A story from World War II:

Frank would wait until take-off.

Then, with the plane up in the air, he’d climb down into the plexiglass sphere, about four feet in diameter, which hung from the plane’s belly.

He’d position his backside in the bottom of the sphere, put his feet in the stirrups in the front and draw his knees up next to his ears.

Then, Frank would practice the reach up to the triggers for the two .50-caliber machine guns and adjust the gun-sight that hung down in front of his face.

He was ready.

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The condition of the 150-year-old White House in 1948 was a testament to the danger of making short-term improvements on the cheap for temporary residents.

Engineers determined the foundation beneath the interior walls could no longer support the upper floors and roof, causing the interior walls and floors to pull away from the exterior walls, leaving large gaps.

The building wasn’t safe, so the Truman family moved into Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue.

The total gutting and three-year reconstruction of the White House began the next year.

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Germany’s foreign minister Von Ribbentrop will travel to Moscow tomorrow for meetings with Soviet officials and the foreign minister of Turkey.

Turkey will likely be asked to close the Bosphorus Strait to belligerents to facilitate Soviet shipments of war materials across the Black Sea to Odessa, and then on to Germany by rail.

As hand-to-hand combat rages in the outskirts of Warsaw, Soviet occupation troops are replacing German assault troops in conquered Polish territories.

These German units are being sent to the Western Front, where a million-man army is being assembled in what is called, for now, a defensive posture.

There, French heavy artillery continues to pound the outermost line of the German West Wall, but commentators warn that, given the depth of the layered German defenses, no immediate French advance should be expected.

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It is November 6, 1860.

One of the most consequential election days in American history.

Four major national political parties have nominated presidential candidates.

Abe Lincoln, a former one-term congressman from Illinois, is the Republican party’s nominee.

While the Republican party opposes slavery, the party platform promises not to interfere with slavery in the South, pledging, instead, to prohibit slavery in the Nation’s territories.

Among Lincoln’s challengers is Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, his debate partner during the 1858 Illinois Senate race.

On election day, Lincoln left his law office in Springfield, Illinois, at 3:00 PM and walked to the polling place in the courthouse.

There, he voted a straight Republican ticket.

He spent the evening in the Springfield telegraph office monitoring election returns from across the nation.

Shortly after midnight, Lincoln joined his wife at home for a late supper.

He’d been elected the sixteenth President of the United States.

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Both Germany and its capital of Berlin were split into four sectors after World War II.

The Soviet Union was placed in control of the easternmost sectors of Germany and Berlin, and the other sectors were placed under the control of the US, France and Britain.

West Germany rebuilt and began to prosper after the war, but East Germany languished under communist restrictions.

Soon, the economic and social conditions of the West outstripped those in the East.

The economic development and societal freedoms of the West made it a magnet for educated and professional people in the East who felt stifled under communist control.

Millions evaded emigration restrictions and defected into West Berlin, a conduit offering safe passage to democratic West Germany and other western European countries.

This outflow of people deprived East Germany of its best and brightest.

So, East Germany’s masters in the Soviet Union decided it had to be stopped.

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It is February 27, 1860.

Abraham Lincoln, a contender for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination, is in New York, where he will deliver an address to the Cooper Union, a private educational institution.

His topic is slavery, the current subject of all political debate.

Southerners intent on preserving their slave-holding tradition have called Lincoln and Republicans opposed to slavery ‘radical extremists.’

In his speech, Lincoln says the opposite is true:

“But you say you are conservative – eminently conservative – while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort.

What is conservatism?

Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

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In a speech yesterday, Hitler claimed he had no war aims against Britain or France but said ‘Poland was doomed.’

Germany and the Soviet Union have partitioned Poland between them, with Germany taking Poland’s west and the Soviet Union taking the east.

As German aerial bombardment continues, Polish radio tonight broadcast a forlorn message:

“Warsaw presents a very pitiful sight.

Buildings, monuments, museums and art galleries are in ruins.

[But] we will fight to the last drop and never surrender.”

Hitler said Germany is willing to accept its current western border as it is and harbors no further territorial aims.

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The fires which consumed the San Francisco business district after the 1906 earthquake upended the lives and careers of hundreds of thousands of people.

More than 75,000 left town permanently.

Another quarter of a million were left homeless.

They spent months living in tent cities built and managed by the Army.

Small businesses set up shop quickly on their sidewalks.

But old, established businesses had a harder time resuming operations.

It was especially difficult for big banks, whose metal vaults had become superheated in the fire.

Opening them before they cooled risked the spontaneous combustion of their contents — cash, gold and silver and customer valuables — with the onrush of oxygen; and these vaults took weeks to cool down.

But the big banks’ dilemma presented an opportunity for Amadeo Giannini.

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September 18, 1862.

A day of great sadness.

Thousands of dead and wounded Americans lay on farm fields in southern Maryland.

The day before, McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had met in battle along southern Maryland’s Antietam Creek.

23,000 men were killed or wounded in the one-day fight.

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The rise of industries in the late 1800s eroded the tradition of people living together in multi-generational households, where old and young worked together to provide for everyone.

Nuclear families became the norm.

Younger generations moved to cities to take good-paying industrial jobs, leading lives distant from their older, often infirm, relatives.

And they became consumed with the struggle to support their own children.

With the traditional family support system eroded, poverty became pervasive among older Americans.

It afflicted about half of the elderly.0

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