November 2019 – Page 2 – Historical Easter Eggs

November 17, 1558 Strange Beauty Secrets

The archaeological record suggests humans have been coloring their lips, for 4,000 years.

Popular ideas of what is beautiful have changed with time and place, but strange beauty secrets are as old as history itself.

In ancient Greece, blond hair was perceived as beautiful, probably because it was unusual. Women would lighten their hair using a mixture of ashes, olive oil & water, and sometimes arsenic.

Cleopatra used a lipstick of mashed up beetle guts and powdered her eyes with the dried excrement, of crocodiles. She would bathe daily in the sour milk of donkeys, 700 of the animals kept on-hand, for the purpose.

The stuff was supposed to have smoothed out wrinkles and just might have worked too. Soured lactose turns to lactic acid, capable of removing the top layer of skin. The Greek princess-turned Egyptian Pharoah all but owned the hearts of the most powerful men of the age, but at a cost. Burning your own skin off seems a tough way to go.

The 12th century Queen Isabeau of France likewise favored the sour donkey milk routine, followed up by rubbing her skin with crocodile glands and the brains of boars.

empress-elisabeth-of-austria-by-georg-raab-1867 — Empress Elisabeth of Austria, considered by many to be the most beautiful woman, on earth

History remembers Empress Elisabeth of Austria for helping to bring about the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, in 1867. Less well known is the woman’s obsessive dedication to her own youthful figure and exceptional beauty.

Elisabeth would crush strawberries over her face, neck and hands, followed by a bath in warm olive oil. She would sleep in a mask lined with raw veal.

Elisabeth emphasized her already slender figure by “tight-lacing” a leather corset, a practice which infuriated the mother-in-law who regarded the queen’s duty, as being perpetually pregnant.

Even after four pregnancies, on her death at age 60 at the hands of an Italian anarchist, the woman’s waist measured 18½”-19 inches.

During the Heian period in Japan, 794 to 1185AD, a woman’s beauty was judged by the length of her hair. The ideal was considered to be about two feet below her waist.

The Hungarian “Blood Countess” Erzsébet Báthory who lived from August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614, may be the most prolific female serial killer in history, bathing in the blood of as many as 650 virgins, to keep herself looking young.

Erzsébet’s four cohorts were convicted in the murder of 80, while the Countess herself was neither tried nor convicted due to her exalted rank. She was simply thrown into a cell on her arrest in December, 1610 and there left to die, four years later.

On a less macabre note, Mary, Queen of Scots, bathed in wine. Strange beauty rituals weren’t limited to women, either. Novelist George Sands liked to soak himself in cow’s milk (3 quarts) and honey (3 pounds).

Nefertiti ruled as Egyptian Queen ca. 1351–1334 BC, the Great Royal Wife of Pharoah Akhenaten, predecessor to the great Tutankhamun. Nefertiti , her name translates as “The Beautiful Woman has Come”, would shave herself hairless from head to foot, donning a wig and lining her eyes with Egyptian kohl, a substance derived from lead. In case that wasn’t enough, Nefertiti would color her lips with a combination of seaweed and bromine nitrate, a plant-derived toxin so powerful, some believe the stuff to be the origin of the phrase, “the kiss of death”.

Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, was crowned this day, November 17, 1588. As queen, Elizabeth followed a path taken by women for thousands of years, sporting the high forehead and daubing her face with a powder makeup called ceruse. High lead content made the practice deadly enough, but women would top it off with a rouge containing mercury, leading to an untold number of birth defects and miscarriages. It’s all but certain the combination of lead and mercury led to her complete loss of hair. Small wonder she was the “Virgin Queen”.

The European quest for the perfect, porcelain complexion lasted well into the 19th century, for which some women ate clay. The ladies of the French Court obsessed over flawless, alabaster skin, until the end of the 18th century. They would fake it with thick layers of white powder, made from white lead, or talcum powder, or pulverized bone. Whatever they could get hold of. Combined with wax, whale blubber, deer fat or vegetable oil, the stuff had a nice, greasy consistency that stayed where they put it.

