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How a group of Cuban exiles set up to topple Fidel Castro - Bay of Pigs
Bay of Pigs: The passionate but doomed fight for Cuba
The commander of the Bay of Pigs invasion, José Perez San Roman, kneeled and kissed the sand with joy when he landed at Playa Girón on the south coast of Cuba. Two days later, his 1,500 men had been thoroughly defeated.
“We are out of ammo and fighting on the beach. Please send help,’’ San Roman radioed his CIA advisors. Then, this final transmission: “I have nothing to fight with. Am taking to the woods.’’
The most direct and powerful U.S. bid to topple Fidel Castro began amid rosy optimism 50 years ago on April 17. It ended in disaster April 19.
President John F. Kennedy and the CIA were forever seared by the historic failure. Castro became the Caribbean David who defeated the Goliath to the north. His grip on the reins of power grew ever more powerful. And 18 months later, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Castro branded the captured Brigade 2506 invaders as “mercenaries” and demanded ransoms for their release – from $500,000 for San Roman and each of the two other invasion leaders, down to $25,000 for the foot soldiers.
Yet survivors of the Brigade’s assault today recall the three days of fighting and 20 months in Castro’s appalling prisons as a heroic moment for them and a luminous moment in Cuba’s struggle for democracy.
The brigadistas landed in the predawn darkness of April 17, 1961 — five frogmen and one CIA case officer, Grayston Lynch, who were to plant lights on the beaches to guide ashore the rest of the amphibious assault force.
The exile fighters were to follow and seize a 40-mile long front on the eastern shore of the Bay of Pigs — from Playa Larga in the north to Playa Girón in the middle and Caleta Verde to the south.
In the first hours, the invasion seemed to go well.
“We repelled three attacks during daylight, including one in the afternoon [by] more than 1,000 militia and army” troops, wrote Erneido Oliva, head of Playa Larga operations and the landing force’s No. 2 military commander.
Brigade paratroopers seized two key roads to the beachheads — narrow causeways built over the largest swamp in the Caribbean, the Cienaga de Zapata. The infantry secured an airstrip needed to resupply the invaders and fly in a civilian “government’’ that would call for international recognition.
Six Brigade B-26 planes dropped 250-pound bombs on the first and last vehicles of a Castro police and militia convoy caught on one causeway, then raked the rest with the eight 50-caliber machine guns mounted on their noses. Cuba later reported 1,800 people were killed or wounded in that one battle alone.
“For me, those 15-20 minutes seemed like an hour. For the people down there, it must have seemed like an eternity,’’ recalled Gustavo Villoldo, who flew aboard one of the B-26s.
In another bloody battle, Brigade fighters controlled the critical San Blas causeway through three days under nearly constant pounding by Castro’s long-range artillery and waves of attacks by ground troops and Soviet-made T-34 tanks.
Mortar crewman Mario Martinez-Malo recalled that at one point, the number of civilians and Castro militias captured in just one area was more than twice the number of invaders.
Underground Railroad Quilt Code
Materials Relating to Slavery
Walter Hawkins was born a slave in Georgetown, Maryland. After being sold to a slave-dealer, Hawkins escaped to Philadelphia.
Later h e moved on to Canada where he became a Methodist minister. In 1890 Hawkins was made a bishop Methodist Episcopal Church.
With help from Celestine Edwards, Hawkins wrote his autobiography, From Slavery to Bishopric (1891).In the happiest moment of their life, there arose in some an irrepressible desire for freedom which no danger or power could restrain, no hardship deterred, and no bloodhound could alarm. This desire haunted them night and day; they talked about it to each other in confidence; they knew that the system which bound them was as unjust as it was cruel, and that they ought to strive, as a duty to themselves and their children, to escape from it, as the slaves in Jamaica tried to do in 1732, unknown to them, and later as their neighbours in St. Domingo succeeded in doing: and such was the state of mind beneath all their singing and dancing that, had they means as they had desire, there would have been no slave-holder to talk about the happiness of his slaves.
To enslave men successfully and safely it was necessary to keep their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they were deprived. Thus masters gave the slaves some holidays, which served the purpose of keeping their minds occupied with prospective pleasures within the limits of slavery. It was during these holidays that the young man could go wooing; the married man went to see his wife; the father and mother to see their children; the industrious and money-making could earn a few dollars: it was then that the strong tried their strength at wrestling or boxing; then the drinker drank plenty of whisky, and the religious spent their time in praying, preaching, singing and exhorting. Before these holidays their pleasures were in prospect, after they were pleasures of reflection; but for these holidays, which acted as safety-valves, the rigours of bondage would have been carried off by the explosive elements produced in the minds of the slaves by the injustice and fraud of slavery.
