On this day:

Naval Act of 1794

The Act to Provide a Naval Armament (Sess. 1, ch. 12, 1 Stat. 350), also known as the Naval Act of 1794, or simply, the Naval Act, was passed by the 3rd United States Congress on March 27, 1794, and signed into law by President George Washington. The act authorized the construction of six frigates at a total cost of $688,888.82. These ships were the first ships of what eventually became the present-day United States Navy.

The USS United States was the first to be commissioned.

I owned a '64 Biscayne like the one in the first earthquake picture. When I lived at the house by the pond I drank a bit. Lots of trees along the 1/2 mile of driveway bore the marks of those side fins.

Ronnie was touch and go. Much worse than they let on.

Crossover. . . .

March 31st
1949 - RCA Victor
RCA Victor introduced the 45rpm single record, which had been in development since 1940. The 7-inch disc was designed to compete with the Long Playing record introduced by Columbia a year earlier. Both formats offered better fidelity and longer playing time than the 78rpm record that was currently in use. Advertisements for new record players boasted that with 45rpm records, the listener could hear up to ten records with speedy, silent, hardly noticeable changes.

It was a bit later before we started making lists, but this one was on it.

Written records about life in Florida began with the arrival of the Spanish explorer and adventurer Juan Ponce de León in 1513. Sometime between April 2 and April 8, Ponce de León waded ashore on the northeast coast of Florida, possibly near present-day St. Augustine. He called the area la Florida, in honor of Pascua florida ("feast of the flowers"), Spain's Eastertime celebration. Other Europeans may have reached Florida earlier, but no firm evidence of such achievement has been found.

On another voyage in 1521, Ponce de León landed on the southwestern coast of the peninsula, accompanied by two-hundred people, fifty horses, and numerous beasts of burden. His colonization attempt quickly failed because of attacks by native people. However, Ponce de León's activities served to identify Florida as a desirable place for explorers, missionaries, and treasure seekers.




"Zazel" makes her spectacular entrance over an astonished crowd
by Ray Setterfield

April 2, 1877 — First there was an explosion, then a puff of smoke, and then, on this day, the first human cannonball was propelled into the air about 60 feet above the heads of an astonished crowd.

She was Rosa Matilda Richter, a 14-year-old English girl who performed under the decidedly un-English name of “Zazel”. A tightrope walker and aerial acrobat, Rosa had learnt her craft from William Hunt, a Canadian who gloried under the title of The Great Farini. He was most famous for performing a high-wire walk above Niagara Falls.

In 1871 he patented the mechanism for launching a human projectile through the air into a safety net. Fortunately for Rosa, the process did not actually involve any explosive, her ejection from the “cannon” being achieved by a system of springs and tension, accompanied by a fake explosion and smoke.

Still, the London spectators who witnessed the first performance in 1877 were wildly impressed and excited. It happened at the Royal Aquarium, a place of entertainment that had been built next to Westminster Abbey the previous year and which continued to pull in crowds until it was demolished in 1903.

Despite her physical prowess and acrobatic ability, the act was not without danger for Rosa. The springs-and-tension method of propulsion – replaced in modern times by compressed air – was hardly precise and the day came, almost inevitably, when she shot through the air and missed the safety net.

Fortunate to survive, Zazel, the human cannonball, who had been playing to crowds of 20,000 in England and the United States, broke her back and was forced to retire.

When I was in high school we played Ponce de Leon in basketball. They are way the fuck out west. The bus would leave right after lunch for the away game with them. (in the 1970's not the 1570's)

Motorola’s Marty Cooper made the first call from a handheld mobile phone (distinct from car phones) to Joel S. Engel, a rival at Bell Labs, on April 3, 1973. Bell Labs had envisioned such technology as early as the late 1940s and, by Cooper’s own admission, he couldn’t help but playfully rub the monumental moment in a bit.

Cooper made the call during an interview with reporters located near a 900-MHz base station on 6th Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets in New York, to Bell Labs’ New Jersey headquarters (see a 2007 photo of Cooper below).

The call was made on a prototype of the DynaTAC (dynamic adaptive total area coverage) 8000X, which, 10 years later, would become the first such phone to be commercially released. In 1973, it weighed 1.1 kg and measured 22.86 cm long, 12.7 cm deep, and 4.44 cm wide. The prototype offered a talk time of about 20 minutes and took 10 hours to recharge. Cooper was not concerned about the limited talk time as it would be difficult to hold something of that weight and size to an ear for more than 20 minutes.

