November 21

164 BC. Judas Maccabeaus, one of the greatest warriors in Jewish history, restores the Temple of Jerusalem, an event celebrated each year by the Hannukah festival.

1620. The Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact.

1877. Thomas Edison reveals his invention of the phonograph -- a machine that can record and play music -- to the world.

1967. General William Westmoreland tells the press that he is "absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."

1985. US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying for Israel. He remains in prison to this day, despite repeated efforts by Israel to obtain a pardon or other clemency for him.

1986. National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary begin to shred documents relating ot the Iran-Contra affair. Unfortunatately, he does not remain in prison to this day. In fact, his conviction will be overturned as his limited immunity for Congressional testimony ends up immunizing him more broadly than expected.

November 22

1864. Confederate General John Bell Hood invades Tennessee, hoping to force Union General Sherman to reverse course on his March to the Sea. Instead, Sherman is thrilled, and merrily continues hsi rampaging destruction through the South, leaving Union General (the Rock of Chicamauga) Thomas to deal with Hood. He will do so, very successfully.

1942. German General Friedrich Paulus notifies Hitler that his Sixth Army is completely surrounded.

1963. President John F. Kennedy is killed and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded by (presumably) Lee Harvey Oswald, who is later captured.

1995. Toy Story is released, the first feature length fully computer generated imagery movie.

November 23.

1863. The Battle of Chattanooga begins. To lay some groundwork, in 1863 the Civil War was essentially at the tipping point, with the Union having won decisive victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. In the middle of the country, however, the Confederates had landed a decisive blow at the Battle of Chickamauga against the Union Army of the Cumberland, under General Rosencrans. At this battle, General Thomas earns the nickname the Rock of Chickamauga for staving off destruction, but the battle was still a decisive victory for the Confederates. The Union is thrown into Chattanooga, which is soon surrounded by the Confederates on the high ground, and besieged.

In response, the Union reacts swiftly. General Hooker, who had led the Union Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville earlier in the year, but had been dismissed, was sent with 15,000 men by train to help. In addition, General Grant was ordered first to send General Sherman with 20,000 men, and then ordered to go personally to save the Union Army. During the course of these events, for the first time the entire Western Theater -- everything from the Appalachians to the Mississippi -- is put under the command of one man -- Grant.

Meanwhile, the defeat at Chickamuaga and siege, short though it had been, broke Rosencrans psychologically. Lincoln, in his inimicable fashion, said that he "seemed confused and stunned, like a duck that had been hit in the head." Grant was given authority to deal with command there as he saw fit, and he relieved Rosencrans, appointing Thomas in his stead.

Now commanding the Confederate forces at Chattanooga -- an important rail hub and iron and coke producer, was Braxton Bragg, who had with him as a corps commander Lee's right hand, General Longstreet.

Without going into too much detail, the battle was hard fought, as the Union needed to try to dislodge the Confederates who held the high ground, especially Lookout Mountain. Both sides also had a fair share of bumbling under the circumstances. The Union plan seemed sound -- with General Sherman charging up the long side of a ride rather than a frontal assault, but he was pinned down and unable to effect much. Somehow, somewhat against orders, a Union frontal assault up the steep mountain succeeded in throwing the Confederates off. Both Grant and Sherman tried to shift credit for the victory to Sherman, but the careful Civil War student knows that there was as much luck as skill involved in this particular victory, and that Sherman certainly doesn't deserve the lion's share of the credit.

In any event, the siege was broken, and the Confederacy's efforts to obtain a major victory to redeem the losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg failed.


1876. Boss Tweed, leader of the Tammany Hall corrupt political machine in New York City, is turned over to NY authorities after being captured in Spain.

1936. The first edition of Life Magazine is published.

1963. The first episode of Dr. Who is broadcast.

Nov 27
 

1582: William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway

I searched for about a half hour and this is the only thing worth even mentioning on nov 27 in history LOL

November 24

1835. The Texas Provisional Government authorizes the formation of a mounted police force called the Texas Rangers.

1859. Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1932. The FBI crime lab officially opens.

1963. Only days after he shot President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald is shot and killed by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters. The shooting was coincidentally broadcast live on national television.

1971. "Dan Cooper", who had boarded and hijacked a plane two days earlier, parachutes out of a plane in a severe thunderstorm over Washington state with his $200,000 in ransom money. He is never caught, though the FBI believes he did not survive the jump. To this day, it remains the only unsolved airplane hijacking in US history, as no one has been able to determine who Dan Cooper (the name he used in getting his tickets) actually was.

