Net Topics Wednesday, June 28: First Federal Holidays ...... & Bald Eagles
Embedded Files
The US Congress establishes the 1st federal holidays
(New Year Day, July 4th, Thanksgiving, and Christmas).
On this day in 1870, was the creation of Federal Holidays, when Congress passed the first federal holiday law, the federal government employed approximately 5,300 workers in Washington, DC, and approximately 50,600 around the country. The distinction between federal employees working in the District of Columbia and those elsewhere proved important because the initial holiday act only applied to the federal workforce in Washington, DC. Federal employees in other parts of the country did not receive holiday benefits until at least 1885, as federal holidays were initially interpreted as only applying to federal workers in the District of Columbia.
The first four congressionally designated federal holidays were created in 1870, when Congress granted paid time off to federal workers in the District of Columbia for New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.
In 1880, George Washington’s Birthday was included. In 1885, Congress extended holiday coverage for some holidays to all federal employees. Although Thanksgiving Day was included in the first holiday bill of 1870, it was not until 1941 that Congress specifically designated the fourth Thursday of November as the official date.
Since 1888, Congress has added seven federal holidays, creating Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) in 1888, Labor Day in 1894, Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) in 1938, Inauguration Day in 1957 (quadrennially and only celebrated in the District of Columbia), Columbus Day in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday in 1983, and Juneteenth in 2021. In 1954, Armistice Day was broadened to honor Americans who fought in World War II and the Korean conflict, and the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans Day. In 1968, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was enacted to “provide for uniform annual observances” of Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day.
Additionally, the Monday Holiday Law established Columbus Day to be celebrated on the second Monday in October. In 1975, Veterans Day celebrations were returned to November 11 by Congress.
In 1870, when Congress passed the first federal holiday law, the federal government employed approximately 5,300 workers in Washington, DC, and approximately 50,600 around the country. The distinction between federal employees working in the District of Columbia and those elsewhere proved important because the initial holiday act only applied to the federal workforce in Washington, DC. Federal employees in other parts of the country did not receive holiday benefits until at least 1885, as federal holidays were initially interpreted as only applying to federal workers in the District of Columbia.
Bald Eagles
Removed from the Endangered Species List in 2007
On June 28, 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Bald Eagle from the federal endangered species list. In the United States, there may be no greater avian icon — or impressive wildlife comeback story — than the Bald Eagle.
The shaggy, fierce-eyed bird has been our national symbol since 1782. It wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s that Bald Eagles became an emblem of the environmental movement as their numbers plummeted from the effects of the pesticide DDT. Once DDT was banned and the species was fully protected under the fledgling Endangered Species Act, however, eagle numbers began to rebound, gradually at first and then with increasing vigor.
Developed in the 1940s, DDT — short for dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane — was one of the first synthetic insecticides. Its effectiveness made it popular, but it came at a cost: DDT residue began to wash off agricultural fields and into aquatic ecosystems, and soon Bald Eagles and other large predatory birds across the country were eating contaminated fish. Ingesting the chemicals caused eagle eggshells to become so thin that large numbers of nests failed.
Rachel Carson's seminal 1962 book Silent Spring helped to spark the environmental movement and exposed the hazards of rampant pesticide use on birds and other wildlife. The Environmental Protection Agency eventually banned DDT a decade later, just two years after the agency was established.
Legal protection of Bald Eagles themselves proceeded in a more piecemeal fashion. It began with the passage of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918. Then, in 1940, the Bald Eagle Protection Act (now the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act) expanded the law's reach, prohibiting the killing or possession of Bald Eagles or their feathers, eggs, or nests. Some eagle populations were listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act, which became law in 1967; this protection was maintained with the passage of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973.
Finally, in 1978, ESA protection expanded to include Bald Eagles in all 48 contiguous states. (The eagle population in Alaska had remained healthy and was never in need of listing.) The resulting efforts to restore the species went beyond the simple elimination of DDT use: eagles' nests and habitat were now strictly protected from human disturbance of all sorts.
