History Thread...

[casimir]

9 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

July 16

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-16

 

My usual bicycle jaunt takes me past Fallen Timbers and past a statue of Wayne and Chief Little Turtle.  The monument was placed at what was originally thought to be the battlefield.  More recent combing of land and discovery of artifacts have placed the actual area of the skirmish about a half mile away.  Who knows, maybe it was in both spots and/or somewhere in between?

[CMRivdogs]

2 hours ago, casimir said:

My usual bicycle jaunt takes me past Fallen Timbers and past a statue of Wayne and Chief Little Turtle.  The monument was placed at what was originally thought to be the battlefield.  More recent combing of land and discovery of artifacts have placed the actual area of the skirmish about a half mile away.  Who knows, maybe it was in both spots and/or somewhere in between?

It all makes sense. The statue was probably placed on word of mouth history. Archeology has gotten so much better in recent years.

One example in Williamsburg is latest work on the armory. When Colonial Williamsburg was being recreated back in the early 1930s they relied a lot on peoples memories (Parts othe armory was still standing, memories said the walls were much higer than later research found they were too high. Also the first rebuilt armory had a wooden slat roof. To store gunpowder it probably had to be slate.

Just this past year while clearing land for a proposed indoor sport facility for travel teams, construction workers found remains of what is thought to be barracks for the British Army near Yorktown (about 15 miles away)

This is the stuff that fascinates me since we moved here 5 years ago 

[CMRivdogs]

“I have found great Inconvenience for Want of this Art, since I have had to contemplate America so much, and since I had to study the Processes and Operations of War. But their Honour, Truth, in one Word their Morals, are of most importance. I hope these will be kept pure.”

 

[CMRivdogs]

July 17

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-17
 

Quote

Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 18 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion.

In the early 1950s, Walt Disney began designing a huge amusement park to be built near Los Angeles. He intended Disneyland to have educational as well as amusement value and to entertain adults and their children. Land was bought in the farming community of Anaheim, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and construction began in 1954. In the summer of 1955, special invitations were sent out for the opening of Disneyland on July 17. Unfortunately, the pass was counterfeited and thousands of uninvited people were admitted into Disneyland on opening day. The park was not ready for the public: food and drink ran out, a women’s high-heel shoe got stuck in the wet asphalt of Main Street USA, and the Mark Twain Steamboat nearly capsized from too many passengers.

One note Disney would often visit with JD Rockefeller Jr in Williamsburg, Va.during the 40s and 50s It's said that the two would sit in the rear of the Rockefeller financed Williamsburg. Theatre as they shared their interest in movies during that time. 

That was about the time Colonial Williamsburg came to life (the idea started in the mid to late 1920s). It's not surprising that. Disney wanted to bring a bit of education to his theme parks. 

[CMRivdogs]

Quote

On July 17, 1941, New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio fails to get a hit against the Cleveland Guardians (then known as the Cleveland Indians), ending his historic 56-game hitting streak. The record run had captivated the country for two months.

 

On May 15, 1941, DiMaggio began his record-breaking streak against the White Sox in Yankee Stadium with a single and an RBI. As the streak continued, fans across the nation took notice. DiMaggio broke George Sisler’s American League record of 41 consecutive games with a hit on June 29 at Griffith Stadium in Washington, and four days later, on July 2, DiMaggio broke “Wee” Willie Keeler’s major league record streak of 44 games. As the nation followed DiMaggio’s progress and he continued to hit in game after game, the Les Brown Orchestra scored a hit with the popular tune “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.”

Finally, on July 17 in Cleveland, in a night game in front of 67,468 fans, DiMaggio went hitless against Cleveland pitchers Al Smith and Jim Bagby, Jr. In his first three at-bats, DiMaggio grounded out to third twice against Smith, both on hard-hit balls, and then walked. With Bagby pitching in the eighth inning, DiMaggio hit into a double play, ending a Yankee rally and the greatest hitting streak in major league history. DiMaggio confided to a teammate after the game that by failing to get a hit he had also lost the $10,000 promised to him by Heinz ketchup for matching the number “57” featured on their labels.

 

[CMRivdogs]

July 18

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-18

Quote

On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

Quote

On July 18, 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler’s philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. The book sold a total of 9,473 copies in its first year.

Volume Two of Mein Kampf, focusing on national socialism, was published in 1927. Sales of the complete work remained mediocre throughout the 1920s. It was not until 1933, the first year of Hitler’s tenure as chancellor of Germany, that sales soared to over 1 million. Its popularity reached the point where it became a ritual to give a newly married couple a copy.

Quote

On July 18, 1947, President Harry S. Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act. This act revised an older succession act that was passed in 1792 during George Washington’s first term.

The original succession act designated the Senate president pro tempore as the first in line to succeed the president should he and the vice president die unexpectedly while in office. If he for some reason could not take over the duties, the speaker of the house was placed next in the line of succession. In 1886, during Grover Cleveland’s administration, Congress removed both the Senate president and the speaker of the house from the line of succession.

 

Edited Friday at 02:43 PM by CMRivdogs

[CMRivdogs]

July 19

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-19

Quote

The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city beginning on July 19 in the year 64. Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda.

The fire began in the slums of a district south of the legendary Palatine Hill. The area’s homes burned very quickly and the fire spread north, fueled by high winds. During the chaos of the fire, there were reports of heavy looting. The fire ended up raging out of control for nearly three days. Three of Rome’s 14 districts were completely wiped out; only four were untouched by the tremendous conflagration. Hundreds of people died in the fire and many thousands were left homeless.

Quote

The agricultural chemist George Washington Carver, head of Alabama’s famed Tuskegee Institute, arrives in Dearborn, Michigan at the invitation of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company.

Like Carver, Ford was deeply interested in the regenerative properties of soil and the potential of alternative crops such as peanuts and soybeans to produce plastics, paint, fuel and other products. Ford had long believed that the world would eventually need a substitute for gasoline, and supported the production of ethanol (or grain alcohol) as an alternative fuel. In 1942, he would showcase a car with a lightweight plastic body made from soybeans. Ford and Carver began corresponding via letter in 1934, and their mutual admiration deepened after Carver made a visit to Michigan in 1937. As Douglas Brinkley writes in “Wheels for the World,” his history of Ford, the automaker donated generously to the Tuskegee Institute, helping finance Carver’s experiments, and Carver in turn spent a period of time helping to oversee crops at the Ford plantation in Ways, Georgia.

By the time World War II began, Ford had made repeated journeys to Tuskegee to convince Carver to come to Dearborn and help him develop a synthetic rubber to help compensate for wartime rubber shortages. Carver arrived on July 19, 1942, and set up a laboratory in an old water works building in Dearborn. He and Ford experimented with different crops, including sweet potatoes and dandelions, eventually devising a way to make the rubber substitute from goldenrod, a plant weed. Carver died in January 1943, Ford in April 1947, but the relationship between their two institutions continued to flourish.