The Great Dictator Speech, 1940

Transcript and video  of Charlie Chaplin’s Final Speech in The Great Dictator

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone – if possible – Jew, Gentile – black man – white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness – not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

A Day in Infamy

The handwritten notes Franklin D. Roosevelt scribbled before giving his ‘Day of Infamy’ speech have been put on display on the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The original draft of the president’s speech is on display at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The former president dictated the first version of the speech to his secretary in the hours immediately after the attack, meaning he was editing his own words in later copies.

In the opening line of the speech, FDR at first referred to the day, December 7, 1941, as one that would live in ‘world history’. The words were scribbled out and replaced with ‘infamy’.

FDR’s first draft speech December 8, 1941

Check out more pictures, a video of this day and continue reading this article here! 

Honor Surpassed

We dismiss the achievements of our ancestors & fall short of them.

They honor the achievements of their ancestors & surpassed them.

Anthony Esolen, Professor of English

Woman worker grinding a machined part at Curtiss-Wright. Photograph by F. Dale Smith, 1943-44. Missouri History Museum Photographs and Prints Collection. Smith, Dale F. Collection.

Image found here

 

 

 

[No] Shots Fired!

Cpl. Desmond T. Does

Seventh-Day Adventist Saved Fellow Soldiers on Sabbath

What do you do with a soldier who doesn’t eat meat, refuses to train on Saturday, and won’t carry a gun or bayonet? In the case of Cpl. Desmond T. Doss, you give that soldier a Medal of Honor — and many thanks for saving over 75 lives.

Image of the Day: 20 October 2016

World War Two, United States Army Air Force (U.S.A.A.F.), 5th Photo Reconnaissance Group, 4th Photo Squadron: “Mail call.” Handwritten on back: “Must read a letter from  home!” Cpl. Donald Krasno (Photo Lab Tech), Italy, 1944 or 1945

Find image on Flickr 

Image of the Day: 1 September 2016

Corporal Leslie “Bull” Allen carrying a soldier who had been knocked unconscious by a mortar round to safety during the assault on Mount Tambu in New Guinea on the 30 July 1943.  Cpl Allen was awarded the American Silver Star for his action, rescuing 12 American soldiers during the battle.He had also received the Military Medal in February for his courage at Crystal Creek whilst serving with the 2/5th Infantry battalion.
Image found here 

Image of the Day: 30 August 2016

US Marine lets loose with his M1918 Browning Auto Rifle somewhere in the Pacific. Chambered for the .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge, the M1918 was the light auto weapon at platoon level that was supposed to be deployed in a “walking fire” mode — blasting from the hip. In practice, the M1918 was mostly fired with the help of its bipod or like a conventional rifle, provided the shooter could withstand the recoil.

Image found here 

Image of the Day: 13 August 2016

Widow & Son 

Image found here

Today in History: Senate approves United Nations charter 1945

In a ringing declaration indicating that America’s pre-World War II isolation was truly at an end, the U.S. Senate approves the charter establishing the United Nations. In the years to come, the United Nations would be the scene of some of the most memorable Cold War confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Missed in History: Walter Reed

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In the United States (and probably elsewhere, at least for people who keep an eye on U.S. news), Walter Reed’s name is sadly synonymous with both military medicine and with neglect and mismanaged care for veterans. But the man himself did critical, groundbreaking work in disease prevention, particularly related to the hemorrhagic illness known as yellow fever.
Our listener mail is from Karina, about the Young Lords, which is an organization we mentioned in passing in our Sylvia Rivera episode.

Episode link: Walter Reed

Read more here 

[My]  research:
    “Walter Reed.” Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://library.eb.com/levels/referencecenter/article/63004&gt;

    “Walter Reed.” World of Biology. Gale, 2006. Biography in Context. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.

    Bean, William B. “Walter Reed: A Biography.” University Press of Virginia. 1982.

    Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. “Walter Reed (1851-1902).” Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection, University of Virginia. http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu/reed/reed.html

Image of the Day: 4 August 2016

After returning from the front line, Sergeant William Purdum rests and reads mail received on Iwo Jima. He was a member of the Twenty-Eight Marines. 
Photographed by R. H. Stotz, 4 March 1945.

127-GW-329-112426: 

Image found here 

Image of the Day: 31 July 2016

Churchill tanks of ‘B’ Squadron, 107th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps, 34th Tank Brigade. Normandy, 17 July 1944.

Image of the Day: 20 July 2016

Exhausted US Marines sprawl all over beaches while they wait for their LC to arrive and take them off Guadalcanal. The Marines had been left on the island for four months fighting the Japanese, all with waning supplies and growing wounded before the Army arrived to relieve them. 1943

Image found here 

Image of the Day: 1 July 2016

U.S. T92, self-propelled 240mm gun,  WWII

 (photo credit: Mark Holloway/LIFE)

Image of the Day: 9 June 2016

BRITISH AIRSHIP PILOTS FIRST WORLD WAR.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat! I’d say munitions have come a long way.