Archive for the ‘History’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Obit watch: December 1, 2023.

Friday, December 1st, 2023

Sandra Day O’Connor, a good El Paso girl (thanks, Rich!). WP.

You know who writes really good obits? Murray Newman writes really good obits, thought it probably helps that his obits are for people he knew personally. Anyway, he put up another excellent one for former Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal, who passed away November 23rd. I have not seen this reported elsewhere.

The Remington plant in Ilion, New York. My brother forwarded some tweets yesterday, and Mike the Musicologist found press coverage, but I prefer the Outdoor Life link.

The Ilion plant had been making guns since 1828. I have seen references (but can’t back them up) to this being the oldest continuously operating manufacturing plant making the same product in the United States. At the time of the announcement, they were making the Remington 870 shotgun and the Model 700 bolt-action rifle.

Remington (well, the new “RemArms, LLC”, which is one of the parts that emerged from bankruptcy) is moving all of their production to their new facilities in Georgia, and plans to shut down the plant in March of next year. However, the tweets my brother sent over were from people who said they’d already been laid off.

Frankly, this doesn’t surprise me, though I feel bad for the people who get fired right before Christmas. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.) New York is consistently hostile to firearms, so moving everything out of there seems like a good decision. It also sounds like a lot of the equipment is old and needs replacement or refurbishment. I’m surprised that they apparently aren’t offering Ilion employees jobs and relocation allowances to move to Georgia, but the linked article says the employees were represented by the United Mine Workers of America. That could have been another factor: move to Georgia and get cheap non-union labor. (Hi, Lawrence!)

It should be interesting to watch this play out. I’m wondering if Remington also plans to move their museum to Georgia as well.

Posted in Guns, HCDA, History, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 30, 2023, part 1.

Thursday, November 30th, 2023

Henry Kissinger. NYT. WP. LAT. McThag. Henry Kissinger official website.

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

–Tom Lehrer

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

Yes, I know…

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023

Kissinger obits tomorrow, when I have a chance to search the ‘Tube for that Python bit.

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

Coffee mugs.

Saturday, November 11th, 2023

“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”

–Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC

Just how pale and insipid shoreside coffee is when compared with robust Navy joe is illustrated by an incident which occurred when a lady invited two hash-marked sailors to “tea.” Having heard than Navy men like their coffee strong, she added an extra amount of coffee and allowed it to boil twice as long as normal. The visitors nodded approvingly when the beverage was served. When time came to leave, one turned gallantly to his hostess and remarked, “Ma’am, I wanna tell you that was the finest tea I’ve ever tasted.”

–Seabeecook.com, quoting an article from the August 1949 “All Hands” magazine

When we talk about the Navy, battleships, submarines, and aircraft carriers get all the love. And let’s fact it, those are sexy. Things like the LCS, maybe less so.

But someone has to support those ships. Somebody’s got to deliver fuel and mail and toilet paper and repair parts and coffee and a million other things.

Those people serve just as heroically as the folks on the sexy ships. Sometimes, they go in harm’s way as well.

(more…)

Posted in Boats, History | Comments Closed

Brief historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Wednesday, October 4th, 2023

30 years ago yesterday and today, a group of UN soldiers (including US Special Operations troops, and units from Malaysia and Pakistan) went out on a mission to capture high-ranking members of the Somali National Alliance (SMA) in Mogadishu.

Things went bad. Then they went very bad. When it was all over, 18 US soldiers had been killed, and another 73 were wounded. One Malaysian Army soldier and one Pakistani soldier were also killed.

Battle of Mogadishu from Wikipedia.

Medal of Honor citations for Master Sergeant Gary Ivan Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randall David Shughart, killed in action during the battle.

Also killed:

  • Staff Sergeant Daniel Darrell Busch.
  • Sergeant First Class Earl Robert Fillmore, Jr.
  • Master Sergeant Timothy Lynn Martin.
  • Sergeant First Class Matthew Loren Rierson.
  • Corporal James E. Smith.
  • Specialist James M. Cavaco.
  • Sergeant James Casey Joyce.
  • Corporal Richard W. Kowalewski, Jr.
  • Sergeant Dominick M. Pilla.
  • Sergeant Lorenzo M. Ruiz.
  • Staff Sergeant William David Cleveland, Jr.
  • Staff Sergeant Thomas J. Field.
  • CW4 Raymond Alex Frank.
  • CW3 Clifton P. Wolcott.
  • CW3 Donovan Lee Briley.
  • Sergeant Cornell Lemont Houston, Sr.
  • Private First Class James Henry Martin, Jr.
  • Lance Corporal Mat Aznan Awang (Malaysian Army, posthumously promoted to Corporal).

I have been unable to find a name for the Pakistani soldier who was killed.

