jgo
jgo's JournalOn This Day: U.S. and Britain de-escalate war on Great Lakes following War of 1812 - Apr. 16, 1818
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Rush-Bagot Treaty
The Rush–Bagot Treaty or Rush–Bagot Disarmament was a treaty between the United States and Great Britain limiting naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, following the War of 1812. It was ratified by the United States Senate on April 16, 1818, and was confirmed by Canada, following Confederation in 1867.
The treaty provided for a large demilitarization of lakes along the international boundary, where many British naval arrangements and forts remained. The treaty stipulated that the United States and British North America could each maintain one military vessel (no more than 100 tons burden) as well as one cannon (no more than eighteen pounds) on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain. The remaining Great Lakes permitted the United States and British North America to keep two military vessels "of like burden" on the waters armed with "like force". The treaty, and the separate Treaty of 1818, laid the basis for a demilitarized boundary between the U.S. and British North America.
History
The origins of the Rush–Bagot Treaty can be traced to a correspondence of letters between Acting United States Secretary of State Richard Rush and the British Minister to Washington Sir Charles Bagot, which were exchanged and signed on April 27 and 28, 1817. After the terms of the notes were agreed upon by Rush and Bagot, the Rush–Bagot Agreement was unofficially recognized by both countries. On April 6, 1818, it was submitted to the United States Senate and formally ratified on April 16, 1818. The treaty eventually led to the Treaty of Washington of 1871, which completed disarmament. The United States and Canada agreed in 1946, through an exchange of diplomatic notes, that the stationing of naval vessels for training purposes was permissible provided each government was fully notified in advance.
In 2004, the U.S. Coast Guard decided to arm 11 of its small cutters stationed on Lake Erie and Lake Huron with M240 7.62 mm machine guns. The U.S. decision was based on a climbing number of smuggling operations as well as the increased threat of terrorist activity after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The Canadian government decided that the armament did not violate the treaty, as the guns were to be used for law enforcement rather than military activities. Canada reserved the right to arm its law enforcement vessels with similar weapons.
Military installations
There are still military facilities near or next to the Great Lakes - [see source for list]
Outcome
The Canada–United States border was demilitarized, including the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. The U.S. and the British agreed to joint control over the Oregon Territory. The Rush–Bagot Agreement laid the foundation for the world's longest international boundary—5,525 mi, and the longest demilitarized border in the world.
Although the treaty had caused difficulties during World War I, its terms were not changed. Similar problems occurred before World War II, but Secretary of State Cordell Hull wanted to preserve the agreement because of its historical importance. In 1939 and 1940, Canada and the United States agreed to interpret the treaty so that weapons could be installed in the Great Lakes but could not be operable until the ships left the Lakes. In 1942, the United States, by then having entered the war and allied with Canada, successfully proposed that until the end of the war weapons could be completely installed and tested in the Lakes. After discussions in the Permanent Joint Board on Defense, in 1946, Canada similarly proposed to interpret the agreement as permitting using ships for training purposes if each country notified the other.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush%E2%80%93Bagot_Treaty
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On This Day: Titanic sinks two hours forty min. after hitting an iceberg - 710 of 2,224 survive - Apr. 15, 1912
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375941
On This Day: For J.W. Booth, voting rights for freed slaves was final grievance among many - Apr. 14, 1865
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375905
On This Day: 50 industrialists, artists, and scientists found the Met art museum. Recent controversies. - Apr. 13, 1870
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375851
On This Day: Polio vaccine found safe and effective. Now, polio returns with anti-vax movement. - Apr. 12, 1955
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375800
On This Day: Truman fires MacArthur. Top brass criticize MacArthur's dangerous ideas in secret sessions. - Apr. 11, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375745
On This Day: Titanic sinks two hours forty min. after hitting an iceberg - 710 of 2,224 survive - Apr. 15, 1912
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Sinking of the Titanic
RMS Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at around 23:40 (ship's time) on Sunday, 14 April 1912. Her sinking two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 ship's time (05:18 GMT) on Monday, 15 April, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
Titanic received six warnings of sea ice on 14 April but was travelling at a speed of roughly 22 knots (41 km/h) when her lookouts sighted the iceberg. Unable to turn quickly enough, the ship suffered a glancing blow that buckled her starboard side and opened six of her sixteen compartments to the sea. Titanic had been designed to stay afloat with up to four of her forward compartments flooded, and the crew used distress flares and radio (wireless) messages to attract help as the passengers were put into lifeboats.
In accordance with existing practice, the Titanic's lifeboat system was designed to ferry passengers to nearby rescue vessels, not to hold everyone on board simultaneously; therefore, with the ship sinking rapidly and help still hours away, there was no safe refuge for many of the passengers and crew with only twenty lifeboats, including four collapsible lifeboats. Poor preparation for and management of the evacuation meant many boats were launched before they were completely full.
The Titanic sank with over a thousand passengers and crew still on board. Almost all of those who jumped or fell into the sea drowned or died within minutes due to the effects of cold shock and incapacitation. RMS Carpathia arrived about an hour and a half after the sinking and rescued all of the 710 survivors by 09:15 on 15 April, some nine and a half hours after the collision. The disaster shocked the world and caused widespread outrage over the lack of lifeboats, lax regulations, and the unequal treatment of third-class passengers during the evacuation. Subsequent inquiries recommended sweeping changes to maritime regulations, leading to the establishment in 1914 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) which still governs maritime safety today.
[Unprecedented scale]
At the time of her entry into service on 2 April 1912, the Titanic was the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners, and was the largest ship in the world. She and the earlier RMS Olympic were almost one and a half times the gross register tonnage of Cunard's RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania, the previous record holders, and were nearly 100 feet longer. The Titanic could carry 3,547 people in speed and comfort, and was built on an unprecedented scale. Her reciprocating engines were the largest that had ever been built, standing 40 feet high and with cylinders 9 feet in diameter requiring the burning of 600 long tons (610 t) of coal per day.
[Steep first class fares]
The passenger accommodation, especially the first class section, was said to be "of unrivalled extent and magnificence", indicated by the fares that first class accommodation commanded. The Parlour Suites (the most expensive and most luxurious suites on the ship) with private promenade cost over $4,350 (equivalent to $137,000 today) for a one-way transatlantic passage. Even third class, though considerably less luxurious than second and first classes, was unusually comfortable by contemporary standards and was supplied with plentiful quantities of good food, providing her passengers with better conditions than many of them had experienced at home.
[Titanic's builder on board]
Captain Smith felt the collision in his cabin and immediately came to the bridge. Informed of the situation, he summoned Thomas Andrews, Titanic's builder, who was among a party of engineers from Harland and Wolff observing the ship's first passenger voyage. The ship was listing five degrees to starboard and was two degrees down by the head within a few minutes of the collision. Smith and Andrews went below and found that the forward cargo holds, the mail room and the squash court were flooded, while No. 6 boiler room was already filled to a depth of 14 feet. Water was spilling over into No. 5 boiler room, and crewmen there were battling to pump it out.
Within 45 minutes of the collision, at least 13,500 long tons (13,700 t) of water had entered the ship. This was far too much for Titanic's ballast and bilge pumps to handle; the total pumping capacity of all the pumps combined was only 1,700 long tons (1,700 t) per hour. Andrews informed the captain that the first five compartments were flooded, and therefore Titanic was doomed. Andrews accurately predicted that she could remain afloat for no longer than roughly two hours.
[Passengers skeptical at first]
Few passengers at first were willing to board the lifeboats and the officers in charge of the evacuation found it difficult to persuade them. Millionaire John Jacob Astor declared: "We are safer here than in that little boat." Some passengers refused flatly to embark. J. Bruce Ismay, realising the urgency of the situation, roamed the starboard boat deck urging passengers and crew to board the boats. A trickle of women, couples and single men were persuaded to board starboard lifeboat No. 7, which became the first lifeboat to be lowered.
The lifeboats were lowered every few minutes on each side, but most of the boats were greatly under-filled. No. 5 left with 41 aboard, No. 3 had 32 aboard, No. 8 left with 39 and No. 1 left with just 12 out of a capacity of 40. The evacuation did not go smoothly and passengers suffered accidents and injuries as it progressed.
By 01:20, the seriousness of the situation was now apparent to the passengers above decks, who began saying their goodbyes, with husbands escorting their wives and children to the lifeboats. Distress flares were fired every few minutes to attract the attention of any ships nearby and the radio operators repeatedly sent the distress signal CQD.
By this time, it was clear to those on Titanic that the ship was indeed sinking and there would not be enough lifeboat places for everyone. Some still clung to the hope that the worst would not happen. Other couples refused to be separated.
The industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim changed out of his life vest and sweater into top hat and evening dress and declared his wish to go down like a gentleman.
[Immigration laws and treatment of third-class passengers]
At this point, the vast majority of passengers who had boarded lifeboats were from first- and second-class. Few third-class (steerage) passengers had made it up onto the deck, and most were still lost in the maze of corridors or trapped behind gates and partitions that segregated the accommodation for the steerage passengers from the first- and second-class areas.
This segregation was not simply for social reasons, but was a requirement of United States immigration laws, which mandated that third-class passengers be segregated to control immigration and to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
First- and second-class passengers on transatlantic liners disembarked at the main piers on Manhattan Island, but steerage passengers had to go through health checks and processing at Ellis Island.
In at least some places, Titanic's crew appear to have actively hindered the steerage passengers' escape. Some of the gates were locked and guarded by crew members, apparently to prevent the steerage passengers from rushing the lifeboats.
A long and winding route had to be taken to reach topside; the steerage-class accommodation, located on C through G decks, was at the extreme ends of the decks, and so was the farthest away from the lifeboats. By contrast, the first-class accommodation was located on the upper decks and so was nearest. Proximity to the lifeboats thus became a key factor in determining who got into them. To add to the difficulty, many of the steerage passengers did not understand or speak English. It was perhaps no coincidence that English-speaking Irish immigrants were disproportionately represented among the steerage passengers who survived. Many of those who did survive owed their lives to third-class steward John Edward Hart, who organised three trips into the ship's interior to escort groups of third-class passengers up to the boat deck. Others made their way through open gates or climbed emergency ladders.
