June 18

1859  Captain W. F. Raynolds' expedition set out from Fort Pierre, SD, to explore the upper Yellowstone, Gallatin, and Madison Rivers. Attribution:  On This Day.

1893  Sheridan Inn opened.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1907  The first train arrives in Centennial, where today there is a train museum.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   The Crisis on the Border in 1916: The National Guard Mobilized

 New York National Guardsmen in Texas, 1916.

The National Guard is mobilized due to the ongoing crisis on the Mexican border caused by the Villista raid of Columbus New Mexico.  This included, of course, the somewhat short handed Wyoming National  Guard.

Mobilized New York National Guardsman.

Not all of the National Guard was Federalized at one time.  The entire National Guard had been Federalized prior to the entry of the United States in World War One, but the mobilization came in stages, with various units taking tours of duty along the Mexican border while the crisis with Mexico endured. The mobilization came to be a critical aspect of the United State's preparations for World War One, although accidentally, as it effectively meant that a huge proportion of the American defense establishment was mobilized and effectively training prior to the American entry into the war.

National Guard Camp, Camp Ordway Virginia, 1916.

1918  Huge evening thunderstorms washed out railroad bridges in Central Wyoming on June 17.  Hardest hit was the area between Powder River and Waltman.  The news hit today.

A rail line still runs between the towns today, but there are no bridges.  At the time, there were numerous ones, which shows how different rail bed construction was at the time.

Interestingly, at the time of 2018, this same day was also pretty rainy in Central Wyoming.

The Casper Daily Press for June 18, 1918. Big storms cause big damage.

And not just the storm of war.

We posted about the big storm that wiped out bridges in Central Wyoming yesterday.  Today it hit the press.

And flood waters were becoming a concern on the Sandbar.  This, of course, at a time when only one dam, Pathfinder, was upstream on the Platte.

1976   The J.C. Penney Home in Kemmerer was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1990  The Gap Puche Cabin near Jackson, WY, added to the National Register of Historic Places.  Attribution:  On This Day.

2017   American Father's Day
 

Today is Father's Day in the United States for 2017.

 Almost like a scene out of the Andy Griffith Show, father and son fishing, Jackson County West Virginia.

It's set on the Third Sunday of June, meaning you father's don't get the day off.

I'd have guessed this was some sort of uniquely American holiday, but it isn't.  The US actually came to it late in comparison to Catholic Europe and Latin America, where it was established on conjunction with the Feast of St. Joseph, which is celebrated on March 19.  The separated Coptic Church, interestingly, also makes this connection but celebrates the feast day on July 20. 

 St. Joseph depicted with Jesus as a young boy.  This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less.

The connection comes due to the obvious role of St. Joseph.  In this connection its also interesting to note that the focus on St. Joseph has increased in recent years in association with his role as the patron saint of workers.  Indeed, he's sometimes called St. Joseph the Worker.

Another depiction of St. Joseph, who made his living as a carpenter and passed that trade on to Jesus.  This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less.

Those two roles, it occurs to me, are probably more connected than it might at first seem. . . . 

Father's Day as an American holiday was first proposed in the early 20th Century and Woodrow Wilson wanted to make it such. Wilson seems to have experienced his first early troubles with Congress, which would become enormous later on, with holidays as Congress would have none of it.  Note that we just passed Flag Day which didn't become official until after World War One, but which was subject to a Presidential proclamation in 1916.   In regards to Father's Day, Congress feared it would become commercial so they wouldn't go for it. Finally President Johnson made it subject to a proclamation in 1966 and it became an official holiday in 1972.

Based on the advertising found this time of year, Congress may have had a reason to worry about the day's commercialization. . . . 

 It's been a really long time since you could get a plate of anything for .30.

On this day I always see, now that we have so much cyber stuff going on all the time, posted dedications by some to their fathers.  And that's great.  What strikes me, however, is the interesting connection between the example of St. Joseph and the day, and in a way that occurred to me about this day before but not quite in the same context.  If we look at St. Joseph's veneration's, that of father and of a worker, what we're left with is the example of a really dedicated individual who carried his family through some really horrible times, to say the least, and who passed his trade on to his son through direct example.  

We don't know a lot, indeed, about St. Joseph.  We know that he was older than Mary but much is debated beyond that.  Quite a bit of early church attention suggests that he may have been a widower at the time that he became betrothed to Mary and indeed that explains a lot about their relationship that seems to completely baffle modern Americans in particular, given that they think relationships between men and women as portrayed by Friends or The Big Bang Theory are normal, rather than pathologically abnormal in the real and natural sense.  What that means is that a lot of St. Joseph's life was about duty and example.  Indeed, his life, to the extent we know about it, was pretty much about dedication.  He may very well have suffered the tragedy of the loss of his first wife, and may have had children from that union (again, this is maintained by quite a few students of the Gospels and it seems to be a fairly valid argument).  His betrothal to Mary seems likely to have been under circumstances in which he was marrying a young woman (Mary was likely quite young, perhaps about sixteen) who was perhaps a consecrated virgin (again, something argued by some students of the Bible and which seems to be a pretty valid argument) which meant that the marriage was going to be a Josephite Marriage from the onset.  He wasn't making his life easier in any sense by the marriage and right from the very onset it took a turn that made it marketedly worse for him on a real physical level.  And yet, he just kept on keeping on.

Immigrant farm laborer with his sons, the older two of which were already working with their father at the time this photo was taken in the late Great Depression.  Note the depiction in the background which sort of ties into this dicussion.

Which is part of my point.

A lot of fathers today just don't stick around.

Indeed we've grown accustomed to a situation in which they're not even expected to quite often, even by the women they get pregnant.  This has made, to a degree, us accustomed to the concept that fatherhood is somehow optional.  It isn't.  It is, rather, an obligation, and being there is a big part of that obligation.  And, by being there I mean in the sense that St. Joseph was.  

