Civil War Veteran Jacob Miller was shot in the forehead on Sept.19th 1863 at Brock Field at Chickamauga. He lived with an open bullet wound for many years, with the last pieces of lead dropping out 31 years after he was first shot; ca. 1911
Jacob Miller’s account taken from the Daily News Joliet Ill. Wed. June 14, 1911:
Braidwood is sending to the state G.A.R. encampment today one of the most remarkable hero survivors of the Civil War. His name is Jacob Miller and since Sept. 19, 1863, he has lived with an open bullet wound in his forehead. For a number of years the bullet remained in his head but piece by piece it fell out till now. It is thought none of it remains in the wound. During the time it was in the head it at times would produce a stupor, which sometimes would last two weeks, it being usually when he caught cold and produced more of a pressure on the brain. At other times delirium would seize him and he would imagine himself again on picket duty and would tramp back and forth on his beat, a stick on his shoulder for a musket, a pitiful object of the sacrifice for freedom. As these pieces of lead gradually loosened and fell out he regained his usual health and is now at the age of 78 years, one of the most, if not the most, remarkable survivor of the Civil war.
The harrowing experience undergone by Mr. Miller is so vividly felt by him even at this late day that it is seldom he can be persuaded to talk of it.
But it is my privilege to record from his own hand writing written for his family the story of his miraculous escape from death at that memorable time under his signature.
Jacob Miller, formerly a private in company K 9th Indiana Vol. Inf. Was wounded in the head near Brock Field at the battle of Chickamagua, Georgia on the morning of Sept. 19, 1863. I was left for dead when my company when my company fell back from that position. When I came to my senses some time after I found I was in the rear of the confederate line. So not to become a prisoner I made up my mind to make an effort to get around their line and back on my own side. I got up with the help of my gun as a staff, then went back some distance, then started parallel with the line of battle. I suppose I was so covered with blood that those that I met, did not notice that I was a Yank, ( at least our Major, my former captain did not recognize me when I met him after passing to our own side).
At last I got to the end of the confederate line and went to our own side while a brigade of confederates came up to their line behind me. There were none of the Union forces found on that part of the field when I passed along. I struck an old by-road and followed it the best I could, as by this time my head was swelled so bad it shut my eyes and I could see to get along only by raising the lid of my right eye and look ahead then go on till I ran afoul of something, then would look again and so on till I came to the Lafayette Pike near the Kelly house and started towards the field Hospital at the springs. I at length got so badly exhausted I had to lie down by the side of the road. At last some bearers came along and put me on their stretcher and carried me to the hospital and laid me on the ground in a tent. A hospital nurse came and put a wet bandage over my wound and around my head and gave me a canteen of water. I don’t know what time of day they examined my wound and decided to put me on the operating table till after dark some time. The surgeons examined my wound and decided it was best not to operate on me and give me more pain as they said I couldn’t live very long, so the nurse took me back into the tent. I slept some during the night . The next morning (Sunday), the doctors came around to make a list of the wounded and of their company and regiments and said to send all the wounded to Chattanooga that the ambulances would carry and told me I was wounded too bad to be moved, and if the army fell back those that were left there could afterwards be exchanged.
As stated before I made up my mind as long as I could drag one foot after another I would not allow myself to be taken prisoner. I got a nurse to fill my canteen with water so I could make an effort in getting near safety as possible. I got out of the tent without being noticed and got behind some wagons that stood near the road till I was safely away (having to open my eye with my finger to take my bearings on the road) I went away from the boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry. I worked my way along the road as best I could. At one time I got off to the side of the road and bumped my head against a low hanging limb. The shock toppled me over, I got up and took my bearings again and went on as long as I could drag a foot then lay down beside the road, to see if I could not rest so I could move. I hadn’t lain long till the ambulance train began to pass, the drivers as they passed me asked me if I was still alive, then passing on. At last one of the drivers asked if I was alive and said he would take me in, as one of his men had died back awes, and he had taken him out. Then it was all a blank to me, (Monday the 21st I came to myself and found I was in a long building in Chattanooga Tenn., lying with hundreds of other wounded on the floor almost as thick as hogs in a stock car. Some were talking , some were groaning. I raised myself to a sitting position got my canteen and wet my head. While doing it I heard a couple of soldiers who were from my company. They could not believe it was me as they said I was left for dead on the field at the left of Brock Cabin. They came over to where I was and we visited together till then came an order for all the wounded that could walk to start across the river on a pontoon bridge to a hospital, to be treated ready to be taken to Nashville. I told the boys if they could lead me, I could walk that distance. I started but owing to our army retreating the night before, and was then in and around the city wagon trains. Troops and artillery were crossing the river on the single pontoon bridge. We could not get across until almost sundown. When we arrived across and up on the bank we luckily ran across our company teamster, who we stopped with that night He got us something to eat After we ate some (the first I had tasted before daylight Saturday morning the 19th), we lay down on a pile of blankets, each fixed under the wagon and rested pretty well as the teamsters stayed awake till nearly morning to keep our wounds moist with cool water from a nearby spring.
