Tuesday, November 30, 1965: 'Unsafe at Any Speed' published

From the dust jacket:

     You have been told many times that thousands of people are killed each year by automobiles and millions more injured by them. But when you read this book you will know for the first time that the main causes of these deaths and injuries are automobiles that are unnecessarily dangerous.

     UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED is the full story of how and why cars kill, and why the automobile manufacturers have failed to make cars safe, even though the knowledge and technical skill to do so have been in their hands for years. The documented history of the industry's intransigence is here, along with the detailed background of the campaign to convince us all that only a changed driver can prevent the ravages of the traffic toll.

     It is the thesis of this book that it is easier to redesign automobiles to make them safe than to revise the nature of the people who drive them. In proof of this point, Ralph Nader has done the first thoroughgoing study not only of the major producers of automobiles, but also of the men and women who make up the safety propaganda establishment, the staffs of the peculiarly constituted standards groups (and the inadequate standards they set), and the scientists who what the automotive engineers and stylists could do if their full capabilities were used.

* "Writer Declares Auto Safety Takes Back Seat" (New York Times, December 1965): @

* Preface of book (Automobile in American Life and Society): @

* Excerpt: "The Sporty Corvair" (American Journal of Public Health): @

* "The Corvair In Action!" (Promotional film, 1960): @

* Excerpt: "The Stylists" ("The Industrial Design Reader," 2003): @
* "Ralph Nader and the Consumer Movement" (Digital History): @

* "Safety Crusaders" ("America on the Move," National Museum of American History): @

* "G.M. & Ralph Nader" (The Pop History Dig): @

* "Head-Cracking Assault on the Problem of Car Safety" (Life magazine, May 8, 1966): @

* "The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979" (Daniel Horowitz, 2005): @ 
* "Car Safety Wars: One Hundred Years of Technology, Politics, and Death" (Michael R. Lemov, 2015): @
* "Unsafe at Any Speed -- Fiftieth Anniversary" (The Nader Page): @
* Center for Auto Safety: @
* American Museum of Tort Law: @
* "The Ralph Nader Reader" (2000): @

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Saturday, November 20, 1965: Mount Hermon vs. Deerfield

Photo by Robert Van Vleet. Caption, as published in the (Pocatello) Idaho State Journal:

HEATED COMPETITION -- Spectators attending the football game at Hermon, Mass., between Mount Hermon School and Deerfield Academy teams were at a loss as to what action to watch -- firemen struggling to contain the fire burning through the roof of the Mount Hermon science building or the football team trying to stop Deerfield. Deerfield and the fire won and Mount Hermon lost the building -- the second major fire on the campus in recent weeks -- and a two-year football winning streak.

* "Fire Raged, They Played On, and the Photo Still Beguiles" (New York Times, May 5, 2015): @

* "Despite burning building, the game continued: CMU prof recalls scene of famous photo 50 years later" (Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun, June 21, 2015): @

* "Playing With Fire" (NFL films, 2015): @ 

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November 1965: 'Flower power'

Written by poet-activist Allen Ginsberg and published in the Berkeley Barb on November 19, 1965. Ginsberg was talking about tactics that might be used during an antiwar demonstration scheduled for November 20 in Berkeley and Oakland, California. Ginsberg did not use the term "flower power" in this piece; the counterculture catchphrase, along with "flower child," would come into wider use in 1967.

* "10,000 Marchers Protest Policy" (Associated Press, November 20): @

* Summary from "1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music" (Andrew Grant Jackson, 2015): @
* Berkeley Barb archives: @ 
* Allen Ginsberg Project: @

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Wednesday, November 17, 1965: 'Stagflation'

A term coined in the late 1960s to describe the state of the economy at that time, that is, rising prices (inflation) accompanied by insufficient economic expansion (stagnation) and consequently increasing unemployment.

     -- From "Dictionary of Business and Economics" (Christine Ammer, Dean S. Ammer, 1986): @

The term was believed to have been coined by MP Iain Macleod during a debate on November 17, 1965 in Britain's House of Commons:

     We now have the biggest gap between productivity and earnings of any time in modern economic history. ... We now have the worst of both worlds -- not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of "stagflation" situation and history in modern terms is indeed being made.