Now most of us won't endure trials such as his.  Most of us won't have to flea for Egypt.  But then most of us wouldn't pass that test and men who just ignore the situation in general have already flunked it.  Women who allow them to are flunking it as well.

But being there means more than being physically present.  It also means being some sort of example.  We all fall short on that, particularly in comparison to a Saint, but a lot of us fall very far short of it. Being an example only in the acquisition of wealth doesn't mean very much at all.  Conveying a value to things that are done means a great deal more, but that's not always easy in a society which measures everything simply by monetary gain.  Very few young men today grow up in a situation in which they see their father's work, and a lot of that work has a value that's somewhat mysterious at best.

Idaho father and son, late l930s, in a cleared field.  Agricultural families today remain really rare examples of families in which children actually see what their parents do and what the value of it is.

And of course there's a lot more of value to life than work, although we seem to have forgotten much of that.

June 14--Flag Day

Today is Flag Day

The reason for the day being Flag Day is explained immediately below.  This is a Federally observed day, but it is not one of those holidays that has been statutorily moved to a Friday or Monday and made a three day weekend holiday.  Indeed, while it is a noted date, it is technically not a holiday.

1775  The Continental Congress created the Continental Army.  The act formed the army out of existing units that had been mustered or raised by the thirteen colonies which were already serving in the field, and it also authorized the enlistment of volunteers directly into a Continental Army, with units that were directly formed for national service.

The nature of the Army at that time is somewhat confusing for people only familiar with the modern Army.  Most of the American military establishment at the time was based upon colonial units, with militia being a very significant portion of that.  The states, during the Revolution, both mustered militia for service and raised state units.  Some loyalist militia was also mustered, so the war had the odd character of local musters of competing loyalties.  The British forces sent to North American were entirely made up of a regular forces, a force which we'd now be familiar with, but which saw the majority of British and Hessian enlisted men serving under lifetime enlistments, a very common type of European enlistment at the time.  The United Kingdom authorize wartime enlistments for the Revolution, showing hos seriously they took it, which was a novelty for the British at the time.  French soldiers serving in North America during the war, like their British compatriots, were professional soldiers.

Because the creating of a national army was authorized on this day, this is viewed as the "birthday" of the U.S. Army.  That first Continental Army, however, saw the amalgamation of a lot of troops who were actually serving in state enlistments, a feature of U.S. wartime armies that would continue up through the Civil War, but which rapidly passed away thereafter.

1777 Continental Congress adopts the Stars & Stripes as the national flag.

1845  Five companies of the 1st Dragoons arrive at Ft. Laramie.

1899   Mary Pickford performed in "Cinderella" at Laramie's Empress Theatre.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916  Flag Day first officially commemorated by way of a proclamation by Woodrow Wilson.

1917  Flag Day. June 14 (1917 and 2017)
 

1917 Flag Day Poster nothing the 140th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars & Stripes.

It's always on June 14.

The date commemorates the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as the on July 14, 1777 as the national standard.  The day was established as a commemorative day by proclamation of Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and then National Flag Day was proclaimed an official commemoration, but not a national holiday, by Congress in 1949.

 Woodrow Wilson delivering his 1917 Flag Day address.

Wilson used the occasion to deliver a speech:

My Fellow Citizens: We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honour and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us. —speaks to us of the past, * of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great, events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men. the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away, —for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? American armies were never before sent across the seas. Why arc they sent now? For some new purpose, for which this great flag has never been carried before, or for some old. familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution?

These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. Wo are accountable at the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve.

It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honour as a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance, —and some of those agents were men connected with the official Embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her, —and that, not by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their own neighbours with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been dishonoured had we withheld our hand.

But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly as we knew before we were ourselves engaged that we are not the enemies of the German people and that they are not our enemies. They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. The whole world is at war because the whole world is in the grip of that power and is trying out the great battle which shall determine whether it is to be brought under its mastery or fling itself free.

The war was begun by the military masters of Germany, who proved to be also the masters of Austria-Hungary. These men have never regarded nations as peoples, men, women, and children of like blood and frame as themselves, for whom governments existed and in whom governments had their life. They have regarded them merely as serviceable organizations which they could by force or intrigue bend or corrupt to their own purpose. They have regarded the smaller states, in particular, and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force, as their natural tools and instruments of domination. Their purpose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German professors expounded in their classrooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well advanced intrigues lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and make interest with her government, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. The demands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere single step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought themselves ready for the final issue of arms.

Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military power and political control across the very centre of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Servia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the ponderous states of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same forces and influences that had originally cemented the German states themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It contemplated binding together racial and political units which could be kept together only by force, —Czechs, Magyars. Croats, Serbs, Roumanians, Turks, Armenians, —the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtile peoples of the East These peoples did not wish to be united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs, would be satisfied only by undisputed independence. They could be kept quiet only by the presence or the constant threat of armed men. They would live under a common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day of revolution. But the German military statesmen had reckoned with all that and were ready to deal with it in their own way.

And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan into execution! Look how things stand. Austria is at their mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since the war began. Its people now desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are in fact but a single Power. Servia is at its mercy, should its hands be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will, and Roumania is overrun. The Turkish armies, which Germans trained, are serving Germany, certainly not themselves, and the guns of German warships lying in the harbour at Constantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread.

Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested from Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? Peace. peace, peace has been the talk of her Foreign Office for now a year and more; not peace upon her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private. Through all sorts of channels it has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept. That government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of France, though with slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close upon Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It cannot go further; it dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand.

