Sgt. Charles H. Coolidge (US Army – ret.), Amercian badass. He was 99.
Sgt. Coolidge was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. He was the oldest living MoH recipient. (The current oldest is now Hershel W. Williams, who is 97.)
Edited to add: throwing some backlinks Lawrence’s way.
I’m just feeling very random today.
“Vintage Tiny Home on Wheels – 1976 GMC Motorhome Tour”.
I really like that form factor in a RV. I also like the fact that it has an internal shower and toilet. They don’t make these any more, but I think if i was going to adopt the RV lifestyle, I’d look for something similar to this.
Random related crankery: the GMC motorhome was also the basis for Mack Bolan’s “War Wagon” in the “Executioner” books.
Bonus #1: We did “Worker and Parasite” earlier. How about the American response?
“It’s Everybody’s Business”, a 1954 film from the US Chamber of Commerce.
Bonus #2: trolling, trolling, trolling, got to keep on trolling…
“Flugzeuge am Haken” from 1969, featuring the favorite plane of Lawrence, RoadRich, and WCD. (Yes, it is dangerously close to military history, and in German. But it’s less than three minutes long.)
Bonus #3: I swear that early in the life of this blog, I posted someone’s blog entry about their purchase of a fire truck, and what to look for when you’re buying a used fire truck. But I can’t find that post now.
“I BOUGHT A Legit FIRETRUCK From The Fire Department”.
You know, $3,000 is almost in my price range, if I wanted to mess around in a used fire truck. Then again, my local gun shop has a nice Colt Combat Commander modified by Clark Custom for $2,500, and I wouldn’t have to worry about parking the .45.
Car talk!
Great and good FotB RoadRich sent this one over: “Master Hands”, a 1936 documentary about the Chevrolet manufacturing line: “from foundry to finished vehicles”.
Not only is this another fine piece of work from the Jam Handy folks, it is also on the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Bonus #1: “Rare 1970 Plymouth Superbird unrestored”. I was out driving to an appointment a while back, and drove past one of the local auto repair shops. This one has some interesting and exotic stuff from time to time: that day, they had a Superbird in this exact color scheme (but seemingly restored) parked out front. I don’t think it was there for repair or restoration: I think someone was showing it off, and I nearly stopped to ask permission to take a photo. But I was running behind schedule…
As I’ve said before, I’m not a Mopar guy, but there’s something about the Superbird that grabs me.
Bonus #2: I’ve done Plymouth/Chrysler. I’ve done Chevy. How about Ford?
“The Hunt for Little Red”.
Breaking news, by way of Lawrence, and only from two sources at the moment: Alcee Hastings. Miami Herald in readable form.
Gloria Henry, most famous as the mother on the “Dennis the Menace” TV series.
Ritter was best known in the U.K. in recent years for playing the family patriarch in long-running Channel 4 comedy Friday Night Dinner, but was a recognizable face across numerous films, TV shows and stage plays, landing both Olivier and Tony nominations.
After his debut performance on famed police procedural drama The Bill in 1992, Ritter starred in films such as Son of Rambow, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Quantum of Solace. Ritter was recently seen in the Sky/HBO mini-series Chernobyl portraying Anatoly Dyatlov, the supervisor who was blamed for not following safety protocols leading to the nuclear disaster, and is set to appear in upcoming WWII drama Operation Mincemeat.
Arthur Kopit, playwright. Noted here because of his most famous work: “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad”. Among his many other works: the book for “Nine”.
Malcolm Cecil, synthesizer guy.
Military History Monday strikes again! And today I’ve got two kind of odd ones for you.
“The Small Boat Navy”, a 1968 Navy propaganda film about shallow water Navy ops in Vietnam. The odd part? This is narrated by Steve Martin Perry Mason Chief Ironside Raymond Burr.
Bonus: this is a little on the short side, and just has overlaid background music, but I wanted to include it for the odd factor. Video of test flights of the prototype two seat Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II trainer jet aircraft from the 1970s.
What’s odd about this? Two things: this is the only one of these aircraft ever built.
Thing #2: The guy flying in the second seat is…Barry Goldwater. Yes, the Senator from Arizona.
Science Sunday!
I’m thinking a little bit of space science today.
First up, a nice little historical video direct from NASA about the Mercury Control Center.
That covers Mercury. How about Gemini?
“The 12 Gemini”.
Apollo? Well, would you settle for a vintage Rocketdyne promo video on “Large Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines”, like the F1 engine used in the Saturn V?
Last one, and it is a long one. But today is Sunday. “Engineering Space: The Mighty Saturn V”.
I thought I’d dabble in some real history again today. These are also long, but it is a Saturday. Also, this is advertising to some extent: I am not getting any compensation for this, but I like the idea, and heartily endorse this product and/or event.