["Stoic passivity"]
Some, perhaps overwhelmed by it all, made no attempt to escape and stayed in their cabins or congregated in prayer in the third-class dining room. Leading Fireman Charles Hendrickson saw crowds of third-class passengers below decks with their trunks and possessions, as if waiting for someone to direct them. Psychologist Wynn Craig Wade attributes this to "stoic passivity" produced by generations of being told what to do by social superiors. August Wennerström, one of the male steerage passengers to survive, commented later that many of his companions had made no effort to save themselves. He wrote:
Hundreds were in a circle [in the third-class dining saloon] with a preacher in the middle, praying, crying, asking God and Mary to help them. They lay there and yelled, never lifting a hand to help themselves. They had lost their own will power and expected God to do all the work for them.
The remaining boats were filled much closer to capacity and in an increasing rush.
[Fate of Andrews and Smith]
The ship's designer, Thomas Andrews, was reportedly last seen in the first-class smoking room after approximately 02:05, apparently making no attempt to escape. However, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that Andrews was sighted in the smoking room prior to 01:40, as well as other reports that indicate that Andrews then continued assisting with the evacuation. He was reportedly seen throwing deck chairs into the ocean for passengers to cling to in the water, heading to the bridge, perhaps in search of Captain Smith. Mess steward Cecil Fitzpatrick claimed to have seen Andrews jump overboard from the bridge with Smith. Neither man survived.
As most of the passengers and crew headed to the stern, where the priest Thomas Byles, a second-class passenger, was hearing confessions and giving absolutions, Titanic's band played outside the gymnasium.
Part of the enduring folklore of the Titanic sinking is that the musicians played the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the ship sank, though some regard this as dubious. Nonetheless, the claim surfaced among the earliest reports of the sinking, and the hymn became so closely associated with the Titanic disaster that its opening bars were carved on the grave monument of Titanic's bandmaster, Wallace Hartley, one of those who perished.
[Legislation]
The disaster led to major changes in maritime regulations to implement new safety measures, such as ensuring that more lifeboats were provided, that lifeboat drills were properly carried out and that radio equipment on passenger ships was manned around the clock. Radio operators were to give priority to emergency and hazard messages over private messages and to use the Q code to minimize language problems. Shore stations of the rival international "wireless" networks, Marconi of Britain and Telefunken of Germany, were required to handle all radio calls including those of the other network. An International Ice Patrol was set up to monitor the presence of icebergs in the North Atlantic, and maritime safety regulations were harmonised internationally through the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Titanic
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On This Day: For J.W. Booth, voting rights for freed slaves was final grievance among many - Apr. 14, 1865
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375905
On This Day: 50 industrialists, artists, and scientists found the Met art museum. Recent controversies. - Apr. 13, 1870
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375851
On This Day: Polio vaccine found safe and effective. Now, polio returns with anti-vax movement. - Apr. 12, 1955
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375800
On This Day: Truman fires MacArthur. Top brass criticize MacArthur's dangerous ideas in secret sessions. - Apr. 11, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375745
On This Day: Approx. 1,700 Virginia investors look to make money off of gold, gems, timber, glass, etc. - Apr. 10, 1606
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375697
On This Day: For J.W. Booth, voting rights for freed slaves was final grievance among many - Apr. 14, 1865
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
On April 11, Booth attended Lincoln's last speech, in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for emancipated slaves; Booth said, "That means [n-word] citizenship. ... That is the last speech he will ever give." Enraged, Booth urged [Lewis] Powell to shoot Lincoln on the spot. Whether Booth made this request because he was not armed or considered Powell a better shot than himself (Powell, unlike Booth, had served in the Confederate Army and thus had military experience) is unknown. In any event, Powell refused for fear of the crowd, and Booth was either unable or unwilling to personally attempt to kill the president. However, Booth said to David Herold, "By God, I'll put him through."
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died of his wounds the following day at 7:22 am in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first U.S. president to be assassinated. His funeral and burial were marked by an extended period of national mourning.
Three part conspiracy
Near the end of the American Civil War, Lincoln's assassination was part of a larger conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the federal government. Conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herold were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt was tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson. Beyond Lincoln's death, the plot failed: Seward was only wounded, and Johnson's would-be attacker became drunk instead of killing the vice president. After a dramatic initial escape, Booth was killed at the end of a 12-day chase. Powell, Herold, Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt were later hanged for their roles in the conspiracy.
[Plan A - kidnap Lincoln]
John Wilkes Booth, born in Maryland into a family of prominent stage actors, had by the time of the assassination become a famous actor and national celebrity in his own right. He was also an outspoken Confederate sympathizer; in late 1860 he was initiated in the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore, Maryland.
In May 1863, the Confederate States Congress passed a law prohibiting the exchange of black soldiers, following a previous decree by President Jefferson Davis in December 1862 that neither black soldiers nor their white officers would be exchanged. This became a reality in mid-July 1863 after some soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts were not exchanged following their assault on Fort Wagner. On July 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued General Order 252 to stop prisoner exchanges with the South until all Northern soldiers would be exchanged without regard for their skin color. Stopping the prisoner exchanges is often wrongly attributed to General Grant, even though he was commanding an army in the west in mid-1863 and became overall commander in early 1864.
Booth conceived a plan to kidnap Lincoln in order to blackmail the Union into resuming prisoner exchanges, and he recruited Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael O'Laughlen, Lewis Powell, and John Surratt to help him. Surratt's mother, Mary Surratt, left her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland, and moved to a house in Washington, D.C., where Booth became a frequent visitor.
Booth and Lincoln were not personally acquainted, but Lincoln had seen Booth at Ford's Theatre in 1863. After the assassination, actor Frank Mordaunt wrote that Lincoln, who apparently harbored no suspicions about Booth, admired the actor and had repeatedly but unsuccessfully invited him to visit the White House. Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4, 1865, writing in his diary afterwards: "What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on Inauguration day!"
On March 17, Booth and the other conspirators planned to abduct Lincoln as he returned from a play at Campbell General Hospital in northwest Washington. Lincoln did not go to the play, however, instead attending a ceremony at the National Hotel. Booth was living at the National Hotel at the time and, had he not gone to the hospital for the abortive kidnap attempt, might have been able to attack Lincoln at the hotel.
[Plan B - assassination]
Meanwhile, the Confederacy was collapsing. On April 3, Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, fell to the Union Army. On April 9, General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Potomac after the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and other Confederate officials had fled. Nevertheless, Booth continued to believe in the Confederate cause and sought a way to salvage it; he soon decided to assassinate Lincoln.
Preparations
On April 14, Booth's morning started at midnight. He wrote his mother that all was well but that he was "in haste". In his diary, he wrote that "Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done".
While visiting Ford's Theatre around noon to pick up his mail, Booth learned that Lincoln and Grant were to visit the theater that evening for a performance of Our American Cousin. This provided him with an especially good opportunity to attack Lincoln since, having performed there several times, he knew the theater's layout and was familiar to its staff. Booth went to Mary Surratt's boarding house in Washington, D.C., and asked her to deliver a package to her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland. He also asked her to tell her tenant Louis J. Weichmann to ready the guns and ammunition that Booth had previously stored at the tavern.
[The conspirators meet]
The conspirators met for the final time at 8:45 pm. Booth assigned Powell to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home, Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the Kirkwood Hotel, and Herold to guide Powell (who was unfamiliar with Washington) to the Seward house and then to a rendezvous with Booth in Maryland.
Booth was the only well-known member of the conspiracy. Access to the theater's upper floor containing the Presidential Box was restricted, and Booth was the only plotter who could have realistically expected to be admitted there without difficulty. Furthermore, it would have been reasonable (but ultimately incorrect) for the plotters to have assumed that the entrance of the box would be guarded. Had it been, Booth would have been the only plotter with a plausible chance of gaining access to the President, or at least to gain entry to the box without being searched for weapons first. Booth planned to shoot Lincoln at point-blank range with his single-shot Philadelphia Deringer pistol and then stab Grant at the theater. They were all to strike simultaneously shortly after ten o'clock. Atzerodt tried to withdraw from the plot, which to this point had involved only kidnapping, not murder, but Booth pressured him to continue.
Lincoln arrives at the theater
Despite what Booth had heard earlier in the day, Grant and his wife, Julia Grant, had declined to accompany the Lincolns, as Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant were not on good terms. Others in succession also declined the Lincolns' invitation, until finally Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris (daughter of U.S. Senator Ira Harris of New York) accepted.
The presidential party arrived late and settled into their box, made from two adjoining boxes with a dividing partition removed. The play was interrupted, and the orchestra played "Hail to the Chief" as the full house of about 1,700 rose in applause. Lincoln sat in a rocking chair that had been selected for him from among the Ford family's personal furnishings.
The cast modified a line of the play in honor of Lincoln: when the heroine asked for a seat protected from the draft, the reply – scripted as, "Well, you're not the only one that wants to escape the draft" – was delivered instead as, "The draft has already been stopped by order of the President!" A member of the audience observed that Mary Lincoln often called her husband's attention to aspects of the action onstage, and "seemed to take great pleasure in witnessing his enjoyment".
At one point, Mary whispered to Lincoln, who was holding her hand, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" Lincoln replied, "She won't think anything about it". In following years, these words were traditionally considered Lincoln's last, though N.W. Miner, a family friend, claimed in 1882 that Mary Lincoln told him that Lincoln's last words expressed a wish to visit Jerusalem.
Booth shoots Lincoln
Booth had prepared a brace to bar the door after entering the box, indicating that he expected a guard. After spending time at the tavern, Booth entered Ford's Theatre one last time at about 10:10 pm, this time through the theater's front entrance. He passed through the dress circle and went to the door that led to the Presidential Box after showing Charles Forbes his calling card. Navy Surgeon George Brainerd Todd saw Booth arrive.
Once inside the hallway, Booth barricaded the door by wedging a stick between it and the wall. From here, a second door led to Lincoln's box. Evidence shows that, earlier in the day, Booth had bored a peephole in this second door.
Booth knew the play Our American Cousin, and waited to time his shot at about 10:15 pm, with the laughter at one of the hilarious lines of the play, delivered by actor Harry Hawk: "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!". Lincoln was laughing at this line when Booth opened the door, stepped forward, and shot him from behind with his pistol.
Lincoln slumped over in his chair and then fell backward. Rathbone turned to see Booth standing in gunsmoke less than four feet behind Lincoln; Booth shouted a word that Rathbone thought sounded like "Freedom!"
Booth escapes
Rathbone jumped from his seat and struggled with Booth, who dropped the pistol and drew a dagger with which he stabbed Rathbone in the left forearm. Rathbone again grabbed at Booth as he prepared to jump from the box to the stage, a twelve-foot drop; Booth's riding spur became entangled on the Treasury flag decorating the box, and he landed awkwardly on his left foot. As he began crossing the stage, many in the audience thought he was part of the play.