The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has brought them. If they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power both abroad and at home will fall to pieces like a house of cards. It is their power at home they are thinking about now more than their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very feet: and deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their military power or even their controlling political influence. If they can secure peace now with the immense advantages still in their hands which they have up to this point apparently gained, they will have justified themselves before the German people: they will have gained by force what they promised to gain by it: an immense expansion of German power, an immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political power. If they fail, their people will thrust them aside; a government accountable to the people themselves will be set op in Germany as it has been in England, in the United States, in France, and in all the great countries of the modern time except. Germany. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the world are undone: if they fail Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they succeed, America will fall within the menace. We and all the rest of the world must remain armed, as they will remain, and must make ready for the next step in their aggression: if they fail, the world may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union.

Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue for peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that promises to effect their purpose, the deceit of the nations? Their present particular aim is to deceive all those who throughout the world stand for the rights of peoples and the self-government of nations; for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are employing liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and without, as their spokesmen whom they have hitherto despised and oppressed, using them for their own destruction, —socialists, the leaders of labour, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence. Get them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will have set up; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all succour or cooperation in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered and supported; Germany herself will lose her chance of freedom; and all Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle.

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted in this country than in Russia and in every country in Europe to which the agents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access. That government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their masters: declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no danger to either her lands or her institutions; set England at the centre of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation in the politics of the nations; and seek to undermine the government with false professions of loyalty to its principles.

But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in every accent. It is only friends and partisans of the German Government whom we have already identified who utter these thinly disguised disloyalties. The facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; and the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a Peoples' War, a war for freedom and justice and self-government amongst all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe for the peoples who live upon it and have made it their own, the German people themselves included; and that with us rests the choice to break through all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight, of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible armaments, —a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which political freedom must wither and perish.

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new lustre. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people.

Not surprisingly, the speech featured the crisis of the hour, World War One, which the US had of course just entered. 

It is coincidentally the birthday of the United States Army as well, which was created by Act of Congress on June 14, 1775 in a fashion on that date.  The act actually authorized the enlistment of ten companies riflemen in Continental service for a period of one year.  It seems at the time that expansion of a Continental Army was contemplated at the time and positions associated with it began to appear within days of the June 14 original authorization date.

1922  Tornadoes hit in the Torrington area.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society. 

1926  A severe hailstorm damaged the dome of the Capitol.  Hailstorms are not uncommon in Wyoming, but the southeastern corner of the state has some particularly severe ones from time to time, together with other severe summer weather events.  This particular storm is on record as one of Cheyenne's worst.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1931  The USS Wyoming responded to a distress call from the Nautilus.

1945  Shoshone and Washakie National Forests consolidated.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1949  Flag Day first celebrated as an official date under an Act of Congress.

1979  Baxter Ranch Headquarters added to the National Register of Historic Places.

May 30

1834  William Sublette and William Anderson arrive at "Laramee's Fork", named for the late Jacque LaRamie, a trapper who had been killed there. The next day they lay the foundation logs for Fort William, which would be come Ft. Laramie..  Attribution:  On This Day.

1854    The territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.  Wyoming east of the Rocky Mountains was included in the Nebraska Territory.

1862  Companies A, B, C, and D of the First Battalion of the 6th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry arrived at Fort Laramie.

1865  Cheyenne and/or Sioux attack Three Crossings Station.

1871  Wyoming Stock Growers Association, which would have an enormous impact on Wyoming's history, formed.

1901         Memorial Day becomes a national observance.

1903  Theodore Roosevelt visited Cheyenne and Laramie.  He stopped first in Laramie, where he delivered a speech at Old Main.  Invited by Rough Rider veterans to ride to the next stop, Cheyenne, he did so.

1904  Sheep rancher Lincoln Morrison shot in ambush near Kirby Creek, Hot Springs County, Wyo. He survived.  His mother, Lucy Morrison Moore, “The Sheep Queen,” offers a $3,500 reward but the attempted murderer is not discovered.

1908  The commencement of a Evanston to Denver horse race.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Memorial Day, 1916
 

So, on Memorial Day, 2016, let's look back a century at Memorial Day, 1916.

Armored car in a parade in New York City.  Mounted policemen, on the left edge of the photo, truly look a lot more mobile and effective than this armored car.

This had to be a really somber Memorial Day.  World War One was raging in Europe. Ships were going down in the North Atlantic.  American soldiers were chasing Villa in Mexico. All that must have hung over the heads of the citizenry like a dark cloud.

Still, usually something goes on for this holiday. And some of it ends up on the front page of the news in anticipation of the day.  Let's see what we can find around the state and nation.  We've put one up above, a parade was held in New York City that featured a rather martial, if rather antiquated looking even then, armored vehicle.

One of the Casper papers didn't see fit to really announce anything on the front page for the day.

One of the Sheridan papers urged honoring veterans.

Another Sheridan paper did honor veterans, and of the conflict with Mexico.  Memorial Day festivities were also noted.

Interestingly, the death of Confederate John Singleton Mosby was also noted.

And Colorado National Guard officials were resigning in the wake of the Ludlow strife.  Quite a paper, all in all.

An important death figured on the front page of the Cheyenne Leader. By that time, that paper was summarizing "the War", meaning the war in Europe, on a regular basis.  Memorial Day was noted in the context of the Grand Army of the Republic, i.e., the Union troops who had fought in the Civil War (although not all joined the GAR of course).

Scandal, war and violence figured on cover of the Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune.

 

War and the "draft Roosevelt" movement took pride of place on the cover of The Wyoming Tribune, which also noted Memorial Day in the context of the Civil  War, which after all is what it commemorated.

1997  The USS Wyoming, SSBN 742,  successfully launched one Trident II missile during the ship's Demonstration and Shakedown Operation.

2007  Laramie's post office named after the late Senator Gale McGee.

Memorial Day

Observers here may have noted that I failed to put up a post for Memorial Day when this post was first made, in 2012.

