Posted on 04/11/2018 7:13:06 AM PDT by fugazi
1918: 1st Aero Squadron pilots, equipped with the French Spad biplanes, perform the first American reconnaissance flight over enemy lines during World War I.
1945: At 3:15 p.m. a detachment of soldiers from the 9th Armored Infantry Battalion reach the front gates of Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. The emaciated prisoners give their American liberators a hero’s welcome. The Nazis incarcerated over a quarter million people in one of Germany’s first and largest camps, leading to some 56,000 deaths.
The SS manages to evacuate many of Buchenwald’s prisoners before Patton’s Third Army can reach the site. The prisoners left behind are in such a horrible state that many dozens continue to die each day after regaining their freedom. Nearby residents of Weimar are ordered to tour the site to “see for themselves the horror, brutality and human indecency.”
1951: Pres. Harry Truman removes Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his position as Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces in South Korea for the esteemed general’s repeated – and very public – disrespect to the president. MacArthur’s replacement is Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who had been serving under MacArthur as Commanding Officer of the Eighth Army.
Ridgway will move on to replace Gen. Dwight Eisenhower as head of NATO in 1952, and becomes the Army’s top officer when he is named Chief of Staff the following year.
1966: The 1st Infantry Division clashes with the Viet Cong east of Saigon and rescue helicopters are dispatched to evacuate the casualties. Airman First Class William H. Pitsenbarger...
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
Seems like we have been in decline ever since. Where are the great advancements driving civilization forward like we experienced in the 20th Century. Just think: in a few short decades leading up to Apollo 13 we went from horses to cars to jets to a space program. In the decades since, our space program was turned into something (under the previous administration) intended to "make Muslims feel good about their contributions to math and science" and our vinyl records turned became iPods. I think we - as a society - have lost our way and have been declining ever since.
We need to start sending astronauts back into space and do things that will instill a sense of pride in our country again and propel civilization forward. If the IRS put a donation box for putting men on Mars on our taxes, I imagine they would raise all the money they needed.
“Just think: in a few short decades leading up to Apollo 13 we went from horses to cars to jets to a space program.”
And using slide rules to boot! I understand the paper that Jim Lovell used to do his calculations (under much fatigue and adverse temperatures - and IMMENSE pressure) was sold to someone for only $13,000.
I would think it was worth 100X that, and should be in the Smithsonian.
(I don’t know, maybe it is now)
Your post is right on, btw.
Don't touch the moon
I need it for loving.
Don't touch the stars.
I need them, too.
All you frantic scientists,
Find something else to do.
Slide rules - good catch, I forgot to put that in.
Incredibly smart people worked for NASA. And I imagine many incredibly smart people still do; they just don’t have anything amazing to do as in something on the scale of the Apollo program.
Consider that our planet is rotating while traveling tens of thousands of miles per hour around the sun (which is also moving). Men figured out in a matter of just a few short years how to launch a rocket and send astronauts to a spot that the moon - which is revolving around our planet as it travels through space - will be a few days later. Then, the astronauts shoot towards a location that the Earth will be a few days after that and splash down in the ocean a few miles away from an aircraft carrier.
Wow.
Nearly 50 years after Apollo 13, many - if not most - Americans today would be hopelessly lost in the town they live in without GPS.
Salute to Airman Pitsanbarger.
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