It worked. In 1963, when the species was at its lowest ebb, there were only an estimated 417 breeding pairs of Bald Eagles in the lower 48 states. By 1997, this number had increased to more than 5,000.
The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed “delisting” the Bald Eagle in 1999, based on the fact that recovery goals for all regions of the country had largely been met a decade before — and populations were still on the rise. In 2007, it became official: the Bald Eagle was no longer endangered, or even threatened. Our national emblem was back.
Net Discussion Questions:
With a Federal Holiday right around the corner (Independence Day), what are your plans to celebrate?
Bald Eagles…have you seen any in your area?
Net Topics Monday, June 26: Field Day ...... & Windows 98
ARRL Field Day
2023 ARRL Field Day June 24-25
ARRL Field Day
ARRL Field Day is the most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June, more than 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.
Net Topic Question:
Tell us about your field day!
Did you participate in field day this past weekend? Did you participate with a club or solo? Did you make a lot of contacts?
Windows 98
Released to the General Public June 25, 1998
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to manufacturing on May 15, 1998, and generally to retail on June 25, 1998. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit and 32-bit[3] monolithic product with the boot stage based on MS-DOS.[4]
Net Topic Question:
Do you remember the first computer you owned that ran Microsoft’s Windows 98 operating system on it? Or do you recall the first desktop computer you owned that ran a Microsoft Windows operating system?
Net Topics Wednesday, June 21: Summer Solstice ...... and Missing Submersible
The summer solstice is TODAY: 5 things to know about the longest day of the year
The summer solstice is upon us: Wednesday, June 21, is the longest day of 2023, and the start of the summer season, for anyone living north of the equator.
Technically speaking, the summer solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer, or 23.5 degrees north latitude. This will occur at exactly 10:57 am Eastern Wednesday.
1) Why do we have a summer solstice, anyway?
The summer and winter solstices, the seasons, and the changing length of daylight hours throughout the year are all due to one fact: Earth spins on a tilted axis.
The tilt — possibly caused by a massive object hitting Earth billions of years ago — means that for half the year, the North Pole is pointed toward the sun. For the other half of the year, the South Pole gets more light.
2) How many hours of sunlight will I get on the 21st?
That depends on where you live. The farther north you are, the more sunlight you’ll see during the solstice. The northernmost latitudes will see an entire 24 hours of sunlight, while most of the US will see anywhere between 14 and 16 hours.
On the chance you live near the Arctic Circle, the sun never really sets during the solstice.
3) Is the solstice the latest sunset of the year?
Not necessarily. Just because June 21 is the longest day of the year for the Northern Hemisphere doesn’t mean every location has its earliest sunrise or latest sunset on that day.
If you live in Washington, DC, the latest sunsets will start the day after the solstice, the 22nd.
4) Is the solstice really the first day of summer?
Well, depends: Are you asking a meteorologist or an astronomer?
Meteorologically speaking, summer is defined as the hottest three months of the year, winter is the coldest three months, and the in-between months are spring and fall.
Here’s how NOAA breaks it down:
Meteorological spring includes March, April, and May; meteorological summer includes June, July, and August; meteorological fall includes September, October, and November; and meteorological winter includes December, January, and February.
So, by this meteorological definition, summer has already started.
But astronomically speaking, yes, summer begins when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer, which is today.
5) Are there solstices and equinoxes on other planets?
Yes! All the planets in our solar system rotate on a tilted axis and therefore have seasons. Some of these tilts are minor (like Mercury, which is tilted at 2.11 degrees). But others are more like Earth (23.5 degrees) or are even more extreme (Uranus is tilted 98 degrees!).
Saturn is tilted 27 degrees relative to the sun, and equinoxes on the planet are less frequent than on Earth. Saturn only sees an equinox about once every 15 years (because it takes Saturn 29 years to complete one orbit around the sun).
During Saturn’s equinox, its rings become unusually dark. That’s because these rings are only around 30 feet thick, and when light hits them head-on, there’s not much surface area to reflect.