In his savage state the Negro was at liberty to eat what he liked and could get by his own activity, but as a slave he was forced to have "Johnny cakes" and black treacle, with rare variation. This cake was made out of corn-meal, salt, and water, and baked on a piece of barrel-head. At dinner-time old Jane Robinson would call her slaves and give each of them a piece and a little molasses, which she would pour into a large plate so as to make it look much more than it really was; of course there was no blessing asked on this meal. The necessary preliminary having been gone through, Walter would receive his allowance with all the humility of one who had received a knighthood from his Queen. It is needless to say that he soon polished off the "Johnny cake," licked the treacle and bowed ready for more, to which Mrs. Robinson would gravely reply: "You young rascal, do you mean to breed a famine? Go to your work!" Can anyone wonder at slaves singing.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAShawkins.htm
The Rise of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire
Other Turkish nomads from the Altai region founded the Görtürk Empire, a confederation of tribes under a dynasty of khans whose influence extended during the sixth to eighth centuries from the Aral Sea to the Hindu Kush in the land bridge known as Transoxania, i.e., across the Oxus River. The Görtürks are known to have been enlisted by a Byzantine emperor in the seventh century as allies against the Sassanians. In the eighth century some Turkish tribes, among them the Oguz, moved south of the Oxus River, while others migrated west to the northern shore of the Black Sea.
Great Seljuk Sultanate
The Turkish migrations after the sixth century were part of a general movement of peoples out of central Asia during the first millennium A.D. that was influenced by a number of interrelated factors--climatic changes, the strain of growing populations on a fragile pastoral economy, and pressure from stronger neighbors also on the move. Among those caught up in this spirit of restlessness on the steppes were the Oguz Turks, who had embraced Islam in the tenth century and established themselves around Bukhara in Transoxania under their khan, Seljuk. Split by dissension among the tribes, one branch of the Oguz had gone to India, while another, led by descendants of Seljuk, struck out to the west and entered service with the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, who were the spiritual leaders of Islam as well as temporal rulers of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia.
Known as gazis (warriors of the Islamic faith), the Turkish horsemen were organized in tribal bands to defend the frontiers of the caliphate, often against their own kinsmen. In 1055, however, a Seljuk khan, Tugrul Bey (reigned 1055-63), occupied Baghdad at the head of an army composed of gazis and Mamluks (slave-soldiers, usually Circassians and Kurds). Tugrul forced the caliph to recognize him as sultan (temporal leader) in Persia and Mesopotamia. His regime eliminated Arabs from government and relied entirely on a corps of Persian ministers to administer what came to be known as the Great Seljuk sultanate.
The social and economic structure of the Anatolian countryside was unchanged by the Seljuks, who had simply replaced Byzantine officials with a new elite that was Turkish and Muslim. Conversion to Islam and the imposition of the language, mores, and customs of the Turks progressed steadily in the countryside, facilitated by intermarriage. The cleavage widened, however, between the unruly gazi warriors and the state-building bureaucracy in Konya.
The Crusades
The success of the Seljuk Turks stimulated a response from Europe in the form of the First Crusade. A counteroffensive launched in 1097 by the Byzantine emperor with the aid of Western crusaders dealt the Turks a decisive defeat. Konya fell to the crusaders, who compelled the Turks to provide them with reconnaissance on their march to Jerusalem. In a few years of campaigning, Byzantine rule was restored in the western third of Anatolia, and the crusaders carved out feudal states there and in Syria as vassals of the emperor.
RISE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Documentation of the early history of the Ottomans is scarce. According to semilegendary accounts, Estugrul, khan of the Kayi tribe of the Oguz Turks, fled from Persia in the mid-thirteenth century to escape the Mongol hordes and took service with the sultan of Rum at the head of a gazi force numbering "400 tents." He was granted territory--if he could seize and hold it--in Bithynia, facing the Byzantine strongholds at Bursa, Nicomedia (Izmit), and Nicaea. Leadership subsequently passed to Estugrul's son, Osman I (reigned ca. 1299-1326), the eponymous founder of the Osmanli dynasty--better known in the West as the Ottomans-- that was to endure for 600 years.
