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Today in History with Ray – November 11
Today is Veterans Day
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ended. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.
On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.
On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia’s ally, ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany.
For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France.
The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris. By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front—the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium—the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.
In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany. In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918.
World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict—the Treaty of Versailles of 1919—forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.
Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding.
Two days before, an unknown American soldier, who had fallen somewhere on a World War I battlefield, arrived at the nation’s capital from a military cemetery in France. On Armistice Day, in the presence of President Harding and other government, military, and international dignitaries, the unknown soldier was buried with highest honors beside the Memorial Amphitheater. As the soldier was lowered to his final resting place, a two-inch layer of soil brought from France was placed below his coffin so that he might rest forever atop the earth on which he died.
The Tomb of the Unknowns is considered the most hallowed grave at Arlington Cemetery, America’s most sacred military cemetery. The tombstone itself, designed by sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones, was not completed until 1932, when it was unveiled bearing the description “Here Rests in Honored Glory an American Soldier Known but to God.” The World War I unknown was later joined by the unidentified remains of soldiers from America’s other major 20th century wars and the tomb was put under permanent guard by special military sentinels.
In 1998, a Vietnam War unknown, who was buried at the tomb for 14 years, was disinterred from the Tomb after DNA testing indicated his identity. Air Force Lieutenant Michael Blassie was returned to his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, and was buried with military honors, including an F-15 jet “missing man” flyover and a lone bugler sounding taps.
On November 11, 1933, a powerful wind stripped the topsoil from desiccated farmlands in South Dakota, one of a series of disastrous windstorms that year. The drought-ridden land of the Southern Plains became known as the Dust Bowl; it was useless to farmers, and only exacerbated the economic problems of the Great Depression. Within two days, dust from the South Dakota storm had reached all the way to Albany, New York.
Dust storms plagued the West throughout the 1930s and eventually the devastated area covered nearly 100 million acres. Rising like ominous black clouds on the horizon, the dust storms destroyed crops, choked livestock to death, and damaged human health. During 1938, the worst year of the dust storms, it is estimated that 850 million tons of topsoil disappeared with the winds. The size and scope of the problem have led some historians to call the Dust Bowl the worst environmental disaster in American history.
The cause of the Dust Bowl is still unclear. Widespread drought-which killed crops and turned the topsoil into a light powder-was undoubtedly a factor. However, some have argued that the farmers played their part by replacing native grasses with wheat and less hardy crops.
Whatever the causes, the Roosevelt administration responded to the Dust Bowl with a billion- dollar program to aid and educate farmers in soil conservation techniques that have become standard practice. After the rains returned in 1941, the region bloomed once again. Severe droughts have occurred since, but none have been as devastating as the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s.
On November 11, 1942, Congress approved lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37.
In September 1940, Congress, by wide margins in both houses, passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, and the first peacetime draft was imposed in the history of the United States. The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began exactly one month later. There were some 20 million eligible young men—50 percent were rejected the very first year, either for health reasons or because 20 percent of those who registered were illiterate.
But by November 1942, with the United States now a participant in the war, and not merely a neutral bystander, the draft ages had to be expanded; men 18 to 37 were now eligible. Blacks were passed over for the draft because of racist assumptions about their abilities and the viability of a mixed-race military. But this changed in 1943, when a “quota” was imposed, meant to limit the numbers of blacks drafted to reflect their numbers in the overall population, roughly 10.6 percent of the whole. Initially, blacks were restricted to “labor units,” but this too ended as the war progressed, when they were finally used in combat.
By war’s end, approximately 34 million men had registered; 10 million had been inducted into the military.
On this day in 1988, authorities unearthed a corpse buried in the lawn of 59-year-old Dorothea Puente’s home in Sacramento, California. Puente operated a residential home for elderly people, and an investigation led to the discovery of six more bodies buried on her property.
Puente was a diagnosed schizophrenic who had already been in trouble with the law. She had perviously served prison time for check forgery, as well as drugging and robbing people she met in bars. After her release, she opened a boarding house for elderly people. Beginning in 1986, social worker Peggy Nickerson sent 19 clients to Puente’s home. When some of the residents mysteriously disappeared, Nickerson grew suspicious. Puente’s neighbors, who reported the smell of rotting flesh emanating from her vicinity, validated Nickerson’s concern.
Although all the buried bodies were found to contain traces of the sedative Dalmane, the coroner was never able to identify an exact cause of death. Still, during a trial that lastedfive monthsand included 3,100 exhibits, prosecutors were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Puente had murdered her boarders, most likely to collect their Social Security checks. Though she was formally charged withnine counts of murder and convicted on three, authorities suspected that Puente might have been responsible for as many as 25 deaths.
A cable car taking skiers to a glacier in Austria catches fire on November 11, 2000, as it passes through a mountain tunnel; 156 people die. Only 11 people managed to survive the fire, which was caused by an illegal space heater.
Kitzsteinhorn Mountain in the Austrian Alps is a popular skiing and snowboarding destination located just south of Salzburg. In order to reach the mountain’s prime skiing locations, it is necessary to take a cable car from the town of Kaprun into the mountains and through a 2.5-mile tunnel. The 90-foot-long car is pulled by a cable along train-like tracks.
On the morning of November 11, the car left at 9 a.m. for its journey up the mountain; within two minutes, flames were spotted shooting from the car. The cable car had just entered the concrete shaft tunnel when a disruption indicator, part of the car’s safety system, automatically stopped it. Quickly, the tunnel filled with toxic smoke, but the doors wouldn’t open. In the back of the car, a man smashed the rear window Plexiglas and 11 people were able to crawl out the back to a stairway that led several hundred yards down to the entrance.
The other passengers were not so fortunate. Although some passengers were able to make it out of the front of the car and attempted to climb to the top of the tunnel, the tunnel acted as a chimney sending flames and smoke straight up. In fact, the driver of the corresponding car coming down the tunnel was burned near the exit at the top. Three other people who were near the top of the tunnel also burned to death.
The fire burned all day, as it was not until that evening that workers could get to the train. Once there, they encountered bodies that were burned and charred beyond recognition. One worker later said “I don’t want to describe it for the sake of the families.” An inquiry into the fire’s cause revealed that a space heater in the driver’s cabin had caused the hydraulic oil in a pipe to overheat and leak on to a plastic seat, where it ignited.
And the lead story making headlines this morning…Wednesday, November 11, 2015…….
The city of Hamtramck, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, has made American history by being the first city in America to elect a Muslim-majority city council.
Hamtramck, a city of 22,000 with a Polish majority, elected three Muslim candidates onto their six-member City Council, creating a two thirds Muslim majority. The mayor, Karen Majewski, is Polish.
According to Bill Meyer, a Hamtramck non-Muslim community leader, the one incumbent Muslim who is already on the Council along with the others on the Council have accomplished a lot in the city. He said, “They’ve helped bring stability, security and sobriety while lessening the amount of drugs and crime in the city.”
Meyer further said, “The three each received over 1000 votes each, while those running against them got less than 700 votes each.”
Since 2004, Hamtramck’s city Council has allowed a mosque to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer from loudspeakers that can be heard throughout the city. Many opponents at first claimed that it was an intrusion of Islam into their lives. In 2004 there was only one Muslim on the Council. That has changed now. Today Hamtramck is half Muslim.
According to the University of Michigan, Dearborn professor Sally Howell told the Washington Post, “The growth is taking place in these Muslim communities, and they are transforming the city. “That’s become much more visible in the last 15 years.”
In the early 20th century, Polish immigrants flocked to Hamtramck because of a Dodge Brothers plant built in 1914. By the 1970’s, Polish Catholics made up 90% of the city. But Asian and Arab immigrants began to settle there as the Poles moved to the suburbs. Most of them came from Bangladesh and Yemen.
Getting to a Muslim majority wasn’t easy. In the past, Muslim candidates have been harassed, accused of terrorism, and some Bangladeshi voters were asked to show proof of citizenship by poll workers.
One of Tuesday’s winners is Saad Almasmari, a 28-year-old student who received the highest percentage of votes – 22%, moved to the United States in 2009 and 2 years later became an American citizen. Saad said “At the end of the day for Hamtramck, it’s not about religious unity. Although we are Muslims, it doesn’t have anything to do with serving the community. Not about religion. It’s not about Muslim unity. We are planning to work for everyone.”
Thanks to every veteran listening. Happy Veterans Day.
Today in History with Ray – November 11
Today In History with Ray – November 11