-voxmedia
“Titan” The Missing Submersible
touring the Titanic
An international team of rescuers was racing against time on Tuesday to search an area of the North Atlantic larger than Connecticut for a deep-diving submersible and its five occupants, with less than two days of oxygen believed to be remaining on board and a staggering list of logistical challenges complicating the operation.
The submersible, the Titan, was more than halfway into what should have been a two-and-a-half-hour dive to the ruins of the Titanic when it lost contact with a chartered research ship on Sunday morning. Leaders in the submersible craft industry had warned for years of possible “catastrophic” problems with the craft’s design, and worried that the Titan had not followed standard certification procedures.
Operated by OceanGate Expeditions, which has provided tours of the Titanic wreck since 2021, the submersible was believed to have set out with 96 hours’ worth of oxygen. As of 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, the craft probably had about 40 hours of breathable air left, said Capt. Jamie Frederick of the U.S. Coast Guard.
Search aircraft from the United States and Canada have been scanning the surface, while sonar buoys have been pinging the depths in hopes of locating the lost submersible, Captain Frederick said.
Even if the Titan can be located — in a remote patch of ocean where the seafloor lies more than two miles below the choppy surface — retrieving it may not be easy. To recover objects off the seafloor, the U.S. Navy uses a remote-operated vehicle that can reach depths of 20,000 feet. But ships that carry such a vehicle normally move no faster than about 20 miles per hour, and the Titanic wreck lies about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Here’s what to know:
· Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, was piloting the submersible, according to the company. The other four occupants are Hamish Harding, a British businessman and explorer; the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French maritime expert who has been on over 35 dives to the Titanic wreck site.
· Spots in the tours go for a price of up to $250,000 as part of a booming high-risk travel industry. OceanGate has described the trip on its website as a “thrilling and unique travel experience.”
· In 2018, more than three dozen people, including oceanographers, submersible company executives and deep-sea explorers, warned that they had “unanimous concern” about the craft’s design, and worried that the Titan had not followed standard certification procedures. In a 2019 blog post, the company said that “bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.”
-NY Times
Net Discussion Questions:
All the planets in our solar system rotate on a tilted axis and therefore have seasons. How did this “tilting” occur?
What is the difference between a submarine and a submersible similar to Titan?
Net Topics Monday, June 19: St. Peter's Festival ...... and Camping
Welcoming New Monday Net Control Operator KC1SOO, Brian, of Gloucester
St. Peter's Fiesta
St. Peter's Fiesta is a five-day festival honoring the patron saint of the fisherman, St. Peter. Hosted by the Italian American community of Gloucester, Massachusetts,[1] the festival involves a carnival, seine boat races, and the Greasy Pole contest, and attracts people from all over.
A man attempts to reach the flag during the Greasy Pole contest on Sunday, July 1, 2007.
History
The festival began in 1927 when a life-sized statue of St. Peter was enshrined by fishermen in the heart of Gloucester's Italian district. The fishermen and their families began to pray to their patron saint, and soon plans for a religious procession on June 29 came about. They grew into the festival it is today.[1]
No festival was held from 1942–45, nor in 2020–21.
Camping
Camping is a form of outdoor recreation involving overnight stays with a basic temporary shelter such as a tent. Camping can also include a recreational vehicle, a permanent tent, a shelter such as a bivy or tarp, or no shelter at all. Typically, participants leave developed areas to spend time outdoors, in pursuit of activities providing them enjoyment or an educational experience. Spending the night away from home distinguishes camping from day-tripping, picnicking, and other outdoor activities.
Net Discussion Questions:
Do you or have you attended any of the St. Peter’s Fiesta events?
During the good weather seasons, do you go on camping trips?
2.b Do you use a tent, RV or Popup camper Etc.
Net Topics Wednesday, June 14: Flag Day ...... and One Nation Under God
June 14 - Flag Day (United States)
In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777, by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. The Flag Resolution, passed on June 14, 1777, stated:
"Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."
