1455 – Traditional date for the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed from movable type. Printed in Mainz, Germany, where I was stationed 1974-77. They have the Gutenberg Museum, with an original Gutenberg bible as one of many interesting displays. I spent three great years in Mainz.
1778 – American Revolution: Baron von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to help to train the Continental Army. This is regarded as the birth of the drill sergeant.
1836 – The Battle of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas. Sometimes you have to fight, knowing that you might lose…
1847 – Mexican-American War: Battle of Buena Vista – In Mexico, American troops under General Zachary Taylor defeat Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. If we’d have hanged him after we captured him following the Battle of San Jacinto, we could have saved a lot of trouble. The guy was a psychotic, murderous thug.
1903 – Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States “in perpetuity”. I’m surprised that obama didn’t give it back.
1934 – Leopold III becomes King of Belgium. Nobody cares. Belgium is the doormat that the German Army wipes its feet on before it enters France. Now they’re the seat of the European Union.
1945 – World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines and a commonly forgotten U.S. Navy Corpsman, reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag.
1945 – World War II: Capitulation of German garrison in Pozna. The city is ‘liberated’ by Soviet and Polish forces, where ‘liberated’ means rule by ONE murderous dictatorial regime is replaced by rule by another murderous dictatorial regime for the next forty-odd years.
1954 – The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh. Polio was the big “scare” disease when I was a kid. You seldom hear of it today. Two years after this date I and my brother and sisters stood in LINE to get the vaccine. Now you never hear of it.
1988 – Saddam Hussein begins the Anfal genocide against Kurds and Assyrians in northern Iraq. He uses chemical weapons against civilian tagets – some of those ‘weapons of mass destruction’ the Left now says he didn’t have.
1954 – The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh. . . . Two years after this date I and my brother and sisters stood in LINE to get the vaccine.
I remember the polio vaccine. Sugar cubes. Did it twice. And it worked. Unlike the Wuhan flu vaccine that you take four times and still get the disease.
The sugar cubes were the Sabin vaccine, introduced in 1961 in the US. (Some countries began using it several years before.)
The Salk vaccine was injected and was introduced in the US in 1955. It’s introduction was rushed and in the first years, something went wrong at the factory and some live virus went out in the Salk vaccine. About 60,000 people contracted polio from it, but it saved many more. Unlike COVID-19, polio was a serious threat to healthy children and adults.