Wednesday - October 26, 2005

It Never Ends

Israel pulled out of Gaza strip and turned the whole strip of land over to the Paleswinians. In return the Paleswinians decided to forgo further violence against Israel, no more suicide bombings and peace reigned in the Middle East ... well, it was a good dream while it lasted. Does anyone out there still believe the Paleswinians and their Islamofascist sponsors will ever stop this mindless murder spree?

Suppose they kill all the Jews? What difference does that make to you and me since we’re not Jews? Why not just let the bloody Islamofascists murder all the Jewish men, women and children? Why should we care about the Jews?

“When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church—and there was nobody left to be concerned.”

-- Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984, speaking before the US Congress in 1968
(Congressional Record 14 October 1968, page 31636)

Bombing at Israeli Food Stand Kills Five
HADERA, Israel (AP)
_{October 26, 2005, 11:28 AM EDT}

A Palestinian suicide bomber standing in line at a crowded falafel stand blew himself up Wednesday in this central Israeli town, killing five people and injuring 21, police and rescuers said. The bombing—the first suicide attack in nearly two months—eroded hopes that Israel’s Gaza pullout would revive peace talks. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the blast, saying it was in retaliation for the killing of a top militant leader by Israeli troops earlier this week.

“This is another link in the murderous chain of terrorism served up by the Palestinian Authority, which continues to do nothing to stop these terror attacks,” said Israeli government spokesman David Baker. “The Palestinian Authority should once and for all disarm and dismantle the terror organization.” Ambulances rushed to the scene after the explosion at the falafel stand, which was next to the central bus station. Rescuers treated the wounded in a nearby field.

“Body parts reached all the way until my apartment building. The damage is really great,” witness Eidan Akiva told Channel Ten TV, saying he lived 100 yards from the blast. “All the stalls alongside just fell apart. The windows are all broken. It looks like a war was here,” he said. “This is a very crowded place, very central place. We never expected that this would happen. We thought our world was good but apparently we were wrong.”

Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last month has raised hopes for a return to Mideast peacemaking after five years of bloodshed. However, the sides have failed to capitalize on the pullout’s momentum, and Wednesday’s bombing appeared to hurt prospects for a return to talks.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/26/2005 at 12:47 PM   
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   Wednesday - October 12, 2005

Goodbye Columbus

Where else but Berkeley could you find an event like this? It seems Columbus is completely out of favor these days. Native Americans are more important. After all, they had to walk tens of thousands of miles across the Bering landbridge and down across Canada, during an Ice Age for goodness sake, to get here, whereas Columbus just tricked out his boat and sailed over in a few months, bringing disease with him to kill the noble savages while stealing their gold. At least that’s the modern version of history in the People’s Republic Of Kalifornia (with help from the asshats at the United Nations) ...

Berkeley Celebrates Indigenous Peoples Day
(DAILY CALIFORNIAN)

Bells jingled, feathers flew and chants rang out at Berkeley’s 14th annual Indigenous Peoples Day celebration, which drew hundreds of supporters to Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park on Saturday. The city-sponsored event featured dozens of vendors and dance performances from American Indian tribes across the Bay Area and the country in honor of the Oct. 12 Day of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples.

The holiday is the first of its kind in the country-since 1991, the Berkeley City Council has been one of few city governments nationwide to proclaim the Saturday nearest Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. After the United Nations declared Aug. 9 International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in 1993, Bay Area-based coalition Resistance 500, which advocates awareness of American Indian history, urged the city of Berkeley to observe the holiday closer to Columbus Day instead.

In Berkeley, both have been designated citywide holidays. “I’m sure there’s some people that prefer to celebrate Columbus Day, but generally I think (Indigenous People’s Day) is broadly supported,” said Councilmember Max Anderson. According to John Curl, a member of the event’s planning committee, promoting awareness of American Indian culture is a unique process because the Bay Area’s many tribes combine to create a new intertribal culture.

As part of a government program to integrate American Indians into the work force during World War II, American Indians from a variety of tribes were moved to the Bay Area. The result was a blending of tribal cultures, Curl said. “Many native people came off the reservation and they developed a new urban, intertribal culture,” he said. But not everyone at Saturday’s celebration was aware of the holiday’s long history.

Audrey Chrisler, a Berkeley High senior, strolled the open market with her mother as an assignment for her environmental science class. Chrisler said she had never heard of the event before, but expressed interest in learning about the culture. “It’s great,” she said. “It’s so fun seeing everyone’s outfits and hearing the music and learning about different people.” The celebration also drew participants from outside the state. Cisa Loja, a member of the Quaechae and Cuni tribes, traveled from New Mexico to staff a booth selling handmade artwork that she and her family made.

