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Below are current event articles that relate to events, topics, and people found in The Winds of Change.
Australia's oldest man, World War I veteran Claude Choules dies at 110
perthnow.com.au
5/5/2011
WA's national treasure Claude Choules, Australia's oldest man and the world's last surviving World War I veteran, has died in Perth aged 110. Mr Choules was a man who made the best of life and devoted himself to his family and country. His fighting spirit helped him survive two world wars, and also live long enough to become the oldest man in WA and the last World War I veteran living in Australia.
Ten Enduring Myths About the US Space Program
Smithsonian.com
4/15/2011
1. “The U.S. space program enjoyed broad, enthusiastic support during the race to land a man on the Moon.” Throughout the 1960s, public opinion polls indicated that 45 to 60 percent of Americans felt that the government was spending too much money on space exploration. Even after Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind,” only a lukewarm 53 percent of the public believed that the historic event had been worth the cost.
The Invisible Line Between Black and White
Smithsonian.com
2/18/2011
For much of their history, Americans dealt with racial differences by drawing a strict line between white people and black people. But Daniel J. Sharfstein, an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt University, notes that even while racial categories were rigidly defined, they were also flexibly understood—and the color line was more porous than it might seem. His new book, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White, traces the experience of three families—the Gibsons, the Spencers and the Walls—beginning in the 17th century. Smithsonian magazine's T.A. Frail spoke with Sharfstein about his new book.
Remains of once-missing WWI veteran to be interred
12/9/2010
A U.S. soldier who had been missing in action for 92 years will be buried with full military honors Thursday. On Wednesday, the Department of Defense's POW/Missing Personnel Office said the remains of Army Private Henry A. Weikel, 28, of Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania, had been identified and returned to his family for burial. Weikel will be laid to rest in Annville, Pennsylvania, the office said in a statement.
Final Farewell to the Space Shuttle
Smithsonian.com
12/1/2010
As the space shuttles complete their final missions, curator Valerie Neal at the National Air and Space Museum highlights the spacecraft’s history and legacy in manned space flight.
Wrong Turns in Korea
AmericanHeritage.com
10/28/2010
On its 60th Anniversary, the Korean War looks much like Vietnam, a pointless conflict that gained nothing for those who began it: North Korea’s Kim Il-sung and South Korea’s Syngman Rhee, with the consent of the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong.
Astronauts, Artists Agree: Moon Stinks of Gunpowder
aolnews.com
10/21/2010
You can't breathe on the moon, but now you can smell it. A Scottish printmaker has released a series of works that publicize a fact known to astronauts for decades: The moon smells like gunpowder. Apprentice printer Sue Corke worked with flavorist Steven Pearce of Omega Ingredients and Apollo 16 astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr. to create "scratch-and-sniff" moon prints. The two men designed the scent, which was converted into a printable ink by The Aroma Co. for the art, according to Newslite.tv.
Germany Closes Book on World War I With Final Reparations Payment
spiegel.de
10/3/2010
Germany will make its last reparations payment for World War I on Oct. 3, settling its outstanding debt from the 1919 Versailles Treaty and quietly closing the final chapter of the conflict that shaped the 20th century. Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country's defeat.
China's WW I Effort Draws New Attention
voanews.com
9/23/2010
World War I drew in people from around the world, including 140,000 Chinese workers who served on the Western Front. A new museum exhibition in Flanders, Belgium, highlights China's role in the war. It appears the curators have had to cancel plans to take it to China.
Ten Inventions That Inadvertently Transformed Warfare
Smithsonian.com
9/19/2010
Bayonet: In the early 17th century, sportsmen in France and Spain adopted the practice of attaching knives to their muskets when hunting dangerous game, such as wild boar. The hunters particularly favored knives that were made in Bayonne—a small French town near the Spanish border long renowned for its quality cutlery.
The Shock of War
Smithsonian.com
9/5/2010
In September 1914, at the very outset of the great war, a dreadful rumor arose. It was said that at the Battle of the Marne, east of Paris, soldiers on the front line had been discovered standing at their posts in all the dutiful military postures—but not alive. “Every normal attitude of life was imitated by these dead men,” according to the patriotic serial The Times History of the War, published in 1916. “The illusion was so complete that often the living would speak to the dead before they realized the true state of affairs.” “Asphyxia,” caused by the powerful new high-explosive shells, was the cause for the phenomenon—or so it was claimed.
America’s Bloodiest Battle
AmericanHeritage.com
7/26/2010
On October 11, 1918, late in the afternoon, a platoon of American doughboys marched to the front in eastern France, passing shattered villages, forests reduced to matchsticks, and water-filled shell craters. At every step the Americans struggled to free their boots from the slopping mud. Icy wind and rain slashed at their clothing, and water poured in steady streams from the rims of their helmets, somewhat obscuring the devastation.
A Year of Hope for Joplin and Johnson
Smithsonian.com
6/1/2010
On that fourth of July afternoon 100 years ago, the eyes of the world turned to a makeshift wooden arena that had been hastily assembled in Reno, Nevada. Special deputies confiscated firearms, and movie cameras rolled as a crowd estimated at 20,000 filled the stands surrounding a boxing ring. The celebrities at ringside included fight royalty—John L. Sullivan and James “Gentleman Jim” Corbett—and the novelist Jack London. For the first time in U.S. history, two champions—one reigning, the other retired but undefeated—were about to square off to determine the rightful heavyweight king of the world. But more than a title was at stake.