This is in part due to Memorial Day being one of those days that moves around as, in recent years, Congress has attempted to make national holidays into three day weekends. That's nice for people, but in some ways it also takes away from the holiday a bit.  At the same time, it sort of tells you that if a holiday hasn't been moved to the nearest Friday or Monday, next to its original location on the calendar, it means that the holiday is either hugely important, a religious holiday, or extremely minor.  The 4th of July and Flag Day, one major and one minor, do not get moved, for example.

Anyhow, Memorial Day commenced at some point either immediately after or even during the Civil War, depending upon how you reckon it, and if you are date dependent for the origin of the holiday.  In American terms, the day originally served to remember the dead of the then recent Civil War.  The holiday, in the form of "Decoration Day" was spreading by the late 1860s.  The name Memorial Day was introduced in the 1880s, but the Decoration Day name persisted until after World War Two.  The holiday became officially named Memorial Day by way of a Federal statute passed in 1967.  In 1971 the holiday was subject to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which caused it to fall on the last Monday of May, as it does now.

The day, therefore, would have always been observed in Wyoming, which had Grand Army of the Republic lodges since prior to statehood. But, like many holidays of this type, observation of the holiday had changed over the years.  In the 1960s and 1970s, by my recollection, the day was generally observed by people visiting the grave sites of any deceased family member, and therefore it was more of a day to remember the dead, rather than a day to recall the war dead.  This, however, has changed in recent years to a very noticeable extent.  Presently, it tends to serve as a second Veterans Day, during which veterans in general are recalled.  This year, for example, Middle School children in Natrona County decorated the graves of servicemen in the county with poppies, strongly recalling the poppy campaigns of the VFW that existed for many years.

Wyoming has a strong military culture, even though the state has lost all but two of its military installations over the years. The state had the highest rate of volunteers for the service during World War Two, and it remained strongly in support of the Vietnam War even when it turned unpopular nationwide.  The state's National Guard has uniquely played a role in every US war since statehood, including Vietnam, so perhaps the state's subtle association with Memorial Day may be stronger than might be supposed.

On remembrance, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out our Some Gave All site.

May 1

Today is May Day, the International Workers' Holiday, in many localities
Today is Law Day in the United States, an observance created by the American Bar Association in the 1950s which was designed to counter Communist celebrations of May Day with a day dedicated to the rule of law.

1707 Parliament passes the Act of Union forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

1839   An 18 man party from Peoria, Illinois, under the leadership of Thomas J. Farnham, leaves Independence, Missouri, bound for Oregon.

1867  The Cheyenne leader, in boosterism typical for the day, declared Wyoming to be a "cattleman's paradise", citing to the grass and abundant water.

1868  Martha Jane Cannary, "Calamity Jane", arrived in Ft. Bridger.

1869  The Laramie Daily Sentinel starts publication:  Attribution:  On This Day.

1883  William F. Cody put on his first Wild West Show.

1898  The US defeats the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay, in the opening battle of the Spanish American War.  The Philippines would see the deployment of Wyoming volunteers by the end of the year when the Philippine Insurrection rapidly followed the Spanish American War.

1900 The Scofield mine disaster kills over 200 men in Scofield, Utah.

1903  Basin incorporated. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1909  Cheyenne replaces its volunteer fire department with a full time paid department.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Sinclair Oil Corporation founded on this day in 1916
 

 

 Sinclair advertisement in Hudson Wyoming.

Sinclair Oil Corporation, which recently announced a major turnaround at its refinery in Casper Wyoming, was founded on this day in 1916.

The founder of the company, Harry F. Sinclair, created the company by merging the assets of eleven small petroleum companies. 

The company has long had a presence in Wyoming with even a town being named after it.

 

Former Parco Hotel in Sinclair, which was once called Parco.

1918  Casper Daily Press for May 1, 1918.

We return today to the Casper newspaper.

The headline was correct, actually.  The Germans were stalling out massively in the second stage of the 1918 spring offensive.  And they were making a massive effort, commencing on May 1, to move large numbers of troops to the West.

Not that this didn't pose its challenges.  Only yesterday the Germans had help Ukraine take Sevastopol from the putative Crimean soviet republic.  This was accompanied by the Ukrainian navy moving its ships out of harms way for the time being, although the Germans occupied those that were left.  Lenin ordered their commander to scuttle them, and he refused, showing a Ukrainian navy that proved more loyal to Ukraine in 1918 than it did a couple of years back when it basically defected to Russia.  And the Germans were fighting in Finland against the Red Finns for the White Finns.

Nonetheless, they were moving troops west now, which they should have done months ago.  Having taken massive casualties in the spring offensive, they had little choice.

Eddie Rickenbacker, who really was a race car driver, made his appearance in the paper as a fighter pilot on this day, at least in the local paper, for the first time, thereby achieving the role for which he is remembered.

And Mother's Day was coming up.

1920 It was announced that Cheyenne was to become a principal stop on the new U.S. Air Mail service route.

1923   Frances Beard became State Historian.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1980   Fort Sanders was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

2017  A complete freeze on state hiring commences.

April 22

 Today is Earth Day

1864     Congress authorized the use of the phrase "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins.

1892  Charles Miller, age 19, executed for murder in Cheyenne. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1898   The Volunteer Army Act was passed to address questions about the legality of sending the militia overseas.

1899 The Rawlins newspaper announces that the Union Pacific will be bringing in Japanese workers, due to a labor shortage.

1916   The Casper Daily Press for Holy Saturday, April 22, 1916
 

Train robberies, something more associated with the 19th Century over the 20th Century, appear once again as the late famous series of those events in this year reoccurred in Wyoming.

And Casperites received the opportunity to appear as extras in a movie.