Curl said honoring the American Indian culture is not only about preserving the past but also improving current and future interracial relations. “It’s about native people, but it’s about a lot more than that,” Curl said. “It’s about the world.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/12/2005 at 06:53 AM   
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   Sunday - October 09, 2005

On This Day In History

October 9, 1967
Che Guevara Executed In Bolivia

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known to the world as “Che” Guevara, was executed by Bolivian armed forces on this day in 1967. Born in Argentina, Guevara was a professional revolutionary who became involved in the Guatemalan revolution of the 1950s. It was during this time that he discovered Marxism and became a fervent convert to the philosophy. Following the overthrow of the Guatemalan government by a U.S.-sponsored coup in 1954, Guevara traveled to Mexico where he joined up with Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

In 1956, Castro, Guevara, and a small band of supporters landed in Cuba intent on overthrowing its government. When the initial attack did not succeed, Che joined Castro and the survivors in the wilds of Cuba, carrying on a guerilla war. In 1959, the Cuban government fell and Castro seized power. Guevara was put in charge of finance and economic planning for the revolutionary government. In 1960 he published Guerilla Warfare, in which he argued that armed struggle was necessary to free the masses from capitalistic exploitation.

By 1965, he faded from public life in Cuba for reasons still not entirely clear. He then reappeared in 1966 in Bolivia where he hoped to bring about a revolution. In October 1967, he was captured and executed by Bolivian troops. This outcome satisfied the U.S. government, under the leadership of President Lyndon B. Johnson, which viewed him as a dangerous agitator and had assisted the Bolivian government in its efforts to end Guevara’s challenge.

Despite Che’s death more than 30 years ago, his face is still familiar to millions around the world, adorning T-shirts, key chains, and posters. He is also a constant presence in Cuba, with his image painted on walls and buildings around the nation. Many compelling films have been made about the life of Che, including the 2004 Oscar-winning film The Motorcycle Diaries.

Source: The History Channel

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/09/2005 at 11:37 AM   
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   Monday - September 19, 2005

Me Favorite Pirate Wenches - ARRRH!

Mary Read was born in England and raised as a boy so that her widowed mother could get money from her husband’s parents. About the age of 12, Mary served as a “footman” for a Lady. Later she joined the Flemish army and fought as an infantryman. No one knew the soldier was a woman until her heart got the better of her. She fell in love with a fellow soldier, who at first was alarmed at the advances of this “man.” She finally revealed herself to be a woman and the soldier became enamored of her. At the end of the conflict, they revealed their secret to their fellow soldiers. The unit gave them a lavish wedding and chipped in to buy them a tavern near Utrecht, Belgium (then Flanders).

Alas, happiness was not to last and Mary’s husband died of an illness soon after. Having nothing better to do with herself, Mary donned her male disguise and went to sea on a ship to the West Indies. As was common in that time (see this website, Pirate Facts), pirates captured the vessel and pressed the captured crew into pirate life. Mary apparently took to the life of piracy very well. She was said to “Swear and Shoot as well as any Mann.” She fell in love with a sailor — who apparently didn’t return her affections. When the sailor offended another pirate and was challenged to a duel, Mary created an offense with the pirate that also demanded a duel — only she scheduled their face-off a half-hour before her would-be lover’s. Then she promptly killed the man, thus saving her love interest. He was less than grateful.

As luck would have it, the ship Mary boarded belonged to “Calico Jack” Rakham. Aboard this vessel was the only other woman pirate of the Caribbean, Ann Bonny. Bonny, although she was openly living with Calico Jack, was attracted to one of the new crew and made her interests know to the “fellow,” who revealed “himself” to be Mary Read. There are some historians who believe there may have been a sexual relationship between the two.

Ann Bonny was born in Ireland, the product of a married lawyer and his wife’s maid. Their union created so much of a scandal that the threesome left to join the South Carolina colony and start a plantation. Ann was a wild child, riding and shooting as well or better than boys her age. Then she fell in love with a poor seaman by the name of Bonny and ran away with him. The two ended up in New Providence, Bahamas, then a pirate stronghold.

Ann and Bonny soon had a parting of the ways when raffish Calico Jack showed up. There are differing accounts, but it seems that there was an attempt at a Common Law Divorce in which Calico Jack offered money or barter for Ann’s freedom from her husband. Some historians say Ann was too proud to go through with it. In any case, the three were jailed and, once freed, Bonny and Calico Jack left the island for the pirate’s life. Ann wore men’s clothes when the crew went to action.

