Posts tagged “history”
Twenty Thousand Hertz
A podcast recommendation
Never Forget
A terrible anniversary
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910
The Essex
On this date in 1820, a sperm whale attacked a whaling ship off the coast of South America. The Essex hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, and was captained by George Pollard Jr. Pollard was only 29, the youngest man to ever command a whaling ship; the Essex, by contrast, was pretty old, and she was also
Get action. Do things. Be sane.
Don’t fritter away your time. Create. Act.
Take a place wherever you are and be somebody.
Get action.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Roosevelts
Anniversary
Crisis on Infinite Earths
“The appeal seems universal. To social historians it is a microcosm of the early 1900s. To nautical enthusiasts it is the ultimate shipwreck. To students of human nature it is an endlessly fascinating laboratory. For lovers of nostalgia it has the allure of yesterday. For daydreamers it has all those might-have-beens.”
Walter Lord, on the tale of the RMS Titanic
The 1973 National Personnel Records Center Fire
An unparalleled disaster
Prohibition!
It’s the 94th birthday of Prohibition! The Eighteenth Amendment, the Volstead Act, took effect on this date in 1920, a year after it was ratified. Congress passed the Act even though President Woodrow Wilson had vetoed it. It made the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor illegal. It took almost 14 years before the 21st