1918  Two men were tarred and feathered for refusing to buy Liberty Bonds in Frontier.  World War One, far more than any other 20th Century American war, saw widespread shunning and hostility towards those who opposed the war.  Actions of this type were not uncommon, but probably more effective yet was the giving of feathers to young men opposed to the war by young women, indicating to them that the women regarded them as cowards.  Statements regarded as sedition were also prosecuted in some states, under state law.  As an added factor to this, two groups of Americans, those of recent German extraction and those of recent Irish extraction entered into this era with a degree of cultural hostility towards the English, which they had to rapidly overcome given the spirit of the times.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1946  Short special session of the legislature, called to deal with University of Wyoming funding issues, concludes.

1973  A magnitude 4.8 earthquake occurred in Fremont County.

2012  Today starts Preservation Week in Laramie, for this year.

April 8

1832  John "Portugee" Phillips (Manual Felipe Cardoso) born in the Azores.

1889  William F. Cody donated three elk to the proposed National Zoological Park.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1890  An election for the county seat of Natrona County pitted Casper against Bessemer.  Bessemer received more votes, but had only 24 residents, so the commissioners ruled the vote fraudulent and chose Casper as the county seat.  Bessemer now no longer exists.

1890  The Episcopal Church in Douglas bought the Congregational church.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

 
1892 On the afternoon of this day, Stock Detective and Invader informed the invasion party at the Tisdalde Ranch that "rustlers" were located at the the KC Ranch, and that the party included Nate Champion, a well known and somewhat controversial small stockman.  Stockmen Irvine and Wolcott urged an immediate march on the location, which perhaps was not surprising as Champion was a witness against stockmen enforcer Joe Elliot.  Canton, Ford, Campbell and Hesse, however urged the party to march on to Buffalo, which was regarded as the headquarters of the opposition (and which demonstrates how bold the stockmen's plan really was).  After drinking and arguing, a vote was taken and the party elected to march on the KC.  The Johnson County Invaders reached the KC Ranch in Johnson County, Wyoming, at midnight.. Since disembarking in Casper on April 6, they had ridden east and then north, cutting telegraph lines in the process.

In  modern highway miles, the trip is only about 70 miles.  Granted, in the context of the era that would be fairly long distance to cover by horse, so perhaps the amount of time that the invading party took to cover this distance is not too surprising.  A typical cavalry unit at the time covered about 30 miles in a day, although they could cover 60 or more, while severely stressing their mounts, if necessary.  Here, as the invading party was entering clearly hostile terrain, depleting their mounts unnecessary would have been unwise.

Having said that, the amount of time that this advance took was significant in that it showed the extraordinarily ill advised nature of the expedition.  It the party nearly two days to reach their first target and they had yet to deeply penetrate into Johnson County.  The presence of the party was already known, and counter insurgents, if you will, were already at work preventing the telegraph lines that the invaders had taken down from being repaired.  While their location had not yet been discovered, a better military mind would have regarded them as already in a poor tactical posture.  Worse yet for their endeavor, new articles had been published in Cheyenne, Denver and New York to the effect that an action was afoot.  Cheyenne's newspaper even correctly noted that their specially chartered train had gone through Douglas and Casper, and then discharged its passengers for a trip to Johnson County.

1892  Remains of soldiers buried at Ft. Steele relocated to Fort McPherson National Cemetery.

1899  Edward D. Crippa, Wyoming's Senator for the balance of Lester Hunt's term in office for 1954, born in Rock Springs.  Crippa did not run for reelection.

1903  President Theodore Roosevelt commences his 1903 visit of Wyoming, starting with sixteen days in Yellowstone National Park.  His total time in Wyoming for the trip would be nineteen days.  Much of that time was spent on horseback.

1913 The US Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, requiring direct election of senators. Almost an historical footnote for the most part today, this really effected a radical restructuring of the American Constitutional system which has gone remarkably un-commented upon since 1913. The original Constitutional system contemplated the seat of Senatorial power really being in State legislatures, not in a direct election, so to a certain extent the change, which was meant to convey power to the citizenry, really only did so in the context of national citizenship while as the same time power was effectively conveyed from the states to the national government.

1916:   The Punitive Expedition, Railroads, and the Presidential Election of 1916: The Casper Daily Press of April 8, 1916
 

Lots of big news in this evening edition.

Theodore Roosevelt announced that he was throwing his hat in the ring, rather late, for the 1916 Presidential election.  Sort of.  He would not really end up being a candidate, and in fact, he was wearing down physically at this time, having never recovered from earlier serious health bouts and injuries.

Locally, the Northwestern Railroad story was indeed big news.  And apparently Frederick Funston was talking about railroads in connection with the expedition in Mexico.

1917  The Sunday State Leader for April 8, 1917: Join the Guard, but not the Navy?
 

The shape of a national Army was beginning to take place in the first days of the wary.  The US would conscript, although there was opposition to it, and the Army was going to be huge.

Americans were joining the National Guard, lining up, as they had in prior wars, to go with their state units rather than the Federal Army.  With conscription that would soon change, but here we see the evolution of the Army.  Joining state units had long been the wartime norm.  It still was, but that was going to change in short order, although conscription had been a feature of the Civil War as well.

Men (and of course now women as well) weren't joining the Navy in the same numbers.  But, as it'd turn out, the role of the U.S. Navy would not be as vast as some had thought.

And Ft. D. A. Russell was going to be busy. 

 

1918.  Lex Anteinternet: Big Horn Hot Springs, Thermopolis, Wyoming. April8, 1918

This photographs was taken a century ago, today.

If it looks familiar, perhaps that's because we use it as the flagship photograph for our Railhead blog, dedicated to railroad themes.

1922  United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Justice James E. Barrett born in Lusk.  He was appointed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1971.

1935 The Works Progress Administration was approved by Congress.

1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.

