To All..
Good Monday morning April 27, 2026. Cool overcast and a few sprinkles this morning on the way out to the VA. The workers are here for the mod to the Gazebo. I hope that you all had a good weekend. Looking forward to a Great Bubba Breakfast this Friday. I hope that many of you will attend. Jessica will be ready for us.
. Regards,
Skip
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Regards,
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HAGD
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This day in Naval and Marine Corps History (thanks to NHHC)
Go here to see the director’s corner for all 97 H-Grams
Here is a link to the NHHC website: https://www.history.navy.mil/
April 27
1805 With naval bombardment from USS Nautilus, USS Hornet, and USS Argus, Lt. Presley OBannon leads his Marines to attack Derne, Tripoli, and raises the first U.S. flag over foreign soil. The Battle of Derna was the Marines' first battle on foreign soil, and is notably recalled in the first verse of the Marines Hymn.
1813 A U.S. naval squadron under the command of Commodore Isaac Chauncey supports an attack on York (now Toronto), Canada, of nearly 1,800 troops under Gen. Zebulon Pike during the War of 1812.
1861 - President Lincoln extended blockade of Confederacy to VA and NC ports
1865 - Body of John Wilkes Booth brought to Washington Navy Yard.
1944USS Bluegill (SS 242) torpedoes the Japanese light cruiser Yubari west of Sonsorol Island, while USS Halibut (SS 232) sinks Japanese minelayer off Okinawa.
1952 During the Korean War, USS Samuel N. Moore (DD 747) conducts counter-battery fire against enemy shore batteries off Kosong, Korea. The enemy guns are silenced. Also on this date, USS Waxbill (AMS) is damaged by enemy shore battery off Wonsan, Korea.
1963 USS Daniel Webster (SSBN 626) is launched at Groton, Conn. Commissioned a year later, she serves until decommissioned in August 1990.
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Today in World History.
April 27
1296 Edward I defeats the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar.
1509 Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice.
1565 The first Spanish settlement in Philippines is established in Cebu City.
1773 British Parliament passes the Tea Act.
1746 King George II wins the Battle of Culloden.
1813 American forces capture York (present-day Toronto), the seat of government in Ontario.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus.
1861 West Virginia secedes from Virginia after Virginia secedes from the Union.
1863 The Army of the Potomac begins marching on Chancellorsville.
1865 The Sultana, a steam-powered riverboat, catches fire and burns after one of its boilers explodes. At least 1,238 of the 2,031 passengers--mostly former Union POWs--are killed.
1909 The Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, is overthrown.
1937 German bombers of the Condor Legion devastate Guernica, Spain.
1941 The Greek army capitulates to the invading Germans.
1950 South Africa passes the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
1961 The United Kingdom grants Sierra Leone independence.
1975 Saigon is encircled by North Vietnamese troops.
1978 The Afghanistan revolution begins.
1989 Protesting students take over Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.
1521…Magellan killed in the Philippines
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Thanks to Al
Monday Morning Humor--Random Musings
Submitted by Dave Harris:
• There are more airplanes in the oceans, than submarines in the sky!
• “Do not touch” must be one of the scariest things to read in Braille.
• People say love is the best feeling. I think finding a toilet when you are having diarrhea is better.
• That moment when your steak is on the grill and you can already feel your mouth watering…do vegans feel the same way when mowing the lawn?
• There is a species of antelope capable of jumping higher than the average house. This is due to its powerful hind legs and the fact that the average house cannot jump.
• Sometimes getting out of bed just ruins the whole day.
• Don’t wear headphones while vacuuming. You might finish the whole house before realizing the vacuum isn’t plugged in.
• Why does toilet paper need a commercial? Who is not buying it?
• If a woman says “Do what you want.” Do not do what you want. Stand still. Do not blink. Don’t even breathe. Just play dead.
Submitted by Mark Logan:
• I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
• I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.
• Don't take life too seriously; No one gets out alive.
• You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.
• Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
• Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.
• I'm not a complete idiot -- Some parts are just missing.
• Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
• NyQuil, the stuffy, sneezy, why-the-heck-is-the-room-spinning medicine.
• The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
• Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.
• Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
• Being 'over the hill' is much better than being under it!
• Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when i grew up.
• Procrastinate Now!
• I have a degree in liberal arts; Do you want fries with that?
• A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
• A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
• Stupidity is not a handicap. Park elsewhere!
• He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless DEAD.
• A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory.
• Ham and eggs... A day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.
• The trouble with life is there's no background music.
• I smile because I don't know what the he!! is going on.
Submitted by Mike Ryan:
• If you see your glass as half empty, pour it into a smaller glass and quit complaining.
• I trained my dog to fetch beer. It may not seem too impressive but he gets them from the neighbor’s fridge.
• Our town is so small, we don’t have a town drunk, so we all take turns.
Submitted by Colleen Grosso:
I find it odd that…
• Drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
• People order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet Coke.
• Banks leave vault doors open and then chain the pens to the counters..
• People leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put their useless junk in the garage.
• They sell hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
• The sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin.
• You never see the headlines “Psychic Wins Lottery.”
• Lemon juice is made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid is made with real lemons.
• The man who invests all your money is called a broker.
• The time of day with the slowest traffic is called ‘rush hour.’
• There isn’t mouse-flavored cat food.
• They sterilize the needles for lethal injection.
• They are called ‘apartments’ when they are all stuck together,
Submitted by Jerry Norris:
• If a bottle of poison reaches its expiration date, is it more poisonous or is it no longer poisonous?
• Which letter is silent in the word "Scent," the S or the C?
