Oh, gee, we’re running late: The National History Day competition live webcast is this morning. Go here: http://www.history.com/classroom/nhd/
National History Day live webcast – June 18, 2009
June 18, 2009
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History, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Television | Tagged: National History Day, Technology, Television, Webcast | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Typewriter of the moment: Steve Allen
June 17, 2009I miss Steve Allen. I miss “Meeting of Minds.” I miss finding out what Allen would be up to next.
Steve Allen at his typewriter, well before 1999
An Olivetti electric? Anyone know for sure?
Steve Allen invented “The Tonight Show” on NBC, and was its first host. It would have been great to have heard his opinion of Jay Leno’s leaving, and Conan O’Brien’s taking over.
Leave a Comment » | Biography, Books, Heroes, History, Technology, Television, Typewriters | Tagged: Heroes, History, Steve Allen, Technology, Television, Typewriters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
46 states agree to work for common education standards — Texas left out
June 17, 2009(This issue has moved a bit since I first drafted this post — watch for updates.)
Ain’t it the way?
46 of the 50 states agreed to work for common education standards through a project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Texas is one of four states not agreeing. News comes from a report in the venerable Education Week (and to me directly via e-mail from Steve Schafersman at Texas Citizens for Science).
National standards for education are prohibited in the U.S. by law and tradition. Education standards traditionally have been set by each of the more than 15,000 local school districts. After the 1957 Sputnik education cleanup, and after the 1983 report of the Excellence in Education Commission, the nation has seen a drive to get at least state-wide standards, though a jealous regard for federalism still prevents national standards.
Almost all other industrialized nations have a set of national standards set by the national government, against which progress may be measured. All the industrialized nations who score higher than U.S. students in international education comparisons, have standards mandated by a national group.
So if it’s an internationally recognized way of improving education, as part of their continuing war on education, and their war on science and evolution theory, the Texas State Board of Education takes the Neanderthal stance, avoiding cooperation with the 92% of the states working to improve American education.
You couldn’t make up villains like this.
Article below the fold.
1 Comment | Education, Education assessment, Education reform, TAKS, TEKS, Testing, Texas Citizens for Science | Tagged: Education, Education assessment, Education reform, National Standards, TAKS, TEKS, Testing, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Gambling to make government work, in Cave Creek, Arizona
June 17, 2009It helps that it happened in a small Arizona town, in the desert, with a colorful name. You cannot imagine such a thing happening in Yonkers, New York, nor in West Bend, Wisconsin.
A deadlocked election for the Cave Creek city council came down to a draw from a deck of cards, a poker deck carefully shuffled by a robed judge.
Cave Creek, Arizona, Judge George Preston, shuffles cards to breal a deadlock between Thomas McGuire, left, and Adam Trenk. New York Times photo by Joshua Trent
We get the story from The New York Times:
Adam Trenk and Thomas McGuire, both in blue jeans and open-collar shirts, strode nervously into Town Hall with their posses. There stood the town judge. He selected a deck of cards from a Stetson hat and shuffled it — having removed the jokers — six times.
Mr. McGuire, 64, a retired science teacher and two-term incumbent on the Town Council, selected a card, the six of hearts, drawing approving oos and aws from his supporters.
Mr. Trenk, 25, a law student and newcomer to town, stepped forward. He lifted a card — a king of hearts — and the crowd roared. Cave Creek had finally selected its newest Council member.
“It’s a hell of a way to win — or lose — an election,” Mr. McGuire said. Still, it was only fitting, Mr. McGuire and others here said, that a town of 5,000 that prides itself on, and sometimes fights over, preserving its horse trails, ranches and other emblems of the Old West would cut cards to decide things. A transplant of 10 years from Yorktown Heights, N.Y., north of New York City, Mr. McGuire said he knew things were different here when not long after arriving he walked into a bar and found a horse inside.
Marshall Trimble, a cowboy singer, folklorist and community college professor who serves as Arizona’s official historian, said, “We are pretty tied to our roots here, at least we like to think so.”
