MuLE

66 YEARS AGO TODAY - At 4:10 P.M., on January 31, 1956, a TB-25N medium bomber ditched in the Monongahela River near Homestead, Pennsylvania, and was lost. All ...six of the occupants aboard the aircraft survived the ditching. Only four, however, survived their encounter with the freezing Mon. In the fourteen days following the ditching, a search for the aircraft was conducted but the B-25 was never found and its fate remains one of Pittsburgh's most intriguing, enduring, and challenging mysteries. This video comes courtesy of Steve Mellon of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.sennex.com/b25/

Christmas 1962 (1st grade) brought our family's first television set, a Magnavox. The 12inch screen, housed in a stove sized mahogany cabinet, was the beginning of my interest in history; although I didn't know it at the time. The use of the set was garded by parental rules and regulations that included my brother and I hitting certain marks in the process of learning life's lessons. For instance poor conduct or under achievement at school could result in no Saturday morning... cartoons, sometimes for several weeks. Although I felt it to be "totally" unfair, none of it was a threat as we were well informed of the rules in advance. One show that we were always able to watch was Walter Cronkite deliver the evening news and this provided my first experience with a bonified historical event; JFK's assignation in November of 1963. For the rest of the decade and beyond, Mr Cronkite kept me interested in what was happening in my country and how it fit into the world picture. The North Vietnamese Tet Offensive really triggered an intense U.S. escalation in the Vietnam quagmire and this synopsis brought back a lot of memories and filled in some information that I was unaware of. So what was your first exposure to the television and how many do you have now?

What's old is "new" again? 1911 GE electric car charging station. In the first several decades of automobile production, (circa 1896-1920) electric and steam powered models outnumbered gasoline power by a large margin. Have a safe and historically happy day.

I have always enjoyed the pageantry and symphony of nature. This is new information for me and it brightens my spirit... Have a safe and happy day

The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from Napoleonic France in 1803. In return for fifteen million doll...ars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile, the United States nominally acquired a total of 828,000 sq mi (2,140,000 km2). However, France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of it inhabited by Native Americans; for the majority of the area, what the United States bought was the "preemptive" right to obtain "Indian" lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers. The total cost of all subsequent treaties and financial settlements over the land has been estimated to be around 2.6 billion dollars.