Booth held his bloody knife over his head and yelled something to the audience. While it is traditionally held that Booth shouted the Virginia state motto, Sic semper tyrannis! ("Thus always to tyrants " ) either from the box or the stage, witness accounts conflict. Most recalled hearing Sic semper tyrannis! but others – including Booth himself – said he yelled only Sic semper! Some did not recall Booth saying anything in Latin. There is similar uncertainty about what Booth shouted next, in English: either "The South is avenged!", "Revenge for the South!", or "The South shall be free!" Two witnesses remembered Booth's words as: "I have done it!"
Immediately after Booth landed on the stage, Major Joseph B. Stewart climbed over the orchestra pit and footlights and pursued Booth across the stage. The screams of Mary Lincoln and Clara Harris, and Rathbone's cries of, "Stop that man!" prompted others to join the chase as pandemonium broke out.
Booth exited the theater through a side door, and on the way stabbing orchestra leader William Withers, Jr. As he leapt into the saddle of his getaway horse Booth pushed away Joseph Burroughs, who had been holding the horse, striking Burroughs with the handle of his knife.
[Lincoln moved]
Charles Leale, a young Union Army surgeon, pushed through the crowd to the door of the Presidential Box, but could not open it until Rathbone, inside, noticed and removed the wooden brace with which Booth had jammed the door shut.
Leale found Lincoln seated with his head leaning to his right as Mary held him and sobbed: "His eyes were closed and he was in a profoundly comatose condition, while his breathing was intermittent and exceedingly stertorous." Thinking Lincoln had been stabbed, Leale shifted him to the floor. Meanwhile, another physician, Charles Sabin Taft, was lifted into the box from the stage.
After Leale and bystander William Kent cut away Lincoln's collar while unbuttoning his coat and shirt and found no stab wound, Leale located the gunshot wound behind the left ear. He found the bullet too deep to be removed but dislodged a blood clot, after which Lincoln's breathing improved; he learned that regularly removing new clots maintained Lincoln's breathing. After giving Lincoln artificial respiration, Leale allowed actress Laura Keene to cradle the President's head in her lap. He pronounced the wound mortal.
Leale, Taft, and another doctor, Albert King, decided that Lincoln must be moved to the nearest house on Tenth Street because a carriage ride to the White House was too dangerous. Carefully, seven men picked up Lincoln and slowly carried him out of the theater, which was packed with an angry mob. After considering Peter Taltavull's Star Saloon next door, they concluded that they would take Lincoln to one of the houses across the way. It was raining as soldiers carried Lincoln into the street, where a man urged them toward the house of tailor William Petersen. In Petersen's first-floor bedroom, the exceptionally tall Lincoln was laid diagonally on a small bed.
After clearing everyone out of the room, including Mrs. Lincoln, the doctors cut away Lincoln's clothes but discovered no other wounds. Finding that Lincoln was cold, they applied hot water bottles and mustard plasters while covering him with blankets. Later, more physicians arrived: Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, Charles Henry Crane, Anderson Ruffin Abbott, and Robert K. Stone (Lincoln's personal physician).
[Medical efforts]
All agreed Lincoln could not survive. Barnes probed the wound, locating the bullet and some bone fragments. Throughout the night, as the hemorrhage continued, they removed blood clots to relieve pressure on the brain, and Leale held the comatose president's hand with a firm grip, "to let him know that he was in touch with humanity and had a friend".
Lincoln's older son Robert Todd Lincoln arrived at about 11 pm, but twelve-year-old Tad Lincoln, who was watching a play of Aladdin at Grover's Theater when he learned of his father's assassination, was kept away. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton arrived. Stanton insisted that the sobbing Mrs. Lincoln leave the sick room, then for the rest of the night he essentially ran the United States government from the house, including directing the hunt for Booth and the other conspirators. Guards kept the public away, but numerous officials and physicians were admitted to pay their respects.
Shortly before 7 am Mary was allowed to return to Lincoln's side, and, as Dixon reported, "she again seated herself by the President, kissing him and calling him every endearing name."
[Death of Lincoln]
Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15. Mary Lincoln was not present. In his last moments, Lincoln's face became calm and his breathing quieter. Field wrote there was "no apparent suffering, no convulsive action, no rattling of the throat ... [only] a mere cessation of breathing". According to Lincoln's secretary John Hay, at the moment of Lincoln's death, "a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features". The assembly knelt for a prayer, after which Stanton said either, "Now he belongs to the ages" or, "Now he belongs to the angels."
On Lincoln's death, Vice President Johnson became the 17th president of the United States. The presidential oath of office was administered to Johnson by Chief Justice Salmon Chase sometime between 10 and 11 am.
Powell attacks Seward
Booth had assigned Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward. On the night of the assassination, Seward was at his home on Lafayette Square, confined to bed and recovering from injuries sustained on April 5 from being thrown from his carriage. Herold guided Powell to Seward's house. Powell carried an 1858 Whitney revolver (a large, heavy, and popular gun during the Civil War) and a Bowie knife.
William Bell, Seward's maître d', answered the door when Powell knocked at 10:10 pm, as Booth made his way to the Presidential Box at Ford's Theater. Powell told Bell that he had medicine from Seward's physician and that his instructions were to personally show Seward how to take it. Overcoming Bell's skepticism, Powell made his way up the stairs to Seward's third-floor bedroom. At the top of the staircase he was stopped by Seward's son, Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward, to whom he repeated the medicine story; Frederick, suspicious, said his father was asleep.
Hearing voices, Seward's daughter Fanny emerged from Seward's room and said, "Fred, Father is awake now" – thus revealing to Powell where Seward was. Powell turned as if to start downstairs but suddenly turned again and drew his revolver. He aimed at Frederick's forehead and pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired, so he bludgeoned Frederick unconscious with it. Bell, yelling "Murder! Murder!", ran outside for help.
Fanny opened the door again, and Powell shoved past her to Seward's bed. He stabbed at Seward's face and neck, slicing open his cheek. However, the splint (often mistakenly described as a neck brace) that doctors had fitted to Seward's broken jaw prevented the blade from penetrating his jugular vein. Seward eventually recovered, though with serious scars on his face.
Seward's son Augustus and Sergeant George F. Robinson, a soldier assigned to Seward, were alerted by Fanny's screams and received stab wounds in struggling with Powell. As Augustus went for a pistol, Powell ran downstairs toward the door, where he encountered Emerick Hansell, a State Department messenger. Powell stabbed Hansell in the back, then ran outside exclaiming, "I'm mad! I'm mad!" Screams from the house had frightened Herold, who ran off, leaving Powell to find his own way in an unfamiliar city.
Atzerodt fails to attack Johnson
Booth had assigned George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, who was staying at the Kirkwood House in Washington. Atzerodt was to go to Johnson's room at 10:15 pm and shoot him. On April 14, Atzerodt rented the room directly above Johnson's; the next day, he arrived there at the appointed time and, carrying a gun and knife, went to the bar downstairs, where he asked the bartender about Johnson's character and behavior. He eventually became drunk and wandered off through the streets, tossing his knife away at some point. He made his way to the Pennsylvania House Hotel by 2 am, where he obtained a room and went to sleep.
Reactions
Lincoln was mourned in both the North and South, and indeed around the world. Numerous foreign governments issued proclamations and declared periods of mourning on April 15. Lincoln was praised in sermons on Easter Sunday, which fell on the day after his death.
On April 18, mourners lined up seven abreast for a mile to view Lincoln in his walnut casket in the White House's black-draped East Room. Special trains brought thousands from other cities, some of whom slept on the Capitol's lawn. Hundreds of thousands watched the funeral procession on April 19, and millions more lined the 1,700-mile route of the train which took Lincoln's remains through New York to Springfield, Illinois, often passing trackside tributes in the form of bands, bonfires, and hymn-singing.
Poet Walt Whitman composed "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", "O Captain! My Captain!", and two other poems, to eulogize Lincoln.
Ulysses S. Grant called Lincoln "incontestably the greatest man I ever knew".
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln
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On This Day: 50 industrialists, artists, and scientists found the Met art museum. Recent controversies. - Apr. 13, 1870
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375851
On This Day: Polio vaccine found safe and effective. Now, polio returns with anti-vax movement. - Apr. 12, 1955
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375800
On This Day: Truman fires MacArthur. Top brass criticize MacArthur's dangerous ideas in secret sessions. - Apr. 11, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375745
On This Day: Approx. 1,700 Virginia investors look to make money off of gold, gems, timber, glass, etc. - Apr. 10, 1606
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375697
On This Day: Lawyer says airline had no right, after man dragged off airplane; rules amended - Apr. 9, 2017
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375615
On This Day: 50 industrialists, artists, and scientists found the Met art museum. Recent controversies. - Apr. 13, 1870
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an art museum in New York City. It is the largest art museum in the Americas and fourth-largest in the world.
In 2023, the museum welcomed 5,800,000 visitors, making it the most-visited museum in the United States and the fourth most visited art museum in the world. In 2000, its permanent collection was said to have over two million works; it currently lists a total of 1.5 million objects. The collection is divided into 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art ranging from the ancient Near East and ancient Egypt, through classical antiquity to the contemporary world. It includes paintings, sculptures, and graphic works from many European Old Masters, as well as an extensive collection of American, modern, and contemporary art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes, and decorative arts and textiles, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries.
[Founding]
The New York State Legislature granted the Metropolitan Museum of Art an Act of Incorporation on April 13, 1870, "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said City a Museum and Library of Art, of encouraging and developing the Study of the Fine Arts, and the application of Art to manufacture and natural life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and to that end of furnishing popular instruction and recreations".
This legislation was supplemented later by the 1893 Act, Chapter 476, which required that its collections "shall be kept open and accessible to the public free of all charge throughout the year".
The founders included businessmen and financiers, among them Theodore Roosevelt Sr., the father of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the US, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people.
Also instrumental in the founding of the museum was Henry Gurdon Marquand, who donated an important part of his collection of Old Masters paintings to the fledgling institution. The Marquand family maintained a diverse interest in art based philanthropy, having donated large sums of money to Princeton University, as well as establishing Southport's Pequot Library, a special collections institution.
The museum first opened on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue. John Taylor Johnston, a railroad executive whose personal art collection seeded the museum, served as its first president, and the publisher George Palmer Putnam came on board as its founding superintendent. The artist Eastman Johnson acted as co-founder of the museum, as did landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church.