Tuesday morning the 22nd we awoke to the crackling of the camp fire that a comrade built to get us a cup of coffee and a bite to eat of hard tack and fat meat. While eating, an orderly rode up and asked if we were wounded. If so we were to go back along the road to get our wounds dressed, so we bid the teamsters good-bye and went to get our wounds attended to. We had to wait till near noon before we were attended to. That was the first time I had my wound washed and dressed by a surgeon. After we were fixed up we drew a few crackers, some sugar coffee, salt and a cake of soap and were ordered to get into an army wagon with four army mules, ( God Bless the army mule, the soldiers friend.) We got in and started to go over Raccoon or Sand Mountain to Bridgeport, Ala. To take the train to Nashville, Tenn. After riding in the wagon awhile I found the jolting hurt my head so badly I could not stand it so had to get out. My comrades got out with me and we went on foot. I was told it was 60 miles that route to Bridgport, at least it took us four days to get there. Wednesday morning when I woke up I found I could open my right eye and see to get around. We arrived at Bridgeport the fourth day out from Chattanooga at noon, just as a train of box cars were ready to pull out. I got in a car and lay down. I had gained my point so far–and how. As the soldiers term it with lots of sand, but the sand had run out with me for the time being.
The next thing I remember I was stripped and in a bath tub of warm water in a hospital at Nashville. I do not know what date it was; in fact I didn’t pay much attention to the dates from the Friday at noon when I got in the box car at Bridgeport to start to Nashville.
After, some length of time I was transferred to Louisville , Ky. From there to New Albany, Ind.. In all the hospitals I was in I begged the surgeons to operate on my head but they all refused.
I suffered for nine months then I got a furlough home to Logansport and got Drs. Fitch and Colman to operate on my wound. They took out the musket ball. After the operation a few days, I returned to the hospital at Madison and stayed there till the expiration of my enlistment, Sept. 17, 1864. Seventeen years after I was wounded a buck shot dropped out of my wound and thirty one years after two pieces of lead came out.
Some ask how it is I can describe so minutely my getting wounded and getting off the battle field after so many years. My answer is I have an everyday reminder of it in my wound and constant pain in the head, never free of it while not asleep. The whole scene is imprinted on my brain as with a steel engraving.
I haven’t written this to complain of any one being in fault for my misfortune and suffering all these years, the government is good to me and gives me $40.00 per month pension.
Allied soldiers mock Hitler atop his balcony at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin; July 6th, 1945
With the final victory over Nazi Germany achieved, soldiers and allies of the British, American and Russian armies mimic and mock Adolf Hitler and his ideas on Hitler’s famous balcony at the Chancellery in conquered Berlin. The photo is taken on 6th July, 1945 (1945 (about 2 months after Germany’s surrender, 1 month before Hiroshima and the day after the Phillipines were liberated). Corporal Russell M. Ochwad, of Chicago, plays the part of Hitler on the famous balcony of the Chancellery, in Berlin, from which the former Nazi leader had proclaimed his 1,000-year empire. A British and Russian soldier stand on each side of Cpl. Ochwad, while American and Russian soldiers cheer at the little get-together.
Wounded Knee Massacre – Mass grave for the dead Lakota after the conflict at Wounded Knee Creek; December 29th, 1890
The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek (Lakota: Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota. On the day before, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitsideintercepted Spotted Elk’s band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them five miles westward (8 km) to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp.
The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment arrived, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth and surrounded the encampment supported by four Hotchkiss mountain guns.
On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, claiming he had paid a lot for it.A scuffle over Black Coyote’s rifle escalated and a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry’s opening fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow soldiers. The Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the attacking soldiers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire. The surviving Lakota fled, but U.S. cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed.
By the time it was over, more than 200 men, women, and children of the Lakota had been killed and 51 were wounded (4 men, 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300. Twenty-five soldiers also died, and 39 were wounded (6 of the wounded would later die).
(Source)
Troops of the eight allied nations during the Boxer Rebellion.
They are, from left to right: British, American, Russian, Indian, German, French, Austro-Hungarian, Italian and Japanese.