In January 1830, U.S. Senator Samuel Foote of Connecticut introduced a resolution calling for a suspension of the surveying of western lands owned by the federa...l government until those already on the market had sold. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri rose and declared that Foote’s resolution was part of a New England scheme to impede westward migration, which might cause New England to lose the poor working class that it depended upon for cheap factory labor. As other senators joined in the fray, many of the important and divisive issues confronting the young republic were introduced into the debatesamong them protectionism, tariffs, slavery, state sovereignty, and nullification. Although the debates would continue for months, with nearly half of the senators weighing in, it was the two-day exchange between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina that became most famousa debate within a debate that focused on issues of federal authority and states' rights and during which both senators pointed to the risk of civil war. History remembers the exchange as the Webster-Hayne debate. On January 19, Hayne took the floor of the Senate and argued that federal revenue from the sale of western lands tended to dangerously increase the power of the federal government. I am one of those who believe that the very life of our system is the independence of the states, and that there is no evil more to be deprecated than the consolidation of this government. It is only by a strict adherence to the limitations imposed by the Constitution on the federal government, that this system works well, and can answer the great ends for which it was instituted, he declared. Webster replied to Hayne the next day. I know that there are some persons in the part of the country from which the honorable member comes, who habitually speak of the Union in terms of indifference, or even of disparagement, he remarked during his lengthy speech. Sir, I deprecate and deplore this tone of thinking and acting. I deem far otherwise of the Union of the states; and so did the Framers of the Constitution themselves. What they said I believe; fully and sincerely believe, that the Union of the states is essential to the prosperity and safety of the states. On January 25, Hayne took the floor again, this time to rebut Webster’s argument. Within his lengthy reply he asked, Who, then, Mr. President, are the true friends of the Union? Those who would confine the federal government strictly within the limits prescribed by the Constitutionwho would preserve to the states and the people all powers not expressly delegatedwho would make this a federal and not a national Unionand who, administering the government in a spirit of equal justice, would make it a blessing and not a curse. And who are its enemies? Those who are in favor of consolidation; who are constantly stealing power from the states and adding strength to the federal government; who, assuming an unwarrantable jurisdiction over the states and the people, undertake to regulate the whole industry and capital of the country. In his concluding remarks two days later, Hayne said, Sir, it is because South Carolina loves the Union, and would preserve it forever, that she is opposing now, while there is hope, those usurpations of the federal government, which, once established, will, sooner or later, tear this Union into fragments. But it is Webster’s speech of January 26-27 that won the most admiration and contributed timeless idioms to our national political lexicon. It is widely regarded as the greatest speech ever given on the floor of the Senate. In his two-day speech Webster attacked the concept of nullification and defended the concept of a strong national identity. ’What interest, asks (Senator Hayne), ‘has South Carolina in a canal in Ohio?’ Sir, this very question is full of significance. It develops the gentleman’s whole political system; and its answer expounds mine. On that system, Ohio and Carolina are different governments, and different countries, connected here, it is true, by some slight and ill-defined bond of union, but, in all main respects, separate and diverse. On that system, Carolina has no more interest in a canal in Ohio than in Mexico. The gentleman, therefore, only follows out his own principles; he does no more than arrive at the natural conclusions of his own doctrines; he only announces the true results of that creed, which he has adopted himself, and would persuade others to adopt, when he thus declares that South Carolina has no interest in a public work in Ohio. Sir, we narrow-minded people of New England do not reason thus. Our notion of things is entirely different. We look upon the states, not as separated, but as united. We love to dwell on that union, and on the mutual happiness which it has so much promoted, and the common renown which it has so greatly contributed to acquire. In our contemplation, Carolina and Ohio are parts of the same country; states, united under the same general government, having interests, common, associated, intermingled. In whatever is within the proper sphere of the constitutional power of this government, we look upon the states as one. We do not impose geographical limits to our patriotic feeling or regard The federal government is not an agent of the states, Webster insisted. It is, sir, the people’s Constitution, the people’s government; made for the people; made by the people; and answerable to the people. Webster concluded with the most enduring part of his speech: While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather behold the gorgeous Ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscuredbearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as, what is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly, liberty first, and union afterwardsbut everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole Heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heartliberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable! The Webster-Hayne debate filled American newspapers for months and for generations afterwards American schoolchildren memorized and recited Webster’s stirring conclusion. Nowadays, of course, the famous debate has almost entirely faded from public memory, even as Americans continue to debate federalism and the proper allocation of power between the federal and state governmentsa debate that has been ongoing since the founding of the republic and shows no sign of coming to an end. The Webster-Hayne debate concluded on January 27, 1830, one hundred ninety-two years ago today. The image is George P.A. Healy’s 1851 painting Webster Replying to Hayne.

During the French and Indian War as well as the Revolutionary War the various native groups did what was best for their tribes. This was always maintaining neutrality when possible.