• Do twins ever realize that one of them is unplanned?
• Every time you clean something you just make something else dirty.
• The word "swims" upside-down is still "swims".
• Over 100 years ago, everyone owned a horse and only the rich had cars. Today everyone has cars and only the rich own horses.
• If people evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still around?
• Why is there a 'D' in fridge, but not in refrigerator?
• As I've grown older, I've learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but ticking everyone off is a piece of cake!
• I'm responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.
• Common sense is like deodorant. The people who need it the most never use it.
• My tolerance for idiots is extremely low these days. I used to have some immunity built up, but obviously, there's a new strain out there
• It's not my age that bothers me - it's the side effects.
• I'm not saying I'm old and worn out, but I make sure I'm nowhere near the curb on trash day.
• As I watch this generation try and rewrite our history, I'm sure of one thing: it will be misspelled and have no punctuation.
• As I've gotten older, people think I've become lazy. The truth is I'm just being more energy-efficient.
• I haven't gotten anything done today. I've been in the Produce Department trying to open this stupid plastic bag.
• Turns out that being a "senior" is mostly just googling how to do stuff.
• I want to be 18 again and ruin my life differently. I have new ideas
• I'm on two simultaneous diets. I wasn't getting enough food on one.
• I put my scale in the bathroom corner and that's where the little liar will stay until it apologizes.
• My mind is like an internet browser. At least 18 open tabs, 3 of them are frozen, and I have no clue where the music is coming from.
• Hard to believe I once had a phone attached to a wall, and when it rang, I picked it up without knowing who was calling.
• My wife says I keep pushing her buttons. If that were true, I would have found mute by now.
• There is no such thing as a grouchy old person. The truth is that once you get old, you stop being polite and start being honest.
Have a great week,
Al
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Some bits from 1440
Good morning, it's Monday, April 27. We're covering the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
Need To Know
WHCD Shooter Arrested
A gunman is in custody after storming the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday. President Donald Trump, whom the acting attorney general described as the likely target, is unharmed.
The attack happened shortly after 8:30 pm ET, when police say a man armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives rushed past security at the Washington Hilton in downtown Washington, DC. Secret Service agents intercepted the gunman in the lobby while others escorted Trump out of the ballroom, and guests took cover. One Secret Service agent was shot in his bulletproof vest and later released from the hospital.
The suspect is Cole Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from California who released a manifesto suggesting he sought to target administration officials. Trump says the dinner will be rescheduled within 30 days in remarks shortly after the attack
Musk v. Altman
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, and several others (including Microsoft) heads to court today with jury selection in Oakland, California. Opening arguments are expected tomorrow.
Musk cofounded OpenAI alongside Altman and several others in 2015 with a founding mission to develop artificial intelligence to benefit all humanity, unencumbered by corporate interests (see mission statement). Musk alleges he was misled when he donated tens of millions of dollars on the understanding it would remain a nonprofit; OpenAI transitioned to a public benefit corporation in October of last year. The trial—which centers on two claims, unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust—comes in the lead-up to OpenAI’s potential public filing later this year. The company is targeting a $1T valuation.
Musk seeks up to $134B to be returned to OpenAI's nonprofit arm, and wants OpenAI to be forced to return to nonprofit status. Among high-profile tech leaders who could testify are Musk, Altman, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
🫶 Humankind: Technically not a human, but watch the National Zoo's new baby elephant splash around in a soapy pool.
Marathon Record Falls
The longstanding two-hour marathon milestone was broken in London over the weekend—not just by one competitor, but two. Kenyan Sabastian Sawe finished the race in 1:59:30, finishing 11 seconds ahead of Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha (in what was the latter’s first official marathon).
The sub-two-hour mark was unofficially broken in 2019 by Eliud Kipchoge, but had never been reached in a sanctioned race. Both Sawe and Kejelcha ran in a newly debuted Adidas shoe model weighing less than 100 grams (roughly equal to a deck of cards) and designed to return energy from sole compression with each step. The women’s winner, Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa, also wore the shoes and finished in 2:15:41.
The winning time is equivalent to running a mile in 4 minutes and 33 seconds, 26 times in a row. See how the development of energy return technology in shoes has pushed elite runners to previously unattainable speeds).
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April 27
Hello All,
Thanks to Dan Heller and the Bear
Links to all content can now be found right on the homepage http://www.rollingthunderremembered.com. If you scroll down from the banner and featured content you will find "Today in Rolling Thunder Remembered History" which highlights events in the Vietnam war that occurred on the date the page is visited. Below that are links to browse or search all content. You may search by keyword(s), date, or date range.
An item of importance is the recent incorporation of Task Force Omega (TFO) MIA summaries. There is a link on the homepage and you can also visit directly via https://www.rollingthunderremembered.com/task-force-omega/. There are 60 summaries posted thus far, with about 940 to go (not a typo—TFO has over 1,000 individual case files).
If you have any questions or comments about RTR/TFO, or have a question on my book, you may e-mail me directly at acrossthewing@protonmail.com. Thank you Dan
Thanks to Micro
To remind folks that these are from the Vietnam Air Losses site that Micro put together. You click on the url below and get what happened each day to the crew of the aircraft. ……Skip
For Monday 27 April. ..
