Showing posts with label Ohio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ohio. Show all posts

Thursday, November 9, 2023

The 2023 "Off Year" Election.

October 2, 2023.


Some states, albeit not Wyoming, are having elections this November.  

And some of them will have interesting topics on their ballots.  We start with this one, a Texas right to farm act, that will be on the ballot in Texas.

Texans to Vote on Right to Farm Constitutional Amendment November 7

November 8, 2023

Following the trend of voting to make Americans even more intoxicated and dim than they already are, Ohio voted to legalize recreational marijuana.  It also voted in favor of opening up abortion, unfortunately.

Houston is going to have a mayoral runoff.

cont:

Democrats gained control of both houses of the Virginia legislature.

Republicans only barely held the House of Delegates before this, but this can legitimately be regarded as another example of the Trump GOP losing power in an election.

Democrats took the Governor's race in Kentucky.

None of this may be dramatic, but the GOP has a demographic problem, and Trump isn't helping it.  Therefore, ironically, there's a fairly good chance that he'll be elected as the next President, but the House and the Senate will go Democratic.

cont:

Democrats won big in New Jersey.

For some reason, apparently it was thought they would not, which is odd.

November 9, 2023

Regarding ballot initiatives in Maine; Maine passed a resolution prohibiting election funding by foreign governments, including entities with partial foreign government ownership or control.

The Pine Tree Power Company initiative decisively failed.

A right to repair initiative requiring vehicle manufacturers to provide access to vehicle on board diagnostic systems to owners and repair facilities passed.

An attempt to allow out of states to gather initiative signatures failed.

Texas, not too surprisingly, had a bunch of initiatives on its ballot.  Some of interest here:

A right to farm, ranch, harvest timber, practice horticulture and engage in wildlife management was added to the State Constitution.  The vote was overwhelmingly in favor.

Voters authorized an ad valorem tax exemption on medical and biomedical equipment.

An effort to raise judicial retirement age from 75 to 79 (what the heck?) failed, thank goodness.

A resolution to prohibit a tax on net wealth passed.

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Friday, July 27, 1973. Operation End Sweep Ends

Operation End Sweep, the de-mining of North Vietnam's waters by the U.S. Navy, came to an end after having been underway since February.


Carol Tipton became the first woman to graduate from the Toledo police force training cycle as a conventional, rather than separate female, policeman.  Female police officers were very rare in the US, and indeed everywhere, until the 1970s.

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Friday, October 20, 1922. First jump.

First Jump. October 20, 1922

Lt. Harold R. Harris bailed out of a Leoning PW-2A over Dayton, Ohio, being the first U.S. military pilot to make an emergency parachute exist from an aircraft.  The aircraft crashed at 403 Valley Street without injuring anyone.

Harris.  He wasn't the first man saved by parachute, contrary to what this caption states.  Balloon crews had used them during World War One and passengers in disabled aircraft had used them before this day in 1922 as well.  He was the first aircraft pilot to use one.

Harris was a test pilot, and unlike many in that field, he lived a long life, serving in the military twice as well as having a role in commercial aviation.  He died at age 92 in 1988.

The crash site.

Indeed Crimean pilot Pavel Argeyev, who had served in the French and Imperial Russian militaries, died this day in an aircraft accident in Czechoslovakia, which he was flying as a test pilot.

Greece turned over the Gallipoli Peninsula to the Allies, who turned it over to Turkey.

A photo taken on this day in 1922.  I don't know what they were doing.

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

The Tragedy At Kent State

Yesterday, as we noted below, was the 50th anniversary of the Kent State, Ohio, incident.

The incident, to put it briefly, occured when students at Kent State University staged a protest over the invasion of Cambodia which had been announced by President Nixon on April 30 and which for the US commenced on May 1.

This blog isn't a day by day anything, but we do commemorate certain events, most frequently those of 100 years past, when they occur.  Starting in 2018 we started picking up some fifty years past events mostly to mark the epicoal year of 1968.  We've continued with that a bit, as that is in some ways the continuation of the original story.

I marked the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, an event that I can personally recall as I noted in a post about that, but I managed to almost miss the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings. I marked it, but only with a post nothing it:

May 4, 1970. Kent State


I nearly missed this somehow.

The point at which the Vietnam War took on a new, tragic, aspect, as a protest resulted in a unforeseen bloodshed.

This deserves a much better post than this, but unfortunately, it'll have to wait a bit.

The event was a huge one in the story of the war as it was the point where protests over the war resulted in bloodshed, something they had not up until then.  As the anti war movement had developed some real radicals, it would have some violent incidents after Kent State, but the protest at Kent State itself was never intended to be that sort of confrontation.

It's easy to over explain what happened there, but the real oddity of it is that National Guardsmen, who were drawn from the local area and largely not reflected in the student body of Kent State, were deployed as a riot detail to the protest. That's not surprising but frankly, as a former National Guardsmen, that sort of duty is always dangerous for Guardsmen and the public, to a degree.  Guardsmen are trained as soldiers, not as riot police, and the instinct of soldiers is to fire when confronted, no matter how well trained they may be. There are plenty of such incidents all around the globe that have occured when soldiers, even very well trained soldiers, fall back on their training in that fashion.