Imagine you’re strolling down the boardwalk on Coney Island, enjoying the day as the horde of carnival barkers try to lure you into the many sideshows along the... boulevard. One catches you attention. Step right up! Live babies in incubators here! Step right up! Curious, you hand the barker a dime and he directs you to the entrance. You step inside and what you see are dozens of premature babies in incubators, being tended by nurses and physicians. The Coney Island incubator sideshows, the most popular sideshows on the island, were open for forty yearsfrom 1903 till 1943. Thanks to them, and others like them, the lives of thousands of prematurely born infants were saved. This story begins at the 1896 World’s Fair in Berlin. As with all World’s Fairs, exhibitions of the latest technology were popular with fairgoers. In Berlin in 1896, a particularly popular exhibit displayed a new invention called an incubator, designed to help save the lives of premature babies. Martin Couney, a German man who had immigrated to the United States in 1888, was amazedboth at the machine and at the crowds of people paying to see it and the prematurely born babies being cared for. Deeply concerned with the care and treatment of preemies, in the Berlin exhibit, Couney recognized an opportunity. Few physicians at the time had any faith in the incubators. The prevailing wisdom was that while low-birthweight premature babies should be cared for, mortality was very high and was to be expected. Expensive and intensive care of babies likely doomed to die anyway was considered pointless. Couney set out to prove that attitude wrong. Back in the States, Couney passed himself off as a German-educated physician (in fact he had no medical education), and in 1903 he opened his first incubator exhibition on Coney Island. He would later add a second. Couney asked hospitals and families of preemies to send the babies to him for care. The hospitals were happy to unload the infants and their families were relieved to find a doctor who was willing to care for them. In fact, to the families of babies characterized by mainstream medicine as weaklings, Couney was a savior. He took in babies of any race and without regard to the social class of their parents. And Couney charged the parents no fee for his services. The expense of the care and treatment of the babies was covered entirely by the admission fees paid by Coney Island tourists. Few American hospitals had incubators before the 1940’s, and many took advantage of his offer to treat the children. Over the span of the incubator exhibits, Couney took in babies from all across America, and thousands of people flocked to the exhibits to see the tiny babies in the life-saving machines. Couney later estimated that he saved the lives of over 6,500 babies in his careerachieving an 85% success rate. Originally the medical establishment did not embrace Couney or his methods. But as his success became known, he rose in stature and eventually became a close professional acquaintance of some of the country’s leading physicians and pediatricians. Not until author Claire Prentice was researching her 2016 book Life Under Glass was it discovered that Martin Couney had never been to medical school. A remarkable fact, she wrote, about a man who has a claim to have changed the course of American neonatal medicine. Martin Couney died on Coney Island, New York in 1950, at age 81.

Under the terms of the treaty that ended the Mexican American War, the U.S. acquired over a half million square miles of new territory: all or parts of present-...day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Immediately the question arose: would slave-owning settlers be allowed to bring their slaves with them, or would the new territory be reserved for free labor only? The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited the introduction of slavery into the territory north of the Ohio River. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise (brokered principally by Henry Clay) allowed the admission of Missouri into the union as a slave state, but on the condition that other than in Missouri slavery would not be permitted north of the 3630 parallel (Missouri’s southern border). The acquisition of the new territory raised the sectional question again, with some demanding that slavery be permitted in all the new territory, some demanding that it be prohibited in all the new territory, some demanding that the 3630 parallel compromise line be extended to the Pacific (which would have the effect of making some of the territory open to slavery and some not), and some demanding that the question of slavery be left to the citizens of the territories. It was a difficult knot to untangle and the preservation of the Union was at stake. After much debate, controversy and conflict, the matter was eventually resolved by the Compromise of 1850. Under the provisions of the Compromise, slavery was prohibited in California and Oregon (as opposed to extending the 3630 parallel to the ocean, which would have made slavery legal in southern California, but not northern California), in the Utah and New Mexico territories the question of slavery was to be determined by the will of the settlers, the slave trade (but not slaveholding itself) was prohibited in Washington D.C., and the fugitive slave provision of the Constitution was codified into law. The Compromise of 1850 was the last hurrah for the men remembered by history as The Great Triumvirate: Senators Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. His health failing, Clay introduced the resolutions that made up the Compromise, then took a leave of absence from the Senate. While freshman Senator Stephen Douglas led the floor fight for passage, Clay did much of the hard work from his home in Kentucky. Webster’s reluctant support of the Compromise destroyed his reputation in New England and tarnished his career. From his deathbed, Calhoun railed against the Compromise, preferring immediate disunion. After months of debate and angst, the resolutions were passed, delaying the crisis of disunion. Although none of the antagonists knew it at the time, the postponement of the crisis probably sealed the fate of its ultimate resolution. Had the southern states seceded in 1850, rather than 1861, the North would not have had the strength to stop them. But over the next decade the population and industrial might of the North would boom, so that by the time the war came the North had a decisive material advantage. Henry Clay introduced the Resolutions that would become the Compromise of 1850 on this date, one hundred seventy-two years ago today.

Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II acted promptly to punish those responsible for his father’s execution. All the commissioners who h...ad signed the death warrant of Charles I eleven years earlier, and who were still alive and could be found, were tried and sentenced to death, along with the lawyer for the prosecution, the officers of the guards at the king’s trial and execution, and the preacher who had encouraged and attended the execution. Execution for regicide was an especially brutal way to go. The prisoners were dragged, hung, then drawn and quarteredmeaning they were first dragged through the street by horses, then they were hung but cut down while still alive, then they were disemboweled while alive, then they were dismembered into four pieces. Oliver Cromwell was already dead by the time of the restoration, but the new king was unwilling to be cheated out of the chance to take his vengeance on him. So, Cromwell was tried posthumously (along with several others who had already died) and convicted. His corpse was then disinterred from Westminster Abbey where it had been buried two years earlier, and was dragged through the street, then hanged. After the body was taken down, the corpse was beheaded, and Cromwell’s deteriorated head was placed on a spike atop a 20-foot pole raised above Westminster Hall. The head remained on public display there for 28 years. When a storm broke the pole in the late 1680s, dropping Cromwell’s head to the ground, an enterprising guard stole it and eventually sold it. The head passed through several owners over the years, who brought it out to show guests at parties or tried to turn it into a sideshow exhibit. In 1815 it was purchased by Josiah Wilkinson. The Wilkinson family treated Cromwell's unfortunate head more carefully and respectfully than prior owners and it remained in the family for over 150 years. When Horace Wilkinson inherited it from his father in 1957, he decided it was finally time to give Cromwell’s head a proper burial. In 1960 the head was secretly buried in the chapel at Sussex College. The burial was not revealed until October 1962. Oliver Cromwell’s body was disinterred from Westminster Abbey on January 28, 1661, three hundred sixty-one years ago today. The image is a photo of Cromwell’s head, taken just before it was buried at Sussex College.

Today, Pennsylvania is home to the largest wild elk herd in the northeastern U.S., with approximately 1,300 free-ranging elk roaming the northcentral part of th...e state. But #DYK that on this day, 109 years ago, Pennsylvania’s first shipment of elk, from Yellowstone National Park, arrived by train. On Jan. 26, 1913, 50 elk were delivered. From 1913-1926, a total of 177 elk were reintroduced to Clearfield, Clinton and Monroe counties, with the intent of reestablishing the state’s wild population. In 1912, Joseph Kalbfus, the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s first executive director, began considering to reintroduce elk from the western states back here in Penn’s Woods. Kalbfus wrote in the 1912 annual report: "It now appears that the herds of elk found far West are annually subjected to severe suffering and death by starvation because of the limitation and taking for agricultural purposes of their winter feeding grounds the national government is anxious to reduce the western herds by placing numbers of these animals elsewhere to their benefit... I believe it would be well to locate the elk that may be received upon those of our preserves located upon the largest tracts of our state forest lands as far as possible from cultivated lands, and as near the center of the state as may be, in this way giving the animals as great range as possible, and at the same time reduce to the minimum the danger of injury to growing crops by these animals and the possibility of their wandering out of our jurisdiction." Learn more about the history of Pennsylvania elk here https://bit.ly/3H6vePs. #DYK #TodayInHistory #History #ThrowbackThursday #PaElk

From the BB gun to actual radioactive material, some of the most popular toys of the past century have also been the most hazardous. Check out the most dangerous toys from the 1920s to now, in this episode of History By the Decade.