The United States Army also celebrates the U.S. Army birthday on this date; Congress adopted "the American continental army" after reaching a consensus position in the Committee of the Whole on June 14, 1775.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day; on August 3, 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress. Flag Day is not an official federal holiday. Title 36 of the United States Code, Subtitle I, Part A, CHAPTER 1, § 110 is the official statute on Flag Day; however, it is at the president's discretion to officially proclaim the observance.
On June 14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday, beginning in the town of Rennerdale. New York Consolidated Laws designate the second Sunday in June as Flag Day, a state holiday.
Perhaps the oldest continuing Flag Day parade is in Fairfield, Washington. Beginning in 1909 or 1910, Fairfield has held a parade every year since, with the possible exception of 1918 and 2020, and celebrated the "Centennial" parade in 2010, along with some other commemorative events.
Appleton, Wisconsin, claims to be the oldest National Flag Day parade in the nation, held annually since 1950.
Quincy, Massachusetts, has had an annual Flag Day parade since 1952 and claims it "is the longest-running parade of its kind" in the U.S. The largest Flag Day parade had been held annually in Troy, New York until 2017, which based its parade on the Quincy parade and typically draws 50,000 spectators. In addition, the Three Oaks, Michigan, Flag Day Parade is held annually on the weekend of Flag Day and is a three-day event and it claims to have the largest flag day parade in the nation as well as the oldest.
Why Eisenhower Added ‘Under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance During the Cold War
On June 14, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill to insert the phrase “under God” into the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance that children recited every morning in school. Previously, the pledge—originally written in 1892—had contained no reference to religion.
The push to add “under God” to the pledge gained momentum during the second Red Scare, a period when U.S. politicians were keen to assert the moral superiority of U.S. capitalism over Soviet communism, which many conservatives regarded as “godless.”
Court cases about whether students should recite the pledge had already reached the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1940s, before “under God” was added. In the decades after the 1954 addition, there were numerous other lawsuits related to the pledge.
The Original Pledge Was for Marketing
The first version of the Pledge of Allegiance was written for the Columbian Exposition in October 1892 to mark the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas. Historians have long identified its author as Francis Bellamy, an ordained Baptist minister and Christian socialist who got a job working for the family magazine Youth's Companion.
As a marketing gimmick, Bellamy put together a program for schools to use to mark the Columbian Exposition, and successfully lobbied Congress to support the program. Part of this program was a Pledge of Allegiance, which originally read:
“I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands—one Nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.”
Like the magazine’s other marketing strategies, which included sending flags and pictures of George Washington to schools, the pledge was part of a push for “Americanization.” Bellamy was one of many Protestant Americans of northern European heritage who believed that new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, many of them Catholic, were harmful to the “American” way of life, and that they needed to assimilate.
Pledge Standardized During World War II
Over the next few decades, schools and organizations that chose to recite a pledge used variations of Youth’s Companion’s version or made up their own pledges. One June 22, 1942—just over six months after the United States entered World War II—the U.S. government officially recognized a standard version of the pledge for the first time when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the U.S. Flag Code.
The pledge in the Flag Code was a version of Youth’s Companion’s original pledge, and still contained no reference to God. Even so, the issue of whether children should recite the pledge in school came up in two Supreme Court cases around this time.
In February 1954, Eisenhower attended a sermon by Reverend George Docherty at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. that greatly influenced his ideas on the subject.
“To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life,” Docherty preached. He discounted the right of atheists to object, arguing that an “atheistic American is a contradiction in terms,” because if “you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.”
With Eisenhower on board, the campaign to adopt the phrase had more momentum. On June 14, Flag Day, Eisenhower signed a law adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Two years later, Eisenhower also made “In God We Trust” the United States’ official motto (it did not appear on paper currency or stamps before the 1950s).
Net Topics Monday, June 7: Tear Down the Wall!! ...... and George Herbert Bush Born in Milton
President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall
On June 12, 1987, in one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany.
