Posted on 08/02/2018 7:06:09 AM PDT by fugazi
1776: Although the Continental Congress voted to establish the thirteen united [sic] States of America on July 2 and adopted Thomas Jeffersons draft of the Declaration of Independence two days later, congressional delegates sign the Declaration on this date. The most famous inscription belongs to John Hancock, the president of Congress, who is said to have declared, There, I guess King George will be able to read that without his spectacles, after adding his rather substantial signature.
1862: The brass approves the plan by Maj. Jonathan Letterman, Medical Director for the Army of the Potomac, to establish an ambulance corps. Letterman is considered the Father of Battlefield Medicine for revolutionizing the way casualties are handled; soldiers now had first aid stations at the regimental level where they could be treated and triaged. Those more seriously wounded could be sent by ambulance to field hospitals at the division and corps level.
During the Peninsula Campaign, one out of every three Army of the Potomac casualties would die prior to implementing Lettermans system. But after, just 2 percent of soldiers wounded Battle of Gettysburg died.
1909: After a successful demonstration for the military by Orville Wright, the Army Signal Corps purchases a Wright Flyer for $30,000 (the equivalent of $800,000 today). The two-seat Signal Corps Airplane No. 1 will train Americas first military pilots at College Park, Md. and Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio over the next two years crashing several times before its retirement. Today, the legendary aircraft hangs in the Smithsonian Institutions National Air and Space Museum.
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
Fast forwarding to today, a wounded troop can be medevaced, put on a plane, then flown to Germany and be on the operating table in no time. Incredible.
I recently saw an article about Dr. Hunter McGuire who was Stonewall Jackson’s Dr. He was one of the youngest Dr.s in the U.S.
He later became president of the AMA. Also attended the first Geneva Convention and helped write the rules intended to lessen some of the brutality of war.
216 BC- Battle of Cannae. Hannibal Barca of Carthage resoundingly defeats a Roman army in SE Italy during the Second Punic War.
1918 Vancouver general strike
The 1918 Vancouver General Strike was the first general strike in Canadian history and was held 2 August 1918. It was organized as a one-day political protest against the killing of draft evader and labour activist Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, who had called for a general strike in the event that any worker was drafted against their will.
The strike was met with violence from returned soldiers who had been mobilized and supplied with vehicles to storm the Labour Temple at 411 Dunsmuir Street (the present-day 411 Seniors Centre).
Three hundred men ransacked the offices of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC), twice attempted to defenestrate VTLC secretary Victor Midgely and forced him and a longshoreman to kiss the Union Jack.
A woman working in the office was also badly bruised when she prevented Midgely from being thrown out the window. Labour activist and suffragette Helena Gutteridge was also at the scene, but was unscathed.
In response to virulent opposition from business and the middle class, strike leaders could point to the vote by VTLC delegates that supported the strike 117 to 1.
After the strike, all the strike leaders resigned and nearly all were re-elected, demonstrating widespread support for the action amongst organized workers and that it was not the product of a Bolshevik conspiracy.
Although the strike call was province-wide, it was only in the city that it took general strike proportions.
Numerous other strikes took place in the city that year, and the general strike was as much a show of labour strength as much as it was a political protest over Goodwin’s death.
War-time inflation reduced real income profoundly. Other factors such as the Bolshevik Revolution the previous year and the realization that capital profited immensely from the First World War while workers were cannon fodder fuelled the belief that labour deserved more than what employers were voluntarily willing to give.
Although only one day in duration, the 1918 strike was thus an important marker in the Canadian labour revolt that peaked with the Winnipeg General Strike the following year. A 1919 Vancouver strike in sympathy with Winnipeg would be the longest general strike in Canadian history.
I wonder if they helped those in grey too, or just their people.
Yes they did, by the thousands.
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