DECEMBER 7 — 1941 FDR announced Day in Infamy; 1863 Schuyler “Smiley” Colfax becomes House Speaker; 1787 Delaware joins Union
DECEMBER 7
Sunday, 1941. A date that shall live in infamy. Let me just start by saying this. The Japanese had never lost a war. Then again, that’s most likely because they’ve never declared war. Just attacked without warning. Some legacy. All that rhetoric about honor and it means nothing.
Today would be no different. At Opana Point Radar Station, a couple army privates noticed a huge squadron of planes heading their way. When they reported it, their Lt. told them they were b-17s and to forget about it. They turned off the radar and went to breakfast. A private plane, flown by an attorney on a flight of leisure, encountered a huge squadron of planes bearing a red sun. They flew in from the north over the pineapple and sugar fields. Locally, a CBS radio show called Hawaii Calls began airing the news. Attention. This is no exercise. The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor. All Army, Navy and Marine personnel are to report to duty. The message repeated.
Phone lines jammed up. About 353 Japanese fighters and bombers descended on Oahu. The first casualty may have been a 10 year old girl. The information coming into FRD’s cabinet was incomplete, and not exactly accurate. There was no telling how much damage the Japanese unleashed on their attack on Pearl Harbor. Folks on the east coast didn’t know what Pearl Harbor was, but they knew it was American.
By 3:00 EST, it was generally known that the navy in the Pacific was either obliterated or scattered, and the Army Air Corps in Oahu had simply been annihilated. A second wave of 171 planes then hit Hawaii. The Japanese attacked the Philippines, Wake Island, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaya, Guam, the Midway Islands, Shanghai, and Pearl Harbor. Good thing three American pacific fleet carriers were out at sea on training maneuvers. Those giant aircraft carriers would have their revenge against Japan six months later at the Battle of Midway, reversing the tide against the previously invincible Japanese navy in a spectacular victory.
1863 Smiley Colfax becomes the only House Speaker to become Vice President.
Schuyler Colfax was born in New York City on March 23, 1823 to a distinguished family. His grandfather served close to General George Washington during the American Revolution and his father was a bank teller on Wall Street. His father died just a few months before he was born, and when he was a boy his mother moved the fam to Indiana.
He became the editor of the St. Joseph Valley Register, then entered politics first as a Whig. In Indiana, the Know-Nothing party was assembling, like a swarm of locusts in Egypt, which was a short-lived party that opposed slavery and alcohol, but really hated Catholics and immigrants. Smiley just opposed slavery so he switched from the Know-Nothings to the Republicans, and was elected to Congress in 1854, arguing and debating southern pro-slavery lawmakers like an old gladiator.
He soon became House Speaker and worked closely with President Lincoln during the Civil War. Lincoln called him “a little intriguer, plausible, inspiring, beyond his capacity, and not trustworthy. In fact when the war ended, since he was in such a great mood, Lincoln actually invited Colfax to go to Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater on the night of his assassination. Colfax declined because he was planning a long trip to California unless the president was planning on calling on a special Congress, which he wasn’t. , but instead found himself among just a few others at Lincoln’s side as he lay dying.
During Reconstruction, p administration, Colfax sided with the Radical Republicans on extending suffrage to freedmen and punishing Confederate states, much of his effort being vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. However he was elected Vice President under Ulysses Grant in 1868. /Though a popular hero who ended the Civil War, Grant’s presidency would go down in history as one of the most, if not the most corrupt and ineffective ever.
Smiley was little help in that regard. In fact, Smiley’s face would be all over the Credit Mobile scandal that plagued the Grant presidency. Turned out he had a hard time turning down gifts, such as sterling silver and bribes and railroad tickets. Not the kind of tickets that let you ride the train, I mean the discounted stock that was a $1200 gift or 20 shares that he received in the Union Pacific Railroad that, coops daisy, would boom and provide a dividend of around.
Then, another investigation found that he received $4K in campaign contributions for the 1868 election. Smiley was indicted. This essentially forced Colfax out of office and he would never UN for politics again. Always a journalist and a business executive rather than a politician, at heart, Colfax continued speaking and eventually regained some honor and dignity.
He died on his way from Mankato MN to Rock Rapids, Iowa, and January 131885. Schuyler Colfax, who once actually wrote a degree for women for the Rebekah Lodges, was indeed a great editor apparently. The Rebekahs are otherwise known as the International Association of Rebekah Assemblies, or the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which may or may not be related to the Illuminati, depending on who you ask, lol.
It probably is, but anyway, Colfax’s legacy lives on, there is an elementary school named after him in Pittsburgh, as well as a dozen or so towns throughout America, including Indiana of course, as well as New Mexico, Illinois, Washington, and here in California where there’s a bronze statue of him at the Amtrak station.
1979 — Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin passes away. Otherwise known as the woman who discovered the universe, her research showed the world that stars were made of hydrogen and helium, and found a way to classify stars by their temperatures. She did this by studying the temperature and density of stars. She began studying in her birthplace of England, but felt as a woman, her work would be taken seriously more if she studied in the United States. By this point, stars were already classified by their spectra, which was laid out in seven different types, called O, B A, F, G, K and M. O being the hottest, and M being the coolest.
Though undoubtedly brilliant, Payne was persuaded during the 1920s into continuing her research on stars at Harvard using photographic plates, even though more accurate photoelectric instruments were being used. But after writing her book Stars of High Luminosity, she turned her attention to Cepheid variables to study nova. She traveled to Europe and collaborated with Sergey Gaposchkin from Russia, and the two were married back in Massachusetts.
In the 1950s Payne became chairman of the astronomy department at Harvard, finishing her autobiography in 1966 called The Dyer’s Hand.
1787 — Delaware was the first state to ratify the United States constitution.
…It did so on December 7, 1787. The log cabin originated in Finland. Finnish settlers arrived in Delaware in the mid-1600s and brought with them plans for the log cabin, one of the enduring symbols of the American pioneer. One of the cabins has been preserved and is on display at the Delaware Agricultural Museum in Dover. Barratt’s Chapel is known as the Cradle of Methodism. It was built in 1780 and is the oldest surviving church built by and for Methodists in the United States. The frying pan built in 1950 for use at the Delmarva Chicken Festival is 10 feet in diameter and holds 180 gallons of oil and 800 chicken quarters.