Meanwhile, African women of antiquity favored lavender oil for its distinctive feminine scent and a red tea called Rooibos to keep skin looking young and supple. With its naturally high levels of zinc and vitamin D2, the stuff was an important defense against the hot African sun.

Marie Antoinette washed up with “Eau Cosmetique de Pigeon”, the stuff bearing the promise right there on the label, that every bottle contained no fewer than “eight pigeons stewed.”

Hers was a time of big hair, when hair was piled high on top of the head, powdered and augmented with the hair of servants and the fur of pets. The do was often adorned with fabric, ribbons or fruit, sometimes holding props like birdcages complete with stuffed birds and even miniature frigates, under sail.

It wasn’t just women’s hair, either. Fashionable European men of the 18th century wore wigs made of both animal and human hair, a practice that soon spread across the water and into North America.

The wealthy wore longer wigs, often powdered and curled while those who couldn’t afford them wore shorter versions, usually styled into a braided ponytail.

George Edward Pickett, he of the famous charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, was acclaimed for his oiled and perfumed locks. The “Boy General”, the youngest Civil War General in the Union Army, would anoint his hair with cinnamon oil. A lock of George Armstrong Custer’s hair recently sold at auction, for $12,500.

Well into the 20th century, women and men alike chose between slicking their hair down with a greasy brilliantine, or spraying it with shellac dissolved in an admixture of water and alcohol.

Weird beauty tips are easy to find on-line. Some say that Preparation H under the eyes reduces puffiness (I hear it works). Hot pepper sauce applied to the roots of the hair will help it grow, (the jury’s out on this one). Some believe that urine works as an astringent to clear up acne, (it doesn’t), and rubbing your face with a potato dries up oily skin (that one’s false as well).

Today we look on past practices as bizarre, but maybe we shouldn’t. If those people from the past were to peer into their own future, they’d see spray tanning, teeth bleaching, and Brazilian bikini wax. They’d see people injecting the neurotoxic output of Clostridium Botulinum into their faces, and sticking metal objects through all manner of body parts.

You have to wonder what our own future will bring. Not even Nostradamus could have foretold tattooed grandmothers.

November 15, 1963 Unintelligible at Any Speed

In 1955, singer-songwriter Richard Berry wrote a tune about a Jamaican sailor returning home to see his lady love. It’s a ballad, a Caribbean-flavored conversation in the first person singular, with a bartender. The bartender’s name is Louie.

The song was covered in Latin and and R&B styles in the 1950s, never becoming more than a regional hit on the west coast.

“Mainstream” white artists of the fifties and sixties often covered songs written by black artists. On April 6, 1963, an obscure rock & roll group out of Portland, Oregon rented a recording studio for $50, and covered the song. They were The Kingsmen. Lead singer Jack Ely showed the band how he wanted it played. Berry’s easy 1-2-3-4, 1-2, 1-2-3-4 ballad was transformed to a raucous 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2-3 beat.

The Kingsmen recorded the song in a single take. The guitar was chaotic, the lyrics difficult to make out. The single was released by a small label in May and re-released by Wand Records in October.

Rock music is so mainstream now, it’s hard to remember the style was once considered subversive. Decadent. The impenetrable lyrics led to all kinds of speculation, driving sales through the 15th of November, all the way to the Billboard Top 100 chart.

It all went downhill from there. “Louie Louie, me gotta go,” became in the fevered imagination, “Louie Louie, grab her way down low.” Invented lyrics ranging from mildly raunchy to downright pornographic were written out on slips of paper and exchanged between teenagers, spurring interest in the song and driving record sales, through the roof.

Music critic Dave Marsh later wrote: “This preposterous fable bore no scrutiny even at the time, but kids used to pretend it did, in order to panic parents, teachers and other authority figures. …So ‘Louie Louie’ leaped up the chart on the basis of a myth about its lyrics so contagious that it swept cross country quicker than bad weather.”

