APRIL 18

APRIL 18 — 1970 Houston Globe Headlines: “Spacemen Are Home Safe!”; 1969 Sister Joachim begins fighting for the Cannonball train;  1776 The British Are Coming!

APRIL 18

1970 here are the headlines:

Daily News: A Worldwide Sigh of Relief! Return Called NASA’s Proudest Moment.

The Sun: Apollo Crew Clear Air: Gas Beaten.

Houston Chronicle: The Spacemen Are Home Safe. Splashdown Four Miles from Ship.

The Apollo 13, bound for the moon, suddenly turned into a useless vessel in space, putting the crew in jeopardy. The Apollo 13, commanded by 42 year old James Lovell, the world’s most travelled astronaut, command module pilot Jack Swinger, who came on board after Ken Mattingly was taken off the mission due to a case of the measles, and Fred Hayes as lunar module pilot.

These three gentlemen were all trained astronauts and had experience on dealing with inflight problems, which probably saved their lives on this mission.

On April 11^th, Apollo 13, NASA’s third attempt at landing on the moon, launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. All was well. Two days into the journey, capsule communicator at mission control Joe Kerwin announced, “The spacecraft is in good shape as far as we are concerned. We’re bored to tears down here.”  Lovell announced in live TV footage that aired around America and the rest of the world, “This is the crew of Apollo 13 wishing everybody there a nice evening and we’re just about ready to close out our inspection of Aquarius and get back for a pleasant evening in Odessey. Good night.” referring to the lunar and command modules, respectively.

The Odyssey would house the crew quite comfortably; however a few minutes after Lovell’s broadcast, one of the oxygen tanks went BOOM!  And blew up the one next to it.

That’s when Gary Sinise announced, and I paraphrase, Whitney Houston, we have a problem. Then Whitney came out and sang I Want Dance with somebody  and all was well, though the astronauts were now in survival mode.

The Aquarius was intended to be used for the actual moon landing, but now the mission was obviously aborted as the crew turned around to head back to Earth, which was 200,000 miles away. The Odessey had to be shut down to save power and was now a crippled vessel. The crew would have to seriously ration their water intake to a fifth of their normal amount. The Aquarius didn’t have a heat shield and all three crew members had to cram in there dealing with 38 degree temperatures.

It was miserable, but they made it, getting past Earth’s atmosphere and landing safely on April 17^th. During the reentry, communication was lost for over four minutes due to ionization in the atmosphere, and mission control held their breath The module parachuted back to earth and landed in the Pacific Ocean and were immediately picked up by helicopters, joining their families a couple days later, alive and well.

Swinger would be elected in the House of Representatives for Colorado, but died of bone cancer before he was sworn in.

In 1995, the Apollo 13 movie, directed by Tom Hanks and starring Tom Hanks won two Academy Awards. And as long as we’re dancing to Whitney Houston, we don’t have a problem.

1942-The Tokyo Raid.
Lt. Col. James Doolittle did a lot on this day. This is an example of what can happen if you bomb Pearl Harbor. Doolittle was born in Fremont, CA but spent part of his youth in Alaska. When he was 14 he went to school in Los Angeles, later on UC Berkeley.

But that’s the boring part. On April 18th, Doolittle commanded 16 American B-25 bombers, launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet 650 miles east of Japan and attacked the Japanese mainland. The plan was to keep heading to China after the raid, and most of them did except for one plane that landed in Russia. Fourteen crews, except for one crewman, returned either to the US or to American forces. The result was the first attack on Japan, which led to US propaganda victory, US morale improved, and Japanese morale weakened.

Beyond that, there was no significant military effect, although it did lead to the Japanese decision to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific, which led to a decisive strategic defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy vs the US in the Battle of Midway. Like a boss!

There was a 1944 movie called 30 Seconds Over Tokyo starring Spencer Tracy.

1969 Sister Ann Joachim begins her fight to keep the Cannonball.

The Wabash Cannonball, a train that ran from 1950-1971, was named after a classic folk song originally named The Great Rock Island Tribute from the 1880s by J.A. Roff. It rode its happy passengers comfortably with reclining seat coaches, a dining lounge car and a parlor car from Adrian, Michigan to Chicago to St. Louis all the way down to El Paso TX, Denver, up to Detroit.

But by the late 1960s, the Wabash Company, these days America’s largest producer of semi-trailers and liquid transportation systems, was merging with Norfolk and Western Railway, which administered the Cannonball.

Who do you get to help you save a train from a corporate merger? Try a nun.

Need a lawyer? How about a lawyer nun? Yes it couldn’t hurt to have God on your side along with the saints and apostles backing up from behind.

Hailing from Cologne Germany comes Petronella Joachim born in1901, moved to Detroit Mich at the age of three along with her mom, two brothers and a sister. She was nicknamed Nelly, then later on Pat. While working at a law firm by day, at night Pat attended college and in her spare time was into hiking, bowling, basketball, horse riding, hockey, rifle shooting, golf and boxing.  Turned out Pat could take a pretty good punch for a girl.

She took the bar exam and while waiting for the results, resigned as captain of Civil Air Corps of the U.S., a member of the League of Catholic Women, and several other organizations, and turned towards the convent, of the Adrian Dominican, and the habit went on her head,

I can’t even say the word convent without feeling the sting from a ruler on my hand.

She started winning court cases in 1928, no doubt with the help of St. Jude, the patron saint of the impossible, It would be on this day in 1969 that Mich. senator Philip Hart publicized the Cannonball hearings, Sister Ann, now known as Sister Cannonball, used the support of local citizens and happy passengers to raise awareness and send letters to local politicians. For the people of Adrian, it was a major hub that would be lost.

In May 1970 the case to save Cannonball went off the rails in the federal courts, and the Cannonball’s run was over. But of course, Sister Ann Joachim wasn’t done by a long-shot. She would go on to run as a liberal Democrat for the Adrian County Commission in a heavily Republican district, and champion water ducts to the poor parts of the city, then retired at age 74.

Sister Ann, everybody. One serious sister you don’t want to mess with.

1906- The Great San Francisco earthquake.
It only lasted a minute but its immediate impact was disastrous. The earthquake caused several fires around the city that burned for three days and destroyed almost 500 city blocks. It’s estimated that 3000 people were killed and half of the city’s 400,000 residents were left homeless. It’s considered one of the worst natural disasters in US history.
Congress handled this a couple ways. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees enacted emergency appropriations for the city to pay for food, water, tents, blankets, and medical sup plies and worked to reconstruct the buildings that were damaged or destroyed. But it really got out of hand when law enforcement destroyed the city’s booze.

That’s right! The saloons and liquor stores were emptied out in order to minimize the spread of fire and threat of mob violence. An estimated $30,000 worth of liquor was destroyed.

1775-The Midnight Riders gallop into Lexington and Concord
…to warn the colonists about the British. Massachusetts governor Thomas Gage, a British general received instructions from Great Britain to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents and take out Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

Dawes and Revere went separate directions in case one of them got caught. Dawes left about an hour before Revere was dispatched. Revere screamed The British are coming throughout the neighborhoods.

Dawes let everyone sleep.

Dawes arrived in Lexington at 12:30a.m. about half an hour after Revere, who had travelled a shorter distance on a faster horse. They grabbed Dr. Samuel Prescott and rode to Concord, but were stopped by British forces before entering the city. Prescott escaped and made it to concord to warn everyone, Revere was captured, and Dawes lost his horse. About 5a.m. on April 19…well, we’ll get into the story of the shot being heard round the world tomorrow.