Various other industrialists, artists, and scientists of the age served as co-founders, including Howard Potter, Salem Howe Wales, and Henry Gurdon Marquand. Marquand's donated works are known as the Marquand Collection.
[First holdings]
The former Civil War officer, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, was named as its first director. He served from 1879 to 1904. Under their guidance, the Met's holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space.
[Relocation]
In 1873, occasioned by the Met's purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Mrs. Nicholas Cruger Mansion at 128 West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations proved temporary, as the growing collection required more space than the mansion could provide. It moved into the current building in 1880. Between 1879 and 1895, the museum created and operated a series of educational programs, known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art Schools, intended to provide vocational training and classes on fine arts.
John Taylor Johnston
John Taylor Johnston (1820–1893) was an American businessman and patron of the arts. He served as president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey and was one of the founders of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Both of his parents were of Scottish ancestry, and his father was a prominent businessman. Johnston grew up in Greenwich Village, where he was born, and was educated at Edinburgh High School in Edinburgh, Scotland. He graduated from the University of the City of New York, an institution founded by his father and several other civic-minded New Yorkers, in 1839.
He was the driving force behind the acquisition of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, and also endeavored to develop the suburbs of central New Jersey through which his railroads passed. According to his obituary, "[h]is expenditures to secure low grades and good alignment to avoid grade crossings were far in advance of the railroad science of his time and were ridiculed by some of his competitors."
Johnston was the founding president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870. Together with William Tilden Blodgett, he financed the initial "1871 purchase" of 174 paintings for the museum. He held this position until ill health forced him to retire in 1889, at which point he was succeeded by Henry Gurdon Marquand and the museum's Trustees voted him Honorary President for Life. He was also a patron to living American artists and was an avid collector, including many French academic paintings. His personal art collection in his Fifth Avenue mansion, which included works by Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, John Frederick Kensett, and Winslow Homer.
Henry Gurdon Marquand
Henry Gurdon Marquand (1819–1902) was an American financier, philanthropist and art collector known for his extensive collection.
Marquand was born in New York City on April 11, 1819. At the age of fifteen, Henry began working for his family's prestigious jewelry business, Marquand & Co. At the time, the business was headed by his older brother Frederick, a liberal benefactor of Yale College, Union Theological Seminary, and founder of Pequot Library.
Following the death of their father in 1838, Frederick sold the business, and took up real estate investment and other financial ventures. Henry established himself as a banker on Wall Street, became Director of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, and eventually made a fortune speculating on foreign currency exchange and railroads. With a profit of one million dollars, Marquand effectively retired from the business world in 1880 and focused his energies on the acquisition of art and the management of the fledgling Metropolitan Museum of Art.
[Founders consisted of 50 men]
Marquand was a member of the Provisional Committee of fifty men assembled in 1869 to establish a museum of art in New York City. As a member of the building committee and president of the Museum's board of trustees, he witnessed the physical growth of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from various temporary quarters to its permanent home on the eastern edge of Central Park. Marquand, a personal friend and client of museum architect Richard Morris Hunt, was in large part responsible for the realization of the project to extend and reorient the distinctive Beaux-Arts façade entrance east to Fifth Avenue.
[Vermeer painting]
Marquand was also a significant contributor to the Museum's collection, particularly in the area of European paintings. This donation included, among other old master works, Johannes Vermeer's Woman with a Water Jug, the first Vermeer to enter a United States collection and which scholars now agree is one of only thirty-seven known works by the artist.
Marquand was also a benefactor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Schools and Princeton University.
Frederic Edwin Church
Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for painting large landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets. Church's paintings put an emphasis on realistic detail, dramatic light, and panoramic views.
[Church's paying audiences]
He debuted some of his major works in single-painting exhibitions to a paying and often enthralled audience in New York City. In his prime, he was one of the most famous painters in the United States.
In 1844, aged 18, Church became the pupil of landscape artist Thomas Cole in Catskill, New York. Church studied with him for two years; by this time his talent was evident. Cole wrote that Church had "the finest eye for drawing in the world". During his time with Cole he travelled around New England and New York to make sketches, visiting East Hampton, Connecticut, Long Island, Catskill Mountain House, The Berkshires, New Haven, Connecticut, and Vermont.
[Church's lucrative career]
By 1860, Church was the most renowned American artist. In his prime, Church was a commercial as well as an artistic success. Church's art was very lucrative; he was reported to be worth half a million dollars at his death in 1900.
...
[Met's selling art controversy - AG gets involved]
In the early 1970s, under the directorship of Thomas Hoving, the Met revised its deaccessioning policy. It sought to acquire "world-class" pieces, including through the sale of mid- to high-value items from its collection. Hoving's deaccessioning practices, including secretive non-public sales that violated donor wishes, was exposed in the New York Times. These exposés provoked widespread criticism when they came to light, and they were compounded by deceitful and misleading statements made by Hoving. This resulted in an investigation of the museum by the New York State Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz. As a result of these hearings, the museum agreed to list in its annual report the total cash proceeds from art sales each year, and to itemize any deaccessioned objects valued at more than $50,000 each. It also agreed to sell those pieces at public auction and provide advance public notice of a work being sold if it had been on view in the last ten years.
Two of the objects purchased with funds generated by Hoving's deaccessions were highlights of the Met's collection. Diego Velázquez's 1650 Portrait of Juan de Pareja (bought in part through deaccessioned works) and a classical Greek vase, the Euphronios Krater, which depicted the death of Sarpedon (funded by the sale of the museum's classical coin collection). The latter, which proved to be looted, was repatriated to Italy in 2006.
Hoving was criticized for selling important works from the museum to fund his acquisitions, including a Henri Rousseau and a Van Gogh, and he planned to sell many more, including 14 Monet paintings he characterized as "routine." During the tenure of director Philippe de Montebello, the sale of a single Monet (together with the construction of purpose-built galleries) eventually led to the acquisition of two collections totaling 220 paintings, which established the museum's remarkable plein-air paintings collection.
[Covid era]
Another deaccessioning controversy broke out in 2021, when the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) temporarily relaxed its guidelines due to hardships suffered by museums during the COVID pandemic. Previously, funds from deaccessioned works were only to be used to purchase other works for the permanent collection. The temporary guidelines, however, permitted these monies to be used for the "care" of the collection. The Met decided to use funds from deaccessions for collection care (to pay salaries). It was roundly criticized for this decision by the Met's former director Thomas P. Campbell (Montebello's successor), by cultural critic Lee Rosenbaum, and by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Christopher Knight, among others. They argued that the practice set a bad example for other museums and that the Met did not truly need these monies.
[Looted art]
One of the most serious and daunting challenges to the Metropolitan Museum's respectable reputation has been a series of allegations and lawsuits about its known status as an institutional buyer of looted and stolen antiquities. Since the 1990s the Met has been the subject of countless investigative reports and books critical of the Met's laissez-faire attitude to acquisition. The Met has lost several major lawsuits, notably against the governments of Italy and Turkey, which successfully sought the repatriation of hundreds of ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern antiquities, with a total value in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
In December 2023, the museum announced it will return 14 Khmer sculptures to Cambodia and 2 to Thailand after determining they were stolen and linked to art dealer Douglas Latchford.
In April 2023, ProPublica published a report detailing the Indigenous American collections of the Met Museum. The report exposed the loophole of loan vs. own that the Met was using to cling onto objects that they had an ethical and legal responsibility to repatriate.
Collecting practices
In response to many controversies, the museum issued a statement on collecting practices. The statement encompasses all 1.5 million works of art held by the Met. Referencing research, transparency, and collaboration, this statement is a clear redefining of the Met's outlook on looted art and artwork with unknown histories. “As a pre-eminent voice in the global art community, it is incumbent upon the Met to engage more intensively and proactively in examining certain areas of our collection,” stated Max Hollein, the directer of the museum. The Met hired a manager of provenance research with a team of three staff to assist the already-employed curators and historians.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Johnston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Gurdon_Marquand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Edwin_Church
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On This Day: Polio vaccine found safe and effective. Now, polio returns with anti-vax movement. - Apr. 12, 1955
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375800
On This Day: Truman fires MacArthur. Top brass criticize MacArthur's dangerous ideas in secret sessions. - Apr. 11, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375745
On This Day: Approx. 1,700 Virginia investors look to make money off of gold, gems, timber, glass, etc. - Apr. 10, 1606
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375697
On This Day: Lawyer says airline had no right, after man dragged off airplane; rules amended - Apr. 9, 2017
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375615
On This Day: Superconductivity discovered, now a potential technology to help combat climate change - Apr. 8, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375571
On This Day: Polio vaccine found safe and effective. Now, polio returns with anti-vax movement. - Apr. 12, 1955
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Polio vaccine
The second polio virus vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh, and announced to the world on 12 April 1955. The Salk vaccine, or inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), is based on poliovirus grown in a type of monkey kidney tissue culture (vero cell line), which is chemically inactivated with formalin. After two doses of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (given by injection), 90 percent or more of individuals develop protective antibody to all three serotypes of poliovirus, and at least 99 percent are immune to poliovirus following three doses.
Jonas Salk
The first effective polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk and a team at the University of Pittsburgh that included Julius Youngner, Byron Bennett, L. James Lewis, and Lorraine Friedman, which required years of subsequent testing. Salk went on CBS radio to report a successful test on a small group of adults and children on 26 March 1953; two days later, the results were published in JAMA. Leone N. Farrell invented a key laboratory technique that enabled the mass production of the vaccine by a team she led in Toronto.
[Field trials]
Beginning 23 February 1954, the vaccine was tested at Arsenal Elementary School and the Watson Home for Children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Salk's vaccine was then used in a test called the Francis Field Trial, led by Thomas Francis, the largest medical experiment in history at that time. The test began with about 4,000 children at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia, and eventually involved 1.8 million children, in 44 states from Maine to California. By the conclusion of the study, roughly 440,000 received one or more injections of the vaccine, about 210,000 children received a placebo, consisting of harmless culture media, and 1.2 million children received no vaccination and served as a control group, who would then be observed to see if any contracted polio.
The results of the field trial were announced 12 April 1955 (the tenth anniversary of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose paralytic illness was generally believed to have been caused by polio). The Salk vaccine had been 60–70% effective against PV1 (poliovirus type 1), over 90% effective against PV2 and PV3, and 94% effective against the development of bulbar polio. Soon after Salk's vaccine was licensed in 1955, children's vaccination campaigns were launched. In the U.S., following a mass immunization campaign promoted by the March of Dimes, the annual number of polio cases fell from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,600 by 1957. By 1961 only 161 cases were recorded in the United States.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine
(edited from article)
"
Polio Is Making a Comeback. Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers!
