Monday, September 10, 1945. Eh?

Post war news items were getting a bit weird.

Mike the Headless chicken was ineffectively beheaded, and would go on to become sort of a freak show star for a brief period of time.

Life magazine featured a black and white cover photo of a UAW worker.  The contents of the magazine were:

Pg… 29 The Week's Events: U. S. Occupies Japan

Pg… 42 The Week's Events: Editorial: Peace in Asia

Pg… 45 The Week's Events: King Leopold's Family

Pg… 51 The Week's Events: Black Markets Boom in Berlin

Pg… 127 The Week's Events: Lilly Dache Packs for Paris

Pg… 63 Articles: Nijinsky in Vienna, by William Walton

Pg… 112 Articles: As We May Think, by Vannevor Bush

Pg… 103 Photographic Essay: United Automobile Workers

Pg… 57 Modern Living: House for Texas

Pg… 90 Modern Living: The French Look

Pg… 61 Art: Portrait of Sylvia Sidney, by Fletcher Martin

Pg… 82 Art: Hudson River School of Painters

Pg… 75 Movies: "Uncle Harry"

Pg… 97 Sports: Grownups Spin Tops

Pg… 138 Science: Plant Cancer

Pg… 2 Other Departments: Letters to the Editors

Pg… 12 Other Departments: Speaking of Pictures: Germany's Fantastic Secret Weapons

Pg… 16 Other Departments: LIFE's Reports: "Bottoms Up" in China, by Lieut. Thomas P. Ronan

Pg… 132 Other Departments: LIFE Goes Swordfishing

Pg… 142 Other Departments: Miscellany: Seabees Give Waves a Party

Life is often remembered as a great magazine in its heyday, but it featured some pretty vapid articles.  This issue's feature on The French Look informed readers that young French women had small breasts and often went braless, depicting a typical bra (on a young French woman), for those occasions in which les mademoiselles wore them.  Doing that in the US, UK, or Germany would have been regarded as shockingly indecent, although it was not uncommon in the Southern European Slavic and Romance language speaking countries, which in turn contributed to the American and British views that the Italians were really primitive, and the German view that the Yugoslavians were.

In case you wonder, I ran across the Life magazine item searching this date on Twitter.  I haven't pulled up the article.

I'm clueless on the truth or accuracy of that claim and not going to investigate it, but French living conditions were definitely different than American ones, with a significantly different diet. Most people and cultures today are significantly thinner than Americans are and in the 1940s the French had suffered years of near starvation conditions, so they were likely overall less bulky than Americans in every manner.  A 20 year old French woman in 1945 had lived her teen years in starvation conditions and had been on pretty thing rations throughout the 1930s.  She would have been smaller in every way.

Also, French clothing had been severely rationed during the Second World War and you can't wear clothes you just don't have.  Americans have largely forgotten, indeed never appreciated, the extent to which World War Two causes massive food and material deficits during the Second World War.

Added to that, Americans for some reason think of the French as being Parisians, which most are not.  Paris had been the center of the fashion industry since at least the mid 19th Century, but that didn't apply to most of the French.  About 50% of the French were rural in 1940, down from 64% in 1920, but still a very large percentage.  As late as 1960 about 40% of the French were rural.

This oddly ties into this topic as rural life isn't like urban life, including in terms of the clothing people wear.  Starting in the late 19th Century French and British artists began to glamorize the agrarian life and left a fair number of romantic, but fairly realistic, paintings of it.  Some British paintings of rural life show farm women working fields in the hot summer months flat out topless, something you would not associate with either the UK or British farming today.  French paintings can be a shock to run across while as they're often very well done and beautiful, they also make it relatively apparent that French farm women in hot months were wearing light cotton blouses with nothing underneath them.

European agriculture was much slower to mechanize than American agriculture.  The Great Depression had an enormous retarding effect on the mechanization of American agriculture and this is even more so for European agriculture, which remained largely equine or bovine powered before the end of World War Two, another thing contributing to starvation as horses were conscripted for the German Army and cows and bulls just shot and ate them.  Here, however, this is significant as French men and women were working the fields largely in the same way as they had in 1918.

