On October 10th, 1984, Red Dawn, the first PG-13 rated movie, starring Patrick Swayze was released. The movie (the 1984 original, not the 2012 remake) is a favorite of both JWR and HJL, and the characters that the movie is about embody the independent, indomitable spirit that created this country.
August 9th, 1831 was the birthday of James Paris Lee (August 9, 1831 – February 24, 1904). He was a Scottish-Canadian and later American inventor and arms designer, best known for inventing the bolt action that led to the Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield series of rifles.
August 8th is the birthday of Terry Nation (August 8th, 1930 – March 9th, 1997), who was a Welsh television writer and novelist. Nation wrote two series, Survivors and Blake’s 7, in the 1970s. Survivors was re-made a few years ago.
August 7th, 1933 The birthday of Jerry Pournelle. He, along with Larry Niven authored the survivalist classic Lucifer’s Hammer.
On August 6th, 1945 at 8:16 a.m. (Japanese time), an American B-29 bomber– the Enola Gay– dropped the world’s first war-time atom bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people were killed as a result of the blast, with another 35,000 injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. History is always written by the victors, so the reasoning and justification for this will be argued for years to come. But one thing is for sure: this action officially ushered in the nuclear age in war and …
August 5th is the sad anniversary of the Mann Gulch Fire in Montana that took the lives of 13 firefighters (including 12 smokejumpers and one former smokejumper), in 1949. The intense, fast-moving forest fire took place in what later became the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness. The events of that fire were chronicled in the book Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean and immortalized in the haunting lyrics of the ballad Cold Missouri Watersby James Keelaghan.
On August 4th, 1944, 15-year old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family were captured by the Nazi Gestapo. The Franks had taken shelter in a small space in a sealed off area of an Amsterdam warehouse along with another Jewish family and a single Jewish man. They were aided by Christian friends who brought them food and supplies. Her diary survived the war, overlooked by the Gestapo, but Anne and nearly all of the others perished in the Nazi death camps.
August 3rd, 1846 is the day that the Donner party found a note warning the emigrants that their expected route through the mountains ahead was nearly impassable. Hastings, an unscrupulous trail guide had created his own “short cut” route and wasn’t even at the meeting place at Fort Bridger, but had left word for the part to continue on. Hastings had claimed easy passage through the rugged Wasatch Mountains, but had left a note attached to a forked stick for the party explaining that the route was more difficult than he thought. Eventually reduced to cannibalism, only 45 of the …
August 2nd was the birthday of Peter O’Toole (1932–2013). When his name is mentioned, Lawrence of Arabia immediately comes to mind.
August 1st is celebrated as Swiss Independence Day, in recognition of the signing of the Federal Charter of 1291, which united Switzerland’s first three cantons. As of 2017, Switzerland has been free and independent for 726 years. Having a well-armed populace has assured that. August 1st is also remembered as the election day in 1946 that sparked the Battle of Athens, Tennessee, when returning World War II veterans took up arms to oust a corrupt local government that was rigging an election.
July 31st is the birthday of Army Air Corps veteran David Thatcher, one of the Doolittle Raiders. He lived in Missoula, Montana. This is also the birthday of free market economist Milton Freidman (born 1912, died November 16, 2006.)
Today we remember the birthday of author Reginald Bretnor. He was born Alfred Reginald Kahn on July 30, 1911, in Vladivostok. He died on July 22, 1992 in Medford, Oregon. In addition to penning many witty science fiction novels and short stories in his characteristic style, he also wrote nonfiction articles for Mel Tappan’s P.S. Letter
July 29th, 1805, is the birthday of Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville. He died april 16th, 1859.
July 28th is the anniversary of the outbreak of World War I— the War that irreparably changed geopolitics. Officially, the war lasted until November 11, 1918, but American troops were still running around shooting Russians until well into 1919.
July 27th is the birthday of Captain Samuel Whittemore (born in 1694, died February 3, 1793). He was an English-born American farmer and soldier. He was eighty years of age when he became the oldest known colonial combatant in the American War of Independence.
