Friday, November 16, 1973. Transforming Alaska.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 16: 1973     President Richard M. Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.

The building of the Alaska pipeline was huge news at the time. There were those then who expressed concerns about the environmental costs, but by and large, in the midst of the oil crisis, it was looked at by Americans with a lot of hope and often compared to big prior endeavors, such as the Transcontinental Railroad.

The oil would forever change the economy of Alaska, as it also had already, and was continuing to do, in Wyoming.

Before the Oil. And after it? The economies of Wyoming and Alaska.

Skylab 4 was launched.

Saturday, October 27, 1973 Ceasefire.

Israel and Egypt announced a ceasefire in the Yom Kippur War.  Part of the agreement was for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.  China declared it would not help pay for the force.

Nixon stated at a press conference; “So long as I can carry out that responsibility for which I was elected, I will continue to do my job."

A 1.4 kg meteorite hit in Fremont County, Colorado.

Monday, May 14, 1973. Skylab launched, but damaged.

Skylab was launched.  The US's first space station was damaged due to a signals error, and the launching of the crew therefore had to be delayed.

This is, I'll admit, one of those areas of history I should be interested in, but I'm not.  I'm not sure why, but post Apollo space exploration just does't interest me very much.

The US opened its first diplomatic mission to the People's Republic of China.

Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty in Northern Ireland.

Tuesday, April 3, 1973. The beginning of the end of personal space and time.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 3:  1973  The T E Ranch Headquarters, near Cody, WY, which William F. Cody had owned, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The first handheld cellular phone call was made by Martin Cooper in a demonstration call by Motorola.

Would that this would never have occurred.

Montreal announced Canada's first lottery in an effort to help pay for the upcoming 1976 Olympics.

The USSR launched Salyut 2, it's second space station.  It would be a failure due to hitting fragments soon thereafter, and it would crash back to Earth on May 28.  Well, not crash.  It burned up before it hit.

The Kingdom of Sikkim within India experienced a large-scale revolt which would require Indian intervention, and result in eventual Indian annexation.

Seal of Sikkum, downright scary.

Thursday, February 21, 1963. Training SEALs.

US Navy Seals in training in the Virgin Islands, February 21, 1963.  Note the original verion of the M16 in use here, before it had been actually adopted as a theater rifle by the U.S.

I don't normally put posts from 60 years ago, but as I don't anticipate being around when these photos hit the 75 or 80 year mark, I thought I'd go ahead and post them.

As we have these up, we'll note a few things about the day.

The Telstar 1, the first privately funded satellite, became the first satellite destroyed by radiation.  The U.S. had conducted a high altitude nuclear test the day prior.

Oops.

The satellite had inspired a hit instrumental by the Tornados.

The Soviet Communist Party wrote the Chinese one, proposing a meeting in hopes of clearing up differences between the two bodies of thuggery.

In East Berlin, the Communist government yielded in the face of a student protest which simply assigned occupations to graduating students, rather than allow them to pick their own paths, prior to being able to attend university. The occupations that had been chosen were all manual labor jobs.

Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago received a shipment of surplus Mannlicher-Carcano rifles.  One of them would later be purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Tuesday, December 19, 1972. Apollo 17 splashes down.

 

Apollo 17 splashed down, bringing to an end the Apollo missions.

Thursday, December 7, 1972. The last to be drafted, Apollo 17.

Apollo 17 was launched.

It was the last of the Apollo missions and accordingly the last manned mission to the Moon.

This seems like something I should recall, but I don't.  I would have been in 4th Grade at the time, and moon missions were a big deal, but as noted, this was the last one and the 17th Apollo Mission. Fifty years later, I can't recall having paid too much attention to this one, although it seems to me I dimly recall it.

On the same day, the last conscription induction call in U.S. history occurred.  The call was to have been one of two to occur in 1972, but the second one was suspended due to a national day of mourning called by President Nixon in honor of Harry S. Truman, who died on December 26, 1972.  The conscription call would have occurred on December 28. 

The men who were chosen in the draft lottery on this day did not, I believe, immediately but in 1973. This was, after all, in December.  Having said that, I'm not completely certain.  49,514 men were inducted into the service via conscription in 1972.  646 were inducted in 1973, with the final induction occurring on June 30, 1973,  The height of the Vietnam War era induction occurred in 1966, when 382,010 men were inducted.

