Today In History

[Volkonski]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1801, 222 years ago: an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr, Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

[Volkonski]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1878, 145 years ago: In the United States, Thomas Alva Edison patents the phonograph.

[Volkonski]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1945, 78 years ago: World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima: About 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima.

Including my father.

[RTH10260]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1878, 145 years ago: In the United States, Thomas Alva Edison patents the phonograph.

I wonder what he would think about the streaming services available now and the vast storage of audio to choose from

[Volkonski]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1918, 105 years ago: The last Carolina parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

[keith]

The reason why International Mother Language Day falls on the 21st of February is that, in 1952, four young students were killed in Bangladesh during a protest because of a Bengali and Urdu language controversy.

[bill_g]

Yesterday in History thousands of American Nazis gathered as Madison Square Garden to celebrate our Founders complete with George Washington flanked by swatikas.



Extended version at YT

[Volkonski]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1845, 178 years ago: United States President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.

[RTH10260]

"Today in 2023: United States President Joe Biden signs a bill authorizing the Republic of Texas to secede from the United States"

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[AndyinPA]

[RTH10260]

70 years ago - March 5, 1953 - Death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

[RTH10260]

20 years ago - March 19, 2003 - United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq[ b] was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month,[23] including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. Twenty-two days after the first day of the invasion, the capital city of Baghdad was captured by Coalition forces on 9 April 2003 after the six-day-long Battle of Baghdad. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations" in his Mission Accomplished speech,[24] after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.[25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

[keith]

70 years ago - March 5, 1953 - Death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

Wait, Stalin's dad was Vissarion?

I thought that was a Game Of Thrones king name.

[Volkonski]

70 years ago - March 5, 1953 - Death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

Wait, Stalin's dad was Vissarion?

I thought that was a Game Of Thrones king name.

Stalin was not a Russian. He was a Georgian. His birth name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. His father's name was Besarion Ivanes dze Jughashvili. He dropped his last name and replaced it with Stalin which is the Russian word meaning steel.

When transliterating Russian (and Georgian) into the English (Latin) alphabet different translators use V or B for the Russian letter that is looks like a B but is pronounced like the English V. (Thus in different English translations of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" Prince Andre's name is sometimes Bolkonski and sometimes Volkonski.)

At some point Stalin Russianized the first parts of his name adopting the -ovich form for the patronymic so Besarionis became Besarionovich which could be transliterated as Vissarionovich. Ioseb became Joseph in English.

[Volkonski]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1963, 60 years ago: in the United States the Alcatraz Island prison is officially closed, due to the pollution it produced in the San Francisco Bay

[RTH10260]

55 years ago - March 16, 1968 - the Mỹ Lai massacre

Mỹ Lai massacre: 55 years since one of the US Army’s worst atrocities of the 20th century

Ana Yoo
Fri, March 17, 2023 at 10:29 PM GMT+1

On March 16, 1968, more than 500 unarmed civilians were brutally killed in a mass murder committed by U.S. troops in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

Victims of the Mỹ Lai massacre included men, women, children, infants and animals. Some women and children were gang-raped before their murders and had their bodies mutilated. Investigations later revealed an estimated 347 to 507 civilians were killed that day.

Five platoons — Charlie Company, First Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade and 23rd Infantry Division — were ordered to carry out the killings by U.S. Captain Ernest L. Medina and Lieutenant William Calley Jr.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lai-massacre ... 19124.html (original: NextShark)

[RTH10260]

40 years ago - Spring and Summer 1983 - Late huge snowpack in the Rocky Mountains and snow melt hitting the Colorado river

Reminder of current California events and reminiscence of the Oroville incident

Challenge at Glen Canyon, 1983

konvideoful
1 Sept 2017

A film produced by The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the failure of the Glen Canyon Dam spillway in 1983

[RTH10260]

40 years ago - April 1983 - Thiste Landslide

[RTH10260]

30 years ago - between February 28 and April 19, 1993, The Waco siege, also known as the Waco massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

also:

‘Led to the edge of the apocalypse’: 30 years on from the Waco massacre
A new Netflix docuseries looks back at the siege that saw a cult standoff lead to the deaths of 86 people

Lauren Mechling
Tue 21 Mar 2023 06.17 GMT

A siege, a massacre, a tragedy – call it what you will, the great shootout dominated the nightly news for two months of 1993 and seared itself into American history, attaining mononym status in the bargain.

Waco, as the catastrophe is best known, was not actually in Waco. It took place 13 miles east of the central Texas town, at the putty-colored Mount Carmel Center compound presided over by David Koresh, a cult leader with cherubic curls and an enthusiasm for firearms. Under his auspices, the rambling structure was home to a vast reserve of weapons, and over a hundred followers who believed in their leader’s claims about the coming apocalypse. (There was also a bus that had been buried underground, ready to serve as a bunker.)

Operating on a tip, employees of the alcohol, tobacco and firearms bureau showed up with a warrant to search the premises for machine guns. It was a Sunday, and the government agents had planned on the religious residents being at church. But Branch Davidians, a splinter group of Seventh Day Adventists, observed the Sabbath on Saturday, and if they were prepared for the Second Coming, then they could handle a knock at the door from nosy government emissaries. What followed was the largest gunfight on American soil since the civil war, lasting 51 days and leaving 86 people dead. It was a diplomatic tightrope walk played out on a public stage, and Americans tuned into the nightly news for the latest blunders and blow-ups. Fingers were pointed, accusations flew, and public personalities like Bill Clinton and Janet Reno denied and accepted blame to varying degrees.





https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... docuseries

[keith]

40 years ago - Spring and Summer 1983 - Late huge snowpack in the Rocky Mountains and snow melt hitting the Colorado river

Reminder of current California events and reminiscence of the Oroville incident

Challenge at Glen Canyon, 1983

konvideoful
1 Sept 2017

A film produced by The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the failure of the Glen Canyon Dam spillway in 1983

https: //youtu.be/m8xZzmtM8iw

Glen Canyon Dam is an abomination.

[John Thomas8]

The bloodiest battle on English soil occurred today, in 1461:

[Volkonski]

On This Day In History
@onthisday@mastodon.social
Today in 1865, 158 years ago: American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

[Foggy]

[AndyinPA]

No caption needed.