Calico Jack and his crew were captured by the British in 1721. It was said that while Calico Jack and most of the crew stayed below decks drinking and gambling rather than face their foes. Mary, Ann and a few others fought bravely, but were eventually captured. The crew were taken to trial in Spanishtown, Jamaica and sentenced to die by hanging. At this point, Mary and Ann (still in men’s clothes) stepped forward and said “Sir, We plead our bellies” — meaning they were pregnant. The court went into an uproar. No one had ever heard of women behaving in such a manner. But the women knew their legal standing. English law forbade the hanging of a pregnant woman (taking of an unborn life) until they came to term, at which point the mother would be executed and the baby turned over to an orphanage. A doctor confirmed that the women were, indeed, both about six months along. Before the pirate crew was hanged, they testified to both women behaving as men — especially Mary’s would-be (& possibly the father of the baby) lover. Apparently, this was an attempt to have the women hanged with the rest of the crew. The women were, however, spared. Mary Read died a few months later of a fever. Bonny either escaped or was bailed out by her rich father — depending upon what source you believe.

_{Source: Beagle Bay: About Women Pirates.}

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/19/2005 at 12:19 PM   
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   Wednesday - September 14, 2005

On This Day In History

1814 - Francis Scott Key Composes “The Star-Spangled Banner”

Francis Scott Key composes the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” after witnessing the massive British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. Key, an American lawyer, watched the siege while under detainment on a British ship and penned the famous words after observing that the U.S. flag over Fort McHenry had survived the 1,800-bomb assault.

During the War of 1812, Dr. William Beanes, a close friend of Key’s was taken prisoner by the British. Since Key was a well-known lawyer, he was asked to assist in efforts to get Dr. Beanes released. Knowing that the British were in the Chesapeake Bay, Key left for Baltimore. There Key met with Colonel John Skinner, a government agent who arranged for prisoner exchanges. Together, they set out on a small boat to meet the Royal Navy

On board the British flagship, the officers were very kind to Key and Skinner. They agreed to release Dr. Beanes. However, the three men were not permitted to return to Baltimore until after the bombardment of Fort McHenry. The three Americans were placed aboard the American ship and waited behind the British fleet. From a distance of approximately eight miles, Key and his friends watched the British bombard Fort McHenry.

After 25 hours of continuous bombing, the British decided to leave since they were unable to destroy the fort as they had hoped. Realizing that the British had ceased the attack, Key looked toward the fort to see if the flag was still there. To his relief, the flag was still flying! Quickly, he wrote down the words to a poem which was soon handed out as a handbill under the title “Defence of Fort McHenry.” It was renamed “The Star- Spangled Banner” by an adoring public.

After circulating as a handbill, the patriotic lyrics were published in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20. Set to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an English drinking song written by the British composer John Stafford Smith, it soon became popular throughout the nation.

Throughout the 19th century, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was regarded as the national anthem by the U.S. armed forces and other groups, but it was not until 1916, and the signing of an executive order by President Woodrow Wilson, that it was formally designated as such. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a Congressional act confirming Wilson’s presidential order.

_{Sources: The History Channel & National Parks Service}

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/14/2005 at 05:00 AM   
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   Monday - September 05, 2005

Atlantis

New Orleans: Modern-Day Atlantis?
(NEW YORK TIMES - Sept. 5)

Nothing lasts forever. Just ask Ozymandias, or Nate Fisher. Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, might be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt’s coast in the Mediterranean.

“Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place,” said Peirce Lewis, an expert on the history of New Orleans and an emeritus professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University. Changes in climate can make a friendly place less welcoming. Catastrophes like volcanoes or giant earthquakes can kill a city quickly. Political or economic shifts can strand what was once a thriving metropolis in a slow death of irrelevance. After the Mississippi River flood of 1993, the residents of Valmeyer, Ill., voted to move their entire town two miles east to higher ground.

What will happen to New Orleans now, in the wake of floods and death and violence, is hard to know. But watching the city fill up like a bathtub, with half a million people forced to leave, it has been hard not to think of other places that have fallen to time and the inconstant earth. Some of them have grown larger in death than they ever were in life.

The most famous lost city of all is one that probably never really existed, Atlantis, the fabulous island civilization swallowed by the sea, which was referred to by Plato. Some scholars think he might have been inspired by one or more real events. Among them is the destruction of Helike, a city on the Corinthian coast, which was swallowed by an earthquake and a tsunami one winter night in 373 B.C., during Plato’s lifetime.  “For the sea was raised by an earthquake,” wrote the Greek geographer Strabo, “and it submerged Helike and the Helikonian Poseidon.” The city went down like the Titanic with its entire population on board. An expeditionary force sent from a nearby town the next day found no survivors and no bodies to recover.

Though not the seat of empire like fabled Atlantis, Helike was a significant and prosperous city. It was the head of a confederacy of 12 Greek city states, the First Achaean League, whose successor, the Second Achaean League, was recommended as a model of federalism by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in their Federalist Papers. It minted its own coins. Lured by the prospect of an underwater time capsule, archaeologists have long sought the remains of the sunken city.

