Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae’s immortal words of remembrance of all who fell in the Great War carried through a beautiful ceremony honoring the oft-forgotten war and America’s pivotal role. On Friday morning, politicians, historians, activists, military leaders, artists, and descendants virtually gathered to raise the American flag over the newly-erected World War I memorial in Washington DC.

As the last of the major 20th century US war veterans to receive a national memorial, those who served in WWI now have a powerful tribute to their sacrifice, bravery, and heroism. Hopefully, the monument will help return the Great War to public consciousness. //

The flag had quite a journey to reach Pershing Park, making a physical trip symbolic of that experienced by soldiers. It first was raised inside the US Capitol, before being flown to France to fly over a cemetery of American war dead, then spending time above the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City and finally arriving at its permanent home in DC.

Just before it was raised, the final words of the event were shared by Terry Hamby, the chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission. He dedicated the monument to the men and women of WWI, who answered the call to “serve in places they’ve never visited, for a war they didn’t start, to protect the freedom of people they’d never met.”

For over 60 years, Pan Am grew as a dominant operator of international flights from the US. While it is this legacy it is remembered for; it also became one of the largest ever operators of fifth freedom flights between other cities. Many of these started as a method to promote viable growth on long-haul operations and went on to become important routes in their own right. //

First, a quick recap on what a fifth freedom flight is. In simplest terms, it is a flight between two countries that are not the operating airline’s home base. It is permitted as part of a flight to or from the airline’s base. As an example – Singapore Airlines operates flights from Singapore to Frankfurt and on to New York. It is permitted to sell tickets for the Frankfurt to New York sector as a fifth freedom flight. //

Fifth freedom flights were conceived as part of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation in December 1944. In these early days of aviation, such routes were vital for many airlines operating international flights. Several stops were common on long routes, and restricting airlines only to carry passengers between bases would be very limiting. In short, they made long-haul operations economically viable.

The New York Times has finally admitted a key error in the 1619 Project. It disqualifies it from use in our schools. //

A central essay in the project, written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, underwent a major correction this week. Only two words were changed, but they were big words. And given how much they change the underlying argument, the correction shows this project should not be used as a teaching tool in our schools. //

In the original she said that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation of colonists in revolting against England. That was one of the most bashed claims in the whole project. Now it reads, that it was a primary motivation for “some of” the colonists. //

It is hard to overstate just how massively this correction undermines the entire project. The purpose of this historian-free history of America was to refocus the American story by centering it on slavery. The idea was that 1619, the year the first chattel slaves arrived is the date of America’s founding, not the traditional 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This re-dating of the founding of the United States only makes sense if we accept an ahistorical claim that slavery was a major reason colonists split with England. That is exactly why Hannah-Jones made the claim. It is also why the Times has dragged its feet while a deluge of virtual failed peer reviews poured in from actual historians. //

The New York Times shot for the moon on the 1619 Project. Its goal was nothing short of fundamentally changing the way Americans view the history of their country from a slow painful pursuit of freedom, to a deadly attempt to continue slavery and the oppression of minorities.

Woodbutcher
3 hours ago
"From the beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own"

Well, yes, Joey boy, you could, in the beginning. Up to and including cannon and warships!

tonysc Woodbutcher
3 hours ago
GMTA, I'm not going to delete my comment but, canons were, indeed privately owned. At the time, I'm not sure what weapon was considered more war-like than a canon but I can't think of any.

Diamondback tonysc
3 hours ago
A fully-armed warship with two dozen of 'em on its gun deck would fit that description nicely, this was why privateers had to have a Letter of Marque and Reprisal before sailing.

The backbone of Revolutionary War naval efforts was actually our privateer fleet, ditto the War of 1812 and the Quasi-War with France.

