This Day in History

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Carruthers

Now there's a thought!

I've just had a look at the dozen or so plates I have and most seem to have registrations in a non-standard format.
I'm no expert in these matters but they do seem to be of an 'individual' nature and which presumably mean something to the owners.
I have a pair of plates from Montana which read 'I NEWTON'. Photographic evidence is available.

Incidentally, I have mostly collected plates with wildlife designs, particularly Maine and Minnesota, or horse designs from Virginia and Kentucky.
I have a particularly fine plate from Pennsylvania depicting a River Otter.
Are you familiar with that one?

Do you have a US huckleberry?

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by BigV

Do you have a US huckleberry?

No, just wildlife, horses and the Jamestown plate above.

[BigV]

*sigh*

Too clever by half.

I was invoking the Val Kilmer usage of the term, from Tombstone.

Let me try again.

Do you have someone in the US you can depend on to send you desirable plates?

[Carruthers]

It did occur to me that there was a cultural reference there, but not having the first idea of what it was I played a straight bat.


I haven't bought any plates for a while, but I have found a dealer in Massachusetts to be very reliable and I've had good transactions with a couple of eBay sellers.

[Gravdigr]

April 18, 1943



Albert Hofmann deliberately doses himself with LSD for the first time, three days after having discovered its effects on April 16.


********************************************

1987 – The Simpsons first appear as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.

1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of six.

2011 – Fidel Castro resigns.

[Carruthers]

More than 600 US sailors and soldiers died in the April 1944 rehearsal for D-day.

Families of American sailors and soldiers who lost their lives in a disastrous second world war exercise off the British coast will this weekend join veterans, dignitaries and local people to mark the 75th anniversary of the tragedy.

More than 600 personnel lost their lives in Exercise Tiger, a rehearsal for D-day, on 28 April 1944, but the botched operation was covered up for decades and only came to light 40 years later when a hotelier located a Sherman tank lost in the exercise on the seabed and hauled it to shore.

On Sunday, 29 relatives of the Americans who died will gather around the tank at Slapton Sands in Devon alongside military officials, politicians, diplomats and residents, including some who remember having to leave their homes so that the exercise could be conducted in secrecy.

It is the biggest commemoration of the Exercise Tiger disaster, which is still not well known in the UK or the US.

Dean Small, whose late father Ken recovered the tank, said it was vital the tragedy was remembered. “One of the main reasons my dad wanted to set up the tank on the beach was to create a tangible memorial, somewhere for people to gather.”

Small said his father had been intrigued when he moved to the area and found bits of shrapnel, bullets and tunic buttons on the beach. A fisherman told him a strange object was lying on the seabed three-quarters of a mile offshore. Ken Small persuaded the fisherman to dive to the object, and they were shocked to discover it was a tank.

Small researched how it had come to rest on the seabed and the hidden story of Exercise Tiger emerged. “It troubled dad that the story and the sacrifice so many had made had been covered up,” said his son.

Link

Link

Link

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'd say 9 of these is a force to be reckoned with.

[sexobon]

That's why the mantra is: Shoot, move, and communicate.

[Diaphone Jim]

I have heard references to these incidents leading up to D Day, never read about any in detail.
The size of the fuck up and the rank responsible determine the depth and duration of the cover up. This was a real champ.
Just reading about LST-531 stretches belief. It was commissioned January, 1944 and sunk April 28; no pictures apparently exist, but this is close: http://leaderbackup.weebly.com/uploa...484024_orig.jp
It was designed to carry and deliver tanks but had over 400 men on board. Almost all were lost, but I can find only 98 names. Apparently it was common to issue life jackets that were not combatable with the rucks worn. so they were strapped around the soldier or sailor's waist, turning them upside down in the water, insuring drowning.
Almost all responsible and survivors are now dead.

There are videos of what is probably 531 on the ocean floor, but show little.
Except that it capsized.

Important post, carruthers.

[xoxoxoBruce]

They had to cover it up so as not to tip off D-Day plans, then D-Day, Battle of the bulge, liberating Paris, concentration camps, and VE-Day took the spotlight. Then we had to concentrate of their war crimes, not our mistakes.

[Diaphone Jim]

Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between a necessary secret and a cover-up.
Actually, German intelligence used the choice of location off Devon as a clue to the invasion at Normandy.

It is nice that there is only one E-Boat left.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-32396969

[xoxoxoBruce]

That link says 4 E-boats, while the link in Carruther's post says 9 E-boats. That's a big difference.

[Diaphone Jim]

From the link:

"Mr Casner, 88, from Summerville, South Carolina, added: "This is really big. If all the nine E-boats that were out that day hit us, I wouldn't be here talking about it."

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ah, then at the other link reporter heard the Nazis had 9 total got mixed up. They had pickets watching the E-boat base to warn the troops of the boats coming out but these four were still out from the night before. That's just another thing the Allies overlooked in this clusterfuck.

[Gravdigr]

May 4, 1988



BIG bada boom!

PEPCON Disaster

4500 metric tons of Space Shuttle fuel burn and detonate in four separate explosions, the last of which was the equivalent of 1 kiloton of TNT.