The Hudson's Bay Company opened Fort Vancouver.
The Bicentennial of Fort Vancouver
Last edition:
Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Thursday, August 11, 1774. Sighting of Mount Olympus.
The Spanish ship Santiago, commanded by Juan Perez, sailed past the future state of Washington and sighted Mt. Olympus, which they named "Cerro Nevada de Santa Rosalia."
This was the first known European exploration of the Pacific Northwest.
Last edition:
August 10, 1774. Illegal meeting.
Friday, July 26, 2024
Saturday, July 26, 1924. Other around the world flights.
Argentinian pilot Pedro Zanni and mechanic Felipe Beltrame began their rather belated attempt to fly around the world.
The KKK held a rally in Issaquah, Washington that drew at least 13,000 people.
The weekly magazines were out.
The Saturday Evening Post with a girl who had a scouting uniform of some type, or perhaps was wearing an oddly colored representation of Navy white shirt, with red instead of blue.
Country Gentleman had a classic of a draft team.
Last edition:
Sunday, July 14, 2024
Monday, July 14, 1924. Siberian revolt.
Forest fires in Washington, California, Idaho and British Columbia killed 35 people.
The Tungus Republic was declared within the Khabarovsk Krai and part of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union in Siberia. Armed rebels against the Soviet state had been in action since May 10.
Flag of the Tungus Republic.
Alvey A. Adee, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State from 1886 until June 30, 1924, died at age 81. He was the model for the fictional detective, Nero Wolfe.
On Bastille Day for 1924, a monument to French African soldiers who served in World War One was dedicated in Reims. The Germans destroyed it during World War Two.
Last edition:
Sunday, July 13, 1924. End of the occupation of the Dominican Republic.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Thursday, November 15, 1973. Lowering the speed limit.
Washington state lowered its speed limit to conserve gasoline. Coincidentally, highway mortality drooped 11%.
Israel and Egypt exchanged POWS taken during the Yom Kippur War.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Friday, July 14, 2023
Saturday, July 14, 1923. Harding in Anchorage.
President Harding visited Anchorage, where he and Mrs. Harding painted their names on a section house.
Direct link to something else, apparently, going on in Anchorage on the same day.
The Ku Klux Klan holds its first "Konvention" in Washington state.
Once again, it's really hard to imagine this occurring today.
The French celebrated Bastille Day, even though there's next to nothing to actually celebrate about it, or the French Revolution in general.
Oh well, it's a party, there was music, and the girls were there.
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
Thursday, July 5, 1923. President Harding departs for Alaska.
President Harding boarded the USS Henderson for Alaska, departing from Tacoma.
Marine Corps guard for President Harding.
The Henderson was a troop ship.
Sunday, July 2, 2023
Monday, July 2, 1923: Officers behind bars, French seize Krupp factory
President Harding, continuing his Voyage of Understanding, was allowed to take the controls of a locomotive, fulfilling a boyhood ambition. It was an early electric locomotive.
U.S. President Harding in the cab of a Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ("Milwaukee Road") boxcab electric locomotive, July 2, 1923.
The trip took Harding to Spokane, where he addressed a crowd on public lands. In his address, acknowledging the growing conservation movement that had received a large boost during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, he argued that use of public resources from public lands, rather than locking them up, preserved them. He also more or less correctly anticipated the size of the US population in 2023.
The sad story of a woman killed by a sheriff's deputy for failure to dim her lights was playing out with officers now behind bars.
And the French seized a Krupp plant.
Pope Pius XI sent a letter to the papal nuncio in Berlin appealing to the Weimar German Republic to try to make its reparations payments and to cease resisting the French. Basically, an appeal to try to restore the evaporating peace.
On reparations, Allied delegates at the Conference of Lausanne made their final offer to Turkey.
Sunday, March 5, 2023
Monday, March 5, 1923. Reds.
The Soviet Union, which claimed to respect the rights of nations, delivered a protest note to Finland over Finland's negotiations with the League of Nations over Karelia, which should have been Finland's.
Soviet barbarity would later assure that it ended up in the USSR, and then later in Russia. A general Soviet policy of Russification, which settled lands with Russians, means that Karelians, a Finnic people, are now minorities in Russian Karelia.