Concerned parents contacted government authorities to see what could be done. One father, a Sarasota, Florida junior high teacher whose name is redacted in FBI files, wrote to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy:

“Who do you turn to when your teen age daughter buys and brings home pornographic or obscene materials being sold along with objects directed and aimed at the teenage market in every City, Village and Record shop in this Nation?” The letter asserts “The lyrics are so filthy I cannot enclose them in this letter” and concludes with a plea, complete with four punctuation marks: “How can we stamp out this menace????”

Dad might have taken a breath. The pop culture scene was not so steeped in filth, as he imagined. The top television program of the time was the Beverly Hillbillies. The top movie the Disney animated production, “The Sword and the Stone”.

The FBI took up an investigation under the ITOM statute in 1964, a federal law regulating the Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material. Investigators interviewed witnesses. They listened to the song at varying speeds, backward and forward. The relentless search for lascivious material lasted two years and in the end, came up empty.

The FBI’s archival website contains 119 pages, covering the investigation. In the end, the song was ruled “unintelligible at any speed”.

Inexplicably, G-men never interviewed Kingsmen lead singer Jack Ely. He probably could have saved them a lot of time. The lyrics never did measure up to the fevered imagination, of a Sarasota schoolteacher.

Louie Louie, with lyrics

The song has been covered by numerous artists over the years, including Paul Revere & the Raiders, Otis Redding, Motorhead, Black Flag and Young MC. The best ever though, has got to be the Delta Tau Chi fraternity version from John Landis’ 1978 movie, Animal House.

“OK, let’s give it to ’em. Right now”.

November 13, 1985 The Awful Story of Omayra Sánchez

Omayra Sánchez Garzón was a little girl on this day in 1985, a typical thirteen-year-old and one among many, living in Armero. There is not enough meanness in all the world, to wish on anyone what this one little girl would endure for the next three days.

Fifty miles from the Colombian capital of Bogotá, the municipality of Armero was once home to 30,000 souls. Long known as “Colombia’s White City”, Armero was at one time a major cotton producer, seat of the prosperous agricultural region located in the northern Tolima Department, of Colombia.

Today, the place is a ghost town.

Omayra Sanchez Armero_lahar — the “Armero Tragedy’, before and after

Some forty miles from Armero, the Nevado del Ruiz Stratovolcano in the Central Andes, is the site of three major eruptive periods since the early Pleistocene era. The present volcanic cone formed some 150,000 years ago during the present eruptive period. Known to locals as the “Sleeping Lion”, Nevado del Ruiz had not experienced a major eruption, since 1845. 140 years later, it was hard to imagine the thing presented much of a threat.

The eruption of November 13, 1985 was small by volcanic standards. For its unsuspecting victims, it was a distinction without a difference. Much as the ant may fail to notice. He was crushed by a very small elephant.

Nevado del Ruiz armero(1).png — Nevado del Ruiz Stratovolcano

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD was later described in a letter written by Pliny the Younger, describing the catastrophe that killed the philosopher’s uncle. The “Plinian Eruption” which killed the Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder would be repeated half a world away and some 2,000 years later, as a sleeping lion came to life.

The fast moving clouds of gas and volcanic material came in the dead of night, the “pyroclastic flow” super-heated to 1,000° Fahrenheit and racing away from the cone at speeds as high as 430 miles-per-hour. Next came the Lahars, the violent and terrifying mud flow of pyroclastic material, rocky debris and vast quantities of water released by the near-instantaneous melting of the Nevado del Ruiz glacier. Imagine a wall of rocky mud coming at you at 22mph, only a little slower than Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s best 100-meter dash. Usain Bolt just happens to be the fastest man who ever lived.

Mount Merapi Lahar, Central Java

Lahars flow at depths as great as 460-feet. Vast, hideous walls of mud, rock and debris the consistency of wet concrete, speeding down rivers and valleys. The first of three lahars and the most powerful of that night wiped fourteen towns and villages from the face of the earth, killing as many as 20,000 in Armero, alone.

