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PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 8:44 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

On May 28, 1937, the government of Germany–then under the control of Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party–forms a new state-owned automobile company, then known as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH. Later that year, it was renamed simply Volkswagenwerk, or “The People’s Car Company.”

Originally operated by the German Labor Front, a Nazi organization, Volkswagen was headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany. In addition to his ambitious campaign to build a network of autobahns and limited access highways across Germany, Hitler’s pet project was the development and mass production of an affordable yet still speedy vehicle that could sell for less than 1,000 Reich marks (about $140 at the time). To provide the design for this “people’s car,” Hitler called in the Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche. In 1938, at a Nazi rally, the Fuhrer declared: “It is for the broad masses that this car has been built. Its purpose is to answer their transportation needs, and it is intended to give them joy.” However, soon after the KdF (Kraft-durch-Freude)-Wagen (“Strength-Through-Joy” car) was displayed for the first time at the Berlin Motor Show in 1939, World War II began, and Volkswagen halted production. After the war ended, with the factory in ruins, the Allies would make Volkswagen the focus of their attempts to resuscitate the German auto industry.

Volkswagen sales in the United States were initially slower than in other parts of the world, due to the car’s historic Nazi connections as well as its small size and unusual rounded shape. In 1959, the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach launched a landmark campaign, dubbing the car the “Beetle” and spinning its diminutive size as a distinct advantage to consumers. Over the next several years, VW became the top-selling auto import in the United States. In 1960, the German government sold 60 percent of Volkswagen’s stock to the public, effectively denationalizing it. Twelve years later, the Beetle surpassed the longstanding worldwide production record of 15 million vehicles, set by Ford Motor Company’s legendary Model T between 1908 and 1927.
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PostPosted: Mon May 31, 2021 12:42 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

Wilton Johnson of Menlo Park , WW2
As reported by the San Jose Mercury News

While King George VI visited victorious Allied troops in Normandy 10 days after they drove the Nazis off French beaches, Wilton Johnson of Menlo Park marched north on the peninsula toward his next mission past tall hedgerows on war-torn roads with the faint rat tat tat of gunfire in the distance.

As part of a machine gun platoon for the 82nd Airborne Division, Johnson and his men — just hours after landing in France during the historic Normandy Invasion — attacked a roadblock set up near the German-occupied town of Sainte-Mère-Église.

They took the town and Johnson was photographed in front of the town’s church. Then more danger lurked, as he and his squad walked in drainage ditches next to a road amid the thuds of artillery in the distance.

Suddenly there was a flash of light and everything went dark. A mortar shell tore through his friend Herman Young of Texas, killing him, and left Johnson with a gaping wound in his back.

“It just happened, like that,” Johnson, now 97 and one of the few remaining World War II veterans in the Bay Area, said in a recent interview at his Palo Alto home. “Fortunately someone, one of the members in my squad, stuffed a piece of cloth or something in my back to stop the bleeding. If it wasn’t for that, I would’ve died.”

“That was all of Normandy for me,” he said.

Like many people of his time, Johnson has never told the story of his war days. “It’s something you’d rather forget,” he said with a distant look in his eyes. But with memories from the war fading, Johnson felt the urge to tell his story ahead of Memorial Day.

“There aren’t many of us left,” he explained. “It’s time.”

Johnson recalled jumping out of an airplane with more than 13,000 other paratroopers right after midnight on June 6, 1944, taking part in the enormous invasion that turned the tide of the European Theater and has been mythologized in American film, video games and popular culture since.

The jump on D-Day wasn’t his first and the wounds he suffered in France wouldn’t be his last.

He was just 18 when he felt compelled by patriotic pressure to enlist and fight in the war. At the time, he was living with his parents — Dust Bowl refugees from North Dakota — and working for Southern Pacific Lines in San Francisco while also helping out at a gas station in Menlo Park when he could. Then one day in April 1942, Wilton took a train to an office building in downtown San Francisco and signed up.

“I thought about enlisting after Pearl Harbor, but I wasn’t old enough,” Johnson said. “When I turned 18, I just felt it was my duty to serve. I wasn’t nervous or anything. I was determined to do it. I had accepted it was what I had to do.”

At first, he operated a watchtower over Menlo Park at a time when California feared a Japanese attack. But before he knew it, Johnson was headed to Monterey and later San Miguel for basic training at Camp Roberts.