In 1945, following Germany’s defeat in World War II, the nation’s capital, Berlin, was divided into four sections, with the Americans, British and French controlling the western region and the Soviets gaining power in the eastern region. In May 1949, the three western sections came together as the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), with the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) being established in October of that same year. In 1952, the border between the two countries was closed and by the following year East Germans were prosecuted if they left their country without permission. In August 1961, the Berlin Wall was erected by the East German government to prevent its citizens from escaping to the West. Between 1949 and the wall’s inception, it’s estimated that over 2.5 million East Germans fled to the West in search of a less repressive life.e Cold War
With the wall as a backdrop, President Reagan declared to a West Berlin crowd in 1987, “There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.” He then called upon his Soviet counterpart: “Secretary General Gorbachev, if you seek peace—if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe—if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Reagan then went on to ask Gorbachev to undertake serious arms reduction talks with the United States.
Most listeners at the time viewed Reagan’s speech as a dramatic appeal to Gorbachev to renew negotiations on nuclear arms reductions. It was also a reminder that despite the Soviet leader’s public statements about a new relationship with the West, the U.S. wanted to see action taken to lessen Cold War tensions. Happily for Berliners, though, the speech also foreshadowed events to come: Two years later, on November 9, 1989, joyful East and West Germans did break down the infamous barrier between East and West Berlin. Germany was officially reunited on October 3, 1990.
Gorbachev, who had been in office since 1985, stepped down from his post as Soviet leader in 1991. Reagan, who served two terms as president, from 1981 to 1989, died on June 5, 2004, at age 93. Gorbachev died on August 30, 2022, at age 91. History.com
George Herbert Walker Is Born
June 12, 1924 The first Bush president, George Herbert Walker Bush, is born in Milton, Massachusetts. Bush served in the Navy during World War II and survived a harrowing ordeal when his torpedo bomber was shot down over the Pacific. Bush drifted in the water for several hours until a U.S. submarine picked him up. He was later awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in combat.
After the war, Bush married Barbara Pierce, attended Yale University, worked in the oil business and then devoted his life to public service. After serving two terms as a U.S. representative from Texas, he served in several diplomatic and intelligence capacities, including U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1971), chairman of the Republican National Committee (1973), chief envoy to the People’s Republic of China (1974) and briefly as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from January 1976 to January 1977. In 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan chose Bush to be his running mate; Bush went on to serve two terms as vice president. In 1988, Bush won the presidency and presided over the end of the Cold War between Russia and the U.S. and led America in the 1991 defeat of Saddam Hussein during Operation Desert Storm.
Bush was the father of another president, George Walker Bush, and of Jeb Bush, the two-term governor of Florida. Barbara Bush died on April 17, 2018, in Houston, Texas. George H.W. Bush died on November 30, 2018, also in Houston.
Net Topics Wednesday, June 7: Gandhi’s First Act of Civil Disobedience ...... and Dino's Birthday
Today in 1906: Gandhi’s first act of mass civil disobedience – satyagraha (suh·tee·aa·gruh·huh)
In an event that would have dramatic repercussions for the people of India, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a young Indian lawyer working in South Africa, refuses to comply with racial segregation rules on a South African train and is forcibly ejected at Pietermaritzburg.
Born in India and educated in England, Gandhi traveled to South Africa in early 1893 to practice law under a one-year contract. Settling in Natal, he was subjected to racism and South African laws that restricted the rights of Indian laborers. Gandhi later recalled one such incident, in which he was removed from a first-class railway compartment and thrown off a train, as his moment of truth. From thereon, he decided to fight injustice and defend his rights as an Indian and a man.
When his contract expired, he spontaneously decided to remain in South Africa and launch a campaign against legislation that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. He formed the Natal Indian Congress and drew international attention to the plight of Indians in South Africa. In 1906, the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians, and Gandhi organized his first campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience. After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement with the South African government.
In 1914, Gandhi returned to India and lived a life of abstinence and spirituality on the periphery of Indian politics. He supported Britain in the First World War but in 1919 launched a new satyagraha in protest of Britain’s mandatory military draft of Indians. Hundreds of thousands answered his call to protest, and by 1920 he was leader of the Indian movement for independence. Always nonviolent, he asserted the unity of all people under one God and preached Christian and Muslim ethics along with his Hindu teachings. The British authorities jailed him several times, but his following was so great that he was always released.