Brassiers are actually a French invention, makign their appearance in the 1880s, as we've discussed before, and they received a boost due to World War One, as we addressed here:

As early as the 1880s, a French women involved in fashion had introduced the brassier, a total alternative for the corset.  It was not widely accepted, but due to World War One it was soon to be.

At the Great War in 1914 nearly every woman would have owned corsets.  By that time, the majority of them would have had one the less restrictive type.  And then the war came.

Women employed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1917.  All of the clothing here, except for the women who appear to be employed as domestics by the railroad, would have been highly problematic for their occupations.  They're wearing, it might be noted, a lot of loose clothing, which is likely in part due to their bulky undergarments.

As we've already noted, World War One pulled thousands of women into work they weren't already doing.  A fair amount of that work was industrial.  Lots of women went to work everyday wearing corsets of the less restrictive type, but all corsets were singularly unsuitable for the work that thousands of women were doing.  The bra was.  Not insignificantly, Crossley patented her brassier on November 13, 1914.

New York National Guard bandsman Edwardina Lavoie, 1917.  This photograph demonstrates a woman wearing what is likely a male uniform which would have required a least a partial change in the development of ladies' undergarments in the form of more modern underpants, another thing that was coming in at this time.  No wearing bloomers with breeches.

As noted, things don't change overnight.  So, maybe, young women coming of age in Paris in the 1940s who had an okay income or who had parents who did, might have a more advanced clothing standard then, say, a young woman growing up in rural Normandy, even if that young woman had moved into Paris during the war. 

And, shall we noted this, in 1914-1918 Americans had been absolutely charmed by the French, and American men had been charmed by French women.  But those men were largely rural and they were meeting women who were largely rural.  In 1918, 20% of American homes had full indoor plumbing, meaning most did not. By World War Two most Americans homes did, although quite a few very rural ones did not.  Most Americans were no longer rural by 1945.  

In 1940 only 5% of French homes had indoor plumbing.  The percentage for Italy was lower.

5%.  

Perhaps not too surprisingly, therefore, lots of American troops were fairly horrified by the French, contrary to the way we like to remember it, when they started landing on French soil in 1944.  The French, to put it mildly, smelled.  And if the French smelled, the Italians smelled worse, with Italian women wearing cotton dresses in hot weather in which their upper lady bits flopped out, combined with omitting shoes and going around in bare feet.  They were hopelessly primitive, in American eyes (which as noted is how the Germans found the Yugoslavians).

Anyhow, if you don't have indoor plumbing, you aren't going to be able to easily frequently wash your clothes and if you can omit something, you probably are going to.

Additionally, if you live in those conditions, and those of the 30s and early 40s, you are probably 40% underweight, smoke cigarettes constantly, have a large percentage of your caloric intake depending on alcohol, and you smell bad.

That's okay if everyone you associate with also is underweight and unwashed.

Things weren't like imagine them to be back then.  Glamorous French women? Sure, on their own terms in the conditions in which they found themselves.

Life today is now a sort of special issue magazine featuring photographs.  It's very large size format always existed, but it was originally a weekly and was so until 1972.  It's big competitor was Look, which ceased publication in 1971.  That both of these magazines took a hit in the early 1970s is really interesting is at long predates the Internet, which would otherwise be blamed for it.

Anyhow, Life was always a photo magazine, of which there were several others.  It was a serious one, but right from its onset in 1936 (interesting to note it came out during the Great Depression) it frequently featured cheesecake, running racy photographs of actresses and semi undressed women on the guise of discussing clothing or fashion.  Some of the photographs even today are shocking if you are not anticipating them.  In 1953 it went full pornography for the first time running a nude of Marilyn Monroe which would be the same photograph used as the very first Playboy centerfold in 1953.  The excuse, and probably the actual motivation, for that is that by doing that it was attempting to save the career of Monroe, who would be scandalized if her nude, taken in the late 1940s before she was a well known and up and coming actress, appeared first in a pornographic magazine, but still there's the only difference between the two publications of the image is the purpose the magazines served.