Hans Zinnser, in the venerable Rats, Lice and History, relates the story of an eastern European town where such ties are broken by lice — the two candidates put their beards on a table, and a louse is placed between the men. The man whose beard the louse chooses is the winner.
Of course, this makes it difficult for women to participate in government fully.
Cave Creek is a typical cowboy, American town. Deadlocks in government can be resolved by a game of chance.
Government teachers, history teachers, go get this story and clip it — it’s a good bell ringer, if not a full lesson in democratic republican government.
So, as the state’s Constitution allows, a game of chance was called to break the deadlock. The two candidates agreed on a card game (alternatives from the past have included rolling dice and, on rare occasions, gunfights).
Mr. Trimble said a cutting of the cards or roll of the dice had decided ties a handful of times in Arizona local elections. Tie-breakers have also been tried in other states, including in recent years in Alaska and Minnesota, said Paul Fidalgo, a spokesman for FairVote, a Washington group that monitors and advocates for fair elections.
Mr. Fidalgo said the group objected to random chance as the decider of election outcomes.
“Definitely not a democratic ideal, to say the least,” he said, suggesting, among other ideas, that the tied candidates engage in one more runoff.
That was ruled out here as too expensive, and besides, this was much more fun, as Mayor Vincent Francia made clear, clutching a microphone and serving as M.C.
“Originally we thought of settling this with a paintball fight but that involves skill, and skill is not allowed in this,” Mr. Francia said to laughter.
Did you ever think that the ability to shuffle a deck of cards would be a job skill for a judge? There’s a reason law students play poker in the coffee lounge, and all weekend!
There’s more. Go read the Times. This is also why the New York Times is a great paper, and why we cannot function without “mainstream media.” Who else could have brought us the story?
More resources:
- Story from KPHO Channel 5 News, in Phoenix, with link to a great video (how can you capture the video for classroom use?)
- AZ Central (Arizona Republic) story on the council meeting — approval of a 128,000 square-foot WalMart store was on the first agenda after the card shuffle decision
- Story from ABC affliate, Channel 15
- Politico report
- “Mathematics of a tied election,” from Cox News, 2000
- Lahood Productions’ 2004 election coverage — story of a deck of cards deciding an election in New Mexico in 1998
- Gateway to state election codes, from the National Center for State Courts
- Arizona election code; provision for breaking a tie by lot
4 Comments | Elections, Government, History, Politics | Tagged: Arizona, Cowboys, Elections, Game of Chance, Government, History, Politics, U.S. history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
President Obama on the necessity of science
June 16, 2009Many Americans took great pleasure in Barack Obama’s noting the importance of science, and the importance of heeding science, in his inaugural address.
In April he attended an annual meeting of the poobahs at the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s premiere science organizations and the backbone and guts of the science movement that drove American prosperity and security in the 20th century. Historians will want to note especially the history President Obama recounted in the first few minutes of the speech.
Can we use video for DBQs in AP courses yet? Here’s one to use.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Real racism: Should we brace for protests?
June 16, 2009Here’s a story exposing a real case of racism, “Latest Republican racist e-mail.” Hillbuzz? Texas Darlin’? Are you going to go after this despicable display? Are you going to defend a color-blind society and anti-racism?
No, we didn’t really think so. Now that we’ve established what you really do, we’re just haggling over the price.
2 Comments | Politics, Racism, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Politics, Racism, Rampant stupidity, Republicans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Fake quotes in prize-winning essays
June 16, 2009Rational Rant crashes into some use of faked and edited quotes in prize-winning essays and speeches.
Nothing new to careful observers. Several of the Usual Suspects™ bad quotes turned up.