If it seems like infectious diseases are coming at us faster, spreading more widely and persisting longer than they have in generations, it’s because they are, health experts say.
AUGUST 16, 2022
EARLIER THIS MONTH, poliovirus was discovered in wastewater in counties outside New York City late last month, signaling the first domestic outbreak since the 1970s of that potentially deadly and crippling virus.
Covid. Monkey Pox. Now polio. If it seems like infectious diseases are coming at us faster, spreading more widely and persisting longer than they have in generations—well, it’s because they are, health experts say, largely because one thing that we can do to reliably prevent an outbreak of infectious disease—get vaccinated—is the one thing millions of people in the United States and across the developed world are failing to do.
For the first time since the early 1990s, life-expectancy is actually dropping for many groups in the U.S. A fifth of Americans have refused the Covid vaccines for themselves or their children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And just 65 percent of residents of some counties outside New York City—Orange and Rockland Countries, for instance—are vaccinated for polio, compared to a nationwide average of 80 percent. It should come as no surprise that when polio reappeared in the United States last month—the first U.S. outbreak since 1979—the first diagnosed case was from Rockland.
We’re time-traveling, in a sense, returning to that dark time before vaccines. “The extent to which people are currently rejecting scientific findings, and expertise of all kinds, is scary,” said Mary Fissell, an historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
"
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/anti-vaxxers-virus-polio-comeback-1396772/
(edited from article)
"
Jonas Salk, the man who cured polio, "would be shocked" by anti-vaxxers, experts say
Many people once lined up joyously to receive vaccines. What changed?
Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that invades the nervous system and can trigger total paralysis in a matter of hours. It mainly targets children under age 5, and at one time disabled and killed thousands of American children every year. Today, all that is a distant memory. The World Health Organization recently estimated that, thanks to polio vaccines, "More than 20 million people are able to walk today who would otherwise have been paralyzed. An estimated 1.5 million childhood deaths have been prevented through the systematic administration of vitamin A during polio immunization activities."
That breakthrough was largely the work of Dr. Jonas Salk, the American virologist who developed one of the first polio vaccines. A year before Salk died in 1995, polio was considered eradicated in North and South America and today cases have decreased by 99% globally. There were just six cases reported in 2021.
At the same time, Salk was a prominent liberal who cared about public health and believed that quality medical care should be widely available. As his son, Dr. Peter Salk of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health, told Salon, there are lessons from his life that clearly apply to present conditions. Salk had no desire to become rich from his work, his son said, a stark contrast to the current era when most new drugs are developed by pharmaceutical companies frequently accused of exploiting public health needs, predatory pricing, misleading marketing and deliberately stalling vaccine development to protect corporate profits.
Salk "would be shocked" by the rise of the contemporary anti-vaccine movement, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "He grew up at a time when diphtheria was a routine killer of teenagers and whooping cough would kill 8,000 to 10,000 people a year. Polio would paralyze 30,000 to 35,000 people a year and kill 1,500 people."
"
https://www.salon.com/2023/11/01/jonas-salk-the-man-cured-polio-would-have-been-baffled-by-modern-anti-vaxxers-experts-say/
(edited from article)
"
Column: Trump and RFK Jr. want to make the world safe again for polio and measles. You should be terrified
By Michael Hiltzik
March 5, 2024
We’ve already seen that the embrace of pernicious anti-vaccination claptrap by unscrupulous politicians and government officials has had detectable impacts on public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now reporting 41 cases of measles, for which a vaccine has been available since 1963, in 16 states.
"Polio hit without warning. There was no way of telling who would get it....It killed some of its victims and marked others for life, leaving behind vivid reminders for all to see: wheelchairs, crutches, leg braces, breathing devices, deformed limbs."
— David Oshinsky, “Polio: An American Story”
Resistance or refusal of COVID vaccination, plainly due to anti-vaccine propaganda, has kept the vaccine rate alarmingly low.
In only one state, Minnesota, did the percentage of the population that has received the latest updated booster exceed 20% as of the end of last year. In Florida, the adult booster rate is an appalling 7.7%. (In California, it’s 14.2%, which isn’t something to be particularly proud about.)
"
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-03-05/trump-and-robert-f-kennedy-jr-measles-polio
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On This Day: Truman fires MacArthur. Top brass criticize MacArthur's dangerous ideas in secret sessions. - Apr. 11, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375745
On This Day: Approx. 1,700 Virginia investors look to make money off of gold, gems, timber, glass, etc. - Apr. 10, 1606
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375697
On This Day: Lawyer says airline had no right, after man dragged off airplane; rules amended - Apr. 9, 2017
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375615
On This Day: Superconductivity discovered, now a potential technology to help combat climate change - Apr. 8, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375571
On This Day: Carter shelves production of neutron bombs, amid pressure from allies - April 7, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375532
On This Day: Truman fires MacArthur. Top brass criticize MacArthur's dangerous ideas in secret sessions. - Apr. 11, 1951
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Relief of Douglas MacArthur
On 11 April 1951, U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then commander of United Nations Command forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil–military relations.
MacArthur led the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, and after the war was in charge of the occupation of Japan. In the latter role, MacArthur was able to accumulate considerable power over the civil administration of Japan. Eventually, he gained a level of political experience that was unprecedented and not to be repeated by anyone else actively serving as a flag officer in the U.S. military.
When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, starting the Korean War, MacArthur was designated commander of the United Nations forces defending South Korea. He conceived and executed the amphibious assault at Inchon on 15 September 1950, but when he followed up his victory with a full-scale invasion of North Korea on Truman's orders, China inflicted a series of defeats, compelling him to withdraw from North Korea. By April 1951, the military situation had stabilized, but MacArthur continued to publicly criticize his superiors and attempt to escalate the conflict, leading Truman to relieve MacArthur of his commands. The Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate held a joint inquiry into the military situation and the circumstances surrounding MacArthur's relief, and concluded that "the removal of General MacArthur was within the constitutional powers of the President but the circumstances were a shock to national pride".
An apolitical military was an American tradition. The principle of civilian control of the military was also ingrained. Civilian control was an issue considering the constitutional division of powers between the president as commander-in-chief, and Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and declare war. This was also an era when the rising complexity of military technology led to the creation of a professional military and American forces were employed overseas in large numbers. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the president's role as preeminent.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur
(edited from article)
"
The Redacted Testimony That Fully Explains Why General MacArthur Was Fired
Far beyond being insubordinate, the military leader seemed to not grasp the consequences of his desired strategy
September 28, 2016
[The article is about secret testimony of U.S. military leaders to a Senate committee following Truman's action]
...
Other excised testimony revealed a fundamental reason for the administration’s reluctance to escalate in northeast Asia: There was precious little for the United States to escalate with. American air power, in particular, was stretched very thin. Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force chief of staff, told the committee that Korea was already claiming a large part of America’s available air strength. “The Air Force part that is engaged in Korea is roughly 85 percent—80 to 85 percent—of the tactical capacity of the United States,” he said. “The strategic portion, which is used tactically, is roughly between one-fourth and one-fifth. The air defense forces are, I would judge, about 20 percent.”
Joe Collins, the army chief of staff, explained how Communist restraint had prevented an utter American debacle. Referring to the moment MacArthur had initially sought permission to bomb into China, Collins said, “When the first recommendations came in to bomb across the frontier, our troops were separated in Korea. The Tenth Corps was operating from the base at Hungnam, and our other forces were operating from bases at Pusan and Inchon. As soon as the Chinese attack began we were very much concerned about the fact that we would have to get that Tenth Corps out; and had we permitted the bombing north of the Yalu, we were dreadfully afraid that that might be the thing that would release the Russian planes, and additionally, have them give additional assistance to the Chinese, and might well have subjected the Tenth Corps to bombardment and possibly submarine attack during the perilous evacuation from Hungnam. Troops evacuating from a port of that character, in commercial ships, are terribly subject to air and underwater attack; and in my judgment, it would be a much too risky procedure.”
The committee members were sobered, if not stunned, by the chiefs’ and Marshall’s testimony. Americans tended to believe that, having won World War II, the American military could dispatch China with one hand and whack Russia with the other. The secret testimony of Marshall and the chiefs made patent that America’s military had its hands full already.
Republicans were compelled by the revelations about America’s vulnerability to rethink their endorsement of MacArthur and the belligerent course he favored. They didn’t recant in public; they wouldn’t give Truman that satisfaction. But they no longer looked to MacArthur as a credible alternative to Truman on military strategy or in politics. They eased away from the general, and because the testimony was sealed, they never said why.
"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fully-explains-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Nuclear weapons
At a press conference on 30 November 1950, Truman was asked about the use of nuclear weapons:
Q. Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the atomic bomb is under active consideration?
Truman: Always has been. It is one of our weapons.
Q. Does that mean, Mr. President, use against military objectives, or civilian—
Truman: It's a matter that the military people will have to decide. I'm not a military authority that passes on those things.
Q. Mr. President, perhaps it would be better if we are allowed to quote your remarks on that directly?
Truman: I don't think—I don't think that is necessary.
Q. Mr. President, you said this depends on United Nations action. Does that mean that we wouldn't use the atomic bomb except on a United Nations authorization?
Truman: No, it doesn't mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has.
The implication was that the authority to use atomic weapons now rested in the hands of MacArthur. Truman's White House issued a clarification, noting that "only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given," yet the comment still caused a domestic and international stir. Truman had touched upon one of the most sensitive issues in civil-military relations in the post-World War II period: civilian control of nuclear weapons, which was enshrined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.
On 9 December 1950, MacArthur requested field commander's discretion to employ nuclear weapons; he testified that such an employment would only be used to prevent an ultimate fallback, not to recover the situation in Korea. On 24 December 1950, while responding to a formal request from the Pentagon, MacArthur submitted a list of "retardation targets" in Korea, Manchuria and other parts of China, for which 34 atomic bombs would be required.
In June 1950, Louis Johnson released a study on the potential uses of radioactive agents. According to Major General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur considered the possibility of using radioactive wastes to seal off North Korea in December 1950, but he never submitted this to the Joint Chiefs. After his dismissal, Congressman Albert Gore Sr. put a similar proposal to Truman. In January 1951, MacArthur refused to entertain proposals for the forward deployment of nuclear weapons.