Anyhow, this is interesting in that Life and Look were general publication magazines that were outright flirting with cheesecake very early on, showing an (unfortunate) evolution on community standards.  We've looked at this in the past, but this is certainly good evidence that whatever was going on in the culture was going on before World War Two and before the 1950s.

The Allied Control Commission decided to transmit to all neutral states a request for the return to Germany of "all German officials and obnoxious Germans".

Sweden resumed allowing foreign warships to enter its territorial waters.

MacArthur ordered the dissolution of the Imperial general headquarters and imposed censorship on the press.

The Shangdang Campaign began in the Chinese Civil War between the Eighth Route Army and Kuomintang troops led by Yan Xishan in what is now Shanxi Province, China.

The Indonesian Navy was founded.

The USS Midway was Commissioned

José Feliciano was born in Lares, Puerto Rico.

Related threads:

Clothing: It was because of World War One.

Labels: 1910s, Clothing, It was because of World War One, It was because of World War Two, Men, Standards, The roles of men and women, Women, World War One, World War Two, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History

Last edition:

Friday, September 7, 1945. Green River Railroad Bridge Fire. A final and unnoticed parade.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Armor, Douglas MacArthur, Harry S. Truman, It was because of World War Two, Japan, Railroads, The Post War Economy Myth, Transportation, Union Pacific Railroad, World War Two, Wyoming (Green River)

Tuesday, August 7, 1945. Fallout.

The news of the Atomic Bomb, including that it was just that, was now in the headlines.

Radio Tokyo reported the attack on Hiroshima, but without specificity.

Late in the day Japan's central commend stated that a new type of bomb was used, presuming that more than one was dropped.

U.S. radio read Truman's August 6 statement about the use of the atomic bomb. This caused the Japanese government to meet and confer.

The Air Force carried out raids on Yahata, Tokyo and Kukuyama.

The Nakajima Kikka, the Japanese ME262 inspired jet fighter, made its first flight.

Staff officers of the U.S. 1st Army met on Luzon to plan the invasion of Japan.

Tito refused to let King Peter II back into Yugoslavia.

The British revealed the existence of the wartime development Radar.

Last edition:

Monday, August 6, 1945. The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Blog Mirror, Chester Nimitz, Fr. Joseph Krupp, Hiroshima Japan, Japan, Operation Silverplate, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Wake Island, War Crimes, Weapons, World War Two

Saturday, April 25, 1925.

Germany was turning to an ancient leader. . . what could go wrong?

Last edition:

Thursday, April 23, 1925.. My mother.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Canada, Daily Living, Quebec, St. Lambert Quebec, The family

Tuesday, April 15, 1975. Xuân Lộc,

 

The far left Socialist government of Portugal, which swept into power by way of a junior officers revolt brought about by disgust with conscription and colonial wars, nationalized most of the nation's industries and commenced land reform.

Karen Ann Quinlan collapsed after drinking several gin and tonics in addition to having already taken the tranquilizers Valium and Darvon.

She's be the subject of major controversy over the battle to take her off of life support, which occured on May 22, 1976.  She lived until June 11, 1985.

Last edition:

Monday, April 14, 1975. Collapse In Viet Nam

Labels: actors and actresses, Defeated people, Federal Election Commission, India, Kingdom of Sikkim, Operation Babylift, Personalities, Sports, Vietnam War, Weight Lifting

A Disturbing Trifecta

The weekend shows were unsettling, to say the least.

Economic chaos was referenced in all three shows.

On This Week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who sounds like a dimwit in spite of a fairly impressive set of credentials, indicated that the tariff exception for electronics is only temporary until the government comes out with targeted tariffs on them of some sort.

On Meet The Press, investor and author Ray Dalio pretty much predicated a depression, and perhaps a global war of some sort.

