Take a Chance

Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape…

Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of ’safe houses’ where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.

Paper maps had some real drawbacks — they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.

Someone in MI-5 (similar to America ’s OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It’s durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.

At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.

By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, ‘games and pastimes’ was a category of item qualified for insertion into ‘CARE packages’, dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.

Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington’s, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were [located]. When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.

As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington’s also managed to add:

1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass
2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together
3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!

British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a ‘rigged’ Monopoly set — by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.

Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWs who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets.. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war.

The story wasn’t declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington’s, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.

It’s always nice when you can play that ‘Get Out of Jail’ Free’ card!

Above sent to me by Jeanne; she has her sources, though it appears the story first appeared in mental_floss and at the mental_floss Blog in 2007.

Who’s Buried in the History Books?

RONALD REAGAN deserves posterity’s honor, and so it makes sense that the capital’s airport and a major building there are named for him. But the proposal to substitute his image for that of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill is a travesty that would dishonor the nation’s bedrock principles of union, freedom and equality — and damage its historical identity. Although slandered since his death, Grant, as general and as president, stood second only to Abraham Lincoln as the vindicator of those principles in the Civil War era.

Historian Sean Wilentz goes on to explain. Click and give it a read.

“I expect that before too long Grant will be returned to the standing he deserves — not only as the military savior of the Union but as one of the great presidents of his era, and possibly one of the greatest in all American history.”

Most interesting history line of the day

“Although the Roman Catholic Church allowed Africans to be enslaved because they were presumed to have rejected Christianity, it forbade enslaving Indians because they were believed never to have heard of Christ. Nevertheless, the Spanish were allowed to enslave Indians who attacked them.”

From an article in The Santa Fe New Mexican exploring the book The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: An Indigenous Archaeology of Contact by Michael V. Wilcox.

FDR’s first fireside chat

… was on this date in 1933.

President Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the people on the banking crisis just eight days after taking office. He began:

My friends:

I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking — to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks.

You may read or listen to the entire talk here.

In all, Roosevelt gave about 30 Fireside Chats. The National Archives describes them:

During the 1930s almost every home had a radio, and families typically spent several hours a day gathered together, listening to their favorite programs. Roosevelt called his radio talks about issues of public concern “Fireside Chats.” Informal and relaxed, the talks made Americans feel as if President Roosevelt was talking directly to them. Roosevelt continued to use fireside chats throughout his presidency to address the fears and concerns of the American people as well as to inform them of the positions and actions taken by the U.S. government.

Faces of America

I watched the third and fourth programs of the four-part series Faces of America this afternoon. (I mentioned it here yesterday.) I just thought I’d mention again that I think it’s worth your time.

The DNA analysis in the fourth episode is just amazing.

“It’s a small world after all.” Malcolm Gladwell

The four programs are online.

Bell’s Notebook

“Alexander Graham Bell’s notebook entry of 10 March 1876 describes his successful experiment with the telephone. Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, ‘Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.’”

Take a look at the entry in Bell’s Experimental Notebook

Faces of America

I watched the first two programs (55 minutes each) of the PBS series Faces of America this evening. I found the shows to be interesting, informative, moving and enjoyable. I encourage you to find time to view the series; all four episodes are currently online.

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Harvard scholar turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans — professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander, chef Mario Batali, comedian Stephen Colbert, novelist Louise Erdrich, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, musician Yo-Yo Ma, director Mike Nichols, Her Majesty Queen Noor, television host/heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, actress Meryl Streep, and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.

Here’s a spoiler for you — Eva Longoria and Yo-Yo Ma have a common ancestor.

Thanks to my cousin Christina for the reminder. Christina wants us to have our DNA tested to confirm that our mothers’ father is the same man. What makes it interesting is that our mothers were born just 10 weeks apart.

And, yes it’s a documentary, but it really is worth watching.

The Amistad Case

… was handed down by the Supreme Court on this date in 1841.

The National Archives has a web page on the Amistad case with links to images of several documents. The Archives summarizes:

In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. This abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. On July 1, 1839, the Africans seized the ship, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered the planters to sail to Africa. On August 24, 1839, the Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY, by the U.S. brig Washington. The planters were freed and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven, CT, on charges of murder. Although the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans continued to be held in confinement as the focus of the case turned to salvage claims and property rights. President Van Buren was in favor of extraditing the Africans to Cuba. However, abolitionists in the North opposed extradition and raised money to defend the Africans. Claims to the Africans by the planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the brig led the case to trial in the Federal District Court in Connecticut. The court ruled that the case fell within Federal jurisdiction and that the claims to the Africans as property were not legitimate because they were illegally held as slaves. The case went to the Supreme Court in January 1841, and former President John Quincy Adams argued the defendants’ case. Adams defended the right of the accused to fight to regain their freedom. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, and 35 of them were returned to their homeland. The others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial.

