FEBRUARY 19 — 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima; 1847 Donner Party found by rescuers; 1777 Benedict Arnold passed up for promotion; 1977 Starl;and Band receives “Career Death Curse” Grammy award for Best New Artist
FEBRUARY 19
1945 – Battle of Iwo Jima.
The American Navy and Marines with Maj. Gen. Aharry Schmidt VADM Marc Mitscher v Japan forces led by Lt. Gen Tadamichi Kuribayashi and Col. Baron Takeichi Nishi. The result, a proud American selfie.
Now that the Allies had victories with the marianas and the Philippines, they were ready to head for Okinawa. And just 660 miles from Japan was Iwo Jima sitting all by itself. Since the Allies had over 110,000 men versus the Japanese 23,000 men, it wasn’t much of an exciting fight.
550 Marines died and 1800 wounded, but thea little more than a month later, the battle was over, Iwo Jim could be used for its strategic airfields to launch an attack against Japan, and the American flag was famously raised, as depicted in the famous Pulitzer Prize winning picture by Joe Rosenthal that said to the world, what is up?
1847 – The first rescuers find the Donner Party.
During the summer prior to this point, the Donner and Reed families headed out west from Illinois like thousands of other settlers. The difference with this group is that they relied on faulty information, on how to get to California. They used the Hastings Cutoff, which literally cut them off from getting to Clalifornia.
They ran into problems with the trail not really being much of a rail at all in the Wasatch Mountains, the Great Salt Lake Desert and the Humboldt River. They arrived at the Sierra Mountains three weeks olate, which made a huge difference as far as the weather was concerned. In other words, they were too late and winter begun in full swing. Snow trapped the crew near what is now Donner lake, and the crew began killing and eating their oxen, and then later, other human beings who had perished in the biter cold. News finally reached Sutter’s Fort in present day Sacramento on January 31, and a team of rescuers went and searched for our cannibalistic friends. They found the crew nearly covered in snow and barely alive. Though the few remaining survivors were rescued, many of them still didn’t survive the trip to Cliaofrnia. Out of 89 people who started their journey, only 45 survived.
1777 – Benedict Arnold passed up for promotion. Although he fought bravely in Saratoga and Ticonderoga, kinda, he had a lot of enemies and was court martialled for corruption. He was passed over for rhe rank of major geneal. He couldn’t understand why Junion officers were leapfrogging over him, and he went to General Washington, who assured him there might be a mistake. But Goerge Washington wuld be incorrect, and Arnold began his traierous cause.In 1780, he would offer to hand West Point over to the British, which would give the British controolof the Hudson River, and sever the line between the New England and other colonies. But his plan was foiled, he would be passed over for promotion in the Biitish army as well, retired to Britain after the war and died poor and lonely.
1777 – The Starland Vocal Band winds the grammy for best new artist for the song Afternoon Delight. The problem with that award is that up until 2005 it has been a raging deatch curse for artists careers. With the exception of Mariah Carey and the Beatles, a large majority who one the award fell to one-hit wonder status, including Milli Vanilli, men at Work, Hotie and the Blowfish, Christopher Cross and that one dude who sang A taste of Honey.