Five years ago, after a dozen years of searching, a team of archaeologists led by Dora Katsonopoulou of the Ancient Helike Society in Aigion, Greece, and Steven Soter, a geophysicist with New York University’s Center for Ancient Studies, said they had found the lost city - not in the sea but on the coastal plain next to it, near Aigion, about 45 miles northwest of Corinth. It may have been gradually raised by seismic activity, said Dr. Soter. Moreover, he said, three rivers feeding the coastal plain deposit sediment that helps build it up. In expeditions every summer, Dr. Soter and his colleagues have uncovered more and more of the city, including a road that goes almost a mile across the plain, walls, buildings, coins, pottery and a cemetery, although they have not found the center of the city yet.

Recently they have found a whole new and unknown city, dating from 2200 B.C., the early Bronze Age, near Helike. The sediments of this ruin contain marine and lagoonal microfauna, Dr. Soter said, suggesting that it too, may have been swallowed by an earthquake and a tidal wave like Helike, but 2,000 years earlier, only to rise again. It may be, he said, that there have been recurrent floods and abandonments on the plain, the land rising and sinking, cities blooming out of the reborn mud.

There is in the picture a kind of immortality for the dead, as well as for the perennials blooming on the flood plain. If Helike can give rise to the vision of an Atlantis, a collection of scrolls can forever change our concept of learning and memory and empty stones can inspire us to reveries, what can we expect from jazz, gumbo and soft air at one of the trading crossroads of the world, so blessed and cursed with water?

New Orleans will never die. It is already larger than life.

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/05/2005 at 08:55 PM   
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   Thursday - September 01, 2005

First-Hand Account

This is remarkable.  There is an ISP in New Orleans that is still running.  Their “crisis manager”, who is ex-military, is holed up in the building with an unspecified number of people, supplies and weapons to ensure the data center is running and secure.  This is his journal.  There is also a live streaming webcam here.

This is an excerpt from yesterday:

Ok, we went down to the ground floors to lock down the building tight since a couple of people holed up with us took off. While we were down there we surveyed a huge area of the CBD.

Flooding in the CBD: Poydras is flooded from near the west side of the Superdome down to Baronne street. All of the side streets are flooded too down that way. Baronne is the last flooded street as you head to the river. Poydras is clear from Baronne to the river.

There is no water that we could see from Poydras to the interstate starting at Baronne and going all the way to the river. Headed toward Canal St. from Poydras, I saw no flooding at all from just past Baronne to the river. That’s a huge area of the CBD without water on the streets. That’s way better than the warnings we got.

Looting: The police are looting. This has been confirmed by several independent sources. Some of the looting might be “legitimate” in as much as that word has any meaning in this context. They have broken into ATMs and safes: confirmed. We have eyewitnesses to this. They have taken dozens of SUVs from dealerships ostensibly for official use. They have also looted gun stores and pawn shops for all the small arms, supposedly to prevent “criminals” from doing so. But who knows their true intentions. We have an inside source in the NOPD who says that command and control is in chaos. He reports that command lapses more than 24 hours between check-ins, and that most of the force are “like deer in the headlights.” NOPD already had a reputation for corruption, but I am telling you now that the people we’ve been talking to say they are not recognizing the NOPD as a legitimate authority anymore, since cops have been seen looting in Walmarts and forcing people out of stores so they could back up SUVs and loot them. Don’t shoot the messenger....

Personal: Securing a 27 floor high rise with no elevator support is not fun. I am totally worn out. I am gonna chill for an hour, eat dinner, then perform maintenance. But never fear, Outpost Crystal and Team SOTI have knuckled down and will never quit. Never. We are prepared to go all the way to see this thing through.

Thanks again for all the support and love. One day this will all be over and ancient history, but I’ll never forget the kindness of strangers. Keep the less fortunate people in your thoughts and prayers.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/01/2005 at 11:23 AM   
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   Thursday - August 25, 2005

On This Day In History

August 25, 1814 - British Burn Washington To The Ground

During the War of 1812, British forces under General Robert Ross overwhelm American militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, and march unopposed into Washington, D.C. Most congressmen and officials fled the nation’s capital as soon as word came of the American defeat, but President James Madison and his wife, Dolley, escaped just before the invaders arrived. Earlier in the day, President Madison had been present at the Battle of Bladensburg and had at one point actually taken command of one of the few remaining American batteries, thus becoming the first and only president to exercise in actual battle his authority as commander in chief.

