All posts in History

Accord­ing to Georgina Lan­de­mare,¹ the Churchill’s pri­vate cook, the Prime Min­is­ter was a fan French haut cui­sine as well as tra­di­tional Eng­lish dishes like fowl, and roast beef with York­shire pud­ding. He also pre­ferred shell­fish to plain old fish. He liked clear soups more than thick, creamy ones, and inter­est­ingly, he liked Stil­ton² more than sweet desserts, but, accord­ing to Lan­de­mare, he could eas­ily be per­suaded to eat any type of fish or dessert.

When it came to desserts, though, he insisted that they be expres­sive. It may be apoc­ryphal, but it is said that he once demanded of a waiter, “Take away this pud­ding, it has no theme.” There is no record of how the waiter took the “compliment”.

When it came to drink­ing, though, he was very par­tic­u­lar. He was per­sonal friends with Sir Alexan­der Walker, and loved his scotch, Johnny Walker Red. When he drank brandy, he always took a snifter of Hine.³

1. There’s a lit­tle bit of info here about the book that Lan­de­mare wrote here. [↩]
2. I had no idea what Stil­ton was, but thanks to the glo­ri­ous inter­net you can read more about Stil­ton Blue Cheese here. [↩]
3. The info for this post came from the highly infor­ma­tive winstonchurchill.org. [↩]

It was nearly 4 pm on Feb­ru­ary 4, 1958, when a B-47 bomber, piloted by Major Howard Richard­son and 2 other crew mem­bers, lifted off from Home­stead Air Force Base near Miami, Florida. There mis­sion that day was to prac­tice to fly tan­dem with another B-47 and mimic the require­ments of a wartime attack on tar­gets in the Soviet Union. These mis­sions, striv­ing for real­ism, would include an aer­ial refu­el­ing, a round trip of about 5,000 miles at speeds up to 600 mph and an elec­tronic “bomb drop” scored by a ground sta­tion in Europe or North Amer­ica. Often along the way the bombers, to sim­u­late real­ity, would be “attacked” by Air Force fighter air­craft. This day, how­ever, to add another touch of real­ism to the mix, the B-47 flown by Maj. Richard­son also con­tained within its bomb bay an 11-foot-7-inch-long, 7,600-pound Mk 15 Mod 0 ther­monu­clear weapon, which wasn’t stan­dard prac­tice for these types of missions.

While cruis­ing west­erly over the Gulf of Mex­ico Richardson’s B-47 refu­eled as was stan­dard prac­tice on these mis­sions. Upon reach­ing New Orleans, Richard­son turned northerly and pro­ceeded to the Cana­dian bor­der in prepa­ra­tion for a southerly turn to begin his “bomb run” on radar scor­ing facil­ity at Rad­ford, Vir­ginia. Richardson’s B-47 “bombed” the tar­get elec­tron­i­cally and headed for home. The crew had cov­ered 4000 miles in 8 hours and were ready to rest and relax. Richard­son was told by a mes­sage from head­quar­ters that on the return trip he would not be “attacked” by enemy fight­ers, which added a lit­tle bit of com­fort to the remain­ing flight.

But no one seemed to have told Charleston Air Force Base in South Car­olina. Lt. Clarence Stew­art and two other pilots and three crew chiefs are ready­ing their F-86 fight­ers to “attack” Richardson’s return­ing B-47. They had been given per­mis­sion to attack Richardson’s plane any time before it landed in Florida.

At 12:09 a.m. on Feb­ru­ary 5, Air Defense Con­trol radar picked up one of the B-47’s roughly 180 miles north of Charleston Air Force Base, but it did not pick up Richardson’s B-47. Ground con­trol radar directed the 3 F-86’s to a point sev­eral thou­sand feet over and 15 miles away from Richardson’s B-47. Stew­art, and his radar, locked onto the known B-47 and he began descend­ing rapidly to “attack” the bomber, never know­ing that he was on a col­li­sion course with Richardson’s B-47. Stew­art didn’t know he was plung­ing towards Richardson’s B-47, as he was intently look­ing at his radar for fear of los­ing the other B-47 in the dark­ness, but he looked up for a sec­ond and saw the moon reflect­ing off the top of Richardson’s B-47. He attempted to roll the F-86 right but was unable to avoid a collision.