April 27: https://www.vietnamairlosses.com/loss.php?id=551
This following work accounts for every fixed wing loss of the Vietnam War and you can use it to read more about the losses in The Bear’s Daily account. Even better it allows you to add your updated information to the work to update for history…skip
Vietnam Air Losses Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady’s work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
This is a list of all Helicopter Pilots Who Died in the Vietnam War . Listed by last name and has other info https://www.vhpa.org/KIA/KIAINDEX.HTM
MOAA - Wall of Faces Now Includes Photos of All Service members Killed in the Vietnam War
(This site was sent by a friend . The site works, find anyone you knew in “search" feature. https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/ )
Wall of Faces Now Includes Photos of All Service members Killed in the Vietnam War
By: Kipp Hanley
AUGUST 15, 2022
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From the archives
. Just a quick note first
Tornados are a scary bunch. We lived in Salina Kansas when dad got stationed at Smokey Hill (affectionally known as Smoky hole) for about 5 months where I finished the 5th grade. We were used to noises in the night as a main east west train route and a major hiway were about a mile from our back yard in the outskirts of Salina. One night my parents were out and we had a sitter because I had two much younger sisters. It was a dark and stormy night just like the movie said and we heard what we thought was the train but getting closer and closer. Then it sounded like it was in the back yard and the house shook like mad. We all ran to the front of the house and by the light of the street light saw the tornado touch down across the street and made a mess of a bunch of houses. It had gone over our house and done minor damage to the roof. I will never forget that night. The Sitter was really upset. My parents came home to find us all ok. So then the Air Force moved us to Loring AFB in Maine and we froze our tails off for 18 months which was as long as we stayed anywhere but we got the most of two winters up there and still do not like snow after shoveling it so much. Skip
SCIENCE | APRIL 26, 2024 8:00 A.M.
Ten Amazing Facts About Tornadoes, Explained
To prepare you for the movie “Twisters,” we’ve compiled some jaw-dropping details about the powerful phenomenon
As looming thunderstorm clouds spit out baseball-sized hail and torrential rain, a narrow whirlwind of air stretches its way toward the ground, signaling the arrival of one of nature’s most violent phenomena: a tornado.
Also known as twisters, these violent cyclones can reach wind speeds of 300 miles per hour and blaze a path of destruction that can last from mere seconds to several hours. While most people flee or take shelter at the sight of these alarming conditions, others dive headfirst into them. Storm chasers, people who get dangerously close to extreme weather events, sometimes for scientific research, jump at the chance to pursue the ever-unpredictable tornado.
The 1996 disaster classic Twister follows a group of these daring storm chasers, a university professor and her team of students who rush toward an outbreak of severe twisters sweeping Oklahoma. Their goal: deploy a revolutionary weather alert device, aptly named “Dorothy,” within the heart of multiple tornado systems to track and possibly tame the forces of nature. After a series of disastrous attempts to deploy their invention within multiple cyclones, a final, massive tornado rips through the area. In the nick of time, the team successfully sets up their device in the twister’s center and collects crucial data.
The highly awaited sequel Twisters sees the continuation of this research nearly two decades later, with a new generation of storm chasers and technology. The story’s hesitant protagonist Kate Cooper, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, joins forces with adrenaline junkie Tyler Owens, played by Glen Powell, as twin twisters ravage the plains of central Oklahoma. The pair races against a rival team and devastating weather conditions to conduct groundbreaking analysis. Though the film is fictionalized, its overarching circumstances—the treacherous nature of twisters and the difficulty of predicting their arrival—ring true.
In anticipation of the July 19 release of Twisters, we contacted three scientists to unravel some of the secrets wrapped within these catastrophic cyclones. Here are a few of the coolest finds we uncovered.
Supercell thunderstorms are responsible for creating tornadoes
Tornadoes are born within supercell thunderstorms, an anvil-shaped cloud with a rotating updraft called a mesocyclone. As an extremely rare weather event, only one in thousands of storms yields a supercell thunderstorm. One in five or six supercells, though, produces a tornado.
“To get a thunderstorm, we have to have an unstable atmosphere, and generally, for a tornado, we need the thunderstorms to rotate,” says William Gallus, a meteorologist at Iowa State University. “That happens if we have wind shear, which means that the wind speed and wind directions are changing as you go up.”
Warm air rises, cold air falls, rough winds whip within the storm system, and an updraft occurs. If this rotating updraft descends toward the ground, lowering itself below the storm, a tornado can emerge from the chaos.
The tornado forms as the mesocyclone accelerates from the bottom up—and the feature intensifies its rotation, in a way similar to an ice skater who pulls her arms into her body to spin faster, says Jana Houser, a supercell thunderstorm and tornado radar analysis expert at Ohio State University.
The strongest winds of the tornado are closest the ground
In the atmosphere, the winds get stronger the higher up you go. Tornadoes reverse these conditions, with their strongest winds appearing at the lowest points. This powerful rotation starts at the ground and then floats its way upward to converge into the visible funnel cloud.
“This process happens very quickly,” says Houser, who, alongside her team and National Geographic cameras, captured the very tornadoes set to appear as background footage in the upcoming film Twisters. “In under a minute, you can go from a weak rotation to, all of a sudden, a full tornado.”
According to Gallus, computer models of tornadoes have shown that the strongest winds could lie just 15 feet above the ground—their most brutal region lining up with the height of homes and buildings.
“That’s pretty unfortunate for all of us who live on Earth, because that means that in a tornado, unlike any other weather system, the very worst winds are impacting buildings, people and trees down near the ground,” says Gallus.
Tornadoes can form anywhere, anytime
Most tornadoes are formed in the Great Plains of the United States, in an area deemed “Tornado Alley.” Flat terrain combined with unstable conditions—warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with dry winds drifting in from the Rocky Mountains—provides the ideal breeding ground for twisters to spawn. But tornadoes can happen almost anywhere. They have been reported in all 50 states and all continents except Antarctica, and they’ve struck major urban areas, such as Dallas, Miami and Minneapolis.