Black Hawk Down is still a heck of a book, in my opinion. The movie’s pretty good, too, but I’m not going to stake my life on it being 100% accurate. (Though I do believe the movie makers tried very hard.)

“Folly and Redemption: Thirty Years After Black Hawk Down” from The American Conservative.

Posted in Heroism, History | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: September 15, 2023.

Friday, September 15th, 2023

Éva Fahidi, Holocaust survivor.

Ms. Fahidi, part of a Hungarian Jewish family that had converted to Catholicism, was rounded up in 1944 along with the rest of her family and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination complex in occupied Poland. She was 18.
She was apparently saved from the gas chamber by being of an age and fitness level to qualify for a forced-labor camp. Her other family members were sent to their deaths. Josef Mengele, the Nazi death camp doctor, presided over the selection process.

…

After the war ended in 1945, Ms. Fahidi (who was also known as Éva Fahidi-Pusztai from an early marriage) kept her experiences largely to herself for more than a half-century. Then, in 2003, on the anniversary of that day on the ramp when she last saw her family members, she visited the Birkenau site and was disappointed to find it more like a tourist attraction than like anything she remembered.
She committed herself to telling her story and to helping younger generations understand what had gone on at the camp and in the Holocaust in general. Over the next 20 years she spoke to countless schoolchildren and worked with young volunteers who collected Holocaust remembrances from survivors. She appeared at anniversary observances marking the liberation of Auschwitz and other occasions and spoke to legislative bodies. And she bore witness, including attending the 2015 war crimes trial in Germany of Oskar Gröning, who at 93 was accused of having been one of the guards working that ramp at Auschwitz and was one of the last complicit Germans to face trial.

Lauch Faircloth, former Senator from North Carolina.

But it was as a member and later as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on the District of Columbia that Mr. Faircloth made national headlines on a collision course with Mr. Barry, a former leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who had been a popular elected official in Washington, in various capacities, since the establishment of limited home rule in the capital in 1973.

…

The mayor admitted that the city government was “unworkable” and asked Congress to take over some city functions. Instead, with Mr. Faircloth as point man, a new Republican congressional majority put some city operations into receivership and created a financial control board to take over day-to-day spending and financial planning, with the power to overrule the mayor.
Over the next two years, Mr. Faircloth granted the city some concessions: more money than requested for public schools and repairs to decaying buildings. But Mr. Barry and the control board battled constantly over policy and budgetary issues.
A settlement was reached in 1997, when the Clinton administration and Senator Faircloth agreed to rescue the city but stripped Mr. Barry of power over most city agencies, handing it to the control board. The mayor, who retained authority over parks and recreation, libraries and tourism, called the arrangement “a rape of democracy.”

…

He dismissed Mr. Barry’s criticism. “I’ve heard so many meaningless statements from Marion Barry that one more doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s airy persiflage.”

Lisa Lyon, bodybuilder and Robert Mapplethorpe photo subject.

Lawrence emailed an obit for Jean Boht, British actress, with the note that he wasn’t aware there was a British remake of “The Golden Girls”. I wasn’t either, but if we can remake British shows in the US, why can’t the Brits remake our stuff?

(I was aware that there was an attempt at a US “Fawlty Towers” remake. I wasn’t aware, until I went to look it up, that there were actually three attempts, including the Harvey Korman/Betty White one, and another with John Larroquette.)

IMDB.

Posted in History, Nazis, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: September 11, 2023.

Monday, September 11th, 2023

Mangosuthu Buthelezi. I went back and forth about noting this, as I’m pretty far from being an expert in South African politics in the 1990s. What pushed me into it was that Lawrence posted a good obit at his site, which I encourage you to read.

Charlie Robison, noted Texas country musician. All the “local” obits I’ve found pull from the same AP obit.

Posted in History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Random gun crankery, with a public service announcement.

Thursday, September 7th, 2023

The Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) has opened up round 4 of 1911 pistol purchases. (Previously.)

Even better: with some limitations, you can purchase a second 1911, even if you’ve bought one from the CMP previously. That’s a new twist. There was formerly a lifetime limit of one 1911 per customer.

This might be your last chance to own a chunk of history. I, personally, won’t be buying one this time as I’m not eligible. (I technically got my 1911 this year, which disqualifies me.) But I’d really like to see some of my friends purchase 1911s from CMP, and if you need help navigating the process, I’ll be happy to try to help out.

Orders are being accepted through September 30th, so you’ve got some time.

Hattip: McThag.

Posted in 1911, Guns, History | Comments Closed

Where do we get such men?

Wednesday, September 6th, 2023

This is a Bell AH-1 “Cobra” helicopter.

It was commonly used as an attack helicopter during the Vietnam war. I would like for you to observe that it has two seats: one for the pilot and one for the co-pilot. It has no more seating inside. It is only designed to carry two people, plus armament and ammo. This will become significant in a little bit.