First Blood in Vietnam
AmericanHeritage.com
4/26/2010
On the evening of July 8, 1959, six of the eight American advisers stationed at a camp serving as the headquarters of a South Vietnamese army division 20 miles northeast of Saigon had settled down after supper in their mess to watch a movie, The Tattered Dress, starring Jeanne Crain. One of them had switched on the lights to change a reel when it happened.
A Civil Rights Watershed in Biloxi, Mississippi
Smithsonian.com
4/20/2010
The waters beside Biloxi, Mississippi, were tranquil on April 24, 1960. But Bishop James Black’s account of how the harrowing hours later dubbed “Bloody Sunday” unfolded for African-American residents sounds eerily like preparations taken for a menacing, fast-approaching storm.
Shooting the Moon
AmericanHeritage.com
4/12/2010
Gazing up at the Texas night sky from his ranch, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson did not know what to make of Sputnik I, the first artificial Earth satellite launched into orbit by a Soviet missile on October 4, 1957.
Gene Kranz's Apollo Vest
Smithsonian.com
4/1/2010
Forty years ago, for several unbearably tense days—April 13 to April 17, 1970—the whole world watched as NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz led a team that worked around the clock to rescue Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. After an explosion of an oxygen tank partially crippled the moon-bound spacecraft, NASA’s mission was to bring the trio safely back to Earth.
Chinese on the Western Front?
cumberland-courier.whereilive.
3/17/2010
Chinese on the Western Front? Many Australians have grown up hearing stories from the battlefields of WW1, but Chinese men on the Western Front? How did this happen, and why? Between 1914 and 1918, the governments of France and Britain recruited thousands of Chinese labourers and transported them to Europe to help the Allied war effort, thousands died by enemy fire. A few were executed by their employers.
Courage at the Greensboro Lunch Counter
Smithsonian.com
2/1/2010
On February 1, 1960, four young African-American men, freshmen at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, entered the Greensboro Woolworth’s and sat down on stools that had, until that moment, been occupied exclusively by white customers. The four—Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil and David Richmond—asked to be served, and were refused. But they did not get up and leave. Indeed, they launched a protest that lasted six months and helped change America.
Germany still paying off £50million in reparations following World War One
dailymail.co.uk
12/3/2009
Germany is still paying off £50million of the 'reparations' demanded from it after the end of First World War. The German Finance Agency, its authority on debt management, said tens of millions of euros are still being transferred to private individuals holding debenture bonds as agreed under the Treaty of Versailles signed on June 28, 1919.
Moonwalk Launch Party
Smithsonian.com
7/1/2009
In the summer of 1969, all eyes turned to a spit of land on Florida's Atlantic coast—the site of the Kennedy Space Center, named for the president who had challenged the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. That July, the Apollo 11 mission would attempt just that. I was 22, a year out of Colorado College and working as a photographer at Time magazine's Miami bureau. In the days before the launch, thousands of people drove from all over the country to see it firsthand, converging on Titusville, across the Indian River from NASA Launch Complex 39-A.
Italy Puts Iraqi Treasures Online
Artinfo.com
6/9/2009
Treasures from 6,000 years of Mesopotamian history are just a click away, now that Italy has put the National Museum of Iraq online. The Virtual Museum of Iraq, viewable in Arabic, English, and Italian, lets visitors "walk" through eight virtual halls and see works from the prehistoric to the Islamic periods, while video clips reconstruct the history of Iraq’s main cities. Looted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the museum partially reopened in February after six years, but the Web site will make its most important artifacts accessible to everyone.
Children of the Vietnam War
Smithsonian.com
5/20/2009
They grew up as the leftovers of an unpopular war, straddling two worlds but belonging to neither. Most never knew their fathers. Many were abandoned by their mothers at the gates of orphanages. Some were discarded in garbage cans. Schoolmates taunted and pummeled them and mocked the features that gave them the face of the enemy—round blue eyes and light skin, or dark skin and tight curly hair if their soldier-dads were African-Americans.
The Flu Hunter
Smithsonian.com
4/27/2009
**Webmaster's note: This article is linked to this Indy chapter because it represents the end of World War I, a time when a massive flu pandemic killed millions across the globe.
Robert Webster was in the backyard of his home in Memphis doing some landscaping. This was in the early winter of 1997, a Saturday. He was mixing compost, a chore he finds enchanting. He grew up on a farm in New Zealand, where his family raised ducks called Khaki Campbells. Nothing pleases him more than mucking around in the earth. He grows his own corn, then picks it himself. Some of his friends call him Farmer Webster, and although he is one of the world’s most noted virologists, he finds the moniker distinguishing.
N. Korea preparing for missile test
MSNBC.com
3/29/2009
North Korea is preparing to launch a short- or medium-range missile, possibly right after it carries out its plan to fire a long-range rocket in early April, a Japanese newspaper reported Sunday.
With a Camera to the Red Planet
AmericanHeritage.com
3/24/2009
When John Wesley Powell and his nine men pushed their four boats out into the roaring Colorado in 1869, they had no idea what lay downriver. They set out with the knowledge that they might not return—and several did not. As I reflect on the last decade's adventure of designing, building, testing, launching, and operating two complex and hardy robotic space vehicles on Mars, I cannot help but wonder if we were just as naive when we started out.