1. FDR versus Wendell Willkie, the 1940 US presidential election.
Wendell Willkie, the Republican who challenged Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, was a wealthy Wall Street lawyer who opposed much of Roosevelt’s New Deal. While in favor of giving Britain some aid in her on-going fight against Nazi Germany, Willkie opposed Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program, claiming it was dictatorial. Willkie also opposed direct US involvement in the war and called Roosevelt a warmonger. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, embroiled in the Battle of Britain, worried that an inexperienced isolationist would become the next US president, an event that would ease Hitler’s path to European domination. Churchill and many others were greatly relieved when Roosevelt secured a strong victory on November 5, receiving 55% of the popular vote and 85% in the electoral college. Some historians claim the 1940 presidential election was the most consequential in US history.
2. Country women, late 1930’s-40s. Dorothea Lange photos.
A former slave and her Alabama home, 1938.
Nebraska farm wife. Neighbors paint her farmhouse, 1940.
A homesteader from Scandinavia years ago, her son now runs their South Dakota farm, 1939.
3. The Battle of Dak To, South Vietnam, November 1967.
In November 1967, US Army personnel engaged in a series of battles with the North Vietnamese Army near Dak To, a village with a small US airstrip located in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam near the Cambodia/Laos border. The battle was sparked by a series of small engagements instigated by the North Vietnamese which were intended to draw US forces away from South Vietnamese cities in advance of a large offensive they planned to launch in January 1968. The US responded to these engagements with extensive “search and destroy” operations in the rugged jungle terrain of Dak To. While the US Army declared victory after the three-week battle, it proved to be one of the costliest of the Vietnam War, with 361 Americans lost and another 1441 wounded.
4. The Eiffel Tower, 1887 — 1889.
French engineer Gustave Eiffel’s company designed and built the Eiffel Tower as the centerpiece of the 1889 World’s Fair, drawing inspiration from the Latting Observatory (second photo), a wooden tower built on New York’s 42nd Street for the 1853 World’s Fair. The Tower’s elevators — uniquely designed to rise on a diagonal — were themselves a marvel and were constructed by the European branch of New York’s Otis Elevator Company. While engineers and artists initially criticized Eiffel’s plans for the Tower, as depicted in the caricature above, most criticism ceased when the Tower opened in May 1889. The Tower was an engineering marvel that delighted the public. For Gustave Eiffel, it was a personal triumph, and he proudly guided press and public officials on a tour to the top in March 1889, prior to its public opening. During the fair, the Tower was bathed in hundreds of gaslights in the evenings, with beacons beaming the colors of the French flag.
5. The “Great Chatsworth Train Wreck,” 1887.
At midnight on August 10-11, 1887, a train from Peoria, IL, bound for Niagra Falls, carrying 500 passengers in twenty wooden coaches, crashed near Chatsworth, IL, while traveling over a bridge that had been weakened earlier in the day by controlled burns intended to prevent prairie brush fires. 85 people were killed and dozens more were injured. The crash made national headlines and is still ranked as one of the worst rail accidents in US history. The disaster spurred the use of steel in passenger cars.
6. Today’s odd lot.
Aviation pioneer Ruth Law bought a plane from Orville Wright in 1912, but he refused to teach her to fly, believing that women ‘were not mechanically inclined.’ She found another flight instructor and went on to set flight records and perform as a stunt pilot. During WWI, Law sought permission to fly with male US aviators in France, but was denied. In 1922, her husband forced her to stop flying. She had a ‘nervous breakdown’ a decade later, a condition she blamed on being grounded.
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