AUGUST 14 – 1961 New york Times: “East German Troops Seal Border With West Berlin”; 1959 Explorer 6 snaps the first Earth selfie; 12016 David Ortiz becomes oldest MLB player to hit 30 home runs in one season
AUGUST 14
1961 here are the headlines from New York Herald: Reds Seal off East Berlin to Block Refugees; Forces Threaten to Fire on Protesting Crowds. New York Times: East German Troops Seal Border with West Berlin to Block Refugee Escape.
Since World War II, Germany was divided into four sections of new ownership by the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Since the beginning of that division, which included the city of Berlin, capitalism was running fine and dandy in the west side and communism on the east was, as always, not. From 1945 on to this point, East Berlin professionals were leaving their section in droves to head to the west.
President Jack Kennedy had already looked bad as he started taking office with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, in which he unsuccessfully authorized a coup d’état in Cuba.
But Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had his hands full with the Germany situation. Walter Ulbricht, the head of state for the east side, known as the German Democratic Republic or GDR, lost his patience in watching well over 4 million professionals, including doctors, teachers, engineers and others, retreating to the other side. It was Khrushchev’s only choice. The GRD was quickly being lost as the economy was in complete ruins, even though the Soviet Union kept putting state money into the its economy.
Because that’s how communism works, but I think most of you know that already.
So after midnight on August 13 1961, forces were sent into the city border, and a barbed wire fence was setup. It was Sunday night/Monday morning. By the time daylight struck the city the citizens of the GRD found they would be unable to cross the border to the west side to get to work. The protests started in earnest. Days later a concrete barrier would take the place of the chain linked fence. More tried to escape, and paid the price dearly; many times with their lives.
But now here’s Kennedy in yet another tough position as he steered the United States through a very hostile Cold War with the Soviet Union. For the time being, he felt the need to do nothing. It wasn’t the United States problem, for one thing.
Besides, as JFK said, “It’s a hell of a lot better than a war.” President Kennedy wasn’t in office for very long, and these very subtle moves of not getting into a conflict with the East German forces would be one of his smartest decisions, even though excited Americans wanted him to be more forceful. Tearing down that wall would be a bad idea. “We could have sent tanks over and knocked the Wall down,” he mused. “What then? They build another one back a hundred yards? We knock that down, then we go to war?” The East Berliners would continue to get squeezed until they saw help from the United States in 1949 during the Berlin Airlift, which I go into detail on my April 1 and May 12ps.
In the 1980s, a song by German music artist Nina released a song called 99 Luftballoons, containing very powerful lyrics about some red balloons being lifted to the sky, only to be seen by the Soviets as a weapon from the west side, band beginning another war. The song detailed the emotions of the area at the time. In 1989, the wall came down, and thousands of friends and family who hadn’t seen each other in over 25 years reunited.
Thanks to America.
1776 – An effigy of Andrew Oliver
…is hanged on the Liberty Tree. The Liberty Tree was a large elm tree that stood in Boston on the corner of Essex and Orange, now Washington streets. It was the site of many protests, assemblies, several funerals, and symbolized American patriotism. From 1764 to 1776 the British imposed the Stamp Act on the colonies, which was met with colonial outrage over the issue of taxation without representation which was a driving force leading up to the American Revolution.
Andrew Oliver was the local stamp distributor, a man hated in the colonies for enforcing the tax on all legal documents as a result of the Stamp Act, including, newspapers, legal documents, playing cards, etc. It was here at this Liberty Tree that colonists assembled the Loyal Nine, which would later become the Sons of Liberty in Boston. On august 141, 1776, a doll was made to Oliver’s liking, complete with a devil on it to represent the man behind the Stamp Act, Lord Bute, and hanged the doll on the Liberty Tree.
Later on, the Act was repealed, and replaced by the Declamatory Act which taxed molasses, and Oliver used the tree’s location to resign as stamp enforcer. The tree had many uses during these times. Samuel Adams arranged funeral processions resulting from the Boston Massacre to take a detour around the street as it went from Fanuell Hall to Granary Burial Grounds as thousands of Patriots followed. As the Revolution went under way, the British ridiculed the tree and Loyalist Job Williams cut it down in defiance of the Patriots, which heightened tempers even further. That’s fine, Liberty Trees sprung up all over the colonies after that. In fact there wasn’t a colony that didn’t have its own Liberty Tree.
1959 — Explorer 6 snaps the first Earth selfie.
That’s right. From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral Florida, this unmanned craft nicknamed the Paddlewheel was launched to orbit. Its mission, according to NASA’S website, was to observe radiation of various energies, galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetism, radio propagation in the upper atmosphere, and the flux of micrometeorites.
While it was there, from 17,000 miles out there, it used a photocell scanner, basically a small analog electronic processor called Telebit, to take a rather primitive but first-ever picture of our beloved rock we earthlings call home. Telebit took about 40 minutes to transmit frames, each totally 7,000 pixels, back to earth. Say cheese everybody!
1935 – Roosevelt signs Social Security Act.
…This was part of FDR’s New Deal program, along with the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which were designed to help the flailing American economy during the great depression by bringing unemployment levels down. According to their website, Social Security delivers a broad range of services online at socialsecurity.gov and through a nationwide network of over 1,400 offices that include regional offices, field offices, card centers, tele service centers, processing centers, hearing offices, the Appeals Council, and our State and territorial partners, the Disability Determination Services. We also have a presence in U.S. embassies around the globe. For the public, we are the face of the government. The rich diversity of our employees mirrors the public we serve, and we have a proud history of protecting the integrity of our programs and service to the public.
1831 – Happy birthday Vigilante X.
…John X Biedler from Pennsylvania, led a group of vigilantes hunt down crime, led by the lawless Plummer gang in Montana in the 1860s. He helped to bring law back into order and personally hanged five of Plummers gang members. Biedler simply went by the name X. There’s lot more to that story if you check out the John Axline book “speaking ill of the dead”.