#Eniwetok Atoll

[irawhiti]

while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.

important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.

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in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.

the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.

200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.

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i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.

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as i just mentioned, ānewetak (the eniwetok atoll) was bombed so violently that an entire island, āllokļap, was permanently and completely destroyed. an entire island. it's just GONE. the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested on this island. the crater is visibly larger than any of the islands next to it, more than a mile in diameter and roughly fifteen storeys deep. the hydrogen bomb released roughly 700 times the energy released during the bombing of hiroshima. this would, of course, be later outdone by other hydrogen bombs dropped on the pacific, reaching over 1000 times the energy released.

one attempt to clean up the waste on ānewetak was the construction of a large ~380ft dome, colloquially known as the tomb, on runit island. the island has been essentially turned into a nuclear waste dump where several other islands of ānewetak have moved irradiated soil to and, due to climate change, rising seawater is beginning to seep into the dome, causing nuclear waste to leak out. along with this, if a large typhoon were to hit the dome, there would be a catastrophic failure followed by a leak of nuclear waste into the surrounding land, drinking water, and ocean. the tomb was built haphazardly and quickly to cut costs.

hey, though, there's a plus side! the water in the lagoon and the soil surrounding the tomb is far more radioactive than the currently contained radioactive waste. a typhoon wouldn't cause (much) worse irradiation than the locals and ocean already currently experience, anyway! it's already gone to shit! and who cares, right, the only ""concern"" is that it will just further poison the drinking water of the locals with radioactive materials. this can just be handwaved off as a nonissue, i guess. /s

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at least 36 bombs were detonated in the general vicinity of kiritimati (christmas island) and johnson atoll. while johnson atoll has seemingly never been inhabited by polynesians, kiritimati was used intermittently by polynesians (and later on, micronesians) for several hundred years. many islands in the pacific were inhabited seasonally and likewise many pacific islanders should be classified as nomadic but it has always been convenient for the goal of white supremacy and imperalism to claim that semi-inhabited areas are completely uninhabited, claimable pieces of terra nullius.

regardless of the current lack of inhabitants on these islands, the nuclear detonations have caused widespread ecological damage to otherwise delicate island ecosystems and have further spread nuclear fallout across the entirety of the pacific ocean.

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while the marshall islands, micronesia, and the surrounding areas of melanesia and polynesia were (and still are) by far the worst affected by these atrocities, the entirety of the pacific has been irradiated to some extent due to ocean/wind currents freely spreading nuclear fallout through the water and air. all in all, at least 318 nuclear bombs were detonated across the pacific. i say "at least" because these are just the events that have been declassified and frankly? i wouldn't be shocked to find out they didn't stop there.

please don't leave the atomic destruction of the pacific out of this conversation. we've been displaced, irradiated, murdered, poisoned, and otherwise mass exterminated by nuclear testing on purpose and we are still suffering because of it. many of us have radiation poisoning, many of us have no safe ancestral home anymore. i cannot fucking state this enough, ISLANDS WERE DISINTEGRATED INTO NONEXISTENCE.

look, this isn't blaming people for not talking about us or knowing the extent of these issues, but it's... insidiously ironic that i haven't seen a single post that even mentions pacific islanders in a conversation about indigenous voices/voices of colour being ignored when it comes to nuclear tests and the devastation they've caused.

[todaysdocument]

Tanks to the Marshalls -- Special Delivery

Record Group 26: Records of the U.S. Coast GuardSeries: Photographs of Activities, Facilities, and PersonalitiesFile Unit: Art by Digemma through Frankle

0909441

From:

Public Relations Division

U.S. Coast Guard

Washington, D.C.

Thank to the Marshalls -- Special Delivery

Coast Guardsmen, aboard an invasion transport, lift a tank clear of the deck and swing it over the side to landing craft preparatory to running it to the beaches of Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshalls. This sketch of war in the Pacific is by Coast Guard combat artist Bruno Figallo, of Washington, D.C., an invasion veteran.

In rewriting caption please mention "Coast Guard."

[captain-price-unofficially]

"An American Marine, in foreground, still clutches the knife with which he killed the Jap, in background, in a duel on Engebi Island, Eniwetok Atoll. A moment after finishing off his adversary, a sniper's bullet killed the Marine." ca. Feb 1944.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 2.20 (after 1940)

1942 – World War II: Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace. 1943 – World War II: American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies. 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms. 1944 – World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers. 1944 – World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Atoll. 1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League. 1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy. 1959 – The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate. 1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes. 1965 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts. 1968 – The China Academy of Space Technology, China's main arm for the research, development, and creation of space satellites, is established in Beijing. 1971 – The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert. 1979 – An earthquake cracks open the Sinila volcanic crater on the Dieng Plateau, releasing poisonous H2S gas and killing 149 villagers in the Indonesian province of Central Java. 1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years. 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. 1991 – In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters. 1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski, at the age of 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. 2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others. 2005 – Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout. 2009 – Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack. 2010 – In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago. 2014 – Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, many reportedly killed by snipers. 2015 – Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services. 2016 – Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.

