On this day:

October 15, 1947 U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.

For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” (after Yeager's wife), was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet.

Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general

On October 16, 1987, in an event that had viewers around the world glued to their televisions, 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued after being trapped for 58 hours in an abandoned water well in Midland, Texas.

The drama unfolded on the morning of October 14, 1987, when McClure fell through the 8-inch-wide opening of an abandoned well while playing with other children in the backyard of her aunt’s home day-care center. After dropping about 22 feet into the well, the little girl became stuck. Over the next two-and-a-half days, crews of rescue workers, mining experts and local volunteers labored around the clock to drill a shaft parallel to the one in which McClure was trapped. They then tunneled horizontally through dense rock to connect the two shafts. A microphone was lowered into the well to keep tabs on the toddler, who could be heard crying, humming and singing throughout the ordeal.

On the night of October 16, a bandaged and dirt-covered but alert Baby Jessica, as she became widely known, was safely pulled out of the well by paramedics. By that time, scores of journalists had descended on Midland, a West Texas oil city, and the rescue was carried out on live television before a massive audience.

After her rescue, McClure was hospitalized for more than a month and lost a toe to gangrene. She and her family were flooded with gifts and cards from well-wishers, and received a visit from Vice President George H.W. Bush and a phone call from President Ronald Reagan. Once out of the hospital, McClure went on to lead a normal life, spent largely out of the public spotlight. She graduated from high school in 2004, married two years later and became a mother. In 2011, at age 25, she gained access to a trust fund—reportedly worth at least $800,000—that was established following her rescue and made up of donations from people around the world.

Life proved more challenging for others involved in the Baby Jessica saga. McClure’s parents divorced several years after her accident, rescue workers in Midland feuded over a potential Hollywood movie deal and in 1995, a paramedic who played a key role in helping to save McClure died by suicide, possibly as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"An earthquake hits the San Francisco Bay Area on October 17, 1989, killing 67 people and causing more than $5 billion in damages. Though this was one of the most powerful and destructive earthquakes ever to hit a populated area of the United States, the death toll could have been much worse.

The proximity of the San Andreas Fault to San Francisco was well-known for most of the 20th century, but the knowledge did not stop the construction of many un-reinforced brick buildings in the area. Finally, in 1972, revised building codes forced new structures to be built to withstand earthquakes. The new regulations also called for older buildings to be retrofitted to meet the new standards, but the expense involved made these projects a low priority for the community.

On October 17, the Bay Area was buzzing about baseball. The Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, both local teams, had reached the World Series. The third game of the series was scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Just prior to the game, with the cameras on the field, a 7.1-magnitude tremor centered near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains rocked the region from Santa Cruz to Oakland. Though the stadium withstood the shaking, much of the rest of San Francisco was not so fortunate.

The city’s marina district suffered great damage. Built before 1972, on an area of the city where there was no underlying bedrock, the liquefaction of the ground resulted in the collapse of many homes. Burst gas mains and pipes also sparked fires that burned out of control for nearly two days. Also hard hit by the quake were two area roads, the Nimitz Expressway and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Both roads featured double-decker construction and, on each, the upper level collapsed during the earthquake. Forty-one of the 67 victims of this disaster were motorists on the lower level of the Nimitz, who were killed when the upper level of the road collapsed and crushed them in their cars. Only one person was killed on the Bay Bridge—which had been scheduled for a retrofitting the following week—because there were no cars under the section that collapsed.

Other heavily damaged communities included Watsonville, Daly City and Palo Alto. More than 10 percent of the homes in Watsonville were completely demolished. The residents, most of whom were Latino, faced additional hardship because relief workers and the Red Cross did not have enough Spanish-speaking aides or translators to assist them."

The earthquake caused billions of dollars in damages, and contributed in part to the deep recession that California suffered in the early 1990s.

BarnBuster said:

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"An earthquake hits the San Francisco Bay Area on October 17, 1989, killing 67 people and causing more than $5 billion in damages. Though this was one of the most powerful and destructive earthquakes ever to hit a populated area of the United States, the death toll could have been much worse.

The proximity of the San Andreas Fault to San Francisco was well-known for most of the 20th century, but the knowledge did not stop the construction of many un-reinforced brick buildings in the area. Finally, in 1972, revised building codes forced new structures to be built to withstand earthquakes. The new regulations also called for older buildings to be retrofitted to meet the new standards, but the expense involved made these projects a low priority for the community.

