Richard Overton, local veteran and WWII hero, has passed. He was 112.
Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Obit watch: December 28, 2018.
Friday, December 28th, 2018Tweets of the day.
Sunday, December 16th, 2018I was only going to have one. Then a second one got posted. I feel justified in using both of them. Here. We. Go. In both cases, the tweet is the start of a thread.
Ok. So. I've been thinking about how there seems to be problems within the general officer/admiral ranks when it comes to ethics – as in, the violations of ethics, specifically.
And for a long time I've wondered how that happens. Then I took command. Let's talk for a sec.
— Angry Staff Officer (@pptsapper) December 16, 2018
This has a lot to do with stuff I’ve been thinking about recently (because: reasons).
The winter of 1989 was surreal, to say the least. At the beginning of November I had attended a briefing updating our METL (Mission Essential Task List) for worst case scenario, with assurances that Eastern Europe was stable despite what was happening in Hungary and the like.
— Tim Willard (@TWillardAuthor) December 16, 2018
This, on the other hand, is just kind of fun and historical: a first-hand account from a guy who was on duty close to the Berlin Wall when it fell.
(Hattip on both of these to Morlock Publishing.)
Obit watch: December 13, 2018.
Thursday, December 13th, 2018Melvin Dummar, historical footnote, passed away last Sunday at the age of 74.
I’m not sure how many of my readers remember Mr. Dummar and his saga. To summarize: one night in 1967, Mr. Dummar picked up a drifter by the side of the road and gave him a ride. The drifter told him that his name was Howard Hughes. Mr. Dummar forgot about the incident until nine years later, when Mr. Hughes died…
…and a will turned up at the Morman Church headquarters that left 1/16th of the Hughes estate to the church…
…and 1/16th of the estate to Mr. Dummar. (This was about $156 million in 1976 dollars.)
Of course there were legal cases.
But after his fingerprints were found on the envelope, he testified that a stranger had given it to him at his gas station and that he had taken it to the church headquarters.
A jury decided that the will was forged, and while no one was ever officially charged, Mr. Dummar was found guilty in the court of public opinion.
…
Jonathan Demme made what is supposedly a pretty good movie (haven’t seen it yet) out of this story, “Melvin and Howard“.
Thing I didn’t know: there’s a revisionist movement, apparently led by a retired FBI agent, that claims Mr. Dummar’s story was true, and he was cheated out of his rightful inheritance by a vast conspiracy “replete with acts of obstruction of justice, witness intimidation and possible jury tampering.” Yeah. Gonna take some convincing to get me to buy that.
I’ve suffered for my art. Now it’s your turn.
Monday, December 10th, 2018I was in San Antonio over the weekend for an event. We stumbled across this memorial outside the Tobin Center, and were all struck by the wording.
“Honoring the mothers whose sons fought in the world war.
Erected by San Antonio Chapter No. 2, 1938.”
“the world war”.
This one’s just for fun. I saw this in front of a restaurant we went to, and I know someone who would appreciate it. They did, but I thought the rest of you might get a kick out of it as well.
Obit watch: December 1, 2018.
Saturday, December 1st, 2018Obit watch: November 30, 2018.
Friday, November 30th, 2018Lady Trumpington (Jean Alys Campbell-Harris).
She was a member of the House of Lords from 1980 to 2017, and held various other governmental positions.
But she gets her obit linked here because she was one of the Bletchley Park codebreakers.
This month, she was among a group of Bletchley Park veterans awarded the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor, for their contributions to the liberation of France.
“Oh, I had such fun in Paris after the war,” she said after receiving the medal in a ceremony at her home. “While this award recognized my time at Bletchley, I still find it difficult to discuss my time there, as we were taught to never talk about it.”
…
During her husband’s tenure at the Leys School in Cambridge, Lady Trumpington kept up her society habits. “I smoked and drank and did everything naughty,” she said.
Once, when presenting awards to Leys athletes, she jumped fully clothed into the school’s swimming pool, followed by the students. “My husband was furious,” she said.
Obit watch: November 20, 2018.
Tuesday, November 20th, 2018Andrew Fitzgerald passed away last week at the age of 87.
There’s a chance you may have heard of Mr. Fitzgerald. He was the last surviving member of the four man crew of the Coast Guard lifeboat CG-36500.
At 5:50 AM on February 18, 1952, the oil tanker Pendleton broke in half off Cape Cod during a severe storm. The crew of the CG-36500 went out and rescued 32 out of 33 men off the stern half of the ship. (One man drowned during the rescue, and the eight men who were in the bow were also lost at sea.)