On the same day, Lenin wrote Stalin on a personal matter.
Dear Comrade Stalin:
You have been so rude as to summon my wife to the telephone and use bad language. Although she had told you that she was prepared to forget this, the fact nevertheless became known through her to Zinoviev and Kamenev. I have no intention of forgetting so easily what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against my wife I consider having been done against me as well. I ask you, therefore, to think it over whether you are prepared to withdraw what you have said and to make your apologies, or whether you prefer that relations between us should be broken off.
Respectfully yours,
Lenin
Lenin's wife was one Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was also a Bolshevik and very active in party affairs. She's long out live her husband, dying in 1939, just before the start of World War Two.
She managed to survive Stalin's purges, even intervening to attempt to save some condemned Reds. No doubt her status as the wife of the original Red dictator insulated her from such attacks.
It's widely asserted that Nadezhda wasn't Lenin's only love interest, and that French Communist Inessa Armand was his mistress. This is hard to prove, however, even though it is flatly asserted as being the case in many histories referencing Lenin. They had met in France while Lenin was living there, and she came to Russia following the Revolution. Becoming overworked in Revolutionary Russia, Lenin urged her to go to the Caucasus for a holiday, which was suffering from an epidemic and which still had armed opposition to Communism. Supposedly, Lenin was unaware of this. She contracted cholera there and was buried in a mass grave at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, being the first woman to be accorded this dubious honor.
Igor Sikorsky, who felt Soviet barbarity, incorporated the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation in the U.S.
The state of Washington got around to adopting an official flag.
It's incredibly boring.
It's original appearance:
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Still boring.
Casper read of railroads to be built, $1.00 gasoline, and the dangers of ardent wooing.
Friday, December 23, 2022
“Zelenskyy was all rumpled and not wearing a suit, very disrespectful.”
George Washington as Commander of the Continental Army, in the same style of uniform as he wore at the Second Continental Congress in 1775. Shocking.
Eh?
Did I hear that right?
Are Americans suddenly criticizing the dress of somebody appearing at a public function?
Oh yes, they are, and some are truly verklempt, or appearing to be. Consider Newsmax's Benny Johnson:
This ungrateful piece of sh*t does not have the decency to wear a suit to the White House -- no respect the country that is funding his survival.
Track suit wearing eastern european con-man mafia.
Our leaders fell for it. They have disgraced us all. What an incredible insult.
Oh my. An American criticizing somebody for how they dress. It's almost impossible to imagine.
I'm stunned.
I've commented on the decline on the dressing standard here quite a few times. And I do generally think that appearing in front of Congress, and being at Congress, should require formal dress.
And not just there, I'd note.
I don't know that I think that required of a man whose living under siege and who is a wartime leader of a country whose capital is within rocket range of what was thought, up until a few months ago, to potentially have the first or second most powerful military on earth.
Indeed, any rational observer of American dress has to know that Americans, generally, dress like slobs. Quite a few dress like children all the time. People toddle around in public markets dressed like their mothers just got them up for an early morning trip to the store in their pj's. People board planes in jammies. Some men wear knee pants all the time, even during the winter, choosing to affect a dashing infantile presentation in the worst weather.
And more than that, people appear at official functions poorly dressed all the time.
When I was first practicing law, as I noted here before, I didn't really have to tell witnesses how to dress in court. A while later, however, I'd get asked, and when asked I'd use the Protestant term "Sunday Best", even though I'm not a Protestant, as everyone knew what that meant. Later, however, I found that was no longer the case and I started to get lucky if people had a clean shirt.
The summer before last I tried a case in Denver in which a downtown Denver jury came in extremely informal clothing. Shorts, t-shirts, etc. Only the lawyers, the court staff, and the judge dressed up to the old standard. A couple of decades ago, this would not have occurred.
Just recently I attended a multiple day contested case hearing in which the lawyers were no longer wearing ties, something that would be a defacto breach of the old official standard that applied to us when we were first practicing. And I mean the latter. Ties were part of the official rules for male lawyers up until the time I started practicing, and they basically remain that for courtroom attire.
No, not me, I wore jacket and tie every day.
The panel hearing the matter wore formal clothes, however. Most of the lawyers, most of the time, did not. Not that they'd gone full informal, they were still wearing dress shirts and jackets, but no ties.