     -- From Hansard: @

* Entry from Investopedia: @

* "Theories of Stagflation" (Axel Leijonhufvud, UCLA, 1980): @
* "The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities" (Mancur Olson, 1982): @
* "Monetary Policy and Stagflation in the UK" (Edward Nelson and Kalin Niklov, Bank of England, 2002): @ 

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Sunday, November 14, 1965: Battle of Ia Drang Valley

The Battle of Ia Drang Valley was the first major battle between regular U.S. and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) troops. The two-part battle occurred at landing zones X-Ray and Albany in Ia Drang Valley, Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Despite heavy casualties on both sides, both claimed the battle was a victory. The battle was considered essential as it set the blueprint for tactics for both sides. American troops continued to reply on air mobility and artillery fire, while the Viet Cong learned that by quickly engaging their combat forces close to the enemy, they could neutralize American advantages.

     -- Summary from thevietnamwar.info

     -- Photo by Peter Arnett for The Associated Press. Caption: U.S. cavalrymen carry a fellow soldier to an evacuation zone after he was seriously wounded in a North Vietnamese ambush in South Vietnam's Ia Drang Valley, mid-November 1965. A battalion of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division was ambushed while marching from the jungle clearing where the Ia Drang Valley fighting started Nov. 14, 1965. 

Postscript: November 30

* Memorandum from Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson: @

* "The Battle of Ia Drang Valley" is broadcast on CBS. Summary: @. Video: @

Resources

* "Heavy Fighting Near Cambodia" (Peter Arnett, AP, November 15, 1965): @

* Summary from "Atlas of American Military History" (2003): @

* Summary from "The Vietnam War" (Andrew Weist, 2009): @

* Summary from "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War" (2011): @

* Summary from www.history.com: @

* "After Action Report, Ia Drang Valley Operation, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 14-16 November 1965" (Donovan Research Library, Fort Benning, Georgia): @

* "The Battle at LZ Albany" (Infantry Online, U.S. Army): @

* "Rescue at LZ Albany" (www.historynet.com, 2006): @
* "Fight at Ia Drang" (U.S. Army Center of Military History): @
* "Ia Drang -- The Battle That Convinced Ho Chi Minh He Could Win" (Joseph Galloway, www.historynet.com, 2010): @

* "Death in the Ia Drang Valley" (Jack P. Smith, Saturday Evening Post, January 28, 1967): @ 
* "Battle at Ia Drang" (video, National Geographic): @

* "Vietnam at 50: 1965" (Stars and Stripes): @

* www.lzxray.com (companion site to the 1992 book "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young"): @

* Other resources (Lehigh University Digital Library): @ 

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Tuesday-Wednesday, November 9-10, 1965: Great Northeast Blackout

The nation's worst power failure plunged an estimated 30 million persons into darkness tonight in the huge metropolitan areas of the Northeast and President Johnson ordered an immediate investigation.

     -- Associated Press, November 9: @

Lights flashed on in New York city early Wednesday and transportation systems slowly began to move, signaling the end of a massive and frightening electric power blackout that brought hardship, cold and fear to 30 million persons. But New York city remained crippled because hundreds of thousands of workers could not get to their jobs. The city was still partly paralyzed. Little was normal.

     -- Milwaukee Journal, November 10: @

The enormous scope of the nation's most stunning technological breakdown became starkly clear today, but the cause of the 10-hour blackout remained itself a dark mystery.

     -- Associated Press, November 10: @

     -- Photo by Bob Gomel; published in Life magazine, November 19, 1965: @

* Blackout History Project (George Mason University): @

* NBC television coverage: @
* WABC radio broadcasts, November 9-10: @
* New York Times front page, November 10: @

* "Week of Wonders -- November 14, 1965" (pastdaily.com): @ 
* "Report to the President by the Federal Power Commission on the Power Failure in the Northeastern United States and the Province of Ontario on November 9-10, 1965" (December 6, 1965): @

* "From Here to Maternity" (snopes.com, 2007): @

* "When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America" (David E. Nye, 2010): @
* Photos by Rene Burri: @

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Saturday, November 6, 1965: 'Restoring the Quality of Our Environment'

Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" brought public attention to the pesticide menace contaminating the environment, but this only dealt with one portion of the problems Americans started referring to as "pollution." Evidence of this growing national concern was the appointment of an Environmental Pollution Panel by the President's Science Advisory Committee. In 1965 the panel produced a report that chronicled the concerns that dominated environmental policy and legislation for the reminder of the 20th century. ... The panel explained that air, water and land pollution threatens the "health, longevity, livelihood, recreation, cleanliness and happiness of citizens" who cannot escape their influence. ... Consistent with Carson's explanation of the dangers of DDT, the panel made an ecological argument for the necessity of federal environmental management.

