Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy Wizard Wednesday...



2 year anniversary...




Aug 16, 1950: Minutes of the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion of the White House.

As the renovation came to a close, rumors spread across Washington that the commander-in-chief had new protections in place. The front page of The Washington Post on April 18, 1951, blared:

“Truman Digs into Special Fund for $881,000 A-Bomb Shelter.” Congressmen who had approved and overseen the project fund expressed displeasure that they hadn’t been told of the shelter construction—nor about the extra monies spent. But Truman and his advisors saw it as a necessary step—and not the last one that would be taken. That $881,000 was just a tiny down payment on the billions to come.

Source: Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die (2017) by Garrett M. Graff.




When White House had to be completely gutted, 1949-1952


The first smartphone, IBM Simon with blazing fast 2400 baud modem was released August 16, 1994 to those who could afford it. The battery lasted only an hour, and flip phones (Nokia) became increasingly slim which led to its demise. It would cost $2,200 in today’s prices.


Simon says: Pay your taxes.



Renamed to the Carbon Credits Bank in the early 2000s.


August 16, 1989: A solar particle event affects computers at the Toronto Stock Exchange, forcing a halt to trading.

"SCIENTISTS blame an intense burst of solar activity for events which halted all trading on Toronto’s stock market last month. Officials watched in disbelief as three disc drives failed in succession on what is supposed to be a ‘fault-tolerant’ computer system. The crash stopped trading for three hours. ‘I don’t know what the gods were doing to us,’ said John Kane, the vice president of the exchange.

Did your computer crash? It might have been a cosmic ray




Kinda mind blowing that this Capitoline Wolf statue (replica of the famous Etruscan statue) representing the mythological story of Rome's founding by two brothers (Romulus and Remus) raised by a wolf was gifted to the city of Rome, Georgia by none other than Benito Mussolini (which is apparently something he did during the 20s-30s to sympathetic groups) in 1929 along with his "Make America Great" speech. This city also happens to be the residence of wingnut congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.



That city/district used to be represented by a staunch anti-communist & southern democrat who helped found the John Birch society and he died when the Soviets shot down his plane. He also co-founded the "Western Goals Foundation" which would help create the modern public-private security state we now know and love.

That story if interested: Detective charged with aiding right-wing group

Western Goals Foundation was a private domestic intelligence agency active in the USA. It was founded in 1979 by the legendary Army Ranger Major General John K. Singlaub, the publisher and British spy John H. Rees, and Congressman Larry McDonald. It went defunct in 1986 when the Tower Commission (Sen R-TX John Tower) revealed it had been part of Oliver North's Iran–Contra funding network. LOL, Ooops.


John Tower is the short guy in the middle, Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board under George HW Bush, who mysteriously died in a plane crash 214 days before Robert Maxwell's suicide-murder in 1991. Read his Post-Senate career with Robert Maxwell.

Lee Harvey Oswald 1961 Autograph Letter Signed to Senator Tower

August 2018: Lt Gen Mike Flynn receives the "Singlaub Award" from the Eagle Forum. Singlaub was a founding member of the CIA, and a highly decorated officer in the former Office of Strategic Services (OSS). His wet works history is off the charts. At age 73 he was also on the team that captured Carlos the Jackal. Singlaub died on January 29, 2022, age 100.