From last year:

1963  The Wyoming League of Women Voters held its seventh convention.

Today is Easter for 2012.

The date Easter falls on shifts significantly from year to year, and does not occur on a specific date of the calendar every year.  The United States Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command provides the following discussion regarding the date:

Easter is an annual festival observed throughout the Christian world. The date for Easter shifts every year within the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar is the standard international calendar for civil use. In addition, it regulates the ceremonial cycle of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. The current Gregorian ecclesiastical rules that determine the date of Easter trace back to 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine. At that time the Roman world used the Julian Calendar (put in place by Julius Caesar).
The Council decided to keep Easter on a Sunday, the same Sunday throughout the world. To fix incontrovertibly the date for Easter, and to make it determinable indefinitely in advance, the Council constructed special tables to compute the date. These tables were revised in the following few centuries resulting eventually in the tables constructed by the 6th century Abbot of Scythia, Dionysis Exiguus. Nonetheless, different means of calculations continued in use throughout the Christian world.
In 1582 Gregory XIII (Pope of the Roman Catholic Church) completed a reconstruction of the Julian calendar and produced new Easter tables. One major difference between the Julian and Gregorian Calendar is the "leap year rule". See our FAQ on Calendars for a description of the difference. Universal adoption of this Gregorian calendar occurred slowly. By the 1700's, though, most of western Europe had adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The Eastern Christian churches still determine the Easter dates using the older Julian Calendar method.
The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon.
The ecclesiastical rules are:

• Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox;
• this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and
• the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21.

resulting in that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25. The Gregorian dates for the ecclesiastical full moon come from the Gregorian tables. Therefore, the civil date of Easter depends upon which tables - Gregorian or pre-Gregorian - are used. The western (Roman Catholic and Protestant) Christian churches use the Gregorian tables; many eastern (Orthodox) Christian churches use the older tables based on the Julian Calendar.
In a congress held in 1923, the eastern churches adopted a modified Gregorian Calendar and decided to set the date of Easter according to the astronomical Full Moon for the meridian of Jerusalem. However, a variety of practices remain among the eastern churches.
There are three major differences between the ecclesiastical system and the astronomical system.

• The times of the ecclesiastical full moons are not necessarily identical to the times of astronomical Full Moons. The ecclesiastical tables did not account for the full complexity of the lunar motion.
• The vernal equinox has a precise astronomical definition determined by the actual apparent motion of the Sun as seen from the Earth. It is the precise time at which the apparent ecliptic longitude of the Sun is zero. (Yes, the Sun's ecliptic longitude, not its declination, is used for the astronomical definition.) This precise time shifts within the civil calendar very slightly from year to year. In the ecclesiastical system the vernal equinox does not shift; it is fixed at March 21 regardless of the actual motion of the Sun.
• The date of Easter is a specific calendar date. Easter starts when that date starts for your local time zone. The vernal equinox occurs at a specific date and time all over the Earth at once.

Inevitably, then, the date of Easter occasionally differs from a date that depends on the astronomical Full Moon and vernal equinox. In some cases this difference may occur in some parts of the world and not in others because two dates separated by the International Date Line are always simultaneously in progress on the Earth.
For example, take the year 1962. In 1962, the astronomical Full Moon occurred on March 21, UT=7h 55m - about six hours after astronomical equinox. The ecclesiastical full moon (taken from the tables), however, occurred on March 20, before the fixed ecclesiastical equinox at March 21. In the astronomical case, the Full Moon followed its equinox; in the ecclesiastical case, it preceded its equinox. Following the rules, Easter, therefore, was not until the Sunday that followed the next ecclesiastical full moon (Wednesday, April 18) making Easter Sunday, April 22.
Similarly, in 1954 the first ecclesiastical full moon after March 21 fell on Saturday, April 17. Thus, Easter was Sunday, April 18. The astronomical equinox also occurred on March 21. The next astronomical Full Moon occurred on April 18 at UT=5h. So in some places in the world Easter was on the same Sunday as the astronomical Full Moon.
The following are dates of Easter from 1980 to 2024:

1980  April 6        1995  April 16         2010  April 4

1981  April 19       1996  April 7          2011  April 24

1982  April 11       1997  March 30         2012  April 8

1983  April 3        1998  April 12         2013  March 31

1984  April 22       1999  April 4          2014  April 20

1985  April 7        2000  April 23         2015  April 5

1986  March 30       2001  April 15         2016  March 27

1987  April 19       2002  March 31         2017  April 16

1988  April 3        2003  April 20         2018  April 1

1989  March 26       2004  April 11         2019  April 21

1990  April 15       2005  March 27         2020  April 12

1991  March 31       2006  April 16         2021  April 4

1992  April 19       2007  April 8          2022  April 17

1993  April 11       2008  March 23         2023  April 9

1994  April 3        2009  April 12         2024  March 31

2013  A major blizzard hits most of Wyoming.

Late day in Casper Wyoming, April 8, 2012.

2021  Fast pitch girls high school soft ball started came to Casper for the first time with NCHS playing KWHS.  Kelly Walsh won 6 to 0

March 29

1879  The Laramie County Stock Growers Association changed its name to the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.  The WSGA was to be a major political force early in the state's history.

1887  The following soldiers, stationed at posts in Wyoming, earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for action on this day:

Second Lieutenant Lloyd M. Brett, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At O'Fallons Creek, Mont., 1 April 1880. Entered service at: Malden, Mass. Born: 22 February 1856, Dead River, Maine. Date of issue: 7 February 1895. Citation: Fearless exposure and dashing bravery in cutting off the Indians' pony herd, thereby greatly crippling the hostiles.

 Brett in later life.