Osman I's small amirate attracted gazis--who required plunder from new conquests to maintain their way of life--from other amirates, siphoning off their strength while giving the Ottoman state a military stature that was out of proportion to its size. Osman I, who acquired the title sultan, organized a politically centralized administration in Sögüt that subordinated the activities of the gazis to its needs and facilitated rapid territorial expansion. Bursa fell in the final year of his reign. His successor, Orkhan (reigned 1326-59), crossed the Dardanelles in force and established a permanent European base at Gallipoli in 1354. Murad I (reigned 1359-89) annexed most of Thrace (called Rumelia, or "Roman land," by the Turks), encircling Constantinople, and moved the seat of Ottoman government to Adrianople (present-day Edirne). In 1389 the Ottoman gazis defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Kosóvo, where Murad lost his life. The steady stream of Ottoman victories in the Balkans continued under Bayezid I (reigned 1389-1403). Bulgaria was subdued in 1393, and in 1396 a French-led crusade that had crossed the Danube from Hungary was annihilated at Nicopolis. http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Turkey2.html
Waldseemuller Map, 1507 (Geography and Map Reading Room, Library of Congress)
Recognizing and Naming America
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Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map grew out of an ambitious project in St. Dié, near Strasbourg, France, during the first decade of the sixteenth century, to document and update new geographic knowledge derived from the discoveries of the late fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth centuries. Waldseemüller’s large world map was the most exciting product of that research effort, and included data gathered during Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501–1502 to the New World. Waldseemüller christened the new lands "America" in recognition of Vespucci ’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered as a result of the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in the late fifteenth century. This is the only known surviving copy of the first printed edition of the map, which, it is believed, consisted of 1,000 copies.
Waldseemüller’s map supported Vespucci’s revolutionary concept by portraying the New World as a separate continent, which until then was unknown to the Europeans. It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean. The map represented a huge leap forward in knowledge, recognizing the newly found American landmass and forever changing the European understanding of a world divided into only three parts—Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Martin Waldseemüller (1470–1521)
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The Manson Family Murders Pictures - CBS News
Charles Manson was the leader of the "Manson Family" cult, responsible for a series of brutal murders in California in 1969. Manson was convicted of orchestrating the murders of seven people.
Cr
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-504083_162-10006372-15.html#ixzz1Bm4m2100
Al Capone - Top 10 Real-Life Mob Bosses - TIME
You can't have a list of mobsters without mentioning the man who sticks in the minds of most people: Al Capone. It seemed for years as if law enforcement couldn't touch him. As head of the Chicago-based Italian-American empire known as the Outfit, Capone was guilty of any number of sins, from gambling and prostitution to bootlegging and narcotics trafficking to robbery, bribery and murder. Though his record is long, Capone gained the most notoriety for the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in which seven high-ranking members of a rival gang were shot dead. Though Capone himself had arranged to conveniently be vacationing at the time, there was little doubt the job didn't have the boss's approval. But what finally brought the mobster down was one of his most minor offenses: tax evasion. The lesser crime — and lighter sentence it carried — meant one of the most notorious crooks of all time served just seven years, six months and 15 days behind bars.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2043575_2043788_20... #ixzz1BhxD2BWh
Ambassador Morgenthau telegram.
This is an official telegram sent by Henry Morgenthau Sr. on July 16, 1915 to what he describes a process of "race extermination" in regards to what was happening to the Armenians at that time. Morgenthau served as the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913-1916 and so this work comes from the United States State Dept.
How Disney brought demise of early Florida theme park
Opening with great fanfare on Feb. 2, 1963, the Western-themed attraction would draw thousands of visitors to Ocala during its 20-year lifespan. Six Gun and nearby Silver Springs attraction were among the premier stops in pre-Disney Florida.
Yet, even as this frontier town in the East reveled in its newness, the seeds of its demise were being sown some 100 miles to the south.
A cartoonist from California was looking to re-create some Western magic of his own in the eastern half of the country. And Florida was ripe.
In fact, had Florida's Turnpike and Interstate 4 not intersected where they do just south of Orlando, that city's fate might have been Ocala's. For a time, Ocala was in the hunt for the new playground dubbed Walt Disney World.
To compound Six Gun's eventual woes, while Orlando was urbanizing, so were the television networks; Westerns, a staple much of the 1950s into the '70s, were disappearing from the airwaves.
The romantic image of the Wild West was passe, and Six Gun Territory eventually became a ghost town. It closed for good just shy of 21 years after opening.
In 1986, the deserted buildings were bulldozed and burned, making way for the Six Gun Plaza and the Oak Hill Plantation home on State Road 40 East.
"We used to have a good time out there," recalled 77-year-old Herbert "Boots" Hooker, a barber whose shop in Six Gun Plaza is a few steps from where the aerial Sky Ride transported guests from the Silver Springs Boulevard entrance to the Old West town.
"When Disney came," he said, "it kind of knocked us out."
'Time' Magazine's Person Of The Year ... In Years Past : The Picture Show : NPR
In 2006 it was you. It 1999 it was the founder of Amazon.com. In 1932 (and again in 1934) it was FDR. Time magazine's "person of the year" profile (formerly "man of the year") started with aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927; today, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was announced 2010 person of the year. To catch yourself up to speed on all 84 past recipients of the title, check out Life magazine's retrospective gallery.