Many years ago, I found myself pinned under a car while working on the engine. The motor and transmission assembly, free of its mount, swung down and pinned my hand underneath. It obviously hurt but, more than that, there was the strangest feeling of being…trapped. Permanently pinned in place like an insect in a child’s science project, entirely denied the power of voluntary movement. It may as well have been a locomotive, sitting there on my fingers.

Omayra Sánchez suffered her legs to be so trapped, pinned under the collapsed stony structure of her own home, legs entangled in the dead arms of her aunt and submerged up to her neck, in water.

The nation of Colombia was a basket case at this time, engaged in a fight for its life with Leftist guerrilla organizations such as the M-19 Democratic Alliance (19th of April Movement), and the FARC. The Palace of Justice siege of less than a week earlier resulted in the murder of fully half the 25-member Colombian Supreme Court, as the Colombian military mobilized across the capital city of Bogotá.

Rescue efforts on the ground in Armero were frantic, disorganized and mostly local. Official government assistance was all but, non-existent, pumps altogether unavailable. Soon even supplies of simple hand tools such as stretchers, shovels and cutting tools, began to give out. Foreign aid rushed in from nations from around the world but, for most victims, such well-intended help arrived, too late..

After the lahar passed, Sánchez found herself buried in rubble. She managed to get one hand out of the wreckage as rescuers desperately worked to clear the wood, stone and debris from her upper body. As the water rose, a tire was placed around her body to keep her from drowning. Divers attempted to free her legs, but without success. She was trapped. Bilateral amputation was considered but there were no means, even to remove the water. In the end, doctors determined the most humane course was to comfort this child as much as humanly possible, and let her die.

Colombian Ambassador to Portugal Germán Santa María Barragán was at that time a journalist and volunteer in the Armero rescue. Barragán was with Omayra for much of her last three days. Sánchez herself remained relatively positive throughout the ordeal, sometimes asking for sweets or soda, sometimes even singing to the journalist. Some times she cried and others, she prayed. Stuck there as she was she agreed to be interviewed, her face and her desperate plight quickly becoming known, around the world.

“Colombia and half of the world remained with the bitter sensation that Omayra Sánchez could have been able to continue living after remaining for almost 60 hours trapped from head to toe amidst the rubble of Armero. Her face, her words, and her courage, which streamed throughout the world on television and were a heartbreaking image in the largest newspapers and magazines of the United States and Europe, remained a testimony of accusation against those who could have at the very least made the tragedy less serious. – Germán Santa María Barragán in El Tiempo, November 23, 1985

The color of her hands make it appear, as Sánchez is wearing gloves. She isn’t.

French photographer Frank Fournier arrived at dawn on the 16th. Omayra Sánchez had been in the water for nearly three days and nights by this time. She was all but abandoned when Fournier first saw her, the whole place eerily silent, save for the occasional scream.

Fournier received vehement backlash for his pictures. How could he do that, just taking pictures like that, without trying to help. What are you, some kind of ghoul? A “vulture”!? Fournier himself had no means to help this girl, save to use his skill and his camera, to bring her story to the world. He was a photographer.

In her final hours, Sánchez began to hallucinate. She asked the photographer to bring her to school. She didn’t want to miss her lessons. She had a math exam. At one point she even told her rescuers, to go get some rest.

Omayra Sánchez was trapped for sixty hours with only head and shoulders above water, caught in a kneeling position and pinned under massive and impenetrable piles of bricks and masonry. Her eyes reddened toward the end as her face swelled and her usually brown hands turned from pale, to white.

Two years later, the world held its breath for fifty-eight hours as scores of frantic volunteers worked ’round the clock, to free Baby Jessica from a West Texas well. Omayra Sánchez waited sixty hours for a rescue, that never arrived.

Red Cross workers desperately appealed to the Colombian government for a pump, and for help in freeing the trapped girl. In the end there was no alternative but to stay by her side, and pray. She died at 10:05am local time, from a combination of gangrene and hypothermia. Three hours after Fournier took the picture above.