The Boxer Rebellion, Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement was an anti-imperialist uprising which took place in China towards the end of the Qing dynasty between 1898 and 1900. It was initiated by the Militia United in Righteousness (Yihetuan), known in English as the “Boxers,” and was motivated by proto-nationalist sentiments and opposition to foreign imperialism and associated Christian missionary activity. The Great Powers intervened and defeated Chinese forces.
The uprising took place against a background of severe drought, and the disruption caused by the growth of foreign spheres of influence. After several months of growing violence against the foreign and Christian presence in Shandong and the North China plain, in June 1900 Boxer fighters, convinced they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing with the slogan “Support Qing government and exterminate the foreigners.” Foreigners and Chinese Christians sought refuge in the Legation Quarter. In response to reports of an armed invasion to lift the siege, the initially hesitant Empress Dowager Cixi supported the Boxers and on June 21 declared war on foreign powers. Diplomats, foreign civilians and soldiers as well as Chinese Christians in the Legation Quarter were placed under siege by the Imperial Army of China and the Boxers for 55 days. Chinese officialdom was split between those supporting the Boxers and those favoring conciliation, led by Prince Qing. The supreme commander of the Chinese forces, the Manchu General Ronglu (Junglu), later claimed that he acted to protect the besieged foreigners. The Eight-Nation Alliance, after being initially turned back, brought 20,000 armed troops to China, defeated the Imperial Army, and captured Beijing on August 14, lifting the siege of the Legations. Uncontrolled plunder of the capital and the surrounding countryside ensued, along with the summary execution of those suspected of being Boxers.
The Boxer Protocol of September 7, 1901 provided for the execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, provisions for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and 450 million taels of silver—more than the government’s annual tax revenue—to be paid as indemnity over the course of the next thirty-nine years to the eight nations involved. (Source)
American psychologist B. F. Skinner kept his baby in a box; ca. 1959
Essentially he WAS a psychologist, but also an inventor. His “Aircrib” shown in the photo was essentially just a crib. The baby was still removed and got interaction, but nap time and night time she was put inside an environmentally controlled crib.
Motel manager pouring acid in the water when black people swam in his pool; ca. 1964.
*According to multiple sources it was Hydrochloric acid.
This famous photograph by Horace Cort shows a group of white and black integrationists in the former Monson Motor Lodge swimming pool on June 18, 1964. The photo was connected to the St. Augustine Movement, named for the town in Florida where it took place.
The photo was taken right after anti-segregation protesters had jumped into the whites only pool and the manager thought this acid would drive the protesters out. It doesn’t matter that the acid didn’t harm them, his intent was to terrorize them. The protesters were arrested just a few minutes later. This photo made global news at the time and was a major embarrassment for the U.S.
(Source)
Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon debate the merits of communism versus capitalism at the American National Exhibition, Moscow; ca.1959.
…this the exhibition where Khrushchev didn’t believe normal Americans had washing machines in their homes.
Here’s the debate:
Jimmy Hoffa as he appeared before a Senate hearing. August 22, 1957, Washington, DC.
Begging for Contempt of Congress, by the look see of it.
The story is Jimmy was getting grilled by Bobby Kennedy who was the chief counsel of the 1957–59 Senate Labor Rackets Committee under chairman John L. McClellan. On this day in 1964, Hoffa, then Teamsters Union President, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for defrauding his union’s pension fund. In 1971, President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence.
A policeman rips the American flag away from 5-year-old Anthony Quinn, having already confiscated his ‘No More Police Brutality’ sign. Jackson, Mississippi; ca. 1965
The guy in the background looks justifiably shocked. And yet is doing nothing.
In the South during the civil rights movement, the American flag was a potent symbol of support for racial integration (and support for federal law). Southerners who believed in racial segregation displayed Confederate flags instead. People were pulled from their cars by policemen and beaten simply for displaying an American flag on their license plates. So the simple act of a small child carrying an American flag represented defiance of Mississippi law and custom.
Anthony and his mother were arrested and hauled off to jail, which was a cattle stockade at the county fairground, since the city jails were already full of protesters. The Quinn protest was organized by COFO (Council of Federated Organizations), an umbrella organization responsible for most civil rights activities in the state. Today Anthony lives in Florida. I believe he is a lawyer. His mother died recently, and when Patrolman Kohler died a number of years ago, his obituary in the Jackson Daily News referred to this photograph and mentioned how Kohler regretted that moment ‘for the rest of his life’.”
Were Southern Generals better than Northern Generals in the US Civil War?