On January 27, 1973, President Nixon suspended conscription. In part this recognized the impending end of the Vietnam War, but the move was also clearly political and designed to address increasing civil unrest in spite of the obvious coming end of the war.  Conscription had been resumed in 1948 and the Cold War was far from over, but moral in the U.S. military was disintegrating to the crisis level, which provided another, albeit unstated, reason for suspending the draft.  The Army started rebuilding itself as an all volunteer force in 1973, but it would really take until the Reagan Administration for a new, effective Army to form.

Congressional authority to induct expired on June 30, 1973, although oddly lottery drawing continued until March 12, 1975.  Registration for conscription terminated on April 1, 1975, which I can recall occurring.  Registration would resume, however, a mere five years later, in 1980, and it remains a legal obligation for men.

Men drafted on this day would have found themselves in the odd situation of having to serve in the U.S. Army until late 1974, according to The New York Times, which ran a headline on November 23, 1974, that the last conscripts had been discharged.  If that is correct, they must have been let go slightly ahead of schedule, which likely would have reflected the end of the Vietnam War and a drawdown that sought to eliminate men who didn't want to be there.  Otherwise, the June 30, 1973, inductee should have served until June 1975.  The last pool applied only to men born in 1952 or later, so it applied only to men in their early 20s, for practical purposes.

The end of the draft really returned the U.S. military to its historical norm. The Army had not conscripted at all until the Civil War, and then did not do it again until World War One.  Militia service, of course, was mandatory in the US up until around the Civil War, when it started to slowly die off as a observed state requirement.  The World War One and World War Two drafts had been enormous, with the US drafting 2,294,084 in 1918 alone, and 3,323,970 in 1943.  Following 1940, there'd only been one year, 1947, in which there had been no inductions, up until 1974.

The last man inducted was Dwight Elliot Stone.  He was a married plumbers apprentice living in Sacramento who was 24 years old at the time and had two kids.  He tried to avoid to hide induction before finally turning himself in.  He served in the Army for 17 months (which would make the NYT article at least a bit inaccurate) before being discharged early for reasons he wasn't aware of, but which were probably due to the fact that by 1975 the Army didn't really want unwilling soldiers around.

Stone went to basic training at Ft. Polk, at which the press followed him around a bit.  He was trained as an electronic technician, after which he was stationed at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey.  Upon his discharged he was quoted as saying "I wouldn't have joined.  It wasn't the place to be. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone. I didn't like it. It was poorly run.''

In the early 70s, it was in fact poorly run.

Stone went back to work as a plumber/pipe fitter in Sacramento, but over time his view changed, as it did for many who had been conscripted in the same period.  He later stated that while he didn't like being in the Army, he'd had a lot of fun while in it, and he used his service benefits to attend two years of college.  His oldest son enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Thursday, October 28, 1971. The House of Commons votes for British entry into the European Economic Community and the UK launches a satellite into orbit

On this date in 1971 the British House of Commons voted to join the European Economic Community.  This did not bring the UK into the EEC, however, but only supported a move to enter into negotiations to do so.

There had been two prior efforts to do so, but the EEC President at the time, Charles DeGaulle, had vetoed British entry.  DeGaulle had just stepped down from that position.  His leaving office, and the Commons vote, assured British entry in the near future.

On the same day, the UK became the sixth nation in the world to launch a satellite into orbit, something it undertook from Australia.  It sadly is the only such example from a British rocket, the UK having decided to abandon such efforts the prior July.

Both events were signs of British decline at the time. The UK had concluded that being a loner in space endeavors wasn't something it could do, and gave it up, never to return.  And reluctance to join the EEC, which the British had been a standoffish founder of, had been completely overcome, with all that meant, in the wake of a long-lasting post World War Two economic decline.  The sun was truly setting on the British Empire.

Wednesday, June 30, 1971. Dropping the voting age to 18, Soviet Space Disaster, the Pentagon Papers.

On this day in 1971 Congress ratified the 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution which dropped the voting age from 21 to 18.

Marine Corps position in Vietnam, 1967.

The Vietnam War, and the increasing involvement of young Americans in protesting it, really caused the change to come about.  18 was the conscription age, which thereby made men that age liable for combat, and there was a widespread feeling that you couldn't really justly ask people to potentially go to their deaths for a country and not let the same people vote in its elections.  That logic was pretty solid really, even though as a practical historical fact very few 18 year olds served in Vietnam.  That point, while correct, is really irrelevant, however. The larger point, that you could require people to divert from their plans and force them to serve in the military, but they couldn't vote, didn't make a lot of sense and Congress recognized that fact.