The trouble with these quotations, which are central to the theses of both pieces, is that all of them are fake. And by fake I don’t mean, please note, that they had a word off here and there, or that they were a popular misquoting of something Washington or Franklin actually said or wrote—I mean that they were out-and-out fakes, words put into their mouths by somebody else with an axe to grind. (And even worse—a number of them were actually misquotations of the original fake quotation.) Here are the seven, in all their glory:
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! (falsely attributed to Patrick Henry)
It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here. (falsely attributed to Patrick Henry)
He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world. (falsely attributed to Benjamin Franklin)
The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart. (falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson)
The future and success of America is not in this Constitution but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded. (falsely attributed to James Madison)
It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. (falsely attributed to George Washington)
It is impossible to rightly govern a country without God and the Bible. (falsely attributed to George Washington)
It’s difficult to get students to attribute quotes with proper citations. Students are mightily confused by the notion of plagiarism. We teachers need to work harder to get them to verify what they quote, and to offer appropriate citations. Since these quotes can’t be cited, students should have discovered the errors as they wrote.
One of the offending pieces was written by a high school junior, the other by a 10-year-old. There’s time to make them savvy (but will anyone do it?).
Do we need to give judges, of essay and speech competitions, sheets of the quotes that most frequently show up, though they are faked?
6 Comments | Bad Quotes, Bogus history, History, Voodoo history, Writing, Writing history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
On the immorality of Darwin, Hubble and others
June 16, 2009Thought of the day, stumbled into at John Wilkins’s site, Evolving Thoughts, “The Demon Spencer”:
Surely that’s an avatar, and not really John Wilkins! It looks like Snowflake.
RBH // June 16, 2009 at 7:56 am |
I wait in vain for a condemnation of Newton’s laws of motion, since they account for so many deaths in virtue of their description of how bullets, speeding automobiles, and the like generate so much energy of impact. F=MA must be immoral.
Where are Richard Weikart, Francis Beckwith and Douglas Groothuis when they could be useful?
Why is it Darwin gets all the flack from fundamentalists, when it was Newton who pushed the angels out of the heavens, Hubble who peeked into the universe’s running without gods?
Wilkins’s post is also useful for his scalpel-like arguments disembowling the claim that Darwin led to Hitler, in comments.
Leave a Comment » | Charles Darwin, Ethics, Evolution, Physics, Science | Tagged: Charles Darwin, Creationism, Ethics, Evolution, Herbert Spencer, Isaac Newton, John Wilkins, Morality, Philosophy, Physics, Religion and Science, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas Darlin’ on Sotomayor: Still ugly
June 15, 2009I can’t bite my tongue and let idiots rage on unfairly and inaccurately about important matters.
Earlier I noted the difficulties with reality at Texas Darlin’. The warden of the blog dropped by and suggested I should join the discussion there if I had something to say. It always ends badly. Someone there says something plug ugly stupid, and I note the facts. My posts get edited, or censored.
Some post linked there, and I looked. I couldn’t resist. The owner and commenters are flailing around like a bass in the boat, trying to make a case that Sonia Sotomayor shouldn’t be a justice of the Supreme Court. They have convinced themselves that she’s a racist, she’s sexist, she got where she is solely because of affirmative action and the Great Cabal that Runs the World. And they are stuffing tinfoil in their ears now — it makes their hats leak, but it keeps them from hearing anything that might upset them.
I expect they’ll remove my posts soon. If you care, I’ve made some defense of Sonia Sotomayor, and I copied the posts below the fold. Texas Darlin’ inmates correspondents repeat every canard about Sotomayor you can imagine. And some you can’t imagine.
Texas Darlin’ is neither.
I am persuaded to do a series of posts on the nomination of Sotomayor. In the interim, here’s my attempt to square things at Texas Darlin’, below the fold.
7 Comments | Advise and Consent, Politics, President Obama, Racism, U.S. Supreme Court | Tagged: Advise and Consent, Affirmative Action, Civil Rights, Equal Rights, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Law School, Nominations, Politics, Racism, U.S. Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
1943 – What the First Amendment means when saluting the flag conflicts with religion
June 14, 2009Historic irony: On Flag Day in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of West Virginia vs. Barnette.
