Nixon, the Moon, Pong, M*A*S*H. What a year!

The first tenants move into the World Trade Center’s South Tower, the second tower to be completed.

The HP-35, the world’s first hand-held scientific calculator, is introduced. Its retail price is $395.

The last two crewed missions to the moon, Apollo 16 and 17, take place.

Nixon spends eight days in China, ending decades of diplomatic estrangement.

Alabama Governor George Wallace is shot and paralyzed while campaigning for president.

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Adolph Hitler has committed suicide.

This report comes from Soviet forces which have taken Berlin after a twelve-day street fight, but there are conflicting reports on the date and true cause of death.

While the German admiralty claims Hitler died ‘a hero’s death,’ a report from Paris claims Hitler was assassinated in an explosion ten days ago after a quarrel with Nazi war lords.

General Eisenhower says Hitler had been suffering from a cerebral hemorrhage which proved fatal.

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It is April 1861.

The US Army has 1,080 commissioned officers.

Each has sworn an oath to “bear true allegiance to the United States of America,” and “observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States.”

But as the wave of secession engulfs the Southern states, 286 resigned or were dismissed to enter Confederate service in 1861, elevating loyalty to their home state above their sworn duty to the nation.

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It is May 1918.

Eight artists have been made US Army captains and have arrived in France.

Their job is to prepare artistic scenes from World War I for distribution to American magazines.

These works should be historically accurate but also inspiring.

The War Department wants to boost public support for the war.

These combat artists produced seven hundred works of art but their commanding officers didn’t like them.

“They do not serve either a military purpose or propaganda purposes,” said one, noting that everyone who had viewed the works was of the same opinion.

French artists had prepared “splendid color reproductions” of French forces which had an “inspirational quality and vigor,” the officer said.

The American artists had depicted war’s dirty, grinding reality instead.

So, the artists’ works weren’t distributed to magazines.

And only a few were shown briefly in New York after the war had ended.

When the next war erupted and the Army instituted another government combat artist program, Congress defunded it after just six months.

A lesson of sorts had been learned.

If you want to sell the public on a war, don’t show people what it really looks like.

Congress knows that voters often prefer a fairy tale to the truth.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

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Sometimes they tell the whole story.

Leonardo da Vinci drew a diagram and specifications for a flying machine, which he called a ‘helical air screw,’ in 1493.

The machine measured about fifteen feet in diameter and was to have been made out of linen, reed and wire.

528 years later, in February 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars, carrying the Ingenuity helicopter in its belly.

The Ingenuity flew seventy-five flights across the Martian surface during the next three years.

*****

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It is September 13, 1900.

The storm has passed, and Galveston — devastated and in ruin — is cut off.

Relief supplies are pouring into the wharf at nearby Texas City, where boats are ferrying them across Galveston Bay.

Worried men who wanted to search for family members in Galveston are allowed on these boats, but not women.

So, Winifred Black has dressed in men’s clothing and talked her way onto a relief boat.

She will be the first journalist to reach Galveston and her reports will rivet the nation.

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It is July 18, 1863.

650 Black men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry have mounted an assault on Fort Wagner, the Confederate stronghold in Charleston Harbor.

The assault will end in a costly failure.

At the end of the day, 270 men of the 54th had been killed, wounded, captured or gone missing.

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New Zealanders have blocked temporarily the advance of German invasion forces in Greece’s Thermopylae Pass.

It is the site of the battle 2,400 years ago between the Persian Empire and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Leonidas of Sparta.

The New Zealand effort has enabled the British Expeditionary Force to evacuate most of its troops and equipment for repositioning in Crete.

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It is the afternoon of September 17, 1862.

Federal infantrymen from New York and Pennsylvania have received orders to cross a bridge on Antietam Creek in southern Maryland and capture the high ground on the other side.

That ground is held by men from Georgia who are arrayed there in fortified positions and are prepared to hold it.

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It is July 1, 1934.

President Franklin Roosevelt and his sons have boarded the USS Houston in Annapolis harbor for a one-month cruise to the Virgin Islands, Haiti, Panama and Hawaii.

The trip will enable FDR to meet local officials, tour US military facilities and be seen by large crowds of everyday people.

It comes at a difficult time.

The domestic economy, deep in the grasp of the Great Depression, has occupied much of FDR’s time.

But the rise of militarism in Europe and Japan cannot be ignored.

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