Indeed, the voting age was really a carryover from a much older era in which the drafters of the Constitution paternalistically felt that a lot of people couldn't vote as they didn't have the mental maturity before a certain age or,  in other instances, because of their gender. Women couldn't vote, originally, at any age.  And the feeling in Colonial times that only propertied men could vote was widespread.

Indeed, in English speaking countries the concept that a person became an adult at age 18 was not the norm and is somewhat of an American oddity.  Ultimately it came to be the widespread view, but that was in no small part due to World War One. The English, for example, originally viewed 21 years of age as the service age, although it accepted the oddity of allowing parents to enlist their children, without the children agreeing to it, down to about age 13, if I recall correctly. Be that as it may, younger enlistees were not supposed to serve outside of Great Britain, although it occasionally occurred. The Great War changed all that.

The United States really started off with this view, which reflected, to some degree, its origin as an agrarian nation.  Contrary to widespread believe, youthful marriage was not an American norm and early in the country's history a man of 18 or 19 was most probably working on his parent's farm, or perhaps apprenticed to a nearby tradesman.  He wasn't out on his own, normally, and he wasn't in the Army, which was so small as to be nearly nonexistent, as we covered here the other day.   That started to increasingly change with industrialization and when the formal public school system became universal by the 20th Century the distinct concept of a person graduating from high school and into the adult world arrived.

By and large, however, people usually didn't.  Most 18 year olds who graduated, which was a minority of men well into the 20th Century, still went into nearby work and they weren't setting up their own households. The real separation of generations, as noted, began with World War One. Following that, the Roaring Twenties briefly started what the 1960s would more fully develop, which was the concept of leaving home to go to university.  The Depression put an end to the Jazz Age abruptly, but World War Two massively introduced the idea that at age 18, you were an adult.  It not only did that, it massively separated teenagers from their homes and, if they weren't in the service, many were in university on their way to the service.  The war also boosted youthful marriage, briefly, as people rushed into adulthood not knowing how long the war would last.

Coming out of the Second World War the trend continued with the GI Bill and the concept of "graduating from high school and going to college" really set in.  My own father was the first in his family to do that (my mother's parents, in contrast, were both university graduates from the 1910s, something extraordinarily unusual at the time).  He was somewhat compelled to do so, however, by family pressure and circumstances.  My grandfather had died and with him my father's probable future employment.  My father's Irish American mother, to whom he was close, had already seen him enter "junior college" and when my grandfather died she wouldn't allow my father to retain a job he'd taken with the Post Office and required him to move on, on the basis that "he was too intelligent" to work the job that he'd been comfortable with.  He was a genius, so perhaps her view had merit.  We'll deal with that another day.

My father, like many men of his generation, went right from university, where he'd obtained a DDS degree, into the service, in his case the Air Force.  After his Air Force service, however, he came back home and was living at home when he met and married my mother. That retained pattern of life remained common as well.

But by the 1960s things were really changing.  And Congress followed the change.  On this day in 1971, the voting age became 18 years of age.  Only nine Congressman and two Senators voted against it.

I recall this actually occurring. In 1971 I was a grade school student and it was the talk of the school.  The fact that all of us very young people thought it was a great idea, and that even then we associated it with the Vietnam War, shows to what extent that must have been the view of our parents.

It should be noted that right about this time, although I don't recall exactly when, the Wyoming state legislature dropped the drinking age to 19 years of age. The rationale was exactly the same.  Wyoming had only one military base, but the thought was that you really couldn't ask people to go off and fight in Vietnam and tell them they were too  young to have a beer.  It frankly makes some sense.  The neighboring state of South Dakota dropped it to 18.  I don't know why Wyoming didn't go that low, but the thought of having people in high school young enough to drink probably had something to do with it.  As it was, the drop in the age came to mean that there was almost no drinking age as a practical matter.

Of course, over time, things change in various and interesting ways.  The Federal Government came about and ultimately punished states that had dropped their drinking ages with the threat of withholding highway funds, so they all boosted them back up to 21.  Wyoming did so only very reluctantly and nearly didn't.  In the end, however, it came around.  Conscription came to an end with the end of the Vietnam War, although men and women can still enlist at age 18.  On base, those in the service could drink at the 1-2-3 clubs by my recollection, irrespective of age and state law, although only 3.2 beer.  I don't know if that's still true or not.