Right after the Civil War, there was something called the myth of the “Lost Cause.” It was pioneered by Edward A. Pollard, A Richmond journalist who wrote a history of the war in 1866, called (can you guess?) The Lost Cause. Basically, the book says that the Confederacy was a glorious agrarian state, and was defended by the best armies in American history. Pollard argues that the Armies of the Confederacy were more motivated, they fought better, they were led by better officers, and they were fighting for a noble and glorious cause (the defense of the antebellum south). Many historians, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, repeated this myth and rebuilt it into its modern, “acceptable” form. Basically, they repeated it so often, and so loudly, that the “Lost Cause” became accepted as truth. Men like Douglas Southall Freeman, and even Ken Burns, have been influenced by the “Lost Cause” mythos. More recent historians have moved away from the “Lost Cause” myth, but the myth is still incredibly powerful, especially in conservative and southern circles, where the myth is undergoing yet another reinvention.
Were the South’s generals really better? Well that depends.
Robert E. Lee was repeatedly able to produce battlefield successes; hes called the American Napoleon for good reason! But he also failed strategically, by wasting the South’s precious manpower in offensive battles that cost the Confederacy more than it gained.
And on the other hand, Ulysses Grant maximized the Union’s advantage, especially in the Overland Campaign, by using multiple armies to attack the Confederacy all along its border. This strategy prevented the Confederates from reinforcing one area after another, as they had done in 1863, and it also stretched the CSA’s manpower to its very limits. So, there, you could say that Grant better adapted his strategy to the unique strengths and weaknesses of the resources at his disposal. In addition, he waged a spectacular series of campaigns, first in Mississippi against Vicksburg, then later against Lee in Northern Virginia, which achieved remarkable battlefield success.
What held Grant back, and what held both the Confederacy and the Union back throughout the war, was the state of professionalism in the wartime armies. Many of the Generals who fought in the American Civil War, on both sides, really weren’t generals at all. Lee was a Colonel before the war, Grant was a washed up Captain, Winfield Scott Hancock was a quartermaster, Sherman was a Colonel at First Bull Run, etc. Nobody really had the command experience required to maneuver large forces either strategically, or tactically. Unlike in Europe, where generals learnt how to be generals for decades before a war put their training to the test, in America, these men had to learn on the job. What that meant was that those with natural talent, like Lee, Grant, and Sherman, floated to the top, while everyone else made a mockery of warfighting. And when a commander would be wounded, or worse promoted, their subordinates would have to come up to fill the gap, regardless of skill or training. The Armies needed officers, and it was too late to shove a new batch through West-Point to make a general staff.
Thats why we often look at the Union Army, especially the Army of the Potomac under Hooker and Burnside, and snicker. They look so dumb, and these men were give command of an army. But really, I think if you look at what was going on in the Western theatre, and if you look at the Corps commanders of the Army of Northern Virginia, Grant and Lee were the exceptions, not the rule. They were the cream that rose to the top. Even men like Longstreet and “Stonewall” Jackson had major problems with commanding their forces in the field, Longstreet did poorly without Lee’s supervision, and Jackson did so with it.
So I think thats the real issue with Generalship in the Civil War. The South was fortunate to have found Lee so early on, while Grant was a gem that had to be dug out of the rough.
How did lobbying as we know it today get its start in the United States?
Lobbying had always existed in the United States, even before its independence, thriving in local governments. When crafting the constitution and the Federalist Papers, James Madison saw commerically motivated “factions” as threatening to the general will. He tried to neutralize that threat by making them compete against each other. Even though the First Amendment protects the right to petition, Madison hypothesized that special interest groups would often negate each others powers, thus preventing any possibility of tyranny. Since the federal government did not deal with many economic matters throughout most of the nineteenth century, lobbying occured only at a state level. However, the onset of the Gilded Age and increased federal intervention in fiscal matters also brought a heightened scale of lobbying as we know today.
Where did Jefferson find builders talented enough to build Monticello?
Most of the brick and stonework on Monticello was done by local white masons, with some of the finer woodwork done by joiners from the mid-Atlantic region. That said, several foreign-born artisans are known to have worked on Monticello. Carpenter David Watson was British and his successor James Dinsmore and Dinsmore’s assistant John Neilson were Irish. They used already-skilled slaves, including John Hemmings, as their assistants. Lucia Stanton, a respected Monticello scholar, also notes a stonemason from Scotland. The window glass and mahogany sashes were European imports, but the rest of the materials were local as well.