In early April 1951, the Joint Chiefs became alarmed by the build up of Soviet forces in the Far East, particularly bombers and submarines. On 5 April 1951, they drafted orders for MacArthur authorizing attacks on Manchuria and the Shantung Peninsula if the Chinese launched airstrikes against his forces originating from there. The next day Truman met with the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean, and arranged for the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs to military control.
Dean was apprehensive about delegating the decision on how they should be used to MacArthur, who lacked expert technical knowledge of the weapons and their effects. The Joint Chiefs were not entirely comfortable about giving them to MacArthur either, for fear that he might prematurely carry out his orders. Instead, they decided that the nuclear strike force would report to the Strategic Air Command (SAC). This time the bombers deployed with the fissile cores. SAC did not intend to attack air bases and depots; the bombers would target industrial cities in North Korea and China. Deployments of SAC bombers to Guam continued until the end of the war.
There has been debate whether MacArthur advocated the employment of nuclear weapons, including over whether his submission to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was tantamount to a recommendation. In his testimony before the Senate Inquiry, he stated that he had not recommended their use. In 1960, MacArthur challenged a statement by Truman that he had wanted to use nuclear weapons, saying that "atomic bombing in the Korean War was never discussed either by my headquarters or in any communication to or from Washington"; Truman, admitting that he did not have documentation of any such claim, said that he was merely providing his personal opinion. In interview with Jim G. Lucas and Bob Considine on 25 January 1954, posthumously published in 1964, MacArthur said,
Of all the campaigns of my life, 20 major ones to be exact, [Korea was] the one I felt most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging. I could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days.... I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on his air bases and other depots strung across the neck of Manchuria.... It was my plan as our amphibious forces moved south to spread behind us—from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea—a belt of radioactive cobalt. It could have been spread from wagons, carts, trucks and planes.... For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the north. The enemy could not have marched across that radiated belt.
In 1985 Richard Nixon recalled discussing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with MacArthur:
MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants... MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off, which I think speaks well of him.
MacArthur's advice to President John F. Kennedy during the next nuclear crisis of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, divulged his viewpoints on nuclear warfare while acting as Kennedy's personal military advisor. In a very long meeting in the White House between MacArthur and Kennedy in August 1962 after Kennedy received intelligence that the Soviet Union transported nuclear weapons to Cuba, MacArthur told Kennedy to not invade or bomb Cuba and also to not use nuclear weapons on Cuba, which would have led to the deaths of thousands of Soviet and Cuban soldiers. He advised Kennedy to simply do a naval blockade, which was exactly what Kennedy did two months later when the crisis reached its zenith. “The greatest weapon of war is the blockade,” he told Kennedy. “If war comes, that is the weapon we should use.” In contrast to MacArthur, all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the majority of EXCOMM urged Kennedy to first bomb and then invade Cuba, claiming that a blockade would show weakness and entice the Soviets to become more aggressive. They also argued for nuclear weapons to be used on Cuba if the Soviets responded militarily to a first-strike attack by the United States.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur#Nuclear_weapons
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On This Day: Approx. 1,700 Virginia investors look to make money off of gold, gems, timber, glass, etc. - Apr. 10, 1606
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375697
On This Day: Lawyer says airline had no right, after man dragged off airplane; rules amended - Apr. 9, 2017
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375615
On This Day: Superconductivity discovered, now a potential technology to help combat climate change - Apr. 8, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375571
On This Day: Carter shelves production of neutron bombs, amid pressure from allies - April 7, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375532
On This Day: New York Slave Revolt of 1712 - Apr. 6, 1712
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375473
On This Day: Approx. 1,700 Virginia investors look to make money off of gold, gems, timber, glass, etc. - Apr. 10, 1606
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Virginia Company of London
The London Company, officially known as the Virginia Company of London [,founded on April 10, 1606,]was a division of the Virginia Company with responsibility for colonizing the east coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N.
Origins
The territory granted to the London Company included the eastern coast of North America from the 34th parallel (Cape Fear) north to the 41st parallel (in Long Island Sound). As part of the Virginia Company and Colony, the London Company owned a large portion of Atlantic and inland Canada. The company was permitted by its charter to establish a 100-square-mile settlement within this area. The portion of the company's territory north of the 38th parallel was shared with the Plymouth Company, with the stipulation that neither company found a colony within 100 miles of the other.
The London Company made landfall on 26 April 1607, at the southern edge of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which they named Cape Henry, near present-day Virginia Beach. Deciding to move the encampment, on 4 May 1607 they established the Jamestown Settlement on the James River about 40 miles upstream from its mouth at the Chesapeake Bay. Later in 1607, the Plymouth Company established its Popham Colony in present-day Maine, but it was abandoned after about a year. By 1609, the Plymouth Company had dissolved. As a result, the charter for the London Company was adjusted with a new grant that extended from "sea to sea" of the previously shared area between the 38th and the 40th parallels. It was amended in 1612 to include the new territory of the Somers Isles (or Bermuda).
The London Company struggled financially, especially with labor shortages in its Virginia colony. Its profits improved after sweeter strains of tobacco than the native variety were cultivated and successfully exported from Virginia as a cash crop beginning in 1612. By 1619 a system of indentured service was fully developed in the colony; the same year the home government passed a law that prohibited the commercial growing of tobacco in England. In 1624, the company lost its charter, and Virginia became a royal colony.
[Eager investors]
In Renaissance England, wealthy merchants were eager to find investment opportunities, so they established several companies to trade in various parts of the world. Each company was made up of investors, known as "adventurers", who purchased shares of company stock. The Crown granted a charter to each company with a monopoly to explore, settle, or trade with a particular region of the world. Profits were shared among the investors according to the amount of stock that each owned. More than 6,300 Englishmen invested in joint-stock companies between 1585 and 1630, trading in Russia, Turkey, Africa, the East Indies, the Mediterranean, and North America.
In an extensive publicity campaign, Wingfield, Gosnold and a few [other organizers], circulated pamphlets, plays, sermons and broadsides throughout England to raise interest in New World investments. Investors could buy stock individually or in groups. Almost 1,700 people purchased shares, including men of different occupations and classes, wealthy women, and representatives of institutions such as trade guilds, towns and cities. Proceeds from the sale of stock were used to help finance the costs of establishing overseas settlements, including paying for ships and supplies and recruiting and outfitting laborers. A single share of stock in the Virginia Company cost 12 pounds 10 shillings, the equivalent of more than six months' wages for an ordinary working man.
The largest single investor was Thomas West, Lord de la Warre, who served as the first governor of Virginia between 1610 and 1618. (The English colonists named the Delaware River and Native American Lenape tribe, called the Delaware Indians, after him.)
[Indenture system]
The business of the company was the settlement of the Virginia colony, supported by a labor force of voluntary transportees under the customary indenture system. In exchange for 7 years of labor for the company, the company provided passage, food, protection, and land ownership (if the worker survived).
First expedition
In December 1606, the Virginia Company's three ships, containing 105 men and boys as passengers and 39 crew members, set sail from Blackwall, London and made landfall on 26 April 1607 at the southern edge of the mouth of what they named the James River on the Chesapeake Bay. They named this shore Cape Henry. They were attacked by Native Americans, and the settlers moved north. On 14 May 1607, these first settlers selected the site of Jamestown Island, further upriver and on the northern shore, as the place to build their fort.
[No gold or gems]
In addition to survival, the early colonists were expected to make a profit for the owners of the Virginia Company. Although the settlers were disappointed that gold did not wash up on the beach and gems did not grow in the trees, they realized there was great potential for a wealth of other kinds in their new home.
[Early industry]
Early industries, such as glass manufacture, pitch and tar production for naval stores, and beer and wine making took advantage of natural resources and the land's fertility. From the outset, settlers thought that the abundance of timber would be the primary leg of the economy, as Britain's forests had long been felled. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap American timber was to be the primary enabler of England's (and then Britain's) rise to maritime (merchant and naval) supremacy. However, the settlers could not devote as much time as the Virginia Company would have liked to developing commodity products for export. They were too busy trying to survive.
Company rules
Within the three-sided fort erected on the banks of the James, the settlers quickly discovered that they were, first and foremost, employees of the Virginia Company of London, following instructions of the men appointed by the company to rule them. In exchange, the laborers were armed and received clothes and food from the common store. After seven years, they were to receive land of their own. The gentlemen, who provided their armor and weapons, were to be paid in land, dividends, or additional shares of stock.
Initially, the colonists were governed by a president and a seven-member council selected by the King. Leadership problems quickly erupted. Jamestown's first two leaders coped with varying degrees of success with sickness, assaults by Native Americans, poor food and water supplies, and class strife. Many colonists were ill-prepared to carve out a new settlement on a frontier. When Captain John Smith became Virginia's third president, he proved the strong leader that the colony needed. Industry flourished and relations with Chief Powhatan's people improved.
Instructions
After so many failed colonizing attempts in the 16th century such as the Roanoke Colony, and with the ascension of King James to the throne of England on 24 March 1603, the effort to colonize was renewed, but this time in the form of joint-stock companies, which did not involve the king's treasury, also known as the public treasury. Thus it became, from a royal perspective at least, a largely risk-free endeavor. Although a profit-driven enterprise, the king was motivated by international rivalry and the propagation of religion, and the individuals who ventured to the New World were motivated by a chance to improve their economic and social standing.
Thus King James awarded a patent to a group of investors which included detailed instructions for everything from where to place watchmen and with how many, to where to plant. It instructed Christopher Newport, captain of the Susan Constant, and Bartholomew Gosnold, captain of the Godspeed and leader of the expedition of three ships, on their duties upon reaching the land they named Virginia. There were no instructions for administration or governance.
The Charter of 1606
The First Virginia Charter established provisions for the governance of the colony. It was to be governed by a colonial council, which proved ineffective. A governor, Lord De La Warr, was dispatched in 1610 to provide firmer governance of the colony. The council back in London whose directives and interests Lord De La Warr represented was composed of knights, gentlemen and merchants who had invested in the company. This charter also limited the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company of London to 100 miles from the seaboard and from 38 degrees to 45 degrees latitude north.
Charter of 1609
In 1609, the Virginia Company received its Second Charter, which allowed the company to choose its new governor from among its shareholders. Investment boomed as the company launched an intensive recruitment campaign. Over 600 colonists set sail for Virginia between March 1608 and March 1609.