But cyclones don’t follow any sort of pattern or path, contrary to popular misconceptions. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a downtown part of the city, in a hilly area or even a mountainous area,” says Houser. She adds that some terrain may reduce or increase the probability of tornadoes, but complete protection from the twisters can’t be guaranteed.
Similarly, while peak tornado season ranges from May to July depending on location, tornadoes can hit at any month and any time, both day and night.
Tornadoes have uniquely powerful upward motion
In most weather phenomena, the most aggressive winds blow horizontally, directing their potency outward toward the north, south, east and west, rather than upward and downward. Tornadoes defy these expectations. Things resting in the tornado’s path—the roofs of homes, cars, animals—can be suddenly whisked straight up and into the whirl of debris, victim to the sheer power of the tornado’s upward winds. According to Gallus, the strength of a tornado’s upward motion is comparable to the speed at which it moves along terrain, with 100- or 200-mile-an-hour winds shooting up toward the sky.
“That’s why the damage that a tornado does to buildings is very different than if you have the exact same mile-per-hour wind from just a thunderstorm,” says Gallus. “It’s also why you hear these stories of people or things getting picked up and seeming to levitate or fly up into the air—it’s because the tornado has such strong upward motion.”
The air pressure inside a tornado can cause just as much damage as the wind itself
Tornado Rubble
When visiting the site of a Missouri hospital ravaged by a tornado, Gallus recalls, a nurse he spoke with had to tilt her head a certain direction to hear. Due to the intense air pressure change caused by the tornado, her eardrum ruptured. The air pressure in the middle of a tornado can drop suddenly and strongly, as if you were riding on a plane flying up into the air extremely fast. Many people near tornadoes have reported their ears “popping” during the phenomenon. “That change in pressure is almost like nature’s way of giving you a very last warning by having your head experience this strange rapid adjustment and popping going on in your head,” says Gallus.
The change in air pressure can also create an additional force on buildings that, along with the strong winds, can intensify and quicken their destruction.
Terrain can change a tornado’s behavior
Researchers have a difficult time predicting when a tornado will form—and where it will go. Changing winds and differing terrain can make it hard for meteorologists chart the exact path of a twister.
“Tornadoes are incredibly susceptible to very small nuances in the land cover, in the environment, in the storm itself, and it’s very difficult, I would say impossible, to account for every single factor that could possibly go into changing what a tornado is doing,” says Houser. “They defy generalization.”
While predicating a storm is hard, meteorologists say that some features of terrain may enhance the conditions needed for a twister to form. For example, sprawling urban areas can affect thunderstorms, which, in turn, can affect tornadoes. Since cities have more precipitation on their downwind side because of the way water systems interact with urban structures, they produce more rain and more hail, and can be warmer, helping set up an environment that’s more likely for a tornado to form.
“Sometimes urban areas are warmer than rural areas due to the urban heat island. What happens if a tornado goes over a warmer city?” says Jason Naylor, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Louisville. “It looks like the urban heat island could potentially enhance the low-level updrafts in the storm and may help instigate tornadoes in a theoretical way.”
Tornadoes usually rotate counterclockwise, but they can switch directions
Rope Tornado
In the Northern Hemisphere, about 98 percent of tornadoes spin counterclockwise, which meteorologists label as cyclonical. However, a clockwise-swirling tornado is not out of the question—just much less common.
The counterclockwise motion of most tornadoes has long been attributed to the Coriolis effect, the force caused by the Earth’s rotation. But, according to Houser, this is merely a myth. Tornadoes exist on “too small a space scale and time scale for the Coriolis force to affect it,” she says. Rather, the counterclockwise motion results from how vertical winds change in speed and height within the storm.
Meteorologists call clockwise tornadoes anti-cyclonic. “You get an anti-cyclonic tornado when you have a very strong surge of air within the storm,” says Houser.
Storms can produce more than one tornado at a time
Two Tornadoes
Twin tornadoes converge on Wisner, Nebraska. Ethan Schisler / National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Twisters sees two groups of storm chasers unite as two different tornadoes converge over a small town in central Ohio. This event isn’t just movie magic: The same storm system can really eject multiple tornadoes at once. As winds change, the storm itself can begin to form a new tornado in a slightly different location from the original tornado—with the fledgling rotating updraft gaining power as the other twister slowly dies down. Or, if the original tornado is particularly violent, the level of agitation can churn out smaller whirlwinds that extend toward the ground.
And Houser says that other freak circumstances, such as extremely strong rotation along the edges of a storm, can also produce multiple tornadoes. A clockwise and counterclockwise tornado can even appear in the same storm system.
Tornadoes themselves can’t be forecast—only the conditions that produce them can
The 1996 film Twister and its 2024 companion Twisters center around the same key issue: the frustrating impossibility of forecasting tornadoes. “We don’t even really try to forecast exactly when and where a tornado would hit, because we simply cannot do that ahead of time,” says Gallus.
Warnings for tornadoes are only issued when a twister is already forming and has been sighted—or indicated by weather radar—and the alerts cover an area that may be impacted.
Scientists are able to predict, however, the conditions favorable for supporting thunderstorms that spin and would be more likely to produce tornadoes. Up to a couple of hours ahead of time, when increased weather severity is detected, local television and radio news stations issue a tornado watch.
