Today In Wyoming's History: November 22, 2025. Retiring a number.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 22: 2025.  Former University of Wyoming football player and now player for the Buffalo Bills in the NFL, Josh Allen, had his UW uniform number retired prior to a UW football game against Nevada with the Pokes lost, 13 to 7.

Also, he's married to Hailee Steinfeld.

Thursday, November 5, 1925. The Big Parade.

 

Released on this day in 1925, the film is regarded as one of the greatest films about World War One.

The picture also would be associated with a level of tragedy for its stars.  John Gilbert died in 1936 at age 38 due to alcoholism.  He managed to marry four times in his short life, and was not married at the time of his death.  His costar in the film, Renee Adoree made the transition to sound movies, but died in 1933 at age 35 of tuberculosis.  She'd married twice, but was not married at the time of her death.

Born in the Russian Empire, with his true name never definitively learned, Sidney Reilly, a British spy, was executed by the Soviets.

He had a prolific career as a spy, leading to his nickname as The Ace of Spies.  He was reported a model for James Bond.  Early in his life as an emigre he went by the last name of Rosenblum, which would suggest Jewish heritage.  In the late 19th Century he seems to have worked for Scotland Yard as a paid informant on immigrant matters.  He married widow Margaret Thomas at Holborn Registry Office in London in 1898 after her husband had died under conditions that suggested poisoning, something of note as Rosenblum was working as sort of a herbalist at the time.  She was wealthy and that, by extension, made him wealthy.  Soon after that, he began his career as a spy, spying for the British and the Japanese in the lead up to the Russo Japanese War.

While it is difficult to determine the range of his activities, it is claimed that:

• He pretended to be a Russian arms merchant to spy on Dutch weapons shipments to the Boers during the Boer War.
• He obtained intelligence on Russian military defences in Manchuria for the Kempeitai.
• He obtained Persian oil concessions for the British Admiralty in events surrounding the D'Arcy Concession.
• He infiltrated a Krupp armaments plant in prewar Germany and stole weapon plans.
• He seduced the wife of a Russian minister to glean information about German weapons shipments to Russia.
• He attempted to overthrow the Russian Bolshevik government and to rescue the imprisoned Romanov family, actions which lead to his being sentenced to death in absentia.
• He served as a courier to transport the forged Zinoviev letter into the United Kingdom.

He had been lured by into the Soviet Union by the Cheka, posing as anti Soviet agents.

It's difficult to tell the overall truth of his activities.  British intelligence is notoriously able to keep its secrets for one thing.  Reilly was good at keeping them as well, and as he worked for various entities he had a strong reason to.  Like the James Bond character that's supposedly based upon him, he had a strong affinity for women and married up to three or four times, with other alleged affairs in addition.  His last marriage was to actress Pepita Bobadilla.

Last edition:

Wednesday, November 4, 1925. Now or then?

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 Election, Democratic Party, History repeating itself or at least rhyming, New Jersey, New York

In Memoriam. James Earl Jones

James Early Jones with Barbara and George Bush.

James Earl Jones

The legendary movie actor with the deep unforgettable voice was an Army officer in the latter stages of the Korean War.  Jones never served in Korea, but his service was notable in part because he attended Ranger school as an Army officer and was accordingly Ranger qualified.

Category:  Actor

Passed today at age 98.

Jones was an interesting figure.  He started university as a pre med major but switched to drama prior to entering the Army.  He had considered a career in the service, but a conversion to Catholicism influenced him to leave the Army as he claimed that Shakespeare and the Catholic Church were the only things in his life that were not geared towards killing.  

He played many roles, but is probably best remembered for either being Darth Vader by some, or Terence Mann in Field of Dreams.

He was a fairly private man rarely speaking of his private life, but he did late in life reveal a diabetic condition which plagued him and he was a devout Catholic, albeit with potentially irregular marriages, dating back to his time in the Army.

postscript:

I screwed t his up, as the comments note.

To make it worse, I noted his death at the time it actually happened.

Inexcusable.

Monday, October 1, 1945. The OSS disbanded.

 

The Office of Strategic Services was disbanded.

Due to a clerical error, it had only been given ten days to wrap up.