After months of training and doing five qualifying jumps out of a Douglas C-47, Johnson went overseas to Casablanca, though he didn’t see any fighting. But when Allied troops readied for an assault on mainland Europe in July 1943, Johnson found himself in an olive orchard outside Tunisia preparing to jump into Sicily.

Those jumps were nothing compared to the one in Normandy.

Having staved off serious war injuries until then, Johnson wasn’t expecting the months-long, harrowing recovery he’d go through after that mortar shell punched a hole into his back. He received his first Purple Heart medal in England and a Bronze Star a couple of weeks after fighting deep inside enemy territory in Normandy.

On the Ruhr river near the town of Schmidt, Germany, he was wounded again. It was an injury he couldn’t bring himself to talk about, and by the time he recovered, the war was winding down and Johnson was sent home.

There, Johnson started working at the old gas station again before joining the fire department. Transitioning from the battlefields to buying groceries in Menlo Park after 1945 “was a little difficult,” Johnson said.

“I guess I still had itchy feet,” he said.

Johnson went through multiple jobs — including as a mortician at one point and a merchant marine sailor at another — until finally settling down as a U.S. Post Office mailman for 27 years. He married his wife, Clara Johnson, after the war and had three daughters, Sharon Webster, Hannah Limon and Judith Johnson, and bought a home in Palo Alto where he’s lived since.

Webster, Johnson’s eldest daughter, said in an interview that her father never talked about the war to any of his children. Describing him as a quiet, reserved father, Webster said Johnson “was there, but he wasn’t really there.” Johnson would come home, read the mail, pay the bills, watch the news and eat dinner, always asking about how everyone’s day went but never talking about how his went.

Webster suspects her dad has pent-up emotions he’s never dealt with, and skeletons in closets they’ll likely never know about. As the wife of a Vietnam War veteran, Webster said she can tell her father “definitely” showed signs of post-traumatic stress.

“But he covered it well,” Webster said. “Very well. My dad would’ve been a different person if he’d talked about it. I don’t think World War II veterans got the counseling they really needed.”

It was only after she’d grown older and went with Johnson to the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy in 1994 that she truly got to know her dad. Touring different cemeteries across northern France, Webster watched as Johnson — stoically silent and somber — suddenly teared up remembering the people he lost.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 02, 2021 9:18 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/zoot-suit-riots-erupt-in-los-angeles
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:23 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

1989 Tiananmen Square protests/massacre.
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 05, 2021 4:01 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

5 years ago my son got married.
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 11:49 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

A whole bunch of people on the French coast woke up this morning in 1944 and said

O, Scheisse.

I had three uncles visiting them by boat.
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 11:51 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

Operation Overlord begins, 6/6/44.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 11:58 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

Abscate wrote:
A whole bunch of people on the French coast woke up this morning in 1944 and said

O, Scheisse.


Regarding swearing, this is one my favorite stories about that day (sorry for the repost from a couple of years ago):

KTPhil wrote:
I hope I don't garble this story too badly. I saw it on a TV special many years ago, and repeat its point here...

There was a French restaurant/inn owner in the area behind Normandy. It was well known that an invasion would come, just not when and where. That day was like any other, with workers and patrons inside.

The owner, like everyone else, ducked for cover when the pre-invasion shelling started. The bombing was so dense and sustained that he knew this must be "the one they had been waiting for."

He later remarked to a reporter that he immediately knew the Allies would be successful, and that his country would be liberated, and Hitler defeated.

How did he know?

"When the bombing started, and everyone was yelling and swearing as they ducked down or ran out, most of the swearing was in English, not French or German. I knew then, that if the Allies had infiltrated the countryside this thoroughly, that they were prepared and would prevail."

God bless them all.
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 7:22 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

Bobby Kennedy dies, 68 was a bad year.
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 12:32 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

12th june 1942 Anne Frank is given a diary for her 13th birthday and the rest is history...
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 2:00 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

finster wrote:
12th june 1942 Anne Frank is given a diary for her 13th birthday and the rest is history...


See the kid looking outside the window? Wait for it.
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 8:30 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

The New York Times begins publishing portions of the 47-volume Pentagon analysis of how the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia grew over a period of three decades. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst who had become an antiwar activist, had stolen the documents. After unsuccessfully offering the documents to prominent opponents of the war in the U.S. Senate, Ellsberg gave them to the Times.

