Category: History

Fighting Social Contagions With Common Sense

June 7, 2024 by • History, Society • 0 Comments

“…a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right…Time makes more converts than reason.”      –from Common Sense, by Thomas Paine

Construction Of The World Trade Center Twin Towers

March 15, 2025 by • History • 0 Comments

  • The World Trade Center North Tower’s construction started in August of 1968 and was completed in 1972. 
  • The World Trade Center South Tower’s construction started in January of 1969 and was completed in 1973.

A History Channel documentary on Modern Marvels about the World Trade Center twin towers, dated in 2001 but before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, failed to mention the 60 fatalities that occurred during the twin towers’ deadly construction.  An event in history 20 times as deadly as the Apollo space program.

The Tet Offensive & The Watergate Break-in

March 15, 2025 by • History, Politics • 0 Comments

Historical events of the late 1960’s/early 1970’s that would play a major role in Americans turning on their presidents who had won their last elections in landslides.

The Tet Offensive.  1968.

“The Tet offensive proved in fact a serious psychological defeat for the United States because it suggested the unreliability of Johnson’s claims about an imminent South Vietnamese-United States victory. …The Tet offensive destroyed much of whatever political support Johnson still commanded among antiwar Democrats and threw his strategic planners into confusion.”  –from the Third Edition of Liberty Equality Power, an American history textbook

Two months after the start of the Tet offensive, President Johnson announced he would not run again for reelection as a Gallop poll showed that only 26% of Americans approved of his handling of the Vietnam War.

President Johnson had won 61% of the popular vote in 1964 while winning 486 electoral votes of the 538 needed.

The Watergate Break-In.  1972

The Watergate burglary in June 1972 involved employees of Nixon’s 1972 reelection committee that eventually was linked to several top White House aides in early 1973.  President Nixon insisted that he took no part in the break-in or in any kind of cover-up.  Eventually however over the coming months, events would prove otherwise and Nixon would end up having to resign from the White House in August of 1974.

President Nixon had won 60.7% of the popular vote in 1972 while winning 520 electoral votes of the 538 needed.

Nixon Winning Presidential Elections

March 3, 2025 by • History, Law, Politics • 0 Comments

November 1968 and November 1972.  Richard Nixon winning Presidential elections.  (He had lost previously in 1960 in his political run for the White House to John F. Kennedy.)  President Nixon would become the only American president forced to resign from office after he faced inevitable impeachment for obstructing justice during his handling of the Watergate scandal.  Inevitable impeachment because of Republicans who put their country before their political party.

Speaking of Republicans putting their country before their political party…

Sorry for the delay, folks.  So where am I going with this, you may be asking…It has to do with my admiration of Eisenhower and his tax policies during his presidency throughout the 1950’s.  Republicans were wanting him to cut taxes for the rich, but he held his ground and stuck to his principles and his concern for the country not going into further debt after World War II and the deficit spending during the Great Depression.  Eisenhower was elected president as a Republican. 

Anyway, my plan is to eventually list and defend my choice for America’s finest four presidents since World War I.  This will include back-to-back-to-back presidents, along with President Ronald Reagan, a Republican who would not recognize today’s Republican Party. 

Actually, I’ll be writing about President John F. Kennedy as well.  So really I’ll be writing about my top five picks.  He did inspire the nation to accomplish humanity’s greatest scientific achievement inside of a decade and he saved the world from an all-out nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis while preventing Fidel Castro from keeping nuclear weapons.

(I had to add the word “scientific” to that last paragraph.  Humanity’s greatest achievement was what Jesus Christ did on the cross.)

America Losing The Vietnam War

March 3, 2025 by • History • 0 Comments

Early 1968 thru January 1973.  From the Tet Offensive and President Johnson announcing he wouldn’t run again in early 1968 until January 1973, when American delegates signed an agreement around a really big table in Paris to stop fighting in Vietnam.  

Eventually in 1975, all of Vietnam would fall to the Communists. 