Various clues have led to dead ends through the years, including an eight year old boy finding over $5,000 in decaying $20 bills which were confirmed as being part of the original ransom money along the banks of the Columbia River, near the jump site.

In 2007 the FBI tried to jump-start interest in the case by announcing that it had obtained partial DNA identification from the tie he had left on the plane, and by releasing for the first time composite sketches. While reiterating that it thought he was dead, the FBI stated that it was still interested in determining his identity.

1974. "Lucy", a 3.2 million year old Australopithecus skeleton, is discovered in Ethiopia. She is named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was being played repeatedly and loudly on a tape recorder in the archeologists' camp.

November 25.

1491. The siege of Granada, the last Moorish (i.e. Islamic) stronghold in Spain, begins. Note that this is only one year before Columbus's famous voyage. Before they are cast out, they will have been in the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years.

1952. Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap opens in London, later to become the longest continuous running play in history.

1984. 36 top musicians gather to perform Band Aid's "Do they Know It's Christmas" to help raise money for famine relief in Ethopia.

1984 Bands Aid...I think it was George Harrison that was one of the organizers/sponsers of that. Regardless, it was a cool thing to do. :thumb:

November 26.

1789. A national Thanksgiving Day holiday, as recommended by George Washington and approved by Congress, is observed.

1863. President Lincoln proclaims an annual day of Thanksgiving, to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November each year (changed in 1941 to the fourth Thursday).

1950. After stupidly pushing too far North and blatantly ignoring Chinese warnings regarding the situation, UN forces led by the United States, who are spread out and more focused on the severe cold than the mopping up of North Korean forces, are assaulted all across the lines by vastly numerically superior forces of Communist China. This is Douglas MacArthur's darkest hour, as his heady proclamations that the Chinese ("I understand the Oriental mind") won't come into the war, or if they do they will quickly be annihilated, are proven to be utterly and fantastically wrong. His subordinate (lackey, really) Ned Almond, in command of X Corps, will eventually be promoted out of Korea and then out of the service, when he should have been promoted to Leavenworth for gross deriliction of duty in ignoring the many warning signs.

November 27

1895. Alfred Nobel, discoverer of dynamite, signs his last will and testament setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after his death.

and, oh, hey, didja hear Shakespeare got married today in 1582? (yeah, it's a SLOW day)

November 28

1520. After three days in the Strait, three ships under the overall command of Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

1814. For the first time, the Times of London is printed via automatic, steam powered presses, beginning the mass availability of newspapers.

1907. In Haverhill, Massachusetts, former scrap metal dealer Louis Mayer premiers a movie at his new theater, a remodeled former burlesque theater. It is the beginning of his rise to power, culminating in running Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for over 25 years.

1942. The famous (around here at least) Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston, Massachusetts, kills nearly 500 people when the popular nightclub erupts in flames. To this date it is the second deadliest building fire in American history, and it briefly replaced WWII news as the shocked nation reacted to the calamity with an outpouring of grief. It also triggered a wave of revitalized building and fire codes. Contributing to the deahts were that the main entrance was a single revolvign door, which quickly became jammed when too many people rushed to the exit, and second, the bolting closed of many other exits to prevent patrons from leaving without paying their bills. Other side doors opened inward, and the crush of people trying to escape left them inoperable.

1943. The Tehran Conference between FDR, Churchill and Stalin is held.

November 29

1890. Navy beats Army, 24-0, in the first Army-Navy football game.

1910. The first patent for the traffic light system is issued.

1934. The Lions, as always, suck in a big event, when the Bears beat them 19-16 in the first nationally broadcast (by radio) NFL game.

1963. President Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

1972. Pong, the first commercially successful video game, is released.

http://www.ventrice.com/tony/images/...ocial/pong.png

November 30

1782. In Paris, representatives of Great Britain and the United States sign preliminary peace accords that will later turn into the Treaty of Paris.

1804. In a disgusting display of the bitterness of early American politics, the Republican-Democrats in Congress impeach Federalist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. Part of the charges are the purportedly "seditious and official attack by Chase on the principles of our Constitution" (Thomas Jefferson) which ought not "go unpunished." The Senate acquitted him, and he remains to this day the only Supreme Court Justice ever impeached.