Image 1 - Billy Gobitas explained why he would not salute the U.S. flag, November 5, 1935 - Library of Congress collection
The case started earlier, in 1935, when a 10-year-old student in West Virginia, sticking to his Jehovah’s Witness principles, refused to salute the U.S. flag in a state-required pledge of allegiance. From the Library of Congress:
“I do not salute the flag because I have promised to do the will of God,” wrote ten-year-old Billy Gobitas (1925-1989) to the Minersville, Pennsylvania, school board in 1935. His refusal, and that of his sister Lillian (age twelve), touched off one of several constitutional legal cases delineating the tension between the state’s authority to require respect for national symbols and an individual’s right to freedom of speech and religion.
The Gobitas children attended a public school which, as did most public schools at that time, required all students to salute and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. The Gobitas children were members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a church that in 1935 believed that the ceremonial saluting of a national flag was a form of idolatry, a violation of the commandment in Exodus 20:4-6 that “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor bow down to them. . . .” and forbidden as well by John 5:21 and Matthew 22:21. On 22 October 1935, Billy Gobitas acted on this belief and refused to participate in the daily flag and pledge ceremony. The next day Lillian Gobitas did the same. In this letter Billy Gobitas in his own hand explained his reasons to the school board, but on 6 November 1935, the directors of the Minersville School District voted to expel the two children for insubordination.
The Watch Tower Society of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sued on behalf of the children. The decisions of both the United States district court and court of appeals was in favor of the right of the children to refuse to salute. But in 1940 the United States Supreme Court by an eight-to-one vote reversed these lower court decisions and ruled that the government had the authority to compel respect for the flag as a key symbol of national unity. Minersville v. Gobitis [a printer’s error has enshrined a misspelling of the Gobitas name in legal records] was not, however, the last legal word on the subject. In 1943 the Supreme Court by a six-to-three vote in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, another case involving the Jehovah’s Witnesses, reconsidered its decision in Gobitis and held that the right of free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution denies the government the authority to compel the saluting of the American flag or the recitation of the pledge of allegiance.
There had been strong public reaction against the Gobitis decision, which had been written by Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965). In the court term immediately following the decision, Frankfurter noted in his scrapbook that Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980) told him that Justice Hugo LaFayette Black (1886-1971) had changed his mind about the Gobitis case. Frankfurter asked, “Has Hugo been re-reading the Constitution during the summer?” Douglas replied, “No–he has been reading the papers.”1 The Library’s William Gobitas Papers showcase the perspective of a litigant, whereas the abstract legal considerations raised by Gobitis and other cases are represented in the papers of numerous Supreme Court justices held by the Manuscript Division.
1. Quoted in H. N. Hirsch, The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 152.
John E. Haynes and David Wigdor, Manuscript Division
Second page, Billy Gobitas's explanation of why he will not salute the U.S. flag: "I do not salute the flag not because I do not love my country but I love my country and I love God more and I must obey His commandments." - Library of Congress
Supreme Court justices do not often get a chance to reconsider their decisions. For example, overturning Plessy vs. Ferguson from 1896 took until 1954 in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. In the flag salute/pledge of allegiance cases Justice Hugo Black had a change of mind, and when a similar case from West Virginia fell on the Court’s doorstep in 1943, the earlier Gobitis decision was reversed.
Writing for the majority, Justice Robert H. Jackson said:
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, and all other Americans, thereby have the right to refuse to say what they and their faith consider to be a vain oath.
And that, boys and girls, is what the First Amendment means.
Resources:
10 Comments | Advanced Placement, DBQ sources, First Amendment, Historic documents, History, Religion, Religious Freedom | Tagged: Advanced Placement Government, DBQ sources, First Amendment, Flag Day, Historic documents, History, Pledge of Allegiance, Religion, Religious Freedom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Flag Day, 2009 – Fly your flag today
June 14, 2009June 14th marks the anniversary of the resolution passed by the Second Continental Congress in 1777, adopting the Stars and Stripes as the national flag.