September 13, 1894 - The gazers from the hilltops had the advantage of seeing a magnificent sight besides the fireworks. The brilliant electrical displays on a...ll sides gave Pittsburgh the appearance of an immense display of fiery jewels. The evening’s entertainment began shortly after eight o’clock, when simultaneously were displayed on Mt. Washington and on Monument Hill, Allegheny, where a great crowd was also assembled, the sign ‘G.A.R. Welcome,’ in electrical letters twenty feet high. They began the shooting of rockets from the flats, kept up and followed steadily for an hour and a half with a bewildering variety of representations in mid air... The firing of cannon and the blowing of whistles on the boats, with which the river fairly swarmed, kept up a deafening din the whole time... There were innumerable discharges of rockets, producing brilliant chromatic effects; there were serpents, clouds, forests, and a grand illumination of the wharves. To tell the number of those who came out to see the brilliant exposition of Pittsburgh’s tribute to the veterans, with anything like accuracy, is of course impossible. That there could have been less than 200,000 is highly improbable... The Monongahela Incline alone hauled 7,000 people both ways, and at least six times that number saw the fireworks from the hill. -Journal of the Twenty-Eighth National Encampment, Grand Army of the Republic, Pittsburgh, PA Opened in May 1870, the Monongahela Incline has been in continuous operation for 150 years. During the 28th Annual Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1894, the Incline not only served as a practical mode of transportation, but also shuttled onlookers to the peak of Mount Washington where closing ceremonies could be observed with a grand view.

The Star Spangled Banner Written F.S. Key 1814 102 years later President Woodrow Wilson adopted the song as a de facto national anthem in 1916 but did not co...dify this ruling. In 1929, House Resolution 14 was presented to Congress to name The Star-Spangled Banner as the official national anthem to the United States. There were many objections to this resolution. How old were you when you found out the Star Spangled Banner really has four verses? Following here is the Complete version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" showing spelling and punctuation from Francis Scott Key's manuscript in the Maryland Historical Society collection. O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bomb bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there, O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream, 'Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a Country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation! Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto - "In God is our trust," And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Interesting ten minute synopsis

I have always wondered how Troy Hill's "Pig Hill" got its name. I always assumed that pigs were just thrown down it or something...Turns out they were herded UP... that hill in order to be slaughtered on Spring Garden Ave. This all begins with Herr’s Island. The island was named for an early owner, Benjamin Herr, who used the island for farming. By 1872, Herr’s Island contained oil refineries, saw mills, and the Graff Tube Works. Later, Herr’s Island became occupied by stockyards among the largest in the United States, advantageously located adjacent to the Pennsylvania Railroad. Swine were driven from these stockyards UP to Troy Hill via Rialto Street (thus nicknamed Pig Hill) to be slaughtered at packing plants on Spring Garden Avenue.

It started on the northwest boundary of our yard and in the mid-1960s it let our posse on some of the greatest adventures in one's lifetime. It was The Path. An... endless combination of Pats, Chucks Bobs, Butches, Rich's, Bills, Phil's, Tims, Bens and Denny's would gather on any given occasion to start a great adventure down The Path. Hikes to various Tarzan vines, the creek, the acid dump, further on, the cemetery, on and on, the reservoir, the church, oh no! It's suppertime! All began with those first steps down The Path. Danger is a prominent ingredient in all great adventures and our excursions qualified in all aspects. While stitches, sprains, broken bones, bee stings and various cases of poison this or that ran rampant throughout the members, a careful well a balanced alliance of a "posse" mother who was a registered nurse, the local emergency room, loving home care and the grace of God made us all feel invincible and loved. Time has March forward over 50 years and our "posse" has explored many different paths. Paths that went across town, paths that went across the county, paths that led to college and to work, paths that ran to sadness and happiness. Oh the great adventures! Man against man! Man against nature! Man against himself! There have been good paths, rocky paths, soft paths, dirty paths, dry paths, short paths, and long paths but It started on the northwest boundary of our yard, and in the mid-1960s it let our posse on some of the greatest adventures in one's lifetime. It was The Path.

Daniel Boone was born on October 22, 1734 ("New Style" November 2), the sixth of eleven children in a family of Quakers. His father, Squire Boone (1696 - 1765),... had emigrated to colonial Pennsylvania from the small town of Bradninch, England in 1713. In 1720, Squire, a weaver and blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan (1700 - 1777), whose family were Quakers from Wales. In 1731, the Boones built a one-room log cabin in the Oley Valley in what is now Berks County, Pennsylvania, near present Reading, where Daniel Boone was born. Daniel Boone, is my 11th cousin five times removed... Jeffrey A. Stunja, webmaster January 31st, 2021. See more

Did You Know? The first automobile tunnel built in the USA was the Liberty Tunnel in #Pittsburgh. #PittsburghProud