In 1997 Steven Spielberg directed a fine movie concering the case with Anthony Hopkins portraying John Quincy Adams. Morgan Freeman and Anna Paquin are other “stars” in the film, but many critics thought Djimon Honsou as the leader of mutiny, Joseph Cinqué, was the heart of the film. Retired Justice Harry Blackmun played Justice Joseph Story.

Pancho Villa

… and his forces attacked Columbus, New Mexico, on this date in 1916.

Why Columbus? A series of circumstances and events: Columbus had a garrison of about 600 U.S. soldiers and the U.S. had taken sides against Villa and for Venustiano Carranza in the continuing Mexican revolutions. Villa had been sold blank ammunition by an arms dealer in the town. A few days earlier 10 Mexicans had been “accidentally” burned to death while in custody in El Paso during a “routine” delousing with gasoline.

The attack at dawn lasted about three hours before American troops chased Villa’s forces into Mexico. The town was burned and 17 Americans, mostly private citizens, were killed. About 100 of Villa’s troops were reportedly killed. The arms dealer was absent from Columbus that morning. He had a dental appointment in El Paso.

The next day President Wilson ordered General Jack Pershing and 5,000 America troops into Mexico to capture Villa. This “Punitive Expedition” was often mis-directed by Mexican citizens and Villa allegedly hid in the dust thrown up by Pershing’s vehicles. (The American Army used aircraft for reconnaissance for the first time. This is considered the beginning of the Army Air Corps.)

Unsuccessful in the hunt, by February 1917 the United States and Pershing turned their attention to the war in Europe. Minor clashes with Mexican irregulars continued to disturb the border from 1917 to 1919. Engagements took place near Buena Vista, Mexico, on 1 December 1917; in San Bernardino Canyon, Mexico, on 26 December 1917; near La Grulla, Texas, on 8-9 January 1918; at Pilares, Mexico, about 28 March 1918; at Nogales, Arizona, on 27 August 1918; and near El Paso, Texas, on 15-16 June 1919.

NewMexiKen’s very own grandfather served in Columbus during World War I, making him the first NewMexiKen.

Villa, born Doroteo Arango, surrendered to the Mexican Government in 1920 and retired on a general’s pay. He was assassinated in 1923.

Columbus photo via New Mexico Magazine.

The February Revolution

… began in Russia 93 years ago today.

The February Revolution was the first stage of the Russian Revolution. Mostly bloodless, it led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Ultimately, the regime that began in the February Revolution was replaced during the October (Bolshevik) Revolution.

Here’s some contemporary reports from The New York Times.

(Russia was still using the Julian Calendar in 1917. Hence, March 8 elsewhere was February 23 in Russia.)

The Boston ‘Massacre’

On this date in 1770 —

It began when a young barber’s apprentice by the name of Edward Garrick shouted an insult at Hugh White, a soldier of the 29th Regiment on sentry duty in front of the Customs House (a symbol of royal authority). White gave the apprentice a knock on the ear with the butt of his rifle. The boy howled for help, and returned with a sizable and unruly crowd, cheifly boys and youths, and, pointing at White, said, “There’s the son of a bitch that knocked me down!” Someone rang the bells in a nearby church. This action drew more people into the street. The sentry found himself confronting an angry mob. He stood his ground and called for the main guard. Six men, led by a corporal, responded. They were soon joined by the officer on duty, Captain John Preston of the “29th,” with guns unloaded but with fixed bayonets, to White’s relief.

The crowd soon swelled to almost 400 men. They began pelting the soldiers with snowballs and chunks of ice. Led by a huge mulatto, Crispus Attucks, they surged to within inches of the fixed bayonets and dared the soldiers to fire. The soldiers loaded their guns, but the crowd, far from drawing back, came close, calling out, “Come on you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire if you dare, God damn you, fire and be damned, we know you dare not,” and striking at the soldiers with clubs and a cutlass.

Whereupon the soldiers fired, killing three men outright and mortally wounding two others. The mob fled. As the gunsmoke cleared, Crispus Attucks (left) and four others lay dead or dying. Six more men were wounded but survived.