Captain Eli L. Huggins, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At O'Fallons Creek, Mont., 1 April 1880. Entered service at: Minnesota. Birth: Illinois. Date of issue: 27 November 1894. Citation: Surprised the Indians in their strong position and fought them until dark with great boldness.

1888  State Capitol completed. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society. 

1906  Construction at Pathfinder Dam suffered a set back due to flood damage.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   The Punitive Expedtion: The Casper Daily Press, March 29, 1916
 

I think one of the most interesting items in this edition was the addition of extra train service, showing how extensive it really was at the time.

1917   The Cheyenne State Leader for March 29, 1917: More Guardsmen needed
 

The Cheyenne State Leader ran a story about the national mobilization of Guardsmen.  No way Wyoming could have mustered four regiments.

There was a tragic reminder, as well, that April and March are winter months in Wyoming.

The Laramie Daily Boomerang for March 29, 1917. Laramie's Guardsmen ordered to Ft. D. A. Russell as, maybe, the Kaiser makes a peace move?

 

The Medical Company of the Wyoming National Guard, based in Laramie, was ordered to Ft. D. A. Russell outside of Cheyenne. At the same time, the Laramie paper was hoping against hope that entry into the war might not be necessary.  Who could blame them?

The Connor Hotel, by the way, still stands in Laramie, although I don't think it's a hotel anymore.

1918   Wyoming State Tribune, March 29, 1918. The Germans in control of the breweries?
 

Lots of grim war news.

And a report that the Germans were in control of the breweries to the tune of, a fellow from the Anti Saloon League claimed, 75%. That is, he said, 75% of all the stock owned in breweries was owned in Germany.

Hmmm. . . . .

And a draft evader was shot in the Seminoes after fighting to contest his arrest.  As this shows, there was opposition to the draft during the Great War and it was sometimes pretty determined, even if most people accepted it readily.

1943  Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing commences in the U.S.

On this day in 1943, rationing in the US of meats, fat and cheese commenced, with Americans limited to two pounds per week of meat.

Poultry was not affected by the order.

This must have been a matter of interest in my family, engaged in the meat packing industry as they then were.

Contrary to popular memory, not everything the US did during the war met with universal approval back home, and this was one such example.  Cheating and black marketing was pretty common, and there were very widespread efforts to avoid rationing.  Farmers and ranchers helped people to avoid the system by direct sales to consumers, something the government intervened to stop and only recently has seen a large-scale return.

While wholesale inclusion of a prior item in a new one is bad form, here's something we earlier ran which is a topic that needs repeating here:

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Some time ago I looked at this in the context of World War One, but what about World War Two?

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...: what would that have been like? Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Bro...

 Wisconsin deer camp, 1943, the year meat rationing began.

Indeed, a person's reasons to go hunting during World War Two, besides all the regular reasons (a connection with our primal, and truer, selves, being out in nature, doing something real) were perhaps stronger during the Second World War than they were in the First.  During WWII the government rationed meat.  During World War One it did not, although it sure put the social pressure on to conserve meat.

Indeed, the first appeals of any kind to conserve food in the United States came from the British in 1941, at which time the United States was not yet in the war. The British specifically appealed to Americans to conserve meat so that it could go to English fighting men.  In the spring of 1942 rationing of all sorts of things began to come in as the Federal government worried about shortages developing in various areas.  Meat and cheese was added to the ration list on March 29, 1943.  As Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:

On March 29, 1943, meats and cheeses were added to rationing. Rationed meats included beef, pork, veal, lamb, and tinned meats and fish. Poultry, eggs, fresh milk—and Spam—were not rationed. Cheese rationing started with hard cheeses, since they were more easily shipped overseas. However, on June 2, 1943, rationing was expanded to cream and cottage cheeses, and to canned evaporated and condensed milk.

So in 1943 Americans found themselves subject to rationing on meat.  As noted, poultry was exempt, so a Sunday chicken dinner was presumably not in danger, but almost every other kind of common meat was rationed.  So, a good reason to go out in the field.

But World War Two was distinctly different in all sorts of ways from World War One, so hunting by that time was also different in many ways, and it was frankly impacted by the war in different ways.

For one thing, by 1941 automobiles had become a staple of American life.  It's amazing to think of the degree to which this is true, as it happened so rapidly.  By the late 1930s almost every American family had a car.  Added to that, pickup trucks had come in between the wars in the early versions of what we have today, and they were obviously a vehicle that was highly suited to hunting, although early cars, because of the way they were configured and because they were often more utilitarian than current ones, were well suited as a rule.  What was absent were 4x4s, which we've discussed earlier.

This meant that it was much, much easier for hunters to go hunting in a fashion that was less of an expedition.  It became possible to pack up a car or pickup truck and travel early in the morning to a hunting location and be back that night, in other words.

Or at least it had been until World War Two. With the war came not only food rationing, but gasoline rationing as well.  And not only gasoline rationing, but rationing that pertained to things related to automobiles as well

Indeed, the first thing to be rationed by the United States Government during World War Two was tires.  Tires were rationed on December 11, 1941.  This was due to anticipated shortages in rubber, which was a product that had been certainly in use during World War One, but not to the extent it was during World War Two.  And tire rationing mattered.

People today are used to modern radial tires which are infinitely better, and longer lasting, than old bias ply tires were.  People who drove before the 1980s and even on into the 80s were used to constantly having flat tires.  I hear occasionally people lament the passing of bias ply tires for trucks, but I do not.  Modern tires are much better and longer lasting.  Back when we used bias ply tires it seemed like we were constantly buying tires and constantly  having flat tires.  Those tires would have been pretty similar to the tires of World War Two.  Except by all accounts tires for civilians declined remarkably in quality during the war due to material shortages.

Gasoline rationing followed, and it was so strict that all forms of automobile racing, which had carried on unabated during World War One, were banned during World War Two.  Sight seeing was also banned.  So, rather obviously, the use of automobiles was fairly curtailed during the Second World War.

