On this day in 1948, a deadly smog event began in Donora, Pennsylvania. It was caused by hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. Steel’s Donora Zinc Works and its American Steel & Wire plant during an atmospheric temperature inversion. It killed 20 people and caused respiratory problems for 6,000 of the 14,000 people living in Donora, a mill town on the Monongahela River 24 miles (39 km) southeast of Pittsburgh.
Many of the illnesses and deaths were initially attributed to asthma. The smog continued until it rained on Sunday, October 31, by which time 20 residents of Donora had died and approximately one third to one half of the town’s population of 14,000 residents had been sickened. Another 50 residents died of respiratory causes within a month after the incident.
The event is often credited for helping to trigger the clean-air movement in the United States, whose crowning achievement was the Clean Air Act of 1963, which required the United States Environmental Protection Agency to develop and enforce regulations to protect the general public from exposure to hazardous airborne contaminants.
Donora Wire Mill
Charcuterie for the season
Have the right Bumper Sticker!
Today is the birthday, in 1949, of American musician and record producer Garry Tallent who is the bass player with the Bruce Springsteen E Street Band. He started playing with Springsteen in 1971 and as of 2013, and not counting Springsteen himself, Tallent is the only original member of the E Street Band remaining in the band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPhWR4d3FJQ
On this day in 1977, Ali Maow Maalin, a Somali cook and health worker was the last person in the world known to have been infected with naturally occurring smallpox. Smallpox was declared to have been eradicated globally by the World Health Organization (WHO) two years later. This amazing accomplishment was made possible by vaccination.
Before the successful worldwide vaccination campaign, smallpox was a feared and deadly disease. During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 250–500 million deaths. In the early 1950s, an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year. Thanks to this successful public health campaign for vaccination and the eradication of the disease, vaccination for smallpox is no longer necessary.
Photograph by Allan Warner of two boys who came in contact with smallpox, 1901. The one on the right was vaccinated in infancy, the other was not vaccinated.
Remembering the oil embargo and gas lines of the ’70s.
On this day in 1962, President John Kennedy announced, in a nationwide broadcast, that the Soviet Union had placed missiles in Cuba that were capable of attacking the United States with nuclear weapons. In response, Kennedy ordered a naval ‘quarantine’ (a ‘blockade’ would be considered an act of war) on all offensive weapons headed to Cuba. During the speech, a directive went out to all US forces worldwide, placing them on DEFCON 3. The heavy cruiser USS Newport News was the designated flagship for the blockade, with USS Leary as Newport News‘s destroyer escort.
The crisis continued unabated, and on the evening of 24 October 1962, the Soviet TASS news agency broadcast a telegram from Khrushchev to Kennedy in which Khrushchev warned that the United States’ “outright piracy” would lead to war. The US requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on 25 October and Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, confronted Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin and challenged him to admit the existence of the missiles. Ambassador Zorin refused to answer. At 10:00 pm EDT the next day, the US raised the readiness level of Strategic Air Command (SAC) forces to DEFCON 2. For the only confirmed time in US history, B-52 bombers were put on continuous airborne alert. B-47 medium bombers were dispersed to military and civilian airfields and made ready to take off, fully equipped, at 15 minutes’ notice. Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52 bombers were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union to demonstrate that the US was serious.
The implicit threat of air strikes on Cuba followed by an invasion allowed the United States to exert pressure in future talks, and the prospect of military action helped to accelerate Khrushchev’s proposal for a compromise. At 9:00 am EDT on 27 October, Radio Moscow began broadcasting a message from Khrushchev. Contrary to the letter of the night before, the message offered a new trade: the missiles on Cuba would be removed in exchange for the removal of the US Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey.
Emissaries sent by both Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to meet at the Yenching Palace Chinese restaurant in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, DC, on Saturday evening, 27 October. Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles in Turkey, on the border of the Soviet Union, and possibly those in southern Italy, in exchange for Khrushchev removing all missiles in Cuba.
President Kennedy signing the Proclamation for Interdiction of the Delivery of Offensive Weapons to Cuba at the Oval Office on 23 October 1962.
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It was a naval battle between the Royal Navy and a combined fleet of the French and Spanish navies during the War of the Third Coalition. As part of Napoleon’s planned invasion of the United Kingdom, the French and Spanish navies planned to take control of the English Channel and provide the French invasion army with safe passage to Britain.