Excerpt from the Boston Massacre Historical Society, which has a wonderful web site with everything about the “Massacre.”

Attorney John Adams defended the soldiers at trial. Captain Preston and six of the soldiers were acquitted. Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and branded on the thumb.

President for a day

In 1849, inauguration day, March 4th, happened to be a Sunday. James Polk’s term ended at noon that Sunday, but President-elect Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in on the Sabbath.

So who was President? Some have claimed it was Missouri senator David Rice Atchison. Atchison was President Pro-Tempore of the Senate and, as such, third in line to the presidency. Atchison must have been president for a day.

In 1821, 1877 and 1917 the inauguration was also changed because of Sunday. James Monroe’s second inauguration was on March 5, 1821. Rutherford B. Hayes took the oath of office privately on March 3. Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated for his second term on March 5.

It ought to be a national holiday

The Constitution went into effect 221 years ago today.

The Constitution was approved on September 17, 1787, and sent to the states for ratification. The required ninth state, New Hampshire, ratified it on June 21, 1788. The Confederation Congress then approved an act that called for “the first Wednesday in March next to be the time for commencing proceedings under the Constitution.”

The first Wednesday the following March was the 4th, and so the terms of the President and Vice President and members of Congress began on March 4, 1789. As it turned out, the first Congress convened on March 4, but did not actually have a quorum in either house until early April. Washington did not take the oath of office until April 30, 1789.

But officially the Constitution went into effect on March 4, 1789.

Thirty-six times in our history March 4th was inauguration day. (Four of those times — 1821, 1849, 1877, 1917 — March 4th occurred on Sunday and the inauguration was postponed until the next day.)

The 20th Amendment changed inauguration day to January 20 effective in 1937.

145 years ago today

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865.

77 years ago today

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

From the First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933.

Hear FDR speak the first part of the famous line.

The United States Department of the Interior

… was established 161 years ago today. It is the fifth in seniority among cabinet departments after State, Treasury, Defense and Justice.

The idea of setting up a separate department to handle domestic matters was put forward on numerous occasions. It wasn’t until March 3, 1849, the last day of the 30th Congress, that a bill was passed to create the Department of the Interior to take charge of the Nation’s internal affairs.

The Interior Department had a wide range of responsibilities entrusted to it: the construction of the national capital’s water system, the colonization of freed slaves in Haiti, exploration of western wilderness, oversight of the District of Columbia jail, regulation of territorial governments, management of hospitals and universities, management of public parks,and the basic responsibilities for Indians, public lands, patents, and pensions. In one way or another all of these had to do with the internal development of the Nation or the welfare of its people.

U.S. Department of the Interior

Interior manages 507 million acres of surface land, or about one-fifth of the land in the United States, including:

• 262 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management
• 95 million acres managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service
• 84 million acres managed by the National Park Service
• 56 million acres managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs
• 8.6 million acres managed by the Bureau of Reclamation

Yours truly was a senior executive with Interior from January 1999 through January 2003.

The Star Spangled Banner

… became the official national anthem of the United States on this date in 1931. You know what that means? For 155 years is was not the official national anthem. For just 79 years it has been. We could change it. It isn’t etched in granite.

The first (of four) verses:

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Who wants a national anthem that glorifies war?

And another thing singers, it’s an anthem, not a ballad, not a salsa number, not a rap. It’s an anthem, “a solemn patriotic song officially adopted by a country as an expression of national identity.”

Witch way did they go?

The examination of witnesses at the Salem Meeting House began on this date in 1692. Before the 17-month ordeal was over, 25 had died — nineteen executed by hanging, one man tortured to death, and five who succumbed to conditions while in jail. More than 160 people were accused, most jailed and many deprived of property and legal rights. Those who confessed and accused others were saved; those who maintained their innocence were executed.

B & O

On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. railway chartered for commercial transportation of freight and passengers. Investors hoped a railroad would allow Baltimore, the second largest U.S. city at that time, to successfully compete with New York for western trade. New Yorkers were profiting from easy access to the Midwest via the Erie Canal.

Construction began at Baltimore harbor on July 4, 1828. Local dignitary Charles Carroll, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the first stone.

The initial line of track, a 13-mile stretch to Ellicott’s Mills (now Ellicott City), Maryland, opened in 1830. The Tom Thumb, a steam engine designed by Peter Cooper, negotiated the route well enough to convince skeptics that steam traction worked along steep, winding grades.