This is becoming increasingly common.
During the recent January 6 hearings, many of the witnesses fell well below what we would have regarded as the old standard. Not so low as the rioters, however, who were largely dressed down to the American standard.
I'd include in that dressing down, I'd note, the MAGA trucker's hat.
I'm not a trucker's cap fan, for the most part, anyhow, with some exceptions. I will wear real baseball caps from real baseball teams. Baseball caps, however, are actually not baseball caps, which have longer bills, but an evolution of them that has looked bad from day one. Thanks to the MAGA cap, now you see guys wearing sports coats and MAGA caps, which looks dumb.
Okay, I suppose we might ask if this is unprecedented? I truly don't know.
What I can say is that Zelenskyy is a wartime leader. When he was a peacetime leader, he favored dark suits, and was clean-shaven. Starting with the Russian invasion of his country, and the fighting in his own capital, he began to dress in a quasi military fashion.
He's not the first leader of a democratic country to do that. I'll omit non-democratic ones, as their leaders affecting military style dress is extremely common.
The best example is Winston Churchill who dressed eclectically frequently. We like to remember him dressed to the English standard, suit and bowler, but in actuality as he grew older he favored jumpsuits. In his visits to see FDR he wore them quite frequently, and was photographed by the press wearing them due to their uniqueness.
Churchill, who had started off his professional life as a career British Army officer, but who had official roles with the Admiralty later on, really like to dress in quasi Naval attire, even while Prime Minister, including in official meetings with the heads of foreign states.
George Bush, George Bush II, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have all appeared at various times wearing various types of flight jackets, an unmistakenly military item. No, they didn't wear them in Congress, but they wore them. The two Bush's had both seen military service, as pilots, but President Obama and President Trump never did.
And let's not forget George Washington.
Washington famously appeared in Congress, as a member of the Continental Congress, that assembled to take up the problems with the Mother Country, dressed in the blue uniform of the American Continental militia officers.
We might regard that as formal wear, but that was the combat uniform of the time. Our failure to appreciate that is probably due to our inability to read the clothing of the time, but in context, quite frankly, it's shocking.
And it is pretty much what Zalenskyy did earlier this week, save for the fact that he's the besieged president of an embattled country, whereas Washington was implying that maybe the colonies ought to rebel against their established sovereign.
Oh well. The standard is reestablished. Trumpites, your call is clear. Off to Brooks Brothers to suit up, literally.
Monday, July 4, 2022
Tuesday, July 4, 1922. Independence Day.
It was, of course, Independence Day, and parades and celebrations took place in communities across the country, such as this one at Takoma Park, Maryland.
Bauer, who became engaged in college to future television host Ed Sullivan, went on to swim in the 1924 Olympics. The marriage did not take place, however, as she died at age 23 of cancer.
At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the Marines reenacted the pivotal day of the battle.
The last race at the Tacoma Speedway took place.
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Thursday June 1, 1942. General Service opened up to African Americans in the Department of the Navy.
The Department of the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, opened up recruitment of enlisted men to African Americans for segregated units.
This was a change from the existing status in which the Navy only accepted blacks as messmates, and the Marine Corps not at all.
The Marine Corps had been all white during its history, something which is not true of the Navy, which actually had only become segregated in the early 20th Century.
Howard P. Perry.
The first enlisted black Marine was Howard P. Perry. He survived the war and died in 1986 in Virginia, the state he enlisted in. The first black recruit for established general service was William Baldwin.
The Grand Coulee Dam opened.
It was a major and celebrated Depression era project in an era in which such major construction projects were highly celebrated.
Sarah Sundin reports the following:
Today in World War II History—June 1, 1942: RAF launches 1000-bomber raid on Essen, Germany. US Navy lets Blacks enlist in services other than the mess—but not as officers and only in segregated units.
The raid on Essen was only one day behind the 1000 plane raid on Cologne.
She also notes the opening of Treblinka concentration camp in occupied Poland.
And she also notes that employees of Kaiser Shipyards were extended the benefit of the Permanente Health Plan. That may seem like a minor thing, but acts like that brought about the current American health care system. Before World War Two, there were health insurance companies, but during the war they expanded greatly as an employment benefit. In order to curb inflation brought about by labor demands, the government had frozen wages, but it didn't think to freeze benefits, which were rare at the time. Health care plans rapidly became a benefit offered by some employers to entice employees.
Health insurance has, as a result, became a standard feature of American life and a dominating force in our health care system today, in contrast to other countries where state supplied health coverage is the norm.
The Afrika Korps broke through British lines at Sidi Muftah. Fighting was hand to hand.
Related thread:
Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR
KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR
Monday, September 6, 2021
Tuesday September 6, 1921. Dedicating the Peace Arch.
The Peace Arch between Washington State and British Columbia, commemorating 100 years of peace between the United States and Canada, was dedicated.
On the US side the arch bears the inscription "Children of a Common Mother". On the Canadian side, "Brethren dwelling together in Unity".
On the same day the Greeks took Angora, the Turkish Nationalist capital.
Monday, May 24, 2021
May 24, 1921. Clarkston, Washington and Lewiston, Idaho, Bulhoek Massacre, and the Northern Irish vote.
Clarkston, Washington and Lewiston, Idaho. May 24, 1921.
Nothing stays the same, of course.
While I haven't been to Clarkson/Lewiston, I dare say its changed. I'd take the 1921 variant over today's, almost certainly.
Slightly colorized version of the same photograph.
In South Africa a 163 Xhosa followers of a Xhosa excommunicated lay Methodist minister were killed in what is known as the Bulhoek Massacre. They were killed by heavily armed police in a battle whose beginning is confused. The community was made of a group known as the Israelites who followed the beliefs of their founders apocalyptical predictions.
Saturday, April 3, 2021
April 3, 1941. The Grand Coulee Dam
The Grand Coulee Dam under construction, April 3, 1941.
On this day in 1941 the British announced their withdrawal from Benghazi in the face of German advances in Libya. The tide in the North African war had rapidly turned.
Hungary chose a new Prime Minister as the sitting one committed suicide in protest of apparent Hungarian willingness to violate its treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia, which it had just entered into, and allow the German army limited transit across its territory.
Friday, January 29, 2021
January 29, 1921. The Great Olympic Blowdown and the Sighting of the Carroll A. Deering.
Blown down trees.
On this date in 1921 the Great Olympic Blowdown occurred in which a massive windstorm blew down 40% of the trees on Olympic Mountain in Washington state, killing 200 Roosevelt Elk. The event remains nearly unparalleled.
More on that event here:
The Great Olympic Blowdown of January 29, 1921
The last siting of the crew of the Carroll A. Deering was made by the Cape Lookout Lightship. Crewmen could be seen on board and a person on board reported the ship had lost its anchor. The lightship keeper photographed the ship. Crewmen were on the quarterdeck where they were generally not allowed. The man who addressed the lightship had a foreign accent and asked the lightship to contact the ship's owners about the anchor. As the lightship's radio was out, it did not do so.
That afternoon another ship spotted the vessel headed for Diamond Shoals, but did not attempt to hail it, assuming that a lighthouse would waive it off.
Two days later the ship was spotted wrecked on Diamond Shoals. Two lifeboats, the logs and the crew's personal effects were nowhere to be found when the ship was capable of being reached several days later.
None of the crew were ever found. Much speculation has occurred on the mystery, but it seems most likely that it suffered a mutiny.
Two men performing bicycle stunts were photographed in Washington, D.C.
As was suffrage art.
Friday, January 22, 2021
January 22, 1941. The Fall of Tobruk
British Commonwealth forces, together with some allied forces from occupied countries in Europe, took Tobruk.
Australian soldiers after the capture of Tobruk.
The taking of the town from the Italians was an early major British Commonwealth victory which is heavily associated with the Australian army, which played a major, but not exclusive role.
Scuttled Italian cruiser burning at Tobruk.
The loss of the city was a major Italian defeat and was demonstrating that Italy was rapidly becoming an detriment to the Axis cause, not a plus.
Other events of World War Two on this day:
Day 510 January 22, 1941
A great photo of Tacoma Washington on this day can be found here: Tacoma, January 22, 1941.
Tacoma was about to be forever changed due to World War Two industrial production. It'd never look like this again.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
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