Fly your flag today. This is one of the score of dates upon which Congress suggests we fly our flags.
Flag Day 1916, parade in Washington, D.C. - employees of National Geographic Society march - photo by Gilbert Grosvenor
The photo above drips with history. Here’s the description from the National Geographic Society site:
One hundred and fifty National Geographic Society employees march in the Preparedness Parade on Flag Day, June 14, in 1916. With WWI underway in Europe and increasing tensions along the Mexican border, President Woodrow Wilson marched alongside 60,000 participants in the parade, just one event of many around the country intended to rededicate the American people to the ideals of the nation.
Not only the anniversary of the day the flag was adopted by Congress, Flag Day is also the anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s controversial addition of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.
(Text adapted from “:Culture: Allegiance to the Pledge?” June 2006, National Geographic magazine)
The first presidential declaration of Flag Day was 1916, by President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson won re-election the following November with his pledge to keep America out of World War I, but by April of 1917 he would ask for a declaration of war after Germany resumed torpedoing of U.S. ships. The photo shows an America dedicated to peace but closer to war than anyone imagined. Because the suffragettes supported Wilson so strongly, he returned the favor, supporting an amendment to the Constitution to grant women a Constitutional right to vote. The amendment passed Congress with Wilson’s support and was ratified by the states.
The flags of 1916 should have carried 48 stars. New Mexico and Arizona were the 47th and 48th states, Arizona joining the union in 1913. No new states would be added until Alaska and Hawaii in 1959. That 46-year period marked the longest time the U.S. had gone without adding states, until today. No new states have been added since Hawaii, more than 49 years ago. (U.S. history students: Have ever heard of an essay, “Manifest destiny fulfilled?”)
150 employees of the National Geographic Society marched, and as the proud CEO of any organization, Society founder Gilbert H. Grosvenor wanted a photo of his organization’s contribution to the parade. Notice that Grosvenor himself is the photographer.
I wonder if Woodrow Wilson took any photos that day, and where they might be hidden.
History of Flag Day from a larger perspective, from the Library of Congress:
Since 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation establishing a national Flag Day on June 14, Americans have commemorated the adoption of the Stars and Stripes by celebrating June 14 as Flag Day. Prior to 1916, many localities and a few states had been celebrating the day for years. Congressional legislation designating that date as the national Flag Day was signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1949; the legislation also called upon the president to issue a flag day proclamation every year.
According to legend, in 1776, George Washington commissioned Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross to create a flag for the new nation. Scholars debate this legend, but agree that Mrs. Ross most likely knew Washington and sewed flags. To date, there have been twenty-seven official versions of the flag, but the arrangement of the stars varied according to the flag-makers’ preferences until 1912 when President Taft standardized the then-new flag’s forty-eight stars into six rows of eight. The forty-nine-star flag (1959-60), as well as the fifty-star flag, also have standardized star patterns. The current version of the flag dates to July 4, 1960, after Hawaii became the fiftieth state on August 21, 1959.
Fly your flag with pride today.
Elmhurst Flag Day 1939, DuPage County Centennial - Posters From the WPA
Elmhurst flag day, June 18, 1939, Du Page County centennial / Beauparlant.
Chicago, Ill.: WPA Federal Art Project, 1939.
By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
7 Comments | Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History, History images, World War I | Tagged: Flag Day, Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Recycling = Patriotism
June 14, 2009Once upon a time it was a patriotic action to recycle things.
Boy Scouts distributed posters urging recycling during World War II - National Scouting Museum via National Archives
Once upon a time the nation’s future hinged on the ability of Americans to conserve resources and energy sources, especially gasoline. So Americans, from the president to the lowliest boy, united to urge Americans to recycle rubber, metal, rags and paper. It was the patriotic thing to do.