On Monday, Capt. Larry L. Taylor (United States Army – ret.) was awarded the Medal of Honor for actions on June 18, 1968.

(more…)

Posted in Helicopters, Heroism, History, Planes | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: September 4, 2023.

Monday, September 4th, 2023

Somebody out there is listening to me.

NYT obit for Marilyn Lovell (archived).

On Christmas Day 1968, while Mr. Lovell was on the Apollo 8 mission, the first manned spaceflight to orbit the moon, Ms. Lovell answered her door to find a representative from Neiman Marcus carrying a large box with moon-themed décor. In it was a mink coat and a note The New York Times would later describe as “the most romantic card in the universe”: “To Marilyn from the Man in the Moon.” Ms. Lovell did her household chores that day in pajamas and her new mink.
On that mission, Mr. Lovell named a triangle-shaped mountain on the lunar surface Mount Marilyn. It would later serve as a landmark for astronauts, and in 2017, after campaigning by Mr. Lovell, the name was officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union.

…

When Ms. Lovell’s 12-year-old daughter, Susan, became hysterical on seeing a priest at their door, Ms. Lovell found a way to soothe her. “Do you really think the best astronaut either one of us knows is going to forget something as simple as how to turn his spaceship around and fly it home?” she asked her daughter, according to Mr. Lovell’s memoir.
Reporters with notebooks, microphones and television cameras filled up the Lovell family lawn and driveway. She fielded a call from President Richard M. Nixon: “I just wanted you to know, Marilyn, that your president and the entire nation are watching your husband’s progress with concern,” he said. “Everything is being done to bring Jim home.”

…

When parachutes were seen on TV billowing out from the spaceship, guiding it safely to the ocean surface, a couple of famous astronauts in Ms. Lovell’s living room, Mr. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, opened champagne. President Nixon called with a new message: “I wanted to know if you’d care to accompany me to Hawaii to pick up your husband.”
She replied, “Mr. President, I’d love to.”

NYT obit for Douglas Lenat (archived).

Running across dozens of computers, Eurisko could discover possibilities that Dr. Lenat — and other humans — had not. But it needed help from human judgment. Machines could not be truly intelligent, he realized, unless they too had common sense.
The project was called Cyc. He set out to define the fundamental but largely unspoken laws that outline how the world works, including everything from “you can’t be in two places at the same time” to “when drinking a cup of coffee, you hold the open end up.” He knew it could take decades — perhaps centuries — to complete the project. But he was determined to try.
In recent years, the Cyc project — and the rule-based approach to A.I. research it represented — has fallen out of favor among leading A.I. researchers. Rather than defining intelligence rule by rule, line of code by line of code, the giants of the tech industry are now focused on systems that learn skills by analyzing massive amounts of digital data. This is how they build popular chatbots like ChatGPT.
Many leading researchers now believe that this kind of sweeping data analysis will eventually reproduce common sense and reasoning. But as today’s computers struggle with even simple tasks and play fast and loose with the truth, others believe that the industry can learn from Dr. Lenat and his never-ending struggle to build common sense by hand.

My favorite Dr. Lenat story is partially in the article: the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron story.

In brief: Game Designers Workshop used to (still may) run a contest where you had a trillion “credits” to design the best possible fleet, according to the rulebook. The contestants were pitted against each other until one fleet won. Dr. Lenet fed the rules into Eurisko and iterated until it came up with what seemed to him to be an optimal strategy. He entered the 1981 tournament with his Eurisko designed fleet…and won.

The next year, GDW changed the rules. Dr. Lenet fed the revised rules into Eurisko, entered the tournament again…and won.

What the NYT obit doesn’t say: The third year, GDW told Dr. Lenet that if he entered the tournament with one of his weird computer designed fleets, they’d just cancel it completely. According to the Traveller wiki, he agreed to accept “the title ‘Grand Admiral’ as consolation.

Steve Harwell, former lead singer of Smashmouth. THR. Pitchfork.

Not much to say about this, really. 56 is awfully young, but all the stories go out of the way to mention his issues. And I was never a big fan of the band, with the possible exception of “Walkin’ on the Sun”.

Gayle Hunnicutt. Other credits include “Mister Roberts” (the TV series), “Get Smart”, and “Marlowe” (the 1969 movie with James Garner). (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Posted in Geek, History, Movies, Music, Nixon, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 1, 2023.

Friday, September 1st, 2023

Gil Brandt, one of the men who built the Dallas Cowboys.

