On This Day in History

[Cancer]

Fifty years ago last night, the Tet Offensive began in Viet Nam.

[Armory]

Today in 1876 the National League is officially formed with franchises in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. 

[Cancer]

100 years ago today, a major campaign began in WW1, as Operation Michael opened on the Western Front.  The first of several offensives by the Germans in 1918, they saw the use of Stosstruppen tactics, which could break through the trench lines and temporarily restore fluid movement on a strategic scale.  This had not been seen on the Western Front since 1914.  It would be the next-to-last act in that vast tragedy.  Alarming to the Allies, the British (and their Dominions, Empire, and colonies) and the French (their armies incapable of effective attack, but still willing to defend French soil) desperately held on against these initially unstoppable surges, while the apparently inexhaustible fresh American armies started arriving in useful numbers in France through the spring of 1918.  

 

Ultimately these German offensives would fail, weakening the German forces critically, before the Allies seized the initiative themselves and began the final hundred days in early July, a drum roll of offensives using the tactics of Monash and Currie, and the newly-invented tanks, and fresh if raw American troops arriving in vast numbers, that pushed the German forces back continuously until the final armistice came on November 11.

[Cancer]

On this day in 1954, the successful trial of Jonas Salk's killed virus vaccine for polio was announced.  A disease that more or less everyone in America dreaded, it propelled Salk to superstar status (perhaps the only scientist to rival Einstein in that regard, for a while) and was a bright, shining blow against the First Horseman of the Apocalypse.  Parents would let nothing stop their children from getting that, I think even if the Horseman Himself had manifested before them.

 

I remember when I was 4 or 5, waiting in a line that wrapped around the block, to get that vaccination some six or seven years later. 

[death tribble]

Operation Chariot took place. Commandos disabled the only drydock that could accommodate the Tirpitz in France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid

[GhostDancer]

On this date in 2002, the first Free Comic Book Day was held.  Check it out tomorrow!  May the Fourth be with you.

[death tribble]

Today is the day that

Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull that divided the New World between Spain and Portugal

The first running of the Epsom Derby took place

The Battle of the Coral Sea took place, the first fleet action between aircraft carriers of Japan and America

Ken Livingstone took office as the first Mayor of London (This is different to the Lord Mayor of London)

[Ternaugh]

The PEPCON disaster in Henderson, NV was 30 years ago today. After the Challenger disaster in 1986, there was a government direcive to store excess ammonium perchlorate onsite, an oxidizer used in the solid rocket boosters. An estimated 4500 metric tons was onsite, and part of the explosions. The more powerful explosion was rated at 1 kiloton of TNT, and caused damage as far away as the Las Vegas Strip. Next door to PEPCON was the Kidd Marshmallow Factory, which was destroyed by the blasts. In the aftermath, videos taken of the desert around the plants were littered with bits of burnt marshmallow fluff, and some reporters commented on the smell of pallets of marshmallows still burning after the initial blasts.

 

I was on the third floor of the old library building on campus several miles away when the blast hit, and several of us were right up against a south-east facing glass curtain wall when the first blast hit. We rode out undulations in the floor for several seconds. Upon watching the second plume rise, a chemistry major friend started calculating under his breath, and announced that we should move away from the windows now. The second blast caused the flooring to undulate again, and this time we could watch the glass curtain wall twist from the force.

 

 

 

[Old Man]

[Armory]

This day in baseball in 1973, Bill North's bat sails onto the infield when he swings and misses the first pitch thrown by Royals rookie reliever Doug Bird, who will be shocked when the A's center fielder, retrieving his bat, unexpectedly goes to the mound and begins to pummel him. The Oakland outfielder, who will be ejected, suspended for three days, and receive a $100 fine for initiating the brawl, was retaliating against the 23 year-old KC right-hander for an incident that occurred in a Class A game played in Waterloo (IA) three seasons earlier.

[Michael Hopcroft]

On this day in 1895, actor-manager Henry Irving became the first actor knighted in England by Queen Victoria. Although artists had been knighted previously, Irving's honor started the long tradition of performers (who were previously viewed as beneath "proper" society) being on the annual Honors List.

[death tribble]

The Eurovision Song Contest was first held in Switzerland on this day in 1956

[Armory]

At Crosley Field, the era of nighttime baseball begins on this day (well, night) in 1935.  Twenty-five thousand fans watch the Reds beat the Phillies 2-1 in the first Major League game ever played under the lights.  During the pre-game ceremonies, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushes a button at the White House to illuminate the field.

 

 

[BoloOfEarth]

36 minutes ago, Armory said:

At Crosley Field, the era of nighttime baseball begins on this day (well, night) in 1935.  Twenty-five thousand fans watch the Reds beat the Phillies 2-1 in the first Major League game ever played under the lights.  During the pre-game ceremonies, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushes a button at the White House to illuminate the field.

 

I'm just imagining the lights going on and off a Crosley Field years later and a Reds coach saying, "Someone call the White House and tell them to cut it out!"

[GhostDancer]

1829 - HMS Pickle captured the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.  Painting by Gordon Frickers.

[death tribble]

Today is the 50th anniversary of the murder of Robert F Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan

[Cancer]

I remember that event.

 

Tomorrow, of course, is D+74 years-Day, the anniversary of the Normandy invasion.

[L. Marcus]

Det är Svenska flaggans dag! 

Och den enda som sjunger det är jag

[GhostDancer]

Historical note from Maggie Thompson's Turning Points...On this date in 1977. The Howard the Duck comic strip by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan began.

[GhostDancer]

From Maggie Thompson's Turning Points...On this date in 1977. The Howard the Duck comic strip by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan began.

[GhostDancer]

 On this date in 2008, the animated movie Kung Fu Panda was released.

[GhostDancer]

1945 – William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") is charged with treason for his pro-German propaganda broadcasting during World War II. He was the basis for the Lord Ha-Ha character who appeared in a memorable early issue of Marvel's Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos.

[death tribble]

That traitor was executed in January 1946

[death tribble]

The Rosenbergs were executed on this day in 1953

The Battle of Seven Oaks took place in 1816

[Cancer]

On this day in 1863 (155 years ago), Lee's Army of Northern Virginia began its withdrawal from Union territory in Pennsylvania, after the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg had brought his army's advance to a halt.  Just as crippling for the Confederates, John Pemberton surrendered his starving and bottled-up army at Vicksburg, Mississippi to U. S. Grant, giving the Union uncontested control of the Mississippi River, acknowledged by Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg a few months later with the poetic phrase, "The Father of Waters runs unvexed to the sea."