     -- "Social History of the United States" (2009): @

In a comprehensive report titled "Restoring the Quality of Our Environment," the PSAC Environmental Pollution Panel (President's Science Advisory Committee, 1965) considered pollution in its broadest contest and made more than a hundred specific recommendations. The philosophy of the panel was based on the assumption that pollution is a by-product of a technological society and that pollution problems will grow with increases in population and improved living standards unless drastic counter-measures to reduce it are taken. The panel offered some sweeping recommendations that placed problems of pollution in a new perspective.
     -- "Land Use and Wildlife Resources" (National Academy of Sciences, 1970): @

A tax on polluters was suggested today by a Presidential advisory group as one way to fight environmental pollution. Environment pollution is a new term that includes such matters as excessive noise and junkyards as well as dirty water and fouled air. The "polluters' tax" was one of more than 100 recommendations made by 14 physicians, scientists and engineers of the President's Science Advisory Committee. The panel advanced in its report a philosophy of "individual rights to quality of living." "There should be no right to pollute," it said. 

     -- New York Times: @

* Full text of report (Hathi Trust Digital Library): @

* President Johnson statement (American Presidency Project): @
* Climate Central: @

* "Top 5 Climate Change Websites" (Carbon Literacy Project): @
* "The Discovery of Global Warming" (American Institute of Physics): @

* "Advancing the Science of Climate Change" (National Research Council, 2010): @
* "The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society" (2011): @

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Tuesday, November 2, 1965: Norman Morrison

     A pacifist sacrificed himself in flames in front of the Pentagon. His widow said he gave his life "protesting our government's deep military involvement" in Viet Nam.

     Norman R. Morrison, a Baltimore Quaker, clutched his year-old daughter Emily in one arm late Tuesday as he began to burn. Screams of "drop the baby" from onlookers may have saved her life, for she fell uninjured to the ground.

     Morrison, 31, drenched himself in kerosene and kindled himself as a human torch in full view of hundreds of Defense Department workers and military men.

     -- Story from Associated Press: @

     -- Photo from Associated Press. Original caption: Mrs. Anne Morrison carries her 18-month-old daughter, Emily, from Fort Myer, Va., U.S. Army Dispensary, November 2, 1965, returning to her home in Baltimore, Md. Earlier in the evening her husband, Norman Morrison, a Quaker, with the baby Emily in his arms doused his clothes with a flammable fluid and set himself afire outside the Pentagon. Morrison dropped the baby before he was engulfed and she was not injured, but Morrison was dead on arrival at the dispensary. Mrs. Morrison issued a statement that her husband was protesting U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

* Summary from "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War" (2011): @

* "The Fiery Pangs of Conscience" (Loudon Wainwright, Life magazine, November 12, 1965; page 34): @

* "The Sacrifice of Norman Morrison" (Alice Steinbach, Baltimore Sun, July 1995): @
* "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" (Robert S. McNamara, 1995): @

* "The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War" (Paul Hendrickson, 1996): @
* Excerpt from "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides" (Christian G. Appy, 2003): @ 
* "Held in the Light: Norman Morrison's Sacrifice for Peace and His Family's Journey of Healing" (Anne Morrison Welsh, 2008): @ 

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Sunday, November 15, 1964: 'Don't trust anyone over 30'

Jack Weinberg, whose arrest on October 1 helped ignite the Free Speech Movement at the University of California Berkeley, is quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle article written by James Benet:

"We have a saying in the movement that you can't trust anyone over 30."

The quote was reprinted by Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason and soon became a slogan of the counterculture. (It was often shortened to "Don't trust anyone over 30.")

In 1970, Weinberg told The Washington Post: "I was being interviewed by this guy, and he was, or seemed to be, saying something that was bothering me. He was probing into the question of weren't there outside adults manipulating us. There was the implication of a 'Communist conspiracy.' That was infuriating, so I said the thing about not trusting anyone over 30 as a kind of taunt. I was trying to tell him there weren't any graybeards manipulating us." (Link to article: @)

Note: While I have not seen the original article in print or online, the source and date comes from Ralph Keyes' book "I Love It When You Talk Retro" (2009). Keyes also writes in "Nice Guys Finish Seventh" (1992): "Twenty-six years later, now long past 30 himself, Weinberg told me that those words just occurred to him on the spot. He thought they were original to him. Calling them a "movement saying" was his way of trying to give the motto more zing. ... Weinberg's generational redlining touched a nerve among over-thirties. It confirmed their worst fears about how they were perceived by their children. When student activists realized how much this motto bugged their elders, many began to chant 'Don't trust anyone over thirty' in earnest. Before long this became the defining slogan of an era when surly youths were seen as rudely elbowing their parents aside. In Weinberg's words, 'The phrase just resonated.' "