With that being the case, the shocking thing is that the Guardsmen had been issued ammunition.  Normally this wouldn't be the case and I heavily doubt that even regular active duty soldiers who were deployed in similar roles in the 1950s and 1960s were issued ammunition.  Likely even those men deployed to disperse the bonus marchers carried nothing more dangerous than than their sabers (they were cavalrymen) in that effort, with sabers making a pretty effective non lethal crowd control weapon in the hands of somebody who knows how to use their flats.

But at Kent State the Guardsmen were issued ammunition for their M1 Garands and at some point, they used it.

What happened remains extremely unclear.  The protests had been running for several days as it was so it had grown tense.  An effort was made to disperse the crowed and as part of that the Guardsmen advanced with bayonets fixed to their M1 Garands.  Some students began throwing rocks and return throwing tear gas canisters.  At some point the Guardsmen fired a 13 second volley, which is a long sustained volley.  Sixtyseven shots were fired by the 77 Guardsmen, but slightly less than half fired at all.

That seems clear enough, but from there things deteriorate.  Forensic examination of audiotape suggests that three shots were fired shortly before any others.  Some witnesses claimed a sergeant opened fire with a sidearm first, but the FBI's expert stated that the first three shots were from a M1 Garand.  An FBI informant inside the student body was revealed to be later armed and some have claimed that he fired the first shots, but this now seems discounted.

In the end, nine students were wounded and four killed. None of the killed was any older than 20 years old.  Given the volume of shots, and the weapons used, it's amazing that only 13 people were hit, which has to lead to some speculation on whether the 29 Guardsmen who all fired actually aimed at anything or even attempted to, or even intentionally did not.

The entire matter was a national tragedy, to say the least.  It put protests on the war on a new footing, even though the United States was already withdrawing from South Vietnam at the time, something not entirely evident to Americans given the recent news.  It was also a local tragedy, however, which is rarely noted as like a lot of university towns, the residents of Kent Ohio, whose families had contributed those who were in the National Guard, never saw the incident in the same light.

Monday, September 9, 2019

The Big Picture: Scenes from September 9, 1919.

Pike's Peak, Colorado. September 9, 1919.

Gateway, Garden of the Gods, September 9, 1919.

Fourth biennial and twenty-seventh consecutive convention, United Mine Workers of America held at Cleveland, Ohio, Sept. 9, 1919

Monday, July 15, 2019

Tuesday, July 15, 1919. 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, Wooster to Bucyrus, Ohio. 63 miles in 11.75 hours.

The transcontinental Army motor convoy made good progress on this day in 1919, 63 miles in 11.75 hours.

Reference in these entries is made again and again to the "Militor". The Militor was a 3 ton artillery tractor that was equipped, in this case, with some sort of apparatus that allowed it to operate as a wrecker.  It was an Army designed truck and proved to be the hero of the expedition, being highly reliable and capable.

Militor

We don't think of the Army as designing its own vehicles, but it was to do this twice.  Once in this instance, and again some years later, again with artillery tractors. That second experiment would lead to the legendary 6x6 vehicles that would prove to be, in our opinion, the most effective military implement of World War Two, in the civilian produced version.  That design development came about during peacetime and due to considerations other than that of an ongoing massive war.

On this day as well, Pope Benedict XV issued a declaration in favor of equal political rights for women.

Elsewhere, Little Rock was photographed.



Sunday, July 14, 2019

Monday, July 14, 1919. Bastille/Victory Day. The Versailles Treaty debate commences. 83 miles on the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, East Palestine PA to Wooster Ohio.


A couple of big events happened on July 14, 1919, perhaps the biggest, by some measure, being the "Victory Day" parade in Paris, in which the various Allied nations participated in.  General Pershing lead a contingent of U.S. troops, mounted on horseback.


On the same day, debate opened on the Versailles Treaty in Congress.

In Pennsylvania, progress resumed on the transcontinental Army motor convoy, although it was a day of mechanical problems.


On this day in 1919, the Government Printing Office issued a recruiting poster aimed at the old means of transportation:


Friday, July 12, 2019

Saturday, July 12, 1919. 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, Sewickley to East Palestine, Ohio. 35 miles in 7.5 hours.

I don't know what the Garford was. Garford was a manufacturer of heavy trucks at the time, and they'd been one of the manufacturers of the Class B Liberty Truck, an Army designed heavy truck that had been used extensively in World War One.


There were Liberty trucks in the convoy, and this may have been one of them.

The Liberty trucks had 425 ci engine, which is big, but it only put out 52 hp. It had a top speed of 15 m.p.h.

That's right.  15 m.p.h.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

The Big Picture: Springfield Ohio Fire Department, 1917


The Springfield Ohio Fire Department, obviously a very modern fire department as it appears to have been all motorized, in this photo that was copyrighted on February 28, 1917.