In time, the water subsided. Those left alive moved away, to Bogotá or to Cali or a few kilometers north to the new town of Armero-Guayabal. Armero itself is a dead place now, save for a few memorials marking important places such as hospitals, parks, and theaters. And a small shrine, dedicated to one little girl.

Little was left of Omayra’s family. Her father was killed in the collapse. Her aunt was dead. Two-thirds of the town in which she had spent her short life, were gone. 85% of Armero itself, had ceased to exist. From that day to this, the once prosperous “White City” of Colombia, remains a ghost town.

Omayra’s brother survived the disaster, with only the loss of a single digit. Her mother expressed the forlorn anguish only the parent of a dead child, will ever experience: “It is horrible, but we have to think about the living … I will live for my son, who only lost a finger.”

November 11, 1921 Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Passing between two lines of French and American officials, Sgt. Younger entered the room, alone. Slowly, he circled the four caskets, three times, before at last stopping at the third from the left. “What caused me to stop” he later said, “I don’t know. It was as though something had pulled me”. Younger placed the roses on the casket, drew himself to attention, and saluted. This was the one.

Many years ago, Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said “If a general war begins, it will be because of some damn fool thing in the Balkans“.

The Chancellor got his damn fool thing on a side street in Sarajevo, when a tubercular 19-year old leveled his revolver and murdered the heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife on June 28, 1914.

In another time and place, such an event could have led to limited conflict. A policing action, in the Balkans. Instead, mutually entangling national alliances brought mobilization timetables into effect, dictating the movement of men and equipment according to precise and predetermined schedules.

German troops, leaving for the front

The hippie subculture of the 1960s produced an antiwar slogan based on the title of a McCall’s Magazine article by Charlotte E. Keyes. “Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came.” In 1914, the coming war Had to happen. If only because everyone was there.

The cataclysm could have been averted, as late as the last day of July. By the first of August, mutual distrust had brought events past the point of no return. By the time it was over a generation was shattered, a continent destroyed and a new century, set on a difficult and dangerous course.Some 40 million were killed in the Great War, either that or maimed or simply, vanished. It was a mind bending number, equivalent to the entire population in 1900 of either France, or the United Kingdom. Equal to the combined populations of the bottom two-thirds of every nation on the planet. Every woman, man, puppy, boy and girl.

The United States entered the conflict in 1917, suffering casualties of 320,518 in only a few short months.The idea of honoring the unknown dead from the “War to end all Wars” originated in Europe. Reverend David Railton remembered a rough cross from somewhere on the western front, with the words written in pencil: “An Unknown British Soldier”.

In November 1916, an officer of the French war memorial association Le Souvenir Français proposed a national-level recognition for the unknown dead of the Great War. Across the English Channel, Reverend Railton proposed the same.

The two nations performed ceremonies on the first anniversary of Armistice Day, the Unknown Warrior laid to rest at Westminster Abbey on November 11, 1920. La Tombe du Soldat Inconnu was simultaneously consecrated under the Arc de Triomphe with the actual burial taking place, the following January.

Tomb_of_the_Unknown_Warrior_-_Westminster_Abbey_-_London,_England_-_9_Nov._2010

Left to Right: Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, Westminster Abbey, London. La Tombe du Soldat Inconnu. lArc de Triomphe, Paris.

That was the year, the United States followed Great Britain and France in honoring her own, unknown dead. Four unidentified bodies were selected from the Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel cemeteries and carefully examined, lest there be any clues to identity. The four were then transported to the Hôtel de Ville at Châlons-sur-Marne, and placed in a makeshift chapel.

Six soldiers were invited to act as pallbearers, each man a highly decorated and respected member of his own unit. Outside the chapel, Major Harbold of the Graves Registration Office handed a large spray of pink and white roses to twice-wounded Sergeant Edward F. Younger, of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). It was he who would perform the final selection.Passing between two lines of French and American officials, Sgt. Younger entered the room, alone. Slowly, he circled the four caskets, three times, before at last stopping at the third from the left. “What caused me to stop” he later said, “I don’t know. It was as though something had pulled me“. Younger placed the roses on the casket, drew himself to attention, and saluted. This was the one.