Make it do or do without - poster encouraging recycling and conservation for World War II
Did the recycling make significant contributions to the resources necessary to win the war? A few argue that the value of the campaigns was uniting people toward a common goal. But there were some clear connections between recycling of some products and the resources delivered to soldiers at the front that aided their fighting.
In the Pacific, Japan cut off U.S. access to rubber in Indochina. Rubber from South America and Africa could be intercepted in shipping by German u-boats. Metal refining from ores required more energy than refining from scrap. Although the U.S. entered the war as the world’s leading petroleum exporting nation, gasoline and Diesel fuel supplies were precious for airplanes, tanks and other machines directly supporting the troops.
Recycling was patriotic in every possible meaning of the word.
Is it really a news flash? Recycling is still the patriotic thing to do.
Waster paper made the boxes in which blood plasma was shipped to battlefield hospitals and medics
What the hell? They’re pro-garbage? Who in the world pays for this campaign Milloy runs, Vladimir Putin? Vlad the Impaler?
Digg: http://digg.com/d1toaH
10 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Conservation, Cost of Green, Environmental protection, History, Natural resources, Politics, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Boy Scouts of America, Conservation, Cost of Green, Green Hell, Natural resources, Patriotism, Recycling | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
In comedy, truth, wisdom, and education
June 13, 2009Remember Jonathan Miller and “The Body in Question?”
Dick Cavett remembers, discusses the now-75-years-old man. Plus, delightfully, Cavett has video at his blog at the New York Times.
And here, Miller explains to Cavett just why creationism is in error, and why the study of Darwin and evolution is worthwhile. You’ll have to go to the Times site for the full program; here’s a few minutes’ of of Miller:
Leave a Comment » | Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Education, Evolution, History, Science, Television | Tagged: Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Dick Cavett, Education, Evolutin, History, Jonathan Miller, Science, Television | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
$36 million to clean up DDT mess
June 12, 2009One more reminder that DDT is a deadly substance: EPA announced a program to cap render harmless the largest DDT dump, off the coast of California.
Jeff Gottlieb writes in The Los Angeles Times:
The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed spending at least $36 million to clean up the world’s largest deposit of banned pesticide DDT, which lies 200 feet underwater off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Montrose Chemical Corp., which was based near Torrance, released 110 tons of DDT and 10 tons of toxic PCBs into the sewers from 1947 through 1971. The chemicals then flowed into the Pacific.
What do you think? A substance that is deadly, makes one of the largest and deadliest Superfund sites in America, and costs $36 million in taxpayer smackaroons just to seal up so it won’t kill again — is it “perfectly safe” as the advocates claim?
This is one subject you will not see discussed at Steven Milloy’s sites, Junk Science, nor Green Hell. You won’t find the Chronically Obsessed with Rachel Carson (COWRC) mentioning this clean-up.
Remind them.
Public hearings on this plan are scheduled for June 23 and 25.
Leave a Comment » | DDT, Economics, Environmental protection, Natural history, oceans, Public health, Rachel Carson, Science, Wildlife | Tagged: Cleanup, DDT, Environmental protection, Palos Verdes, Rachel Carson, Superfund | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
June 12, 1898 – U.S. flag rises over Guantanamo Bay
June 12, 2009
Hoisting the flag at Guantanamo, Cuba, June 12, 1898. Edward H. Hart, photographer. Image from the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress
Oh, it’s important in retrospect, no?
On June 10, 1898, U.S. Marines landed at Guantánamo Bay. For the next month, American troops fought a land war in Cuba that resulted in the end of Spanish colonial rule in the Western Hemisphere. Cuban rebels had gained the sympathy of the American public while the explosion and sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, widely blamed on the Spanish despite the absence of conclusive evidence, further boosted American nationalistic fervor.
On June 12, the area was secured and the flag posted.
1 Comment | 1898, Flag ceremony, foreign affairs, History, History images, Spanish American War, War | Tagged: 1898, Cuba, foreign affairs, Guantanamo Bay, History images, Spanish American War, U.S. Flag | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 