What Happened Today

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, dissatisfaction with the Russian government was widespread among the Russian populace. While the First World War offered a brief reprieve, the administration of the government by the Tsar during the War proved even more problematic. After heading for the front lines, and messing the war effort up from there, Tsar Nicholas II left his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, in charge of domestic policies. She did, if possible, even worse than her husband in running the government. So the Russian people rose up against the government. Largely, it was an almost spontaneous mass movement that begin with strikes and then protests against rationing on International Women's Day. WIthin a week, the Tsar would abdicate and the Russian Provisional Government would take over. Their rule would only last for eight months, until the October Revolution put the Bolsheviks in charge.

The Great White Fleet was an embodiment of President Theodore Roosevelt's idea of "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." The large fleet of US Navy battleships, along with numerous escorts, went around the entire globe, sailing into numerous foreign ports and working on open-ocean maneuvers. This made it an extension of US military prowess and industrial capability, while also being an envoy of peace. Every ship of the fleet was painted white, which signalled to foreign nations that the ships were not at war and gave the fleet its name. Remarkably, few problems befell the fleet along its year-plus journey, and the fleet was greet enthusiastically in almost every port it stopped in. Yet the voyage revealed real problems with US naval construction and US Navy practices, all of which would be handled in the immediate aftermath of the Great White Fleet's return.

When Malcolm X was shot and killed by three men at the Audobon Ballroom in Manhattan, it was immediately obvious who committed the act, as three Nation of Islam members were seen shooting Malcolm X. The assassins targeted him because he had recently left the Nation of Islam after discovering the group's leader, Elijah Muhammad, had been having a series of affairs with secretaries which involved illegitmate children and payoffs. Malcolm X was also punished for saying inflammatory comments about the killing of President John F. Kennedy. So Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam, a group he discovered in prison in 1948 and had then become its most famous spokesman, in early 1964.  Malcolm X would begin studying Sunni Islam, go on the Hajj to Mecca, and reach out to civil rights leaders. By early 1965, Malcolm X appeared to be shifting into a new kind of leader, but exactly what that would be would never be known.

John Glenn was the third American to make it into spaceflight during Project Mercury. He became notable for being the first American to make a real orbit of the Earth, but the Soviet Union had beaten the USA to that feat. Glenn's mission was slated to show that a craft could make it around the Earth multiple times and arrive back on the planet safely. As with everything to do with the Mercury flights, the technology and logistics had to be completely invented for the spaceflight, which meant that Glenn had his flight delayed again and again. Once he was up in orbit, though, everything appeared to be going smoothly. Then, on his second of seven planned orbits, a sensor tells Flight Command there is an issue with the heat shield. Glenn took over manual controls on his reentry, which occurred after Glenn's third orbit. On reentry, Glenn experienced extreme heat and Mission Control was worried he was lost. He would land safely, becoming a national hero and helping increase enthusiasm for the space program.

Executive Order 9066, signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt a month and a half after the attack on Pearl Harbor, allowed the Secretary of War to create "military exclusion zones" that any enemy aliens could be removed from during the war effort. Specifically, though, the order was created to target Japanese-Americans and remove Japanese-Americans from their homes to concentration camps. The order was done entirely from a place of racial animus, as there was literally no evidence that any Japanese-Americans were engaged in espionage or sabotage on behalf of the Empire of Japan. In the camps, which were in remote areas, people managed to persevere in their own ways, building communities in internment camps. Many Japanese-Americans would actually volunteer to serve in the US Army, forming a unit, the 442nd Regiment, that would be among the most decorated in the war. The internment of Japanese Americans ended with two confusing Supreme Court decisions that said Roosevelt's order was Constitutional, but that citizens could not be held unless proved to be disloyal.

Joseph Goebbels, as the Reich Minister for Propaganda for the Nazi regime, was one of the spectacular propagandists in history. He was at Hitler's side from 1924 and helped craft the Nazi Party's message through their rise to power. By delivering prepared speeches, crafting messages on the glory of Germany, and embedding anti-Semitism into everything the Nazi Party did, Goebbels was invaluable to Hitler's aims and politics, and people followed Goebbels' line. Yet when the war started turning against the Nazis in 1943 after the Battle of Stalingrad, Goebbels message has to shift slightly, which illustrates the weakness of his propaganda. At a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast, Goebbels called for total war to turn the tide against Germany's failures, while also trying to blame "International Jewry" and hyping the belief that the German nation would obviously prevail. This obvious and undeniable contradiction shows that there were cracks in the Nazi's propaganda.

The H.L. Hunley was the height of Confederate Naval ingenuity. Featuring eight crewmembers turning a crank that powered a propeller, the Hunley was a solution to the Confederacy's naval inferiority and the Union's blockade of major Confederate ports. Still, the Hunley was deployed in combat less because it was ready for service, but because by 1864, the Civil War was turning so much against the South that they needed something to break out. In February, the Hunley got its first assignment, attempting to place a torpedo, what is now known as an underwater mine, on the hull of the USS Housatonic via a large pole sticking out of the Hunley's bow. The Hunley successfully placed its charge on the Housatonic, sinking it and causing five sailors to perish. It was a pyrrhic victory, though, as the Hunley and all eight of its crew went down as well.

By 1990, Keith Haring was one of the world's foremost fine artist and had become an international cultural force by working with pop stars and starting his Pop Shops. He also was dying of AIDS. For both of these reasons, Haring's life and career are often seen as having reached a certain potential. Actually, Haring had a remarkably short life for an artist, who usually have decades-long careers. Keith Haring's actual legacy was cut off, much like his good friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died a year and a half before Haring from an overdose. Yet Haring's artwork that he left, featuring a figure known as the "Radiant Baby," was so resonant that he still remained influential. He also worked to make his art available to many different people, both by creating public works of art and seeking ways to publicly sell his work commercially. Still, what Keith Haring might have become in his 30s, 40s, and 50s would never be known.

The USS Maine went down in a foreign harbor, killing over 260 men on board, which made everyone in America angry about the event. The problem was that it was fairly unclear what actually caused the Maine to go to the bottom of Havana harbor. In America, consensus opinion, bolstered by the Hearst and Pulitzer publishing empires, was that Spain had attached a mine. Many people who looked carefully at it realized that the Maine probably went down because of an explosion among the ship's coal reserves. One of the key reasons Spain probably didn't touch the Maine was that Spain was embroiled in a rebellion by Cuba. Seeking a conflict with the USA was really a bad idea. Nonetheless, the yellow journalism of the time, declaring "Remember the Maine; To Hell with Spain!" encouraged a war with Spain. That war, which lasted a little more than one summer, made America a global power, ended the Spanish empire, and transferred control of Cuba to the United States.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre might be the most famous gangland killing in American history, and it might have become that as soon as it happened. The bare facts are that four associates of Al Capone entered a garage, with two posing as police officers, and killed seven associates of Bugs Moran and his North Side Gang. This made Capone's organization the premier criminal group in Chicago, which meant that Capone was in charge of most of the bootlegging and rackets. While Capone achieved his goal of taking out a rival gang, he also became the target of law enforcement and authorities, due to the brazen and overwhelming violence of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The actual killers, who were mostly hired guns, would be tracked down over the years, pointing the finger back at Capone and his outfit. So the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was both the signature event of Chicago gangs of the 1920s and the moment when the public perception turned on them.