Stew­art was able to eject from the crip­pled F-86, but, amaz­ingly, the B-47 was only dam­aged. Upon inspec­tion, the B-47’s crew noticed that the far right engine was bent upwards at a 30-degree angle and the right exter­nal fuel tank had been sheared off. Because of the bent engine the plane is rolling wildly. In an effort to con­trol the craft Richard­son cuts the power to that engine and then cuts the speed of the plane in an attempt to make an emer­gency land­ing at Hunter Air Force Base in Geor­gia. The tower at Hunter advises Richard­son that because of main­te­nance on the run­way, if the plane lands short it could cause the plane to crash, hurtling the Mk 15 bomb through the cock­pit and down the run­way at 200+ mph. Richard­son radios Strate­gic Air Com­mand and informs them that he is going to ditch the bomb in the Atlantic near Tybee Island, off the coast of Geor­gia. He does this and is able to even­tu­ally land the dam­aged plane.

On Feb­ru­ary 6, 1958, the Air Force 2700th Explo­sive Ord­nance Dis­posal Squadron and 100 Navy per­son­nel began the ardu­ous search to recover the lost Mk 15 bomb. 10 days later an announce­ment was made that the search had turned up noth­ing, with the Air Force and Navy believ­ing that the bomb was buried below the water in upwards of 5–15 feet of mud. To this day it has never been recov­ered.¹

1. Most, if not all, of the infor­ma­tion for this post came from an amaz­ing Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, “Lost: One H-Bomb. Call Owner”. [↩]

On Feb­ru­ary 18, 1930, a Guernsey cow from Bis­marck, Mis­souri named Elm Farm Ollie¹ became the first cow in his­tory to fly in an air­plane as part of the Inter­na­tional Air Expo­si­tion in St. Louis, Mis­souri. The trip cov­ered 72 miles, with Ollie tak­ing off from Bis­marck, Mis­souri, and land­ing in St. Louis, Mis­souri. Dur­ing the flight she was milked, also mak­ing her the first cow ever milked in the air.

She pro­duced 24 quarts of milk dur­ing the flight, which was sealed into paper car­tons and para­chuted to spec­ta­tors below. Charles Lind­bergh report­edly received a glass of Ollie’s milk.

1. The info for this post came from the super-duper Wikipedia. [↩]

The First Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress did a few things, like draft the Arti­cles of Asso­ci­a­tion¹ and to pro­vide for a Sec­ond Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress to meet on May 10, 1775, but the big news from the Sec­ond Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress was that they began debat­ing a res­o­lu­tion in favor of inde­pen­dence, which was approved on July 2, 1776 and signed 2 days later. Big news indeed.

And yeah, you know some of these men, but what about the other men? Here they are, the mem­bers of the Sec­ond Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress -²

From New Cas­tle, Kent, and Sus­sex, on Delaware
George Read
Cae­sar Rod­ney
Thomas McKean

From the Province of Penn­syl­va­nia
George Cly­mer
Ben­jamin Franklin
Robert Mor­ris
John Mor­ton
Ben­jamin Rush
George Ross
James Smith
James Wil­son
George Taylor

From the Province of Mass­a­chu­setts Bay
John Adams
Samuel Adams
John Han­cock
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

From the Province of New Hamp­shire
Josiah Bartlett
William Whip­ple
Matthew Thornton

From the Colony of Rhode Island and Prov­i­dence Plan­ta­tions
Stephen Hop­kins
William Ellery

From the Province of New York
Lewis Mor­ris
Philip Liv­ingston
Fran­cis Lewis
William Floyd

From the Province of Geor­gia
But­ton Gwin­nett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

From the Colony and Domin­ion of Vir­ginia
Richard Henry Lee
Fran­cis Light­foot Lee
Carter Brax­ton
Ben­jamin Har­ri­son
Thomas Jef­fer­son
George Wythe
Thomas Nel­son, Jr.

From the Province of North Car­olina
William Hooper
John Penn
Joseph Hewes

From the Province of South Car­olina
Edward Rut­ledge
Arthur Mid­dle­ton
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Thomas Hey­ward, Jr.

From the Province of New Jer­sey
Abra­ham Clark
John Hart
Fran­cis Hop­kin­son
Richard Stock­ton
John Witherspoon

From the Con­necti­cut Colony
Samuel Hunt­ing­ton
Roger Sher­man
William Williams
Oliver Wol­cott
From Mary­land
Charles Car­roll
Samuel Chase
Thomas Stone
William Paca

1. The Arti­cles of Asso­ci­a­tion were peti­tions of griev­ances against Great Britain by the Thir­teen Colonies and a com­pact among them to col­lec­tively impose eco­nomic sanc­tions to pres­sure a res­o­lu­tion. The Arti­cles were drafted by the First Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress in 1774 and were an impor­tant for­ma­tive doc­u­ment in the his­tory of the United States that per­haps has­tened the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, though they were intended instead to alter Britain’s poli­cies towards the colonies with­out sev­er­ing alle­giance. [↩]
2. The list of these men can be found pretty much any­where on the Inter­net, but my list came from ushistory.org. [↩]