The body was transferred to a black casket bearing the inscription: “An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War” and transported to the protected cruiser USS Olympia.

Flags at half-mast with stern bedecked with flowers, Commodore George Dewey’s former flagship during the Battle of Manila Bay, received the precious cargo and returned to the United States, arriving in the Navy Yard in Washington DC on November 9, 1921. There the flag draped casket was solemnly transferred to the United States Army, and placed under guard of honor on the catafalque which had borne the bodies of three slain Presidents: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley.On November 11, the casket was removed from the Rotunda of the Capitol and escorted under military guard to the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. In a simple ceremony, President Warren G. Harding bestowed upon this unknown soldier of the Great War, the nation’s highest military decorations. The Medal of Honor. The Distinguished Service Cross.

Special representatives of foreign nations then bestowed, each in turn, his nation’s highest military decoration. The Croix de Guerre of Belgium. The English Victoria Cross. Le Medaille Militaire & Croix de Guerre of France. The Italian Gold Medal for Bravery. The Romanian Virtutes Militara. The Czechoslavak War Cross. The Polish Virtuti Militari.

With three salvos of artillery, the rendering of Taps and the National Salute, the ceremony was brought to a close and the 12-ton marble cap placed over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The west facing side bears this inscription:

“Here Rests In
Honored Glory
An American Soldier
Known But To God”

Two years later, a civilian guard was placed at the tomb of the unknown. A permanent Military guard took its place in 1926 and there remains, to this day.

In 1956, President Dwight David Eisenhower signed a bill to select and pay tribute to the unknown dead of WW2 and the American war in Korea. Selection and interment of these Unknowns took place in 1958.

5d72471c15d3e.image — United States Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie

The Unknown from the American war in Vietnam was selected on May 17, 1984, but wouldn’t remain unknown, for long.

Advances in mitochondrial DNA led to the exhumation and identification of Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie of St. Louis, Missouri, shot down near An Lộc, in 1972.

The Tomb of the Unknown from the Vietnam conflict remains empty. It is unlikely any future war is capable of producing a truly “Unknown”.

So it is through bitter cold and scorching heat, through hurricanes and blizzards and irrespective of day or night or whether Arlington is open or closed, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stands under guard.

This Guard of Honor is performed by a carefully selected elite body of the 3rd Infantry Division. The “Old Guard”. In service since 1784, the Tomb Guard is part of the longest-serving active infantry unit in the United States military.

Since the 14th-century, the cannon salute signified the recognition of a sovereign state and a peaceful intent, among nations. The 21-gun salute is the highest military honor, a nation can bestow. The Tomb Sentinel who “walks the mat” walks precisely 21 steps down the 63-foot black mat laid across the Tomb of the Unknown, signifying that 21-gun salute. The Guard then turns east to face the Tomb, pauses another 21-seconds, before beginning the return walk of 21-steps.

The Tomb Sentinel will continue in this manner for a half-hour, one hour or two depending on the time of day, and the season of the year. If you have witnessed the Changing of the Guard, you are not likely to forget it. My brother and I were once privileged to experience the moment, in the company of an Honor Flight of WW2 veterans. If you’ve never seen the ceremony, I recommend the experience.

Back in 1919, AEF commander General John Pershing and Allied Supreme Commander Marshall Ferdinand Foch of France were adamantly opposed to the treaty, at Versailles. Germany had been defeated they argued, but not Beaten. Without destroying the German war machine on its own soil, Pershing believed the two nations would once again find themselves at war. Marshall Foch agreed, reading the treaty with the remark: “This isn’t a peace. It’s a cease-fire for 20 years!”

He got that wrong. By 36 days.

November 8, 1965 The 8th of November

Outnumbered in some places six to one, it was a desperate fight for survival as parts of B and C companies were isolated in fighting that was shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand.

On this day in 1965, the 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade was halfway through a one-year term of service, in Vietnam. “Operation Hump”, so named in recognition of that mid-point, was a search and destroy mission inserted by helicopter on November 5.

Vietcong fighters occupied positions on several key hills near Bien Hoa, with the objective of driving the Americans out.

There was little contact through the evening of the 7th, when B and C Companies of the 1/503rd took up a night defensive position in the triple canopied jungle near Hill 65.

On the morning of the 8th, the Brigade found itself locked in combat with an entire main line Vietcong Regiment, pouring out of entrenched positions and onto the American defenses.

The Vietcong were well aware of American superiority when it came to artillery and air cover. The VC strategy was to get in so close that it nullified the advantage. “Grab Their Belts to Fight Them”.

Outnumbered in some places six to one, it was a desperate fight for survival as parts of B and C companies were isolated in fighting that was shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand.

Shot through the right thigh and calf with his medical supplies depleted, Army Medic Lawrence Joel hobbled about the battlefield on a makeshift crutch, tending to the wounded.

Though wounded himself, Specialist 4 Randy Eickhoff ran ahead, providing covering fire. Eickhoff was later awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions.

Specialist 5 Joel received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day, near hill 65. Let Joel’s citation, tell his part of the story:

“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Specialist 5 Joel demonstrated indomitable courage, determination, and professional skill when a numerically superior and well-concealed Viet Cong element launched a vicious attack which wounded or killed nearly every man in the lead squad of the company. After treating the men wounded by the initial burst of gunfire, he bravely moved forward to assist others who were wounded while proceeding to their objective. While moving from man to man, he was struck in the right leg by machine gun fire. Although painfully wounded his desire to aid his fellow soldiers transcended all personal feeling. He bandaged his own wound and self-administered morphine to deaden the pain enabling him to continue his dangerous undertaking. Through this period of time, he constantly shouted words of encouragement to all around him. Then, completely ignoring the warnings of others, and his pain, he continued his search for wounded, exposing himself to hostile fire; and, as bullets dug up the dirt around him, he held plasma bottles high while kneeling completely engrossed in his life saving mission. Then, after being struck a second time and with a bullet lodged in his thigh, he dragged himself over the battlefield and succeeded in treating 13 more men before his medical supplies ran out. Displaying resourcefulness, he saved the life of one man by placing a plastic bag over a severe chest wound to congeal the blood. As 1 of the platoons pursued the Viet Cong, an insurgent force in concealed positions opened fire on the platoon and wounded many more soldiers. With a new stock of medical supplies, Specialist 5 Joel again shouted words of encouragement as he crawled through an intense hail of gunfire to the wounded men. After the 24 hour battle subsided and the Viet Cong dead numbered 410, snipers continued to harass the company. Throughout the long battle, Specialist 5 Joel never lost sight of his mission as a medical aid man and continued to comfort and treat the wounded until his own evacuation was ordered. His meticulous attention to duty saved a large number of lives and his unselfish, daring example under most adverse conditions was an inspiration to all. Specialist 5. Joel’s profound concern for his fellow soldiers, at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country“.

48 Americans lost their lives in the battle. Many more were wounded. Two Australian paratroopers were recorded as MIA. Their remains were discovered years later, and repatriated in 2007.

The country music duo Big and Rich wrote a musical tribute to that day. It’s called the 8th of November.

November 7, 1957 Nuking the Moon

Out of the mess of the Space race emerged an idea destined to go down in the Hare-Brain Hall of fame, if there is ever to be such a place. A show of force sufficient to boost domestic morale, while showing the Russkies, we mean business. It was the top-secret “Project A119”, also known as A Study of Lunar Research Flights.

We were going to detonate a nuclear weapon. On the moon.

As World War II drew to a close in 1945, there arose a different sort of conflict, a contest of wills, between the two remaining Great Powers of the world. The “Cold War” pitted the free market economy and constitutional republicanism of the United States against the top-down, authoritarian governing and economic models of the Soviet Union. The stakes could not have been higher, as each side sought to demonstrate its own technological and military superiority and, by implication, the dominance of its own economic and political system.

American nuclear preeminence lasted but four short years, coming to an end with the first successful Soviet atomic weapon test code named “First Lightning”, carried out on August 29, 1949. Mutual fear and distrust fueled the Soviet-American “arms race”, a buildup of nuclear stockpiles beyond any rational purpose. A generation grew up under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. A single mistake, misunderstanding or one fool in the wrong place at the wrong time, initiating a sequence and bringing about the extinction of life on this planet.

The arms race acquired the dimensions of a Space Race on July 29, 1956, when the United States announced its intention to launch an artificial satellite, into earth orbit. Two days later, the Soviet Union announced that it aimed to do the same.

The early Space Race period was a time of serial humiliation for the American side, as the Soviet Union launched the first Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) on August 21, 1957, and the first artificial satellite “Sputnik 1” on October 4.

The first living creature to enter space was the dog “Laika“, launched aboard the spacecraft Sputnik 2 on November 3 and labeled by the more smartass specimens among the American commentariat, as “Muttnik”.

Soviet propaganda proclaimed “the first traveler in the cosmos”, replete with heroic images printed on posters, stamps and matchbook covers. The American news media could do little but focus on the politics of the launch, as animal lovers the world over questioned the ethics of sending a dog to certain death, in space.

On the American side, the giant Vanguard rocket was scheduled to launch a grapefruit-sized test satellite into earth orbit that September, but the program was plagued by one delay after another. The December 6 launch was a comprehensive disaster, the rocket lifting all of four-feet from the pad before crashing to the ground in a sheet of flame, the satellite rolling free where it continued to beep, only feet from the burning wreck.

The second Vanguard launch was nearly as bad, exploding in flames only seconds after launch. Chortling Soviet leaders were beside themselves with joy, stamping the twin disasters as “Kaputnik”, and “Flopnik”.

Out of this mess emerged an idea destined to go down in the Hare-Brain Hall of fame, if there is ever to be such a place. A show of force sufficient to boost domestic morale, while showing the Russkies, we mean business. It was the top-secret “Project A119”, also known as A Study of Lunar Research Flights.

We were going to detonate a nuclear weapon. On the moon.

In 1957, newspapers reported a rumor. The Soviet Union planned a nuclear test explosion on the moon, timed to coincide with the lunar eclipse of November 7. A celebration of the anniversary of the Glorious October Revolution.

Edward Teller himself, the ‘Father of the H-Bomb” is said to have proposed such an idea as early as February, to test the effects of the explosion in a vacuum, and conditions of zero gravity.

Today, we take for granted the massively complex mathematics, involved in hitting an object like the moon. In 1957 there was a very real possibility of missing the thing and boomerang effect, returning the bomb from whence it came.

While the information is still classified, the project was revealed in 2000 by former NASA executive Leonard Reiffel, who said he was asked to “fast track” the program in 1958, by senior Air Force officials. A young Carl Sagan was all for the idea, believing at the time that living microbes may inhabit the moon, and a nuclear explosion may help in detecting such organisms.

Reiffel commented in a Guardian newspaper interview: “It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth. The US was lagging behind in the space race.” The now-retired NASA executive went on to explain that “The explosion would obviously be best on the dark side of the moon and the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun.”

The Air Force canceled the A119 program in 1959, apparently out of concern that a ‘militarization of space’ would create public backlash, and that nuclear fallout may hamper future research and even colonization efforts, on the moon.

Previously secret reports revealed in 2010 that Soviet leaders had indeed contemplated such a project, part of a multi-part program code named “E”. Project E-1 involved reaching the moon, while E-2 and E-3 focused on sending a probe around the far side of the celestial body. The final stage, project E-4, involved a nuclear strike on the moon as a “display of force”.

Construction plans for the aforementioned Hare-Brain Hall of Fame have yet to be announced but, it already appears the place may need another wing.

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Left to Right: Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, Westminster Abbey, London. La Tombe du Soldat Inconnu. lArc de Triomphe, Paris.

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