Officially called The History of the U.S. Decision Making Process on Vietnam, the “Pentagon Papers” disclosed closely guarded communiques, recommendations, and decisions concerning the U.S. military role in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, along with the diplomatic phase in the Eisenhower years. The publication of the papers created a nationwide furor, with congressional and diplomatic reverberations as all branches of the government debated over what constituted “classified” material and how much should be made public.

READ MORE: What Were the Pentagon Papers?

The publication of the documents precipitated a crucial legal battle over “the people’s right to know,” and led to an extraordinary session of the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the issue. Although the documents were from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, President Richard Nixon opposed their publication, both to protect the sources in highly classified appendices, and to prevent further erosion of public support for the war. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the Times had the right to publish the material.

You really want to see what happens when govt overreach gets out of control? Google Cointelpro. 😀
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:34 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

There is a disturbing side story here on this topic. Short version, if you are accused of releasing secrets, you get tried in a different court u der different rules

One of which is, the jury cannot consider your justification of your actions or even hear evidence to this effect.

Ellsberg Felt it was his Constitutional duty to bring forth the lies being told to the public. Snowden is under exactly the same dilemma , he can’t argue why he did what he did in front of a jury.

Really good 60 minutes piece on this
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:49 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbor 136 years ago today, packed in 212 crates. Very Happy
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 9:41 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

Jacks wrote:
The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbor 136 years ago today, packed in 212 crates. Very Happy


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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 11:34 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

with instructions in french!
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 9:52 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

1994, OJ gets a ride Shocked :fist:



Link


Edit: On this same day I got my first Eagle on a golf course. Beautiful shot out of a bunker. Lucky lucky lucky. But it felt so good.
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 25, 2021 3:09 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

June 25, 1876. Custer wears arrow shirt.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 8:42 am    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

1979
July 01
The first Sony Walkman goes on sale
The transistor radio was a technological marvel that put music literally into consumers’ hands in the mid-1950s. It was cheap, it was reliable and it was portable, but it could never even approximate the sound quality of a record being played on a home stereo. It was, however, the only technology available to on-the-go music lovers until the Sony Corporation sparked a revolution in personal electronics with the introduction of the first personal stereo cassette player. A device as astonishing on first encounter as the cellular phone or digital camera would later be, the Sony Walkman went on sale for the very first time on July 1, 1979.

The Sony Walkman didn’t represent a breakthrough in technology so much as it did a breakthrough in imagination. Every element of the Walkman was already in production or testing as part of some other device when Sony’s legendary chairman, Masaru Ibuka, made a special request in early 1979. Ibuka was a music lover who traveled frequently, and he was already in the habit of carrying one of his company’s “portable” stereo tape recorders with him on international flights. But the Sony TC-D5 was a heavy device that was in no way portable by modern standards, so Ibuka asked his then-deputy Norio Ohga if he could cobble together something better. Working with the company’s existing Pressman product—a portable, monaural tape recorder that was popular with journalists—Ohga had a playback-only stereo device rigged up in time for Ibuka’s next trans-Pacific flight.

Even though this proto-Walkman required large, earmuff-like headphones and custom-made batteries (which, of course, ran out on Ibuka midway through his flight), it impressed the Sony chairman tremendously with its sound quality and portability. Many objections were raised internally when Ibuka began his push to create a marketable version of the device, the biggest of which was conceptual: Would anyone actually buy a cassette device that was not for recording but only for playback? Ibuka’s simple response—”Don’t you think a stereo cassette player that you can listen to while walking around is a good idea?”—proved to be one of the great understatements in business history.

After a breakneck development phase of only four months, Sony engineers had a reliable product ready for market at 30,000 Yen (approximately US $150 in 1979 dollars) and available before the start of summer vacation for Japanese students—both critical targets established at the outset of development. The initial production run of 30,000 units looked to be too ambitious after one month of lackluster sales (only 3,000 were sold in July 1979). But after an innovative consumer-marketing campaign in which Sony representatives simply approached pedestrians on the streets of Tokyo and gave them a chance to listen to the Walkman, the product took off, selling out available stocks before the end of August and signaling the beginning of one of Sony’s greatest success stories.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:58 pm    Post subject: Re: This day in history Reply with quote

Happy 🇨🇦 Day everyone
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