The day they stopped Niagara Falls

The day Niagara Falls ran dry: Newly discovered photos show the moment the iconic waterfall came to a standstill!

Its been 42 years, a previously unseen set of photos of the mighty Niagara Falls reduced to nothing more than a barren cliff-top have surfaced. The stark images reveal North America 's iconic - and most powerful - waterfall to be almost as dry as a desert.

In June 1969, U.S. Engineers diverted the flow of the Niagara River away from the American side of the falls for several months.

Stark: A completely dry Niagara Falls never seen before or since the six months in

July 1969 when U.S. Engineers set about restructuring the American side of the twin landmark.

Mountain of rubble: This set of photos only recently came to light when

Russ Glasson found them in a shoebox in his in-laws' Connecticut garage.

Their plan was to remove the large amount of loose rock from the base of the waterfall, an idea which they eventually abandoned due to expense in November of that year. During the interim, they studied the riverbed and mechanically bolted and strengthened a number of faults to delay the gradual erosion of the American Falls .

The team, made up of U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, blew up their temporary dam in November, 1969 and six million cubic feet of water once again thundered over the falls' sides every minute.

Now, after lying unseen for more than four decades, a set of images showing the eerie calm at the American Falls that year have been unearthed by a man from Connecticut.

Plan: The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers studied the riverbed and mechanically bolted and

strengthened a number of faults to delay the gradual erosion of the American Falls . 

Historical moment: In order to stop the Niagara River from running over the American Falls,

engineers constructed a dam consisting of 27,800 tons of rock, stopping the water for the first time ever.

Russ Glasson recently stumbled across the pictures, which were taken by his in-laws, and had been left in an old shoebox in their garage for over four decades.

Mr. Glasson said: 'My in-laws took these pictures during the six months through June to November that the Army was working to improve the health of the American Falls .'

Two rockslides from the plate of the falls in 1931 and 1954 had caused a large amount of rock to be collected at the base. In 1965, reporters at a local newspaper, Niagara Falls Gazette, revealed that the American Falls would eventually cease to flow and stop altogether if the rocks were not removed.

Four years later, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers were charged with de-watering the falls to clean the river bed and to remove any loose rock at the bottom of the falls.

Gradual deterioration: Two rockslides from the plate of the falls in 1931 and 1954

had caused a large amount of rock to be collected at the base.

Eerie calm: The temporary dam can be seen in the top-right of this photograph.

Thunderous: The American Falls as they normally appear,

with millions of gallons of water hurtling over the edge every minute.

To achieve this the army had to build a 600ft dam across the Niagara River, which meant that 60,000 gallons of water that flowed every second was diverted over the larger Horseshoe Falls which flow entirely on the Canadian side of the border.

The dam itself consisted of 27,800 tons of rock, and then on June 12 1969, after flowing continuously for a long, long time, the American Falls stopped.Over the course of the next six months thousands of visitors flocked to the falls to witness the historic occasion.

Once the engineers had removed the collected rocks from the falls base and made geological testing to make safe the rest, the falls were re-watered on November 25 in front of 2,650 onlookers.

 

11 Eponymous Brands and the People Behind Them

1. Adolph “Adi” Dassler – Adidas

© Schnoerrer/dpa/Corbis
Adi and his brother Rudolph owned their own shoe company in Germany during the 1920s and 30s. Their products were so popular, many of the German competitors in the 1928 Olympics wore Dassler Brothers shoes. But during WWII the brothers had a falling out. While both joined the Nazi party, Rudolph was more fanatical and went off to fight, leaving Adi to make shoes for the military. After the war ended, Rudolph left and formed his own company, Puma. Adi then renamed the original company after himself, and Adidas was born.

2. King Camp Gillette – Disposable Razor

King realized early on that people liked things they could use for a short time and then throw away. Since constantly sharpening your razor was a pain, he decided to come up with a disposable one. After five years of work he finally succeeded, and founded the Gillette Safety Razor Company in 1901. King came up with the idea to give away the razor for free and charge men for the blades. He also believed in a socialist utopia, where all companies would be combined into one, which would be owned by the public. He offered Teddy Roosevelt a $1 million salary to be head of this theoretical company, but was turned down. He also believed that everyone in the United States should live in one giant city called Metropolis, which would be powered by Niagara Falls.

