This is a wonderful read in which the American World War One fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker (1890 – 1973), recounted his experiences in the skies above France.
I learned pretty fast. Long practice in driving a racing-car at a hundred miles an hour or so gives first-class training in control and judging distances at high speed…
Forward passing dominated eastern and western intercollegiate football to a degree unprecedented in the history of the game…
D-Day for my outfit was a long, dull 24-hour wait. We spent the whole day marooned in the middle of the English Channel, sunbathing, sleeping and watching the action miles away on the shore through binoculars. We could hear the quick roars and see the greenish-white flashes of light as Allied Battleships and cruisers shelled the pillboxes and other German installations on the beach.
On D-plus-one we took off for shore. Four Messerschmidtts dove down to strafe the landing crafts as we headed in, but a Navy gunner drove them off with a beautiful burst of ack-ack…
…since the Depression began one out of every six banks has failed, one out of every forty-five hospitals has closed, one out of every twenty-two business and industrial concerns has become bankrupt…
– for those living in the digital age, the quote posted above is simply another mildly interesting, stale line from American history – but when those words were written in 1932 it meant for those who read it that there world was falling apart. So much of what they were taught to believe in was collapsing before their very eyes and as a result they felt a need to know God – and know Him they did; half way through 1932 churches and other religious bodies showed a total net gain of 929,252 members thirteen years of age or over – one of the largest gains ever recorded – and the total membership, thirteen years or more of age, reached the record figure of 50,037,209.
Click here to read about the American South during the Great Depression.
Pictured herein is Dr. C.W. Hewlett – early proponent of solar energy.
He was employed by the research department at General Electric and can be seen demonstrating his brainchild, the Solar Electric Motor:
Four small, round iron plates constitute the cell which converts the light into power. The plates are coated with selenium over which is an extremely thin layer of platinum. Both of the metals are ‘light sensitive’ and convert certain of the the rays into electricity, but as to just how this is done science is pretty vague.
The following article and illustration were clipped from the World War Two G.I. magazine, YANK; which we have included in our study of American World War One naval uniforms because we couldn’t imagine that the regulations involving the wearing of the lid could have been that much more different from the days when Admiral Simms ran the shop.
The German soldier is one of several different types depending on whether he is a veteran of 4 or 5 years, or a new recruit. The veteran of many fronts and many retreats is a prematurely aged, war weary cynic, either discouraged and disillusioned or too stupefied to have any thought of his own…The new recruit, except in some crack SS units, is either too young or too old and often in poor health.
Throughout the fall of 1918, American golf enthusiast H.B. Martin (Harry Brownlow Martin, 1873 – 1965), who was not one to dally on the links when there are hard questions to be asked, approached the champions of the game with one query in mind:
What is the ONE essential thing in golf?
As you will read for yourself, he came away with many different responses.
This 1945 article by George Creel reported on the brave and selfless acts of Robert D. Maxwell (1920 – 2019):
COURAGE, like everything else, has its kinds of degrees. No one would detract a hair’s weight from the bravery of the firing line, but in battle there is the heartening touch of a comrade’s shoulder, the excitement of the charge, and the 50-50 chance of coming out alive. All these aids are lacking in those epic instances where men make death a deliberate choice…one example that stands out for sheer drama and sustained fortitude is that of Technician Fifth Grade Robert D. Maxwell, who covered a German hand grenade with his body, smothering the explosion that would have killed every member of his group.
Maxwell survived his wounds; seven months later he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courage. He currently reside in Oregon.
Living, as we do, in the age of Indian gaming casinos it seems rather quaint to talk about which tribe was considered the richest of them all back in the Thirties. Nonetheless, this 1936 article tells the tale of the Osage Indians (Missouri) and the great wealth that was thrust upon them when oil was discovered on their tribal lands:
In 1935, some 3,500 Osage Indians proved their right to the title of wealthiest Indian tribe in America by drawing an income of $5,000,000 from their oil and gas leases…The members of Chief Fred Lookout’s tribe were not stingy with their new wealth. They bought clothes, big cars lavishly ornate homes…
The American Army’s amphibious vehicles called the DUKWs (Ducks) were first manufactured by General Motors in 1942 and were issued to both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. 2,000 were shipped to the British, over five hundred found their way to the Australian military and 535 were passed along to the Soviet Army. They have earned their sea legs a thousand times over and have even ventured across the English Channel.
The attached YANK MAGAZINE article was one of the first articles to have ever been written about them, and quite ironically plays-down the revolutionary nature of the invention:
Japs realize the value of the DUCKs. They once issued a communique saying their bombers sank ‘one 5,000-ton ship and one amphibious truck.
Economist Robert R. Doane (1889 – 1961) presented numerous charts and figures amassed between 1929 through 1932 to argue that America was still a wealthy nation despite the destruction wrought by the Great Depression:
In 1929 the United States held 44.6 percent of the total wealth of the world. In 1932 that proportion has increased to almost 50 percent. We still have half the banking-power of the world. We still have half the income. In all of the items of economic importance and efficiency, the United States still stands supreme.
Recent paintings from Paris have been brought to New York by Pierre Matisse (1900 – 1989) and are now on view at his 57th Street Gallery [at the Fuller Building]. Represented are the Pierre Bonnard, Jean Dubuffet, Andre Marchand, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault.
There, to a coterie of Lincoln addicts on Abe’s 131st birthday, U.S. Patent Commissioner Conway P. Coe displayed a model of a device Lincoln patented in 1849, when he was still an unknown congressman from Illinois. Commissioner Coe read the patent application, in Lincoln’s own handwriting, for a gadget to float flatboats in shallow water.
An informative look at the rising number of cars and the decreasing amount of horses that were put to use in Britain, France and the United States.
In the American confederation it is estimated that there are more than 130,000 automobiles, besides some 35,000 motor trucks, delivery wagons, etc., and 150,000 motor cycles and tricycles. Eight years ago the number of automobiles in the United States did not exceed 6,000.
An article that your gadget-loving, audiophile pals will probably not enjoy from the days before woofers and tweeters. Will wonders never cease? A radio IN THE CAR and an antenna that looks like a luggage rack, for heavens sake…
When this magazine profile of Andrei Gromyko (1909 – 1989) appeared on the newsstands in 1946, the man was already a mainstay in the State Department Rolodex. Anyone who came of age during the Cold War (1947 – 1991) will certainly recognize his name, because as Foreign Minister for the Soviet Union (for 28 years), Gromyko was without a doubt one of the architects of the Cold War.
The attached article outlines Gromyko’s career highlights up to the Summer of 1946 when he was posted as the first Soviet Ambassador to the newly established United Nations.
This is a brief look at the up-bringing of Mark Twain (born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 – 1910), accompanied by two 1910 magazine photographs of the people who inspired the writer to create Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn. Also interviewed was the the man who instructed the author in the skills required to pilot the Mississippi River.
The historian Henry Steele Commager chose to rank Mark Twain at number 4 insofar as his impact on the American mind was concerned – click here to understand his reasoning (does this still hold true?)…