The allied fleet was under the command of French Vice-admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, while the British fleet was under the command of Vice-Admiral of the White Horatio Nelson. Nelson’s fleet was outnumbered, having only 27 ships of the line to the 33 of Villeneuve’s fleet, which included the largest warship in either fleet, the Spanish ship of the line Santísima Trinidad. To address this imbalance, Nelson sailed his fleet directly at the allied battle line’s flank in two columns, hoping to break the line into pieces.
The British plan worked almost perfectly; Nelson’s columns split the Franco-Spanish fleet in three, isolating the rear from the rest of the fleet. In the battle that followed, 18 allied ships were captured or destroyed, while the British lost none. Nelson’s own HMS Victory led the front column and was almost knocked out of action. Nelson was shot by a French musketeer during the battle, and died shortly before it ended.
Nelson’s victory against the odds and death during battle secured his place as a British national hero. His signal to the fleet shortly before the battle, “England expects that every man will do his duty”, is regularly quoted and paraphrased.
The Battle of Trafalgar by William Clarkson Stanfield
Today is the anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973, the climactic series of events during the Watergate scandal. It involved a series of resignations within the United States Department of Justice in protest of President Richard Nixon’s order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating Nixon’s involvement in Watergate.
During a single evening on Saturday, October 20, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox; Richardson refused in protest and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; Ruckelshaus also refused, and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered the third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork carried out the dismissal as Nixon asked. Bork stated that he had intended to resign afterward, but was persuaded by Richardson and Ruckelshaus to stay on for the good of the Justice Department. The impeachment process against Nixon began ten days later, on October 30, 1973.
The political and public reactions to Nixon’s actions were negative and highly damaging to the president. Public opinion, which had previously been dormant, quickly turned against Nixon, and the president’s approval ratings fell to an abysmal 27 percent. Nixon would resign the presidency 9 months and 20 days later, on August 9, 1974.
Not sure about this…
BADA BING!!!
AT MY FUNERAL PLEASE TAKE THE BOUQUET OFF MY COFFIN AND THROW IT INTO THE CROWD TO SEE WHO IS NEXT.
HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT THE FIRST PERSON TO DISCOVER MILK? WHAT WERE THEY EVEN DOING?
REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULD STRANGLE PEOPLE WITH YOUR PHONE? THOSE WERE THE DAYS.
ONE MINUTE YOU’RE YOUNG AND CAREFREE, AND THE NEXT MINUTE YOU’RE CLEANING YOUR HOME TO THE MUSIC YOU USED TO DRINK TO.
THE OLDER I GET, THE MORE I UNDERSTAND WHY ROOSTERS SCREAM TO START THEIR DAY.
SO … ABOUT THESE MURDER HORNETS. DO I SEND THEM MY LIST OF NAMES OR WHAT? HOW DOES THIS WORK?
IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ANY BETTER, I KNOW PEOPLE OLDER THAN YOU WHO ARE STILL ALIVE.
THANK YOU FOR BEING MY FRIEND. QUESTIONABLE LIFE CHOICE, BUT I APPRECIATE IT.
‘ve been to a lot of places, but I’ve never been in Cahoots. Apparently you can’t go alone, you have to be in Cahoots with someone. I’ve also never been in Cognito, either. I hear no one recognizes you there. I have, however, been in Sane. They don’t have an airport, you have to be driven there. I have made several trips.
I couldn’t get a reservation at the library. They were completely booked.
I told my wife she should embrace her mistakes. She gave me a hug.
I asked the librarian if they had books about paranoia. She whispered, ‘They’re right behind you.’
I don’t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
A mechanic asked me if I’d ever rotated my tires. How does he think I got there?
The first ballot question should be “do you think schools are performing secret sex changes” and if you answer yes your entire ballot is invalidated based on incapacity.
Let’s have a moment of silence for all the guys who lost their girlfriends in the Russian data center attack.
Voting is like driving. To go forward, select D. To go backward, select R.
My wife said, “Come at me like a purse snatcher. I want to try something.” What she should have said was, “I bought a Taser … “
I’m not lazy – I’m in power saving mode.
I have a fear of speed bumps. I’m slowly getting over it.
Today is the birthday, in 1951, of Alan Greenwood, keyboards, with English-American rock band Foreigner, who scored the 1985 UK & US No.1 single ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’. They are one of the world’s best-selling bands of all time with worldwide sales of more than 80 million records. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySb1f9zWJkQ
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