Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

March 8, 1937: The Road To Wigan Pier by George Orwell was published.
The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. The second half is a long essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism. Orwell states plainly that he himself is in favour of socialism, but feels it necessary to point out reasons why many people who would benefit from socialism, and should logically support it, are in practice likely to be strong opponents.


The Wigan of George Orwell – in pictures

'Your Questions Answered': Wigan Pier
by George Orwell
BBC Overseas Service broadcast with Colin Wills, 2 December 1943

WILLS: I am going to try some more of these trick questions on somebody else in another programme. And now we've got time for just one more question, asked by Sergeant Salt and Signalman McGrath serving in India. They say: "How long is the Wigan Pier and what is the Wigan Pier?" Well, if anybody ought to know, it should be George Orwell who wrote a book called The Road to Wigan Pier. And here's what he's got to say on the subject.

ORWELL: Well, I am afraid I must tell you that Wigan Pier doesn't exist. I made a journey specially to see it in 1936, and I couldn't find it. It did exist once, however, and to judge from the photographs it must have been about twenty feet long.

Wigan is in the middle of the mining areas, and though it's a very pleasant place in some ways its scenery is not its strong point. The landscape is mostly slag-heaps, looking like the mountains of the moon, and mud and soot and so forth. For some reason, though it's not worse than fifty other places, Wigan has always been picked on as a symbol of the ugliness of the industrial areas. At one time on one of the little muddy canals that run round the town, there used to be a tumble-down wooden jetty; and by way of a joke someone nicknamed this Wigan Pier. The joke caught on locally, and then the music-hall comedians get hold of it, and they are the ones who have succeeded in keeping Wigan Pier alive as a by-word, long after the place itself had been demolished.

March 8, 1958: USS Wisconsin (BB-64) was decommissioned, leaving the Navy without an active battleship for the first time since 1895. The Wisconsin was recommissioned in 1988 as part of Reagan's 600 ship Navy, but fired her guns for the last time in Desert Storm 1991 before being decommissioned again on 30 September 1991. Currently a Museum ship docked at Norfolk, Virginia.

Watch & listen to "Big Wisky"





March 8, 1966: U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Angier Biddle Duke [1915-1995], (right), and Manuel Fraga [1922-2012], Spanish minister of tourism, wave from off Palomares Beach, Spain. They took a swim to demonstrate that the crash of a U.S. nuclear bomber at Palomares had not contaminated the sea. LOL. Remind you of a more recent American leader doing a similar PR stunt concerning "contaminated" water?


Diplomatic Dip

1966 Palomares Broken Arrow incident

US to clean up Spanish radioactive site 49 years after plane crash - A B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed in Palomares in 1966 but now the contaminated earth will be shipped to America, Nevada.


March 8, 1971: This happened...


'Somebody had to do it'

The stolen documents were published in March 1972 issue of WIN Magazine, a journal associated with the War Resisters League. The files were posted on Internet Archive, but for some reason have disappeared.

Noam Chomsky has stated:

According to its analysis of the documents in this FBI office, 1 percent were devoted to organized crime, mostly gambling; 30 percent were "manuals, routine forms, and similar procedural matter"; 40 percent were devoted to political surveillance and the like, including two cases involving right-wing groups, ten concerning immigrants, and over 200 on left or liberal groups. Another 14 percent of the documents concerned draft resistance and "leaving the military without government permission." The remainder [about 15 percent] concerned bank robberies, murder, rape, and interstate theft.

It never really ended. The name was changed countless times over through the ensuing decades to protect the FBI and continue receiving funding from congress.



So, how is that Trump promise to release the JFK/RFK/MLK files going?
The files that escaped the shredder have become an incredible motion picture. From the Kennedys to Martin Luther King. From cab drivers to Congressmen. From housewives to hostesses. He had something on 58 million people. It was all in his files. Now you can see how he used it.


Director Larry Cohen wanted to film at various authentic locations but was repeatedly turned down for permission. However, when First Lady Betty Ford - a former dancer - found out that Dan Dailey was in Washington to make a film, she invited him and Broderick Crawford to the White House for lunch, as she had always liked Dailey's films and work. Larry Cohen then started calling locations such as the FBI's training facility in Quantico, Virginia, and said that he wanted to film there but couldn't do so the next day because the cast was having lunch at the White House. Every location, likely supposing that the film had official backing, soon made themselves available.