[bobmccullochny]

History

October 31st - Halloween or All Hallow's Eve, an ancient celebration combining the Christian festival of All Saints with Pagan autumn festivals.

October 31, 1517 - Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg's palace church, denouncing the selling of papal indulgences and questioning various ecclesiastical practices. This marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

October 31, 1940 - The Battle of Britain concluded. Beginning on July 10, 1940, German bombers and fighters had attacked coastal targets, airfields, London and other cities, as a prelude to a Nazi invasion of England. British pilots in Spitfires and Hurricanes shot down over 1,700 German aircraft while losing 915 fighters. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," declared Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

October 31, 1941 - Mount Rushmore National Memorial was completed after 14 years of work. The memorial contains 60-foot-tall sculptures of the heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt - representing America's founding, political philosophy, preservation, and expansion and conservation.

October 31, 1950 - Earl Lloyd became the first African American to play in a National Basketball Association (NBA) game when he took the floor for the Washington Capitols in Rochester, New York.

October 31, 1952 - The U.S. detonated its first hydrogen bomb at the Elugelab Atoll in the Eniwetok Proving Grounds in the Pacific Marshall Islands.

October 31, 1961 - The body of Joseph Stalin was removed from the mausoleum in Red Square and reburied within the Kremlin walls among the graves of lesser Soviet heroes. This occurred as part of Russia's de-Stalinization program under his successor Nikita Khrushchev. Stalin's name was also removed from public buildings, streets, and factories. Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.

October 31, 1968 - During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson ordered a halt of American bombing of North Vietnam.

October 31, 1984 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by three Sikh members of her bodyguard while walking in the garden of her New Delhi home.

Birthday - Chinese soldier and statesman Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) was born in Chekiang. Educated at the Wampoa Military Academy, he led the KMT (nationalist) forces in the struggle against the Communist army led by Mao Zedong.

[666radio666]

Rise Above - June 7, 2023

Black Flag - Rise Above, Damaged Blood Sucking Freaks - New Rose, Bottlesick The Damned - Melody Lee, Machine Gun Etiquete The Uglies - Pyramid, Planet Uglies The Neuros - orchids on a budget, 7" Price of Silence - Sight, Price of Silence RAW POWER - Start a Fight, Screams from the gutter Meat Puppets - split myself in 2, Meat Puppets II Jaguar God - down on the day, revenge and retruibution Luminous Green Snow - Mushrooms, Split cassette with Yogsothoth/Boiled Lollies & Puppy Dogs (Demo)/bonus track4:14 Pigasus - Hey Fucker, Days of Swine and Roses Killdozer - Take the Money and Run, for ladies only Skid City - Blue, Greetings from Skid City Otoboke Beaver - Anata Ga Fall in Love Shita No Ha Watashi Ga Kirai Na Onnanoko, Okoshiyasu!! Otoboke Beaver (Remastered 2018) Scratch Acid - Mary Had a Little Drug Problem, The Greatest Gift G.I.S.M. - Endless Blockade for the Pussyfooter, Detestation Flipper - Triple Mass, Love / Fight X - Nausea, Los Angeles Husker Du - I'll Never Forget You, Zen Arcade HAGOL - WDDP, Jin-Gong Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers - chinese rocks, L.A.M.F. Roo Shooter - The Corrupter of Me, People Gather Round for the Sound of Slaughter Aborted Tortoise - Primordial, A ALBUM Contrapunctus - plastic world, gone pop o pies - industrial rap, pop o pies anthology Hit The Jackpot - the football team, hit the jackpot Hardy Coxon - Pasquale, eniwetok atoll II Lost Sounds - Plastic skin, Black-Wave Hydromedusa - part one, long live Black Flag - Drinking and Driving, in my head Glen and the Peanut Butter Men - Not Me it's You, The Return of Glen and the Peanut Butter Men Replacements - Favorite Thing, Let it Be Nylex - Violent Action, Demo Bollard - Pain in the Life, Happy Never After Perdition - Crisis, OXYGEN (CD single from forthcoming album in 2022) All The Weathers - jobs for dogs, For The Worms Goon Wizarrd - Scectpterodacular, in the end, my girlfriend became my arch enemy, my arch enemy became my best friend, and my best friend became my girlfriend

[history-today]

Today In History:

A bit of February 17th history…

In 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.