So, where as cars and trucks had brought mobility to all sorts of folks between the wars in a brand new way, rationing cut back on it, including for hunters, during the war.

Which doesn't mean that you couldn't go out, but it did mean that you had to save your gasoline ration if you were going far and generally plan wisely.

Ammunition was also hard to come by during the war.

It wasn't due to rationing, but something else that was simply a common fact of life during World War Two.  Industry turned to fulfilling contracts for the war effort and stopped making things for civilians consumption.

Indeed, I've hit on this a bit before in a different fashion, that being how technology advanced considerably between the wars but that the Great Depression followed by the Second World War kept that technology, more specifically domestic technology, from getting to a lot of homes. Automobiles, in spite of the Depression, where the exception really.  While I haven't dealt with it specifically, the material demands of the Second World War were so vast that industries simply could not make things for the service and the civilian market. 

Some whole classes of products, such as automobiles, simply stopped being available for civilians.  Ammunition was like that.  With the services consuming vast quantities of small arms ammunition, ammunition for civilians became very hard to come by.  People who might expect to get by with a box of shotgun shells for a day's hunt and to often make due with half of that.  Brass cases were substituted for steel before that was common in the U.S., which was a problem for reloaders. 

So, in short, the need and desire was likely there, but getting components were more difficult. And being able to get out was as well, which impacted a person to a greater or lesser extent depending where they were.

And, as previously noted, game populations are considerably higher today than they were then.

New Zealanders entered the Tunisian city of Gabès.

Hitler rejected the recommendations of the German Army to place V-2 rockets on mobile launchers and opted instead for them to have permanent launching installations at Peenemünde.

Life issued a special issue on the USSR.

Nevada joined those states, such as Wyoming, which would no longer recognize Common Law Marriage.

Chapter 122 - Marriage

NRS 122.010 - What constitutes marriage; no common-law marriages after March 29, 1943.

1. Marriage, so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties capable in law of contracting is essential. Consent alone will not constitute marriage; it must be followed by solemnization as authorized and provided by this chapter.

2. The provisions of subsection 1 requiring solemnization shall not invalidate any marriage contract in effect prior to March 29, 1943, to which the consent only of the parties capable in law of contracting the contract was essential.

John Major, British Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997, was born, as was English comedian Eric Idle.

1973  The United States completes it's withdrawal from Vietnam.

By odd coincidence, this is also the day that Lt. William Calley was sentenced in 1971 in a courts martial for his role in the My Lai Massacre, although his prison sentence ended up not being a long one.

Thursday, March 29, 1973. Collapse.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 29: 1973  The United States completes it's withdrawal from Vietnam.

U.S. Army General Frederick C. Weyand, for the U.S. forces, stated: "Our mission has been accomplished," 

General Cao Văn Viên, for South Vietnam, stated to the departing U.S. troops: "We are going to do everything we can to see that your great sacrifices were not in vain."

The sentiments were no doubt sincere, but the mission had not really been accomplished and the sacrifices would have to be qualified.  We took a look at the war in that fashion here:

Looking at the Vietnam War differently. Not a war, but as a campaign in the Cold War.

General Cao would go into exile in 1975 with the fall of South Vietnam, and died in 2008 at age 86 in the United States.  Gen. Weyland died in 2010 at age 93.

The war effectively destroyed the combat capabilities through moral decay of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. The Marines and the Air Force came through it much less impaired.  The lessons learned caused the post Vietnam War military to abandon conscription, something it had relied upon since 1940, and a wholesale return to the pre World War Two volunteer/National Guard based force, something that has been a success.  It would take several years for the Army and Navy to return to combat effective, but it happened much quicker, with the volunteer force, than might have been guessed.  By the early 1980s, the service had been effectively restored and the damaging impacts of the Vietnam War largely put behind it.

The war would have a lingering effect on the military in other ways, of course, perhaps one of the most visual being the adoption of the M16 to such an extent that it has obtained record longevity, in spite of being a widely hated weapon by troops of the era.

On the same day:

Today In Wyoming's History: March 29 By odd coincidence, this is also the day that Lt. William Calley was sentenced in 1971 in a courts-martial for his role in the My Lai Massacre, although his prison sentence ended up not being a long one.

Also on that day, the second to last group of US POWs left Vietnam.  The last POW to board the aircraft out of North Vietnam was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Alfred H. Agnew.

Somehow oddly emphasizing the spirit of defeat at the time, the well regarded television drama Pueblo, about the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo, aired on television.  Only tangentially related to the war, it was impossible not to notice that North Korea of that era felt that the US was so impaired that it could get away with this, which it did. 

It would not, now.

And making the day all the worse, President Nixon set a maximum for prices that could be charged for beef, pork and lamb.  This was in reaction to a consumer revolt in which consumers, mostly housewives charged with home economics, to boycott the same in reaction to rising prices.

Oddly, of course, this is the day that rationing had commenced on the same items in 1943.

You'd think that I'd remember some of this, but I don't on a personal level.

1999     The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 10,000 for the first time.

2016   Waiting for the Storm
 

We're supposed to be getting a huge storm today and tomorrow.

I sure hope so.

These photographs were taken on March 20 in the foothills of the Big Horns:

Foothills of the Southern Big Horns

Elk carcass in the foreground.

Should be snow this time of year.  Not a good sign.

There should be snow everywhere in the photos.  And right now maybe there is, it's snowed since them. But we sure need more.

2017  By and act of Congress and as signed into law this day was designated National Vietnam Veterans Day.

Wyoming had the highest volunteer rate of any state for service in the Vietnam War.  This was not unusual.  It also had the highest volunteer rate for World War One and the highest Marine Corps enlistment rate for World War Two.