King Leopold III of Belgium arrived in Switzerland from Austria and issued a proclamation to the Belgian people defending his actions during the war.

June Allyson appeared on the cover of Life.

Last edition:

Thursday, September 27, 1945. Emperors meet.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, 1945 at the movies, Douglas MacArthur, Hirohito, Japan, Movies, Occupation of Japan, Rome, World War Two

Thursday, September 25, 1975. Three Days of the Condor and Oliver Sipple.

President Ford sent a letter of thanks to disabled former Marine and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Sipple, who had stopped Sara Jane Moore's assassination attempt earlier in the week.  Earlier in the week Sipple, who was living and working in San Francisco, had been outed as a homosexual by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen who had received tips from homosexual activists Reverend Ray Broshears and Harvey Milk.

Milk knew Sipple and claimed to be a friend of his, but neither man had his permission to reveal his homosexuality and Sipple, who had been badly wounded in Vietnam, had never told his family.  As a result, his family disowned him for a time and the stress of the situation was something he never really recovered from.  He descended into alcohol and depression and killed himself in 1989.

Milk has come down as a  hero, and even briefly had a ship named after him, which was renamed this year.  But outing Sipple was a lousy thing to do.

I managed to miss the incident that Sipple is associated with, which was the September 22, 1975 assassination attempt by Sar Jane Moore.  Sipple's quick reactions foiled the attempt, combined with the fact that Moore had purchased the handgun she used only that morning, after one she was familiar with was confiscated by the police the prior day.

Three Days of the Condor was released on this day in 1975.

This is an excellent Cold War thriller based on an underground movement in the US that's operating a shadowy independent mission.  Robert Redford, who passed away yesterday, plays the lead character.  The plot of the film involved Redford's character being a CIA analysts who reads books and steps out during the day, only to find his entire section murdered when he returns.  He flees and is pursued by what turns out to be rogue elements of the CIA.  Every actors portrayal in the movie is excellent, but the most intriguing character is a European assassin played by Max von Sydow.

Following the Vietnam War, the public was learning a lot about the CIA and frankly the FBI for the first time, all of which made the movie's plot seem credible.  Frankly, back where we now are, it seems credible once again.

Oddly enough, the Church Committee revealed that the CIA had a gun designed to shoot toxic pellets to induce a heart attack just prior to this.

The cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show was also released on this day.

Last edition:

Friday, September 19, 1975. No cash.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Cambodia, Currency, Education

In Memoriam. Claudia Cardinale

Tunisian born Claudia Cardinale has died at age 87.  Her entry into film came after being chosen as the most beautiful girl in Tunisia, where her Sicilian parents were immigrants.

One of the Italian (in her case Sicilian) bombshells of the 1960s, Cardinale is famous for a series of well regarded Italian movies, but perhaps best known in the US (outside of film aficionados) for her unlikely role as the Mexican heroin in The Professionals and again as the heroin in Once Upon A Time In The West.  8 1/2 may be her best known Italian film.

She was married once, and had two children, the first of whom when she was a teenager and whom was the result of a rape.  Her parents raised that child as her brother until her true mother was revealed to him when he was eight years old.

In addition to Sicilian and English, she spoke French.

Overshadowed in the US by Sophia Loren, she was known as "Italy's girlfriend".

Tuesday, September 18, 1945. The first desegregation student protest.

White students in Gary, Indiana, walked out of their schools to protest racial integration.  It was the first such example of this in the United States, and an early effort to desegrated segregated schools.

The Red Chinese won the Battle of Xiangshuikou 

Secretary of War Henry Stimson resigned.  He'd also held the post from 1911-13 under Taft.

Stimson regarded Taft as the most efficient President he served under, and he served under more administrations than any other person in U.S. history.  He said that the best President was "Roosevelt", not making a distinction between the two Roosevelts.

Look was out, with Ingrid Bergman on the covery in her role in The Bells of St. Mary.

Last edition:

Friday, September 14, 1945. Strike!

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Belgium, Corporatism, It was because of World War Two, Labor unrest, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Strike Wave of 1945-1945, The Post War Economy Myth, Unions

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Remembers Robert Redford For His Love Of The Wild West

Wyoming Remembers Robert Redford For His Love Of The Wild West

Tuesday, September 9, 1975. Welcome Back Kotter.