There are a lot of people who think this is one of the greatest rescues in the history of the Coast Guard. I can’t do it justice here. You should really go read the entire obituary. There’s also a 2016 Disney film (which I haven’t seen), “The Finest Hours”, based on the book by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman.
In 2002, a 50th-anniversary reunion of the rescue crew was held at the historic Mariners House in Boston’s North End. The four also returned to Chatham for an outing on the CG-36500. Mr. Maske died in 2003, Mr. Livesey in 2007 and Mr. Webber in 2009.
The inscription on their Coast Guard medals read, “In testimony of heroic deeds in saving life from the perils of water.”
Random notes: November 18, 2018.
Sunday, November 18th, 2018A few things I’ve stumbled across over the past couple of days:
“I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It.” In which the author visits 30 cities, eats 330 burgers, names a burger place in Portand as having the best burger in the country…and five months later, the places closes.
I like this story: it’s a good discussion of the impact of criticism on dining establishments, especially smaller ones. But it’s also frustrating: as it turns out, there was more going on with the burger place than just simply being named “best burger in the country”.
Recently retweeted by Popehat:
Okay. History time!
You’ve probably seen photos of Commonwealth war cemeteries, with rows of white graves. They’re heartbreaking images.
What you DON’T see are the thousands of small, tragic stories on each gravestone.
So I’m going to share some with you here. /1 #history #WW1 pic.twitter.com/wr3ucIyMYZ
— John Bull (@garius) October 5, 2018
I don’t like and don’t read the Huffington Post. But this (also by way of Popehat):
Glybera is a drug developed in Canada. It’s a hugely effective treatment for a rare genetic condition, lipoprotein lipase disorder. People with this disorder can’t metabolize fat. Their blood literally turns white from all the suspended fat in their bloodstream.
One round of treatment with Glybera can fix this genetic condition. Only 31 people have ever been treated with the drug, and it is no longer available.
Why? One possible reason: a round of treatment costs one million dollars. (But a round of treatment, as far as anyone’s been able to determine, is a permanent cure. This is a drug that literally edits genes.) And this isn’t a “oh, health care in the US stinks” story: the drug was only used in Canada and Europe, pretty much on an experimental basis, before it was pulled.
On the historic significance of “Hee Haw”:
A few words on Hee Haw, following Roy Clark’s passing…
It is, possibly, one of the most interesting and important shows in American television history.
Really.
I’m not talking about its jokes or production. Many other things made it interesting and important.
Here goes…
— Gabe Bullard (@gbullard) November 16, 2018
Historical note, suitable for use in schools.
Saturday, November 17th, 201850 years ago today, at about 3 PM Central Time on November 17, 1968, the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders began a football game.
One more from the road.
Thursday, November 15th, 2018
I took this one with the baby Nikon and did a little editing on the phone. This is another one that I think came out pretty well: I wanted to get the two graves in front of Geronimo’s into the shot as well, and those markers are actually legible (if you view the photo at full size).
(If you can’t read them, the one on the left is Eva Geronimo Godeley, daughter of Geronimo and Zi-Yeh. Zi-Yeah, one of Geronimo’s wives, is on the right.)
I like the way this one came out.
Friday, November 9th, 2018
French 75, U.S. Army Artillery Museum, Ft. Sill, OK.
Please to remember…
Monday, November 5th, 2018I don’t have a lot to add to what I’ve said previously, and I’m busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest, but:
I wanted to make sure, before it got too late in the day, to wish everyone (especially my peeps in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) a happy Guy Fawkes Day.
Please have fun, and try not to blow yourself up or get burned by flaming barrels of tar.
(I wish I knew somebody in the UK who could place an order from Ottery St. Mary for me. It doesn’t look like they will ship to the US. And it also looks like they don’t have the “You Are Here At Your Own Risk” pins any longer: I wanted to order a bunch of those and give them out as Christmas presents.)
Obit watch: November 1, 2018.
Thursday, November 1st, 2018Obit watch: October 24, 2018.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2018Joachim Ronneberg, certified Norwegian badass.
Mr. Ronneberg led the commando raid that blew up the Nazi heavy water plant at Telemark. He was also the last survivor of that raid.
Obit watch: October 18, 2018.
Thursday, October 18th, 2018Yesterday’s headline of the day:
Felix Smith, pilot for Civil Air Transport.
CAT evolved into the legendary Air America.