On October 17, the Bay Area was buzzing about baseball. The Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, both local teams, had reached the World Series. The third game of the series was scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Just prior to the game, with the cameras on the field, a 7.1-magnitude tremor centered near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains rocked the region from Santa Cruz to Oakland. Though the stadium withstood the shaking, much of the rest of San Francisco was not so fortunate.

The city’s marina district suffered great damage. Built before 1972, on an area of the city where there was no underlying bedrock, the liquefaction of the ground resulted in the collapse of many homes. Burst gas mains and pipes also sparked fires that burned out of control for nearly two days. Also hard hit by the quake were two area roads, the Nimitz Expressway and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Both roads featured double-decker construction and, on each, the upper level collapsed during the earthquake. Forty-one of the 67 victims of this disaster were motorists on the lower level of the Nimitz, who were killed when the upper level of the road collapsed and crushed them in their cars. Only one person was killed on the Bay Bridge—which had been scheduled for a retrofitting the following week—because there were no cars under the section that collapsed.

Other heavily damaged communities included Watsonville, Daly City and Palo Alto. More than 10 percent of the homes in Watsonville were completely demolished. The residents, most of whom were Latino, faced additional hardship because relief workers and the Red Cross did not have enough Spanish-speaking aides or translators to assist them."

The earthquake caused billions of dollars in damages, and contributed in part to the deep recession that California suffered in the early 1990s.

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We had a big macramé hanging table with plants on it that was swinging back and forth, and we were north of Sacramento at the time.

raratt said:

We had a big macramé hanging table with plants on it that was swinging back and forth, and we were north of Sacramento at the time.

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We moved to the state March of the next year. Menlo Park, close enough to the rail line that when a freighter rolled through, the apartment building would shake a bit.

One day the building did its little shimmy, and my first thought was “oh train”.
My second thought was “I don’t hear a train”
My third thought amounted to “oh shit”. Turned on the TV and sure enough, aftershock.

Moved to Sunnyvale soon after, and only experienced one door tapper.

raratt said:

We had a big macramé hanging table with plants on it that was swinging back and forth, and we were north of Sacramento at the time.

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I was in Woodland, just cracked a cold one to nurse a hangover in a buddies backyard when my knees started to wobble (thinking I need to quit this shit!) I was relived to see all the hanging plants swaying back and forth.

RIP Spencer

raratt said:

We had a big macramé hanging table with plants on it that was swinging back and forth, and we were north of Sacramento at the time.

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I had built a 15X8ft stone and concrete koi pond 2 yrs before; the power flickered, a few things fell off a shelf in my shop., no biggie. Next day I noticed the pond was empty and all but two fish died

On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, 58 French soldiers were killed in their barracks two miles away in a separate suicide terrorist attack. The U.S. Marines were part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. From its inception, the mission was plagued with problems–and a mounting body count.

In 1975, a bloody civil war erupted in Lebanon, with Palestinian and leftist Muslim guerrillas battling militias of the Christian Phalange Party, the Maronite Christian community, and other groups. During the next few years, Syrian, Israeli, and United Nations interventions failed to resolve the factional fighting, and on August 20, 1982, a multinational force including 800 U.S. Marines was ordered to Beirut to help coordinate the Palestinian withdrawal.

The Marines left Lebanese territory on September 10 but returned in strengthened numbers on September 29, following the massacre of Palestinian refugees by a Christian militia. The next day, the first U.S. Marine to die during the mission was killed while defusing a bomb. Other Marines fell prey to snipers. On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber driving a van devastated the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. Then, on October 23, a Lebanese terrorist plowed his bomb-laden truck through three guard posts, a barbed-wire fence, and into the lobby of the Marines Corps headquarters in Beirut, where he detonated a massive bomb, killing 241 marine, navy, and army personnel. The bomb, which was made of a sophisticated explosive enhanced by gas, had an explosive power equivalent to 18,000 pounds of dynamite. The identities of the embassy and barracks bombers were not determined, but they were suspected to be Shiite terrorists associated with Iran.

After the barracks bombing, many questioned whether President Ronald Reagan had a solid policy aim in Lebanon. Serious questions also arose over the quality of security in the American sector of war-torn Beirut. The U.S. peacekeeping force occupied an exposed area near the airport, but for political reasons the marine commander had not been allowed to maintain a completely secure perimeter before the attack. In a national address on October 23, President Reagan vowed to keep the marines in Lebanon, but just four months later he announced the end of the American role in the peacekeeping force. On February 26, 1984, the main force of marines left Lebanon, leaving just a small contingent to guard the U.S. embassy in Beirut.

