Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

I wonder how this came to be outta the blue after all these years and why. Why now? Smells fishy.




June 24, 1374: A sudden outbreak of St John’s Dance (“The Dancing Plague”), caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion.


Apparently, a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected adults and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries.
Dancing plague of 1518


June 24, 1948: Berlin Blockade begins. 1st major Cold War Crisis. The West quickly begins air-dropping supplies. The blockade lasted till May 12, 1949. Look familiar eh?


The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin. The number of different aircraft used in the Berlin Airlift was numerous; 10 US planes, 11 British, in addition to Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African air crews assisted the RAF. In total, 692 aircraft.

In aircraft accidents: 39 British, 31 Americans, and 1 Australian were killed. 15 German civilians were also killed. The Allies continued the airlift until September 1949, just in case the Ruskies decided to reinstate the blockade.

On 24 June 1948, all rail traffic into Berlin from the Western Zones of Germany, amounting to 12 or 15 trains per day, was stopped by the Soviet government for "technical reasons, and the strangulation coils which had been slowly tightening about the city since the previous January, took their final hold. Berlin became virtually a besieged city, an island cut off from the rest of the world, entirely surrounded by the Soviet Zone. Official access was permitted only by air, through three 20-mile wide "corridors" extending on straight lines to Berlin from the three westerly cities of Hamburg and Buckeburg in the British Zone and Frankfurt am Main in the American Zone.

Excerpt from General Tunner's report: A Report on the Airlift - Berlin Mission (100 page PDF) - linked from
US Air Force Historical Support Division

Berlin Airlift at 75: The Most Remarkable Supply Operation in Human History



CandyBomber: The Story Behind the Name

Famed ‘Candy Bomber’ of Berlin Blockade, Gail Halvorsen Dies at 101 (Feb. 16, 2022)

Halvorsen grew up in Utah and earned a private pilot’s license at the age of 21, when he joined the Civil Air Patrol. Following the outbreak of WWII, Halvorsen joined the Army Air Forces and flew ferry flights of C-46s and C-47s in the South Atlantic theater of operations.

He stayed in the Air Force after the war and in July 1948 was assigned as one of the pilots in the Berlin Airlift, flying C-54s and C-47s into Tempelhof Airport with crucial sustenance for the citizens of divided Berlin, who were cut off from land resupply by a Soviet blockade. On a sightseeing tour of Berlin during time off, he saw children watching the cargo aircraft operation. Talking to them, he was touched by their appreciation for the airlift and one’s comment that “when the weather gets bad, don’t worry about us. We can get by on little food, but if we lose our freedom, we may never get it back.” He offered them a few sticks of gum, which 30 children shared eagerly but politely. He resolved to do more, and promised to drop candy to them from his plane the next day. He would “wiggle” his wings to let them know which plane to watch for.

Starting with candy rations pooled with friends, Halvorsen devised small parachutes made from handkerchiefs, so the falling candy parcels wouldn’t hurt the children waiting below. For three weeks, he made candy drops once a week. As the weeks passed, the number of children waiting below grew.

The commander of “Operation Vittles,” as the Berlin Airlift was called, was Lt. Gen. William H. Tunner. When he found out about Halvorsen’s unauthorized airdrops, he approved and ordered them expanded as Operation “Little Vittles.” Soon Halvorsen’s whole squadron was buying candy and gum and assembling the parcels with small parachutes. As word reached the U.S. of the mini-airlift, American schoolchildren and confectionary companies donated candy, and soon many other pilots were making candy drops as well. Halvorsen became known as “Uncle Wiggly Wings” or “The Chocolate Flier,” among other names, by the children of Berlin, and the “Candy Bomber” in the U.S.

“Little Vittles” continued from September 1948 through May 1949, when the Soviet Union lifted its blockade and the larger airlift ended. Halvorsen had rotated home in January 1949, but the operation was taken up by his squadron mate, Capt. Lawrence Caskey. “Little Vittles” had dropped an estimated 46,000 pounds of candy tied with more than 250,000 parachutes, and Halvorsen received international attention for his efforts. In his autobiography, Halvorsen recalled that a Berlin child told him the candy was not just chocolate, “it was hope.”

After the airlift, Halvorsen received a permanent USAF commission and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from in aeronautical engineering from the University of Florida. He worked on cargo aircraft development at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, from 1952 to 1957 then joined the new Air Force Space Systems Division in California. There he worked on the Titan III launch vehicle and the X-20 Dyna-Soar reusable spacecraft programs, serving with Air Force Systems Command through 1962. Subsequent assignments took him back to Germany and technology offices at Headquarters, USAF. He developed plans for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which would have put a small Air Force space station in orbit for reconnaissance purposes. He commanded the 6596th Instrumentation Squadron at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., supporting space launch and satellite operations.

Halvorsen organized or supported candy drops in other war zones during his career as well, in Japan, Albania, Guam, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq. He was also a continuous goodwill ambassador for the Air Force and the United States, making thousands of speeches and visits, especially to schools, to discuss Operation Little Vittles.

He wrote the books “The Berlin Candy Bomber” and “The Candy Bomber: Untold Stories from the Berlin Airlift’s Uncle Wiggly Wings.”

Article continues: Famed ‘Candy Bomber’ of Berlin Blockade, Gail Halvorsen Dies at 101





June 24, 1993: The California band Severe Tire Damage pull off the first webcast in history, live streaming a concert from the Xerox Research Center in Palo Alto to an extremely small audience. As proof of their technology, the band was broadcast and could be seen live in Australia and elsewhere. The next year, The Rolling Stones become the first major artist to do a webcast.


Photo & info from Wiki page | Video


The kid Thomas Brodie-Sangster from Love Actually has married Elon Musk’s twice over ex-wife, Talulah Jane Riley-Milburn (English actress). The Twitter population waits for papa’s reaction.


The couple wedded on Saturday, June 22, at St George’s Church in Anstey, England in a grand ceremony.
US Weekly celebrity news


Over in the clandestine flames...


The Moscow Times

Fire engulfs lithium battery plant in South Korea

A lithium factory and an electronic waste facility in Scotland go up in smoke within hours of each other.

Paisley: Update issued on major industrial fire at Linwood and BBC


Appalachian Aesthetics...




New week, new words...


HMS Alacrity was a schooner of the Royal Navy, built by John Cuthbert, Millers Point, New South Wales as the yacht Ethel that the Royal Navy purchased in 1872.

Former mercantile schooner Ethel, hired in April 1872 (purchased 4.11.1872) to help enforce the Imperial Parliament's Kidnapping Act of 1872, which aimed to eliminate the practice of kidnapping Pacific islanders as a labour force for white settles in tropical NE Australia, known in Australia as 'blackbirding'. NavyPedia

She commenced service on the Australia Station at Sydney in 1873 as a tender for HMS Clio. She was later used for anti-blackbirding operations in the South Pacific and also for hydrographic surveys of Fiji and Australia. On 3 June 1873, Alacrity ran aground in Vita Bay, Fiji Islands. She was refloated. She was paid off in 1882 and sold to the Colony of New South Wales, which converted her to a powder hulk guardship. Wiki


U.S. top 40 for June 24, 1967: