Today is Thursday, July 11, the 193rd day of 2024. There are 173 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 11, 1995, the U.N.-designated “safe haven” of Srebrenica (sreh-breh-NEET’-sah) in Bosnia-Herzegovina fell to Bosnian Serb forces, who subsequently carried out the killings of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Also on this date:
In 1798, the U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by a congressional act that also created the U.S. Marine Band.
In 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a pistol duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. (Hamilton died the next day.)
In 1859, Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock tower, chimed for the first time.
In 1864, Confederate forces led by General Jubal Early began an abortive invasion of Washington, D.C., turning back the next day.
In 1914, Babe Ruth made his Major League baseball debut, pitching the Boston Red Sox to a 4-3 victory over Cleveland.
In 1921, fighting in the Irish War of Independence ended with a truce.
In 1960, Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published.
In 1972, the World Chess Championship opened as grandmasters Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union began play in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Fischer won after 21 games.)
In 1979, the abandoned U.S. space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
In 1991, a Nigeria Airways DC-8 carrying Muslim pilgrims crashed at the Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, international airport, killing all 261 people on board.
In 2006, eight bombs hit a commuter rail network during evening rush hour in Mumbai, India, killing more than 200 people.
In 2022, President Joe Biden revealed the first image from NASA’s new space telescope, the farthest humanity had ever seen in both time and distance, closer to the dawn of the universe and the edge of the cosmos.
Today’s Birthdays:
Fashion designer Giorgio Armani is 90.
Actor Susan Seaforth Hayes is 81.
Actor Bruce McGill is 74.
Actor Stephen Lang is 72.
Actor Mindy Sterling is 71.
Actor Sela Ward is 68.
Reggae singer Michael Rose (Black Uhuru) is 67.
Singer Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) is 67.
Actor Mark Lester is 66.
Saxophonist Kirk Whalum is 66.
Singer Suzanne Vega is 65.
Rock guitarist Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi) is 65.
Actor Lisa Rinna is 61.
Author Jhumpa Lahiri is 57.
Wildlife expert Jeff Corwin is 57.
Actor Justin Chambers (TV: “Grey’s Anatomy”) is 54.
Today is Tuesday, July 9, the 191st day of 2024. There are 175 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, granting citizenship and “equal protection under the laws” to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States,” including formerly enslaved people.
Also on this date:
In 1850, President Zachary Taylor died of gastrointestinal illness after consuming a large amount of cherries and iced milk on a hot day five days earlier; Vice President Millard Fillmore was sworn in as president the following day.
In 1896, William Jennings Bryant delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In 1918, 101 people were killed in a train collision in Nashville, Tennessee in the deadliest US rail disaster in history.
In 1937, a fire at 20th Century Fox’s storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, destroyed most of the studio’s silent films.
In 1943, during World War II, the Allies launched Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.
In 1944, during World War II, American forces secured Saipan as the last Japanese defenses fell.
In 1947, the engagement of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was announced.
In 1965, the Sonny & Cher single “I Got You Babe” was released by ATCO Records.
In 1982, Pan Am Flight 759, a Boeing 727, crashed in Kenner, Louisiana, shortly after takeoff from New Orleans International Airport, killing all 145 people aboard and eight people on the ground.
In 2004, a Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded the CIA had provided unfounded assessments of the threat posed by Iraq that the Bush administration had relied on to justify going to war.
In 2010, the largest U.S.-Russia spy swap since the Cold War was completed on a remote stretch of Vienna airport tarmac as planes from New York and Moscow arrived within minutes of each other with 10 Russian sleeper agents and four prisoners accused by Russia of spying for the West.
In 2011, South Sudan officially became an independent nation.
In 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat left vacant by the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Today’s Birthdays:
Artist David Hockney is 87.
Author Dean Koontz is 79.
Actor Chris Cooper is 73.
Musician and TV personality John Tesh is 72.
Country singer David Ball is 71.
Business executive/TV personality Kevin O’Leary (TV: “Shark Tank”) is 70.
Singer Debbie Sledge (Sister Sledge) is 70.
Actor Jimmy Smits is 69.
US Senator Lindsey Graham is 69.
Actor Tom Hanks is 68.
Singer Marc Almond is 67.
Actor Kelly McGillis is 67.
Rock singer Jim Kerr (Simple Minds) is 65.
Actor-rock singer Courtney Love is 60.
Actor Pamela Adlon is 58.
Actor Scott Grimes is 53.
Actor Enrique Murciano (TV: “Without a Trace”) is 51.
Musician/producer Jack White is 49.
Rock singer-musician Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse) is 49.
Actor-director Fred Savage is 48.
Actor Linda Park (TV: “Star Trek: Enterprise”) is 46.
Actor Megan Parlen is 44.
Animator/writer/producer Rebecca Sugar is 37.
Actor Mitchel Musso is 33.
Actor Georgie Henley (Film: “The Chronicles of Narnia”) is 29.
Today is Saturday, July 6, the 188th day of 2024. There are 178 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On July 6, 1957, Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title as she defeated fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.
Also on this date:
In 1483, England’s King Richard III was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
In 1777, during the American Revolution, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga (ty-kahn-dur-OH’-gah).
In 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested an anti-rabies vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by an infected dog; the boy did not develop rabies.
In 1933, the first All-Star baseball game was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park; the American League defeated the National League 4-2 behind winning pitcher Lefty Gomez of the New York Yankees.
In 1942, Anne Frank, her parents and sister entered a “secret annex” in an Amsterdam building where they were later joined by four other people; they hid from Nazi occupiers for two years before being discovered and arrested.
In 1944, an estimated 168 people died in a fire that broke out during a performance in the main tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal of Freedom.
In 1967, Nigerian forces invade the Republic of Biafra, sparking the Nigerian Civil War.
In 1988, 167 North Sea oil workers were killed when explosions and fires destroyed a drilling platform.
In 2013, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport, killing three passengers and injuring 181.
In 2016, Philando Castile, a Black elementary school cafeteria worker, was killed during a traffic stop in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights by Officer Jeronimo Yanez. (Yanez was later acquitted on a charge of second-degree manslaughter.)
In 2018, six followers of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult were hanged along with its leader, Shoko Asahara; they had been convicted of crimes including a 1995 sarin gas attack that killed 13 people and made thousands of others sick on the Tokyo subway system.
In 2020, the Trump administration formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization; President Donald Trump had criticized the WHO’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. (The pullout was later halted by President Joseph Biden’s administration.)
Today’s Birthdays:
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is 89.
Singer Gene Chandler (“Duke of Earl”) is 87.
Country singer Jeannie Seely is 84.
Actor Burt Ward (TV: “Batman”) is 79.
Former President George W. Bush is 78.
Actor-director Sylvester Stallone is 78.
Actor Geoffrey Rush is 73.
Retired MLB All-Star Willie Randolph is 70.
Former first daughter Susan Ford Bales is 67.
Actor-writer Jennifer Saunders (“Absolutely Fabulous”) is 66.
Actor Brian Posehn is 58.
Political reporter/moderator John Dickerson is 56.
Rapper Inspectah Deck (Wu-Tang Clan) is 54.
Rapper 50 Cent is 49.
Actors Tia and Tamera Mowry (MOHR’-ee) are 46.
Comedian-actor Kevin Hart is 45. Actor Eva (EH’-vuh) Green is 44.
San Diego Padres infielder Manny Machado is 32. NBA power forward Zion Williamson is 24.
A little background: Detroit has a long history with the Indians of Michigan. It was established by the French in 1701 as a fortified trading post in the wake of 60 years of warfare between the Iroquois and the tribes of the Midwest. Dubbed “the straits” (détroit) by the French, early Fort Pontchartrain was intended as a friendly meeting ground to establish trade between various tribes who were no longer enemies. Acquired by the British during the French and Indian War, it was passed on to the United States after the American Revolution.
By the early 1800s, Detroit was still a dismal frontier outpost surrounded by swamps and far from the military power of the newborn United States. In 1812 a powerful confederation of tribes under Shawnee war chief Tecumseh gathered to reclaim their land with the help of British troops. Little did American authorities realize that the fall of Detroit was imminent…
The carving of the Michigan Territory began in earnest with the Treaty of Detroit, signed in November, 1807 by 30 chieftains of the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Wyandot along with Revolutionary War hero General William Hull, who was governor of the newly-created territory and its superintendent of Indian Affairs.
The treaty ceded a pie-slice of southeastern Michigan extending from present-day Toledo north to the state’s “thumb” and then west to what is now the city of Jackson. For this massive purchase of eight million acres, the U.S. Government paid just .0012 dollars per acre — a little over one-tenth of a cent — possibly the equivalent of about two-and-a-half cents per acre today. As was the case with other treaties signed with the Indians, the United States government paid pennies per acre — or less — to Indian tribes for their land and then sold the acreage at a huge profit to white settlers.
Written out in elegant script on two pages of parchment and approved by President Thomas Jefferson, the 1807 Treaty of Detroit guaranteed the Indians small parcels of land to live on within the ceded territory and provided them with “ten thousand dollars, in money, goods, implements of husbandry, or domestic animals…” The tribes were promised the services of two blacksmiths for a ten-year period. They were also guaranteed hunting and fishing rights on the ceded land, “as long as they remain the property of the United States.”
The treaty became a template for many treaties to come throughout the Midwest. It also became a template for broken promises, since Congress often fell far short of delivering the cash, supplies and services that had been agreed upon.
Map shows the dates and territory taken from the Indians during the treaties starting with the 1807 Treaty of Detroit.
What could it hurt?
One might wonder why Native peoples opted to cede their ancestral lands when the threat of removal to west of the Mississippi was still more of a rumor than a reality. Simple economics forced the issue in 1807. Egged on by traders, the Indians had scoured southeastern Michigan clean of fur-bearing animals and there was nothing left to trade for muskets, kettles, blankets, tools, and other necessities except for their land. Then too, they had little understanding as to how many white settlers were waiting in the wings, or what ceding their land would actually mean. To some it may have seemed as nonsensical as the idea of ceding the sun or the wind; what could it hurt? In time, Native emissaries would travel to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington to learn to their dismay that the whites were as numerous as the leaves of the forest, but the ramifications of this onslaught may not have been anticipated by the Indians in 1807.
Not all of the Indians were happy with the treaty, however. Some of the Native signatories sided with the British soon thereafter as part of Tecumseh’s alliance in the War of 1812, while others stayed neutral, taking a wait-and-see approach as to which side would come out on top, the Brits or the Yanks.
Rebuilding Detroit
Sealing the deal in 1807 was one of the high points of Hull’s career. He had arrived in Detroit only two years earlier just after the whole town burned down as the result of sparks flying out of a baker’s pipe and igniting a pile of hay. Together with newly-arrived judge Augustus Elias Brevoort Woodward, the two masterminded the rebuilding of Detroit, with Woodward designing the streets arranged like spokes from the waterfront. From this pinnacle of achievement Hull’s career and reputation plummeted to the bottom five years later when he was duped into surrendering Detroit to a lesser force of the British and their Indian allies during the War of 1812.
The war had a number of causes. For years the British Navy had been kidnapping sailors off American merchant ships on the slimmest of pretenses, and then even from a U.S. warship, impressing them into lives of virtual slavery aboard their own ships. American trade with Europe was also suppressed amid the Napoleonic Wars, causing economic turmoil at home. Add to this, the Brits were rabble-rousing the Indians, who raided American settlements from the safety of British Canada. The administration of James Madison declared war after Britain refused to end its practice of plundering American ships. Unfortunately, news that Britain intended to end the impressment of American sailors arrived weeks after the war got underway.
General William Hull’s army arrived in Detroit on July 5, 1812.
Surrender at Mackinac Island
The capture of Detroit was preceded by the bloodless surrender of Mackinac Island on July 17, 1812.
In mid-July, fort commander Lieutenant Porter Hanks noticed that the normally-friendly Odawa had developed a certain “coolness.” A friendly Odawa also told him that large numbers of Indians from many tribes were gathering at the British fort on St. Joseph Island lying thirty miles to the north. Hanks dispatched Michael Dousman, the captain of the local militia company, as a “confidential person” to find out what was going on.
Dousman had paddled his canoe about 12 miles across the gray-green waters of Lake Huron when he spotted an armada of 70 war canoes flying pennants of eagle feathers and streamers of cloth and willow fronds, filled with 600 warriors painted for war. Accompanying them were 50 British soldiers aboard the schooner Caledonia and ten bateaux bearing 150 Canadian militiamen. Taken captive, he was pumped for information by British Captain Charles Roberts, whose force landed on the north end of the island at 3 a.m.
Wishing to avoid bloodshed, Captain Roberts sent Dousman to warn the residents of the town below the fort to take shelter, making him promise not to spill the beans to the American troops. Roused at 6 a.m. by Dousman knocking on their doors, the townspeople fled to a stout distillery for safety. Their flight was reported to Lt. Hanks by the post’s surgeon, who lived in town. Lt. Hanks mustered his troops and prepared to make a stand.
Meanwhile British Captain Roberts and his force made their way along a rough track across the island to the heights above the fort, setting up a 6-pounder cannon, which was capable of firing an iron ball about the size of a softball. Easily maneuvered and capable of knocking down walls, firing shrapnel or canisters full of slugs like a giant shotgun, or skipping a ball across a field of troops, the 6-pounder was the artillery of choice in battles ranging from the Revolution to the Civil War. Even so, its 870-lb. barrel and carriage of several hundred pounds hauled without the aid of horses or oxen made for a tough slog up the rough trail to the heights above the fort.
Down below, Lt. Hanks and his 61 men had seven cannon, but all of them were trained on the harbor, and in any event, their cannon could not fire uphill even if they’d been wheeled around. Nor was withstanding a siege possible, since the fort’s only well was located outside its walls. Later that day, three townspeople arrived and talked Hanks into surrendering — an easy decision, considering the odds. He and his men didn’t even know that war had been declared. As was a common practice at the time, Hanks and his men were set free by Captain Roberts after swearing a gentleman’s agreement that they would not take up arms against the British.
A depiction of the 1763 Siege of Fort Detroit by Frederic Remington.
Siege of Detroit
Weeks later in August, British Major General Isaac Brock laid siege to Detroit with a force of 1,300 soldiers, 600 warriors, and two gunships, bombarding the town from across the river in Canada. For his part, American General Hull had 2,500-3,000 troops and militia and 700 civilians sequestered behind Detroit’s palisaded walls. Alas, their supply lines were cut off and they were far from any hope of rescue.
Hull had accepted the order to secure Detroit with great reluctance, and then only because no other general was available. His orders included attacking the British Fort Malden at Amherstburg across the river in Canada. The American strategy called for conquering Canada in order to end Indian attacks on U.S. soil from their sanctuary beyond the border.
But Hull was the wrong man for the job. Nearly 60, he had suffered a stroke and was debilitated by additional health problems and personal tragedies. With supplies from Ohio cut off by Tecumseh’s warriors and British troops, Hull began to crack, speaking in a trembling voice and dribbling tobacco juice down his beard and clothes. Worse, 400 hand-picked men, the cream of his troops, had gone off to try re-opening the supply lines to Ohio and had elected not to return to Detroit’s defense.
Psychological warfare played a major role in the siege of Detroit. General Brock had arranged for a British courier to be captured along with a bogus document, which claimed that 5,000 Indians were preparing to attack the fort. Learning that the fort at Mackinac Island had been taken, Hull said its defeat “opened the Northern hive of Indians, and they were swarming down in every direction.” In a panic over the Indians and his blocked supply lines, he abruptly canceled the attack on Fort Malden, outraging his officers and crushing troop morale. “He is a coward and will not risque his person,” said one of his soldiers.
A good laugh
Huddled behind the log palisade of Detroit, Hull and his men watched as long lines of Shawnee war chief Tecumseh’s warriors paraded past the fort, uttering hideous war cries and gesturing with their weapons before sneaking around unseen behind a low bank of earth to repeat the charade. One can imagine the warriors had a good laugh back in their camp as the subterfuge went on.
Prior experience with Indian warfare had shown that native warriors might be content to simply plunder their foes and knock them about a bit if they surrendered, but a bloodbath was almost certain if they took losses in battle. Native war chiefs were far less cavalier about the loss of a single man compared to commanders in the Napoleonic and American Civil wars, who sent tens of thousands to their deaths in mass attacks and then slept well at night. The loss of a single warrior was devastating to his family and his band; for who then would care for his wife and children? A war chief was judged by how many men he brought home safely, perhaps even more than the victories he scored.
Of course, the slaughter of innocent non-combatants was hardly confined to that of Native warriors. Across the ocean amid the war with Napoleon, hundreds, if not thousands of unarmed Spanish citizens who refused to surrender to the British were killed by Lord Wellington’s troops at the towns of Badajoz and San Sebastian in an orgy of mass rape, murder, and arson that went on for days even while the war in America was being waged. An appalled British officer wrote that, “Men, women and children were shot in the streets for no other apparent reason than pastime; every species of outrage was publicly committed in the houses, churches and streets, and in a manner so brutal that a faithful recital would be too indecent and too shocking to humanity.”
Surrendering to the Indians in the hope of being spared was a reasonable option, and Hull would have learned that not a soul was harmed by the warriors at Fort Mackinac. Gen. Brock played on well-known fears of a massacre, advising Hull that he had little control over his Indian allies, whose blood was up. “It is far from my inclination to join in a war of extermination,” he wrote to Hull, “but you must be aware, that the numerous body of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops, will be beyond control the moment the contest commences.”
Horrified
“My God! What shall I do with these women and children!” Hull exclaimed on receiving Brock’s message. Horrified at the thought of a bloodbath, he was bamboozled into surrendering Detroit on August 16, 1812 without firing a shot or even consulting his officers.
Outnumbered two-to-one, British General Brock had nonetheless crossed the river with 330 British regulars, 400 militia, and 600 Indians. His force captured 2,500 American troops, thirty-three cannon, and the Adams brig of war, including the entire Michigan Territory. An admiring Tecumseh exclaimed, “Now this is a man!” But a man for only a short time; Brock was killed in battle at Niagara two months later.
Hull later claimed that Detroit had been running low on ammunition and cannon balls, but Brock’s troops were astonished to find more than five thousand pounds of powder and huge quantities of shot at the fort. Hull was court-martialed in 1814, convicted of cowardice and dereliction of duty, and sentenced to die by firing squad. He dodged those bullets, however, after President James Madison pardoned him in lieu of his age and service in the American Revolution.
One of the ironies of the fall of Detroit was that three days later, Hull’s nephew, Captain Isaac Hull, would capture the British warship, Guerriere while commanding the U.S.S. Constitution, sending shock waves through the mighty British Empire. Isaac Hull was hailed as a national hero, while his uncle’s reputation went “hull down.”
More information on the author can be found at robertdownes.com.
After a year-long battle, Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home has been saved from destruction.
On Wednesday, the L.A. City Council unanimously voted to designate the Spanish Colonial-style residence as a historic cultural monument, protecting it from being razed by its current owners.
“We have an opportunity to do something today that should’ve been done 60 years ago. There’s no other person or place in the city of Los Angeles as iconic as Marilyn Monroe and her Brentwood home,” Councilmember Traci Park said in a speech before the vote.
Park, who represents the council’s 11th district, where the property is located, added that she’s planning to introduce a motion to evaluate tour bus restrictions in Brentwood after neighbors complained about unwanted traffic around the estate. She also floated the idea of moving the home to a place where the public could more easily access it.
“To lose this piece of history, the only home that Monroe ever owned, would be a devastating blow for historic preservation and for a city where less than 3% of historic designations are associated with women’s heritage,” Park said.
The battle over the home on 5th Helena Drive has been brewing since last summer, evolving into a greater discussion of what exactly is worth protecting in Southern California — a region chock-full of architectural marvels and Old Hollywood haunts swirling with celebrity legend and gossip.
Monroe fans claimed the residence is an indelible piece of Hollywood history; the actress bought the house for $75,000 in 1962 and died there of an apparent overdose six months later, making it the last home she ever occupied.
The homeowners claimed the house has been remodeled so many times over the years that it bears no resemblance to its former self. They also said it has become a neighborhood nuisance as tourists and fans flock to take pictures outside the property.
The saga started when heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband, reality TV producer Roy Bank, bought the property for $8.35 million and immediately laid out plans to demolish it. They owned the property next door and wanted to expand their estate.
An aerial view shows the Brentwood house where actress Marilyn Monroe died.
(Mel Bouzad / Getty Images)
The couple obtained a permit but soon ran into opposition, as historians, Angelenos and Monroe fans jumped in to protest the planned demolition. Councilmember Park said she received hundreds of calls and emails urging her to take action.
The next day, she held a news conference, while sporting red lipstick and short blond hair in a nod to Monroe, giving an impassioned speech urging the City Council to designate the home as a landmark.
In the months after, the landmark application slowly advanced, first receiving approval from the Cultural Heritage Commission and then from the Planning and Land Use Management Committee.
In the meantime, Milstein and Bank were barred from demolishing the home. Milstein addressed the Cultural Heritage Commission directly in January in an effort to sway its decision.
“We have watched it go unmaintained and unkept. We purchased the property because it is within feet of ours. And it is not a historic cultural monument,” she said at the time.
In an attempt to halt the landmark designation process, they sued the city in May, claiming that officials acted unconstitutionally in their efforts to designate the home as a landmark and accusing them of “backdoor machinations” in trying to preserve a house that doesn’t meet the criteria for status as a historic cultural monument.
“There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture, not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” the lawsuit says.
A judge denied the claim in June, calling the suit an “ill-disguised motion to win so that they can demolish the home and eliminate the historic cultural monument issue,” according to ABC 7.
The City Council vote was originally set for June 12, but Park requested a postponement, citing the recent court decision and pending litigation, as well as ongoing discussions between the city attorney’s office and the property owners.
The United States will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. But how much do the document’s values truly resonate in today’s America? Have they ever?
A new art exhibition, featuring 10 large-scale talking drum sculptures by 11 Detroit artists, examines these questions. Presented by Bedrock’s Decked Out Detroit, non-profit The Stories of Us and the Downtown Detroit Partnership, the show encourages viewers to learn about the past, understand the present, and reimagine the future — focusing on the Declaration’s ideals of solidarity and equity.
“These were not a reality in 1776 and they’re not a reality today, yet they are so much a part of our identity as Americans and who we believe we are,” Ashley Shaw Scott Adjaye, co-founder of The Stories of Us, says. “This is a critical time in American history where it feels like we are so often set up for conflict, rather than for curiosity, for solidarity, this willingness to extend grace to each other. We believe that art has the power to move past some of the barriers we create between each other, whether it’s religion, or our gender, or our race, ethnicity. At the end of the day, we are humans and we believe that art has the power of a human language for us to connect.”
Created by Shaw Scott Adjaye and Dennis Marcus, the art education nonprofit’s first-ever exhibit is debuting in Detroit at Capitol Park from June 12-July 7, then moving to Valade Park from July 9-Aug. 15, and finally will be on display at the Afro Nation Detroit festival from Aug. 18-19. After Detroit, the exhibit will travel to Atlanta and other U.S. cities over the next year and a half, growing to feature 50 sculptures by 2026.
The initial exhibition showcases works by Detroit artists that highlight the city’s diverse talent across generations and backgrounds. Featured artists include Peter Daniel Bernal, Darius Baber, Shirley Woodson, Senghor Reid, Khary Mason, Cailyn Dawson, Ackeem Salmon, Juniper Jones, Nicole Macdonald, DeAnn Wiley, and Hubert Massey.
In the making for 18 months, these artists collaborated on their sculptures in the undeveloped third floor of the city’s newly revitalized Book Tower.
“We got to really feed off of each others’ energy and creativity, share information and experience,” Reid says. “To be able to do that and not work on these pieces in isolation, I think makes this project even more real.”
For the project, Reid collaborated with his mother, Shirley Woodson, on a piece titled “Ancestral Journeys” under the theme “Emancipation,” a mixed-media sculpture of historic family photographs and painting.
“I’m a painter and my mom is a painter as well, but my mother has a large body of collage work where she uses ancestral photographs,” Reid says. “We have a family reunion every year, coming up on our 50th year pretty soon, but my mom is a part of the historical committee. So, for years, she and another cousin of mine were responsible for going to the library, looking up old census records, traveling down to Pulaski, Tennessee where my family’s from, to really discover and really identify key people in our lineage, trying to go back as far as we can. In doing so, in talking to her aunts and people who were still alive at the time, they started sending her all these photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s and she started creating this body of collage works. For this project, using my mother’s approach and some of those photographs, we thought it would fit perfectly with the theme of emancipation.”
Reid describes the process of creating the sculpture as “painstaking” and “challenging,” yet entirely rewarding.
“Artists love being challenged,” Reid says. “I loved every minute of it and it really turned out even better than I could have ever imagined. I just love the way it came together and really allowed for my mom and I to really tell the visual narrative in the way that we have intended from the beginning.”
He adds, “It means a lot because I’m able to connect with my family. I mean, so many African Americans, their knowledge of their ancestral lineage only goes back so far due to enslavement. So, to know that I have these ancestors who were farmers, who at the time were very successful farmers, had all of these creative skills, I mean it’s very empowering for me to know that I can draw strength from all that they had to go through and persevere through so that I could be here today making art.”
The larger-than-life talking drum sculptures featured in Stories of Us exhibition were designed by Jomo Tariku to celebrate the drum’s role in bringing people together across cultures and time.
“During enslavement, many plantations banned the use of the drum because we were able to communicate to enslaved Africans in other plantations,” Reid says. “To be able to have this kind of form and for us as artists to create this imagery to tell the story, and then for these drums to travel to another city and have another group of artists speak through the drums – it’s beautiful. To be a part of it is truly an honor.”
Detroit artist DeAnn Wiley stands next to her sculpture “Letters to Tyree Guyton.”
DeAnn Wiley, a Detroit painter, digital artist, and children’s book illustrator, created a sculpture titled “Letter to Tyree Guyton” under the theme “Me Reimagined.” The piece features Black children in the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood outside of the artist’s version of the Heidelberg Project, an outdoor art project created by Guyton around three decades ago.
While Wiley says he probably doesn’t know her, she wants her piece to be a thank you to Guyton for impacting her journey to becoming the artist she is today.
“[The theme] made me think about when I was younger, going around, driving around Detroit, seeing all of the different murals and the Heidelberg Project and just how it kind of ignited my curiosity into expression and art,” Wiley says. “I thought about their roles, all the artists around Detroit, known and unknown, and what their role was in creating this society and how it impacted me as a child to now be an artist in my 30s.”
When it comes to the entire Stories of Us exhibition wanting people to look forward, Wiley emphasizes the importance of children in shaping the future.
“I think that children move the needle forward, and so I wanted to appeal to children, speak to children, hopefully empower children, so that’s why I depicted a bunch of little Black kids around this neighborhood, and they’re responsible, and they each have a role in kind of what they’re doing to create this little world in the scene,” she says. “It’s very important for me to have children and characters of all abilities, skin tones, body shapes, and everything like that in my art. That’s how I let those people who are usually kind of left out, know that they are important, that they belong in the art.”
The opening of Stories of Us in Detroit is significant for the organizers and artists, as the rich culture, creativity, and history of the city is reflected in the exhibition’s themes and overall mission.
“When I think about Detroit, I think about resistance and I think about being rooted to something and I think that there’s a lot of spaces where you can clearly see that there’s this gentrification and people kind of moving out, but we still find a way to stay true to the spirit of Detroit, to really stay true to our creativity and our expression,” Wiley says. “I feel so inspired to be from here, and to live here… I think it’s important that it started here.”
“What better place to start than the D?” Reid adds. “Our artistic community in Detroit is so rich, and it’s so active, and it’s been that way for so long. I feel like it’s only natural that it start here… To have all those generations working together to create these forms and to tell this story together is important and it’s what Detroit is all about.”
The Stories of Us co-founders hope the exhibit inspires people to move with purpose, grace, courage, and hope.
“I want people to connect,” Shaw Scott Adjaye says. “I want people to understand that our histories are shared, our present is shared, our future is shared, so it is in our best interest to move into that future with solidarity.”
More information on The Stories of Us is available at thestoriesofus.org.
A place that is no longer wanted by the nation it helped protect, Hangar 3 is being demolished.
There was an era when the cavernous structure, one of three hangars at Moffett Field between Mountain View and Sunnyvale, had the attention it deserved. Inside its historic wooden walls, generations of proud servicemembers moored and maintained the aircraft that defended us from predators.
But time has overtaken Hangar 3. Built during World War II, the blimp hangar has long stood idle and empty. Decaying and dangerous, it would cost a fortune to fix.
Its death has been years in the planning, but now it is time. Demolition is systematic and controlled, slicing the building from north to south. A quicker strategy, using explosives, could stress adjacent structures. It will be gone by next March.
“There is a deep sense of loss,” said Jonathan Ikan, cultural resources manager at NASA Ames Research Center, which owns and operates Moffett Field. “It has had, and will always have, an everlasting mark on our history.”
Hangar 3 and its two siblings have been a famed part of the Peninsula’s landscape, punctuating the eastern horizon like giant gray anvils. Hangar 1 is easily viewed from Highway 101; Hangars 2 and 3, more distant, are best seen from the public Golf Club at Moffett Field.
Built in response to the escalating war in Europe, they are among a handful of surviving U.S. blimp hangars — and are among the largest free-standing wood structures in the world.
Moffett’s largest and oldest, massive Hangar 1, was built with steel framing in 1933. Hangars 2 and 3, built between 1942 and 1943, are both wood framed and more vulnerable. As part of Google’s deal with NASA to lease parts of the facility, the company is restoring Hangars 1 and 2 for use in private projects.
Once Hangar 3 is leveled, only five of the original 17 hangars nationwide will remain, said NASA historian James Anderson. Last November, a Tustin-based hangar ignited with such fury that firefighters just let it burn.
The news hit hard in Hangar 3’s close-knit community of veterans, now retired and scattered across the United States, who are connecting online to share photos and memories of a place that irrevocably changed their lives.
They are sharing painful memories of friends who died in the skies, and the relief of watching others return safely. Inside Hangar 3, murals of each squadron’s mascot — a marlin, a black cat, a phoenix, and more — were proudly painted on walls.
They recall winds so fierce that once a giant door blew down, damaging a plane and crushing a truck. An earthquake so strong that it triggered waves, like water, across the concrete floor. An oxygen tank that exploded, soared through the air and pierced a hangar wall.
A mural in the breezeway of Hanger 3 at Moffett Federal Field. The decaying hangar, built during World War II, is being demolished and will be gone by next March. (Dominic Hart/NASA Ames Research Center)
Aviator Larry Beck was on duty on August 5, 1962, the day actress Marilyn Monroe died. “Somehow people got the notion it was a security threat,” he wrote. “We were inundated with phone calls.”
Hectic during the day, Hangar 3 could feel haunted at night. There were owls in the rafters — and a visiting fox.
“It was an awesome place to work,” said 68-year-old John Arthur Davis, of Klamath Falls, Oregon, who cared for the wheels, bearings and tires of surveillance aircraft Lockheed P-3 Orions. When on midnight “hangar watch,” he would pedal the vast perimeter in the dark on his bicycle.
Chris Oman, 77, of Grants Pass, Oregon, a field engineer for the hangar’s Lockheed P-3 Orions in the 1980s, feels “a lot of nostalgia. It served a really special time in history for the San Francisco Bay Area.”
“It felt like family. There was camaraderie there,” said Charles Marotta, 71, of Las Vegas, a medical corpsman who tended to Hangar 3’s sick and injured. “We got them ready to go. We got them fixed when they came back.”
Hangar 3 was built in a hurry, without rigorous research and testing, according to NASA historian James Anderson. The United States desperately needed blimps to conduct submarine surveillance operations along the Pacific Coast.
The original plan called for Hangar 3 to be made of steel, like Hangar 1. But metal was needed for shipbuilding and weapons.
So, instead, it was built of less durable wood. More than 50 arches of Douglas fir, like a giant rib cage, were curved to accommodate the giant blimps.
The size of six football fields, Hangar 3 could house six to 12 aircraft. Flared outer walls provided space for offices, a lab, a shop and storage.
Huge 121-foot-tall doors, rumored to be resistant to nuclear blast, rolled on rails. A pair of catwalks, 15 stories high, provided access to vast upper reaches.
“It was so big that it would have its own fog up there,” recalled Davis. When a cold front rolled through, “it would drizzle inside.”
After the war, the blimps were replaced by Military Air Transport Service planes, whose mission was to deliver cargo, personnel and mail to armed forces across the globe.
The Cold War brought new responsibilities. Part of Moffett Field’s so-called “Orion University,” it housed P-3 Orion patrol squadrons, which flew long, slow and low missions in search of Pacific threats.
“The job was to keep watch over the Soviet navy — both their surface ships and, especially, their submarines,” said retired Captain Tom Spink, board chair for the Moffett Field Museum.
It later housed C-121 Super G Lockheed Constellations, which transported military personnel and their families, then Lockheed C-130 Hercules, which moved cargo. The routes went to Pacific Island nations, as well as the Philippines, Japan, South Vietnam, Thailand, India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — “very interesting places,” recalled retired pilot and Navy Lieutenant Glenn Cribbs, now 87, of Hollister.
One of its last roles was to provide around-the-clock mechanical support to the 129th California Air National Guard.
“The place was busy 24 hours, seven days a week. There were always planes that needed maintaining,” said 57-year-old Tony Divito of Burlingame, who worked on planes’ weapons systems. “We were never closed.”
The beginning of the end came with the 1990 Base Closure Act when Moffett Field was shut down to save money. The Navy transferred the hangars to NASA, which then leased them to Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures.
Hangar 3 has outlived its design lifespan, said NASA’s Trina Meiser, an architectural historian. Even when young, it needed work, such as a new roof, stronger trusses and bracing.
An overhead view of Hangars 2 and 3 from the northwest corner of Moffett Field in June 1943. (Ames Research Center)
Despite such efforts, its roof sagged. Timbers fell on the hangar deck. Air conditioners and heaters quit working. During storms, the floor needed mopping.
“The thing that got me the most was the two to three inches of wood splinters and dust” atop offices and catwalks, recalled fire inspector Rick Say, 68, of Union, Washington. “If any little spark happened, the whole thing could go up.”
For several years, Google tried to slow its decay.
“But shoring would be installed for one location and then damage would happen in another location,” said Andres Estrada, Ames environmental protection specialist. “It became this progressive problem.”
Officials gave in to despair. In a report, NASA concluded that repairs would be “extensive, undefinable, and cost-prohibitive.” Hangar 3’s last resident was the National Guard’s engine shop.
“Finally the word came out that it just was not possible to save it,” said Spink.
“It’s going to be really hard when it all comes down,” he said. “We’re going to have to raise a glass to Hangar 3.”
Hangars 2, left, and 3, right, at NASA Ames Research Center on Monday, May 15, 2006. Hangar 3, considered unsafe, began demolition in Dec. 2023. It will be completed by March 2025. (NASA Ames Research Center)
(The Hill) – A Massachusetts elementary school teacher was placed on paid administrative leave after two incidents the district described as “disproportionately traumatic for students of color,” including a “mock slave auction.”
Gregory Martineau, superintendent of the Southborough school district, wrote to parents last week that the incidents occurred in a fifth-grade class in January and April.
During a class lesson about the triangle slave trade, the unnamed teacher impromptu asked two Black students to stand in front of the class as the class discussed their physical attributes in a “mock slave auction.”
“Holding a mock slave auction is unacceptable and violates the District’s core values,” Martineau wrote. “Simulations or role plays when teaching about historical atrocities or trauma are not appropriate, and these teaching methods are not to be used.”
In a second incident this year, the teacher used the N-word in discussions about a book, even though the book itself did not contain the slur, Martineau said.
After concerned parents met with the teacher, the teacher then called out a student who complained of the behavior in front of the entire class.
The teacher was placed on administrative leave early last month, and an investigation is ongoing, Martineau said.
“I apologize for the events that took place in The Public Schools of Southborough,” he wrote. “I acknowledge that there were missteps in this process that further complicated the situation. Ultimately, I am responsible for ensuring students are in safe and supportive learning environments.”
The district, about a half-hour west of Boston, is 63 percent white and 3% Black, according to the district profile.
Parent Meghan Cifuentes, whose son was in the class, told WBUR that she learned of the incidents when her son told her that the teacher said “a bad word” in class.
“Never was I expecting the N-word to come out of his mouth,” Cifuentes said. “If you’re going to use that word with 10 and 11 year-olds, there needs to be a heavy discussion of what the word is, why it was used and what it means — just some background information.”
A FLOODED FARM, A HAUNTED ISLAND AND A CEMETERY ALMOST LOST TO TIME LAKE. HARTWELL HARBORS ITS FAIR SHARE OF LEGENDS AND TODAY OUR PEYTON FURTADO EXPLORED ONE HERSELF. SHE TAKES US TO CEMETERY ISLAND AND IT’S ALL NEW AT SIX. WHEN YOU HEAD OUT TO LAKE HARTWELL, YOU MIGHT BE GOING FOR A DAY ON THE BOAT, A DAY IN THE WATER. BUT WHAT A LOT OF FOLKS DON’T REALIZE IS THERE’S SO MUCH HISTORY HERE. JUST BELOW THE SURFACE AND IN SOME AREAS JUST ABOVE. HERE LIES LAKE HARTWELL. IT WAS FULLY FORMED BY A DAM IN 1962. ITS GLISTENING SURFACE IS A WATERY GRAVE FOR FARMS, HOMES, EVEN AN ENTIRE TOWN. THERE’S A LOT OF HISTORY THAT’S UNDERNEATH THAT LAKE, FOR SURE. AND CEMETERY ISLAND. IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG. THE ISLAND USED TO BE PART OF HARRIS PLANTATION FOR MORE THAN 200 YEARS BEFORE THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS BUILT LAKE HARTWELL DAM, THEY WOULD HAVE TO EITHER SELL OR FORFEIT THEIR LAND FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THESE LAKES, AND A LOT OF PEOPLE ELECTED TO SELL THEIR LAND. A LOT OF THEM WAS VOTED TO STAY. THERE’S A VERY FAMOUS STORY OF A WOMAN WHO ACTUALLY THREATENED THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS. YOU KNOW, SURVEYORS AND LAND BUYERS WITH A GUN, WHILE OTHER LANDOWNERS MOVED THEIR BURIAL GROUNDS. THE HARRIS’S HAD THIS HIGH GROUND. THE FAMILY PLOT, MADE UP OF 59, MARKED GRAVES, WITH LESS THAN 20 OF THEM ACTUALLY HAVING STONE MARKERS, WHICH INDICATES TO ME THAT THERE WERE QUITE A LOT OF ENSLAVED PEOPLE BURIED THERE BECAUSE THE HARRIS’S HAD A LARGE PLANTATION, IT WAS SOME OF THE AREA’S ONLY HISTORY TO BE PRESERVED. IT’S MYSTERY INSPIRING. THE NAME GHOST ISLAND. I HAVE HEARD IT MENTIONED, UM, SEVERAL TIMES THAT THERE WAS LEGENDS ABOUT A WITCH THAT WOULD THAT WOULD ROAM AROUND ON THE ISLAND, PEOPLE SEEING SHAPES AND FIGURES AND SHADOWS, THE TIDE DRAWING IN ADVENTURE SEEKERS IS KIND OF COOL. IT’S LIKE REALLY OLD TOO. AND SENDING OUT YOUNG HISTORY BUFFS TO SHARE THE ISLAND’S HISTORY AND MYSTERY. AT LAKE HARTWELL, I’M PEYTON FURTAD
Ghost Island: A South Carolina lake history and mystery
Updated: 12:39 AM EDT Jun 3, 2024
In South Carolina, a flooded farm, a haunted island, and a cemetery almost lost to time. Lake Hartwell harbors its fair share of legend. Cemetery Island is no exception.The lake was fully filled in 1962, the glistening surface a watery grave for farms, homes, and even an entire town.”There’s, there’s a lot of history that’s underneath that lake for sure,” said Dustin Norris with the Anderson County Museum.And Cemetery Island is just the tip of the iceberg. The island used to be part of the Harris Plantation for more than 200 years before the Army Corps of Engineers built the Lake Hartwell Dam.”They would have to either sell or forfeit their land, for the construction of these lakes,” said Joshua Johnson with the Bart Garrison Agricultural Museum of South Carolina. “And a lot of people elected to sell their land. A lot of them wanted to say, there’s a very famous story of a woman who actually threatened the Corps of Engineers, you know, surveyors and land buyers with a gun.”While other landowners moved their burial grounds, the Harrises had high ground. The family plot has 59 graves.”With less than 20 of them actually having stone markers, which indicates to me,” Johnson said, “that there were quite a lot of enslaved people buried there because the Harris’s had a large plantation.”It was some of the area’s only history preserved above the surface, the cemetery inspiring the name “Ghost Island.””I have heard it mentioned, several times, that there were legends about a witch that would roam around on the island,” said Norris.Johnson added, “People seeing shapes and figures and shadows or hearing voices out there.”The tide regularly draws in adventure seekers and sends out young history buffs to share the island’s history and mystery.
, S.C. —
In South Carolina, a flooded farm, a haunted island, and a cemetery almost lost to time. Lake Hartwell harbors its fair share of legend. Cemetery Island is no exception.
The lake was fully filled in 1962, the glistening surface a watery grave for farms, homes, and even an entire town.
“There’s, there’s a lot of history that’s underneath that lake for sure,” said Dustin Norris with the Anderson County Museum.
And Cemetery Island is just the tip of the iceberg. The island used to be part of the Harris Plantation for more than 200 years before the Army Corps of Engineers built the Lake Hartwell Dam.
“They would have to either sell or forfeit their land, for the construction of these lakes,” said Joshua Johnson with the Bart Garrison Agricultural Museum of South Carolina. “And a lot of people elected to sell their land. A lot of them wanted to say, there’s a very famous story of a woman who actually threatened the Corps of Engineers, you know, surveyors and land buyers with a gun.”
While other landowners moved their burial grounds, the Harrises had high ground. The family plot has 59 graves.
“With less than 20 of them actually having stone markers, which indicates to me,” Johnson said, “that there were quite a lot of enslaved people buried there because the Harris’s had a large plantation.”
It was some of the area’s only history preserved above the surface, the cemetery inspiring the name “Ghost Island.”
“I have heard it mentioned, several times, that there were legends about a witch that would roam around on the island,” said Norris.
Johnson added, “People seeing shapes and figures and shadows or hearing voices out there.”
The tide regularly draws in adventure seekers and sends out young history buffs to share the island’s history and mystery.
A collaboration between two government agencies is creating exciting opportunities for history buffs interested in the American Revolution.
The Revolutionary War Pension Project, a collaboration between the National Park Service and the National Archives and Records Administration, is looking for volunteers to help transcribe the military pension files from the Revolutionary War.
The special project aims to ”make a permanent contribution to the historical record for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution,” according to the National Park Service’s website. The nation’s Semiquincentennial will take place in 2026.
They are looking for volunteers to help transcribe the military pension files from the Revolutionary War. The files consist of applications an other records pertaining to claims for pensions and bounty land warrants.
According to the project, more than 80,000 of America’s first veterans and their widows have records that “may contain valuable details about Revolutionary War veterans and their families, such as rank, unit, period of service, age, residence, date and place of marriage, and date and place of death of spouse. Also within these records, you may find copies of marriage or other family records, information pertaining to military activities or details about soldier’s lives, along with letters, diaries, or family trees”
You can learn more about the Citizen Archivist Program and how to get started by clicking here. You can even print out a Revolutionary War bingo card and fill it in as you transcribe the pension records.
According to the NPS, Revolutionary War veterans were paid poorly for their service and some were forced to sell to land speculators the promissory land certificates they received at the end of the war, receiving pennies compared to what they were worth.
In 1818, the first of four Revolutionary War veteran pension acts were passed, at first for veterans, and later their widows, to collect a pension from the federal government paid out every six months.
Remember the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire that killed 165 in 1977?
The Beverly Hills Supper Club, once called the “showplace of the Midwest,” was engulfed in flames in 1977, killing 165 people and injuring hundreds more
Updated: 5:47 AM PDT May 28, 2024
It’s impossible to forget that one tragic evening when fire erupted *** blaze that would become one of the deadliest nightclub fires in the history of the United States. We had all the best shows in the country. We had all the big shows at the same time that Las Vegas was getting its start. That’s how musician Earl Clark remembers the Beverly Hills Supper Club *** place he performed for 13 years. They came from all over the country, all over the world. It was *** club that attracted the stars of the 70 s and those patrons wanting to see them. The comedy team of Teter mcdonald was performing on stage when busboy Walter Bailey announced there was *** fire and everyone needed to leave. The waitress came in and told us that we get up and leave and that there was *** fire and just within five minutes, the garden room had went up, we immediately got up and we were sitting next to an exit and walked out. We just got outside. When boom, the whole place went up, I knew this was bad and I started yelling at the top of my voice, how these people could go out *** back entrance. Now, *** back hall, the flames were like on top of the people’s head. You could hear the screams in the building from the people. People have panicked so badly you could still see him in *** running position, arms and legs frozen where he just fell and I don’t know if it was just *** smoke getting him, but they were frozen in that position and trying to get them out to see that many people dead. It’s in America instead of *** battlefield. Somewhere overseas. It’s *** sight that you don’t want to see. 165 people died in that fire. Many more were injured. The popular club was packed with more than 2000 people. The official investigations into what caused the fire were inconclusive but the factor cited the most is faulty aluminum wiring. The fire started in electrical wires attached to the ceiling lights in the club’s zebra room. It burned unnoticed for *** while then traveled into the nearby cabaret room packed with more than 1000 people. Other reports point to overcrowding combustible ceiling tiles and the lack of *** proper evacuation plan or automatic sprinklers. We can’t forget it. They should be here, sharing our life and our families each other, they should be here and they’re not all they did was just go see *** show. Yeah, they didn’t come back. We started these memorials about the 20 year anniversary and every five years we continue to do them. And here at this memorial survivors and those who lost loved ones come to find closure. Greeting those who have helped them live beyond this tragedy. I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve got to lock in *** certain place and, you know, that’s where it is. That’s how I’ve had to deal with life, but it’s something I’ll never forget and it’s always right there and I just thank God for everything I’ve got now.
Remember the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire that killed 165 in 1977?
The Beverly Hills Supper Club, once called the “showplace of the Midwest,” was engulfed in flames in 1977, killing 165 people and injuring hundreds more
Updated: 5:47 AM PDT May 28, 2024
The Beverly Hills Supper Club, located just south of Cincinnati in Southgate, Kentucky, was once a staple of the entertainment scene.Big names like Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Sophie Tucker performed there. People traveled from miles around to witness the shows and enjoy themselves at the nightclub.On May 28, 1977, all of that changed.The Beverly Hills Supper Club was engulfed in flames. The fire, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, claimed the lives of 165 people. Hundreds more were injured in the blaze.The cause of the fire is still subject to debate.Watch the video to find out what most believe caused the fire that destroyed the “showplace of the Midwest.”
SOUTHGATE, Ky. —
The Beverly Hills Supper Club, located just south of Cincinnati in Southgate, Kentucky, was once a staple of the entertainment scene.
Big names like Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Sophie Tucker performed there. People traveled from miles around to witness the shows and enjoy themselves at the nightclub.
On May 28, 1977, all of that changed.
The Beverly Hills Supper Club was engulfed in flames. The fire, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, claimed the lives of 165 people. Hundreds more were injured in the blaze.
The cause of the fire is still subject to debate.
Watch the video to find out what most believe caused the fire that destroyed the “showplace of the Midwest.”
Abington Senior High School Sports Aren’t Just Exciting. It’s Uniting.
In today’s America, sports are more important than ever. It doesn’t just unite us. It binds us.
Ten miles outside of Philadelphia — amid the array of colors of a Pennsylvania spring bloom — Abington Senior High School is doing just that.
One year after the Boys Varsity Track and Field placed first at the 2023 Penn Relays in the 400×4, this year’s Abington Boys Team also placed high in Penn Relays last weekend. This past fall, the Abington High School Boys Soccer Team advanced to the PIAA Quarterfinal Playoffs, where they fought right up to an Overtime Penalty Kick. Last spring the Abington Girls Flag Football Team won the Eagles Girls Flag Football League that was presented by Planet Fitness.
It couldn’t come at a better time.
It’s been a challenging year for Abington. Two weeks ago, police had to respond and place Abington Senior High School on lockdown after a large student fight. Last August, Police responded when a gun was uncovered in the stands of the 104th rivalry Abington and Cheltenham Football Game. Nearly a month later in September 2023, an altercation broke out inside Abington Senior High School between two rival groups. Abington Police were called in both altercations.
Last week, it was announced that this year’s Abington and Cheltenham Football Game — one of the oldest in the State of Pennsylvania since 1915 — has been suspended.
Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons.
You can’t get more historic than Abington Village.
Much like Philadelphia, Abington was founded on a parcel of land negotiated by William Penn and the Lenni Lenape Indians. Abington’s Presbyterian Meeting — founded through the vision of Pastor Malachi Jones in 1714 — and whose congregation would build the first Church 310 years ago in the present-day Church Cemetery in 1719.
Abington has seen it all. It gave its sons to the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. It nearly had to prepare a defense when Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania in 1863. And those same cemetery walls saw American soldiers fire down on British and Hessian forces marching up Old York Road in an attempt to encircle George Washington’s Continental Army and destroy it in 1777. When the Battle of Whitemarsh was over, it was the Americans who held the heights around Abington.
In 1946, Abington Township began a road widening project right outside of the cemetery at the corner of Susquehanna Street Road and Old York Road. Before the Public Works Project began, Abington Township was made aware that they may uncover several Lenni Lenape remains.
Over 350 years ago, before William Penn negotiated the transfer of the land to the colonials and long before Abington Senior High School’s Soccer teams played and practiced on the fields in and around Schwarzman Stadium, the Lenni Lenape Indians faced with the reality of European Colonials encroaching increasingly on their lands — both the men and women of the tribe played a sport called Pahsaheman.
The sport was a combination of modern football and soccer.
Abington Senior High School Athletics aren’t just providing distraction to a fear of hopelessness from the realities of modern American Society. They are creating hope for and excitement for the whole community.
A community that will wait patiently for another hope. The hope of a renewal of Abington and Cheltenham rivalry that has been played on Pennsylvania Football Fields for almost 110 years.
Oh and that 1946 Abington Public Works Project on the corner of Old York and Susquehanna Street Road that was expected to find the remains of a few brave Lenni Lenape athletes?
Nope – it’s not a juvenile joke – there really is a story about parachuting beavers. 76 of them, to be exact.
More than seven decades ago, Idaho found itself with a peculiar problem involving beavers too accustomed to urban life. These beavers, having become a nuisance in the growing residential areas, needed new homes. The solution? Parachute them into the wilderness. Yes, you read that correctly: parachuting beavers.
Elmo Heter: The Man with the Plan
Elmo Heter, an officer with Idaho Fish and Game, faced the challenge of relocating beavers from populated areas like McCall, near Payette Lake, to the remote Chamberlain Basin. His ingenious plan involved some old parachutes left over from World War II and a healthy dose of innovation.
Heter knew that transporting beavers by land was fraught with challenges. Horses and mules tended to get spooked by the critters, and driving them through rugged terrain was costly and complex. So, he looked to the skies for an answer.
Dropping Beavers by Plane
Heter devised a method using surplus military parachutes to air-drop beavers into their new wilderness homes. The first task was creating a safe container for the beavers. Initial attempts with woven willow boxes were scrapped when it became apparent that the beavers might chew their way out mid-flight or cause havoc on the plane.
Thus, Heter designed a wooden box that would open upon impact with the ground. To test this innovative container, he chose a plucky male beaver named Geronimo as his first test pilot. Geronimo endured multiple drops to ensure the safety and efficacy of this method.
The Pioneer Parachuting Beaver
Heter dropped Geronimo repeatedly to test the resilience of the box and the beaver’s tolerance. Remarkably, Geronimo adapted well to his role. After numerous trials, he seemed almost eager to get back into his box for another drop. Heter’s plan was proving viable, and soon, it was time to scale up.
Geronimo’s final test flight included a one-way ticket to the Chamberlain Basin, where he joined three female beavers, establishing a new colony in what would become a thriving ecosystem. This land is now part of the protected Frank Church Wilderness.
The Legacy of the Parachuting Beavers
In total, 76 beavers were air-dropped into the wilderness. All but one survived the journey, and they quickly set about doing what beavers do best: building dams and creating habitats that benefit the entire ecosystem. This area is now part of the largest protected roadless forest in the lower 48 states.
The operation, initially seen as a quirky solution, turned out to be a remarkable success, showing that sometimes unconventional problems require unconventional solutions. The savings in manpower and reduction in beaver mortality proved that sometimes, the sky really is the limit.
Why You Won’t See Parachuting Beavers Today
Despite its success, the days of parachuting beavers have passed. Nowadays, the approach to problematic beavers is more about coexistence and less about relocation. The pioneering days of the 1940s, when men like Elmo Heter looked to parachutes to solve ecological challenges, are long gone. Yet, the descendants of those aerial adventurers likely still live on in the Frank Church Wilderness, a testament to one of the most unusual wildlife management efforts ever undertaken.
So, next time you spot a beaver in Idaho, remember that it might just be the descendant of a brave pioneer who once took an unexpected flight into history.
Every year on May 15, Palestinian people across the world observe what is known as Nakba Day, the solemn anniversary of the day in 1948 when the Arab-Israeli War began, precipitating a wave of displacement and expulsion among the Palestinian population. This year, with more than 450,000 people—nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population—newly displaced in just the past week, the commemoration of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” takes on new significance.
For those who observe it, Nakba Day is not only a day for mourning, but for a sense of re-establishment. Although it is annually remembered, the event has historical nuances and driving forces that can contribute to an understanding of the current events in Gaza.
What is commemorated on Nakba Day?
Political Zionism—the movement to create a Jewish state—dates back to the 19th century, but the persecution of Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s and the horrors of the Holocaust drove a massive migration in that decade of 60,000 Jews to what was then known as Mandatory Palestine, the British-controlled land that was majority Muslim-Palestinian at the time. In the midst of increasing conflict over the land, the United Nations proposed a division of Arab and Jewish states; the proposal was opposed by the Arab population of the land, and a civil war followed the announcement of the plan. When Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, following Britain’s departure, armies from several neighboring Arab lands joined the war on the side of the Palestinian Arab population. Their invasion took place on May 15.
In the war that followed, as Israel pushed back the forces of its neighbors, over half the Palestinian population was displaced. From 1947 to 1949, 531 towns were destroyed by Israeli militias, according to the West Bank-based Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, homes were shelled, and 15,000 people were killed, including women and children. “They witnessed rapes, imprisonment of men and boys, and almost all of them witnessed the destruction of major cultural sites,” says professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti, who teaches modern Palestinian and Arabic History at Rice University. (By the end of the Arab-Israeli war, over 6,000 Israelis lost their lives, including some in mass killings.)
“There were attacks on water sources; Akka [also known as Acre], for example, was subjected to biological warfare. Their water was poisoned to try to force the populations out,” Takriti says. “The idea was to have as much land appropriated with the fewest Palestinian population remaining as possible.” Further attempts to poison water supplies in Gaza were thwarted when Egyptian officials found out, says Takriti.
Of the 1.4 million-strong Palestinian population at the time, 800,000 were displaced; the massacres of families and towns left enduring scars on the survivors. “The Nakba has two dimensions,” Takriti says. “The humanitarian catastrophe entails loss of land, loss of property and expulsion of the people. The other dimension was the political catastrophe, which entailed suppression of native sovereignty. Those two aspects of reality continue to this very day”
Razan Ghabin, a 26-year-old Palestinian living in the U.S., recounts the stories told to her by her grandparents who survived the Nakba. Ghabin’s grandmother, Othmana As’ad Ghabin, was a Palestinian refugee from Lifta, a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Born in 1925, Othmana recounted the Nakba to her granddaughter many times. She would test her children and grandchildren by having them repeating her memories back to her to ensure that her stories never died. The Liftawi people were affluent, with many of the relatives in the families holding Master’s degrees. Lifta is now known as “Palestinian Pompeii”–the original buildings left behind after the Nakba still stand today, deserted.
Left: Razan Ghabin’s grandmother, Othmana As’ad Ghabin, wearing a traditional Liftawi thobe celebrating the wedding of one of her children in Ramallah, Palestine years after the Nakba; Right: Ghabin’s great-grandparents and relatives outside a Lifta coffee shop years before the Nakba, where they would eventually be attacked and forcibly removed.Courtesy Ghabin
Israeli militia attacked a coffee shop in the village in 1948 while Othmana’s family were there, she says. The military threatened them and told them to leave, telling them it would be temporary. They hid in a nearby cave and any time they tried to return they’d be shot at. They later had to establish a life as refugees in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank. Even though the borders opened years later in 1967, As’ad was never able to return to Lifta. The family continues to live in Ramallah.
How is Nakba Day commemorated today?
Yousef Kassim, a Palestinian-American and son of Nakba survivors, emphasized the importance of the day for Palestinians worldwide. “We certainly reflect on it as a family; we’ll share stories or my dad will share stories. He was a baby when it actually happened, but less and less people that were alive when it happened are still here. For a lot of them it’s tough to talk about,” Kassim says. “We believe it’s still ongoing, because so long as the Palestinians that were expelled and their descendants aren’t allowed to return, it’s ongoing for them.”
“My father was from Lifta, next to Deir Yassin”—the site of one of the most infamous massacres of the Nakba—“and that’s where my paternal grandmother was born,” he says. “News spread quick to the neighboring villages, news of the murders and rapes.” Village residents were not in a position to fend off the military. Kassim’s grandfather rented houses to Holocaust survivors and Jewish immigrants, and after what happened to his family, was left penniless with 12 kids. Yousef Kassim’s family lived only six miles outside of Lifta but was never allowed to return. “He lived until he was 93 years old and never got to see justice.”
Palestinian right of return groups and committees across the world demand rights during this day, recounting the destruction of their individual towns and cities, says Takriti. “The refugees want a repatriation, and vehemently reject the resettlement and want their land back. They also want an end to the military occupation and Israeli apartheid systems.” Many Palestinians demand political, national, and humanitarian respect during this time, and they do this through marches, rallies, speeches, publications and cultural activities.
“A lot of Palestinians, when we think of the Nakba we think of really horrible events,” Kassim says, “but we also gain a lot of inspiration from the way that our parents and grandparents approached really difficult situations with a lot of grace.”
Last Week I Told You That Few Things Were As Philly As The Broad Street Run. The Dad Vail Regatta Is One Of Those.
This year is the 85th Anniversary of Philadelphia’s Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate collegiate rowing competition in all of America. This yearly rowing competition draws participation from over 100 US Colleges.
This year — at the 85th running of the Dad Vail Regatta — deviated from its traditional position on the Schuylkill River since 1953. Due to dredging in the Schuylkill, this year’s competition will be on the Cooper River in Camden instead.
Operating under what would eventually be the Dad Vail Regatta Rowing Association, the first competition would be run in 1934. The association would first be formed in 1939, and Dad Vail was born.
For years, the rowers of the Regatta sailed right past Boathouse Row, first built in the 1870s and which recently had its glow restored just this past year. The Fairmount Park Conservancy joined forces this year with Boathouse Row to spend $2.1 Million to add 6,400 individual LED lights.
Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons.
The row isn’t the only thing to glow on the river. The iconic Lemon Hill Mansion, which can be seen at night above Boathouse Row emanating a yellow glow into the Fairmount Park night sky. Henry Platt’s 1800 mansion offers which is a beautifully lit structure against the river at night.
The Dad Vail Regatta was first sponsored by Aberdeen Asset Management in 2010 and Thomas Jefferson University in 2019.
It’s iconic Philadelphia, wherever it’s hosted. It always will be.
And who was the big winner this year? It was Philly’s own Drexel University Rowing.
Lisbon, Portugal – The olive-green military vehicles are the same, as are the uniforms of the personnel riding them. It’s even the same day of the week on this April 25 – a Thursday.
This is when it all started, on the shore of the Tagus River where the sun hangs like a bulb over the Portuguese capital and Europe’s westernmost edge.
But the cheering crowds beside the road today, waving red carnations bought from flower ladies on Rossio Square weren’t there 50 years ago. Nobody clapped their hands or posted photos on social media along with catchy hashtags.
On that brisk dawn, the streets were deserted while Lisbon still slumbered, while a revolt was taking birth. That morning, Portugal was still a fascist dictatorship that had fought three brutal wars in Portuguese Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique in its desperate bid to keep control over its African colonies. By the end of the day, Portugal’s 42-year-old dictatorship, Estado Novo (“New State”), had been felled by a swift military takeover.
“We were professional soldiers, we’d been in wars and were trained to deal with stressful situations, but this was something completely different,” says former navy captain Carlos Almada Contreiras.
Contreiras was among the 163 military captains who in September 1973 had come together in secret at a “special farmhouse barbeque” to form the clandestine “Movement of Armed Forces” (Movimento das Forcas Armadas, MFA). These were men who had fought the Portuguese dictatorship’s colonial wars and knew very well that no military victory was close at hand; on the contrary, morale was in decline and an estimated 9,000 Portuguese soldiers had died since 1961.
Veterans parade on the streets of Lisbon alongside crowds celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, during which military leaders deposed the former authoritarian dictatorship, Estado Novo [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
On April 25, 1974, they turned their gaze towards Lisbon’s political heart, intending to seize control of key military installations, political chambers and broadcasting facilities, as well as the airport. At the time, 50 years ago, nobody could predict the outcome of the day.
However, the rebels knew that “there was no turning back,” says Contreiras.
It was now life or death – if the military action failed, the MFA conspirators would in all probability have been charged with high treason and quite possibly sentenced to death. But a victorious outcome might just bring a new dawn for a dying empire in its last throes.
Was he afraid? Contreiras takes a deep breath and recalls that morning when his life – and the lives of numerous others – changed forever. “I haven’t thought of that,” he says. “We had to act, otherwise we would continue to live in this dead political system, keep fighting these meaningless colonial wars.”
In the end, and in less than a day, MFA gained full control over Portugal’s military facilities and brought an end to the far-right dictatorship. Prime Minister Marcello Caetano bowed to the conspirators and Portugal’s notorious secret police – PIDE – was dismantled.
The following year, 1975, a US-backed counter-coup in November would supplant the new government and the Carnation Revolution would come to an end. But the change it had brought about was permanent.
“The people of Portugal and millions of people in our African colonies were given their lives back,” says Contreiras.
As Portugal celebrates 50 years of pluralistic democracy today, however, the long shadows of the country’s authoritarian past are creeping back in the wake of the March 2024 elections, in which far-right political party Chega (“Enough”) gained 18 percent of the vote and drove a wedge through the heart of the Portuguese two-party system, which had dominated the chambers of power since the 1970s.
‘We had to act,’ former navy captain Carlos Almada Contreiras recalls the events of April 25, 1974 when he and other senior military figures finally stood up to the dictatorship Lisbon [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
A revolution is born
On April 25, 1974, Portugal became world news. Newspapers around the world were drenched in bright images of celebrating Portuguese masses who took to the streets and placed red carnations in soldier’s rifle barrels and uniforms. Portugal’s “Carnation Revolution” is often described as a near-bloodless military takeover. But much blood had been spilled in the years leading up to that moment.
In the early 1960s, as most African nations fought for and won independence from their European colonisers, Portugal stood firm in its claim to the country’s African “possessions”. These were now dubbed “Overseas Territory” instead of “colonies” as a result of a 1951 rewrite of the constitution and the country had responded to self-determination claims with brutality and repression.
Dictator and Prime Minister Antonio de Oliveira Salazar had established the “Estado Novo” in 1932 – a corporatist state rooted in anti-liberalism and fascism formed in the wake of the demise of Portugal’s monarchy – and kept Portugal out of the second world war. Despite being a brutal dictatorship, Salazar managed to lead Portugal into NATO’s anti-communist club in 1949 thanks to its control of the Azores Islands, a vital strategic outpost.
When the first colonial war had erupted in Angola in March 1961, soon followed by wars in Portuguese Guinea and Mozambique, Portugal was able to source weaponry – helicopters, fighter aircraft and petrochemical weapons like napalm – from allied nations, primarily the United States, West Germany and France.
Furthermore, during the Cold War, the Azorean military base became a vital strategic and geopolitical outpost in the mid-Atlantic, particularly for the United States, whose continued access to the military facilities depended on political and economic support to Salazar’s authoritarian rule. The Azorean military facilities became crucial for the United States during its military operations to aid the Israel forces during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
A veteran joins the crowds on a march down Av da Liberdade on the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 2024 [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
Finally, in the mid-1960s, the Portuguese dictatorship started to implode. The colonial wars had finally brought Portugal’s economy to its knees, and large numbers of forced military conscripts were deserting – much to the embarrassment of the government – fleeing the country and becoming vocal proponents of antiwar movements in countries like France, West Germany and Sweden.
As a navy captain, Contreiras patrolled the Atlantic waters between Angola and Sao Tome. He recalls the first signs of dissent within the army. Within an authoritarian political system, the very thought of rebellion was unheard of. Therefore, the first whispers of change occurred in private exchanges.
“War fatigue and a longing for democracy finally caught up with us,” he says. “As part of the navy, I experienced all war fronts, and it was a living hell.”
A revolutionary seed was planted, he believes, and it grew into something larger – something irreversible. “The revolution was born out of the words we uttered at sea.”
Along with the seemingly never-ending colonial wars, the Portuguese military had started to ease the way for more rapid military rank advancement and promotions in 1973 through a series of new laws to attract more men to pursue military careers.
Low-ranking officers who remained on the lower rungs of the career ladder despite many years of war service saw this as an existential threat. “We were both frustrated and nervous about the development,” Contreiras recalls.
In the summer of 1973, the “Naval Club” had been initiated by the 200-odd military captains who were determined to protect their military careers and refused to be singled out as scapegoats for Portugal’s declining successes in its colonial warfare. The initial programme called for “Democracy, Development and Decolonisation” and to achieve these goals, the clandestine movement realised the only way was through a military overthrow of the Estado Novo.
In September 1973, Chile’s socialist president, Salvador Allende, was overthrown by military leaders in a US-backed coup. The Naval Club decided to copy the Chilean coup makers’ use of secret signals via public radio and convinced a radio journalist, Alvaro Guerra, to join the plot. Guerra would issue the “signal” which would start the military operation by playing a chosen song on his nightly programme, Limite (“Limit”).
Contreiras secretly met Guerra “mere days before the revolution” and handed him his last instructions. The chosen song – Grandola, Vila Morena by folk singer Jose Afonso – was to be played shortly after midnight on April 25, 1974, signalling to the MFA to launch its takeover attempt. “It was well planned, it all depended on timing,” he recalls.
A woman selling carnation flowers during the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 2024 [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
Return of the far-right?
Fifty years later, Afonso’s song is playing at a cafe on the Avenida da Liberdade as more a million people take to the street to commemorate the “Carnation Revolution”.
The impressive turnout of the elderly, youth, parents, and their toddlers underlines the importance of the dramatic political event – not just for those who lived through it.
Claudia and Lucia, two teachers in their 40s, break down and cry while drinking coffee at a cafe before the start of the commemoration march along Avenida da Liberdade down to Rossio Square.
They are crying for their parents who survived the dictatorship, explains Claudia.
“It’s so hard for them to talk about what it was like during the Estado Novo,” adds Lucia. “Many Portuguese have just put a lid over the past, never to talk about it again. For us, the children of the revolution, it’s been hard to deal with their pain, let alone helping them to move on. That’s why the rise of the far-right in Portugal is such a hard blow – for us and for our parents.”
The commemoration march – during which political leaders make speeches and cheer for the revolution while crowds of people drink beer and “ginja” (a Portuguese liqueur) – is framed by chants: “25 April, always! Fascism, never again!”
Still, in this environment of seemingly overwhelming consensus, some have chosen to march against the human current, against the wave of numerous people. A middle-aged man, seemingly just walking by, shakes his head and curses the revolution. Nobody seems to notice him, and his words are lost in the sea of revolutionary chants.
The man may be one of the self-titled pacote silencioso (“silent pack”) of whom Portuguese scholars have been talking for years, particularly during the past decade which has been a constant repetition of financial crises, government-imposed austerity policies and rising poverty, leading to an exhaustion of trust among some in democratic institutions and Portugal’s dominant parties, the Socialist Party (PS) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD).
A carnation lies on top of a newspaper on a bench in Lison during celebrations on April 25, 2024 [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
The signs of dissent are here to be seen. On a park bench, another middle-aged man smokes a cigarette and glares at the passing wave of people. From a speaker, the hymn of the revolution is played again, to which the man screams: “Turn off that piece of shit! Nobody believes in that anyway!”
On the bench beside him lies a red carnation on top of a copy of the sports paper A Bola. A woman snaps a photo of the carnation and the newspaper, excusing herself, assuring the man she is not about to steal his flower. The man smiles and says: “Don’t worry, there are no thieves here. The only thieves are in the Portuguese parliament, stealing from the people!”
It’s a sentiment that many appear to share. Chega clinched 50 seats in parliament in the same year that Portugal celebrated 50 years of liberal democracy. According to an analysis by social scientist Riccardo Marchi, Chega’s swift rise since its formation in 2019 by Andre Ventura, a former social democrat and television personality, is rooted in Portugal’s established “two-party system”, dominated by PS and PSD and which became an established political model after the fall of Estado Novo in 1974.
Marchi writes: “The PS and PSD were unable to reverse the growing dissatisfaction of large sectors of voters with the functioning of Portuguese democracy. This feeling of democratic decline was attributed to the elite of the two dominant parties and is evidenced, for example, by the steady increase in abstention.”
Chega’s electoral victory has been at least partially attributed to the far-right party’s ability to persuade formerly reluctant voters to return to the voting booth and to present itself as an appealing choice for young adults (primarily men between 18 and 25) with a deep-lying lack of trust in political institutions. For the first time since 2009, voter turnout reached close to 60 percent, which according to Marchi is a testament to Chega’s ability to attract young voters who are “unaware of the nostalgia for the right-wing dictatorship, and dissatisfied but informed about politics, mainly through the tabloids and social networks”.
This trend has overlapped with eroded historical narratives about Portuguese colonialism and the Salazar dictatorship. There is lingering nostalgia among Chega voters for the “stability” and “order” that the Estado Novo offered its citizens, scholars have said. But the notion that the future is to be found in an authoritarian past goes hand-in-hand with a renewed global populist movement of recent years and Chega’s rewritten historical narrative, which includes downplaying the dictatorship’s global atrocities while outright celebrating it as a functioning state.
A woman holds a carnation flower during a performance at the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 2024 [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
This narrative has even begun to cross the political aisle. In 2019, Lisbon’s socialist mayor, Fernando Medina, underlined Portugal’s historical global identity as “a starting point for routes to discover new worlds, new people, new ideas”. Portraying Portugal as a positive historical actor who “discovered new shores”, Medina turned a blind eye to the brutality and atrocities that went hand in hand with Portuguese colonialism.
In the conservative press, Chega’s rise is portrayed as “a maturing wine” while the Carnation Revolution, according to The European Conservative magazine, opened the door to political instability, chaos and “left-wing hegemony”.
Framing its movement as a resurrection of Portuguese dignity and identity has been a success for the Portuguese far-right, according to an analysis by anthropologist Elsa Peralta: “In today’s overall scenario of global crisis, former imperial myths and mentalities seem to have gained a second life, often testifying to a grip on a nostalgic and biased version of the colonial past,” she writes.
Chega has been able to ride this nostalgic wave, lifted by a European discourse rooted in xenophobia, focusing on immigration and populist solutions to complex financial and political dilemmas, observers have said.
Uprooting the seeds of a revolution
Half a century ago, Estado Novo’s primary pillars of power were the police, military and the Catholic church – and academic circles. Both of Estado Novo’s dictators, Salazar and Caetano, were well-educated economists who saw Portugal’s universities as an extension of the conservative identity of the corporatist state.
Today, many Portuguese universities have become ideological battlegrounds between Chega’s far-right policy and climate action groups who are taking a stand against fossil fuels-driven capitalism.
The day before the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, Matilde Ventura and Jissica Silva from the student climate crisis action group Greve Climatica Estudantil (GCE), are smoking cigarettes in plastic chairs and enjoying the sunshine next to protest tents pitched on the campus of Lisbon’s Faculty of Social and Human Sciences for the past month.
This is a group action with various other action groups at universities in Portugal and other European countries, protesting against the country’s dependency on fossil fuels.
According to Ventura, a political science student, the climate crisis has become a perfect engine for Chega and the party’s far-right agenda which downplays the man-made environmental destruction of the Earth and questions climate change as a hoax.
“Something’s changing here,” she says, squinting her eyes against the bright sunshine.
‘Something’s changing here’. Matilde Ventura and Jissica Silva, seated centre, of Greve Climatica Estudantil (GCE), a student climate crisis action group at Lisbon University of Social and Human Sciences, says the police stormed their protest encampment last November [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
She recalls the early hours of Monday, November 13, 2023, when the climate action groups had decided to occupy the campus ground. That was when police stormed the campus and forced the student occupants out of their tents where they slept. They were hauled to the police station and kept in custody overnight. “It was the first time since the Salazar dictatorship that police crossed the threshold into a university,” she says. “It was a significant and symbolic step. The police were violent against us, and – don’t forget – there are many Chega supporters among the police. But we refused to be silent.”
The students returned to the faculty campus the next day, refused to leave, and continued to make their voices heard. The threat against democracy and the climate go hand in hand, says Silva, a medical student. “The fossil fuels-driven capitalism is the context that embodies all aspects of the problem,” she adds. “All issues – political, financial, social and environmental – can be traced to the problem with climate change and its roots in fossil fuels dependency.”
CGE’s campus occupation is significant for both Portugal’s far-right movements and the country’s financial oligarchy. Lisbon’s Faculty of Social and Human Sciences was born from the Carnation Revolution, established in 1977 on a site that had previously belonged to the military.
Now, the faculty is about to be removed and the former military barracks it occupies is to be converted into a hotel complex. The moving date is not set, but the occupying students of CGE see it as a symbol of political ebb – of uprooting one of many seeds planted by the revolution.
“The circle is closed,” says Ventura. “It’s been 50 years since the revolution, and the far-right is back. Not only in parliament but also as a force against the democratic fight against the climate crisis.”
Members of Chega were there, at the campus, when Ventura and Silva and other students returned from police custody, they say. Chega’s young political star, 25-year-old former university student Rita Matias, entered the campus to hand out flyers and denounce the climate crisis protests.
“Chega was protected by the police,” says Ventura. “But we managed to oust them from the campus and block the entrance by forming a human wall and chanted the same motto as our parents did after the revolution: ‘25 of April, always! Fascism, never again!’”
The incident, she concludes, was a testament to the perils of Portugal’s far-right momentum: “Portugal’s political and economic leaders have no idea how it is to live here. If they did, they wouldn’t waste another minute by moving forward in the same shape and form as today.”
Silva talks of her grandfather, a war veteran from the battlefield of Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde). “He often talks about our shared responsibility to make things right,” she says. “He returned to Africa after the revolution to work with a museum, to remember the colonial wars and what really happened. That’s an inspiration for me.”
Veterans parade with crowds celebrating them during the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 2024 [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
A lost revolution?
All over Lisbon, there are red carnations painted on murals, displayed on posters, visible in shops and worn by people. On an electricity pole close by, someone has shared a question on a poster for the 50th anniversary: “E depois?”(“And then what?”)
Portugal’s Carnation Revolution was “the most profound to have taken place in Europe since the Second World War”, writes historian Raquel Varela in her book about the revolution, A People’s History. But it’s easier to commemorate the dismantling of a fascist dictatorship and the decolonisation of African colonies than to approach the death of the revolution, due to the following counter-coup on November 25, 1975. As one prominent employee at Lisbon University, who wishes to remain anonymous, puts it, “We must not only remember 25 April 1974 but also address the trauma of 25 November 1975.”
Varela concludes that the reason the Portuguese coup in 1975 remains a delicate political topic is that it suffocated a social revolution that “was the last European revolution to call into question private property of the means of production”.
Between April 1974 and November 1975, writes Varela, “hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike, hundreds of workplaces were occupied sometimes for months and perhaps almost 3 million people took part in demonstrations, occupations and commissions. A great many workplaces were taken over and run by the workers. Land in much of southern and central Portugal was taken over by the workers themselves. Women won, almost overnight, a host of concessions and made massive strides towards equal pay and equality.”
Portugal’s NATO allies, primarily the United States, feared that the former fascist state would become a socialist state. The White House, led by President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, acted through the US embassy in Lisbon, instructing the American ambassador Frank Carlucci – later secretary of defense – to “vaccinate” Portugal against the communist disease. The United States supported an anti-communist military section, the so-called “Group of Nine” with both political capital and military equipment, as well as bullying Portugal within the NATO community.
When the “Group of Nine” finally deposed the revolutionary government in Lisbon on November 25, 1975, by dispatching 1,000 paratroopers, and clinched power over the Portuguese government, the Carnation Revolution came to an end.
The historical aftermath has been dominated by a narrative based on the notion that the Group of Nine normalised and stabilised Portuguese society via a “democratic counter-revolution”. The United States rewarded Portugal with a massive economic boost in the form of a “jumbo loan” to integrate the Portuguese Armed Forces further into NATO and liberalise the industries that had been “socialised” during the revolution.
Now, the tiny right-wing party, Centro Democratico e Social – Partido Popular (CDS-PP), has moved to make November 25, 1975 an annual day of remembrance. The day, CDS-PP states in a submitted law proposal, “marked the path towards an irreversibly liberal democracy of the Western model”. This proposal has the backing of Chega while PS, the Communist Party and the Left Bloc oppose it.
‘People became squatters’. Silvandira Costa, 61, was a young teenager when her family ‘returned’ from then-Guinea, Africa, following independence after the Carnation Revolution [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
‘I am a refugee, not a returnee’
One focus of attention for far-right parties in Portugal today is immigration. One-third of Portugal’s non-white immigrants live in poverty.
In Rio de Mouro, a town of 50,000 inhabitants situated 23 kilometres (14 miles) from Lisbon, migrant workers from former Portuguese colonies arrive to sub-let over-priced apartments and take low-paid jobs in construction, the service sector or season-dependent industries.
Silvandira Costa, a 61-year-old assistant administrator and union activist at Editorial do Ministerio da Educação, a publisher of learning materials, points to a row of apartment buildings a five-minute drive from the train station. “All these houses were occupied by returnees after the revolution,” she says. “People had no place to go, nowhere to sleep, so they became squatters.”
Costa can relate to their situation. She was in her early teens in 1977 when her family “returned” to Portugal from Guinea-Bissau, where she was born, in the wake of Guinean independence. “I’m a refugee,” Costa emphasises – she does not see herself as a “returnee”. “I consider myself African. I was born in Guinea, I had my first experiences of smell and taste of food and experiencing the soil and the solidarity among the people in the village where I grew up.”
Refugee status, however, was never granted to 500,000 – 800,000 Portuguese citizens who arrived in Portugal in the mid-1970s from the former colonies. Portugal’s post-revolution governments and the United Nations High Commissioner’s Office for Refugees (UNHCR) deemed them “citizens of the country of their destination” and, therefore, not eligible for refugee status under the Convention of Refugees of 1951. For Silva, that underlined the sentiment of being a castaway in a new society, one to which she arrived without any possessions but the clothes she was wearing. “If we weren’t refugees, then what were we?” she asks out loud. “We left our home in Guinea in a hurry, boarded a plane and expected to deal with the situation in Portugal without any money, nowhere to stay, no work for our mom and me and my sister were looked upon as aliens at school.”
Costa’s mother had left Portugal in the 1950s, as part of an immigration programme under which Portuguese citizens – often poor families and urban dwellers – were promised land and a purpose at the frontiers of the empire. The colonial war in Portuguese Guinea changed everything. Then the Carnation Revolution ended 500 years of Portuguese presence in Africa.
It was a burden to carry, to be the “physical representation of Portuguese colonialism and repression”, says Costa.
People from Guinea-Bissau protest during the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on the 25th of April, 2024 [Fredrik Lerneryd/Al Jazeera]
At the train station, she approaches a group of young Guinean men who have gathered on the concrete steps close to the train station. They speak in Creole, about life, hardships, the situation in Guinea-Bissau, and the future.
“The future?” says one man and laughs. “We talk about Africa – but the only future we’ve got is the world under our feet.”
“Portugal has an enormous responsibility to deal with her colonial past and atrocities against African people,” says Costa. “Chega repeats the same historical mistake as the fascists did by blaming poverty, inflated living costs and social insecurity on immigrants. They’re afraid of the truth, and now they’re trying to whitewash Portugal’s colonial history.”
A closed circle
Back in Lisbon, at Rua da Misericordia, on the second floor of the old military barracks that was overtaken by the MFA on April 25, 1974, former navy captain Carlos Almada Contreiras looks out over the same street on which his life irrevocably changed – along with the lives of millions of others in Portugal and its colonies.
Now, tourists stroll in and out of restaurants and stores. Vehicles drive up and down the same cobblestone street that carried the olive-green military vehicles that early April morning 50 years ago.
“So much has changed, yet the street remains the same,” he almost whispers.
Locked inside the narrow street, constantly sprayed by salty winds from the Atlantic Ocean, Europe’s last social revolution took place. “It was a revolution for the coming generations; it’s important to tell the story in a way that runs along their everyday life, to make them realise what was at stake back in 1974.”
How did it feel to be part of the collapse of a colonial empire? Contreiras laughs, ponders the question, and then answers: “I’ve never really thought of it. But sure, that’s what we accomplished in the end.”
BEVERLY — When the Le Grand David and His Own Spectacular Magic Company ended its historic run at The Cabot theater in 2012, one might say that David Bull disappeared.
Bull, who played the show’s headlining magician for more than 35 years, moved to western Massachusetts, got married, and has not performed a magic trick in public since.
“I don’t miss performing the show we did,” he said. “We did over 2,600 performances in Beverly. But I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to get on stage again and get in front of an audience?’”
Bull will do just that on Sunday, May 26, when he hosts what he is calling ”Le Grand David’s 70th Birthday Bash.” The show will include comedian Paul D’Angelo, Amy G., Kenny Raskin, the Jethro Tull tribute band Minstrels in the Gallery, and others.
Bull will mostly play master of ceremonies and tell stories about the history of the magic show, but said he will also perform “three or four” magic tricks, including one called the Upside Down Production Box.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said. “This is not push-button magic.”
Le Grand David and His Own Spectacular Magic Company ran from 1977 to 2012 in Beverly, making it the longest-running stage magic show in the world, according to Guinness World Records. The troupe that performed the shows also owned both The Cabot and Larcom, two vaudeville era theaters down the street from each other in downtown Beverly.
The company was led by Cesareo Pelaez, a charismatic Cuban who created the show and played Marco the Magi. The show ended shortly after Pelaez died in 2012. The company eventually sold both theaters and auctioned many of its props, costumes and other artifacts.
Bull – who won the Illusionist of the Year award from the Milbourne Christopher Foundation and was given honorary lifetime membership in both The Magic Castle in Hollywood and The Magic Circle in London – said he loved performing as Le Grand David, calling it a “wonderful adventure.”
But he also said he and the rest of the troupe were ready to give it up by the end.
“The shows were so physically grueling,” he said. “It was go-go-go for 2½ hours. I did it from ages 22 to 58 and it became physically difficult at the end. We were the owner-operator, so we popped the popcorn and went in and swept it up in the morning.”
“We said, ‘We’ve done it for 35 years. We’re in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s time to do something else.’”
The only performing Bull does these days is when he and his wife sing in a choral group in nursing homes and hospices. He survived a heart attack and is now a stepgrandfather, which he called “an unexpected blessing in my life.”
Bull admits he’s nervous about performing at The Cabot again. But at the same time, he takes comfort in knowing he is returning to a very familiar place.
“I swing between utter panic and thinking, ‘I’m in my living room. I was on this stage for 35 years.’”
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
On Friday, the wood pylons of the 1,954-foot wooden structure were still smoldering from the blaze that ignited Thursday, officials said. No injuries were reported.
Oceanside and Strand beaches are still closed to the public as an environmental group cleans up the debris that has washed ashore. The fire also damaged a vacant restaurant that used to be Ruby’s Diner and a snack shop that housed the Brine Box, a seafood eatery.
“90% of the pier was saved thanks to a really quick response,” Oceanside city Public Information Officer Terry Gorman Brown said. “A lot of times when piers catch, they’re made of wood — they’re toast.”
The structure sits so high above the water that the sea spray couldn’t dampen the flames, she said.
“We don’t know [the cause] yet because until [the fire] is fully out we can’t really get out there,” said Brown.
The city engineer is assessing the damage and evaluating when the pier might reopen to the public.
This isn’t the first time the pier has caught fire. The last time was in 1976, when a blaze destroyed parts of the pier’s fish market, according to Kristi Hawthorne, director of the Oceanside Historical Society, who wrote a brief history of the pier for the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce.
The wooden pier is the longest of its kind on the West Coast and has been rebuilt five times since it was first constructed in 1888, so many times that it may not be considered the same pier.
“It’s never the same pier,” said Hawthorne. “But in our hearts and in our minds, it’s still always the Oceanside Pier.”
The pier was originally built as a commercial shipping wharf to bring business to Oceanside, which was incorporated the year the pier opened. But two years later the wharf was destroyed in a large storm and was rebuilt four years later as a sightseeing pier with iron pilings.
The pier has been torn down or damaged in storms multiple times. Today’s sixth iteration of the pier was built in 1987 at a cost of $5 million.
The worn nubs of the first wharf can still be seen at times in low tide, and other parts of the structure have managed to survive the test of time. The access bridge connecting pedestrians to the pier is almost 100 years old, and the city is using funding from a sales tax measure to help demolish and construct a new bridge that will be approximately three stories high and house restaurants and other businesses.
Despite the pier’s battered history, Hawthorne said, the city’s residents have always been determined to rebuild because it is a part of the local identity.
“It is the pride of Oceanside,” said Hawthorne, who started researching the pier in 1987 as a volunteer with the Oceanside Historical Society.
The pier has been a part of landmark moments in Oceanside history. In 1916, a huge flood washed through San Diego County. Roadways and railroads were cut off from the area, Hawthorne said, and the pier was used to deliver emergency supplies by boat.
During World War II, the pier became a military lookout for enemy planes and submarines.
Hawthorne’s children have grown up visiting the pier and eating there on special occasions. She said local residents have their graduation photos taken overlooking the water. It’s one of the first places she recommends tourists visit.
“You take one of the most beautiful, iconic walks,” she said of the view from the pier.
The current pier may need to be rebuilt again by 2037, as it has an estimated 50-year lifespan.
Its ever-changing nature adds to its charm, Hawthorne said.
“We’re not taking [the fire] as a loss,” she said. “It’s just a new chapter.”
Was one of President Joe Biden’s relatives eaten by cannibals during World War II? As far-fetched as that scenario might sound, Biden said it was possible while visiting Pennsylvania on April 17.
While visiting Scranton, his family’s hometown, for a speech, Biden sought out a local veterans’ memorial where his uncle, Ambrose J. Finnegan, is honored. Finnegan, who was called “Uncle Bosie,” died during World War II, when the future president was a toddler.
Reporters asked Biden about the memorial visit before he boarded Air Force One at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport. Biden said his uncle’s plane was shot down over New Guinea — and he floated cannibalism as the reason his remains were never recovered.
“He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time,” Biden said. “They never recovered his body. But the government went back … and they checked and found some parts of the plane and the like.”
Biden said he was contrasting his uncle’s military service with a reported 2020 statement by his opponent, former President Donald Trump, that service members were a bunch of “suckers” and “losers.” (Trump has denied saying this, but one of his White House chiefs of staff, John Kelly, later corroborated that Trump said it.)
Biden mentioned cannibalism again later the same day, whilespeaking at the United Steelworkers’ Pittsburgh headquarters.
“He flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones,” Biden said. “And he got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”
Could Finnegan have been eaten by cannibals?
Although cannibalism existed in New Guinea, the military record and experts in New Guinea’s history and culture say it is unlikely that Finnegan was cannibalized, because the plane crashed into the ocean, and even if indigenous people had found Finnegan, a U.S. service member wouldn’t have fit into the two categories of people at risk of being cannibalized: enemies and family members.
Details of the plane crash
New Guinea, the world’s second-largest island, consists of two parts today: the independent nation of Papua New Guinea in the east, and the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua in the west.
According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, a plane carrying a three-man crew and Finnegan, a passenger, was “forced to ditch” in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea “for unknown reasons” May 14, 1944. The engine in the plane, which had been on a courier mission, failed at low altitude; the account does not specify that it was “shot down,” as Biden said.
“The aircraft’s nose hit the water hard,” the Pentagon agency documentation says. “Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash. One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.”
Finnegan was not linked to any remains recovered from the area after the war, and he is officially unaccounted for, the agency said. Finnegan is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
The White House did not answer our inquiry for this article. White House spokesman Andrew Bates told CNN that “President Biden is proud of his uncle’s service in uniform” and that he “highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honoring our sacred commitment … to equip those we send to war and take care of them and their families when they come home.’”
Cannibalism existed, but a U.S. service member would be an unlikely target
We asked experts on New Guinea whether cannibalism was prevalent then. The experts said it existed, but added that it was uncommon when the plane crashed in the 1940s and that it almost certainly didn’t factor into the aftermath of the crash that killed Finnegan.
“There were regions of New Guinea where cannibalism was practiced in the past,” said Alex Golub, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii-Mānoa. “The majority, perhaps the vast majority, of the population of the country never practiced it.”
Experts cautioned that outsiders sometimes exaggerated stories of cannibalism to justify colonial rule. By the World War II era, authorities had largely suppressed cannibalism, sometimes by force.
“Explorers from Captain Cook to more recent twentieth-century encounters in the New Guinea Highlands have searched obsessively for evidence of cannibalism,” said Rainer F. Buschmann, a historian at California State University Channel Islands. “Cannibalism then becomes an excuse to annex, exploit, and colonize the ‘other.’”
A U.S. service member wouldn’t have fit the profile of someone who might be cannibalized, experts said.
“The categories of people, and their parts, that were eaten had to do with formalized social relationships, not strangers, or monsters from the air,” said Frederick H. Damon, an emeritus anthropology professor at the University of Virginia.
With cannibalism of family members, the practices were “part of an attempt to reincorporate some of the person back into his or her lineage,” said Courtney Handman, an associate anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “It is much less likely that it would have been done for an unknown person who crashed his plane nearby.”
Experts said many people in New Guinea knew enough about the war not to consider someone like Finnegan an enemy, especially if they lived near typical military flight paths, said Bruce M. Knauft, an Emory University anthropology professor. Some New Guineans volunteered to fight for the allies.
Even eight decades later, remains of World War II pilots are still being recovered on the island of New Guinea and off its coast. Given the need to cooperate on such searches, Biden is ill-advised to resurface the cannibalism trope, the University of Hawaii’s Golub said.
The people of New Guinea “volunteered to fight in World War II and otherwise aided the allied cause,” Golub said. “They fought bravely and honorably, and very effectively, and their work to fight fascism is what deserves to be remembered, not rumors about cannibalism.”