On Face the Nation Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, clinically said the economy is going in the toilet.

Also on Face the Nation, recently resigned Dr. Peter Marks, the creator of Operation Warp Speed, went after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on his measles response with both barrels, and reloaded four or five times.  He also related Kennedy's promise to figure out the cause of autism by fall as absurd.

Nifty.

Friday, March 3, 1775. A British ship.

The Virginia Gazette alerted the citizens of James City County, Virginia that an armed British ship was at the ferry landing at Kingsmill.

And, by the way, Lent had already started in 1775, so those few Catholics in the country, and those Anglicans observing Lent, were in the Lenten season.

Last edition:

Thursday, March 2, 1775. Raising a stench.

Labels: 1770s, 1775, American Revolution, Colonial North America, Intolerable Acts, Rhode Island, Tea

What's Wrong with the United States? We're really ignorant, and its getting worse.

Can you imagine this scene today?  The older man (who in context is probably in his 50s) would be staring blankly into space, while the young woman looked at TikTok videos.

21% of adults in the US are illiterate. 54% of American adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level. 

And we wonder how Trump got elected?

The illiterate are ignorant, and blisteringly ignorant people vote for stupid stuff.

I had a very strange experience the other day, which I need to be indistinct about.

It had to do with homeschooling.

Twice in recent weeks I've run across a topic that's in the legislature, that being the legal requirement, which the Wyoming 2025 Legislative assembly is about to wipe out, that home schooling parents submit their educational plans to their local school districts.  The requirement is there to prevent parents from basically not educating their children.

Not educating children is what homeschooling is all about.

This wasn't always the case, but it's become the case.  

Some background.

My father was the first male in his family to graduate from high school.  He might have been the third member of the family, as I don't know that much about my paternal grandmother's early life in that fashion.  She probably graduated high school in Denver however, likely from a Catholic high school.  His older sister graduated from a high school in Scottsbluff.

My father went on to a doctorate.

My paternal grandfather, who left school to work at age 13, had such an advance knowledge of mathematics that he helped his children with their high school calculus homework, which is revealing for two reasons, one that is amazing on his part, and secondly all of my father's siblings took calculus in high school.

I didn't take calculus in high school

My father could speak two languages, English and German, and had a knowledge of Latin.  My paternal grandfather also could speak two languages, English and German, and had a knowledge of Latin.

My mother did not graduate from high school She was not given the opportunity to.  She earned an Associates as a an adult.  Her mother was university educated, as was her father.  They all spoke two languages, English and French, and had a command of Latin.

Growing up in my family household was like getting a post doctorate in some things, history and science in particular.  I read so early that I was on to adult books before I left grade school and had the odd experience of a junior high librarian not wishing to check a history book as she feared it was too advance.  I read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire before I left junior high.

I was in fact educated on a lot of stuff at home. . . but I was sent to school.

There's an interesting pattern here.  Some of my friends of my age had college educated parents, but not all of them did.  But all of my friends attended college or university.  Not all graduated, but they did receive some post high school education.  One of my closest friends had a father who did not graduate from high school.  He joined the Army in his senior year to fight in World War Two, following in the footsteps of a father who had fought in World War One.  My friend has two bachelors degrees.

And there's another thing here.  Even those people I knew from my generation, and the prior one, who had parents that didn't graduate high school, had quite literate parents.  If I ever went into a house that didn't have a lot of books somewhere, it was shocking.  I can only really recall one.  The home of my friend noted above was like a library.  My parents house  and that of all of my aunts and uncles were packed with books.  In my parents house you could find a few books that were in German or French.  A friend of mine who did not graduate from high school, but none the less went off to university, recalled his grandparents house being packed with books in . . . Gaelic.

My paternal grandmother absolutely insisted that my father go on to get an advanced degree, something he briefly though about not doing.  His unmarried sister near in age to him was sent to university as well.  I was given no real choice but to go on to higher education myself.  

And this was common for people my generation, and the preceding one.  Farm and ranch family in particular often had a manic dedication to higher education.