After World War II, he was a leading figure in the negotiations that led to Indian independence in 1947. Although hailing the granting of Indian independence as the “noblest act of the British nation,” he was distressed by the religious partition of the former Mogul Empire into India and Pakistan. When violence broke out between Hindus and Muslims in India in 1947, he resorted to fasts and visits to the troubled areas in an effort to end India’s religious strife. On January 30, 1948, he was on one such prayer vigil in New Delhi when he was fatally shot by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist who objected to Gandhi’s tolerance for the Muslims.
Known as Mahatma, or “the great soul,” during his lifetime, Gandhi’s persuasive methods of civil disobedience influenced leaders of civil rights movements around the world, especially Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States.
6 Things You Might Not Know About Gandhi
1. Gandhi was a teenage newlywed.
At 13, Mohandas Gandhi, whose father was the “diwan,” or chief minister, of a series of small princely states in western India, wed Kasturba Makanji (1869-1944), then also a teen and the daughter of a merchant. It was an arranged marriage, and Gandhi had been engaged to Kasturba since he was seven. The couple went on to have four sons
2. Gandhi got his start as an activist in South Africa, not India.
In 1888, Gandhi left India to study law in London, England. When he returned to his homeland in 1891, he had difficulty finding employment as a lawyer, so in 1893 he traveled to South Africa, where an Indian firm had given him a one-year contract to do legal work. In South Africa, which was then under control of the British and the Dutch (known as Boers), he, like other Indians there, encountered frequent discrimination. This mistreatment prompted Gandhi to begin campaigning for the civil rights of Indians in South Africa, and he eventually developed his concept of “satyagraha” (“firmness in truth”), or nonviolent resistance. Despite being arrested and imprisoned multiple times, Gandhi remained in South Africa until 1914. Afterward, he returned to India, where he became a transformative figure and led the nonviolent social action movement for his homeland’s independence.
3. Gandhi was murdered by a fellow Hindu.
While walking to a prayer meeting in New Delhi on the evening of January 30, 1948, Gandhi was shot three times at close range by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse. The gunman blamed Gandhi for going along with the 1947 plan that partitioned British India along religious lines into two new independent states: Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan.
4. Gandhi was a man of peace, but never won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gandhi was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1937, 1938, 1939 and 1947, but never received the award, which was first handed out in 1901. He also was nominated in 1948, the year he was assassinated, but the Nobel committee opted not to bestow him with the award posthumously.
5. Gandhi was extremely shy as a child.
When Gandhi was growing up, few people would’ve predicted he’d one day attract millions of followers, be considered the father of his nation. In fact, as a boy, Gandhi was a middling student and extremely shy. He even described running home from school so he wouldn’t have to talk to anybody.
6. Mohandas and Indira weren’t related.
Despite sharing a last name, Mohandas Gandhi and Indira Gandhi (1917-84), India’s prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and 1980 to 1984, weren’t kin.
Happy 106th Birthday Dean Martin - American singer and actor
Dean Martin, byname of Dino Paul Crocetti, (born June 7, 1917, Steubenville, Ohio, U.S.—died December 25, 1995, Beverly Hills, California), American singer and actor who was a member, with Jerry Lewis, of one of the most popular comedy teams on stage and television and in motion pictures for 10 years. Martin then moved on to a successful solo career as a singer, an actor, and a television variety show host.
During his younger days Martin worked locally in steel mills, delivered bootleg liquor, was a prizefighter, and had a job in a casino. After appearing in local nightspots as a pop singer, he was hired by bandleader Sammy Watkins and began to tour. During an engagement in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1946, he and another performer, comedian Jerry Lewis, began clowning around during each other’s acts. This led to an immensely successful comedy partnership that featured Martin as a suave straight man and Lewis as an immature clown. Before long the two left New York for Hollywood. They made 16 motion pictures together, beginning with My Friend Irma (1949) and ending with Hollywood or Bust (1956).
