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).

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Showing posts with label Odd Points of Fact. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Odd Points of Fact. Show all posts

Sunday, June 9, 2013

June 9

1858  John E. Osborne, Wyoming's Governor following Gov. Barber, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State from 1913 to 1916, born in Westport, New York.

Odd point of fact:  Both Gov. Barber and Gov. Osborne, who were governors back to back, were physicians by training.

1870 President Grant met with Sioux chief Red Cloud. Red Cloud is often noted as to be the only Plains Indian leader who won a war against the United States, that being "Red Cloud's War" in Wyoming. Following his trip East Red Cloud realized that the population of the United States made any war against it futile, and worked for peaceful positions for his tribe.

1918  The Kaiserschlacht Repeats. June 9, 1918. Operation Gneisenau
Operation Gneisenau

 
The map again. The fourth German drive again attempted to exploit the gap beetween the British and the French. As it would turn out, it also ended up pitting the Germans against the newly arrived American Army.  The offensive was sucessful to a degree in that it gained ground, but the ground gained was much smaller than prior German drives.

Operation Blucher-Yorck was followed by a new German offensive, Operation Gneisenau which was designed to exploit the successes of the earlier offensive operations.  The French, however, anticipated the June 9 assault and launched a massive counterattack two days into it, on June 11.  While the Germans had advanced nine miles in that two days, the French counterattack caused them to call off further operations on June 12.  This resulted in a month long German pause while they postponed a large operation that was supposed to have exploited the May 27 through June 5 advances.


1936  The First National Bank of Rock River sold to the town of Rock River. The building the bank was in, which features a Greek facade, still stands, in use as Rock River town storage.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1954 Wisconsin Sen Joseph McCarthy's era of influence came to an end in a confrontation with Army counsel Joseph N. Welch.

McCarthy questioning Welch.

McCarthy has continued to be a pariah ever since, and his reputation was declining at the time.  But a recent book that looks in depth at his role in this period, Blacklisted By History, concludes that much of what he's accused of having done is a false accusation.  Indeed, almost all, if not all, of the individuals that McCarthy referenced as being Communist were in fact just that, and many of them had been mentioned in a prior Congressional effort to expose Communist in government employment in the 1930s.  Some were of course new, but the accusations were largely accurate.  Indeed, there is speculation that he was fed information by the FBI outside of normal channels, and without the knowledge or permission of the Administrations of the period.

McCarthy's character was against him as he was highly aggressive and he frankly drank more than he should have. The stress of the building opposition against him contributed to the latter.  And there was opposition that had dated back to the 1930s on this topic, much of it centered around those who felt that the threat itself simply wasn't as great as portrayed but who were also fearful of being embarrassed by it.  That opposition was on the right and the left, and it ultimately included Administrations that felt institutions were being attacked that did not deserve it.

Welch is probably best remembered today as the judge in the film Anatomy of a Murder.  He is fantastic in the role.  In my view, it's the best movie about a trial that was ever filmed.

2022  Wyoming Congressman Liz Cheney delivered a major address on the occasion of the first of the open hearings of the January 6 Committee.  Her address was effectively an opening statement in the presentation of the events of the January 6, 2021 Insurrection.


2022  The US Board on Geographic names has announced that Mount Doane in Yellowstone National Park is being renamed First People's Mountain.

Gustavus Doane was an Army officer and the peak was named for him during his lifetime.  He is associated with the Marius Massacre where he was an officer, and Native American groups have accordingly been seeking a change in the mountain's name since at least 2018.