But a tornado’s intensity can’t be determined until after its wake. Scientists determine a tornado’s level of destruction by using the Enhanced Fujita Scale. The scale assesses the damage a tornado does to trees, buildings and homes. Scientists then use that information to calculate its probable wind speed. The rating system ranges from F0, the weakest cyclone, to F5, a vicious, deadly tornado, which a character in Twister deems the “finger of God.”
Climate change is affecting tornadoes
Tornado Alley is moving eastward. In the past decade, twisters have been inching their way into the Midwest and hitting states such as Missouri in record-breaking severity. Meteorologists attribute this shift to climate change.
“Now, with climate change, places that were normally too cold in the winter are finding themselves with days warm enough that you’re starting to see tornadoes at times of year, parts of the country, where they didn’t used to happen,” says Gallus.
This is caused by climate change’s impact on weather. Gallus says that climate change is making conditions warmer and more humid near the ground, which is increasing the level of instability that leads to stronger, tornado-producing storms.
According to Gallus, we may see more days that meteorologists call tornado outbreak days, where five to ten tornadoes crop up. But climate change could also decrease the frequency of days where one or two tornadoes crop up. Essentially, the number of tornadoes could be concentrated on fewer days.
“We can’t say that tornadoes are going to become stronger. We can’t say that we’re going to have less,” says Gallus. “But what we do know is, because of how the temperature is changing, we are going to start finding them in weird times of the year and places where it always used to be too cold to have a tornado.”
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Thanks to History Facts
In case you did not know
The Origins of the Beloved Teddy Bear
TEDDY BEAR WITH TAG
Theodore Roosevelt is known as the first conservationist President, having established national parks, wildlife refuges, and national forests during his time in the White House. It seems fitting, then, that one of the world’s most recognizable animal figures — the beloved teddy bear — was inspired by and named after the 26th U.S. President.
In November 1902, Roosevelt joined Mississippi Governor Andrew H. Longino on a hunting trip in Mississippi. On the second day of the trip, Roosevelt’s aides — including guide Holt Collier, a skilled hunter in his own right — captured a bear, tied it to a tree, and presented it to the President, who was eager to start the trip off strong with a catch. Roosevelt, however, refused to shoot the restrained bear. He may have been an avid hunter, but he found it unsportsmanlike to harm a defenseless animal. The hunting incident attracted attention in the press. Washington Post cartoonist Clifford Berryman depicted Roosevelt refusing to shoot a small, tied bear in “Drawing the Line in Mississippi,” a cartoon that doubled as a commentary on the President’s handling of a state border dispute. The cute bear cub character became popular with Americans, and in the ensuing years, Berryman continued to use the bear as a symbol for President Roosevelt, who was commonly known as “Teddy,” short for Theodore.
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. Paul Revere’s ride
Thanks to Ed a former F-4 driver in VF 92 68-71
As a native of Milton MA, I was especially interested in today’s email, particularly the part about Paul Revere’s Ride. This bit of our history was a big deal to those who grew up in the Boston area.
I’ve attached a relevant editorial that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on April 19, 2010. I kept a copy and read it around this time every year. I thought you’d be interested.
By the way, I have a niece who lives on Hancock Ave. in Lexington, a short walk from the Lexington Battle Green. She’s married to a Brit who gets somewhat tight-jawed this time of year (and on July 4th) during all the celebrations. 😊
Please see attachment if I do not screw it up again…skip
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. A life Hack to boost your quality of life
Why you should always have a tea bag in the car
Not only will there be a fresh smell in your car, but it will also help to absorb moisture, which will eradicate bacteria responsible for bad odors. For more fragrance, put a tea bag in the ventilation slots. This is just as effective and a lot safer for you and your family than regular air fresheners. What's more, this natural car air freshener will last months. This method is also less expensive than hanging chemical fragrance cards in the car. There is also a wide range of fragrances available: from honey to lemon and cinnamon to apple and much more!
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Thanks to Barrett
Skip, here's John Nichols' original article about Mike Estocin. (Pirate departed the pattern 20 years ago.). It was slightly modified from On Yankee Station..
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1994/september/your-wing
If I didn't mention it before, the ultimate version was in the A-4 Assn quarterly with a map showing the relative positions of the players. LtJG Cain was shot down within minutes of Estocin but was rescued by the late Capt. Steve Millikin's H-3 crew. Steve received a well deserved Silver Star and after retirement became editor of The Hook. He's gone now as well.
Sidebar: I was acquainted with Ed McKellar, Golden Worms CO during the '67 cruise. He said that originally the citation went in as a Navy Cross but PacFlt said, "Resubmit, will reconsider."
I asked Ed about the MoH citation, which contained the obvious error that ME "exited the area." Ed said that the end-of-cruise paperwork including citations were crammed into a Hong Kong admin over a long Lost Weekend. Hence the error. Ed died in 2002.
As ever,
Barrett
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This one has been around before
WW II : RARE COLOR FILM : AIRCRAFT CARRIER IN THE Pacfic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dR3h2HdnBQ
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Thanks to Interesting Facts Very interesting….skip
8 Dazzling Facts About the Sun
While there’s a lot happening on Earth, the sun is the real star of our show — pun intended. Hanging out at an average 93 million miles away from Earth, the sun is a perfect mixture of hydrogen and helium that spit-roasts our planet just right as we travel around its bright, glowing body. But although the sun is central to our survival, there’s still a lot we don’t know about it. For decades, space agencies have been sending missions to explore the sun and find answers; in 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to “touch” the sun by entering its upper atmosphere (still some 4 million miles away from its surface). Based on research from these missions and more, here are some of the most interesting things we’ve learned about the sun — and some of our best guesses at what its future might look like.
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The Sun Is Middle-Aged
The sun seems eternal — an ever-present, life-giving fireball in the sky — but not even it can escape the wear and tear of time. Some 4.6 billion years ago, the sun formed from a solar nebula, a spinning cloud of gas and dust that collapsed under its own gravity. During its stellar birth, nearly all of the nebula’s mass became the sun, leaving the rest to form the planets, moons, and other objects in our solar system. Even today, the sun makes up 99.8% of all mass in the solar system.
Currently in its yellow dwarf stage, the sun has about another 5 billion years to go before it uses up all its hydrogen, expands into a red giant, and eventually collapses into a white dwarf. So at 4.6 billion years old, the sun could be best described as “middle-aged” — but we don’t think it looks a day over 3 billion.
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1.3 Million Earths Could Fit Inside the Sun
The Earth is big, but the sun is bigger — way bigger. Measuring 338,102,469,632,763,000 cubic miles in volume, the sun is by far the largest thing in our solar system, and some 1.3 million Earths could fit within it. Even if you placed Earth in the sun and maintained its spherical shape (instead of squishing it together to fit), the sun could still hold 960,000 Earths. Yet when it comes to stars, our sun is far from the biggest. For instance, Betelgeuse, a red giant some 642.5 light-years away, measures nearly 700 times larger and 14,000 times brighter than our sun.
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It Takes a Long Time for Light to Escape the Sun
The sunlight that reaches your eyes is older than you might think. It takes a little over eight minutes for photons from the surface of the sun to reach Earth, meaning every time you glimpse the sun (hopefully with sunglasses!), it actually looks as it appeared eight minutes ago. However, this photon blazing at the speed of light is at the end of a very long journey. Once a photon enters the sun’s “radiative zone,” the area between the core and the convective zone (the final layer which stretches to the surface), energy is absorbed after a very short distance into another atom, which then shoots that energy into yet another direction. The overall effect is what scientists call a “random walk,” and the result is that it can take a single photon thousands of years — up to 100,000 years — to escape the sun. As our knowledge of the sun grows, scientists will likely refine this number, but for now it’s safe to say that it takes “a long time.”
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The Sun’s Atmosphere Is Much Hotter Than Its Surface
As you travel farther from the surface of Earth, things usually get colder and colder. Planes traveling at 35,000 feet, for example, travel through the stratosphere and experience temperatures around -60 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the sun’s atmosphere works in exactly the opposite way. While the surface of the sun hovers around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmosphere (or corona) of the sun is hundreds of times hotter, with temperatures reaching up to 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit.
Scientists aren’t exactly sure why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than the surface. One leading theory is that a series of explosions called “nanoflares” release heat upwards of 18 million degrees Fahrenheit throughout the atmosphere. Although small when compared to the sun, these nanoflares are the equivalent of a 10 megaton hydrogen bomb, and approximately a million of them “go off” across the sun every second. Another theory is that the sun’s magnetic field is somehow transferring heat from its core, which rests at a blazing 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, to its corona.
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Different Parts of the Sun Rotate at Different Speeds
The sun doesn’t rotate like your typical planet. While the Earth’s core does rotate ever so slightly faster than the planet’s surface, it mostly moves as one solid mass. The sun? Not so much. First of all, it’s a giant ball of gas rather than a rigid sphere like Earth. The gases at the sun’s core spin about four times faster than at its surface. The sun’s gases also spin at different speeds depending on their latitude. For example, the gases at the sun’s equator rotate much faster than the areas at higher latitudes, closer to the poles. A rotation that takes 25 Earth days at the sun’s equator takes 35 days to make the same journey near the poles.
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The Sun Completes Its Own Galactic Orbit Every 250 Million Years
Picture a grade-school model of the solar system, and it’s easy to forget that the sun is on its own galactic journey. While the Earth orbits the sun, the sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy. On its orbiting journey, it travels roughly 140 miles per second, or about 450,000 miles per hour (by comparison, the Earth travels around the sun at only 67,000 miles per hour). Although blazing fast by Earth standards, it still takes our star roughly 230 million years to complete a full revolution.
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In About 1 Billion Years, the Sun Will Kill All Life on Earth …
In 5 billion years, the sun will enter its red giant phase and engulf many of the inner solar system planets, including Earth. However, Earth will lose its ability to sustain life much earlier than that, because the sun is steadily getting hotter as it ages. Scientists estimate that anywhere between 600 million and 1.5 billion years from now, the Earth will experience a runaway greenhouse effect induced by our warming sun that will evaporate all water on Earth and make life on our blue marble impossible (except for maybe some tiny microorganisms buried deep underground). Eventually, Earth will resemble Venus, a hellish planet warmed beyond habitability due to its thick atmosphere and proximity to the sun. Luckily, humanity has at least several hundred million years to figure out a plan B.
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… But Life Only Exists Because of the Sun in the First Place
You can’t get too mad at the sun for its warming ways, because life couldn’t exist without it. Earth is perfectly placed in what astronomers call a star’s “goldilocks zone,” where the sun isn’t too hot or too cold but just right. This advantageous distance has allowed life to flourish on Earth, with the sun bathing our planet in life-giving warmth. The sun also gives plants the light they need to grow and produce oxygen, which in turn forms the bedrock of the web of life — and it’s all thanks to the middle-aged, hydrogen-burning, massively huge star at the center of our solar system.
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This Day in Aviation History” brought to you by the Daedalians Airpower Blog Update. To subscribe to this weekly email, go to https://daedalians.org/airpower-blog/.
April 26, 1962
At Lake Groom, Nevada, Louis W. "Lou" Schalk Jr. made the first of 13 flights in the A-12, which was the prototype for later versions of the Blackbird, including the SR-71. He reached a top speed of 2,287 mph and altitudes that exceeded 90,000 feet.
April 27, 1939
In Washington, D.C., the Army Air Corps places an order for the first production batch of Lockheed P-38 Lightnings.
April 28, 1919
American Leslie Irvin made the first jump from an airplane using a free-type (to be opened at will by a rip-chord) backpack parachute and landed at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio. The parachute was designed by Floyd Smith.
April 29, 1918
Capt. Edward V. “Eddie” Rickenbacker, Daedalian Founder Member #169, assists downing a German Albatros scout craft over Toul, France and receives half credit for the kill. A former racecar driver, he originally reached France as Gen. John J. Pershing’s chauffeur, but volunteered for combat.
April 30, 1917
In Europe, Capt. William “Billy” Mitchell, Daedalian Founder Member #12595, becomes the first officer of the Army Air Service to fly over enemy territory in a French aircraft.
May 1, 1934
Navy Lt. Frank Akers made a hooded landing in an OJ-2 observation biplane at College Park, Maryland, in the first demonstration of the blind landing system intended for carrier use and under development by the Washington Institute of Technology. In subsequent flights Akers took off under a hood from NAS Anacostia, D.C., and landed at College Park without assistance.
May 2, 1923
From May 2-3, 1923, Lieutenants John A. Macready and Oakley G. Kelly completed the first nonstop, transcontinental flight across the U.S. in a Fokker T-2. The mission originated at Roosevelt Field, New York, and lasted 26 hours and 50 minutes, traversing 2,500 miles. They were greeted at Rockwell Field in San Diego by an estimated 100,000 spectators upon arrival. Kelly was Daedalian Founder Member #34. Macready was Founder Member #469;
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This Day in U S Military History…….April 27
1805 – After marching 500 miles from Egypt, U.S. agent William Eaton leads a small force of U.S. Marines and Berber mercenaries against the Tripolitan port city of Derna. The Marines and Berbers were on a mission to depose Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States. The First Barbary War had begun four years earlier, when U.S. President Thomas Jefferson ordered U.S. Navy vessels to the Mediterranean Sea in protest of continuing raids against U.S. ships by pirates from the Barbary states–Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripolitania. American sailors were often abducted along with the captured booty and ransomed back to the United States at an exorbitant price. After two years of minor confrontations, sustained action began in June 1803, when a small U.S. expeditionary force attacked Tripoli harbor in present-day Libya. In April 1805, a major American victory came during the Derna campaign, which was undertaken by U.S. land forces in North Africa. Supported by the heavy guns of the USS Argus and the USS Hornet, Marines and Arab mercenaries under William Eaton captured Derna and deposed Yusuf Karamanli. Lieutenant Presley O’ Bannon, commanding the Marines, performed so heroically in the battle that Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The phrase “to the shores of Tripoli,” from the official song of the U.S. Marine Corps, also has its origins in the Derna campaign.
1944 – During the night (April 27-28), 3 American LST landing craft, conducting an invasion exercise (Exercise “Tiger”), are torpedoed by German E-boats in Lyme Bay. A total of 638 troops are killed. This incident is kept secret for fear of damaging Anglo-American relations.
1953 – Operation Moolah is initiated by U.S. General Mark W. Clark against Communist pilots in the Korean War. Operation Moolah was a United States Air Force (USAF) effort during the Korean War to obtain through defection a fully capable Soviet MiG-15 jet fighter. Communist forces introduced the MiG-15 to Korea on November 1, 1950. USAF pilots reported that the performance of the MiG-15 was superior to all United Nations (U.N.) aircraft, including the USAF’s newest plane, the F-86 Sabre. The operation focused on influencing Communist pilots to defect to South Korea with a MiG for a financial reward. The success of the operation is disputable since no Communist pilot defected before the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. However, on September 21, 1953, North Korean pilot Lieutenant No Kum-Sok flew his MiG-15 to the Kimpo Air Base, South Korea, unaware of Operation Moolah.
1972 – North Vietnamese troops shatter defenses north of Quang Tri and move to within 2.5 miles of the city. Using Russian-built tanks, they took Dong Ha, 7 miles north of Quang Tri, the next day and continued to tighten their ring around Quang Tri, shelling it heavily. South Vietnamese troops suffered their highest casualties for any week in the war in the bitter fighting. This was the northern-most front of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, launched on March 30 when more than 120,000 North Vietnamese troops invaded South Vietnam. The attacks on Quang Tri were followed by attacks on Binh Long province, just 75 miles north of Saigon, and Kontum in the Central Highlands. Hanoi’s 304th Division, supported by tanks, artillery, and antiaircraft units, swept across the Demilitarized Zone and routed the South Vietnamese division that had been guarding outlying positions on the approach to Quang Tri. The attackers quickly overwhelmed the South Vietnamese troops, who fell back toward the city of Quang Tri. The North Vietnamese encircled the city and continued to pound it with artillery and rockets. On May 1, the North Vietnamese captured the city as the South Vietnamese 3rd Division collapsed as a fighting force. This was the first provincial capital to fall during the North Vietnamese offensive and ultimately the North Vietnamese controlled the entire province. Hanoi claimed 10,000 South Vietnamese and Allied casualties were captured during the battle for Quang Tri.
1998 – A Pentagon panel said remains of the Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery should be exhumed to determine whether they belonged to Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, as his family believed. The remains were later positively identified as Blassie’s.
