How To Use This Site




How To Use This Site


This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.

You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date.
Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.

Alternatively, the months are listed immediately below, with the individual days appearing backwards (oldest first).

We hope you enjoy this site.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

January 17

1882  First session of the Wyoming Academy of Sciences.  Attribution:  On  This Day.

1917   Joint Mexican American Committee Concludes
 Wealthy Mexican in flight
The Joint Committee between the US and Mexico concluded its business.  With the agreement of December 24, 1916 having been made, with Carranza having refused to sign it, and with events overcoming the United States that would give Carranza the result he wanted anyway, there was no more work to be done.


Porfirio Diaz 
Porfirio Diaz in full military costume.  The collapse of his rule lead to the long civil war in Mexico.
Some have stated that the mere existence of the Joint Committee was a success in and of itself, and there is some truth to that.  The committee worked for months on an agreement and came to one, and even if Carranza would not execute it as it didn't guaranty the withdraw of American forces, the fact that the country was now hurtling towards war with Germany made it necessary for that to occur without American formal assent to Carranza's demand.  By not agreeing to it, the US was not bound not to intervene again, which was one of the points that it had sought in the first place. Events essentially gave both nations what they had been demanding.


 Gen. Carransa [i.e., Carranza]
Even if that was the case this step, the first in the beginning of the end of the event we have been tracking since March, has to be seen as a Mexican Constitutionalist victory in the midst of the Mexican Revolution.  At the time the Commission came to the United States it represented only one side in a three way (sometimes more) Mexican civil war that was still raging.  Even as Carranza demanded that the United States withdraw his forces were not uniformly doing well against either Villa or Zapata.  Disdaining the United States in general, in spite of the fact that Wilson treated his government as the de facto government, he also knew that he could not be seen to be achieving victory over Villa through the intervention of the United States, nor could he be seen to be allowing a violation of Mexican sovereignty.  His refusal to acquiesce to allowing American troops to cross the border in pursuit of raiders, something that the Mexican and American governments had allowed for both nations since the mid 19th Century, allowed him to be seen as a legitimate defender of Mexican sovereignty and as the legitimate head of a Mexican government.


 Gen. Pancho Villa
Emiliano Zapata, 1879-1919
As will be seen, even though the war in Mexico raged on, events were overtaking the US and Mexico very quickly.  The Constitutionalist government was legitimizing itself as a radical Mexican de jure government and would quickly become just that.  Revolutions against it would go on for years, but it was very quickly moving towards full legitimacy.  And the United States, having failed to capture Villa or even defeat the Villistas, and having accepted an effective passive role in Mexico after nearly getting into a full war with the Constitutionalist, now very much had its eye on Europe and could not strategically afford to be bogged down in Mexico.  A silent desire to get out of Mexico had become fully open.  The rough terms of the agreement arrived upon by the Committee, while never ratified by Carranza, would effectively operate anyway and the United States now very quickly turned to withdrawing from Mexico.


 Gen. Alfaro Obregon & staff of Yaquis
Alvaro Obregon, whose competence and study of military tactics lead to the defeat of Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte.  He'd ultimately become present of Mexico following his coup against Carranza.  Obregon would serve one term as president of Mexico, and was elected to a second term to follow his successor Calles, but he was assassinated prior to taking office.

1919  January 17, 1919. Fake News
I've been impressed, by and large, by how quickly the papers of a century ago reported the news, and often how accurately.

But that wasn't always the case.


Such was the case regarding the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

We've already touched on this story, but what I didn't realize, and in fact what's contrary to the way the story tends to be reported now, their murder was known have occurred almost immediately after it occurred.  I thought it took a period of days, but not so.

But the story surrounding that murder was completely false.


Their murders did add fuel to the Communist flames, as the Casper paper reported, but it certainly wasn't at the hand of the Berlin populace, as seemingly all papers reported that day.  There was no Berliner storming of the lobby of a hotel where they were staying.  No mob clubbed Liebknecht and lynched Luxemburg (although her body was thrown in a canal).  No, indeed, the story was ludicrous given that Berlin had the reputation of being a far left city at the time. . . Red Berlin.



As we know, they were killed by the Freikorps, under orders of a Freikorps Captain Waldemar Pabst, formerly an officer of the German Imperial Army.  Liebknecht was clubbed to death with a rifle butt.  Luxemburg was shot.  Both were tortured. But not by a crowd of Berliners.

How did the contrary story get started?  I don't know, but I have to suspect it was a planted story to cover up the murder.

1920  January 17, 1920. And then the entire nation was dry forever. . .
or so it seemed.


The Wyoming State Tribune, which was united with the rest of the press in seeing Prohibition as a great advance, counselled that eternal vigilance would be necessary to keep the nation dry.


An article in Colliers already used the term "moonshine" in connection with bootleg liquor, and featured this illustration with a young boy confronting "Revenues".



1930  Kendall Wyoming hits -52F.

1933 A Baggs school-bell was rung in the Bells of Hope Presidential Inauguration celebration.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1955  The 141st Medium Tank Battalion, Wyoming Army National Guard, which had been mobilized due to the Korean War, but which was not sent overseas, was deactivated.




2010  Small earthquake swarm commences in Yellowstone National Park.

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