When war broke out in Sudan towards the end of the 19th century, Winston Churchill wanted to be there. He managed to get himself attached to the 21st Lancers: he also managed to get himself a contract to write articles about the war for one of the newspapers.
In 1899, Churchill published The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, his second book. The original edition was an elaborately put together and illustrated two-volume set.
After becoming a member of Parliament, Churchill edited it down to one volume (and removed much of his criticism of senior officers, especially General Kitchener), and subsequent reprints have pretty much been based on the one volume abridged edition. The original two-volume edition is very rare.
“Lessons from Churchill’s ‘The River War'”, a lecture at Hillsdale College by Dr. James W. Muller .
Longer bonus: this is only a few days old, too. Dr. Muller at America’s National Churchill Museum. “Churchill This Day #7: The River War: Churchill at War on the Nile”.
The advertising portion of this: Dr. Muller has been working on a new, two volume, unabridged and annotated edition of The River War. It is currently available for pre-order from Chartwell Booksellers, the Churchill specialty bookstore (who are very nice folks), with an estimated shipping date of early to mid-June.
Today through Sunday are going to be busy, so there’s probably going to be a strong dose of random.
I haven’t done anything with food in a while, so how about a seasonally appropriate recipe?
“Erich Shows us How to Make Hasenpfeffer”.
Another version from AlmazanKitchen:
Now I know why I don’t post more food videos: I’m hungry. So let’s switch gears.
Here’s another historical video from the AT&T Tech Channel: “The Thinking Machines”.
As I generally do, I’ve set this up to skip the intro.
Travel Thursday!
In honor of the late G. Gordon Liddy, how about a tour of the Watergate Hotel?
Bonus #1: I’m kind of bending one of my own rules here, but I’m thinking of this less as military history and more as “also inspired by current events”.
The Battleship New Jersey folks put up a video the other day about transiting the Suez and Panama canals.
Bonus #2: What the heck, let’s do some more ships. From the “Great British Royal Ships” series, “RMS Queen Mary”.
Man, one year of this. And I haven’t missed a day of being a lazy, shiftless blogger.
I thought today I’d do a sort of call back to the video that started it all, but from a different time – the 1980s – and a different source – the US Air Force. Even though it is an Air Force video, I consider it to be closer thematically to “Vehicle Ambush: Counterattacks”.
“Terrorism: A Survivable Threat”.
Bonus #1: “5 Police Cars Most Police Wish They Still Drove”.
Bonus #2: I’m not a huge fan of Jay Leno’s Garage, but since I’m doing cop stuff, and since I’ve written some in the past year about the California Highway Patrol, I thought I’d put this up: “Classic California Highway Patrol Cars”.
Most people don’t have a favorite Watergate conspirator.
G. Gordon Liddy was mine. WP in archive format so you can actually read it.
As a leader of a White House “plumbers” unit set up to plug information leaks, and then as a strategist for the president’s re-election campaign, Mr. Liddy helped devise plots to discredit Nixon “enemies” and to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Most were far-fetched — bizarre kidnappings, acts of sabotage, traps using prostitutes, even an assassination — and were never carried out.
But Mr. Liddy, a former F.B.I. agent, and E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, engineered two break-ins at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington. On May 28, 1972, as Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt stood by, six Cuban expatriates and James W. McCord Jr., a Nixon campaign security official, went in, planted bugs, photographed documents and got away cleanly.
A few weeks later, on June 17, four Cubans and Mr. McCord, wearing surgical gloves and carrying walkie-talkies, returned to the scene and were caught by the police. Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt, running the operation from a Watergate hotel room, fled but were soon arrested and indicted on charges of burglary, wiretapping and conspiracy.
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Disbarred from law practice and in debt for $300,000, mostly for legal fees, Mr. Liddy began a new career as a writer. His first book, “Out of Control,” (1979) was a spy thriller. He later wrote another novel, “The Monkey Handlers” (1990), and a nonfiction book, “When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country” (2002). He also co-wrote a guide to fighting terrorism, “Fight Back! Tackling Terrorism, Liddy Style” (2006), and produced many articles on politics, taxes, health and other matters.
In 1980, he broke his silence on Watergate with his autobiography, “Will.” The reviews were mixed, but it became a best seller. After years of revelations by other Watergate conspirators, there was little new in it about the scandal, but critics said his account of prison life was graphic. A television movie based on the book was aired in 1982 by NBC.
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His IMDB page. In addition to “Miami Vice”, he also did a guest shot on “Airwolf”.
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But he was better known later as a syndicated talk-radio host with a right-wing agenda. “The G. Gordon Liddy Show,” begun in 1992, was carried on hundreds of stations by Viacom and later Radio America, with satellite hookups and internet streaming. It ran until his retirement in 2012. He lived in Fort Washington, Md.