["Starving Time"]
Sir Thomas Gates, Virginia's deputy governor, bound for the colony in the Third Supply aboard the Sea Venture, was shipwrecked in Bermuda, along with the admiral of the company, Sir George Somers, Captain Newport, and 147 other settlers and seamen. When Gates finally arrived to take up his new post in 1610, with most of the survivors of the Sea Venture (on two new ships built in Bermuda, the Deliverance and the Patience), he found that only 60 of the original 214 colonists had survived the infamous "Starving Time" of 1609–1610. Most of these were dying or ill. Despite the abundance of food which Gates' expedition brought from Bermuda (which had necessitated the building of two ships), it was clear the colony was not yet self-sufficient and could not survive.
The survivors of Jamestown were taken aboard the Deliverance and the Patience, and the colony was abandoned. Gates intended to transport all the settlers back to England, but the fortuitous arrival of another relief fleet, bearing Governor Lord De la Warre, granted Jamestown a reprieve. All the settlers were put ashore again, and Sir George Somers returned to Bermuda aboard the Patience to obtain more food. (Somers died there, and his nephew, Matthew Somers, the captain of the Patience, sailed the vessel to Lyme Regis in England instead, to claim his inheritance.)
[Pivotal point in American history]
This was an ordinance and constitution that proceeded from a set of instructions issued in 1618 to the governor and the Council of Virginia known as An Ordinance and Constitution of the Virginia Company in England on 24 July 1621. This document replaced military law with common law, and provided for land ownership for settlers living in the colony. It is also of great significance for it provides governance independent of the Crown. An assembly took place in a church composed of Governor Sir George Yeardley and 22 select men representing seven regions. They then organized into a legislative body, establishing a precedent for self-governance, a pivotal point in American history.
Collapse and dissolution
After 1620, with growing demand for tobacco on the continent, the company arranged to sell Virginia tobacco in the Netherlands, but the next year and despite company pleas to maintain the privilege of freedom of trade, the Privy Council forbade the export of any product of Virginia to a foreign country until the commodities had been landed in England, and English duties had been paid. By 1621, the company was in trouble; unpaid dividends and increased use of lotteries had made future investors wary. The company debt was now over £9,000. Worried Virginians were hardly reassured by the advice of pragmatic Treasurer Sandys, who warned that the company "cannot wish you to rely on anything but yourselves". In March 1622, the company's and the colony's situation went from dire to disastrous when, during the Indian massacre of 1622, the Powhatan confederacy killed one-quarter of the European population of the Virginia colony.
When the Crown and company officials proposed a fourth charter, severely reducing the company's ability to make decisions in the governing of Virginia, subscribers rejected it. King James I forthwith changed the status of Virginia in 1624, taking control of it as a royal colony to be administered by a governor appointed by the King. However, the government's colonial policy of export restrictions did not change. The Crown approved the election of a Virginia Assembly in 1627. This form of government, with governor and assembly, would oversee the colony of Virginia until 1776, excepting only the years of the English Commonwealth.
Native American relationships
The instructions issued to Sir Thomas Gates, on 20 November 1608, called for a forcible conversion of Native Americans to Anglicanism and their subordination to the colonial administration.
In 1609, the company issued instructions to settlers to kidnap Native American children so as to educate them with English values and religion. These instructions also sanctioned attacking the Iniocasoockes, the cultural leaders of the local Powhatans. Only after Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr arrived in 1610, was the company able to commence a war against the Powhatan with the First Anglo-Powhatan War. De La Warr was replaced by Sir Thomas Dale, who continued the war, which continued until a truce was made with the marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe in 1614.
The military offensive was accompanied by a propaganda war: Alderman Robert Johnson published Nova Britannia, in 1609, which compared Native Americans to wild animals—"heardes of deere in a forest". While it did portray the Powhatan as peace-loving, it threatened to deal with any who resisted conversion to Anglicanism as enemies of their country.
[Tobacco]
The company began to turn a profit after 1612, when planting a couple of new varieties of tobacco yielded a product that appealed more to English tastes than the native tobacco. Tobacco became the commodity crop of the colony, and settlers were urged to cultivate more. The colony struggled with labor shortages as mortality was high.
[War]
In 1622, the Second Anglo-Powhatan War erupted. Its origins are disputed.
In about a day, the Powhatan killed 350 of 1,240 colonists, destroying some outlying settlements. The Virginia Company quickly published an account of this attack. It was steeped in Calvinist theology of the time: the massacre was the work of Providence in that it was justification for the destruction of the Powhatan, and building English settlements over their former towns. New orders from the London Company directed a "perpetual war without peace or truce" "to root out from being any longer a people, so cursed a nation, ungrateful to all benefitte, and incapable of all goodnesses". Within two years, the Crown took over the territory in 1624 as a royal colony.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Company
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On This Day: Lawyer says airline had no right, after man dragged off airplane; rules amended - Apr. 9, 2017
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375615
On This Day: Superconductivity discovered, now a potential technology to help combat climate change - Apr. 8, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375571
On This Day: Carter shelves production of neutron bombs, amid pressure from allies - April 7, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375532
On This Day: New York Slave Revolt of 1712 - Apr. 6, 1712
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375473
On This Day: Sanger's birth control league incorporated, evolves into Planned Parenthood - Apr. 5, 1922
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375438
On This Day: Lawyer says airline had no right, after man dragged off airplane; rules amended - Apr. 9, 2017
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
2017 United Express passenger removal
On April 9, 2017, at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, four paying customers were selected to be involuntarily deplaned from United Express Flight 3411 to make room for four deadheading employees. One of these passengers was David Dao, 69, a Vietnamese-American who was injured when he was forcefully removed from the flight by Chicago Department of Aviation security officers. Dao, a pulmonologist, refused to leave his seat when directed because he needed to see patients the following day. In the process of removing him, the security officers struck his face against an armrest, then dragged him - bloodied, bruised, and unconscious – by his arms down the aircraft aisle, past rows of onlooking passengers.
Dao reached an "amicable" settlement with United on April 27, 2017, though its terms were not publicly announced.
Video of the incident recorded by passengers went viral on social media, resulting in anger over the use of force shown. Politicians expressed concern and called for an official investigation.
Video footage from passengers who remained on the aircraft throughout the incident was widely shared and was picked up by mainstream media agencies. One such video was shared 87,000 times and viewed 6.8 million times in less than a day.
Third-party legal commentary
Early reports and United Airlines initially characterized the incident as a consequence of overbooking, leading some experts to question whether that was the case. John Banzhaf, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, states that United was "citing the wrong federal rule to justify its illegal request to force a passenger already boarded and seated to disembark," since the regulation cited only covers denial of boarding, and not removing a passenger after boarding.
While United has asserted a right to remove passengers after boarding, none of the reasons for doing so specified in the airline's contract of carriage applied in this situation. One attorney pointedly stated United "had absolutely no right to remove that man from the airplane" and described the incident as "assault and battery."
Chicago City Council alderman Michael Zalewski questioned whether the Chicago Airport Police even had the legal authority to enter the aircraft.
[Rules amended]
On January 13, 2021, the United States Department of Transportation amended its rules, forbidding involuntarily bumping from an overbooked flight after boarding starting on April 21.
Similar incidents
A passenger on a United Airlines flight who bought a full-price first-class ticket from Lihue to Los Angeles was told to get off the plane because "they needed the seat for somebody more important." According to the passenger, the gate agent stated "We have a priority list, and you're at the bottom of it."
After paying approximately $1,000 for a seat for her two-year-old child, a woman was forced to hold the child on her lap for over three hours when United Airlines re-sold the child's seat to a standby passenger. The passenger appealed to the flight attendant, who rudely shrugged her shoulders and told her in an aggressive tone that the flight was full. The passenger was afraid to push the issue because of what had happened to Dao. When she flew back to Hawaii, United Airlines upgraded her to business class, provided access to the United lounge at the airport and gave her a lei.
A family on a Delta Air Lines flight was removed from an aircraft and threatened with jail time and the loss of custody of their children for not surrendering a seat that they had originally purchased for their teenage son, who was not on the flight, but instead used for their 2-year-old child. After a video recording of the incident went viral, Delta offered an apology and compensation to the family.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Express_passenger_removal
Aviation Attorney Believes United Airlines Violated Its Own Contract
April 11, 2017
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – United Airlines says it needed more seats to fly four crew members to Louisville and that is why they removed a passenger from their flight.
Aviation attorney Arthur Wolk says he read all 45 pages of United's Contract of Carriage and he believes the airline violated its own contract.
"I want to assure United Airlines they had absolutely no right to remove that man from the airplane. Absolutely no right to forcibly remove him from an airplane. They're in trouble."
According to Wolk, airlines can deny you a seat, but once you're on board that's a different story.
"
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/aviation-attorney-on-united/
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On This Day: Superconductivity discovered, now a potential technology to help combat climate change - Apr. 8, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375571
On This Day: Carter shelves production of neutron bombs, amid pressure from allies - April 7, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375532
On This Day: New York Slave Revolt of 1712 - Apr. 6, 1712
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375473
On This Day: Sanger's birth control league incorporated, evolves into Planned Parenthood - Apr. 5, 1922
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375438
On This Day: NATO treaty signed in Washington, D.C., led by the United States - Apr. 4, 1949
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375380
On This Day: Superconductivity discovered, now a potential technology to help combat climate change - Apr. 8, 1911
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Superconductivity
Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases gradually as its temperature is lowered, even down to near absolute zero, a superconductor has a characteristic critical temperature below which the resistance drops abruptly to zero. An electric current through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.
Superconductivity was discovered on April 8, 1911, by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was studying the resistance of solid mercury at cryogenic temperatures using the recently produced liquid helium as a refrigerant.[26] At the temperature of 4.2 K, he observed that the resistance abruptly disappeared. The precise date and circumstances of the discovery were only reconstructed a century later, when Onnes's notebook was found. In subsequent decades, superconductivity was observed in several other materials. In 1913, lead was found to superconduct at 7 K, and in 1941 niobium nitride was found to superconduct at 16 K.