1864. Blood-and-guts, but no brains, General Hood of the Confederacy launches an extremely ill-advised frontal attack on the Union troops at the Battle of Franklin, losing 1/3rd of his troops and fourteen generals (six killed, one captured, the rest wounded) in the process. Undaunted, Hood will go on to face General THomas at the Battle of Nashville, lose again, and then crawl back with barely half his force. The Confederate Army of the Tennessee will be destroyed as an effective fighting force for the remainder of the war.

1939. A few days after a pretext was created, Soviet troops cross the border into Finland, starting the Winter War. While Soviet strength was overwhelming, their leadership was mediocre due to the Great Purge. Finnish resistance was much tougher than expected, but by the following spring the peace treaty will result in Finland ceding 11% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its pre-war assets.

1998. Exxon and Mobil agree to merge, becoming the world's largest company.

2001. Gary Ridgway, a/k/a the Green River killer, is arrested. He will ultimately be convicted of having murdered 41 women, confess to another 30 on top of those, and is believed to be responsible for over 90.

2004 Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings finally loses, after winning nearly $2.5 million, the biggest winner in television game show history.

My neighbor had one of the early home versions of Pong. I wanted one so bad, but my family didn't get one for several years after that.

I remember the Atari game pong, which I had. Looked similar to the arcade version, but a bit (not much) better. By the time I was 8 or 9 the local pizza joint had games like Space Invaders and Asteroids, which were light-years better than pong.

Wow. I usually have a pretty good head for timeline things, but I'm really surprised at how early this was. I would have guessed the first nationally televised football game would have been something like 1951.

Any idea on how many people watched it?

Mea culpa, mea cupla. Soon as I saw your post I realized I screwed up. The blurb said "nationally broadcast" and my 2010 brain converted that to televised, but as soon as I saw your post I realized it MUST be radio given the timeframe.

December 1.

1913. The first moving assembly line is introduced by Ford Motors.

1952. The New York Daily News creates a sensation with its front page headline describing the world's first widely known case of sex reassignment surgery. The Headline was "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty", and was about Christine (nee George William) Jorgensen, a former soldier who underwent hormone therapy and then surgeries to change genders. While the Daily News reported that this was the first sex change operation, that part was not true, as operations had been performed in Germany and Sweden for some years. The hormone therapy, however, was new.

1955. In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1982. Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart.

This day in history -- December 1
1768 – The slave ship Fredensborg sinks off Tromøy in Norway.

December 2

1805. The Battle of Austerlitz, between the French troops under Napoleon and a combined Russo-Austrian army, is fought. It is Napoleon's greatest victory, and effectively destroys the Third Coalition. As a result of the peace agreement, the Holy Roman Empire -- which as every history teacher likes to say was neither Holy nor Roman -- is dissolved.

1823. President Monroe gives a speech regarding foreign affairs which will become known as the Monroe Doctrine.

1908. Emperor Pu Yi ascends to the throne of China. He is two years old. His life will be memorialized in the movie "The Last Emperor".

1939. LaGuardia Airport opens.

1954. The Senate rebukes member Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."

2001. Enron files bankruptcy.

Historians have roundly criticized him for his policies, most strongly for his decree that "everyone eats cookies all the time", which resulted in over 1 million malnutrition deaths in the Yangtze river valley alone. Fortunately, at the age of seven he was talked out of his "everyone jump up at the same time" policy, which would have had dramatic domestic, international, and astronomical ramifications.

LMAO I keep coming back to this thread because of historical insights like these that for some reason didn't make it into my high school text books.

December 3

1901. President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000 word speech to the Congress, asking it to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits". This will lead to the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and the subsequent breakup of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil.

1929. President Hoover announces to Congress that the worst effects of the stock market crash over a month earlier are past the country, and that its population is regaining faith in the economy.

1944. Even before WWII is over, a clash in Athens between Greek government forces supported by the British Army and ELAS, a left wing military organization that controlled huge swaths of the Greek countryside heralds the coming Greek Civil War.

1971. The Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 begins.

1992. The UN passes a resolution to establish a peacekeeping force in Somalia. This will lead to the events memorialized in the movie and book, Blackhawk Down.

http://www.danablankenhorn.com/image...rustbuster.jpg

Recovery winter!

December 4

771. King Carloman dies, leaving his brother, Charlesmagne, king of the unified Frankish kingdom.

1674. Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek tribe. The mission will grow into Chicago.

1875. Political boss "Boss Tweed", technically incarcerated at the Ludlow Street Jail but allowed home visits, flees. He first goes to Cuba, then Spain. He is caught, returned to the US and will eventually die at the prison in 1878.