Two years after the Marine barracks bombing, a U.S. grand jury indicted Imad Mughniyah for his role in the attack and other terrorist activities. He was high on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists. Still, he evaded capture for 25 years before meeting a fitting fate in 2008 — killed by a car bomb in Damascus. Reports claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence service was responsible, perhaps with help from the CIA.

RIP Jerry Jeff.

During the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, Henry V, the young king of England, leads his forces to victory at the Battle of Agincourt in northern France.

Two months before, Henry had crossed the English Channel with 11,000 men and laid siege to Harfleur in Normandy. After five weeks the town surrendered, but Henry lost half his men to disease and battle casualties. He decided to march his army northeast to Calais, where he would meet the English fleet and return to England. At Agincourt, however, a vast French army of 20,000 men stood in his path, greatly outnumbering the exhausted English archers, knights, and men-at-arms.

The battlefield lay on 1,000 yards of open recently plowed ground between two woods, which prevented large-scale maneuvers and thus worked to Henry’s advantage. At 11 a.m. on October 25, the battle commenced. The English stood their ground as French knights, weighed down by their heavy armor, began a slow advance across the muddy battlefield. The French were met by a furious bombardment of artillery from the English archers, who wielded innovative longbows with a range of 250 yards. French cavalrymen tried and failed to overwhelm the English positions, but the archers were protected by a line of pointed stakes. As more and more French knights made their way onto the crowded battlefield, their mobility decreased further, and some lacked even the room to raise their arms and strike a blow. At this point, Henry ordered his lightly equipped archers to rush forward with swords and axes, and the unencumbered Englishmen massacred the French.

Almost 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives (the figures vary according to source, bb) during the Battle of Agincourt, while English deaths amounted to just over 400. Regardless, with odds greater than three to one, Henry had won one of the great victories of military history.

Most importantly, the battle was a significant military blow to France and paved the way for further English conquests and successes. The French nobility, weakened by the defeat and divided among themselves, were unable to meet new attacks with effective resistance. Henry managed to subjugate Normandy in 1419, a victory that was followed by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, which betrothed Henry to King Charles VI’s daughter Catherine and named him heir to the French crown.

The Battle of Agincourt was immortalized by William Shakespeare in his play Henry V.

"Nov. 4, 1979 Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 66 people hostage, “including diplomatic staff, Marine guards and local Iranian [employees] in an assault that appears to have left the government temporarily paralyzed,” according to an account by The Washington Post’s Nicholas Cumming-Bruce.

That set off a protracted crisis that would last through the end of Jimmy Carter’s first and only term as president, and into the first day of the Reagan administration. The Iranian government, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said it would release the hostages if the United States agreed to extradite the deposed shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

But the United States refused. A week and a half later, Khomeini ordered the release of female and African American hostages, leaving 53. In April 1980, eight U.S. soldiers died in a failed rescue attempt when a helicopter collided with a transport plane. A hostage was later released due to illness. In January 1981, the United States and Iran finally reached an agreement to free the remaining 52.

By the time Iranians let them go, the hostages had spent 444 days in captivity. Thirty-six years after their capture, in December 2015, President Obama signed legislation to compensate each of the surviving 37 former hostages or the estates of 16 others who had died since their release, up to $4.4 million."

Edit: Lessons Learned from EAGLE CLAW

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a402471.pdf

This is what special ops learned 40 years ago from Operation Eagle Claw

The lessons of Eagle Claw led to the establishment of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM.

www.militarytimes.com

Operation Eagle Claw, Disaster At Desert One Brings Changes to Special Operations

The images were stark and startling after the debacle at Desert One in Iran on April 24, 1980, 37 years ago today.

sofrep.com

Territorial Timeline

The Legend of the Oregon Trail began

In 1841 the first emigrant wagon train headed for California. It left Independence, Missouri on May 1, 1841 and reached California on November 4. Two years later, wagon trains began branching to the north onto the Oregon Trail leading to the Pacific Northwest.

A party of American settlers, led by Dr. Elisha White, arrived safely at the Whitman Mission near present-day Walla Walla in 1842, after having traveled across the country by covered wagon. They brought with them a message for Dr. Marcus Whitman, informing him that his mission was to be terminated. Dr. Whitman rode back east almost non-stop to protest his removal. Having succeeded in stopping his removal, Dr. Whitman traveled home, surveying the trail to Oregon as he in order "to open a practible route and safe passage" for immigrants. Dr. White's success, followed by Marcus Whitman's ride, encouraged prospective Oregon settlers.

In 1843 the largest migration of pioneers to Oregon was underway; by October 1843, the population of the Willamette Valley was increased by 875 new settlers.