Despite predictions that Martin would fail as a solo act, his career prospered after he ended the partnership with Lewis. Martin struck gold with hit songs such as “That’s Amore” (1953), “Memories Are Made of This” (1955), and “Everybody Loves Somebody” (1964). Simultaneously, he kept his acting career alive, beginning with the World War II drama The Young Lions (1958), in which he starred with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. That same year he released another hit single, “Volare.” His first film appearance with Frank Sinatra was in Some Came Running (1958). Martin also won praise for his performances in Rio Bravo (1959), Bells Are Ringing (1960), Toys in the Attic (1963), and Airport (1970). In addition, he performed with fellow “Rat Pack” members Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. in the heist film Ocean’s Eleven (1960), the comedy western Sergeants 3 (1962), and the musical comedy Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). Martin also starred as Matt Helm in a popular series of spy spoof films: The Silencers (1966), Murderers’ Row (1966), The Ambushers (1967), and The Wrecking Crew (1968).
Martin was a staple on television for many years. His television variety show, The Dean Martin Show, began an eight-year run in 1965 and was followed by The Dean Martin Comedy Hour (1973–74), the latter a series of celebrity “roasts.” He continued to host celebrity roasts occasionally through 1984. Although Martin often seemed to be intoxicated during his television and nightclub performances—an impression aided by his easygoing manner, ever-present glass, and slurred singing style—he and his friends insisted it was part of his act.
Net Topics Monday, June 5: Robert F. Kennedy Is Fatally Shot and 1st Report on AIDS is Published
Robert F. Kennedy Is Fatally Shot
Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He was pronounced dead a day later, on June 6, 1968.
The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election. Robert Kennedy, John’s younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support.
Kennedy was perceived by many to be the only person in American politics capable of uniting the people. He was beloved by the minority community for his integrity and devotion to the civil rights cause. After winning California’s primary, Kennedy was in the position to receive the Democratic nomination and face off against Richard Nixon in the general election.
As star athletes Rafer Johnson and Roosevelt Grier accompanied Kennedy out a rear exit of the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward with a rolled up campaign poster, hiding his .22 revolver. He was only a foot away when he fired several shots at Kennedy. Grier and Johnson wrestled Sirhan to the ground, but not before five bystanders were wounded. Grier was distraught afterward and blamed himself for allowing Kennedy to be shot.
Sirhan, who was born in Palestine, confessed to the crime at his trial and received a death sentence on March 3, 1969. However, since the California State Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty sentences in 1972, Sirhan has spent the rest of his life in prison. According to the New York Times, he has since said that he believed Kennedy was “instrumental” in the oppression of Palestinians. Hubert Humphrey ended up running for the Democrats in 1968, but lost to Nixon. History.com
First Scientific Repot on
AIDS is Published
On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes an article in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report describing five cases of a rare lung infection, PCP, in young, otherwise healthy gay men in Los Angeles. It was unknown at the time, but the article is describing the effects of AIDS. Today, the article's publication is often cited as the beginning of the AIDS crisis.
The article prompted medical professionals around the country, particularly in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, to send the CDC information about similar, mysterious cases. Because it is first detected circulating among gay men, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, as it will be dubbed the following year, was colloquially referred to as “gay cancer” and formally dubbed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency before the term AIDS was coined in 1982.
AIDS is not lethal in and of itself—rather, it severely impacts the immune system’s ability to fight off illness, leaving the patient vulnerable to all manner of infections, particularly “opportunistic infections.” PCP is one such opportunistic infection, and it was one of a handful of illnesses whose increased occurrence in the year 1981 revealed that there was an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Within a few years, the AIDS epidemic became the major public health crisis of the late 20th century, although many continued to believe it only affected gay men. Due largely to the misconception that it was a “gay disease,” it would be two years before the New York Times published its first front-page article about AIDS and four years before then-President Ronald Reagan first mentioned it publicly
.
Two of the men mentioned in the study were dead by the time it was published, and the three others died a short time later. By the end of the millennium, nearly 775,000 Americans died of AIDS-related illnesses.
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