Cooper, an engineer and executive at Motorola at the time, played an important role in the development of mobile phones. His belief was that a cellular phone should be “something that would represent an individual so you could assign a number — not to a place, not to a desk, not to a home — but to a person.”

Motorola management was supportive of Cooper’s mobile phone concept and invested $100 million between 1973 and 1993 before any revenues were realized. Forty years to the day after this call was made, Cooper was named the 2013 Marconi Prize recipient on April 3, 2013.

^^^^^ He still hasn't been able to get his hooks in me. If you want to bother me, you have to do it in person. I do use the wife's old cell phone for taking pictures and recording video. Also not too bad as a computer when wifi is available.

injinji said:

^^^^^ He still hasn't been able to get his hooks in me. If you want to bother me, you have to do it in person. I do use the wife's old cell phone for taking pictures and recording video. Also not too bad as a computer when wifi is available.

Click to expand...

I still use a flip phone (tracfone)

BarnBuster said:

I still use a flip phone (tracfone)

Click to expand...

I do also, use it rarely. Pay $15 a month pre-pay. Have it for emergencies in the car. I did borrow my son's Obama phone the other day. The Waze app is pretty cool to get directions when driving, just have to turn the stereo down though...lol..

"Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters World War I.

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake.

On May 7, the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. Four days later, his request was granted.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives."

The Longest Boxing Match in History went 110 Rounds and Lasted over 7 Hours



Jack Burke on February 10, 1904


Boxer Andy Bowen (1864-1894)



Jack Burke (1869–1913) was a boxer who fought in the longest gloved ring battle on record in the late 19th century.

Burke went 110 rounds with Andy Bowen at the Olympic Club in New Orleans on April 6, 1893, in a bout which lasted 7 hours and 19 minutes. The marathon fight was called a "no contest" by referee John Duffy when neither man could continue. Burke broke all the bones in both of his hands and remained bed ridden for 6 weeks after the fight. Burke considered retiring after the fight, but chose to continue competing. Andy Bowen had originally scheduled the fight with another opponent, however after dropping out of the fight, Jack Burke, who was the latter's trainer, fought the bout instead.

It was reported that the fight went for so long, that the spectators who stayed to watch the fight had fallen asleep in their seats. It was also recorded that at round 108, with no clear end in sight, referee John Duffy made the decision that if no winner had emerged in the next 2 rounds, the bout would be ruled a no contest.

"Texas" Jack Burke died at Mublenberg Hospital in October 1913 at the age of 44.




A painting of Minoan youths boxing, from an Akrotiri fresco circa 1650 BC. This is the earliest documented use of boxing gloves.

"On April 7, 1994, violence fuels the launch of what would become the worst episode of genocide since World War II: the massacre of an estimated 500,000 to 1 million innocent civilian Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Following the first wave of massacres, Rwandan forces manage to discourage international intervention with the murder of 10 Belgian peacekeeping officers. The Tutsis, a minority group that made up about 10 percent of Rwanda’s population, received no assistance from the international community, although the United Nations later conceded that a mere 5,000 soldiers deployed at the outset would have stopped the wholesale slaughter.

The immediate roots of the 1994 genocide dated back to the early 1990s, when President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, began using anti-Tutsi rhetoric to consolidate his power among the Hutus. Beginning in October 1990, there were several massacres of hundreds of Tutsis. Although the two ethnic groups were very similar, sharing the same language and culture for centuries, the law required registration based on ethnicity. The government and army began to assemble the Interahamwe (meaning “those who attack together”) and prepared for the elimination of the Tutsis by arming Hutus with guns and machetes. In January 1994, the United Nations forces in Rwanda warned that larger massacres were imminent.

On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down. It is not known if the attack was carried out by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi military organization stationed outside the country at the time, or by Hutu extremists trying to instigate a mass killing. In any event, Hutu extremists in the military, led by Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, immediately went into action, murdering Tutsis and moderate Hutus within hours of the crash.

The Belgian peacekeepers were killed the next day, a key factor in the withdrawal of U.N. forces from Rwanda. Soon afterward, the radio stations in Rwanda were broadcasting appeals to the Hutu majority to kill all Tutsis in the country. The army and the national police directed the slaughter, sometimes threatening Hutu civilians when persuasion didn’t work. Thousands of innocent people were hacked to death with machetes by their neighbors. Despite the horrific crimes, the international community, including the United States, hesitated to take any action. They wrongly ascribed the genocide to chaos amid tribal war. President Bill Clinton later called America’s failure to do anything to stop the genocide “the biggest regret” of his administration.

