Category: Note

On May 12th, 1949, one of the first crises of the Cold War came to end when the Soviet Union lifted its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. A massive U.S.-British airlift had broken it. At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into four sectors administered by the four major Allied powers: the USSR, the United States, Britain, and France. Berlin, the capital, was also divided into four parts, though it was located well within the USSR sector. The future of Germany was hotly contested among the allies. The United States, Britain, and France eventually united their sectors …

On May 11, 1949, Israel was finally admitted into the United Nations. In the fall of 1948, Israel had applied for membership in the United Nations but failed to win the necessary majority in the Security Council. In the spring of 1949, the application was renewed. This time, armistice agreements having been signed between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, Israel was admitted by 37 votes in favor, 12 against, with 9 abstentions.

May 10th is the birthday of the late Col. Jeff Cooper (born 1920, died September 25, 2006).

May 10th is also 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.)

On May 9th, 1945, Herman Goering– commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, and Hitler’s designated successor– was taken prisoner by the U.S. Seventh Army in Bavaria. Goering, who was addicted to painkillers due to a wound, was instrumental in creating concentration camps for political enemies. It was Goering who ordered the purging of German Jews from the economy following the Kristallnacht program in 1938, initiating an “Aryanization” policy that confiscated Jewish property and businesses. Tried and convicted at the Nuremberg trials, he was sentenced to hanging, but before he could be executed he committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide tablet he had hidden from his guards.

May 8th is the birthday of missionary and U.S. military intelligence officer John Birch. (Born, 1918, died August 25, 1945.) Many considered him to be the first American casualty of the Cold War.

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SurvivalBlog is introducing a new column this week. We intend  to let our readership know that we are not “armchair preppers”.  We actually live the life that we write about! Each week, we will share a bit of what our plans for the week are to further our preps and we invite you to do so as well. Be prepared, because we all know that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This weekend, we’re going to ask you how you did with your plan.

A couple of things to note:

As you share, please be mindful of good OPSEC and don’t post personally identifying information…

This is the birthday of two notable men: Senator Rand Paul (born 1963); and Bent Faurschou-Hviid, known as The Flame (born 1921, died October 18, 1944). The red-haired Danish resistance fighter fought the occupying Germans with the Holger Danske Group during World War II. His exploits were dramatized in the movie Flame and Citron. Rand Paul Rand Paul describes himself as a Constitutional conservative and supporter of the Tea party movement. He advocates for a balanced budget amendment, term limits, and privacy reform. Rand Paul has been serving as the junior senator from Kentucky since 2011. Bent Faurschou Hviid Bent Faurschou …

Today is the birthday of bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs, (1924-2012) and British comic actor Rowan Atkinson (born 1955).

Earl Scruggs

Earl was an American musician who popularized a three-finger banjo picking style, now called “Scruggs style”. This style is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His radically different three-finger style of playing the five-string banjo is radically different. Previously, the banjo was typically played with a frailing or clawhammer technique. He  also popularized the instrument in several genres of music and elevated the banjo from its role as a background rhythm instrument, or a comedian’s prop, into featured solo status…

Don’t forget about the SurvivalBlog writing contest. With $11,000 worth of prizes it can be well worth your time to finish up that article you have been writing. Round 70 ends on May 31st, 2017 so get it wrapped up and submitted! o o o May 5th is the birthday of Pat Frank (1908-1964). This was the pen name of newspaper journalist Harry Hart Frank. His novel Alas, Babylon is a survivalist classic. His personal life was marred by alcoholism, but his writing is admired and still surprisingly popular, today. (Alas, Babylon is still in print, after more than 50 …