 

John Williams’ score for the 1989 film Born On The Fourth Of July

          • The Shooting Of Wilson
          • Cua Viet River, Vietnam, 1968

Music that captures the horror, tragedy, and chaos of The Vietnam War

 

John Williams (1989), his Oscar-nominated work early in 1990

  • A clueless & faithless 14 year-old.  “You must choose.  But choose wisely.”
  • Ron Kovic’s encounter with Murphy’s Law

 

Clueless & Faithless…& Murphy’s Law.  As a faithless 14 year-old.  As a faithless teenager.  And as a faithless young adult.  A particular train wreck in my life that I’m referring to, the kind that would have helped Harrison Ford get a head start on eluding Tommy Lee Jones. 

Much of it a self-inflicted kind of Murphy’s Law…but Murphy’s Law nonetheless.  Definitely a connection between the two movies other than John Williams getting Oscar recognition in early 1990.  Definitely a connection.  No doubt about it.

NASA’s Apollo Moon Landings

March 3, 2025 by • History • 0 Comments

July 1969 through December1972.   Americans walking on the moon.

“From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon.  It’s not a miracle.  We just decided to go.”  –spoken by Apollo 13’s command astronaut in a 1995 film scored by James Horner that would win a prestigious film industry award for its director.  A film based on the true story of Apollo 13, a flight intended to land on the moon…but didn’t.

That’s because about 200,000 miles away from the face of the earth, there was a problem.

 

RECORDED QUOTES FROM JULY OF 1969 ABOUT APOLLO 11’s MOON LANDING

  • “The greatest human achievement ever.”
  • “Nothing in show business will ever top what I saw on television today.”

 

FROM THE BOOK “LOST MOON”

“…when stations around the globe carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first tentative moonwalk and most of the world stood still to watch it.  But by the time Apollo 13 rolled around, the world had lost interest.  A little after the two-day mark in the mission, the crew was scheduled for its first TV show, but none of the networks intended to carry it.  …Viewers across the nation had shown little interest…”

The Late 1960’s/Early 1970’s

March 3, 2025 by • Books, Entertainment, Financial, History, Law, News, News & Media, Politics, Religion, Society, Sports, Television • 0 Comments

  • Americans walking on the moon.
  • America losing a war.
  • America’s only president who would be forced to resign winning presidential elections.
  • Historical events that would play a major role in Americans turning on their presidents who had won their last elections in landslides.
  • Construction of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City.
  • New York City plagued with various strikes by public employees.
  • New freedoms for Hollywood thanks to the MPAA’s new classification system.
  • Martin Scorsese begins his film career as a director.
  • Early development for Hollywood’s disastrous disaster movies (from Airport to The Towering Inferno).
  • The American movie industry struggling for economic survival.
  • The movie industry’s future king working in television.
  • Construction of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World, the world’s most visited theme park.
  • The first seven years of the Superbowl, an annual sporting event that has since dominated the record books for the “All-Time Most Watched TV Programs”.
  • Historic Middle East conflicts of the 20th Century between Israel and the Arab world.
  • Nixon’s vice-president and legal problems with his income taxes.
  • The birth of a new social movement.
  • William Peter Blatty heading towards winning an Oscar.
  • Pete Maravich lighting up college basketball’s record books.
  • Coach John Wooden leading UCLA to seven consecutive NCAA tournament championships.
  • The first printing of two published books from Christian author Og Mandino containing The Ten Great Scrolls.
  • And finally, Mario Puzo creating a cultural phenomena with “The Godfather”.

The World’s Biggest Social Contagion

December 1, 2024 by • History, Society, Television • 0 Comments

“It’s the world’s biggest something.”  –an insult aimed at television, spoken by Charles Van Doren in the 1994 Best Picture nominee Quiz Show

Charles Van Doren–a real life character who had inside knowledge about television during its early years.

 

“…a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right…Time makes more converts than reason.”

“In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.”  –from Common Sense by Thomas Paine

1 2