In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.

In 1815, the United States and Britain exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.

In 1865, during the Civil War, Columbia, South Carolina, burned as the Confederates evacuated and Union forces moved in.

In 1897, the forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convened its first meeting in Washington.

In 1933, Newsweek magazine was first published under the title “News-Week.”

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. forces invaded Eniwetok Atoll, encountering little initial resistance from Imperial Japanese troops. (The Americans secured the atoll less than a week later.)

In 1947, the Voice of America began broadcasting to the Soviet Union.

In 1968, the original Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, located on the campus of Springfield College in Massachusetts, was opened to the public.

In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon departed the White House with his wife, Pat, on a historic trip to China.

In 1986, Johnson & Johnson announced it would no longer sell over-the-counter medications in capsule form, following the death of a woman who had taken a cyanide-laced Tylenol capsule.

In 1988, Lt. Col. William Higgins, a Marine Corps officer serving with a United Nations truce monitoring group, was kidnapped in southern Lebanon by Iranian-backed terrorists (he was later slain by his captors).

In 1996, world chess champion Garry Kasparov beat IBM supercomputer “Deep Blue,” winning a six-game match in Philadelphia (however, Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in a rematch in 1997).

[lonestarbattleship]

Crewmen on-loading 14 inch shells from USS SANGAY (AE-10) to USS NEW MEXICO (BB-40).

Crewmen lowering a 14 inch High Capacity Shell into the ship's magazines.

They were at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands, probably just before the Marianas Operation.

Photographed in June 1944.

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command: 80-G-K-1840, 80-G-K-1841, 80-G-K-1842, 80-G-K-1845, 80-G-K-1846, 80-G-K-1847, 80-G-K-14228, 80-G-K-1710, 80-G-K-1711, 80-G-K-1712

[mostly-history]

19-year-old PFC Faris “Bob” M. Tuohy (left) and his comrades enjoying a cup of coffee after two days and nights on the battlefield.  These men from the US Marine Corps took part in an amphibious operation to conquer Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

[aiiaiiiyo]

Faris "Bob" M. Tuohy is holding a photo from 1944. That’s him on the left, holding a cup of coffee, after two days of brutal fighting on Eniwetok Atoll. He’s 94 years old in this picture and 97 today Check this blog!

[usaac-official]

Ground crew work on F4U-1s of VMF-113 on Engebi Island, Eniwetok Atoll, 1944

[scienza-magia]

La prima bomba H ha cancellato un'isola del Pacifico

Il primo test di una bomba all’idrogeno, 70 anni fa. Cancellò dalla mappa l'isola su cui fu condotto, e diede inizio a una nuova era di deterrenza nucleare. Il 1° novembre del 1952, settant’anni fa, gli Stati Uniti fecero il primo test nucleare della storia con una bomba all’idrogeno. La bomba, che aveva il nome in codice Ivy Mike, era 500 volte più potente di quelle che pochi anni prima erano state sganciate sulle città giapponesi di Hiroshima e Nagasaki e che posero fine alla Seconda guerra mondiale. Il test eliminò dalla carta geografica l’isoletta disabitata del Pacifico su cui era stato condotto, e diede avvio a una nuova e più pericolosa fase della Guerra fredda, aprendo alla possibilità che un conflitto nucleare avrebbe davvero potuto significare l’estinzione dell’umanità. Semplificando moltissimo, in una bomba nucleare tradizionale (detta anche “bomba A”) si sviluppa una reazione di fissione nucleare, in cui il nucleo di un atomo – di molti atomi in realtà – viene “spezzato” in due parti liberando energia, che poi è l’energia distruttiva della bomba. In una bomba a idrogeno (detta anche “bomba H”, dal simbolo dell’idrogeno, o “bomba termonucleare”) la fissione nucleare viene usata per innescare una fusione nucleare, in cui i nuclei di due atomi di idrogeno si uniscono assieme per formare un atomo di elio. Questa seconda reazione genera molta più energia della prima a parità di masse in gioco, e per questo fu usata per amplificare la potenza della bomba nucleare convenzionale. Si parla inoltre di bomba “all’idrogeno” perché il combustibile termonucleare è composto da isotopi dell’idrogeno.