     -- Photo of Jack Weinberg by Harvey Richards

* As mentioned in "We Shall Overcome" (Ramparts magazine, April 1965): @

* "Boom! Talking About the Sixties" (Tom Brokaw, 2007, interview with Weinberg begins on page 591): @

* "What Happened at Berkeley" (Saturday Review magazine, January 16, 1965): @

* "Free Speech Movement Press Bibliography" (btstack.com): @ 

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November 1964: 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics'

     Richard Hofstadter delivered the first version of "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" as a Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University in November 1963, the same month that President John F. Kennedy was murdered; an abridged version appeared in Harper's Magazine the following year. The lecture had grown out of Hofstadter's long-standing apprehensions about the rise of American right-wing extremism after World War II -- most conspicuously the McCarthyite hysteria of the early 1950s but also the profusion of new right-wing organizations such as the John Birch Society. ... 

     Hofstadter discovered a chronic, rancid syndrome in our political life that he called, loosely, "paranoid." The paranoid style, he contended, had long afflicted radical movements on the left as well as the right, and had even touched some good causes, including the antislavery movement. Usually, however, it appeared in bad ones. ...

     Hofstadter studied the Goldwater campaign closely and wrote an essay about its worrisome paranoid emanations. ... To read these selections today is to see a devoted liberal of moderate disposition aroused by his realization that, despite Goldwater's crushing defeat in 1964, some of the worst distempers of American democracy had become, as he wrote, "a formidable force in our politics" -- and, quite possibly, a permanent one.

     -- From the forward to "The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays" (2008 reissue)

* As printed in Harper's Magazine (November 1964): @

* As printed by Harvard University Press (1996): @

* "A Long View: Goldwater in History" (Hofstadter, The New York Review of Books, October 1964): @

* "Richard Hofstadter: A Reading List" (New York Times, 2006): @

* "Why Richard Hofstadter is Still Worth Reading but Not for the Reasons the Critics Have in Mind" (Jon Weiner, University of California, Irvine, 2006): @

* "Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography" (David S. Brown, 2006): @ 

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Saturday, December 7, 1963: Instant replay

     It was early in the fourth quarter of the 64th Army-Navy football game. Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh broke a tackle from 1 yard out and ran in for a touchdown. A few seconds later, television viewers watched it again -- the first instant replay.
     "This is not live!" CBS announcer Lindsey Nelson said. "Ladies and gentleman, Army did not score again!"
     -- From The Associated Press, 1999; full story: @
     -- Image of Stichweh's touchdown from video, linked below

* "Instant Replay: The Day that Changed Sports Forever" (Tony Verna, 2008): @ (book) and @ (website)
* "Army-Navy, instant replay, Tony Verna, 45 years later" (The Associated Press, 2008): @
* "The Instant Replay: Time and Time Again" (Christopher Hanson, Spectator journal, University of Southern California, 2008): @

* "A look at TV's instant replay through the years" (Patrick Saunders, Denver Post, 2013): @
* "Sports on Television: The How and Why Behind What You See" (Dennis Deninger, 2012): @
* "The President's Team: The 1963 Army-Navy Game and the Assassination of JFK" (Michael Connelly, 2010): @

* 1963 Navy highlights (video): @

* Highlights of an iconic show: A short history of 'Hockey Night in Canada' " (Tara Deschamps, The Globe and Mail, 2013): @

* "Something You Might Not Know About Canada: Instant Replay" (video, CBC, 2012): @ 

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November 1963: 'Where the Wild Things Are'

Maurice Sendak's picture book is published by Harper & Row. From the original book jacket: "Max, sent to his room for acting wildly, sails to the land where the wild things are. His adventures there, and the inevitable and satisfactory ending, form a unique and unforgettable experience. Every child will recognize Max's feelings and his fantasy. And they, as well as adults, will revel in the rich, glorious pictures painted as only Sendak could paint them."