Consider that the Man-o-War was the ICBM of the day...

tonysc
3 hours ago
From the beginning, you couldn't own any weapon you wanted to own.
That's weird, I seem to remember canons being privately owned back when that silly Constitution was written but maybe he was talking about weapons that hadn't been invented yet. //

Draconis tonysc
2 hours ago
...On the note of 'weapons that had not been invented yet' nothing shows the ignorance of the gun grabbers more than 'when the Constitution was written they couldn't imagine something like today's rapid fire weapons existing'....They have obviously never heard of the Girardoni Air Rifle....
...Developed by Bartolomeo Girardoni in 1779, used by the Austrian army from 1780 to 1815, it used compressed air to fire a projectile each time the trigger was pulled (similar to today's semi-automatic rifles) maintaining that rate of fire for 30 shots before it had to be 'reloaded' with compressed air.....Lewis and Clark even carried one on their expedition....in 1803....
...For those who are a bit vague on history, the Second Amendment was written in 1789 and ratified in 1791 ....TWELVE YEARS after this semi automatic rifle was developed...... //

johncv tonysc
3 hours ago
and warships too. IIRC John Hancock owned one. The Privateers also preyed upon British shipping.

The communists are showing the weakness of their programs - the apparatchik speech writers are as ignorant of history as the students they indoctrinate.

Coincidentally, today is Booker T. Washington’s 165th Birthday: he was born April 5, 1856. In a time when racial disparities and tension were the real deal, rather than so much of this manufactured nonsense, Washington made this controversial statement in his 1911 book, My Larger Education.

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Washington described them as “problem profiteers”, and it is interesting that Booker and Barkley saw this so clearly. There are some people for whom it is more important to drive their agenda than it is to actually get things done and solve problems. If work is accomplished and problems are resolved, it means those profiteers can no longer earn their prestige or dollars. Both Booker T. Washington and Charles Barkley are the latter. Our political class and much of our legacy media are the former. //

It was at a second job in a local coalmine where he first heard two fellow works discuss the Hampton Institute, a school for formerly enslaved people in southeastern Virginia founded in 1868 by Brigadier General Samuel Chapman. Chapman had been a leader of Black troops for the Union during the Civil War and was dedicated to improving educational opportunities for African Americans.

Washington walked the 500 miles from Malden, Virginia to Southeastern Virginia to get to the Hampton Institute. //

Brigadier General Chapman was so impressed by Washington, that he was invited to return to Hampton as a teacher. Chapman then referred Washington for a role as principal of a new school for Blacks in Tuskegee, Alabama: The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, now known as Tuskegee University. At age 25, Washington took on the task, and was there until his death in 1915.

Washington is too often seen as a supporter of segregationist views, and he and W.E.B. Du Bois famously battled in their writings over this. Washington encouraged Blacks to embrace skilled labor and the trades to build their own wealth as an avenue of integration, rather than Du Bois’s chosen method of pushing to change laws and forcefully integrate into what was at that time, white society.

In an 1895 speech which Du Bois dubbed, “The Atlanta Compromise,” Washington told a majority white audience in Atlanta that the way forward for Blacks was self-actualization to “dignify and glorify common labor.” Washington saw showing through actions and accomplishments that you are a valuable part of contributing society as a wiser path toward desegregation than some of the attempts being made by his contemporaries. Washington encouraged a measured approach, as opposed to blowing up the system:

“The wisest of my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than to spend a dollar in an opera house.” //

So Barkley and Washington embody a powerful work ethic and an insatiable drive that sadly, is lacking in much of what is touted as “success” today. Instead of upping that quotient, some would rather blame a generation of Blacks’ lack of success on racism. //

Bottom line, both men encourage us to: Get our own. Then, OWN it. Then, BUILD wealth and legacy through it.

My people still have not exploited these lessons to their full extent. We’re still fighting the battles that W.E.B. Du Bois waged and that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others fought and won. Both should capture our attention, and where we have allowed that legacy of civil rights to erode, we need to shore it up. But what I most find is a fixation that no progress has been made. When someone like Barkley points out this is not the case and that certain actors are invested in ensuring we stay divided, his premise is questioned and marginalized, rather than examined for its veracity.

Washington had this to say in his autobiographical novel, Up From Slavery, page 103.

I said that the whole future of the Negro rested largely upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself, through his skill, intelligence, and character, of such undeniable value to the community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with his presence.

