May 10th is the birthday of the late Janis Pinups (born 1925, died 15 June 2007). He was one of the last of the Forest Brothers anti-communist resistance fighters. He came out of hiding, after five decades, to obtain a Latvian passport in 1994, after the collapse of eastern European communism. (He was never issued any communist government identity papers and by necessity lived as a nonexistent ghost during the entire Soviet occupation of Latvia.) The history of the Forest Brothers movement certainly deserves more recognition. Most of these men fought against both the Nazis and the Soviets.
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May 10th is the birthday of the late Col. Jeff Cooper (born 1920, died September 25, 2006).
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May 10, 2021 is the 151st anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad where the golden spike was pounded in Promontory, Utah at the meeting of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in their railroad building race. Transportation and distribution of goods, even those items shipped from China to the U.S. west coast and carried as far as the Atlantic coast on rail, was a significant accomplishment those 15 decades ago. Since then, our train network has greatly expanded throughout the U.S., and we are still quite dependent upon it for goods today. Though our trains are no longer run on coal, they are now dependent upon electronic systems, which may be EMP vulnerable. This is just one of the many reasons we, as preppers, store necessities and prepare to make our own. We know that even our trains are vulnerable, and without them life would drastically change. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 2015 an estimated $623 Billion of goods were transported by train within the United States, not including goods that merely passed through the U.S. from foreign countries with destinations to other foreign countries.
That golden spike was prophetic. There has been a lot of money made in the railroad business and many valuable goods transported across it.
May 10, 1972. Top Gun Graduate Randall “Duke” Cunningham and his backseater Wally “Irish” Driscoll shot down 3 MIGs in a dogfight and became the first Ace of the Vietnam War. He later commanded the Top GUn school when they came to make the movie. His Vice commander? John McCain