The British army entered Washington in the late afternoon, and General Ross and British officers dined that night at the deserted White House. Meanwhile, the British troops, ecstatic that they had captured their enemy’s capital, began setting the city aflame in revenge for the burning of Canadian government buildings by U.S. troops earlier in the war. The White House, a number of federal buildings, and several private homes were destroyed. The still uncompleted Capitol building was also set on fire, and the House of Representatives and the Library of Congress were gutted before a torrential downpour doused the flames.

On August 26, General Ross, realizing his untenable hold on the capital area, ordered a withdrawal from Washington. The next day, President Madison returned to a smoking and charred Washington and vowed to rebuild the city. James Hoban, the original architect of the White House, completed reconstruction of the executive mansion in 1817.

_{-- courtesy of The History Channel}

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/25/2005 at 04:40 AM   
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   Monday - August 08, 2005

On This Day In History

August 8, 1945 ....
&187;&187; Truman Signs United Nations Charter
&187;&187; Second Atomic Bomb Dropped On Nagasaki
&187;&187; Russians Declare War on Japan
(two out of three ain’t bad)

President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization. Although hopes were high at the time that the United Nations would serve as an arbiter of international disputes, the organization also served as the scene for some memorable Cold War clashes.

August 8, 1945, was a busy day in the history of World War II. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, devastating the city of Nagasaki. The Soviet Union, following through with an agreement made earlier in the war, declared war on Japan. All observers agreed that the combination of these two actions would bring a speedy end to Japanese resistance. Tthe Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.

The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima by the Americans did not have the effect intended: unconditional surrender by Japan. Half of the Japanese inner Cabinet, called the Supreme War Direction Council, refused to surrender unless guarantees about Japan’s future were given by the Allies, especially regarding the position of the emperor, Hirohito. The only Japanese civilians who even knew what happened at Hiroshima were either dead or suffering terribly.

Japan had not been too worried about the Soviet Union, so busy with the Germans on the Eastern front. The Japanese army went so far as to believe that they would not have to engage a Soviet attack until spring 1946. But the Soviets surprised them with their invasion of Manchuria, an assault so strong (of the 850 Japanese soldiers engaged at Pingyanchen, 650 were killed or wounded within the first two days of fighting) that Emperor Hirohito began to plead with his War Council to reconsider surrender. The recalcitrant members began to waver.

At the same time, in Washington, D.C., President Truman took a step that many Americans hoped would mean continued peace in the post-World War II world. The president signed the United Nations Charter, thus completing American ratification of the document. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes also signed. In so doing, the United States became the first nation to complete the ratification process. The charter would come into full force when China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and a majority of the other nations that had constructed the document also completed ratification.

The signing was accomplished with little pomp and ceremony. Indeed, President Truman did not even use one of the ceremonial pens to sign, instead opting for a cheap 10-cent desk pen. Nonetheless, the event was marked by hope and optimism. Having gone through the horrors of two world wars in three decades, most Americans--and people around the world--were hopeful that the new international organization would serve as a forum for settling international disagreements and a means for maintaining global peace. Over the next decades, the United Nations did serve as the scene for some of the more notable events in the Cold War: the decision by the Security Council to send troops to Korea in 1950; Khrushchev pounding the table with his shoe during a U.N. debate; and continuous and divisive discussion over admission of communist China to membership in the UN. As for its role as a peacekeeping institution, the record of the U.N. was not one of great success during the Cold War. The Soviet veto in the Security Council stymied some efforts, while the U.S. desire to steer an independent course in terms of military involvement after the unpopular Korean War meant less and less recourse to the U.N. to solve world conflicts. In the years since the end of the Cold War, however, the United States and Russia have sometimes cooperated to send United Nations forces on peacekeeping missions, such as the effort in Bosnia.
-- Courtesy of The History Channel

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 12:31 PM   
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   Saturday - August 06, 2005

On This Day In History

In Their Own Words:

-- Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, age 84: Navigator on the “Enola Gay”

The day before the mission we sat through briefings on Tinian island where they told us who was assigned to which plane, and we ran through what we were going to do. About 2pm we were told to get some sleep. But I don’t know how they expected to tell us were we dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan and then expect us to sleep. I didn’t get a wink. Nor did most of the others. But at 10pm we had to get up again because we were flying at 2.45am.

They briefed us that the weather was good, but they were sending weather observation planes up so we would have the best information on targeting Hiroshima. We had a final breakfast and then went down to the plane shortly after midnight. There was a lot of picture-taking and interviewing going on - by the military - and it was a relief to get in the Enola Gay about an hour before we took off.