1st April 1954: One hundred miles of sky covered by smoke and radioactivity from the first H-Bomb explosion (US) at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) Della possibilità di usare la fusione nucleare per creare una bomba di eccezionale potenza si era cominciato a pensare prima ancora che fosse creata la tradizionale bomba A: nel 1941 ne parlarono, per esempio, i fisici Enrico Fermi ed Edward Teller, entrambi membri del Progetto Manhattan, il grande progetto segreto finanziato dal governo degli Stati Uniti durante la Seconda guerra mondiale che portò alla costruzione della bomba atomica. Dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale, però, il Progetto Manhattan fu di fatto sciolto e molti degli eminenti studiosi che ne facevano parte tornarono alle loro vite in università o nei centri studi. Benché l’amministrazione americana del presidente Harry Truman volesse proseguire con lo sviluppo e la ricerca sulle armi nucleari, vi fu tuttavia un periodo di stanca che durò qualche anno, anche perché usare la fusione nucleare per la costruzione di una bomba si rivelò estremamente difficile. Le cose cambiarono il 23 settembre del 1949, quando il presidente Truman annunciò pubblicamente di avere le prove che l’Unione Sovietica aveva testato una propria arma nucleare. Gli Stati Uniti smisero di essere l’unica potenza nucleare del mondo e cominciò l’era della deterrenza. A quel punto, l’amministrazione Truman decise di andare avanti con più decisione con i lavori per la realizzazione di una bomba a fusione nucleare, nonostante l’opposizione di vari esperti e scienziati, compreso il fisico Robert Oppenheimer, che era stato il capo del Progetto Manhattan. La decisione di lavorare a una bomba a fusione (che al tempo veniva chiamata “super bomba”) fu resa pubblica dall’amministrazione Truman, ma ovviamente le modalità e le tempistiche del progetto furono tenute segrete.

circa 1952: The mushroom cloud of fire and smoke rises 40,000 feet in two minutes after the Hydrogen Bomb explosion at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images) La grossa scoperta che rese possibile la costruzione della bomba H arrivò due anni dopo, nel 1951, quando Edward Teller e Stanislaw Ulam, due fisici che avevano partecipato al Progetto Manhattan, capirono che per realizzare una bomba termonucleare era necessario mettere assieme le due reazioni di fissione e fusione nucleare. Nelle bombe che usano il cosiddetto “design Teller-Ulam”, una fissione nucleare viene usata per innescare la più potente fusione: semplificando ancora una volta all’estremo, all’interno di una bomba H viene fatta scoppiare una bomba nucleare “convenzionale” per avviare la reazione di fusione. La decisione di costruire una “super bomba” usando il “design Teller-Ulam” fu presa nel giugno del 1951 e in poco più di un anno, a metà del 1952, era pronto un prototipo funzionante. La super bomba fu chiamata Ivy Mike, e chiaramente non era adatta per un utilizzo in combattimento: era un oggetto enorme, che pesava 82 tonnellate e occupava moltissimo spazio perché il deuterio (l’isotopo dell’idrogeno usato come combustibile della fusione) doveva essere mantenuto in forma liquida da un gigantesco impianto di refrigerazione. Per il test fu scelta l’isola di Elugelab, un���isoletta che faceva parte dell’atollo di Enewetak, che a sua volta fa parte delle Isole Marshall, nell’oceano Pacifico. Lo spostamento e il posizionamento della gigantesca Ivy Mike richiese l’utilizzo di una portaerei, il lavoro di migliaia di persone e la collaborazione di esercito, marina, aviazione e intelligence degli Stati Uniti. L’esplosione avvenne la mattina del 1° novembre del 1952: fu sprigionata un’energia di 10,4 megatoni, oltre 500 volte quella della bomba sganciata su Nagasaki in Giappone qualche anno prima (1 megatone è pari all’energia sviluppata dallo scoppio di un milione di tonnellate di tritolo). L’esplosione cancellò dalla carta geografica l’isola di Elugelab e cambiò la conformazione delle isole di fianco: creò un cratere di 1.900 metri di diametro di 50 metri di profondità. L’enorme fungo atomico arrivò a 41 chilometri di altezza e a 161 chilometri di diametro. La vegetazione di tutte le isole dell’atollo fu completamente rasa al suolo.

L’atollo di Enewetak in una foto aerea d’epoca, prima e dopo l’esplosione Straordinariamente i giornali del giorno dopo, sia quelli americani sia quelli internazionali, non riportarono la notizia del test. La sua realizzazione non era stata resa pubblica, e per qualche giorno l’amministrazione statunitense riuscì a mantenere il segreto, complice il fatto che le Isole Marshall erano molto remote e che i giornali americani erano concentrati sulle elezioni americane del 4 novembre, che sarebbero state vinte da Dwight Eisenhower. Come ha ricordato lo Smithsonian Magazine, il primo giornale a dare la notizia del test fu il Los Angeles Examiner l’8 novembre, basandosi sulla parola di un solo testimone oculare che aveva assistito all’esplosione da una delle navi di osservazione posizionate attorno.