March 8, 1978: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 for the first time.

So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear?

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that
Grow around you

So long, so long and thanks
For all the fish

The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve.


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (BBC)

The research team has named the period the Adams Transitional Geomagnetic Event, or Adams Event, after sci-fi writer Douglas Adams, who famously declared the number 42 the ultimate answer to life, the Universe, and everything.

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
— Douglas Adams



March 8, 1983: in real life and fictionally (in TV series THE AMERICANS), President Ronald Reagan delivered his "Evil Empire" speech at the 41st Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, FL.


Must to have been true or became true because Reagan used the word "evil" 9 times in his speech.

Transcript (PDF)

The heavily marked up annotated Draft (PDF)

March 8, 1983: "Evil Empire" Speech (VIDEO)


Atomic Flash news update!
Hats off to Robert Friedrichs. It took decades, but he finally got to the bottom of the Cold War MIA case of Miss Atomic Bomb. Historians finally know the true identity of the woman behind the iconic "Miss Atomic Bomb" photo.

We finally know the true identity of the woman behind the iconic “Miss Atomic Bomb” photo.

After 25 years of investigation, the Atomic Museum said in a news release that founding museum member Robert Friedrichs discovered that the woman in the cotton mushroom cloud swimsuit is Anna Lee Mahoney.

The woman in Las Vegas News Bureau photographer Don English’s photo has long been identified as Lee Merlin, but birth records and communication with a relative revealed that Lee Merlin was Mahoney’s stage name, according to the museum.

“‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ captured the imagination of a generation and became a global symbol of the Atomic Age,” Friedrichs said in the news release. “To now put a name and story to her face is a tribute to the enduring cultural legacy of that extraordinary time in history.”

Creating the Atomic Age photo

Mahoney was working as a performer at the Sands Hotel Copa showroom in Las Vegas in 1957 when she was featured in English’s photo.

Inspired by the mushroom cloud that, at the time, was becoming a visual symbol of the atomic bomb and nuclear power, English’s team created the cotton mushroom cloud and attached it to a swimsuit to create a photo that “helped cement Las Vegas a cultural epicenter of the Atomic Age,” the museum said.

The photo was taken on May 24, 1957 — the same day as Operation Plumbbomb at the Nevada Test Site, now known as the Nevada National Security Site.

“We have 7.5 million images in the LVCVA Archive, and the ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ photo is one of the most requested images that we have,” said archivist Kelli Luchs of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Who was Anna Lee Mahoney?

Mahoney was born Aug. 14, 1927, in the Bronx, New York. She trained in ballet and modern dance in Los Angeles and danced in several shows and musicals under the name Lee Merlin.

After years of performing in Las Vegas, she moved to Hawaii in 1962 and worked as a mental health counselor.

She relocated in the late 1990s to Santa Cruz, California, to work for the Cabrillo College Foundation, raising funds for student scholarships.

Mahoney died in 2001 after a battle with cancer, according to the museum.

Exhibit opening to honor discovery

The museum said Friedrichs’ discovery and two-decade search will be honored with a temporary exhibit this summer showcasing how Mahoney’s identity was uncovered, and the image’s evolution through the years.

“Las Vegas played a vibrant and unique role in the Atomic Age, and ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ has always been a symbol of that era’s colorful history,” Joseph Kent, deputy director and curator of the Atomic Museum, said in a news release. “Thanks to Robert Friedrichs’ tireless dedication, we now have the opportunity to connect her story to the history we preserve at the Atomic Museum.”

Who was ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’?

True Identity of Las Vegas’ ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ Uncovered

"Choice Survivor." Ironically, it was the "alternate" shot of Miss Atomic Bomb that appeared in various newspapers in 1957. Not the now famous photograph with outstretched arms.  Wonder if she (Las Vegas Review-Journal) ever watched CRIME STORY on NBC in the 1980s.




The Killers - Miss Atomic Bomb



DOGE killed the UFO weather balloon program...