A Skybus Air Cargo Douglas DC-8 was flying from Miami, Florida, to Georgetown, Guyana yesterday when it had to return to its departing airport due to flap issues. Notably, the aircraft in this incident is over five decades old. //

It is a unique experience to spot a DC-8 presently. The plane was produced between 1958 and 1972 and was a favorite among several veteran airlines.

Today, Skybus holds three units of the type. OB-2059-P, the aircraft involved in the flap incident, first joined Skybus in April 2013. However, its history traces back to July 1968, when it was introduced with Flying Tiger Line. Altogether, according to Planespotters.net, the plane was first produced 52.8 years ago at Long Beach, California. Cargolux, Air India, Evergreen International Airlines, TNT, UPS, DHL, and Peruvian Airlines are some of the other operators that have held the unit.

KLM – October 1919
KLM (Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij in full) is generally recognized as the oldest airline still in service, under its original name. It was established in October 1919. //

Avianca – December 1919
Avianca comes in very close behind KLM, founded just a few months later, in December 2019. It started life in Barranquilla, backed by German expatriates, as SCADTA (The Colombia-German Air Transport Company). //

Qantas – November 1920
Australian airline Qantas makes it to third place. Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services (Qantas) started in 1920 with a mission to service the sparsely populated northern regions of the country. //

Overseas services began in 1934 when Qantas and Imperial Airways (a predecessor of British Airways) jointly formed Qantas Empire Airways Limited (QEA). The route to the UK with Shorts S23 Empire flying boats in 1938 took nine days. //

Qantas was nationalized after the Second World War, and services continued with both flying boats and aircraft such as the Avro Lancastrian and the DC4. Jet service began with the 707 in 1959. For several years in the 1980s, it operated an all 747 fleet, making its retirement particularly sad.

This is brilliant.

May 1981. President Ronald Reagan is giving a speech at an Air Force base in West Berlin when a balloon pops loudly. Only two months previously, the President had been shot in an attempt on his life, not long after beginning his first term.

Reagan's response:

"Missed me"

Before Microsoft and Intel dominated the PC market with a common platform, the CP/M operating system did something similar for small business machines in the late 1970s and early 1980s—until MS-DOS pulled the rug out from under it. Here’s more about CP/M, and why it lost out to MS-DOS.

Video editor Joaquim Campa has remastered, colorized and “deOldified” the iconic 1897 black and white silent film Louis Lumière entitled “Bataille de Nege” (“Snowball Fight”). With these enhancements, the humorous scene in which a man is knocked off his bicycle can be witnessed with greater clarity.

The Trump Campaign laid down a huge marker for the final 50 days leading up to Election Day — voters can embrace the patriotic history that focuses on 1776 and what came after, or 1619 and what the New York Times says should be important. //

Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, an ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country.

American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square,” Trump said.

Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse, the truest sense. For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans’ silence for weakness. They’re wrong. There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children.

The left-wing Cultural Revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution … The Left has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies.

Editor's note: Twelve Civil War historians and political scientists who research the Civil War composed a letter to The New York Times Magazine concerning 'The 1619 Project.' The NYTM editor, Jake Silverstein, responded but the NYTM declined to publish the letter and his response. The scholars created a reply and Silverstein had no objection to publishing the exchange in another venue. It is published below.

From 1973 onwards, Pan Am significantly struggled. Starting with the oil crisis in 1973 and growing competition, the airline worked to right-size its operations. However, the real blow to Pan Am came in 1978.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act into law, which phased out the CAB and deregulated the American airline industry. It was essentially with this stroke that the US officially ended having even a de facto flag carrier.

During the regulated years, Pan Am could not fly domestic routes. The CAB was concerned about Pan Am growing so big it would monopolize the growing air market, so it left Pan Am with operating international routes with few exceptions. The carrier seriously wanted domestic routes, but it never got the breadth that it needed.

So, in 1978, all of a sudden, Pan Am had a limited domestic network and a large international network with nearly no connecting feed. On international routes, Pan Am faced a host of new competitors that seriously threatened its business.

From then on, Pan Am was on the slide. After a rough merger with National Airlines, the carrier went through a difficult 1980s and tried various strategies, including divestment of some assets and fleet advancements, which helped but was not enough for the airline. One thing it could not prepare for was the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and subsequent financial struggles.