Very few of the elements would have been completely unfamiliar to American architects and builders, and the classical orders were not among them. Peter Harrison, a British-born and trained gentleman architect, used Doric order in the 1747-9 Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island. The library is an example of the Palladian style popular in the mid-eighteenth century, which Neo-Classicism had much in common with.
Slightly predating the Monticello we know today was the Woodlands in Philadelphia (1788-9). Besides the Doric columns on the porch, the house also had oval-shaped rooms. This is an example of the Federalist Style, the most popular architectural style in the Early Republic, again using many familiar classical elements.
William Thornton’s 1792 design for the US Capitol features a dome that was quite Monticello-esque. Charles Bulfinch was also building a dome on the Massachusetts State Capitol at roughly the same time (1795-7).
If I have been unclear, my point is that many of the individual features of Monticello were fairly common among other high-style American buildings. The admiration for Monticello comes from Jefferson’s fusing together of various elements in the new style, influenced by his time in France, and the seamless inclusion more subtle details like chamfered corners and the recessed wall behind the portico. There are also the interior contraptions such as the seven-day Great Clock (originally made by Peter Spruck of Philadelphia) which are small marvels of their own.
Geronimo in Council with General George Crook, March 27th, 1886.
This picture was taken during a conference held March 25 and 27, 1886, at Cañon De Los Embudos (Cañon of the Funnels), 20 Miles SSE of San Bernardino Springs, Mexico, on the Sierra Madre Mountains, by a photographer named C.S.Fly.
This is the account of the meeting.
The use of ramming in naval warfare after the 16th century.
Outside of the resurgence of ramming which came along with the development of armored ships, arguably beginning with the ramming of the Cumberland at the Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862, and continued throughout the riverine campaigns of the American Civil War before being picked up by foreign navies (see the Battle of Lissa (1866) and the Battle of Iquique (1879) there is very little mention of ramming as anything but a last-ditch tactic.
In my opinion, the more interesting thing about this question is why ramming fell out of favor. Why does the battle-tried bread-and-butter tactic of great navies from at least 535 BC until the Dark Ages1 simply vanish from use following the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 (the last instance of galley warfare as we generally think of it) and remain more or less completely unused for the next 300 years?
To understand this, we need to look at the differences between galley warfare and the naval warfare of the Age of Sail. Galley warfare is what might be termed “consolidated” warfare- it almost always occurs between large fleets and has as its goal the destruction of the enemy fleet. In a fleet engagement such as this, there is a great deal more support available than in a smaller engagement, so the risk of accidental death due to ramming (i.e. sinking one’s own ship by ramming another) is perceptually reduced. The battles during this time also take place in fairly calm seas with which the participants are familiar; this also makes ramming ‘safer’ from a psychological perspective. From a technological perspective, there is no really effective anti-ship weaponry available (even ballistae are incredibly difficult to fire accurately at a moving target while pitching and rolling in the sea) at the time, so ramming has de facto standing as the most effective anti-ship tactic simply because it is pretty much the only anti-ship tactic.
Warfare in the Age of Sail is much different, it is primarily “distributed” warfare. Mostly small engagements over a wide area in all weathers, with various goals. Prize money becomes an increasingly important factor in this era, so the goal of engagements becomes less about destroying the enemy fleet en masse and more about capturing the individual ships that made up the enemy fleet in small chunks, to increase the size of one’s navy and inflate one’s pockets. In a tactical climate like this, ramming carries a very low cost-benefit. For one thing, ships in the Age of Sail were designed to carry lots and lots of guns, not a ram; this being the case, ramming is far more dangerous to both ships than it would have been in the days of galley warfare. If you ram someone and either ship sinks, you’ve lost out on a lot of potential prize money. The fact that battles often took place in varied locales and weathers also contributed to the deprecation of ramming, as sailing ships are bound to the wind whereas oared vessels are not. There exist a great many battle scenarios where actually positioning in such a way as to be able to ram the enemy would be more or less impossible- in these situations, guns provide an advantage, because they increase the area in which you are able to fight your enemy. Instead of having to be right up against them, you can be right behind them and chasing them while fighting. The increased use of guns also made ramming less desirable in that even in ideal ramming conditions, ramming would require you to run straight into the enemy’s fire, risking heavy damage to your ship and crew. Worse, at the end of the day, if you decided to pull alongside in the same conditions and exchange point-blank broadsides with the enemy instead of ramming, you’d probably do more damage than you would if you rammed them.