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On November 5, 2009, 13 people are killed and more than 30 others are wounded, nearly all of them unarmed soldiers, when a U.S. Army officer goes on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in central Texas. The deadly assault, carried out by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was the worst mass shooting at a U.S. military installation.

Early in the afternoon of November 5, 39-year-old Hasan, armed with a semi-automatic pistol, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (Arabic for “God is great”) and then opened fire at a crowd inside a Fort Hood processing center where soldiers who were about to be deployed overseas or were returning from deployment received medical screenings. The massacre, which left 12 service members and one Department of Defense employee dead, lasted approximately 10 minutes before Hasan was shot by civilian police and taken into custody.

The Virginia-born Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who ran a Roanoke restaurant and convenience store, graduated from Virginia Tech University and completed his psychiatry training at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2003. He went on to work at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., treating soldiers returning from war with post-traumatic stress disorder. In May 2009, he was promoted to the rank of major in the Army, and that July, was transferred to Fort Hood. Located near the city of Killeen, Fort Hood, which includes 340 square miles of facilities and homes, is the largest active-duty U.S. military post. At the time of the shootings, more than 50,000 military personnel lived and worked there, along with thousands more family members and civilian personnel.

In the aftermath of the massacre, reviews by the Pentagon and a U.S. Senate panel found Hasan’s superiors had continued to promote him despite the fact that concerns had been raised over his behavior, which suggested he had become a radical and potentially violent Islamic extremist. Among other things, Hasan stated publicly that America’s war on terrorism was really a war against Islam.

In 2013, Hasan, who was left paralyzed from the waist down as a result of shots fired at him by police attempting to stop his rampage, was tried in military court, where he acted as his own attorney. During his opening statement, he admitted he was the shooter. (Hasan had previously told a judge that in an effort to protect Muslims and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, he had gunned down the soldiers at Fort Hood who were being deployed to that nation.) For the rest of the trial, Hasan called no witnesses, presented scant evidence and made no closing argument. On August 23, 2013, a jury found Hasan guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder, and he later was sentenced to death for his crimes.

Following his conviction and sentencing, Nidal Hasan was incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to await execution. According to Chris Haug, Fort Hood's Chief of Media Relations, Hasan was also stripped of his rank and dismissed from the US Army. Hasan would only be referred to as "Inmate Nidal Hasan" going forward. On September 5, 2013, it was reported that Hasan had his beard forcibly shaved. Fort Leavenworth authorities justified their decision by citing that Hasan would be subject to Army regulations even though he had been dismissed from the Army and forfeited all pay and allowances. Despite Army regulations banning personnel from having facial hair, Hasan had begun growing a beard following the Fort Hood Shooting in 2009 by citing his religious beliefs. Although no new photos of Hasan have been released since his incarceration, military authorities have confirmed that a video recording of the forced shaving exists, as per military regulations. In response, John Galligan, Hasan's former civilian lawyer, had planned to sue the military for violating his religious beliefs. Galligan argued that a military council in 2012 had allowed Hasan to keep his beard for the duration of the trial and dismissed the Army's actions as vindictive.

On August 28, 2014, his attorney said Hasan had written a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In the letter, Hasan requested to be made a citizen of the Islamic State and included his signature and the abbreviation SoA (Soldier of Allah).

On November 5th, 2011 Neosapien was at his wedding in China. 9 years fuck.

neosapien said:

On November 5th, 2011 Neosapien was at his wedding in China. 9 years fuck.

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Congratulations bud!

neosapien said:

On November 5th, 2011 Neosapien was at his wedding in China. 9 years fuck.

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Congrats!

RIP Ken.

RIP Ken

1937 Adolf Hitler informs his military leaders in a secret meeting of his intentions of going to war


The people of Germany and many of the Reich's top leaders had no idea of the depth of their Führer's cynicism, but they would all find out sooner or later. For Germany's top Army leaders that revelation came on November 5th, 1937, when Hitler called a secret conference and bluntly outlined his plans to acquire Lebensraum at the expense of other nations.

The meeting was convened inside the Reich Chancellery in Berlin at 4:15 p.m. Incredibly, earlier on that same day, Hitler had met with Poland's ambassador and signed a treaty assuring that Germany would respect Poland's territorial rights.

Germany's highest-ranking military leaders chat during an appearance at the Nuremberg Rally in September 1936. From the left is Field Marshal von Blomberg, War Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; Colonel-General von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army; and Admiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Below: A look at Hitler's long-serving military adjutant Friedrich Hossbach - seen as a major in 1934. He took the meeting notes during the secret Führer conference on November 5th, 1937.






Only noteworthy to acknowledge, EVIL does exists.