1909. The Montreal Canadians are founded.

1918. President Wilson goes to Europe to attend hte Versailles peace conference. He is the first sitting President to visit Europe.

1945. The US Senate approves US participation in the UN.

1954. The first Burger King opens, in Miami, Florida.

1980. Following the death of its drummer, Led Zeppelin officially disbands.

December 5.

1775. At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his famous transportation of artillery to Boston to lift the British occupation.

1848. President Polk confirms in a message to Congress that large amounts of gold have been found in California. Remember that during this era, gold was not merely a valuable item, it for all intents and purposes was money. So while money may not grow on trees, it could be dug up from the ground.

1932. Albert Einstein is granted a visa by the US, possibly the best move ever made by the US INS.

1941. Soviet troops under Georgi Zhukov launch a massive counterattack against German troops outside Moscow.

December 6

1240. Kiev falls to the Mongols under Batu Khan. Having conquered most of what is now southern Russian, he will soon turn his eye to Europe.

1768. The first edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica is published.

1790. Congress moves from NYC to Philadelphia.

1849. Harriet Tubman escapes slavery. She will become a very influential voice in the abolitionist movement.

1865. The Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery, is ratified.

At some point, these will begin to repeat, right?

Boy, this guy ran out of room on his chest for medals.

http://photo.net/shared/portrait-bit...ser_id=1001379

The first edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica was published in 1768 and included some odd entries, even describing monsters as a human species. The editors of British newspaper The Daily Telegraph share some of the weirdness.

Humans and monsters

Homo sapiens were sub divided into five varieties: the American, the European, the Asiatic, the African and the monstrous.

Medicine

Cures for flatulence included drinking chamomile tea and blowing smoke from a pipe ‘through the anus.’

Chocolate

Chocolate was prohibited to be imported but may be made at home for private use ‘upon three days notice given to the officer of excise, and provided no less than half an hundred weight be made at one time.’

Petrol

Petroleum was used as an ointment to treat pains of the limbs, and to try and cure paralysis. (No cars in those days yet.)

Solar system

The solar system was described as having six planets. (Uranus was discovered in 1781 and Neptune in 1846.)

California

The US state of Callifornia was spelt with two ‘L’s’ and is described as ‘a large country of the West Indies. Unknown whether it is an island or a peninsula.’

December 7

1941. In memoriam.

http://www.pastfoundation.org/Arizon...Riverc1916.jpg

http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/wp...ss_arizona.jpg

http://www.ballslist.com/travel/hawaii/uss_arizona.jpg

I've never seen this one. Rep.

That one is from 1916, shortly after she was commissioned, and taken in the East River, New York City.

December 8

1854. Ineffabilis Deus -- Pope Pius IX issues a Papal Bull declaring that the Virgin Mother was born free of original sin.

1980. John Lennon is murdered by Mark David Chapman, a mentally unstable "fan". He remains incarcerated at Attica prison, his parole having been denied six times.

1991. The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union.

1993. NAFTA is signed into law by President Clinton.

I'm surprised it was still that way in 1768. I would've thought it would've been solved earlier than that.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Page...id-chapman.jpg

http://www.lewrockwell.com/special/Prison1.jpg

December 9

1851. The first YMCA in North America (I didn't even know it was international) is establish, at Montreal, Canada.

1937. Japanese Imperial troops begin their assault of the city of Nanking (Nanjing), China. This will result in the fall of the city, and the aftermath will become known as the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking.

NSFW pictures that you probably do not want to see.

http://www.someworthwhilequotes.com/...rchildren1.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OZlz2hw1ud...0/nankingx.jpg

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...:0&tx=63&ty=84



1961. The trial of Adolf Eichmann ends in Israel, with the former Nazi convicted of 15 counts of various crimes against humanity.

Is that a skull on his cap?

http://home.comcast.net/~twirlrecords/AdolfEichmann.jpg

Yes. The Death Head was a standard part of the SS uniform.

http://www.ww2incolor.com/d/446349-1...-world-war-2-8

http://www.german-helmets.com/ALLG-S...LG_SS_logo.jpg

http://www.german-helmets.com/SS_ALLG_MAIN.htm

That's pretty wild.

December 10

1864. Having marched across Georgia leaving only havoc and destruction in their wake, the forces of General Sherman reach the outer defenses of the city of Savannah, Georgia.

1901. The first Nobel Prizes are awarded.

1906. President Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize.

1935. The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded for the first time, to the immortal Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.