One other reason that navies in the Age of Sail did not ram might have to do with the development of European naval warfare. For a large portion of history, European navies fought naval battles by tying their ships together and fighting what amounted to a land battle at sea (see the Battle of Svolder (1000) and the Battle of Sluys (1340)). Because of this, tactics developed in a much different way in the European naval tradtition than the Medeterranean/Arabic tradition (i.e. the fo’c’sle or forecastle was basically an attempt to copy the effectiveness of a fortress on land for application at sea during battles of the lash-the-ships-together-and-thunderdome-it-out type, and ships themselves grew out of this to be mobile, long range fortresses capable of supporting populations (almost like little towns) rather than purely offensive weapons like galleys, which were short range, crewed by comparably few men, and pretty much disposable).
The reason you see the move back to ramming with the onset of the Civil War is because the tactical climate shifts back to “consolidated” warfare of a slightly different kind. In this case, combat doesn’t occur between large fleets because ironclads can just annihilate any wooden ship you throw at them- instead, it occurs between high value targets- the most important ships in the fleet. Just as in the days of galley warfare, you have the factors of localized combat, predictable weather/seas, and the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy’s ships- what is really interesting, though, is that once again we see that there is no effective anti-ship weapon. Ironclads are highly effective against wooden ships, but they can’t do anything to one another ( for the most part the cannonballs just bounce off the armor), and since this is the case, ramming once again becomes a viable tactic. Since being chewed up by the enemy’s guns on approach isn’t an issue anymore because of armor, and since due to the advent of steam wind position and current are trivial aspects of a typical engagement (i.e. captains no longer needed to wait for the wind to shift just right to be able to get into ramming position), it makes sense to start ramming once more, as it is a means of attack capable of piercing through armor and achieving the desired end result of destroying the enemy.
Ham the chimpanzee photographed while in orbit; ca. 1961
Ham was trained to work with operant conditioning, using a system that would send electric shocks to his feet when he made a mistake and reward him with a banana pellet if he did well.
During the flight, this system went haywire and sent electric shocks even though he was doing a great job at fullfilling his tasks. He was also exposed to almost 15 g’s of acceleration rather than the predicted 11g. Finally, the cabin lost pressure during flight, and reentry damaged the bottom of the craft which started taking in water after landing.
After his historical flight, Ham clearly wanted nothing to do with space anymore and started showing symptoms similar to PTSD. He was thus allowed to retire.
The “Nixon Madman Theory”
Essentially, a key tenet of Nixon’s foreign policy was to make the leaders of communist countries think that he was unstable and prone to use nuclear force. What ensued in his first year in office in 1969 is one of the most fascinating episodes of the Cold War because it really highlights the growing split between the USSR and China and how Nixon tried to drive a wedge between them in order to strengthen the United States’ relative power and influence.
During the buildup to the Vietnam war after the Cuban missile crisis, and prior to Nixon taking office in 1969, leaders in the US and USSR would generally not explicitly threaten each other for fear of stoking another nuclear crisis. Nixon believed that the only way to end the war in Vietnam was to get North Vietnam and China to back down in the face of nuclear extinction, as the threat of nuclear escalation is what brought about a ceasefire during the Korean War. After secret peace talks in Paris to end the war stalled in the first few months of his presidency, Nixon went full ape. If Teddy Roosevelt believed that the United States should speak softly and carry a big stick, Nixon believed the United States should yell incoherently and flail its stick around.
In October 1969, Nixon issued a secret high level alert to his top military brass. He told them to be on standby to use nuclear force against North Vietnam and possibly the USSR and to scramble planes equipped with nuclear bombs to fly near Soviet airspace. This was kept secret from the American public, but was made loud enough so Soviet intelligence would pick up on it. At the time, Nixon wanted to escalate the war in Vietnam by expanding the bombing campaign into the North, which was not popular with the American public and would have likely resulted in fully-fledged war with China. So Nixon wanted the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Soviets to think that he would do anything to win the war in Vietnam without actually having to do anything. It was a huge gamble.
But let’s not forget that in the immediate months prior to Nixon’s secret order, the USSR and China were in an undeclared military conflict with each other over a border dispute. Relations between the two communist powers had soured since 1960, which Nixon sought to capitalize on.
Prior to Nixon issuing the nuclear alert, the USSR was considering a preemptive, possibly nuclear attack on China’s nuclear arsenal. The USSR worried that if the United States escalated the Vietnam war with nuclear force and if China responded with nuclear force too, then they would get dragged into a nuclear war with them as well. When a KGB officer approached an American diplomat about the possibility of the USSR striking China’s arsenal and how the US would respond – and allegedly even asked if the US would collaborate with the USSR to weaken China – Nixon made it very clear that the US would not tolerate an attack on its enemy by its other enemy.