2009 – A low-flying Boeing VC-25, Air Force One, causes momentary panic in New York City, New York, United States. It was intended as a photo opportunity, a showcase of Air Force One alongside the sweep of New York City skyline. Director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, ultimately takes responsibility for approving the mission and failing to notify authorities in New York City. Caldera resigned as a result, on 22 May 2009.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
BURRITT, WILLIAM W.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 113th Illinois Infantry. Place and date: At Vicksburg, Miss., 27 April 1863. Entered service at: Chicago, Ill. Birth: Campbell, N.Y. Date of issue: 8 July 1896. Citation: Voluntarily acted as a fireman on a steam tug which ran the blockade and passed the batteries under a heavy fire.
WEISBOGEL, ALBERT (Second Award)
Citation: For gallant conduct in jumping overboard from the U.S.S. Plymouth, at sea, and rescuing from drowning one of the crew of that vessel on 27 April 1876.
FUNSTON, FREDERICK
Rank and organization: Colonel, 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: At Rio Grande de la Pampanga, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 27 April 1899. Entered service at: Iola, Kans. Birth: Springfield, Ohio. Date of issue: 14 February 1900. Citation: Crossed the river on a raft and by his skill and daring enabled the general commanding to carry the enemy’s entrenched position on the north bank of the river and to drive him with great loss from the important strategic position of Calumpit.
TREMBLEY, WILLIAM B.
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: At Calumpit, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 27 April 1899. Entered service at: Kansas City, Kans. Birth: Johnson, Kans. Date of issue: 11 March 1902. Citation: Swam the Rio Grande de Pampanga in face of the enemy’s fire and fastened a rope to the occupied trenches, thereby enabling the crossing of the river and the driving of the enemy from his fortified position.
WHITE, EDWARD
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: At Calumpit, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 27 April 1899. Entered service at: Kansas City, Kans. Birth: Seneca, Kans. Date of issue: 11 March 1902. Citation: Swam the Rio Grande de Pampanga in face of the enemy’s fire and fastened a rope to occupied trenches, thereby enabling the crossing of the river and the driving of the enemy from his fortified position.
QUICK, JOSEPH
Rank and organization: Coxwain, U.S. Navy. Place and date: Yokohama, Japan, 27 April 1902. Entered service at: New York. Birth: New York. G.O. No.: 93, 7 July 1902. Citation: For heroism in rescuing Walenty Wisnieroski, Machinist Second Class, from drowning at Yokohama, Japan, 27 April 1902, while serving on board the U.S.S. Yorktown.
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for April 27, FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD “PHIL” MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
27 April
1911: The Signal Corps accepted the first Army Curtiss plane, a Curtiss IV Model D, and the second Army Wright plane, a Wright B, at San Antonio. Both aircraft were pusher-types. (21)
1913: Robert G. Fowler flew from Panama to Cristobal, ocean-to-ocean, nonstop, in 57 minutes with cameraman Raymond A. Duhem. The flight represented the first seaplane flight across Panama, the first seaplane flight in Panama, and the first passenger-carrying flight in Central America. Duhem also shot the first pictures from the air of the Canal and Central America. Panamanian authorities later arrested them when the story and pictures appeared in a newspaper. (20) (24)
1949: At Cleveland, Ohio, Harold E. Thompson flew the Sikorsky S-52-1 helicopter to a world speed record of 129,616 MPH over three kilometers (see 6 May). (24)
1963: A Titan II, launched from an underground silo at Vandenberg AFB, made the first successful flight of intercontinental range.
1972: Twelve USAF F-4 Phantom fighters (8th TFW) used Paveway I laser-guided “smart” bombs to knock down segments of the Thanh Hoa Bridge. Prior to this attack, hundreds of conventional missions had caused only minor damage to the bridge. Eight carried the laser-guided bombs. When the dust of the explosions cleared it was apparent that the bridge had been dislodged from its western abutment, dropping one half into the river.
1977: When the 525 TFS arrived at Bitburg AB with its F-15 Eagles, the 36 TFW became the first unit outside the US to be equipped with these aircraft. (4) (30) Through 30 April, after the Ethiopian government announced the closure of some US facilities in that country, 9 MAC C-141s flew 22 missions and a World Airways DC-8 flew 1 mission to airlift 323 Americans and 692,000 pounds of cargo from Addis Ababa and Asmara to Athens, Greece. (18)
1978: Two KC-135 crewmembers shared the distinction of being the first female navigators to perform alert duty in SAC: Capt Elizabeth A. Koch from the 22 AREFW at March AFB and 1Lt Ramona L.S. Roybal from the 916 AREFS at Travis AFB. (1)
1990: After a scheduled five-month layoff, Northrop's B-2A started flying again. This six-hour, fiveminute test flight above Edwards AFB took the Stealth Bomber to 35,000 feet. It also completed four mid-air refuelings with a KC-10. (8: Jul 90)
1991: A C-141 delivered 15 tons of blankets for Kurdish refugees in the first airlift mission into Iran since 1979. (18)
1995: AFSPACE declared its GPS satellites fully operational. This system provided accurate geographical coordinates. (16) (26)
1999: Operation ALLIED FORCE. To support NATO operations over Kosovo, President William J. Clinton approved a Selected Reserve Call-Up of air refueling resources, including 47 tankers and 2,116 personnel assigned to 4 AMC-gained AFRC units and five ANG units. (22)
2007: Following a 12-minute performance at Langley AFB, Va., Air Combat Command officials gave F-22A Raptor demonstration the official seal of approval for future air shows. (AFNEWS, “ACC Approves Raptor Demonstration,” 27 Apr 2007.)
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