1941. The British battleship Prince of Wales and Battlecruiser HMS Repulse, the centerpieces of the British Navy's most powerful naval forces in the Pacific/Indian theater, are sunk by Japanese aircraft. It is an early and painful lesson that airpower has reached ascendancy in naval matters and that even the best capital ships are extremely vulnerable if they are unaccompanied by air power.

1941. Japanese troops begin landing on the Phillipines. History will largely go on to ignore MacArthur's rather fumbling defense of the islands, in particular his loss of American airpower in much the same manner as that which got the commander general in Hawaii fired and accused of gross stupidity.

1949. The Communist forces of the People's Republic of China begin their assault on the last nationalist strongholder of Chiang Kai Shek on the mainland, forcing him to retreat to Formosa/Taiwan.

Yeah, I never gave much thought to it -- it's just sort of embedded knowledge for me that I never look at to analyze, but in retrospect, it does seem a bit wild. You should note, however, that use of morbid symbols is hardly rare or unusual for military or paramilitary uniforms in history, though you certainly see less of it now (perhaps because of the assocation with Nazi Germany, because the Death Head was a very prominent feature of the SS).

Looking up the picture reminded me that the phrase Death Head, Totenkopf in German, also gave rise to the name for one of the "named" SS divisions, along with such other notables as the Adolf Hitler division. Totenkopf served with distinction mostly along the Eastern Front.

The Hermann Goring Division, reknowned in its own right, was an elite Luftwaffe division, and not an SS division. The fact taht the Air Force had its own elite "army-type" division just goes to show how dysfunctional the German military machine was in many respects.

:spock:

Use of the Totenkopf didn't begin with the NAZIs, however. It was used by certain Prussian dorks as well long before the NAZIs. I'll try to find a picture.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nMackensen.jpg

Think I said that:

I remember the Prussians having it, and I think some American units (sub-division) have them as well. I can't remember others, but I think it's one of those things, like the swastika itself, which was not uncommon across nationalities/cultures and now is in disuse due to the association with the Nazis.

That is one snazzy looking uniform...











....for Halloween.

Oh, and hey Donger, welcome to the thread, and thanks for participating. Interested in history are you...?

;)

:cuss:

Yeah, I was thinking there was one American division that had some sort of flaming skull as their symbol. I lack the verve to look for it, though.

December 11

1282. Llwelyn the Last, the last native Prince of Wales, is killed in battle. While of questionable historical significance, clearly I couldn't really let this event passed unmentioned. His father, Peter the Penultimate, died young. And if you know anything of the Welsh, you know that Peter couldn't really be his name because it doesn't have mutliple double consonants, the letter "y" once or twice, like Llwelyn's real father, whose name was in fact Gruffydd, or his uncle Dafydd.

1941. Germany declares war on the United States following the US declaration of war against Germany's ally, Japan, following Pearl Harbor. In retrospect, this wasn't likely their brightest move.

1972. Apollo 17 becomes the last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

2008. Bernie Madoff is arrested and charged with a $50 billion ponzi scheme.

2010. Mark Madoff, Bernie's oldest son, commits suicide on the two year anniversary of his father's arrest.

December 12

627. In the climatic battle of the Byzantine-Sassanid War, the Byzantine Army under Emperor Heraclius defeats, narrowly, the Sassanids. Though the defeat was narrow, the results were cataclysmic. The Sassanids overthrow their ruler, and are forced to sue for peace, giving the Byzantine Empire much land, an indemnity and, most important to that very religious culture, the return of the True Cross and other religious artifacts lost in 614 when Jerusalem was taken.

1098. In yet another example of the moral destitution of much of the Crusading done under the auspices of the Church, Crusaders during the First Crusade breach the town walls of Ma'arrat al-Numan (in modern Syria) after a lengthy siege and butcher 20,000 people. They also, reportedly, resort to cannibalism after food runs short. The memory of this event will be imprinted across the Islamic world for centuries.

1917. Father Edward Flanagan founds Boys Town.

2000. The Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore.

December 13

1636. The Massachusetts Bay Colony forms three regiments to defend the colony against Pequot Indians. Thus, today is recognized as the founding of the US National Guard.