Home schooling has been around since time immemorial, I suppose, but when I was a kid, what it probably meant, where I live, is that the kid in question was living on a really remote ranch.  Even then, most ranching parents made a dedicated effort to avoid that.  More than a few had a teacher who lived at the ranch, paid for by the school district.  The county I live in had four rural remote public schools, of which only one is still in operation.  The neighboring one had some so remote that if you run across them on really rural roads its a shock.  The teachers at these institutions were admired in a way that's hard to describe.  Anything going on in the area always included them.

I didn't know a single homeschooled kid growing up.

Next to home schooling, of course, is private schooling.  When I was young the only private school I ever heard of was the Catholic school.  It was a big downtown school.  It's moved from downtown, but it still exists.  Catholic education had long been a thing in the US and apparently Catholics are supposed to send their kids to Catholic schools if they can, but I didn't go to it (it was full), nor did our kids.  

When in high school I learned that there was a Lutheran grade school, to my enormous surprise, as I walked by it every day.  After high school I learned that there was a "Christian" school, by which I mean a school attached to one of the sort of due it yourself evangelical Protestant groups.  It started in 1978, so I would have been in high school when it commenced operating.  The ministers for that church, at the time, were drawn from the congregation, and I later met one who was ironically adverse with its tenants as he was a geologist who accepted the truth of evolution, which the church did not.

A church that thinks evolution is a fib, probably doesn't have it taught in its schools.

Which is the point, really.  The goal of a large amount of modern homeschooling is to keep students as ignorant as possible, which is conceived of as limiting tehir "exposure" to corrupting elements.

I've been exposed to a few homeschooled kids over the years and frankly a lot of them were rather weird and very socially awkward.  Having said that, I've met one kid, and know of another, from a homeschooling family who were not that way, and one of which went on to a really high dollar career.

Now, with that comment, let me note that education isn't about getting rich, or shouldn't be.  It's about the Allegory of the Cave.  The problem here is that those exposed to  the sunlight are seeking to drag the ir offspring back into it, deeper in the cave, and into chains.

The simple fact of the matter is that Americans were much more literate prior to the 1990s than they are now.  They read.  They read even if they hadn't graduated high school.

And they read a lot, and a lot of it is much more advanced than what people claim to read now.  Even people who mostly read novels often read things much more advanced than people do now.  I recall one parent of a family friend being a fanatic fan of C. S. Forester, whose novels were just that, but noen the less dealt often with the Napoleonic Wars, something a lot of current Americans probably don't know occured.  One fellow I knew in the National Guard loved Louis Lamour, so much so that he read The Walking Drum, which is set in the Middle Ages, about which he was able to speak intelligently.  Another fellow, who had been a career Marine, was reading War and Peace.

Everyone read the newspaper.  You'd frequently see periodicals in people's houses, including unfortunately Playboy on occasion, but the latter had sufficiently good interviews that my high school newspaper teacher used those as examples and adopted them for the pattern of a series in that high school journal.  Less unfortunately, you'd see Time, Newsweek and Life in people's houses routinely.  And everyone read the local newspaper, by which I mean everyone.

The National Geographic seemed to be in the home of every household that had children, including ours.  Our collection went back into the 1940s, from my father's parents home.

Cartoons didn't make much of an appearance in our house, and I"ve never developed a taste for most of the cartoon journal type of cartoons, like Superman, but what I do recall is when they showed up, it was often Mad Magazine, which actually is really adult oriented, and not in the juvenile way "adult" is often used.

The point is, when people claim people were "more educated" in the past, including populists who are not today, they tended to be, but in ways that people now just don't really quite grasp.  They often had lower levels of educational achievement, but because they lived in a literate world, they were societally educated.

You can go into a lot of homes today and find that the occupants read. . . nothing.  

Instead, people consume only what suits them.  