We flew in low over Iwo Jima while the bomb crew checked and armed Little Boy (the uranium bomb) and once we cleared the island we began climbing to our bombing altitude of just over 30,000 feet. It was perfectly clear and I was just doing all the things I’d always done as a navigator - plotting our course, getting fixes to make sure we were on course and reading the drifts so we knew the wind speed. As we flew over an inland sea I could make out the city of Hiroshima from miles away - my first thought was ‘That’s the target, now let’s bomb the damn thing’.

But it was quiet in the sky. I’d flown 58 missions over Europe and Africa - and I said to one of the boys that if we’d sat in the sky for so long over there we’d have been blown out of the air. Once we verified the target, I went in the back and just sat down. The next thing I felt was 94,000lbs of bomb leaving the aircraft - there was a huge surge and we immediately banked into a right hand turn and lost about 2,000 feet.

We’d been told that if we were eight miles away when the thing went off, we’d probably be ok - so we wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and the blast. All of us - except the pilot - were wearing dark goggles, but we still saw a flash - a bit like a camera bulb going off in the plane. There was a great jolt on the aircraft and we were thrown off the floor. Someone called out ‘flak’ but of course it was the shockwave from the bomb. The tail-gunner later said he saw it coming towards us - a bit like the haze you see over a car park on a hot day, but moving forwards at great speed.

We turned to look back at Hiroshima and already there was a huge white cloud reaching up more than 42,000 feet. At the base you could see nothing but thick black dust and debris - it looked like a pot of hot oil down there. We were pleased that the bomb had exploded as planned and later we got to talking about what it meant for the war. We concluded that it would be over - that not even the most obstinate, uncaring leaders could refuse to surrender after this.

In the weeks afterwards, I actually flew back to Japan with some US scientists and some Japanese from their atomic programme. We flew low over Hiroshima but could not land anywhere and eventually landed at Nagasaki. We didn’t hide the fact that we were American and many people turned their faces away from us. But where we stayed we were made very welcome and I think people were glad that the war had ended.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/06/2005 at 08:02 AM   
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   Wednesday - August 03, 2005

On This Day In History

On August 3, 1492 an Italian navigator named Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus) set sail from Spain in search of Cathay and the Indies by a Western route. On the evening of August 3, Columbus left from Palos with three ships, the Santa Maria, Niña and Pinta. The ships were property of Juan de la Cosa and the Pinzón brothers (Martin and Vicente Yáñez), but the monarchs forced the Palos inhabitants to contribute to the expedition. He first sailed to the Canary Islands, fortunately owned by Castile, where he reprovisioned and made repairs, and on September 6 started the five week voyage across the ocean.

A legend is that the crew grew so homesick and fearful that they threatened to hurl Columbus overboard and sail back to Spain. Although the actual situation is unclear, most likely the sailors’ resentments merely amounted to complaints or suggestions. After 29 days out of sight of land, on 7 October 1492 as recorded in the ship’s log, the crew spotted shore birds flying west and changed direction to make their landfall. Columbus called the island he reached San Salvador. The Native Americans he encountered, the Taíno or Arawak, were peaceful and friendly. He wrote with such awe of the friendly innocence and beauty of these Indians that he inadvertently created the enduring myth of the Noble Savage. “These people have no religious beliefs, nor are they idolaters. They are very gentle and do not know what evil is; nor do they kill others, nor steal; and they are without weapons.”. No blood was shed on this first voyage; he believed conversion to Christianity would be achieved through love, not force.

Columbus Sets Sail

From the Spanish port of Palos, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sets sail in command of three ships--the Santa Marýa, the Pinta, and the Niýa--on a journey to find a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.

On October 12, the expedition sighted land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, and went ashore the same day, claiming it for Spain. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and “Indian” captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.

During his lifetime, Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the New World, discovering various Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South and Central American mainland, but never accomplished his original goal--a western ocean route to the great cities of Asia. Columbus died in Spain in 1506 without realizing the great scope of what he did achieve: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
-- The History Channel

Europe, in the year 1492 had reached a critical point. The Muslim capital of Granada was finally captured by the Spanish and the last Muslim stronghold in Europe was destroyed. The Muslim advance into Europe that had begun six hundred years earlier was finally stopped and driven back. Spain was finally united under Ferdinand and Isabella. The Reformation was in progress across the continent and the entire economic structure was altered forever with millions of deaths from the bubonic plague during the previous century. Feudalism was dead and the merchant class was growing. Things were about to get pretty exciting ....

The State Of Europe

Christian Europe, long allowed safe passage to India and China (sources of valued trade goods such as silk and spices) under the hegemony of the Mongol Empire (Pax Mongolica, or “Mongol peace"), was now, after the fragmentation of that empire, under a complete economic blockade by Muslim states. In response to Muslim hegemony on land, Portugal sought an eastward sea route to the Indies, and promoted the establishment of trading posts and later colonies along the coast of Africa. Columbus had another idea. By the 1480s, he had developed a plan to travel to the Indies (then roughly meaning all of south and east Asia) by sailing west across the Ocean Sea (the Atlantic Ocean) instead.