1769. Dartmouth College is founded.

1809. A doctor performs the first ovariotomy (removal of ovaries), cutting out a 22 pound tumor.

1862. The Battle of Fredericksburg, a crushing defeat of the Union by the Confederates.

1939. In the first major naval battle of WWII, the German pocket battleship Graf Spee engages with three British cruisers. The British ships got the worst of the exchange, as one might expect, but then shadowed the GErman commerce raider into the neutral port of Montevideo, in South America. The British planted false information that an overwhelming fleet was assembling almost immediately outside of the port, which entirely fooled the Germans into thinking they couldn't fight their way out of the harbor. Such a force was assembling, of course, but would take some time to get there. After communicating iwth Germany, the German commanded decided to scuttle his ship, reportedly infuritating Hitler, and then committed suicide on December 19.

2003. Former Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein is captured.

http://www.postcardsfrom.com/cards/990831f.jpg

http://thehangar.com/catalog/images/AMERICAN%20FLAG.jpg

:D

The NAZIs surface fleet activities in WWII were almost quaint.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...uth_Dunham.jpg

This is the earliest known image of Dartmouth College. It appeared in a 1793 issue of Massachusetts Magazine.

I've heard of Dartmouth all my life, and this beautiful picture finally prompted me to look them up and see where they're at. I've never known. (Hanover, NH)

Yes, though the Graf Spee had some success before she was caught. But in fairness to the Germans, nobody understood, pre-war and early war, the degree to which air power would dominate.

And Repulse and Prince of Wales are testimony to that.

Yeah, it's pretty much nestled in a quaint New England town. Very nice campus. I've been to some college games there -- my dad was a huge Yale fan as his brothers went there.

Nice edit. Yes, but the Battle of Taranto changed all that.

Sure, but by then the Germans couldn't exactly change their overall naval strategy. They had alot invested in the surface assets that they had, which was really built towards repeating the Battle of Jutland -- not that they really had sufficient assets to do that anyway. But in any event, they certainly didn' thave any aircraft carriers or anything. Instead they had tons of investment in ships like the Tirpitz, which really did little but tie down equally useless (except for countering the Tirpitz/Bismarck etc.) British heavy surface vessels and serve as a target for air raids.

By the time the Germans "perfected" their U-boats -- both in terms of technological capability and mass production, ASDIC and cracking Enigma more than offset the German submarine program successes.

Right, that's why I wrote that the NAZI surface fleet efforts were almost quaint.

Did you know that U-boat crews had the highest casualty percentage of any other German outfits in WWII? Something like 70%.

Didn't know it, but hardly surprised. They sank something like 42 U-Boats in April of '43 alone. I remember Doenitz writing about it extensively in his autobiography -- how they had massively ramped up production but the sinkings were so incredibly high they still didn't have as many boats in the water as they wanted.

Have you read Iron Coffins? Great book...

Today marks the day that Saddam Hussein was captured in Operation Red Dawn (2003).

Yes

Excellent book I really enjoyed it. Its been years though.

No.

One of the best, if not THE best, in-person, front-line military accounts I've ever read. It's about a captain of a U-Boat who actually survived the war (very rare indeed).

Jezebel.

December 14

1287. The Zuider Zee sea wall in the Netherlands gives way in the "St. Lucia's Flood" (it was the day after the holiday), killing 50-80 thousand people.

1903. The Wright Brothers made their first attempt at heavier-than-air machine powered flight with the Wright Flyer. They flip a coin to see who will get the first crack at it. Wilbur wins. They successfully launch the plane, but Wilbur pulls too sharply on the stick, the plane stalls, and lands (semi-crashes) after only three seconds of flight. Repairs will take three days...

1947. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is founded.

1958. A Soviet team reaches the Southern Pole of Relative Inaccessability -- or the spot in Antarctica furthest from the ocean surrounding the continent. It is a location far more difficult to reach than the true South Pole.

1972. Trivia moment -- the immortal Eugene Cernan becomes the last man to walk on the Moon, after he and his fellow astronaut complete their last extra-vehicular activity (EVA) during Apollo 17. This one's for you, Mr. Last-Man-To-Walk-On-The-Moon-But-Nobody-Has-Ever-Heard-of-You man....

2008. During a press conference in Baghdad, a moronic Iraqi broadcast journalist shouts "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog" and throws two shoes at President Bush. Despite calls by some ot place the shoes in a museum, American and Iraqi security forces destroy the shoes. He will later be tried for assaulting a foreign head of state, and serve nine months in prison.

I'd like to publicly applaud the work of our official thread photographer, Patteeu. Rep.

Yes, it is very nice to have pictures to look at for those of us who have trouble with the larger words. :thumb:

Ha. I just figured it was a way to let you know that people are reading without overloading your rep box.

That was also a spectacular night launch of the gigantic Saturn 5 rocket.

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