Pickford’s acting career took her from the Toronto stage to small theaters across the US, and then, in 1909, to New York, where film producer D.W. Griffith hired her as a contract player for his film production company, casting her in both bit parts and leading roles in productions averaging one film per week. She hit her stride in Southern California in 1910, where she played the ingénue in mostly silent films for more than 20 years. But Pickford was locked in the straight-jacket of typecasting and her work in more sophisticated adult roles was unappreciated. When she cut off her trademark long curls, the event made national headlines; and then she fell victim to the shift to “talkies.” But during her prime, Pickford blazed the trail for successful leading ladies, commanding lofty salaries and control over her casting, gaining entitlement to a share of a film’s profits, and forming United Artists, an independent film production company, along with Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin.
2. Civil War railroads.
When the Civil War began in 1861, most of the nation’s rail network, and the telegraph wires that were generally constructed alongside, were concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest. The federal War Department was quick to recognize this advantage, and supplemented the existing rail system with additional rail construction [done mostly by Black men] and the integration of captured Southern railroads and equipment. This extensive rail network, which became the world’s largest rail system, enabled the federal government to transport Union troops, equipment and supplies into battle zones efficiently; and the associated telegraph lines gave the War Department [and President Lincoln] near ‘live-time’ communications with field commanders.
3. The failed Iran hostage rescue, 1980.
On April 24, 1980, the US military used a secret location within the Dasht-e Kavir desert, 200 miles from Tehran, as a staging area for an attempted rescue of 52 Americans who had been held hostage by Islamic student revolutionaries in the American Embassy in Tehran since storming the embassy on November 4, 1979. The military rescue operation involved 8 helicopters, air transport planes, specialized US ground forces, and off-shore naval vessels. On the night of the operation, 3 of the 8 helicopters encountered mechanical difficulties, likely due to a desert sand storm. Citing insufficient helicopter capacity for success, military advisors on the ground advised Pres Carter to order an abort; and Carter did so. Then, a helicopter pulling away from the staging area collided with a transport plane on the ground which carried a back-up supply of fuel and several troops. The collision ignited a fire and 8 men were killed. The “Iran Hostage Crises,” as it came to be known, engulfed the Carter presidency. Months later, a second military rescue mission was planned involving specially modified helicopters that could have landed in a football stadium near the embassy; but mechanical problems with the modified helicopters arose. After Carter lost the presidential election to Reagan in Nov. 1980, planning for a second rescue operation ceased. The embassy hostages would be freed in January 1981 after months of negotiations; but, in a pointed rebuke of Carter, Iran delayed their release until two minutes had passed following Reagan taking the presidential oath of office. Reagan dispatched Carter to a US military base in Germany that was poised to receive the hostages, so that Carter could represent the American government in welcoming them home. Both houses of Congress later investigated allegations that Reagan may have asked Iran to retain the hostages until after the election, but no evidence to support this theory was found.
4. Wilson Chinn and light-skinned children - all escaped slaves, 1862.
Wilson Chinn, age 60, escaped to a Union encampment along with 104 other slaves in the spring of 1862, after the fall of New Orleans to US Navy commander David Farragut and the city's occupation by federal troops. Chinn and 30 others bore the initials of their slave master, sugar plantation owner Volsey B. Marmillion, which had been burned onto their foreheads, breasts or arms by a cattle branding iron. Chinn and some very light-skinned slave children were later sent North under the care of two abolitionist organizations; and in 1864, photos of these children and Chinn demonstrating slave torture methods were published in the journal Harper’s Weekly. These photos were circulated widely and funds raised from their sale supported a school for slaves freed in the Gulf region.
5. Rendova Island and PT-109, 1943.
The successful US assault on Rendova Island eliminated a 300-man Japanese garrison and provided a base of operations for the subsequent Allied invasion of New Georgia Island. The Navy then established a base on Rendova Island for its PT boat operations and Lt. Jack Kennedy and his PT-109 crew were stationed there. When the PT-109 exploded and sank on August 2, 1943, while on a Solomon Island patrol mission, Kennedy and his surviving crew — stranded on a tiny island — were rescued by two Solomon Islanders who were patrolling the seas in a dugout canoe on behalf of the Australian military. Unable to transport the crew to safety in their small canoe, the Islanders paddled 35 miles, through Japanese-patrolled waters, to take a message from Kennedy back to the PT base commander on Rendova Island.
6. Today’s odd lot.
1/ Immigrants who have been processed through Ellis Island await transport to Manhattan, 1912. 2/ Pres Lincoln's railroad car, Jan. 1865. It would carry his body home to Illinois 4 months later. 3/ Archie Roosevelt, on Algonquin, in front of the West Wing as it neared its initial completion in 1902. The Oval Office would be added later and first occupied by Taft in 1909. 4/ Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders atop a captured Cuban hill, Spanish-American War, 1898. 5/ Bounty offered for the capture of John Wilkes Booth, April 20, 1865.
Thanks for taking a look. We’ll see you on Wednesday.