In almost all of the 20th Century, it wasn't really possible to hear only the news you wanted to.  Even if you limited yourself to radio, prior to the introduction of television, you were going to get a wide range of news.  Newspapers were, as noted, almost a requirement for most households.  When television came in, at first, it was highly local but the news was national and there was no avoiding it.  You weren't going to get right or left wing propaganda from anyone.

That's all passed.

Americans aren't reading.  What media they consume is self reaffirming, like Protestant sermons from the 1600s.  People are listening only to like minds, and the nation is becoming more and more ignorant.

Which is why we have Donald Trump in office.  No literate nation would elect him to anything.\

Note that this doesn't mean the population is dumb.  Ignorant and dumb are not the same thing.  But we suffer from the Jo Jo Rabbit Effect in a major way.  We're listening, basically, to ourselves, and making excuses for our failures, and justifying our appetites.

And it puts the entire globe in danger.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 73d Edition. Long outages and Donny wasting the taxpayers money.

The Tribune has been out for an extended period of time due to "Cyber Security issues".

Hmmm. . . 

Donald Trump just has to ruin everything.

What a child.

Trump may well wish to remember that Americans notoriously turn on those they fawn over.  They can and often have done it virtually overnight.  There's a real chance that many of the same people who slavishly love Trump today, will hate him tomorrow.

On Trump, the occupant of the Oval Office flew on Air Force One to Mara Lago, and then flew to California for the game, all on the taxpayers dime. While there, he was of course protected by the Secrete Service.

How much do we suppose all that cost?

While Elon Musk runs the doggy agency, why doesn't he cut this crap out.  Trump doesn't need a government airplane for weekend getaways.  That's not official business.  He can buy an airplane ticket like everyone else.  And as for his protection, if they attended the Super Bowl, and they did, he should pick up the tab for it.  And as he was just on a frolic and detour, he can pick up the costs for all of his security for all of this, including the local costs which there no doubt were.

I'm sure that will occur to Musk . . . 

Indeed, one of the things that has caused Presidents in general to mistake themselves for kings is all the security and infrastructure that goes into maintaining them.  This would be a good time to cut that out.  An airplane to go to something official? Well okay.  A Marine Corps helicopter on the front lawn, forget it.  Just drive.

And for that matter, there's no real reason for much of the White House staff.  Melania isn't working, she can cook dinner.  And that's just a starter.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 72nd Edition. Carbon Comparison and Contrast.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, 2025 Los Angeles Fires, 2025 Wyoming Legislative Session, California, Climate Change, law, New York, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Liz Cheney Maxim, Vermont, Wyoming, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Zeitgeist

Monday, February 5, 1945. French SOE agents Denise Bloch, Lilian Rolfe, and Violette Szabo were executed at Ravensbrück concentration camp.

"British 61st Heavy Regt., 31 Btry., "A" Sub. 7.2 howitzer firing. Gabbiano area, Italy. 5 February, 1945. Photographer: Schmidt, 3131st Signal Service Co."

It was Monday, and news magazines were out.  Stalin was on the cover of Time.  German POWs were featured on Newsweek.  A smiling young woman in a swimsuit was on the cover of Life, which had an article on Florida.

Ecuador declared war on Japan.

The Red Army crossed the Oder at Brzeg.

The US 7th Army and linked up with French forces splitting the Colmar pocket.

SOE agents Denise Bloch, Lilian Rolfe, and Violette Szabo were executed at Ravensbrück concentration camp.  All three women were heroic.

Szabo.

High ranking SOE figure, Vera Atkins, dedicated her immediate post war efforts to detecting who was responsible for all three agents deaths.  A woman of great mystery herself, she was Romanian and Jewish, but easily passed for English.

Bloch, who was as French Jewish refugee.

Violette Szabo is particularly well remembered and was the topic of at least one movie.

Rolfe.

The SOE tends to be well remembered, but it had been penetrated causing some agents, such as Szabo, to be picked up nearly as soon as they were left on the ground.  Who the leak was, was never detected.

The U-41 was sunk by the HMS Antelope off of Lands End.