It was left to the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, to begin an ultimately successful military campaign for control of Rwanda. By the summer, the RPF had defeated the Hutu forces and driven them out of the country and into several neighboring nations. However, by that time, an estimated 75 percent of the Tutsis living in Rwanda had been murdered."

Bystanders to Genocide

The author's exclusive interviews with scores of the participants in the decision-making, together with her analysis of newly declassified documents, yield a chilling narrative of self-serving caution and flaccid will—and countless missed opportunities to mitigate a colossal crime

www.theatlantic.com

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=[URL]https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=6971&context=etd

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Rwandan Genocide Could Have Been Stopped

The Rwandan genocide could have been stopped with tougher action from outside powers, according to a comprehensive study released today by Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues. Next week will mark the fifth anniversary of the genocide, in which more than...

www.hrw.org

America’s secret role in the Rwandan genocide

The long read: The violence that shocked the world in 1994 did not come from nowhere. For years, violent Tutsi rebels, backed by Uganda in full knowledge of the CIA, had been preparing for war

www.theguardian.com

The Rwandan Genocide: Could it Have Been Prevented?

The Rwandan genocide is probably the most intensive killing campaign in human history. The ethnic dimension of the Rwandan genocide was a result of a century of ethnic division, which was not characteristic of Rwandan society prior to colonial rule. One can conclude that a combination of...

www.e-ir.info

On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s legendary record of 714 homers. A crowd of 53,775 people, the largest in the history of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, was with Aaron that night to cheer when he hit a 4th inning pitch off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Al Downing. However, as Aaron was an African American who had received death threats and racist hate mail during his pursuit of one of baseball’s most distinguished records, the achievement was bittersweet.

Henry Louis Aaron Jr., born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 5, 1934, made his Major League debut in 1954 with the Milwaukee Braves, just seven years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier and became the first African American to play in the majors. Aaron, known as hard working and quiet, was the last Negro league player to also compete in the Major Leagues. In 1957, with characteristically little fanfare, Aaron, who primarily played right field, was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player as the Milwaukee Braves won the pennant. A few weeks later, his three home runs in the World Series helped his team triumph over the heavily favored New York Yankees. Although “Hammerin’ Hank” specialized in home runs, he was also an extremely dependable batter, and by the end of his career he held baseball’s career record for most runs batted in: 2,297.

Aaron spent his 23-year big league career with two organizations. He was with the Braves from 1954 to 1974—first in Milwaukee and then in Atlanta, when the franchise moved in 1966—and closed it out with two seasons back in Milwaukee for the Brewers.

Aaron hung up his cleats in 1976 with 755 career home runs—a record that stood until 2007, when it was broken by controversial slugger Barry Bonds (Bonds admitted to using steroids in 2011). Aaron's achievements didn't end when his career did, though. He went on to become one of baseball’s first African American executives, with the Atlanta Braves, and a leading spokesperson for minority hiring. Hank Aaron was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. He died on January 22, 2021, at age 86.

On this day in 1968 Jim Clark died in practice. Some say he was the greatest racing driver ever to get behind the wheel.

"On April 9, 1942, Major General Edward P. King Jr. surrenders at Bataan, Philippines—against General Douglas MacArthur’s orders—and 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans), the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender, are taken captive by the Japanese.

The prisoners were at once led 55 miles from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan peninsula, to San Fernando, on what became known as the “Bataan Death March.” At least 600 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos died because of the extreme brutality of their captors, who starved, beat, and kicked them on the way; those who became too weak to walk were bayoneted. Those who survived were taken by rail from San Fernando to POW camps, where another 16,000 Filipinos and at least 1,000 Americans died from disease, mistreatment, and starvation. If an item “Made in Japan” was found in their possession, they were immediately executed. To the Japanese military for whom surrender was not an option, the captives, surrendered by their commander, were considered cowards (“dogs”).

After the war, the International Military Tribunal, established by MacArthur, tried Lieutenant General Homma Masaharu, commander of the Japanese invasion forces in the Philippines. He was held responsible for the death march, a war crime, and was executed by firing squad on April 3, 1946".

Surrender at Bataan Led to One of the Worst Atrocities in Modern Warfare

When the Battle of Bataan ended on April 9, 1942, about 12,000 Americans and 63,000 Filipinos became prisoners of war. What followed became known as the Bataan Death March—a brutal journey that left thousands dead.

www.uso.org

What Price Surrender? The Court Martial of General Edward P. King