In 1991, Pan Am ceased operations, leading to the end of the premier international airline.

The TriStar’s AFCS (Avionic Flight Control system) included some of the period’s state-of-the-art features. It had speed control, a flight control system, a navigation system, a stability system, a direct lift control system, and autopilot. The aircraft’s CAT-IIIB Autoland system could also help the trijet land, even in severe weather. //

There were also significant cabin innovations. For instance, the passengers on board would notice glare-resistant windows, full-sized hideaway closets for jackets, and a below-deck galley. Food would make its way up to the main cabin with the help of a pair of elevators. Passengers and crew alike enjoyed the advanced features of the aircraft.

“Passengers loved riding in it, thanks to a unique engine configuration that reduced sound in the cabin. Flight crews appreciated its extra-wide aisles and overhead bins. But it was TriStar’s pilots who had access to its most thrilling feature: an advanced fly-by-wire automatic flight control system. Tristar pilots simply had to dial altitude and course changes into the flight control system and monitor their instruments, and the L-1011 would fly and land on its own, descending smoothly onto the runway by locking in to an airport’s radio beacons,” Lockheed Martin shares on its website.

“Thanks to its impressive autopilot feature, the TriStar was given special clearance by the FAA to land during severe weather conditions. Whereas other wide-bodied jets had to be diverted to alternate airports, L-1011 passengers could rest assured that they would touch down precisely where they were scheduled to land.” //

on May 25th, 1972,test pilots Anthony LeVier and Charles Hall flew 115 crew members, employees, and reporters on a four hour and 13 minute trip from Palmdale, California, to Washington Dulles with the TriStar’s AFCS feature in place from takeoff to landing. This was the first transcontinental flight without the need for human hands on the controls. This moment helped to create confidence in new forms of flight tech.

TOMB OF JOHN AND MARY NEWTON APPROXIMATELY 20 METRES SOUTH OF CHURCH OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL, CHURCH STREET //

the epitaph written by Newton himself for the memorial tablet which remains in the church of St Mary Woolnoth: 'JOHN NEWTON, CLERK. / ONCE AN INFIDEL AND LIBERTINE / A SERVANT OF SLAVES IN AFRICA, WAS / BY THE RICH MERCY OF OUR / LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST / PRESERVED / RESTORED, PARDONED / AND APPOINTED TO PREACH THE FAITH HE / HAD LONG LABOURED TO DESTROY. / NEAR 16 YEARS AS CURATE OF THIS PARISH / AND 28 YEARS AS RECTOR OF ST MARY WOOLNOTH.'

In the early morning of January 22, 1970, 335 passengers boarded Pan American World Airways Flight 2 at Terminal 3 of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, bound for Heathrow Airport in London. The flight had been scheduled to depart the night before and by this point was over 6 hours behind schedule, but any irritation on that score would have been largely offset by the excitement of the historic nature of this flight — this was the first passenger flight of Boeing’s latest aircraft model, the Boeing 747. At two-thirds the length of a football field, a tail rising six stories up, and interior dimensions more reminiscent of a large conference room than an aircraft cabin, the 747 was the largest aircraft ever to enter airline service, dwarfing all other existing airliners, and would remain so for the next 37 years.
Just after 2:00 a.m., Clipper Victor (N736PA), the 12th 747 off the production line, departed from New York and headed towards London. 6 hours and 43 minutes later, Clipper Victor touched down at London’s Heathrow Airport at 1:35 p.m. local time, cementing a milestone in aviation history. The completion of the inaugural flight marked the culmination of years of hard work by a team of engineers and test pilots who had been responsible for getting the mammoth 747 designed, built, and into the air safely.

February 23, 2019

LIVING
How Boeing’s first 747 took off — and changed the world forever
By Eric Spitznagel

February 23, 2019 | 12:49pm

The first 747 is rolled out of Boeing's plant in Washington state for display in 1968. The plane finally took off in February 1969.
Courtesy of Boeing
Fifty years ago this month, on Feb. 9, 1969, the Boeing 747 was officially introduced to the world. But as the wide-bodied jumbo jet taxied down the runway for its inaugural flight from Paine Field, just north of Seattle, not everybody in the crowd was convinced it would be a success.