Hard fighting occured near Manila, where Lt. Robert M. Vale would perform the actions that would lead to a posthumous Medal of Honor being conveyed to him.

He displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty. Forced by the enemy's detonation of prepared demolitions to shift the course of his advance through the city, he led the 1st platoon toward a small bridge, where heavy fire from 3 enemy pillboxes halted the unit. With 2 men he crossed the bridge behind screening grenade smoke to attack the pillboxes. The first he knocked out himself while covered by his men's protecting fire; the other 2 were silenced by 1 of his companions and a bazooka team which he had called up. He suffered a painful wound in the right arm during the action. After his entire platoon had joined him, he pushed ahead through mortar fire and encircling flames. Blocked from the only escape route by an enemy machinegun placed at a street corner, he entered a nearby building with his men to explore possible means of reducing the emplacement. In 1 room he found civilians huddled together, in another, a small window placed high in the wall and reached by a ladder. Because of the relative positions of the window, ladder, and enemy emplacement, he decided that he, being left-handed, could better hurl a grenade than 1 of his men who had made an unsuccessful attempt. Grasping an armed grenade, he started up the ladder. His wounded right arm weakened, and, as he tried to steady himself, the grenade fell to the floor. In the 5 seconds before the grenade would explode, he dropped down, recovered the grenade and looked for a place to dispose of it safely. Finding no way to get rid of the grenade without exposing his own men or the civilians to injury or death, he turned to the wall, held it close to his body and bent over it as it exploded. 2d Lt. Viale died in a few minutes, but his heroic act saved the lives of others.

In the same battle, then TSgt Donald E. Rudolph would perform the actions that would lead to the same award.

Second Lt. Rudolph (then TSgt.) was acting as platoon leader at Munoz, Luzon, Philippine Islands. While administering first aid on the battlefield, he observed enemy fire issuing from a nearby culvert. Crawling to the culvert with rifle and grenades, he killed three of the enemy concealed there. He then worked his way across open terrain toward a line of enemy pillboxes which had immobilized his company. Nearing the first pillbox, he hurled a grenade through its embrasure and charged the position. With his bare hands he tore away the wood and tin covering, then dropped a grenade through the opening, killing the enemy gunners and destroying their machine gun. Ordering several riflemen to cover his further advance, 2d Lt. Rudolph seized a pick mattock and made his way to a second pillbox. Piercing its top with the mattock, he dropped a grenade through the hole, firing several rounds from his rifle into it, and smothered any surviving enemy by sealing the hole and the embrasure with earth. In quick succession he attacked and neutralized six more pillboxes. Later, when his platoon was attacked by an enemy tank, he advanced under covering fire, climbed to the top of the tank, and dropped a white phosphorus grenade through the turret, destroying the crew. Through his outstanding heroism, superb courage, and leadership, and complete disregard for his own safety, 2d Lt. Rudolph cleared a path for an advance which culminated in one of the most decisive victories of the Philippine campaign.

Rudolph survived the war and completed a career in the Army, retiring in 1963.

The RAF Balloon Command was disbanded.

The Japanese carrier-battleship Ise, was damaged by a mine off Indochina.

The USAAF hit Iwo Jima again.

The Greek Communist Party accepted the governments terms for amnesty.

The US-bred filly Big Racket set the world record for fastest average speed set by a racehorse at the Clasico Dia del Charro held at Mexicos Hipodromo de las Americas.

Last edition:

Sunday, February 4, 1945. The Yalta Conference begins.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Battle of Manila, British Army, Burma, Indian Army, Iwo Jima, Joseph Stalin, Philippines, Roosevelt, U.S. Air Force, Winston Churchill, World War Two, Yalta Conference

Wednesday, December 31, 1924. Final Home Edition.

 

Last edition:

Monday, December 29, 1924. 4 ROH + 4 CO + O2 → 2 (CO2R)2 + 2 H2O

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 at the Movies, 2020s, Calvin Coolidge, Commentary, Government, Movies, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration