Today in History

[Lady Cop]

'OH THE HUMANITY!'


Sunday May 6^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster.

FULL STORY:
http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/2...m-that-day


Sunday May 6^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster.



HINDENBURG FACTS
Length: 803.8 feet
Diameter: 135.1 feet
Hydrogen capacity: 7 million cubic feet
Cruising speed: 76 miles per hour
Maximum speed: 84 miles per hour
Cruising altitude: 650 feet
Main powerplant: 4 Daimler-Benz 16-cylinder diesel propeller engines
Crew capacity: 40 flight officers and men; 10-12 stewards and cooks
Passenger capacity: 72 sleeping berths (1937)
(The Hindenburg disaster resulted in 36 deaths: 13 of 36 passengers; 22 of 61 crew members, and 1 civilian ground crew member.)

[Cracker]

Mythbusters has a good episode about the Hindenburg and the thermite reaction.

[Maggot]

Off with her head!!

Anne Boleyn in the Tower by Edouard Cibot (1799 - 1877)
Alas! they are so stronge
my dolor will not suffer strength
my lyfe for to prolonge.
Toll on, the passinge-bell;
ring out my dolefull knell;
let thy sounde my death tell.
for I must dye;
there is no remedie.

[Lady Cop]

Off with her head!!

Anne Boleyn in the Tower by Edouard Cibot (1799 - 1877)
Alas! they are so stronge
my dolor will not suffer strength
my lyfe for to prolonge.
Toll on, the passinge-bell;
ring out my dolefull knell;
let thy sounde my death tell.
for I must dye;
there is no remedie.

second wife of Henry Vlll

mother of Queen Elizabeth l

[Lady Cop]

Joan of Arc martyred, May 30, 1431

At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy.

Joan was born in 1412, the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domremy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In 1415, the Hundred Years War between England and France entered a crucial phase when the young King Henry V of England invaded France and won a series of decisive victories against the forces of King Charles VI. By the time of Henry's death in August 1422, the English and their French-Burgundian allies controlled Aquitaine and most of northern France, including Paris. Charles VI, long incapacitated, died one month later, and his son, Charles, regent from 1418, prepared to take the throne. However, Reims, the traditional city of French coronation, was held by the Anglo-Burgundians, and the Dauphin (heir apparent to the French throne) remained uncrowned. Meanwhile, King Henry VI of England, the infant son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles VI, was proclaimed king of France by the English.

Joan's village of Domremy lay on the frontier between the France of the Dauphin and that of the Anglo-Burgundians. In the midst of this unstable environment, Joan began hearing "voices" of three Christian saints—St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. When she was about 16, these voices exhorted her to aid the Dauphin in capturing Reims and therefore the French throne. In May 1428, she traveled to Vaucouleurs, a stronghold of the Dauphin, and told the captain of the garrison of her visions. Disbelieving the young peasant girl, he sent her home. In January 1429, she returned, and the captain, impressed by her piety and determination, agreed to allow her passage to the Dauphin at Chinon.

Dressed in men's clothes and accompanied by six soldiers, she reached the Dauphin's castle at Chinon in February 1429 and was granted an audience. Charles hid himself among his courtiers, but Joan immediately picked him out and informed him of her divine mission. For several weeks, Charles had Joan questioned by theologians at Poitiers, who concluded that, given his desperate straits, the Dauphin would be well-advised to make use of this strange and charismatic girl.

Charles furnished her with a small army, and on April 27, 1429, she set out for Orleans, besieged by the English since October 1428. On April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of Orleans, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. She brought greatly needed supplies and reinforcements and inspired the French to a passionate resistance. She personally led the charge in several battles and on May 7 was struck by an arrow. After quickly dressing her wound, she returned to the fight, and the French won the day. On May 8, the English retreated from Orleans.

During the next five weeks, Joan and the French commanders led the French into a string of stunning victories over the English. On July 16, the royal army reached Reims, which opened its gates to Joan and the Dauphin. The next day, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan standing nearby holding up her standard: an image of Christ in judgment. After the ceremony, she knelt before Charles, joyously calling him king for the first time.

On September 8, the king and Joan attacked Paris. During the battle, Joan carried her standard up to the earthworks and called on the Parisians to surrender the city to the king of France. She was wounded but continued to rally the king's troops until Charles ordered an end to the unsuccessful siege. That year, she led several more small campaigns, capturing the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moitier. In December, Charles ennobled Joan, her parents, and her brothers.

In May 1430, the Burgundians laid siege to Compiegne, and Joan stole into the town under the cover of darkness to aid in its defense. On May 23, while leading a sortie against the Burgundians, she was captured. The Burgundians sold her to the English, and in March 1431 she went on trial before ecclesiastical authorities in Rouen on charges of heresy. Her most serious crime, according to the tribunal, was her rejection of church authority in favor of direct inspiration from God. After refusing to submit to the church, her sentence was read on May 24: She was to be turned over to secular authorities and executed. Reacting with horror to the pronouncement, Joan agreed to recant and was condemned instead to perpetual imprisonment.

Ordered to put on women's clothes, she obeyed, but a few days later the judges went to her cell and found her dressed again in male attire. Questioned, she told them that St. Catherine and St. Margaret had reproached her for giving in to the church against their will. She was found to be a relapsed heretic and on May 29 ordered handed over to secular officials. On May 30, Joan, 19 years old, was burned at the stake at the Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen. Before the pyre was lit, she instructed a priest to hold high a crucifix for her to see and to shout out prayers loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames.

As a source of military inspiration, Joan of Arc helped turn the Hundred Years War firmly in France's favor. By 1453, Charles VII had reconquered all of France except for Calais, which the English relinquished in 1558. In 1920, Joan of Arc, one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 30.