Mr. Liddy, who promoted nutritional supplements and exercised, was still trim in his 70s. He made parachute jumps, took motorcycle trips, collected guns, played a piano and sang lieder. His website showed him craggy-faced with head held high, an American flag and the Capitol dome in the background.
One of the reasons this past weekend was so busy is that I got up brutally early Saturday morning and drove out to the KR Training facility (KR Training, official firearms trainer for WCD) to attend a “Stop the Bleed” class taught by Levi Nathan.
I know there are many gun bloggers who feel like: if you carry a gun, you should carry a tourniquet, too. I haven’t been doing that because:
Summarizing: I got exactly what I wanted out of Mr. Nathan and the course, and I heartily endorse this event and/or product.
And even though this was at KR Training, this isn’t just a gun thing, for all my foreign readers. People hurt themselves badly and suffer life threatening bleeding in all kinds of ways: car accidents, construction accidents, kitchen accidents…
I also heartily endorse the idea of taking an official “Stop the Bleed” course from someone, anyone. You’ll get hands-on practice with stuff, and hands-on practice is good.
That being said, today’s videos are all StB related. Some of this is for my own personal bookmarks, and some of this is for the benefit of my loyal readers who want the knowledge, but may not yet be able to step out and take a StB course.
Remember: Have gloves. Wear gloves. Nitrile is recommended.
This is a compressed (slightly over 15 minutes) version of the “Stop the Bleed” presentation.
Here’s a longer version (a little over an hour) with demos.
Again, these are not substitutes for taking a for real actual course from someone who knows what they are doing. But I know a lot of people still don’t feel like it is safe to go out and mingle in public, so this is better than a poke in the neck with a sharp stick.
And from North American Rescue, makers of the Combat Application Tourniquet (C-A-T), here’s how to apply one:
NAR has a content rich YouTube channel. Here’s another video on the use of the emergency trauma dressing.
And from ITS Tactical, here’s a video on using the Israeli bandage:
Finally, by way of SkinnyMedic, “How to use your IFAK”.
Note that some of these channels talk about stuff other than trauma dressing, gauze (for packing) and the C-A-T: for example, chest seals.
The advice we got in class for using chest seals (and even more emphatically, chest decompression needles) was: don’t. Chest seals seem to show up in a lot of pre-packaged IFAKs, but as Mr. Nathan put it, this is not within your scope having taken just a “Stop the Bleed” course. This is the kind of thing that EMTs with higher level certifications do, not random hobos such as myself.
Also, if you get someone else’s blood on you: tell the responding medical people. We all know about HIPAA, right? Well, there’s a limited exception in the law: if you get someone’s blood on you, and it is documented, and it turns out that person has a blood-borne pathogen, you have a right to be informed of that as long as it is documented. You don’t have a right to know how and where they got it, just that they had it.
Now all I need to do is get my (stuff) together. I’m actually kind of surprised at how many of the companies selling IFAK pouches don’t make them in red. Condor is the only one I’ve found: 5.11 doesn’t, for sure.
The pouch should be the cheapest part of your kit, as long as it holds everything in place. But in a high stress emergency situation, I’m personally thinking “red = first aid”, and I want to be able to tell people “grab the red pouch”, not “grab the black pouch, no, the small black pouch, no, the other small black pouch, no, that’s the dark purple one, grab the black one…” Know what I mean, Vern?
Here’s a little something for Military History Monday that’s at the intersection of military history and film history.
I’ve written before about Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (affiliate link). Here’s another work from one of the five: Mister Wonderful Life himself, Frank Capra.
“Know Your Enemy: Japan”.
Bonus: “Prelude to War”, from the “Why We Fight” series, also directed by Capra.
The US National Archives has a “Why We Fight” playlist, if you’re interested.
Science Sunday!
I’ve got a few things for you today. First up: “ABCs of Radiation” with “Illinois EnergyProf“, which gives a nice explanation of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation for the uninitiated. You know, for kids.
Bonus #1: Some kind person appears to have uploaded all of Jonathan Miller‘s “The Body In Question” series to the ‘Tube. I wanted to see this when it was first run on PBS in America, but for some reason I don’t recall at the moment was unable to.
Here’s episode #1:
Bonus #2: Have you ever asked yourself, “How do atomic clocks work?”
Here’s how the The NIST-F2 Atomic Clock works:
And here’s a more general introduction:
Bonus #3: which, of course, was nicely set up by the previous videos. This guy’s voice is right on the ragged edge of annoying for me (he reminds me of Inspector Clouseau), but I thought the content was worthwhile for HP fans: the HP 5061A Cesium Clock.