But while Nixon intended the nuclear alert to influence events in Vietnam in his favor, some evidence from recently declassified Cold War documents suggest that the USSR mistakenly believed that the alert was meant to warn the USSR against attacking China’s nuclear arsenal.
Nixon did want to exploit the soured relations between the USSR and China in order to have leverage over the Soviets, and the nuclear alert had the unintentional effect of hinting that the US would side with China should a nuclear conflict arise between them and the USSR. This also unintentionally played into Nixon’s policy of opening up to China. By opening up to China, the US would no longer be dealing with one communist power, but rather two competing communist powers that were at odds with each other.
The nuclear alert issued in October 1969 did nothing to improve the situation in Vietnam (and arguably made things worse). While it did frighten the Soviets, they did ultimately interpret it as a bluff. Still, it indicated to the Chinese that Nixon would give them leverage over the USSR. It set the stage for rapprochement with China, which culminated in Nixon’s monumental 1972 visit to the communist country and the subsequent improvement of Sino-American relations. And of course, the visit laid the foundation for the deepening of economic ties between the two nations.
A telephone operator wears a “portable” headset made by the American Bell Telephone Company, ca. 1923
Nagasaki, 20 minutes after the atomic bombing in 1945.
I can’t even imagine what I would feel if I saw this over my city, especially if this was something no one had had seen before. Just thing how unbelievable it must have been to the average person that this was one bomb! Seriously, go look outside right now and imagine half the sky covered by this giant dark mushroom cloud where a city used to lay.
Soliders ready in the trenches during the Iran-Iraq war; ca.1980’s
More people should know about the Iran Iraq war, oil money leads to wars in so many ways.
Gun Laws Must be Rewritten
The United States Constitution is the very fabric of our law and our lives. It should not be lightly modified. If we make a case for the changing effect of time and culture, we open a can of worms that may be hard to close.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution, written and polished by noble and fervent Americans living at a time when a new nation was coming into being, took measures
to protect the rights of Americans to “keep and bear” arms. Courts subsequently ruled that the Second Amendment protected Americans’ right to possess firearms unconnected to a militia, although the need for a standing and present militia was then a real necessity, and the matter was discussed at length.
Some reports of these long-past events suggest that care was taken to avoid the unpleasantness of a “right of citizens to own arms provision” which might be used to provide armaments to those who would overrule a government, in a situation wherein that government no longer had the trust and support of the majority of people.
The Second Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. Again, that’s December. Of 1791.
We may take a moment to call to mind what life in these United States was like in that early time. While civilization was booming in the east, life in the interior and farther west was far from civil. As Americans in covered wagons sought to make homesteads, farms, areas to breed cattle, they encountered Indians native to the region. The history of the defeat of the Indians is a tragic page in American history. The early settlers had to deal as individuals with bad men and rustlers. Gun-wielding bloodthirsty thieves, lawless criminals ran unchecked, out to take everything available for themselves. These lawless riders of the plains were often vicious; they worked in union with others of that ilk. When settlements turned to towns, and later, towns turned to small cities, there was little or no law. Some brave men rose up to protect the community; in some areas sheriffs were elected. Still we can imagine the plight of a man with a wife and children in those trying times.
One early sheriff and fighter for the people was the famed Wyatt Earp, believed to have been born on March 19, 1848.
Earp worked for the law and helped to tame the west. He is remembered for a famous historical gunfight at the OK corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Earp’s birth was nearly 60 years after the passage of the Bill of Rights.
William H. Bonney, “Billy the Kid” started a life of crime with theft and horse robbery. He killed a man at the age of 18. He was a gunslinger known for his wanton violence. Billy is thought to have been born on November 23, 1859. That was 70 years after the Constitution was written as the law of the land.
Son of a preacher, John Wesley Harding was possibly the most bloodthirsty of the infamous in the Old West. He killed at least 42 people, including former slaves and gunfighters.
He was known for carrying two pistols in holsters strapped to his chest, which enabled a faster draw. He was arrested at the age of 17, but was able to get a gun, kill a guard, and escape. John Wesley Harding was born in Bonham, Fannin County, Texas, on 26th May, 1853.
The old west is gone, and a militia has been replaced with a vast and well armed military. People don’t ride in covered wagons, and they are in most cases well protected. In the United States, major cities daily are forced to defend the force of the special interest groups who openly profit from gun sales. Children are shot. Young people anticipate a short and violent lifetime.
Can you imagine a drug-ridden US city, forced to accept the rights of individuals to carry hidden weapons? No self respecting gang member would go weaponless. Concealed arms would be the rule of the day, and gangbangers with guns, like children with toys, wouldn’t rest until they had heard the explosion and felt the recoil of the respect-granting weapon.