Albania issued a decree requiring minorities to adopt names reflecting a Muslim origin, which of course they did not have.  It impacted Catholic and Orthodox minorities.

Welcome Back Kotter premiered.  Set in a gritty high school class in Brooklyn, it was one of the best television series of the 1970s.  It ran until 1979, and debuted John Travolta.

Last edition:

Monday, September 8, 1975. Leonard Matlovich on Time and the UFW.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, 1980s, 1988, AIDs, homosexuality, Mental Health, Military, Personalities, U.S. Air Force, Unions, Vietnam War

Josh Allen. He's not from Wyoming you know.

Football season starts today.

But the, neither are a lot of the "Wyoming Freedom Caucus".

But I digress.  

Josh Allen is not from Wyoming.  Wyomingites worship him as if he is.

He's not. 

His connection with the state is thin.  He went to UW. That's it.

This is the sort of thing, however, that Wyomingites and Faux Wyomingites do all the time, make somebody a hero as they're theoretically from Wyoming.

Now, I have nothing against Allen.  Indeed, he married Hailee Seinfeld, and she's a fox, so he must have something going for him.

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Author Craig Johnson Remembers Actor Graham Greene, Who Died Monday

 

Wyoming Author Craig Johnson Remembers Actor Graham Greene, Who Died Monday

Sunday, August 16, 1925. Cuban Communists, Big Beer Haul, Dainty Ankles.

Backed with Soviet money the Cuban Communist Party was founded.  It became the Popular Socialist Party in 1939, and merged with Castro's Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas in 1961, the two becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965.

The Herald noted a big beer haul, and that dainty ankles were passe.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 15, 1925.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Art

Sunday, August 5, 1945. Enola Gay and Necessary Evil.

The 20th Air Force dropped 720,000 leaflets over twelve Japanese cities.  Conventional bombing raids continued.

Gen. LeMay officially confirmed the atomic mission for the next day.

Paul Tibbets named the lead plane in the Hiroshima bombing mission the Enola Gay, after his mother.  This was done over the objection of the planes normal designated pilot, Robert Lewis, who wanted to name the plane  "The Pearl Harbor," "The Avenger," or "The USS Indianapolis".  Lewis also wasn't happy about being moved to the co-pilot's seat for the mission.

Lewis would return to civilian life after the war, and died in 1983 at age 65.

The B-29 that would take photos on the mission would be named Necessary Evil.  It featured, as many plans did, a buxom woman, albeit one clothed in a bikini, as nose art.

The Chinese 13th Army captured the town of Tanchuk. The Chinese 58th Division took Hsinning (Changchun).

Paul Ferdonet, the "Radio Traitor" of Stuttgart, was executed in France.

His pro Nazi broadcast had actually dwindled after 1942.

Oddly enough, today would have been Loni Anderson' birthday.  She passed away yesterday.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 4, 1945. Tibbets briefs his crew.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, British Army, Burma, Espionage, Imperial Japanese Army, Music, Operation Silverplate, Railroads, Swing Music, U.S. Air Force, USSR, War Crimes, Weapons, World War Two

Blog Mirror: From Barrister to Movie Actor, 1949

 

From Barrister to Movie Actor, 1949

Monday, April 14, 1975. Collapse In Viet Nam

Operation Babylift concluded.

Congressional staff members, Richard Moose and Charles Miessner, back from South Vietnam released a report stating that "no one including the Vietnamese military believes that more aid could reverse the flow of events." 

Their report further stated that evacuation of Americans from Saigon was being resisted by Ambassador Graham Martin and other senior officials.

The cover of Time featured a crying Vietnamese child and the words "Collapse in Viet Nam".

Soviet power lifter Vasily Ivanovich Alekseyev appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Widely admired all over the globe, he died at age 69 of heart problems, something not all that uncommon for the very bulky.

The Federal Election Commission commenced operating.

Sikkim voted to merge into India.

