On this day .....

Sept 10, 2001

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9/20/73

The Astros have a night off and tennis moves into the Astrodome as the “Battle of the Sexes” between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs unfolds before a crowd of over 30,000 and a national television audience of nearly 50 million.

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On this day in 1912 -- Theodore Roosevelt was shot while giving a speech in Milwaukee
The bullet was slowed by his speech pages and spectacle case
Teddy just kept on talking

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On this day in 1983, a suicide bomber (suspected to be a Shiite terrorist associated with Iran) drove a truck packed with explosives into the barracks of the US Marine in Beirut, killing 241 US military personnel


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WWI - Fall 1918

Twenty years after the end of world war one, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited German Chancellor Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian retreat, the Berghof. While there, Chamberlain noticed a picture on the wall of Hitler's study, depicting a scene from a battle at Menin crossroads in 1914. The soldier in the foreground was apparently Pte Tandey, carrying a fellow soldier to safety.

Hitler told Chamberlain in 1918, that same soldier had pointed a gun at him but spared him.

"That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again," Hitler is alleged to have said. "Providence saved me from such devilish accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us." Pte Tandey had tempered justice with mercy, refusing to kill unarmed, injured men in cold blood. The leader of the Third Reich claimed he was one of those spared.

On September 17, 1918, Hitler's unit had been moved about 50 miles (80km) north of Pte Tandey's, which was in Marcoing, near Cambrai in northern France. During the battle in the area later that month, Tandey was on the line, following an artillery barrage of the German position. As the story goes, armed German soldiers came into view mostly stunned and bewildered, Tandey shot them. Except for Hitler and a few others. Hitler told the story that he was disoriented, had no weapon, when he emerged from his position and saw the British soldier aiming at him. Tandey, seeing the man was injured and weaponless, lowered hin rifle and let him go.

Tandey was quoted in an August 1939 edition of the Coventry Herald as saying: "According to them, I've met Adolf Hitler. Maybe they're right but I can't remember him." He indicated there were several men that he spared as they arose from their positions, but could not confirm the truth and veracity of the claim by Hitler.

But a year later, he appeared to be more certain, when a journalist approached him outside his bombed Coventry home, asking him about his alleged encounter with Hitler. "If only I had known what he would turn out to be," Pte Tandey is quoted as saying. "When I saw all the people and women and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go."

The newspapers seemed to say it all:

"Nothing Henry did that night could ease his sickening sense of guilt."
"It was a stigma that Tandey lived with until his death"
"He could have stopped this. He could have changed the course of history"

However, there is no evidence, not even anecdotal, he was either hounded or avoided after the claims.

Was Hitler's story true, or even accurate? No one knows for sure.

The Painting Chamberlain saw...
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It's either today or tomorrow, depending on how you look at it, but in 1989, East Germans could climb over the Berlin Wall for the first time without fear of being shot in the back by their socialist comrades

side note - by coincidence, I was in East Berlin in Sept 1989 - You could tell things were bad there, but nobody knew this would happen shortly thereafter. I will always remember how old and grey everything looked, not just the buildings and streets, but the people too. There was no color there. It was like walking directly into a 1940s B&W movie. I also remember the sound of people trying to start their weird cars - like they had lawnmower motors for engines. But, like everywhere else, the girls were still flirtatious, if in a restricted manner - mainly the eyes.

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Joe Fan said:
It's either today or tomorrow, depending on how you look at it, but in 1989, East Germans could climb over the Berlin Wall for the first time without fear of being shot in the back by their socialist comrades

side note - by coincidence, I was in East Berlin in Sept 1989 - You could tell things were bad there, but nobody knew this would happen shortly thereafter. I will always remember how old and grey everything looked, not just the buildings and streets, but the people too. There was no color there. It was like walking directly into a 1940s B&W movie. I also remember the sound of people trying to start their weird cars - like they had lawnmower motors for engines. But, like everywhere else, the girls were still flirtatious, if in a restricted manner - mainly the eyes.

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I remember this so well. I was living in a student co-op in West Campus at the time and it was amazing to watch this unfold on TV. Two years later, in November 1991, I went to Germany and found East Berlin to be exactly as you describe: gray, dull, almost lifeless looking. I spent the night there with a couple who was renting out a room in their West Berlin apartment. It was a British guy who had married a local German woman, and they were so interesting and cool to talk with. The wall had been just outside their apartment. He took me for a drive around East Berlin. There was no soul there.
 
November 10, 1975 - the Edmond Fitzgerald began it fateful last voyage on the Great Lakes. The ship and all crew were lost. This ship was eventually located, but none of the remains of the crew were ever found. The disaster inspired a song by Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald” shortly after.

Link to Song:

 
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Dionysus said:
I remember this so well. I was living in a student co-op in West Campus at the time and it was amazing to watch this unfold on TV. Two years later, in November 1991, I went to Germany and found East Berlin to be exactly as you describe: gray, dull, almost lifeless looking. I spent the night there with a couple who was renting out a room in their West Berlin apartment. It was a British guy who had married a local German woman, and they were so interesting and cool to talk with. The wall had been just outside their apartment. He took me for a drive around East Berlin. There was no soul there.
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I was there at the Brandenburg Gate for the reunification 10-3-90. It was a great party! It was also the first time I was able to just stroll into the East Zone with out having to worry about being caught, or potentially shot.
 
11-11-11-18

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns fell silent and the war in Europe ended with an armistice with Germany. Estimates range from 33 to 38 million dead and millions more wounded. The countrysides in France, Italy and other countries were devastated. It was the war to end all wars, which would last 21 years.

It's Armistice Day a time to reflect on the past and hope history doesn't repeat itself...again.
 
OTD in 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to Germany's minister in Mexico.
The telegraph encouraged Mexico to invade U.S. territory.
The British kept it a secret from the U.S. for more than a month.
 
Today in 1951 -- in "Peanuts," Charlie Brown first attempted to kick a football. This first time, he was thwarted by Violet. Afterward, Lucy would have the honors

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