Just took this. Have a good weekend.
Archive for June 12th, 2009
12
Jun
09
White-tailed Deer: Posing Doe
During World War I, it had to be an uncomfortable feeling to have this aircraft turn in behind you. This replica Fokker Dr I hangs in the EAA Airventure Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A very visible aircraft that immediately draws your attention as you walk into the museum.
The paint scheme is authentic, representing Lt. Hans Weiss of Jasta 11, which was under the command of Baron Manfred von Richthofen — the Red Baron — famous for his blood red Fokker Dr I. Only 320 Fokker Dr Is were ever built. Making the planes reputation even more remarkable because its Allied counterparts were built in the thousands.
Powered by a rotary engine the Dr I was slower than the then current Allied designs, but with impressive turning and climbing abilities this plane proved capable against most aircraft despite being slower. Armed with a pair of Spandau machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller it delivered a fearful punch.
With a welded aluminum frame, wooden wings and fabric stretched over, this light weight design offered little defensive protection for its pilots, which even the vaunted Red Baron discovered when he was shot down.
June 12, 1987
Reagan challenges Gorbachev
On this day in 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.
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.
“Reagan challenges Gorbachev,” The History Channel website, 2009, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=52611 [accessed Jun 12, 2009]
1099 – Crusade leaders visited the Mount of Olives where they met a hermit who urged them to assault Jerusalem.
1812 – Napoleon’s invasion of Russia began.
1838 – The Iowa Territory was organized.
1918 – The first airplane bombing raid by an American unit occurred on World War I’s Western Front in France.
1926 – Brazil quit the League of Nations in protest over plans to admit Germany.
1929 – Anne Frank was born in Germany. She wrote in her diary about growing up in occupied Amsterdam during World War II. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.
1937 – The Soviet Union executed eight army leaders under Joseph Stalin.
1963 – Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was fatally shot in front of his home in Jackson, MS.
1967 – State laws which prohibited interracial marriages were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1979 – Bryan Allen flew the Gossamer Albatross, man powered, across the English Channel.
1985 – The U.S. House of Representatives approved $27 million in aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
1992 – In a letter to the U.S. Senate, Russian Boris Yeltsin stated that in the early 1950’s the Soviet Union had shot down nine U.S. planes and held 12 American survivors.
June 12, 1942
Anne Frank receives a diary
On this day, Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father’s office. For two years, the Franks and four other families hid, fed and cared for by Gentile friends. The families were discovered by the Gestapo, which had been tipped off, in 1944. The Franks were taken to Auschwitz, where Anne’s mother died. Friends in Amsterdam searched the rooms and found Anne’s diary hidden away.
Anne and her sister were transferred to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died of typhus a month before the war ended.
Anne’s father survived Auschwitz and published Anne’s diary in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The book has been translated into some 30 languages.
“Anne Frank receives a diary,” The History Channel website, 2009, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=4000 [accessed Jun 12, 2009]
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