Great efforts have been devoted to finding out how and why superconductivity works; the important step occurred in 1933, when Meissner and Ochsenfeld discovered that superconductors expelled applied magnetic fields, a phenomenon which has come to be known as the Meissner effect.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity
(edited from article)
"
Role of Superconducting Materials in the Endeavor to Stop Climate Change and Reach Sustainable Development
Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism
Published: 03 February 2023
Lately, superconducting devices such as flywheel energy storage, fusion energy, and superconducting magnetic energy system (SMES) were intensively developed, despite their discovery long ago. The superconducting flywheel energy storage system stores electric energy as kinetic energy of a rotor suspended contactless on superconducting bearings. Kinetic energy of the flywheel can be converted to electric energy whenever needed. Fusion energy as a new clean energy source could be realized only after development of superconductors producing strong enough magnetic fields, up to 20 T. Hot plasma is enclosed and condensed by a huge magnetic field, which prevents its contact with any solid surface and is converted into electrical energy. SMES uses superconducting coils to carry loss less electric current and store its magnetic energy. It can serve in a large number (almost infinite) charge/discharge cycles with a high conversion efficiency of more than 95%. A SMES can roughly store 5 GWh, but requires a large amount of space for superconducting current loop (~?0.5 miles) with cryogenic confinement. Energy harvested in inhabited hot deserts or hot climate countries from renewable sources like sun or wind can be transferred without attenuation using superconducting cables over long distances to people in need. Evidently, superconducting technology can pave ways to harvesting clean energy at large scales using various systems. However, one of concerns is cost of installation and maintenance. Superconductors must be cheap, advanced in properties, and mass producible. Here, we present the summary of development and progress of bulk (Gd,Y,Er)Ba2Cu3O7-x and bulk MgB2 superconductors toward making them cost-efficient by a technology addressing the climate issues and global warming.
In 2015, Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) completed one of the largest superconducting flywheel energy storage systems to that date, with energy storage capacity of 100 kWh, output of 300 kW, and maximum revolution speed of 6000 rpm. To generate these numbers, high temperature superconducting bearings were used and the cryogenics was managed so that the maintenance expenses made this system outstanding. For harvesting more energy, especially in the form of solar and wind energies, huge areas must be used to setup the solar panels and/or windmills. Since these types of energy are geographic dependent, the best positions might be far away from the human colonies, like hot deserts and areas in inhabited regions. In such cases to maximize the energy, we can use superconducting cables to transfer energy from remote areas to human colonies without attenuation losses. The same can be applicable to wind and hydro energies. Simultaneously, we can also employ superconductors to enhance the performance of application; for instance, a superconducting device employed in a wind mill motor can generate twice the power of a regular motor. On the other hand, magnetic energy storage provided by superconductors with a fast response and long backup times is required for a successful transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar power.
Superconducting cables have a great potential for many sectors such as power transfer, fault current limiters, Maglev, etc. The main challenge is to arrange transport of the energy harvested in deserted but rich of natural energy areas (like deserts, windy regions, and underground) to civilian societies. This looks to be a pipe dream, but with a considerable advancement in superconducting technology, it can become a reality. Due to high Tc they can be cooled to superconducting state using liquid nitrogen or by cryogen-free cryocoolers. They could be considered equivalent to optic fibers in high-speed information transfer. The president’s national energy policy mentions that superconductors are one of the promising technologies that will improve transmission, storage, and reliability of renewable energy. Recent technological advances in the high-temperature superconducting underground power transmission cables will enable an increased access to all forms of energy, including renewable energy. These cables will allow 300% rise in capacity without excavations to lay new transmission lines. Another example is the use of superconducting technology to reduce the energy consumption in the railway systems. The superconducting cable allows to reduce energy consumption in electric railcars requiring a large amount of electric current to accelerate. Simulations estimated that use of superconducting cables could save 5% energy per day on an average general city railway model. This is because of cryogenic cooling energy is less than the amount of regeneration and joule heat loss. One of the main challenges in this technology is the high expense of cryogenic technology and long-distance cryogenics pumping. It has to be solved with the advancements in that field. In any case, the superconducting cables are crucial to stop and reverse the climate change.
The role of superconductors in a sustainable technology is crucial due to the impending climate disruption caused by greenhouse emissions. Superconductors play a promising role in loss-less energy transportation as well as storage, which are important to efficiently utilize the power from renewable energy sources. HTS materials’ performance and low-cost fabrication steadily advance. The production methods [discussed in the paper] are cost efficient techniques that can lead to enhancement in performance, paving path to commercialization of the superconductors as a sustainable technology.
"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10948-023-06515-6
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On This Day: Carter shelves production of neutron bombs, amid pressure from allies - April 7, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375532
On This Day: New York Slave Revolt of 1712 - Apr. 6, 1712
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375473
On This Day: Sanger's birth control league incorporated, evolves into Planned Parenthood - Apr. 5, 1922
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375438
On This Day: NATO treaty signed in Washington, D.C., led by the United States - Apr. 4, 1949
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375380
On This Day: New king takes over in struggle between two Mayan "superpowers" - Apr. 3, 686
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375312
On This Day: Carter shelves production of neutron bombs, amid pressure from allies - April 7, 1978
(edited from article)
"
Carter shelves production of neutron bombs, April 7, 1978
Neutron bombs are thermonuclear weapons designed to annihilate people while leaving structures standing.
They feature a warhead that kills people by radiation rather than by the force of a blast. They were developed by the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s and were first operationally deployed on anti-ballistic missiles. They were widely seen as “cleaner weapons” for possible use against invading Soviet armored divisions. As they would be used over allied nations, notably West Germany, the reduced blast damage was seen as a key advantage.
Following a behind-the-scenes debate, on this day in 1978, President Jimmy Carter — embroiled in a controversy that was straining the Western alliance and creating sharp divisions within his administration — decided to defer production of the weapon.
The weapon went into production in 1981, after Carter had left office, for use on the MGM-52 Lance missile. That decision soon generated protests as anti-nuclear movement gained strength. Opposition was so intense that European leaders refused to accept it. President Ronald Reagan bowed to pressure; the weapons remained stockpiled in the United States until they were retired in 1992. The last one was dismantled in 2011.
"
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/07/this-day-in-politics-april-7-1257024
(Carter then continues to see the neutron bomb as a bargaining chip.)
(edited from article)
"
Carter backs Reagan on neutron weapon
TOKYO -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Thursday he did 'not disagree' with President Reagan's decision to build neutron weapons in view of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Moscow-backed Vietnam's aggression against Cambodia.
Carter said, 'I do not disagree with President Reagan's decision but I hope and trust as soon as the Soviet Union is willing to implement the termination of aggression and move towards peace and the control of nuclear weapons our country will be ready to cooperate with them completely as we have been in the past.'
Carter tried to launch a neutron program in 1977 but encountered stiff resistance from western allies who argued that production of the lethal weapon would encourage war.
In April 1978 Carter announced that the United States would build components of the weapon but defer final assembly or deployment of the warheads.
"
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/09/03/Carter-backs-Reagan-on-neutron-weapon/8627368337600/
(edited from article)
"
NEUTRON BOMB: AN EXPLOSIVE ISSUE
Nov. 15, 1981
Four years ago, the United States triggered a controversy in Europe over its plans to build neutron bombs. In April 1978, Ronald Reagan, then a future Presidential candidate, stepped into the fray. He declared that the new bomb was ''the first weapon that's come along in a long time that could easily and economically alter the balance of power. It could be the ideal deterrent.'' President Carter eventually set the plan aside, but last summer the Reagan Administration decided to go ahead with it. This move raises yet again the problem - and with it the heated, emotional controversy and debate - of how to defend Europe in the atomic age without destroying it.
Was Mr. Reagan right in 1978 when he placed such high hopes on the neutron bomb? And is he still right today? The crux of the neutronbomb issue is whether the production and deployment of this weapon will somehow push us closer to the threshold between war posturing and war fighting, or pull us back to a position of greater strength and increased deterrence. Resolving the issue requires answering difficult questions: What do neutron weapons add to the West's existing arsenal? How do military commanders foresee using them? How do the weapons fit into the politics that link Americans with Europeans?
Today, the most common rationale for building neutron bombs is to counter the Warsaw Pact nations' huge tank armada in Europe. Behind the East German frontier, which would look a lot like Wisconsin if the watchtowers and barbed wire were removed, sit 19,700 Soviet tanks in various states of readiness. Ready for what? Some could conceivably be intended for possible internal use within Eastern Europe; some might be for psychological effect. In an area of the world where military confrontation is largely symbolic, it is hard to know what these tanks really mean, what danger they really pose. But North Atlantic Treaty Organization generals feel obliged to translate numbers into offensive tactics. They feel obliged to see blitzkrieg.
Recent interviews with Pentagon officials cast important new light not only on the neutron bomb itself, a weapon that has been clouded by misinformation for 20 years, but also on a policy that is shaking the NATO alliance as never before. Perhaps the most important fact that these officers reveal is that the neutron bomb (''enhanced radiation weapon'' is the Pentagon's preferred term) is not, as publicly perceived, a ''clean'' device that would be surgically used against a small number of key enemy troops without damaging buildings or risking widespread radiation exposure. Like any other nuclear weapon, it is clearly an instrument of mass destruction. ''I think one of the great problems we have,'' says Gen. Niles J. Fulwyler, chief of the Army's tactical nuclear and chemical policy-making unit, ''is that some people perceive enhanced radiation weapons to be something drastically new - some new invention that is far different from any other weapon. That is unfortunate. Enhanced radiation is nothing more than part of a continual process of modernization'' of the nation's nuclear arsenal.
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https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/15/magazine/neutron-bomb-an-explosive-issue.html
(edited from article)
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The Neutron Bomb — A Negotiating Dud
The neutron bomb, a low-yield thermonuclear weapon which would be especially lethal to enemy ground troops but would not seriously damage buildings, became the focus of international controversy when the U.S. and a few others had proposed deploying the weapon in Western Europe to counter the Soviet threat.
Many NATO countries were unwilling to accept the bombs on their territory, as they did not want to become Cold War hot spots. The United States, however, wanted a forward deployed weapon that could deter Soviet aggression, allow for great flexibility after it was used, and which presented a more credible threat to Soviet tanks.
Long negotiations with NATO allies, specifically the Dutch, Danish, and Germans, led to initial plans to deploy the warheads in Germany in 1978. There was some thought of using the neutron bomb as a bargaining chip with the Soviets, perhaps to get a reduction in the number of tanks.
However, after considerable vacillating, President Jimmy Carter announced on April 7, 1978 that the U.S. was abruptly cancelling the program, angering NATO members, especially German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The negotiations with the German Chancellor had been especially fraught and politically costly for Schmidt; he ended up using much of his political capital in order to convince his own party in Parliament to support the deployment of the neutron bomb in Germany, only to see the rug pulled out from under him.
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https://adst.org/2016/07/the-neutron-bomb-a-negotiating-dud/
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