Nei giorni successivi, poi, vari altri giornali cominciarono a ottenere nuove testimonianze, e nel giro di qualche settimana l’amministrazione americana confermò il test. Tempo dopo pubblicò uno dei video girati durante l’esplosione, che è tuttora uno dei più celebri e impressionanti di quell’epoca. Negli Stati Uniti la notizia del test della bomba H fu accolta al tempo stesso con orrore e con sollievo di esserci arrivati per primi. Il test fu condannato dall’Unione Sovietica, che tuttavia si mise immediatamente al lavoro per costruire una propria bomba all’idrogeno. Fece il suo primo test appena tre anni dopo, nel 1955, anche grazie alle intuizioni di Andrei Sakharov, il grande fisico che poi sarebbe diventato dissidente e avrebbe ricevuto il Nobel per la Pace. Nel 1961 l’Unione Sovietica testò in un’isola artica la cosiddetta Bomba Zar, la più potente bomba H mai fatta esplodere, con una potenza di oltre 50 megatoni, contro i 10 di Ivy Mike.

Il grande buco nell’atollo di Enewetak dove un tempo c’era l’isoletta di Elugelab, visibile su Google Maps Read the full article

[thevaultoftheatomicspaceage]

2 craters from surface nuclear explosions Cactus, 18 kt (covered by a dome) and Lacrosse, 40 kt. Atoll Eniwetok, photo 2016.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Coast Guardsmen assist marines climbing back on board their assault transport USS Arthur Middleton (APA-25) from the swift conquest of Eniwetok Atoll. 19-20 February 1944.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 2.20

1339 – The Milanese army and the St. George's (San Giorgio) Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti clash in the Battle of Parabiago; Visconti is defeated. 1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark. 1521 – Juan Ponce de León sets out from Spain for Florida with about 200 prospective colonists. 1547 – Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. 1685 – René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas. 1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington. 1798 – Louis-Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power. 1813 – Manuel Belgrano defeats the royalist army of Pío de Tristán during the Battle of Salta. 1816 – Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. 1835 – The 1835 Concepción earthquake destroys Concepción, Chile. 1846 – Polish insurgents lead an uprising in Kraków to incite a fight for national independence. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Olustee: The largest battle fought in Florida during the war. 1865 – End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance. 1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City. 1877 – Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. 1901 – The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time. 1905 – The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts's mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. 1909 – Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro. 1913 – King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra. 1920 – An earthquake kills between 114 and 130 in Georgia and heavily damages the town of Gori. 1931 – The U.S. Congress approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California. 1931 – An anarchist uprising in Encarnación briefly transforms the city into a revolutionary commune. 1933 – The U.S. Congress approves the Blaine Act to repeal federal Prohibition in the United States, sending the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution to state ratifying conventions for approval. 1933 – Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign. 1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica. 1942 – WW2: Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace. 1943 –Propaganda in ww2: American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies. 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms. 1944 – World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers. 1944 – World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Atoll. 1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League. 1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy. 1959 – The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate. 1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes. 1965 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts. 1968 – The China Academy of Space Technology, China's main arm for the research, development, and creation of space satellites, is established in Beijing. 1971 – The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert. 1979 – An earthquake cracks open the Sinila volcanic crater on the Dieng Plateau, releasing poisonous H2S gas and killing 149 villagers in the Indonesian province of Central Java. 1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years. 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. 1991 – In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters. 1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski, at the age of 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. 2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others. 2005 – Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout. 2009 – Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack. 2010 – In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago. 2014 – Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, many reportedly killed by snipers. 2015 – Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services. 2016 – Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

This photo, taken in February 1944, aboard USS Arthur Middleton (off Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands), shows PFC Faris "Bob" M. Tuohy (in the foreground) and two other exhausted Marines drinking coffee after two days and two nights of fierce fighting. As a proud member of the 3rd Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment, Bob confronted a relentless enemy, and went through hell....for our freedom. This true American hero survived the war, returned to Ohio, and is now 96 years old. Sadly, the two other Marines were both killed in action (on Guam and Okinawa). One of them was PFC Stephen Garboski (on the right) who came from Ringoes, New Jersey.