It is sometimes claimed that the reason Columbus had a hard time receiving support for this plan was that Europeans believed that the Earth was flat. This myth can be traced to Washington Irving’s novel The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828).

The fact that the Earth is round was evident to most people of Columbus’s time, especially other sailors and navigators (Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) had in fact accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth). The problem was that the experts did not agree with his estimates of the distance to the Indies. Most scholars accepted Ptolemy’s claim that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere, leaving 180 degrees of water. In fact, it occupies about 120 degrees, leaving 60 degrees unaccounted for at that time.

Columbus accepted the calculations of Pierre d’Ailly, that the land-mass occupied 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water. Moreover, Columbus believed that one degree actually covered less space on the earth’s surface than commonly believed. Finally, Columbus read maps as if the distances were calculated in Roman miles (1524 meters or 5,000 feet) rather than nautical miles (1853.99 meters or 6,082.66 feet at the equator). The true circumference of the earth is about 40,000 km (24,900 statute miles of 5,280 feet each), whereas the circumference of Columbus’s earth was the equivalent of at most 19,000 modern statue miles (or 30,600 km). Columbus calculated that the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was 2,400 nautical miles (about 4,444 km).

In fact, the distance is about 10,600 nautical miles (19,600 km), and most European sailors and navigators concluded that the Indies were too far away to make his plan worth considering. They were right and Columbus was wrong – but, ultimately in his case, like in that of so many successful individuals, initiative and enterpreneurship ended up being more important than factual accuracy.
-- Wikipedia

Columbus went on to make four voyages to the New World and helped inaugurate the Spanish conquest of Central and South America. The search for gold was on and the Spanish were determined to get all of it. Of course, the Spanish eventually were robbed of all that gold by other European countries and what wasn’t stolen, the Spanish threw away in vain attempts to expand their empire in Europe. As for Columbus, his life after the exploration of America was also a tragedy ....

The Final Years

While Columbus had always given the conversion of non-believers as one reason for his explorations, he grew increasingly religious in his later years. He claimed to hear divine voices, lobbied for a new crusade to capture Jerusalem, often wore Franciscan habit, and described his explorations to the “paradise” as part of God’s plan which would soon result in the Last Judgement and the end of the world.

In his later years Columbus demanded that the Spanish Crown give him 10% of all profits made in the new lands, pursuant to earlier agreements. Because he had been relieved of his duties as governor, the crown felt not bound by these contracts and his demands were rejected. His family later sued for part of the profits from trade with America, but ultimately lost some fifty years later.

On May 20, 1506, Columbus died in Valladolid, fairly wealthy due to the gold his men had accumulated in Hispaniola. He was still convinced that his journeys had been along the East Coast of Asia.
-- The Mariner’s Museum

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/03/2005 at 11:00 AM   
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   Sunday - July 31, 2005

On This Day In History

Sixty years ago, in the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean, nearly 1,200 men were in the water after their ship had been sunk by a Japanese submarine on the evening of July 29-30, 1945. Their ship, the USS Indianapolis, had just delivered the atomic bomb to the island of Tinian, where it would be assembled and later dropped on Hiroshima, ending World War II. For these men of the USS Indianapolis, however, the worst ordeal was yet to come. Through a series of communications errors, their plight would not be known for several more days and in the meantime .... the sharks circled ....

As a prelude to a proposed invasion of the Japanese mainland, scheduled for November 1, U.S. forces bombed the Japanese home islands from sea and air, as well as blowing Japanese warships out of the water. The end was near for Imperial Japan, but it was determined to go down fighting. Just before midnight of the 29th, the Indianapolis, an American cruiser that was the flagship of the Fifth Fleet, was on its way, unescorted, to Guam, then Okinawa. It never made it. It was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Interestingly, the sub was commanded by a lieutenant who had also participated in the Pearl Harbor invasion.

There were 1,196 crewmen onboard the Indianapolis; over 350 died upon impact of the torpedo or went down with the ship. More than 800 fell into the Pacific. Of those, approximately 50 died that first night in the water from injuries suffered in the torpedo explosion; the remaining seamen were left to flounder in the Pacific, fend off sharks, drink sea water (which drove some insane), and wait to be rescued. Because there was no time for a distress signal before the Indianapolis went down, it was 84 hours before help arrived. This was despite the fact that American naval headquarters had intercepted a message on July 30 from the Japanese sub commander responsible for sinking the Indianapolis, describing the type of ship sunk and its location. (The Americans assumed it was an exaggerated boast and didn’t bother to follow up.) Only 318 survived; the rest were eaten by sharks or drowned. The Indianapolis’s commander, Captain Charles McVay, was the only officer ever to be court-martialed for the loss of a ship during wartime in the history of the U.S. Navy.