Library of Congress

The railroad finally connected Baltimore to the Ohio River (at Wheeling) in 1852. In the modern U.S. Here & Now version of Monopoly, the B&O has been replaced with John F. Kennedy Airport.

The bastards!

It was on this date in 1861 that Congress organized the Territory of Colorado and stole the Rio Grande headwaters, the San Luis Valley and a big chunk of plains from New Mexico.

Cooper Union

Abraham Lincoln, a one-term former congressman, spoke in at the Cooper Union in New York City on this date in 1860. Many think Lincoln’s “Cooper Union Address” propelled him to the presidency.

American Rhetoric has the speech text, and the audio of a reading in 2004 by Sam Waterston. Lincoln concluded:

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man – such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care – such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance – such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

NewMexiKen likes that line — “contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong.”

Flags of Our Fathers

As I mentioned in a comment to yesterday’s post on the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, I decided to read James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers.

I’m about three-quarters of the way through the book — including the flag raising, which was on day five of the 35-day battle. I highly recommend Bradley’s book if you have any interest in this event, the Marines, World War II or military history. Bradley tells the story of the six flag-raisers and the battle. Bradley’s father was one of the six in the photograph, a Navy medic and the longest-surviving of the six, three of whom died later in the battle on Iwo Jima. Altogether 6,821 Americans were killed and another 19,217 wounded.

EIght-four marines were awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II. Twenty-seven were for action on Iwo Jima.

Marine Sergeant Bill Genaust had a movie camera that day. This film — and the famous photograph — were taken when the second, a replacement flag was raised. Secretary of Navy James Forrestal (present at the battle) requested the first flag that had been raised 90 minutes earlier to the cheers of the marines on the beaches below. A battalion commander sent up a second, much larger flag. The first was taken down as the second was raised — but the first flag was stored in the battalion safe, not given to Forrestal. It, the significant but less famous flag, is now on display at the Marine Museum. The iconic flag seen here was, according to Bradley, shredded by the wind after a few weeks.

Thanks to Jill for pointing me in the right direction.

American Progress

… In a recent Times story about the Tea Party movement, [Glenn] Beck’s Fox News show comes up again and again as the bolt of lightning that illuminated the dark sky of Obama’s America for the—mostly aging—people who are turning to radical anti-government politics for answers. One of them is a sixty-six-year-old woman from Sandpoint, Idaho, named Pam Stout.

There’s nothing new about Mrs. Stout. She’s a familiar figure in American life, always latent, but coming to the surface in national emergencies. Richard Hofstadter described her mental world in detail. In the seventeen-eighties she lived in Sheffield, Massachusetts, during a period of tight credit and land foreclosures and was sympathetic to the farmers’ uprising known as Shay’s Rebellion that began there. In the eighteen-fifties she was a non-voting constituent of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. In the eighteen-nineties she was the wife of a Nebraska farmer who joined the People’s Party and voted for William Jennings Bryan and free silver. In the nineteen-thirties desperate poverty drove her to fall for the simple solutions of Huey Long’s left-wing demagoguery, or Father Coughlin’s right-wing demagoguery, which often sounded similar. In the nineteen-fifties she listened avidly to radio personalities like Fulton Lewis, Jr., and Walter Winchell, thought President Eisenhower was a knowing agent of the Communist Party, and was a passionate supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy. In 2001 she knew that the Bush Administration orchestrated 9/11. In 2008 she showed up at Sarah Palin rallies.

…

George Packer, from a piece about Glenn Beck at The New Yorker

65 years ago today

Within a month, three of the six pictured were killed in battle. The remaining three marines became celebrities in a savings bond drive. The photo, the second taken of a flag raising on Mount Suribachi that day, won the Pulitzer Prize. The flag and the smaller one used in the earlier flag-raising are in the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia.

Buena Vista

United States General Zachary Taylor was victorious over Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna in the Battle of Buena Vista on February 23, 1847. Santa Anna’s loss at Buena Vista, coupled with his defeat by General Winfield Scott at the Battle of Cerro Gordo in April of that year, secured U.S. victory in the Mexican American War.

The Battle of Buena Vista was fought near Monterrey in northern Mexico. The 5,000 men fighting under General Taylor’s command used heavy artillery fire to turn back nearly 14,000 Mexican troops. During the night, the Mexican army retreated, but Taylor did not pursue.

Library of Congress