MAY 12 — 1789 Tamany Society is formed; 1939 Happy Birthday Chuck Hull, Father of 3D printing; 19770 Ernie Banks hits 500th home run
APRIL 12
1789 Tammany Society is formed.
Also known as Columbian Order, this New York City political organization lasted two centuries! It started as a club back in Philly in 1772, and its first Grand Sachem, or leader, was wealthy philanthropist
William Mooney. The name Tammany came from Native American Lenape Chief Tamamensd, or the affable; a peacemaker from Delaware who was a friend of William Penn, would no doubt wonder today how his name would become synonymous with corruption after Boss Tweed got a hold of Tammany Hall, which I’ll get into in a moment .
Aaron Burr would use the Tammany Society as a political force against the Federalists to support the 180 presidential election victory of Thomas Jefferson.
But by 1817 the Irish wanted in Tammany Society. And they were immigrants too, which was part of Tammany’s original platforms, so they ruled Tammany Hall in many ways moving fo9rward. In the 1830s, the headquarters was formed in NYC, thus becoming Tammany Hall, and in 1855 Fernando Wood became its first mayor.
And Tammany Hall, which once stood for noble ways of servicing all humanity, got deeper into the corruption with gangs like the Dead Rabbits harassing voters at elections booths. Police bribery was rampant, and that was before Boss Tweed got a hold of it.
In 1868, William Tweed, the new Grand Sachem, New York Carty’s third largest landowner, now had control of Tammany, and by extension, the Democratic Party. Tweed does have an interesting story which I detail on my November 23rd ep, but in short he was elected to the US Senate despite allegations for taking control of the city treasury to fill his pockets and voter fraud, would have his vast empire taken down by a reform lawyer named Samuel Tilden.
And yet somehow Tammany Hall managed to rise from the ashes after that. Leaders such as Richard Croker, Alfred E. Smith, and Jimmy Walker dominated New York politics for decades.
But Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was governor of New York from 1928-1933, wasn’t putting up with this corruption in any faction of the Democratic party, New York or otherwise, and assisted NYC mayor Farrell la Guardia to cut the powers and credibility.
Tanya Hall lingered on for a few more decades, until reform mayor John V,. Lindsay , who was NYC mayor from 1966-1973, put the final nail in the coffin of the corrupt Tammany Hall.
1932 – The Lindbergh baby is found dead
…near the woods in the biggest story since the Resurrection. Not sure what that means, but that’s how the story read in the newspapers. Just five years prior, Charles Lindbergh became famous by flying a single seater non-stop across the Atlantic.
In 1932 his twenty month old son Charles junior was kidnapped in his New Jersey home on the second floor. A ransom note demanding $50,000 was found in the baby’s pillow in his bedroom. The ensuing investigation didn’t find anything for a few days until a second note showed up, this one with the ransom changed to $70,000.
When the money was delivered the Lindbergh’s were informed that the baby was on a boat off the coast of Massachusetts, but the boat was never found. However the baby was found on May 12 in the woods near the Lindbergh residence. The autopsy revealed that the baby died of a skull fracture. The unsolved mystery finally got a lead in September two years later when a gas station attendant reported being handed a marked bill from the ransom, which led police to Bruno Hauptman, who found $13,000 of the money. Hauptmann denied involvement, but was found guilty and fried in the electric chair in 1935.
In Cold War news…
1949 – The USSR stops blocking Berlin from the Allies.
…In Post WWII, Germany as well as its capital Berlin was divided into four sections, the Soviet, British, French, and American sections. Friendly relations between the Soviet Union and the rest of the Allies went sour and Berlin was literally and figuratively right in the middle. The question of what to do with Germany was a tough one. The city was in ruins, the shelter and warmth was scarce, the black market subjugated the economic life, and starvation was a problem.
It seemed as though the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, both written for the intention of recovering Germany, was just escalating hostilities between the east and the west. When the allies started printing a Deutch mark the West Berliners and Germans could use for currency, the Soviets retaliated blocking rail, road and water access to allied-controlled areas of Berlin. This included power and coal. The Soviet intentions were to squeeze the life out of West Germany until they submitted to communism.
So the American and British allies airlifted food, supplies and coal to the west. The pilots encountered harsh weather, strict time limits, and hostile enemies in the Soviets just waiting to attack. At the airlift’s peak, there was an allied plane dropping supplies every minute. The winter was especially brutal for this mission, but the Allies endured, and by the time winter broke in 1949, and hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies and food were dropped off every month. They even dropped off chocolate for the kids.
The Soviet plans, as usual, didn’t work, and the Russians caved and lifted the blockade. On May 12, 1949 at one minute after midnight following the blockade lift, a British convoy drove right through to Berlin and the first train reached West Berlin several hours later.
11939 – happy birthday Chuck “Father of 3D printing” Hull.
He came up with stereolithographic. Do you realize how many hearing aids are produced by 3D printers?
All of them.
According to the guardian, Chuck started his journey at a company which used UV rays to harden table top coatings. He concocted this plan to put thousands of thin layers of plastic on top of each other, using light to carve a shape, to see if he could come up with 3 dimensional shapes. He played around with it in a darkroom at work after hours, and discovered that by shining a light in a tub of photopolymer, which is a liquid that changes to hard plastic under light, and traces the shape of the object, one layer at a time, until the desired job is complete.
This is the concept of stereolithographic, and three guys in France had already figured it out and filed their patent, three weeks before Chuck filed his in the U.S. The patent in France however was rejected by the French General Electric Company and French Laser Consortium due to lack of business perspective.
That’s because we need an American to have business perspective, like Chuck Hull.
First it was the auto industry that benefitted from Check’s technology, but then the medical industry took notice.
This surprised Chuck. The possibilities seem endless. When a 3D gun was made in Texas, Chuck called the use of his technology dangerous and that he hopes they don’t hurt themselves. His company is neither the government nor the police, and the gun was probably made to prove a point. Look at the good things that can be printed, such as ravioli and chocolate. Or a home. Or a battery. Good times.
Happy birthday Chuck!
1970-Slugger Ernie Banks hits his 500th home run for the Chicago Clubs. And although he was an NL all-star 11 seasons, he never played a playoff game.