The plane, which would soon be dubbed “Queen of the Skies,” was big — maybe too big. At twice the size of the Boeing 707, it was by far the largest civilian passenger jet ever conceived: 231 feet long with a 196-foot wingspan — enough room to play regulation basketball on each wing — and a tail as tall as a six-story building. Impressive to look at, but would it fly? //

Between 1970 and 2017, more than 3.5 billion people have flown on a 747, more than half the world’s population, according to the Smithsonian. 747s have carried Space Shuttles for NASA, been the choice for Air Force One since 1990 and was Richard Branson’s first plane when he launched Virgin Atlantic in 1984. There has never been a more iconic passenger plane, one that even casual travelers can recognize by sight, thanks to its teardrop-shaped “hump” above the main deck.

Its success is a little ironic, given that the 747 was created with the assumption of failure. In the late ’60s, supersonic airplanes like the Concorde, capable of cruising at more than twice the speed of sound, were widely predicted to be the future of commercial air travel.

“The thought was 747s would eventually be converted into cargo planes,” says Lombardi. “They would become freighters.”

So they designed it with cargo in mind, not passengers. By placing the cockpit above the fuselage on a second deck, creating that distinctive hump, the nose of the plane could become a front-loading door. The wide body design allowed for even more cargo room.

The two men came from extremely modest means, one even more than the other. Primarily because each understood the rare power of self-education and the gift of books, both went on to have lives of remarkable celebrity, accomplishing extraordinary things for our nation.

One was born in a humble one-room cabin in Kentucky. The other was born into slavery in Maryland. In time, they became two of America’s greatest, most consequential leaders during our nation’s most trying time. //

As Douglass recounts in his final autobiography, “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, From 1817 to 1882,” the pair met again at the White House a year later:

What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had even seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing a band of scouts, composed of coloured men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.

This plan, Douglass explained, was finally unnecessary because of the ultimate emancipation of the slaves. But, he adds, “I refer to this conversation because I think it is evidence conclusive on Mr. Lincoln’s part that the proclamation, so far as least as he was concerned, was not effected merely as a ‘necessity’” but as a moral duty. //

In 1865, Douglass traveled to Washington D.C. to hear the president give his second inaugural address. He also accepted President Lincoln’s kind invitation to visit him and his family at the White House, //

Recognising me, even before I reached him, he exclaimed, so that all around could hear him, ‘Here comes my friend Douglass.’ Taking me by the hand, he said, ‘I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd to-day, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?’

I said, ‘Mr. Lincoln, I must not detain you with my poor opinion, when there are thousands waiting to shake hands with you.’

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘you must stop a little, Douglass; there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it?’

I replied, ‘Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.’

‘I am glad you liked it!’ he said, and I passed on, feeling that any man, however distinguished, might well regard himself honoured by such expressions, from such a man. //

Douglass wanted the Ages to know and remember that the Freedman’s Monument — funded primarily by the sweat of emancipated slaves — was a humble and essential gift to the memory of his friend lost to an assassin’s bullet. That “pure act of malice” had “done good after all.”

For that dark murder “filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.” As he closed, the ex-slave said, “No man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him.”

Here’s a summary of where the survivors can be found:

42-107451, Douglas VC-54C “Sacred Cow”, National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, OH
46-505, Douglas VC-118 “The Independence”, National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, OH
48-0610, Lockheed VC-121 Constellation “Columbine II”, Bridgewater, VA
53-7885, Lockheed VC-121 Constellation “Columbine III”, National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, OH
55-4638, U-4B Aero Commander, National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, OH
58-6970, Boeing VC-137B, SAM 970, Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA
58-6971, Boeing VC-137B, SAM 971, Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, AZ
58-6972, Boeing VC-137B, SAM 972, Scrapped
62-6000, Boeing VC-137C, SAM 26000, National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, OH
72-7000, Boeing VC-137C, SAM 27000, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA
82-8000, Boeing VC-25A, SAM 28000, Active Andrews AFB, MD
92-9000, Boeing VC-25A, SAM 29000, Active Andrews AFB, MD