[Ma Huang Sor]

Surveyor 1 launched:

from wiki

Surveyor 1 was the first lunar soft-lander in the unmanned Surveyor program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, United States). This lunar soft-lander gathered data about the lunar surface that would be needed for the manned Apollo Moon landings that began in 1969. The successful soft landing of Surveyor 1 on the Ocean of Storms was the first one by an American space probe onto any extraterrestrial body, and it occurred just four months after the first Moon landing by the Soviet Union's Luna 9 probe. This was also a success on NASA's first attempt at a soft landing on any astronomical object.

Surveyor 1 was launched May 30, 1966, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it landed on the Moon on June 2, 1966. Surveyor 1 transmitted 11,237 still photos of the lunar surface to the Earth by using a television camera and a sophisticated radio-telemetry system.

The Surveyor program was managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Los Angeles County, but the entire Surveyor space probe was designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft Company in El Segundo, California.
Contents

[Lady Cop]

D-Day
June 6, 1944

http://www.army.mil/d-day/



It’s no mystery why images of unremitting violence spring to mind when one hears the deceptively simple term, “D-Day.” We’ve all seen — in photos, movies, old news reels — what happened on the beaches of Normandy (codenamed Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword) as the Allies unleashed an historic assault against German defenses on June 6, 1944.

But in rare color photos taken before and after the invasion, LIFE magazine’s Frank Scherschel captured countless other, lesser-known scenes from the run-up to the onslaught and the heady weeks after: American troops training in small English towns; the French countryside, implausibly lush after the spectral landscape of the beachheads; the reception GIs enjoyed en route to the capital; the jubilant liberation of Paris itself.

As presented here, in masterfully restored color, Scherschel’s pictures — most of which were never published in LIFE — feel at-once profoundly familiar and somehow utterly, vividly new.

THE PHOTOS:

Read more: http://life.time.com/history/d-day-rare-...z1wyJCUUay

[Jimbone]

Right around now in 1944, brave men had dropped from gliders into the French countryside to pave the way for the invasion several hours away. All of these brave men changed the world, and took part in one of the most amazing military maneuvers in human history.

God bless them all.

[SIXFOOTERsez]

They managed to stop a monster, god bless them indeed.
Both my grandfathers were over there early in the war and great grandfathers before them in WW1

[Jimbone]

On June 8, 1967 the USS Liberty incurred over 200 casualties - 34 of them fatalities - from an accidental attack by the Israeli Military.

There has been plenty written about whether the attack was truly accidental or was a deliberate act. Either way, brave men died serving their country.

RIP

[Lady Cop]

HAPPY BASTILLE DAY FROGGIES!


14 July

Bastille Day, the French national holiday, commemorates the storming of the Bastille, which took place on 14 July 1789 and marked the beginning of the French Revolution. The Bastille was a prison and a symbol of the absolute and arbitrary power of Louis the 16^th's Ancient Regime. By capturing this symbol, the people signaled that the king's power was no longer absolute: power should be based on the Nation and be limited by a separation of powers.
Etymology - Bastille
Bastille is an alternate spelling of bastide (fortification), from the Provençal word bastida (built). There's also a verb: embastiller (to establish troops in a prison). Although the Bastille only held seven prisoners at the time of its capture, the storming of the prison was a symbol of liberty and the fight against oppression for all French citizens; like the Tricolore flag, it symbolized the Republic's three ideals: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity for all French citizens.
It marked the end of absolute monarchy, the birth of the sovereign Nation, and, eventually, the creation of the (First) Republic, in 1792.




STORM THE BASTILLE!








Marie Antoinette



Louis XVI

[Riotgear]

July 14, 1933 Nazi eugenics begins with the proclamation of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring that calls for the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who suffers from alleged genetic disorders.

[Duchess]

Can stupidity be deemed a genetic disorder? If so, I'm not exactly opposed to that.

[Riotgear]

YES! Let's do it!

Wait, that just retarded right?

Ooo slippery slope here we come.

[Duchess]

Wait, that just retarded right?

No, they get a pass. I'm talking about stupid people only, There is a difference between stupid & mentally challenged.

[Riotgear]

I've met some pretty retarded stupid people. Indistinguishable really.

[Donovan]

No, they're not. Mentally disabled people aren't given shit to work with, but they make the most of what they get. Stupid people often have plenty, but don't do shit with it. Big difference.

I make the distinction thus: I work WITH the developmentally disabled. I work FOR a bunch of stupid retards.

[Donovan]

Oh yeah, I'm two days late, but Thursday, July 12, 2012: the date Marty McFly set on his time machine when he went forward to help his stupid retard kids.

Like how I tied that in there?

[Maggot]

Billy the Kid was shot today. But he's still alive and well in a few books.

[Lady Cop]

CONCORD MASS.
Members of the oldest and largest organizations devoted to the legacy of Henry David Thoreau gathered in Massachusetts on Saturday to mark the passage of 150 years since the philosopher, naturalist and writer died.

More than 200 members of the Thoreau Society were in Concord for the third day of their annual gathering. The event, scheduled to end Sunday, featured nature walks, workshops and a keynote speech by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning scientist Edward O. Wilson.

Thoreau, who lived from 1817 to 1862, is well-known for his reflections on simple living in nature, especially through his book "Walden," about his two-year retreat in a small house on Walden Pond in his hometown of Concord. He also wrote "The Maine Woods," a lesser-known book about his observations and thoughts during his three journeys to northern Maine in 1846, 1853 and 1857. Thoreau, who died in Concord, supported nonviolent protest to unjust laws in his essay "Civil Disobedience" and was opposed to slavery.