* Advertisement in New York Times, December 1963: @

* Sendak biography and timeline (from Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia): @

* Bibliography (from University of California Berkeley Library): @

* Library of Congress Catalog Record: @

* Caldecott Medal home page: @

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Wednesday, November 27, 1963: President Johnson's address to Congress

President Johnson asked a somber Congress Wednesday to honor John F. Kennedy's memory with swift action on the slain President's legislative program, topped by civil rights and tax deduction.
     Speaking for the first time as chief executive to a body in which he served for many years, the tall, solemn-faced President called too for "an end to the teaching and preaching of hate and evil and violence" in the land.
     -- from The Associated Press; full story: @
* Transcript (from American Rhetoric): @

* Video (includes telephone calls before and after speech; from C-SPAN): @
* Entry from Voices of Democracy project: @

* "Let Us Continue" (film by U.S. Information Agency; from Texas Archive of the Moving Image): @

* "The First 100 Days: Lyndon Johnson Fulfilled Kennedy's Legacy" (U.S. News & World Report, 2009): @ 

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Tuesday, November 26, 1963: NSAM 273

The administration of new President Lyndon B. Johnson administration issues National Security Action Memorandum 273, which officially reaffirms the U.S. commitment to the Republic of Vietnam and pledges "to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy." Johnson also gave his personal sanction for a stepped-up program of "clandestine operations by the GVN (Government of Vietnam) against the North."
     -- From "Vietnam War Almanac" (James H. Wilbanks, 2009)

* Text of NSAM 273 (from "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963," U.S. State Department): @

* Photocopy of NSAM 273 (from LBJ Library): @
* Post from October 5 (JFK approves withdrawal of 1,000 military advisers from Vietnam): @ 

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Monday, November 25, 1963

An eternal flame at President John F. Kennedy's gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery was quickly constructed at the request of his widow. Command Sergeant Major Francis J. Ruddy of the U.S. Army Special Forces honored his fallen commander in chief by placing his Green Beret next to the flame.
     -- Photo from Corbis Images
* "Nov. 25, 1963: A president is buried" (Washington Post): @

* "JFK's Funeral: Photos from Arlington Cemetery" (LifeTime.com): @

* "The Funeral of John F. Kennedy": (photos, CBS Boston): @

* Funeral footage (from JFK Library): @
* Earlier post on Green Berets (September 25, 1961): @
* Ruddy's service record (from U.S. Army): @ 

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Sunday, November 24, 1963

Photo by Bob Jackson, Dallas Times Herald. From the Times Herald's front page: "The historic photograph above was made by Bob Jackson, staff photographer of The Times Herald, from a few feet. It was caught at the precise moment the bullet from Jack Ruby's pistol entered the body of Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President Kennedy. Note outstretched arm at right attempted to thwart the killer. Photographer Jackson has recorded for history one of its most bizarre and dramatic moments."

Note: This is the uncropped version of the photo.
* Footage: @

* Front page, The Dallas Times Herald: @

* Front page, The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington): @

* "Nov. 24, 1963: A president is mourned, an assassin is murdered" (Washington Post): @

* "A Photographer's Story" (from The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza): @
* "Six-Tenths of a Second, Two Lives Forever Changed" (links to Dallas Morning News article about photographers on the scene): @

* Side-by-side photos by Jack Beers of Dallas Morning News and Bob Jackson: @
* "The shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald -- Robert H. Jackson" (from Amateur Photographer magazine): @ 

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Saturday, November 23, 1963: 'Doctor Who'

DR. WHO? That is just the point. Nobody knows precisely who he is, this mysterious exile from another world and a distant future whose adventures begin today. But this much is known: he has a ship in which he can travel through space and time -- although, owing to a defect in its instruments he can never be sure where and when his "landings" may take place. And he has a great-grandaughter Susan, a strange amalgam of teenage normality and uncanny intelligence.
     Playing the Doctor is the well-known film actor, William Harnell, who has not appeared before on BBC-TV.
     Each adventure in the series will cover several weekly episodes, and the first is by the Australian author Anthony Coburn. It begins by telling how the Doctor finds himself visiting the Britain of today: Susan (played by Carole Ann Ford) has become a pupil at an ordinary British school, where her incredible breadth of knowledge has whetted the curiosity of two of her teachers. These are the history teacher Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), and the science master Ian Chesterton (William Russell), and their curiosity leads them to become inextricably involved in the Doctor's strange travels.
     Because of the imperfections in the ship's navigation aids, the four travellers are liable in subsequent stories to find themselves absolutely anywhere in time -- past, present or future. They may visit a distant galaxy where civilisation has been devastated by the blast of a neutron bomb or they may find themselves journeying to far Cathay in the caravan of Marco Polo. The whole cosmos in fact is their oyster.
     -- Radio Times, November 21
* BBC website: @

* BBC America website: @

* Watch episode 1, "An Unearthly Child": @

* "The Genesis of Doctor Who" (from BBC): @
* "The Changing Face of Doctor Who" (from BBC archives): @

* Entires from BBC episode guide: @ and @

* Doctor Who Online website: @

* Doctor Who Reference Guide: @

* "12 Must-Own Books" (from BBC America): @ 

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