Had the attack happened only three days earlier, the Indianapolis would have been sunk carrying special cargo-the atom bomb, which it delivered to Tinian Island, northeast of Guam, for scientists to assemble.
-- The History Channel

“Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know, you know that when you’re in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn’t know, ‘cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh-huh. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s ... kinda like ‘ol squares in a battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark would go for nearest man and then he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got ... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and in spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces. Y’know by the end of that first dawn, lost 100 men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe 1,000. I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bo’sun’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well ... he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’d a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a life jacket again. So, 1,100 men went in the water, 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”
-- Captain Quint, “Jaws”

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Posted by The Skipper     on 07/31/2005 at 05:04 AM   
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   Friday - July 22, 2005

On This Day In History

Exactly two years ago today, Uday and Qusay Hussein got their asses shot all to pieces in a gunfight with US forces ....

(BBC) [22-July-2003]—The United States says the two sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, have been killed by US troops in Iraq. The bodies of the two men were identified after 200 American soldiers, backed by helicopters, stormed a house in the northern city of Mosul following a tip-off from an Iraqi informant.

The operation in Mosul lasted over four hours. US troops came under fire as they entered the villa in the northern part of Mosul, and the Americans responded with rocket fire from helicopter gunships.Uday and Qusay were among the most influential and most feared figures in Saddam Hussein’s regime. Reports of their deaths were welcomed with celebrations on the streets of Baghdad, and gunfire erupted across the city as weapons were fired into the air.

Qusay, 36, was being groomed as Saddam Hussein’s heir, and controlled key areas of the country’s security. Uday, 39, ran large sections of the media. He was known for his extreme brutality and for the extravagance of his playboy lifestyle. The two men have been on the run since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime three months ago.

The Iraqi who apparently tipped off the US military stands to gain at least part of two rewards placed on the heads of Uday and Qusay, each with £15 million (£9.4m). The two were second and third on America’s most-wanted list of the top 55 Iraqis involved in Saddam Hussein’s administration.

Chicago, July 22, 1934—John Dillinger, America’s Public Enemy No. 1 and the most notorious criminal of recent times, was shot and killed at 10:40 o’clock tonight by Federal agents a few seconds after he had left the Biograph Theatre at 2,433 Lincoln Avenue, on Chicago’s North Side.

One bullet penetrated the head and another the chest of the desperate outlaw. He died as he was being taken to the Alexian Brothers Hospital. The body was later removed to the county morgue, where the identification of Dillinger was made positive.

According to Melvin H. Purvis, chief of the investigating forces of the Department of Justice in Chicago, and leader of the band of sixteen men who had waited for more than two hours while the desperado viewed his last picture show, Dillinger attempted to put up a fight.

“He saw me give a signal to my men to close in,” Chief Purvis said. “He became alarmed and reached into a belt and was drawing the .38-callibre pistol he carried concealed when two of the agents let him have it. Dillinger was lying prone before he was able to get the gun out and I took it from him.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 07/22/2005 at 10:49 AM   
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   Wednesday - July 13, 2005

Remember When?

The following were some comments made in the year 1957:

(1) “I’ll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, its going to be impossible to buy a weeks groceries for $20.00.”

(2) “Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won’t be long when $5,000 will only buy a used one.”

(3) “If cigarettes keep going up in price, I’m going to quit. A quarter a pack is ridiculous.”

(4) “Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?”

(5) “If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.”

(6) “When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 29 cents a gallon. Guess we’d be better off leaving the car in the garage,”

(7) “Kids today are impossible. Those ducktail hair cuts make it impossible to stay groomed. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair as long as the girls,”

(8) “I’m afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying damn in “Gone With The Wind”, it seems every new movie has either hell or damn in it.”

(9) “I read the other day where some scientist thinks it’s possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas.”

(10) “Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn’t surprise me if someday that they will be making more than the President.”

(11) “I never thought I’d see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now”

(12) “It’s too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet.”

(13) “It won’t be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work.”

(14) “I’m just afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business.”

(15) “Thank goodness I won’t live to see the day when the Government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to Congress.”

(16) “The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on.”

(17) “I guess taking a vacation is out of the question now days. It costs nearly $15.00 a night to stay in a hotel.”

(18) “No one can afford to be sick any more, $35.00 a day in the hospital is too rich for my blood.”

If you were alive in 1957 (I was eight years old), feel free to add numbers (19) and (20) in the comments ....

Posted by The Skipper     on 07/13/2005 at 09:25 AM   
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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