Actor Fredric March passed away at age 77.  He acted for many years, but is best recalled by me for his role in The Best Years Of Our Lives.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 13, 1975. Start of the Lebanese Civil War.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Apostolic Christianity, Canada, Chad, Christianity, Islam, Lebanese Civil War, Levant, Levantines, Maronite Catholic, Music, Operation Babylift, Operation Eagle Pull, Palestinians, religion

Thursday, April 3, 1975. Operation Babylift.

President Ford ordered the evacuation of Americans from Phnom Penh.

Operation Babylift began as a U.S. effort to bring South Vietnamese orphans to the United States.  Widely lauded today (it would be unlikely to take place, frankly, under the current administration), there was some criticism at the time on the assertion that not all the children were actually orphans, and that it was a cultural based decision given that young people were being taken out of their native land to avoid communism.

Gen. Weyand met with President Thiệu in Saigon and promised more American aid to South Vietnam, but declined Thiệu's request for a renewal of American bombing of North Vietnamese forces.  As they both well knew, without U.S. air support there was no hope for the ARVN.

South Vietnamese Prime Minister Trần Thiện Khiêm resigned.  He would take up exile in France and then the United States, converting to Catholicism there.  He died in 2021.

Israel and South Africa signed SECMENT, a secret mutual defense agreement.

Bobby Fischer refused to play a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, and thereby ceded the title of chess champion.

Actress Mary Ure, most famous for her role in Where Eagles Dare, and the wife of Robert Shaw, died of an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates at age 42.

Last edition:

Wednesday, April 2, 1975. Driving on Saigon.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, North Vietnamese Army, Saigon Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Monday, March 24, 1975. Huế falls to the NVA.

Huế fell to the NVA, with many of its residents, having endured the horror of NVA and VC occupation during the Tet Offensive, having evacuated the city.

Time's cover featured a ARVN soldier with the caption "How Much Longer?"

Chuck Wepner put in a good performance agains tMuhammad Ali in a fight promoted by Sylvester Stallone.

The beaver became the symbol of Canada.

Last edition:

Sunday, March 23, 1975. Advances in the Central Highlands.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Campaign 275, Central Highlands Campaign, North Vietnamese Army, Somalia, Terrorism, Viet Cong, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Friday, March 16, 1945. Luzon Language Edition.

Yank had a feature on the Battle of the Bulge.

Ingrid Bergman was the centerfold.

Franklin Roosevelt stated in a press conference that Americans would need to sacrifice so that food could be shipped to countries devastated by war.

"Men of the 5th Inf. Div., U.S. Third Army, file through Nazi roadblock into the newly captured town of Corweiler, Germany. 16 March, 1945. 5th Infantry Division. Photographer: T/5 Robert J. Schneider."

The 41st Infantry Division landed on Basilan, Philippines

The U-367 hit a mine and sank northeast of Danzig.

Last edition:

Thursday, March 15, 1945.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Operation Springi Awakening, Upper Silesian Offensive

Wednesday, February 18, 1925. Mayflower Hotel opens.

The Mayflower Hotel opened in Washington D.C.  It's still operating.

Actor George Kennedy, who entered the Army during World War Two and completed sixteen years of an intended military career before a medical discharge, was born.  He died in 2016 at age 91.

It's odd to think that in the planning scene in The Dirty Dozen every single actor actually had been in the service.  Kennedy in the Army, Marvin in the Marine Corps, Ryan in the Marine Corps and Borgnine in the Navy.

Last edition:

Saturday, February 14, 1925. The Berries.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Cartoons, Kurds, Slang, Turkey, Valentine's Day

Sunday, February 8, 1925. The Lost World.

The Lost World premiered.

Parliamentary elections were held in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with the People's Radical Party (Narodna radikalna stranka or NRS), led by Prime Minister Nikola Pašić gaining 15 seats. The populist party had evolved from a radical populist socialist party into a conservative one.

Actor Jack Lemmon was born in an elevator in Newton, Massachusetts.

Lemmon was a great actor, but personally highly insecure, something that perhaps reflects itself in his portrayal of worried characters, of which there are some very notable performances.  He died in 2001 at age 76.

Radical environmentalist Alice Mabel Gray died at age 43.

Last edition:

Monday, February 2, 1915. Serum run concludes.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 Serum Run, actors and actresses, Aircraft, Calvin Coolidge, Mail, Retail, Work