Today’s world is nothing like the time of our founding fathers, and they had no hope to envision the future, just as we today have no hope of previewing the world down the road. So it doesn’t make sense to continue gun laws that are clearly obsolete, and counterproductive. We hope that today’s awful violence in unique situations, and in every US city, will bring light to this night, and that sensible laws which don’t conform to the early constitution will be the rule of the day.
A Native American man inspects the newly completed transcontinental railroad, 1868.
There goes the neighborhood.
(Source)
If you’re every up for a REALLY depressing read on the history of the US — read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”
Interesting fact: John Tyler is the only President to die without US citizenship.
Why? While he attempted to prevent the war as a sponsor and chairman of the Virginia Peace Convention, the convention was unsuccessful. When the war finally did break out, Tyler joined the Confederacy, like many other Virginians with ties to the Federal government. Well, he was elected to the Confederate Congress in 1862, and in doing so, he gave up his US citizenship. Soon after his election, he suffered a stroke and died. Since he died before the end of the war and the readmission of the states and citizens, he died without regaining his citizenship. (President Tyler sought to avoid the war, but when he saw it as inevitable, worked to ensure Virginia’s victory.)
The added comma in the 2nd amendment:
What is it with 18th century punctuation and grammar?
Punctuation and spelling were a little looser then, and more importantly, some words in the 18th century do NOT mean what we think they mean today. People who posit that any historical document (whether something as well known as the Constitution to a simple piece of correspondence) is absolutely transparent to the modern reader needs to check their ego at the door. During my career as a historian I have made numerous errors of interpretation — and I am sure I am not done making them — because I misconstrued the use of a phrase or was unaware of how a phrase at a particular time was loaded with specific political, religious, or social meaning. Consider the history of words like terrific orenthusiast, or how certain terms like “gold” and “silver” came to take on special political meanings in the 19th century the same way that “life” and “choice” are — pardon the pun — pregnant with meaning today.
The truth is there may not have been universal agreement on the punctuation (or even the actual meaning) of all of the Constitution, much less its later amendments. Consider how both the Federalists and Antifederalists made counter charges as to what the Constitution would actually mean for a new America. Even the Federalist papers themselves are an interesting case in point — these documents, which have been cited over three hundred time sin court cases to explain what the constitution “actually meant,” were at their heart propaganda pieces to sell the Constitution on ratification. This does not mean that the Federalist papers are flim-flam, but some caution must be used: Sometimes the Federalist paper argue a very populist notion of the rights of the people (and mind you, this is before a bill of rights is on the table, at first), even though the top three types of positions in the new government (President, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices) would not be directly elected by the people.
A Hamiltonian view of what the Constitution meant, what it SHOULD have contained, and what it allowed is vastly different form what others such as Jefferson interpreted, and indeed formed a crux of the political discussion of the early republic.
So — and this is a roundabout way of getting back to the grammar discussion — yes, there is more than one way to legitimately parse the Second Amendment. But the best answer for what does it mean to have a “militia” or what kinds of rights does the second amendment refer to in reference to “arms”, grammar is probably not our most utilitarian friend. I discussed in the most recent second amendment thread the problem with the definition of militia. The majority opinion written by the conservative wing of the modern court in Heller, relied upon a definition of militia that chooses to both very broadly accept certain historical evidence (who are the people who make up the militia) but very narrowly construe the historical existence of the militia as being under control of the state governments. (One historical counterargument to Heller’s interpretation is that the militia as defined in Section I does indeed already exist, but were well-regulated meaning STATE CONTROLLED by the governor, which had been the case during the entire colonial period.)
The point is that grammar alone does not get us to “what does the second amendment really mean?” Heller is simply the most modern example of the court looking at historical and legal evidence and choosing to accept some types of evidence and discard others, which ultimately all rational people have to do when weighing teh evidence of what “the founders” meant. the problem is there is no one universal founder who agreed upon all things or set a specific set of definitions.
One last side note on historical grammar and punctuation and amendments: This problem with Amendments having various punctuation (or spellings) is not confined to this time period. There is a small bevvy of lunatic right-wing antitax zealots who have argued that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified. Their argument boils down to that when the states sent back their ratification notices, some states had different capitalization, or a punctuation mark, or in one case a word that was plural was written in the singular, and that therefore they never really “ratified” the amendment. To no one’s surprise, these arguments have been dismissed by the courts, and now with some prejudice, as the claims have been labeled not only false but fraudulent by courts.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 