On the Fourth of July in 1942, the attack on Pearl Harbor was in the rear-view mirror.

In the past seven months, the number of men serving in the US armed forces had swelled to more than three million and women were beginning to take their place in the workplace.

On July 4th, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt returned to Washington after spending a few days at his home in Hyde Park, New York.

Winston Churchill had been in Washington recently for war planning meetings.

On the Fourth, FDR had lunch with the commanders of the Army and Air Forces.

Planning America’s role in the war was ‘Job #1.’

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When Texas ranchers returned home after the Civil War, they learned the old ways of cattle ranching were gone forever.

The enslaved men who had tended their herds before the war had left and their cattle have scattered across the open range.

The market for beef had changed, too.

Markets in the South had collapsed — people were broke — but demand for beef in the North was surging.

These changes brought an opportunity to get back on their feet for ranchers who could adapt.

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On the night of July 2, 1863, Val Giles, age twenty-one, was huddled behind a large rock at the base of Big Round Top in Gettysburg after his Texas infantry unit had failed to wrest control of the mountaintop from Federal defenders earlier in the day.

He later described that night in his memoirs:

‘In making that long charge across the open field to the base of the mountain, our brigade got jammed up.

Every tree, rock and stump that gave any protection from the rain of Minié balls that were poured down upon us from the crest above us, was soon appropriated.

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Some pictures stick with you.

Here are the ones from last week, which we posted here on Substack or on our Bluesky page or YouTube Channel, which have stuck with me:

When Americans did a big thing: they planted flags on the Moon, 1960-’72.

Another big thing: they built this bridge for the transcontinental railroad, late 1860s.

These Marines in Vietnam, 1967.

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0FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover has announced the arrest of eight Nazi saboteurs who went ashore from submarines on Long Island and Florida with cash, weapons, explosives, and plans for blowing up rail lines, bridges, department stores and defense production factories.

The press has now been permitted to report that a large number of US Army Air Forces personnel have arrived in Britain, where they intend to take over many RAF airfields and participate in mass attacks on German targets.

German forces continue their slow advance east through Ukraine,

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In the early morning hours of June 27, 1967, a rocket and mortar attack struck the Khe Sanh Combat Base in northwest South Vietnam.

Four Marines were killed in the attack and another eighty-three were wounded.

At 8:30 that morning, a Marine patrol set off for a hill four kilometers to the west of the base where an observation aircraft had spotted enemy rocket and mortar launch sites.

When the Marine patrol reached the top of the hill, a large enemy force attacked them, killing and wounding several men.

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The idea of a transcontinental railroad caught fire in the late 1840s, when New York merchant Asa Whitney presented a plan to Congress.

Then Whitney published a pamphlet explaining the idea to the public and the idea took hold.

The government sent engineers out west to evaluate five proposed routes for the railroad.

They determined that, while each route posed its own set of challenges, any of them could work.

And the debate began.

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A barefoot First Lady?

A second-grader writes to President Kennedy.

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00During the 1930s, about half a million people traveled west on Route 66 to the agricultural valleys of California.

Most were tenant farmers who had lost their farm leases during a wave of agricultural consolidation brought on by government programs intended to raise the price of farm products.

Others left home when the drought and dust storms blew their farms away.

Why choose California for a fresh start?

Its mild climate and long growing season for many different crops meant there would be a need for farm workers for most of the year.

And these people were used to working the land.

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American infantrymen, supported by heavy artillery, have advanced to the outskirts of the Atlantic port city of Cherbourg, penetrating the outer ring of German defenses.

French refugees say the Germans have been blowing up port installations there for the past four days.

Meanwhile, French resistance fighters have conducted coordinated attacks on French rail lines and canals which the Germans have used to transport supplies.

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