Mr. Brandt joined the Cowboys in 1960, before their first season, and worked beside Tom Landry, the taciturn head coach, and Tex Schramm, the innovative president and general manager, to make them a perennial winner and a two-time Super Bowl champion. In time, the Cowboys became known as “America’s Team.”
As the team’s vice president of player personnel, Mr. Brandt was known for expanding his scouting beyond major-conference schools. He drafted future stars like the wide receiver Bob Hayes, the defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, the offensive lineman Rayfield Wright and the linebacker Thomas (Hollywood) Henderson, who all played at historically Black colleges and universities.
Mr. Hayes, Mr. Wright, and the quarterbacks Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman are among the nine players whose drafting Mr. Brandt oversaw who were later elected to the Hall of Fame.

…

At Mr. Schramm’s suggestion, Mr. Brandt began using a massive IBM computer in 1962 to meticulously evaluate prospects. He assigned numerical values to many personality traits, including character and competitiveness, and to many physical qualities like quickness and strength; stored them on punch cards; and loaded them into the computer.
The result was a database that enabled the Cowboys to sift through information quickly and comprehensively, weigh the talents of prospects and make recommendations to Mr. Landry and Mr. Schramm. This gave the team a competitive edge.

…

By the late 1980s, however, the Cowboys’ success was waning. In 1989, after Jerry Jones bought the team, he fired Mr. Landry and Mr. Brandt. Mr. Schramm resigned.

Mohamed al-Fayed. I’m not sure how many people remember that name.

The patriarch of a family that rose from humble origins to fabled riches, Mr. Fayed controlled far-flung enterprises in oil, shipping, banking and real estate, including the palatial Ritz Hotel in Paris and, for 25 years, the storied London retail emporium Harrods. Forbes estimated his net worth at $2 billion this year, ranking his wealth as 1,516th in the world.

…

Mr. Fayed lived and worked mostly in Britain, where for a half-century he was a quintessential outsider, scorned by the establishment in a society still embedded with old-boy networks. He clashed repeatedly with the government and business rivals over his property acquisitions and attempts to influence members of Parliament. He campaigned noisily for British citizenship, but his applications were repeatedly denied.

He’s probably better remembered as the father of Emad “Dodi” al-Fayed, who was killed with Princess Dianna and Henri Paul.

As rumors and conspiracy theories swirled, Mr. Fayed declared that the two had been murdered by “people who did not want Diana and Dodi to be together.” He said they had been engaged to marry and maintained that they had called him an hour before the crash to tell him that she was pregnant. Buckingham Palace and the princess’s family denounced his remarks as malicious fantasy.
The deaths inspired waves of books, articles and investigations of conspiracy theories, as well as a period of soul-searching among Britons, who resented the royal family’s standoffish behavior and were caught up in displays of mass grief. In 2006, the British police ruled the crash an accident.
And in 2008, a British coroner’s jury rejected all conspiracy theories involving the royal family, British intelligence services and others. It attributed the deaths to “gross negligence” by the driver and the pursuing paparazzi. It also said a French pathologist had found that Diana was not pregnant.
Mr. Fayed called the verdict biased, but he and his lawyers did not pursue the matter further. “I’ve had enough,” he told Britain’s ITV News. “I’m leaving this to God to get my revenge.”

Posted in History, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

YouTube videos you might enjoy.

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023

I have several favorite bookstores.

One of those is Chartwell Booksellers in New York, which I have never visited but have done business with by mail. Chartwell is a bookshop specializing in Winston Churchill books and related items.

They turned 40 on April 11th of this year, and have been celebrating by doing a series of readings. The first one was John Lithgow reading from William Manchester’s The Last Lion.

I thought some folks might get a kick out of the most recent reading: Bryan Cranston reads from Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins.

They are less than halfway through the series (the Cranston video is #19 out of a planned 40), so it might be worth subscribing to their YouTube channel so you can see what comes next.

Here’s something else I thought was interesting. I was tipped off to it by the second edition of Holstory, R.E.D. Nichols and John Witty’s book about the history of holsters in the 20th Century. I’ve written about that book previously (in both editions) so I won’t repeat myself here.

This is legendary holster designer Chic Gaylord’s appearance on “What’s My Line?” on May 1, 1960.

I’ve set the video to start with Mr. Gaylord’s appearance, but it won’t hurt you to watch the whole thing. The guest before him was Gloria Bale, a very cute trapeze artist. (If she was 17 at the time, she’d be 80 today, so there’s a chance she’s still alive. Miss Bale, if you’re out there somewhere, I hope you had a wonderful life.) And the mystery guest is Laurence Harvey.

This is a nice flashback to a time when guns were less demonized then they are today (well, NYC possibly excepted). I really like Dorothy Kilgallen’s “Ooooo, I’d like one of those.” My only complaint is that they don’t show Mr. Gaylord with any of his products, but I’m sure there were practical and legal reasons why they couldn’t do that.

Posted in Books, Guns, History, Holsters | 6 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »