June 30th is:
Mai Tai Day
Meteor Watch Day *
Social Media Day *
California Avocado Day *
Leap Second Time Adjustment Day
National Handshake Day
National Organization for Women Day *
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MORE! Joseph Hooker, Assia Djebar and Esa-Pekka Salonen, click
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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
British Virgin Islands –
Territory Holiday
Congo Democratic Republic –
Independence Day
Central African Republic –
National Prayer Day
Egypt – June 30 Uprising
Fiji – Sports and Wellness Day
Finland – Sonkajärvi:
Wife Carrying Championship
Guatemala – Army Day
Netherlands – Noord-Scharwoude:
Netherlands Indian Summer Festival
Sudan – Revolution Day
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On This Day in HISTORY
763 – The army of Byzantine Emperor Constantine V defeats the heavy cavalry of Bulgarian Khan Telets, who gave up the high ground and mountain passes to charge down on the Byzantines; there were heavy casualties on both sides, and Constantine executed all his prisoners
1520 – Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés fight their way out of Tenochtitlan
1685 – Dominikus Zimmermann born, Bavarian Baroque architect and stuccoist; designs pilgrimage churches at Steinhausen and Wies
Wieskirche (Wies church)
1688 – English nobles, dubbed the Immortal Seven, send a secret message to William II, Prince of Orange, inviting him to topple Catholic King James II of England from his throne, and replace him with William’s Protestant wife Mary, who is the eldest daughter of James; the Englishmen pledge their support for William; in November, William crosses the channel and deposes James in the ‘Glorious Revolution’
1794 – In Ohio, during the ‘Northwest’ Indian War, ‘Blue Jacket’ (the Shawnee War Chief Weyapiersenwah), leads an attack on Fort Recovery, but they are unable to breach the fort’s defenses, held by U.S. Army troops under General Anthony Wayne
1817 – Sir Joseph Hooker born, English botanist and explorer, founder of geographical botany; director of Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew (1865-1885); Royal Society fellow; his greatest botanical work is the seven-volume Flora of British India
1860 – Oxford Evolution Debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
1864 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for “public use, resort and recreation”
1868 – Mabel Cratty born, American social worker and first head of the Y.W.C.A.
1886 – The first transcontinental train trip across Canada departs from Montreal, arriving in Port Moody, British Columbia on July 4
1893 – Harold Laski born, English political scientist, educator and writer
1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik
1906 – U.S. Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act
1908 – Meteor Watch Day * – A meteor explosion in Siberia knocked down trees in a 40-mile radius and struck people unconscious some 40 miles away
1914 – Mohandas Gandhi sends General Jan Smuts a gift – a pair of sandals he made while serving a prison sentence for campaigning for Indian rights in South Africa; in July, Gandhi and his wife set sail for England, his campaign successfully completed
Gandhi, 1906 – London
1918 – Prominent US Socialist and Pacifist Eugene V. Debs is arrested on charges of denouncing the government, a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917
1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
1934 – The Night of the Long Knives: Adolf Hitler violently purges his political rivals in extrajudicial executions which give him an absolute hold on power in Germany
1936 – Margaret Mitchell’s sweeping romance novel, Gone With the Wind, is published; it sells 176,000 copies in 1936; by the end of 1938, over 1 million copies are sold
1936 – Assia Djebar born, pseudonym of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, Algerian Maghreb author, translator, feminist and filmmaker, one of North Africa’s most influential writers: 1996 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Yourcenar Prize, and German Book Trade Peace Prize; Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, A Sister to Scheherazade
1937 – World’s first emergency telephone number, 999, is introduced in London
1943 – Florence Ballard, American singer and recording artist, founding member of The Supremes, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame posthumously
1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan
1958 – Esa-Pekka Salonen born, Finnish conductor and composer; Principal Conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra since 2006
1960 – The musical Oliver! Premieres in London’s West End
1961 – The California Avocado Commission, originally the California Avocado Advisory Board, is formed, sponsor of California Avocado Day *
1966 – National Organization for Women, which will become the largest U.S. feminist organization, begins organizing, led by Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Pauli Murray, and two dozen other women
1971 – The 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which lowers the minimum voting age to 18, is ratified as Ohio becomes the 38th state to approve it
1971 – In New York Times Co. v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, rules The New York Times and The Washington Post may resume immediate publication of articles based on the secret Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War origins
1972 – First leap second added to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) system; celebrated as Leap Second Time Adjustment Day *
1986 – U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults; the Supreme Court explicitly overturned Bowers in 2003 in its decision in Lawrence v Texas, that adult consensual sexual intimacy in one’s home is a vital interest in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment
1986 – Madonna releases her True Blue album
1990 – East and West Germany merge their economies
1997 – The UK transfers sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China
2004 – The international Cassini spacecraft enters Saturn’s orbit after a nearly seven-year journey
2005 – Spain legalizes same-sex marriage
2010 – The first Social Media Day *
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Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
The Pentagon Papers. Sort of like the material released by Wikileaks?
Well, yes and no – the Pentagon Papers were an analysis of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam from pre-WWII on, revealing a lot of damning information about how the government had lied or omitted to tell the American public what was really going on, and showing mostly questionable economic reasons actually behind the escalating commitment of U.S. forces. But almost all of the information concerned the past. It was background information, but it made what our government was doing, and why, clearer, but also more embarrassing and morally reprehensible.
Wikileaks is usually a huge information dump, which not only exposes government secrets, but also exposes a lot of private information about individuals who have done nothing to deserve having their lives put in the spotlight,.such as putting the names and personal data of underage rape victims online. Some of this information puts lives at risk, like revealing the homosexuality of a man who lives in a country where the penalty for being a homosexual is death.
I think what Ellsberg did was whistle-blowing. To me, what Wikileaks does steps over the line into callous and irresponsible.
Not exactly. WL appears to be an intelligence operation designed to vacuum up all kinds of whistleblower leaks from the unwary and unwitting. They collect a bunch of junk, but there are also some gold nuggets among the dross.
Gotta admit it had me fooled for a long time. As more comes out, I am getting the impression that Assange is two things:
1. An opportunist, and
2. possibly an operative or agent for a foreign power.
Based on material he has written on his Stonekettle Station blog, I gather that Jim Wright was a Navy cryptographer with some kind of intelligence MOS. He was really hot under the collar about both Assange and Snowden from the beginning. Might be that the old CWO knows things the rest of us don’t.
Bradley/Chelsea Manning seems to be a troubled doofus.
Assange just keeps getting more and more out of control. His vendetta against Hillary Clinton, and refusal to face the rape charges against him, because somehow the U.S. government would come kidnap him from Sweden, seem to me like the paranoid delusions of a man with serious mental health issues.
Like you, I once thought wikileaks was not a bad thing as it disinfected many unsavory things. Then, Russia saw it as a tool and took it over. Proof is the wikileaks servers now under a Russian IP address. My guess they paid a good price for it, then held it over his head.
Wikileaks is just the outlet. Yes, it is driven for political purposes by the Russians. Yes, it is wrong. But what Ellsburg disclosed was very damaging to the US because it was a disclosure of real documents that put the US in a bad light. Yes, he was a whistle blower, but then so was Snowden and Manning, at least in their mind’s eyes, By disclosing documents, like the Pentagon Papers, that when made public causes exposure that places the US in a bad light. I am not making excuses for any of them, I am just pointing out that a damning document, when made public is still a document that perhaps should not have existed in the first place if it documents bad behavior and actions.
I put the Hughes burglary in March of 1974 in the same category. This burglary of a Hughes office was for unknown purposes, some thinking it was an inside job for extortion, but ultimately, it was a potential exposure of Hughes’s dealing with the CIA on Glomar Explorer and a sunken Russian sub. It sent shivers through the IC that our plan to raise a sub was close to exposure. Fortunately, the documents never surfaced. Imagine if Wikleaks had gotten them….. But then the Russian already knew about the whole plan anyway, unknown to us, courtesy of Walker and USS Pueblo.
I think what our government was DOING was what placed “the U.S in a bad light” – if wrong-doing is never exposed, won’t it keep getting worse, and the corruption just keep spreading? The documents Ellsberg worked on were part of a government study – somebody in authority must have wanted to know how we had become so embroiled in Vietnam. But would they, or anyone else, have used it internally to try to change policy, or would it have been just another government study gathering dust in some archive, to maybe be discovered decades later by some researcher?
Eisenhower sent the first U.S. military advisers to Vietnam in 1955, and we’d already been sending the French weapons and equipment for at least 5 years before that – we didn’t get out until 1973. That’s 18 years we had military personnel in Vietnam, and it was a disaster. At least we were only in Korea for three years. How many wars did we avoid being trapped in, before Afghanistan, because of the stench from Vietnam?
I don’t believe “self-policing” works on a large scale. Look at where we are now – even our government’s three-branch checks and balances have been stymied – these hearings and investigations are fragile constructs. Even if their findings implicate the White House, they have no real teeth as long as the Republicans control Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court.
Precisely.
When wrong doing is exposed, it comes to a screeching halt.
However, if the wrong doing is ‘legal’ – say writing software to hack an enemy – is it still wrong? That is what happened with ‘stuxnet’, where Iran’s nuke processing was set back when software injected into their control system destroyed a number of centrifuges that were separating radioactive isotopes. And when that was exposed, was that treason?
If the wrong doing is ethical or moral – such as the gleeful conversations recorded when blowing some one to smithereens that caused Manning to steal and publish what we were doing and its subsequent release to wikileaks is that then wrong? That is what was said at the time.
I believe stealing a classified document is dead wrong, no matter how one feels about its contents. There is a very fine line between being a patriot and being a traitor here, and the moral principle enters into it to decide which it is.
In the case of Ellsburg, he stole documents that exposed a political position that directed the way a war was fought. Agree with the document’s position, you are a patriot to some, a traitor to others. Same with Manning and Snowden. Removing classified material from a secure area should not be tolerated, and should result in grave consequences, no matter the personally perceived ethical or moral contents of the documents.
The problem is why we engage in immoral or unethical behavior, Is it for the better good? Sacrifice some to save the many? That is what happens when a ship is sinking. Some compartments are locked closed to keep flooding from spreading, dooming those left inside.
More questions than answers here.
My opinion only, your mileage may vary.
To me, the big difference between Daniel Ellsberg, and Assange and Snowden, is that Ellsberg fully expected to face the consequences of his actions – he assumed he would go to prison, possibly for life. Not the case with the other two, although ironically they both kind of imprisoned themselves, trying to escape from arrest.
It’s perfectly possible to make any government’s actions “legal” no matter how reprehensible – The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required law enforcement in the Northern states to actively aid Southern slave catchers in forcibly returning escaped slaves back to their masters. The Northern lawmen who refused to aid the slave catchers are heroes to me, yet what they were doing was clearly illegal.
I think what was done in Guantanamo under the cloak of government authority was, and probably still is, a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and International Law, and there’s even a case to be made that some incidents could be considered War Crimes.
Water Boarding is TORTURE, not an “enhanced interrogation technique” and I believe everyone involved knew damn well it was torture, did it anyway, and got little, IF ANY, useful intelligence out of it, then lied about that too.
So when were court martials? In fact, who got demoted or reprimanded? Which civilians were fired, much less charged with complicity?
So legal alone doesn’t make right. Laws are only as good as the people who make them, enforce them or adjudicate them.
That’s why U.S.citizens have the right to protest, but they must be prepared to face the consequences of violating an unjust law. If they don’t, then they have no moral force on their side.When facing any.moral dilemma, there is no winning – whether you choose to “do the right thing” or not, you will lose something. The brave accept the consequences in order “to live with themselves.”
The signers of the Declaration of Independence knew that – they signed to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.” If the American colonists had lost the war, they would have been executed as traitors. They won, but many of them did lose their Fortunes, and some gave their lives.
Well said.
In the case of torture of any kind, you will get what you want to hear. It will be a coincidence if it is the truth.
He’d surely be wearing the blackest black these days!
Amen.
Oh what you learn onna ‘puter… I’ve been a train nut all my life and do ‘N’ gauge model railroading. “I hear that whistle blowin’…” I never read a bio on Cash so I wonder if he had a train diorama in his house?
I don’t know if Johnny Cash had a diorama. However, there is a huge model train display at the ETSU library. It has outgrown its space and major expansion plans are in the works. Museum web page.
This video was made eight years ago, so it is dated, but well done and gives an idea of what the display is like. The museum and railroad display is far larger and more detailed now. Every gauge is represented.
Thanx Doctor, the detail is amazing… The idea of the peel’d back tin roof on the Rock City structure is an idea I will use. Ahh the ideas I’ve stolen… er, improved upon keep coming.
I have seen layouts with three scales operating at the same time. O gauge up front, HO gauge at mid distance and N gauge in the far distance, all to force perspective, in a four foot shelf layout at chest height building up to eye level at distance.. Got to scale the scenery for distance too.
‘Nother good idea to salt away in my notes.
Then you will appreciate one of the restoration projects Terry worked on: AT&SF 3751
When I was a kid, my dad worked on the railroad. I got to ride in the cab lots of times. Even went to the yard to help him fire up the boiler before dawn when I did not have to be at school that day. It was my job to get big wads of linters, dip them in some thin oil, light them on fire and throw them into the firebox. Had to place them carefully in the far corners of the firebox so the coal fire would start evenly with no hot spots.
These days, the insurance company would have a cow if a kid was allowed into that work environment.
Jealousy… AT&SF #3751 is a classic. I’ve seen it once on a railfan trip out west. Also saw the #4449 Daylight when it was the red, white and blue ‘Freedom Train’. My bucket list still includes N&W #611, and the Nebraska Zephyr (CB&Q) Silver Pilot. Somethin’ about those giants and to think soft, fleshy hands pounded them out in foundries in what seems a daunting endeavor to make shit fit (speakin’ of dangerous work environs). Thanx again. By the way, is there anything you guys haven’t done? LOL
Ron, I retired after 34 years on ATSF, Amtrak and Chicago’s Metra Commuter Rail system. I have owned and operated a live steam (1/8 full size) parts and service company since 1973, selling it just last year. I have operated full size passenger and freight locomotives. One Amtrak passenger run was from Dodge City to Garden City Kansas at 79mph in December 1980 with a foot of snow on the tracks. I have operated a 10,000hp diesel set with a mile of containers over a 3% grade into Los Angeles over Beaumont Pass.
I have a picture of my dad sitting in 4449’s cab at the Los Angeles’s Pomona Fairground. We were invited for breakfast in the dining car on its first weekend when it was parked there in 1976.
“Up hill slow, down hill fast, on time first, safety last” was the company’s motto.
What haven’t I done. Well, although I consult with several different fire departments, I have never been a firefighter. That almost changed some years back. Good friend was head of aircraft maintenance for the state forestry service. Every year he got tapped to go out west to work with the aerial tankers and patrol planes. He kept them flying.
For several years running, he tried to talk me into coming with him, because there was work to be done. I was ready to go, but ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ said, “Not no, but Hell No!”
If I had gone that year, there was about a 50-50 chance it would have been me in that right seat with my elbow hanging out the window at :23 in the video.
The airplane is a PBY-2 Privateer. That is the Navy version of the B-24 Liberator. Later I was asked to join the crew of the Commemorative Air Force B-24 ‘Diamond Lil’ as a Flight Engineer. Mama put the lid on that too. She did not want me flying around in an airplane that had a history of shedding wings in flight. This is the ‘Diamond Lil’s’ front office. The Privateer and Liberator are identical in this respect.
That was about the last mission for all of the Privateers. The result of the wing separation was grounding all of them for inspection. All of them failed.
I did carburetors for both Hawkins & Powers and Johnson Flying Service. Johnson had a Beech 18 crash with a load of smoke jumpers, right after take off, and at a low altitude. Killed them all. I did the carbs for those R-985 engines. There are two primary settings for an R-985 carb, depending if it is for a low wing aircraft with fuel pumps, like the Beech 18, or a gravity feed system like that found on a high wing or a biplane used for crop dusting. I did both high and low fuel pressure settings for Johnson, as they did crop dusting and fire fighting. The mechanic installed the low fuel pressure carb on the Beech, and it flooded the engine with fuel on takeoff, killing the engine. No climb out with a full load on a hot, humid day, so you crash.
…after years of seein’ a certain video and wondering, there’s someone I can ask who may know. There is a WWII Vid of a bombing run where you are above a silver B-24 where the wing breaks off. I always thought it looked as if it strayed under one of our other bombers and was hit by friendly fire. Flak couldn’t cause such catastrophic damage. I didn’ know the history of wings falling off. I’ve always thought about the crew. Seems it was a low-altitude run and I can’t imagine the mad scramble to get out. I’d like to think they made it. Can you give me the skinny on it?
Doctor, 3 of my friends growin’ up became fire-fighters. Every now and then we’d meet on a fire scene somewhere and I always teased them about choosing the wrong job. While they were soot-faced, snot nosed, and exhausted, I was clean of uniform as I told people, “Keep back folks, let the firemen do their job.”
I know the one you are referring to. That was shot by a combat cameraman with a hand held movie camera, probably 16 mm. Frame by frame analysis of the old film showed it was hit by a stick of bombs from a plane above it.
I don’t think there were any survivors of that incident. I doubt they could have gotten out if they had tried. With one wing gone and the other developing lift, it went into a tight corkscrew, with massive G forces. The crew inside would have been pinned in place, unable to move. This video of the incident catches images of the falling bombs. After the wing was lost, you can see it going down, spinning.
Unfortunately, that happened on several occasions. Band leader Glenn Miller was flying in a small liason plane (similar to modern day civilian aircraft) over the Channel. A returning bomber that still had its bomb load had to dump its bombs before it could land. Place of choice to unload bombs safely is over water. Glenn Miller’s plane, unseen in the dark, was directly under that bomber.
Not uncommon at all. Here a B-17 gets its tail feathers ruffled by a stick of bombs from above.
A B-17 could continue flying in this condition, sometimes. This one didn’t, it spiraled down and the crew was able to get out.
Click the picture to go to the page. There you will see other B-17s and B-24s that sustained some pretty severe damage. One B-24 took a bomb aft of the wing and returned home.
Yes, that’s the vid I speak of. Sadly, the rest of the story was obvious but was hoping to find out someday that someone made it out. Thanx.
As kids we were aware of the ruggedness of the B-17. We all built model airplanes and those who had B-17’s would cause arguments by sayin’ that they couldn’t be shot down. Wan’t aware the B-24 had similar attributes.
Did you see the picture of the B-17 that got sliced by the fighter wing top to nearly bottom, shearing it 90+% of the way through? It flew home and landed! They must have built these things like tanks.
I posted this on Christmas Day, 2014. Might be worth reading.
71 years ago this week, two honorable men met.
Nice work.