The big change, however, is that the older pattern of living, with adult children living at home, has returned in a major way as the post World War Two economy finally ground to a halt in the last quarter of the 20th Century.  A matter of constant speculation by the press as a "new" development, it's nothing of the kind, but rather a return to prior days.

On the same day, the crew of the Soviets Soyuz 11 spacecraft were all killed in reentry, a horrible tragedy that I can can also recall being talked about at the time.  Interestingly, while we feared the Soviets, the heartache over the disaster was so palatable that I can still feel it, in thinking of it.  May God rest the souls of the Cosmonauts who perished so tragically on that day.

Also on this day, the United States Supreme Court found the New York Times publishing of the "Pentagon Papers" to be constitutionally protected by rejecting a Federal government effort at imposing an injunction on it as an unconstitutional instance of illegal prior restraint.

May 15, 1921. The Solar Storm Continues.

The Great Solar Storm, which impacted most notably New York state in the US, also impacted the Rocky Mountain Region, as of course it would, being a global event.

It didn't keep, however, Curtiss Flying Field from opening in Garden City, New York, even though flying during a solar storm in something made out of, basically, paper and wood seems like a bad idea.

The Aerodrome: May 15, 1921. Opening day of the Curtiss Flying F...: 

May 15, 1921. Opening day of the Curtiss Flying Field Garden City, New York. on May 15, 1921.

Both from the 2015 Model T. forum.

May 14, 1921. Stormy Weather

The major impacts of the Geomagnetic Storm of 1921 impact Earth.  In the US, New York, which has more in the nature of telecommunications than other states, is particularly hit.  The impacts were serious even for the era in which there was relatively little in the way of electronics.  As a scientific paper notes:

The most spectacular (and most dangerous) examples of GIC impact were two destructive fires—the first in Sweden around 02:00 GMT on 15 May and the second in the United States around an hour later (times shown in Figure 2a by the upper pair of magenta arrows) The Swedish event occurred in a telephone exchange in the town of Karlstad, 260 km west of Stockholm. This event was widely reported around the world (e.g., Fouche et al., 1921; New York Times (NYT), 1921c; Daily Herald, 1921; Belfast Telegraph, 1921; Sunderland Daily Echo, 1921). It was also the subject of contemporary study by David Stenquist, a Swedish scientist and engineer, who had a long interest in what we would now call GIC impacts on telecommunications systems. One of his narrative reports on the event is included in his 1925 memoir on earth currents (Stenquist, 1925), and another is reproduced by Karsberg et al. (1959). They both outline how the operators at Karlstad exchange first experienced problems (equipment anomalies and faint smoke) around 01:00, followed by a period of quiet, before the main fire started around 02:00 leading to extensive equipment damage. (The scale of that damage is recorded in contemporary photographs held by several Swedish museums, as discussed in the supporting information.) Stenquist also highlighted a near‐miss incident at Ånge, some 380 km north west of Stockholm, that was simultaneous with the Karlstad fire. This experienced a threat similar to that fire, but where the initial problems were sufficient to trigger preventive measures that avoided major damage. In his later analysis of the Karlstad fire (Albinson, 2018; Engström, 1928; Stenquist, 1925), Stenquist noted that this site was vulnerable to strong GIC, because it was on the 400 km route of the major communications lines between Oslo and Stockholm, and this route was vulnerable because of its east‐west orientation. His insights into engineering design of the communications lines enabled him to estimate the geoelectric fields that created the damaging GIC. He showed that fields of at least 6 V/km were required to cause the observed melting of fuses, “tubes de fusion,” in copper wires, and that a field of 20 V/km would have caused more damage than observed (melting of fuses in iron wires). As a result he suggested that 10 V/km would be a reasonable estimate of the average geoelectric field in central Sweden at the time of the Karlstad fire. A later review of GIC impacts on wired telecommunications (Sanders, 1961) noted that in the case of the Karlstad fire, these fields would have been applied over a typical line length of 100 to 200 km, and thus concluded that the induced voltages on the lines into Karlstad would be of order 1,000 V.

The U.S. fire occurred in the village of Brewster in New York state, some 80 km north of New York city, between 03:00 and 04:00 GMT. The fire started in a switch‐board at the Brewster station of the Central New England Railroad and quickly spread to destroy the whole building (Brewster Standard, 1921a; NYT, 1921c). The first reference notes that the night operator had to evacuate the building, rousing another person asleep in the building as well as saving some valuables. There is also evidence of significant damage elsewhere in the Northeast United States caused by GIC during this storm with communications being delayed on 16 May due to the need to repair damage such as burned‐out equipment (Berkshire Eagle, 1921). One major example is that the Boston and Albany Railroad experienced damage to telegraph and telephone equipment in many places along its 250‐km route between Boston and Albany (Springfield Republican, 1921). This reference notes that the damage was most significant in the western half of the route, which passed around 100 km north of Brewster. Unfortunately, the reference does not provide any detailed information on the times when damage occurred on the Boston and Albany systems. However, it does note that other railroads in the Northeast United States (e.g., New Haven, Boston and Maine) were much less affected and attributes the vulnerability of the Boston and Albany route to its east‐west orientation. In contrast to Stenquist's analysis of the Karlstad fire, we do not appear to have any contemporary estimates of the geoelectric fields in the Northeast United States. However, there are many reports that induced voltages up to 1,000 V were measured on telegraph systems in that region (Lyman, 1921; NYT, 1921c; Telegraph and Telephone Age, 1921c). Such large voltages on telegraph lines are suggestive of geoelectric fields of order 10 V/km, as noted by Sanders (1961) in his discussion of the Karlstad fire. They are also consistent with Sanders' report that geoelectric fields of similar strength had been observed in the United States during earlier geomagnetic storms.

On this day in 1921, although I don't have a copy of it, Leslie's ran an article entitled "Is Tobacco Doomed?"

While the geomagnetic storm was ranging planet wide, a more terrestrial storm event was occurring in Maryland.

That didn't stop, however, the horse show from receiving spectators in Washington, D.C., including these ladies from the Junior League.

May 13, 1921. What does that photo tell us?

It's interesting how a photograph can tell you something about times past, and present, in ways the photographer never intended.

How about this first photograph, for example, of the Durst annual Humane Education Society parade?

Unidentified man, Harding's dog Laddie Boy & Isley Randall, 5/13/21

Laddie Boy was President Harding's dog, an Airedale that was reportedly very attached to President Harding.  Who was Isley Randall?  I have no idea.  Obviously, when this was taken she was still in her youth.  A member, somehow, of the White House circle?

And the handsome well turned out African American man on the left?  He almost certainly has to be a member of the White House staff. But who was he?

And how to we view this photograph today?  Does it have messages unintended?\

More photographs of the parade below.

This one shows Sgt. Stubby, the Marine Corps mascot.

And here's another, of the Morse Elm in downtown Washington D.C.  It was about to come down for a road widening project.

Under the Home Rule Act, elections were held in the twenty six southern counties of Ireland.  Sinn Fein won 124 seats in parliament and Independent Unions won four.  There were no opposed seats.

Half of those who won were in prison.

All the Sinn Fein candidates refused to take the oath of allegiance to the crown, meaning none of them could take their seats.

The Great Solar Storm of 1921 began to bombard earth.

May 12, 1921. Storms.

Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa.

The Great Geomagnetic Storm of 1921 commenced on this day, or rather the giant sunspot that's attributed to it was observed first on this day. The actual impact would commence the following day.

So, more to come on that.

Canadian naturalist Farley Mowat was born in Bellville, Ontario.  Mowat was a controversial Canadian author and naturalist.  Born in Ontario, his family moved to Saskatchewan during the 1920s where he was exposed to the outdoors.  In 1939 he joined the Canadian Army and he served throughout the rest of the war, seeing extensive service in Italy and even seeing service in France in 1940 prior to the British evacuation of the country.   His wartime service was the source for three of his books.

A highly prolific writer who wrote both on natural topics and fiction, Mowat came to be highly criticized for several of his works which, critics have argued, were highly fictionalized.  Nonetheless, his works have their defenders who maintain that in spite of their faults, they got the feel of their topics right.

He may be best remembered for his book Never Cry Wolf, which was made into a successful movie.

Edmund Able, who invented the heating element for Mr. Coffee, was also born on this day in 1921.

A mass arrest of Romanian Communist was carried out.

Sewer line going in on this day in Pittsburgh.

 

February 9, 1971. Satchel Page inducted, Apollo 14 returns, San Fernando hit by earthquake.

Satchel Page was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first black player to receive that honor.

The Apollo 14 mission returned to Earth.

An earthquake killed 58 people in San Fernando, California.  It measured 6.5 of the Richter Sale.

Lex Anteinternet: No Surprise: Astronomers find no signs of alien t...

