socialism, South America, The Press

Saturday, March 29, 1924. Yesterday's news, or not. Morning mail.

 Well, it was the "Night Mail" edition.  You'd get it Saturday morning.

The local paper was a day behind on Daugherty, but only to the extent that you got this edition first thing in the morning, or in Saturday's morning mail.

Morning mail?

Yes, morning mail.  Mail was delivered twice per day until 1950.  It varied a bit by city, however, with some cities restricting that to businesses, and some covering everyone.  Some cities had business delivery more than once per day, with some delivering to businesses up to seven times per day. 

Twice per day home delivery ended on April 17, 1950.  For businesses, that ended in 1969.

The same issue had a tragic story of a love gone lethally wrong, and a shooting at the Lavoye.

The final addition, from the next day, followed up on that last story.

Last prior edition:

Friday, March 28, 1924. Daugherty resigns.

1920s, 1924, Calvin Coolidge, Petroleum, Teapot Dome Scandal

Friday, August 24, 1923. "Cross Country Flight Record Is Shattered"

A photographer caught some Maine Corps scenes.

 

The United States Coal Commission met.

Tuesday, August 22, 1923. Oaths of Office, Air Mail, No French Concessions, Japanese Navy Disaster, Societal Shifts.

Calvin Coolidge was administered the oath of office for the second time because of a question of whether the presidential oath had to be administered by a federal official. Judge Adolph A. Hoehling Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia administered did the honors this time, at the  Willard Hotel.

The Coolidge's then moved into the White House later that day.

I'm amazed that our disgraced former business magnate President didn't think of having a notary at the bank or something administer another oath to him.

Mail was getting speedier.

France informed Britain that it would not make concessions on the Ruhr.

Kalamazoo, Michigan banned dancers from staring into each other's eyes.

This sounds absurd, of course, but society was having a difficult time figuring out how to adjust to the arrival of dating.  It didn't come in all at once, of course, but the arrival of modern dating, principally in control of the dating couples or prospective couples, had increased enormously following World War One.

We've dealt with it extensively here before, but the 1920s really saw the onset of domestic machinery which would end up changing women's relationship with work.  And it also saw a dramatic rise in the number of young women who lived outside their parent's homes, or who were semi-independent of their parent's household.  FWIW, a really good portrayal of this can be found in A River Runs Through It, in a rural setting, which is of course a memoir of this period.  Much of this would be arrested with the arrival of the Great Depression, which retarded the advance of household appliances of all sorts, and sent many young people, male and female, back into their parent's households.

Among the difficulties being adjusted to were the morality problems the shift presented.  Now presented as quaint, they really were not and were not easily instantly adjusted to, and in some ways can be argued to have never been worked out.  We may in fact be in the final stages of working them out now.  An item from yesterday demonstrated an aspect of that, being the rise of pornography before there was any consensus on how to address that, which there still really is not.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's submarine 70 sank in a disaster, killing 88 of its men.  She was swamped by a passing ship with her hatch open.  Only six men survived, including her commanding officer.

Six men sawed their way out of the Natrona County jail.

Sawing your way out of a jail window is such a Western movie trope that it's odd to read of it actually being done.

Related Threads:

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two

Thursday, April 15, 1943. V-Mail.

 

The first Victory Mail station established overseas, in this case in Casablanca.

The technology involve microfilming mail for more efficient transmission.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—April 15, 1943: Maj. Gen. Omar Bradley takes command of US II Corps in Tunisia; George Patton is relieved to prepare for the invasion of Sicily.

All in all, Patton had been in command of II Corps for a mere matter of weeks.

On the same day, Gen. Eisenhower toured the front in North Africa.

The State Bank of Ethiopia was established.

The Sino-American Cooperative Organization was established as an intelligence gathering cooperative between Nationalist China and the United States.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand was issued. I haven't read it, and I'm not going to, as Ayn Randites don't impress me.

Wednesday, August 2 1922. Work and play.

 

Tuesday, July 21, 1942. Japan invades Papua.

Today in World War II History—July 21, 1942: 80 Years Ago—July 21, 1942: Japanese invade Papua New Guinea at Buna and Gona, and push south toward Port Moresby.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

Wyoming Air Mail Centennial Talk by Dave Marcum, Cheyenne 6-30-2021

November 6, 1920. The death of John P. Woodward.

1920  U.S. Air Mail pilot John P. Woodward was killed when he flew into a snowstorm near Tie Siding, on his way from Utah to Cheyenne.  His plane crashed near Laramie, a few miles away.

From  here.

The 26  year old Woodward was flying a DH4 when the crash killed him.  He as last sighted over Laramie itself.  In his honor, Woodward Field was named after him at 22nd West and North Temple in Salt Lake City, the city which he had last departed from at 11:30 that morning.  He was to have landed in Laramie at 3:00 and nearly in fact made it.

Woodard Field is now the Salt Lake International Airport.

The Saturday Evening Post depicted a young woman having bobbed her hair.

She didn't look too happy about it in Coles Phillips' illustration.

August 24, 1920. The first issuances of Palestine postage stamps.