Photo of the Day
Photo of the Day Podcast
Photo of the Day
0:00
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -4:32
-4:32

Photo of the Day

No. 784

Reading the paper on Nov. 23, 1941.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Cordell Hull summoned the Chinese ambassador from his sick bed to join discussions with ambassadors from Britain, Australia, and the Netherlands regarding the status of US—Japanese bilateral negotiations.

Japanese invasion forces enter Shanghai through one of its canals, 1937.

Japan currently occupies Manchuria and a large portion of China’s eastern coast, including Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing.

Hull assured the ambassadors that, while the US wished to avoid war, no accommodation to Japan would be made at China’s expense.

Japanese aircraft carriers and torpedo bombers, Dec. 1941.

Later, Hull met with Japanese envoys in his Washington apartment.

[In three days, six Japanese aircraft carriers bearing 414 planes will set sail for Pearl Harbor.]

Left: A British tank passes a burning German tank near Tobruk, Nov. 1941. Right: Civilian residents of Moscow dig anti-tank trench defenses, 1941.

As the British pursued their armored offensive in Libya, with its focus on relieving the besieged British garrison at Tobruk, the German High Command conceded yesterday that its forces there were engaged in ‘a severe battle’ with British tank units.

With the British objective being the destruction of every German tank in Libya, a British spokesman said German General Rommel’s main Panzer force has been ‘badly battered.’

On the eastern front in Europe, the Germans reported the capture of the Russian city of Rostov, called the ‘door to the Caucasus oil fields,’ and claimed ‘further progress’ in its drive to capture Moscow.

Pope Pius XII remains a controversial figure. His detractors claim he failed to undertake sufficient action to prevent or limit the Holocaust.

Yesterday the Vatican announced that, while the world must make a choice between ‘this new order or that,’ the Catholic Church is not faced with such a choice.

‘The teachings of the Church are unchanging,’ it said, rejecting Vatican involvement in any ‘terrestrial’ disputes.

Left: The destroyer USS Reuben James was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Iceland on Oct. 31, 1941, with the loss of 115 of 160 crewmen, including all officers. The ship, a part of a trans-Atlantic convoy, was the first US Navy vessel lost in the war. RIght: Churchill boarded a British vessel to sail to America six days after the Pearl Harbor attack. He stayed at the White House for three weeks in December 1941.

Three members of the US Senate known for their isolationist views have criticized the Navy for refusing to release details on Nazi U-boat sinkings of American vessels.

One claimed the Navy had adopted the tactics of Hitler and Stalin in holding back information, while another said that, if the public knew the truth, they’d view the sinkings as ‘the logical result of the President’s war.’

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill has announced that Britain was now in a position to release warships to the Indian and Pacific Ocean, if needed, due to the increase in US naval activity in the Atlantic.

Left: This building. located near Oslo, is named "Grini." It was used to house Norwegian political prisoners during the Nazi occupation. RIght: American community air raid wardens.

Nazi occupation forces in Bergen, Norway, have executed high school teacher Ingvold Garbo for printing anti-Nazi pamphlets and placing them in German Army transport vehicles.

And nearly one million Americans have enrolled as volunteers in the federal government’s Civilian Protection Program where they will receive training in a variety of civil defense jobs: air raid wardens, bomb disposal workers, auxiliary firemen, demolition and road repair workers, decontamination workers, emergency food and housing workers, and medical aides.

The all-white jury in the murder trial for the alleged killer of 14-year-old Emmet Till, Mississippi 1955.

A New Jersey district court clerk, who was the first in his state to assemble a jury composed of Black men and white women, has achieved another ‘first’ by summoning a group of Black women to the court’s jury pool.

White men are increasingly unavailable for jury duty, he said, since most in the region had taken jobs in New Jersey defense plants.

A Polish child rescues a caged canary from Warsaw after the Nazi invasion, 1939.

And finally…

Yesterday marked the start of the annual two-day show of the Empire Cage Bird Association, an organization of canary lovers from New York State.

In a hotel salon at 10:00 am yesterday, curtains were removed from one thousand bird cages, whose occupants then sang and chirped for the next twelve hours before the room darkened and their curtains were returned.

Meanwhile, in a separate room during the course of the day, Frank Tischer, the bird song judge, evaluated those canaries seeking to be named best chirper in show.

Tischer’s esults are expected at the end of the day tomorrow.

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

I’ll see you on Monday.

— Brenda

Share

Stories from the New York Times.

Discussion about this podcast

Photo of the Day
Photo of the Day Podcast
A little history.
Listen on
Substack App
Spotify
RSS Feed
Appears in episode
Brenda Elthon