Lex Anteinternet: No Surprise: Astronomers find no signs of alien t...: Astronomers find no signs of alien tech after scanning over 10 million stars So read a recent headline. This gets to the Fermi Paradox, name...

It's interesting the extent to which people just don't want to believe this.

No sooner had I posted this item than we were greeted with headlines stating:

Hint's of Life Venus's Clouds

Which were contradicted in the article which noted experts, including three of the author's authors, stated their findings on Venus's cloud chemistry were "far from the first proof of life".

No Surprise: Astronomers find no signs of alien tech after scanning over 10 million stars

Astronomers find no signs of alien tech after scanning over 10 million stars

So read a recent headline.

This gets to the Fermi Paradox, namely if there are aliens from space out there, where are they?  While some will make strained arguments, the fact is that there just isn't any evidence of them at all, and with this, there's now even less.

This is answered neatly by an interview of a scientist in the Smithsonian's Air and Space magazine some years ago. There isn't anyone out there.  I.e., there's no life in space.

Most people don't like that idea, but frankly the odds against life being anywhere are profoundly long.  There shouldn't be life here.  Nobody ever has been able to get over the profoundly improbable act of life coming forth from nothing much in the first place nor been able to explain it.  And even if it can be created from elements that are dead by their very nature in some freak way, which seems frankly impossible, keeping that thing alive is almost impossible.  

And yet people don't like that.  

It makes us unique in a disturbing way.  Nothing should be living anywhere at all. And life, no matter how long it might take, shouldn't evolve into a creature like us. .  let alone just one creature like us.  

It would mean that everything is extraordinarily unlikely, and extraordinarily fragile in some ways at the same time.

It also suggests, indeed demands, an outside element to it to make any sense at all.

Which gets to another point.  If there are those who hold themselves to be scientific, or non scientific, who demand the presence of corporal being who are out there somewhere, in spite of the lack of evidence, why do so many of the same people resist the evidence for non corporal beings which is much more abundant?

Space Force Was Set to Announce Its New Rank Structure. Then, Congress Stepped In

Space Force Was Set to Announce Its New Rank Structure. Then, Congress Stepped In: Some experts have argued that a Navy rank system would make sense for the fledgling Space Force.

The thing that would make the most sense is to abolish the goofball Space Force which doesn't need to exist in the first place.

Indeed, if I took the Oval Office in January, I'd abolish the Space Force and give General Discharges to anyone who got themselves into it.

The Aerodrome: The F15 is back in production and so is the Mig 31.

The Aerodrome: The F15 is back in production and so is the Mig 31.:

The F15 is back in production and so is the Mig 31.

The F15 is the F15EX variant, a brand new version of the old F15, which first went into production in 1976.  The planes history dates back to tests that go as far back as 1972.

The enormous Mig 31 first went into production in 1981 and has a history that goes back to 1975.

Why are they back?

Missiles.

The F15EX can carry a seven foot long missiles that can reach deep into China, should the need arise, and its external hard points can carry more missiles than the F35.

The Mig 31, which might simply be getting an overhaul rather than new editions, can carry missiles that can reach into low orbit and hit satellites.

And so the Cold War sort of returns, in a way.

January 13, 1920. Strife and change

German soldiers guarding the Reichstag following violent Communist demonstrations on January 13, 1920.  The troops ultimately ended up opening up on the crowd with lethal effect.

In Germany a massive demonstration in front of the Reichstag took a turn for the worse when violence erupted and troops opened fire.  Over forty people were killed.

And in Oregon ratified the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.  

The New York Times, always on the right side of history, published a cartoon lampooning Robert Goddard for claiming that a rocket could make it to the moon.

Apollo 12 Returns to Earth. November 24, 1969

Apollo 12 and the USS Hornet.

On this day in 1969, the Apollo 12 crew rode their module back down to Earth.

The recovery was affected by the USS Hornet, the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier that famously was used in World War Two.  The Hornet had been commissioned in 1943, decommissioned in 1947, and then recommissioned with a new angled flight deck 1953. At the time of her recommissioning she was a small aircraft carrier and she was decommissioned again in 1970, just the following year after this mission.  She was struck from the roles in 1989 and is now a museum ship in Alameda, California.

The Apollo 12 mission was a successful one, particularly in light of its frightening start when the Saturn rockets were struck twice by lightening during the launch.  Seismographers were left on the moon when the lunar capsule was launched back to the orbiting module and the launching apparatus' vibrations on the surface of the moon lasted for over an hour.