3. Candido Jacuzzi – Hot tubs

The seven Jacuzzi brothers emigrated from Italy to California in the early 1900s. Once there they started coming up with innovations for the big new craze: the airplane. Their biggest hit was the creation of the first plane with an enclosed cabin, which the US Postal Service bought to deliver mail. According to legend, their mother was worried about her sons’ safety and eventually convinced the brothers to change jobs. They started concentrating on hydraulic pumps for irrigation and hospital use. In the late 1940s, Candido’s young son Kenneth started suffering from arthritis. He received hydrotherapy at a hospital, but his father decided his son needed to have access to it at home as well. He filed a patent for his invention, but it wasn’t until another relative, Roy, joined the business years later that they started selling their Jacuzzi tubs to the public.

4. Charles Rudolph Walgreen – Drug stores

Today Walgreens pharmacies can be found in more than 8,000 locations around the US. But originally, Charles had nothing to do with pharmacies. He was working in a shoe factory in the late 1800s when he lost part of a finger in an accident. The doctor who patched him up managed to convince him to become an apprentice in a drug store. Eventually he became a licensed pharmacist, but enlisted to fight in the Spanish-American war before he could do anything with his new skills. At the war’s end, he started opening pharmacies that also had other amenities like over-the-counter goods and soda fountains. Soon Walgreens were popular hangouts, and Charles owned a chain of hundreds of them before his death in 1939.

5. Earl Tupper – Tupperware

Earl wasn’t always in plastics. Originally he was a landscaping man, but the Great Depression put him out of business. He got a job at DuPont and created a lightweight, flexible plastic, which the government then used for gas masks during WWII. In 1948, ten years after he founded the Tupperware Plastics Company, he was contacted by a woman named Brownie Wise. At that time Tupperware was sold in stores, but Wise had started selling it at women’s get-togethers to great success. She and Earl joined forces and soon he pulled his entire line from shops and it was sold exclusively at these “Tupperware Parties.”

6. Frank Zamboni – Ice Resurfacers

Image credit: Zamboni.com
Before household refrigerators were common, the ice making business was booming. But in 1939, twelve years after Frank and his brother started their ice block business, refrigerators were popular enough that they saw little future in the venture. Stuck with many large refrigeration units, they decided to open an ice rink. It was there that Frank, who had no more than a 9th grade education, came up with a way to resurface the ice. Originally it took three men an hour and a half to get it done, but in 1949 he invented the precursor of the ice machine we know today. Now one man could resurface a rink in ten minutes. Like Xerox and Kleenex, Zamboni is a trademarked word that we now use to refer to all ice resurfacing machines. In April 2012, the 10,000th Zamboni ever sold was delivered to the Montreal Canadiens.

7. Dr. Klaus Märtens – Footwear

The Nazis were apparently very good at footwear. Like Adidas, Doc Martens were designed during WWII by Klaus while he was on leave from the German army due to an ankle injury. He experimented with making better boots for himself, and when the war was ending and Germans started looting from their own cities, he managed to get his hands on a bunch of leather. When the war officially ended he pilfered more from disused Luftwaffe air fields. He was surprised to find when he opened his shops that 40% of the people who purchased his comfortable, durable boots were housewives. Once his shoes were popular enough, an English company bought the rights to distribute them in the UK. Since it was only 1959 and feelings towards Germany were still negative, the name was Anglicized to Doc Martens.

8. Orville Redenbacher – Popcorn

The creator of the most popular popcorn in the United States didn’t even start selling it until he was almost 50 years old. Orville spent most of his life breeding corn hybrids, tens of thousands of them, until he found one that would pop 40% larger than normal corn. Since this special corn, called “RedBow,” was more expensive, many distributors were hesitant to buy it. Orville hired a Chicago marketing company for $13,000. Their advice? Call the popcorn Orville Redenbacher’s and put his picture on the label. While Orville was fond of saying his mother came up with that idea for free, it worked and starting in the 1970s he was appearing in dozens of popular television commercials and going on chat shows to convince the public he was a real person.

9. Josiah Wedgwood – Pottery

Josiah may be remembered today in his eponymous pottery, but his life was far more exciting than that association would lead one to think. In his day he was a prominent abolitionist, and his pottery company made a medallion with the design of a black slave on his knees with the motto, “Am I not a man and brother?” He produced large quantities of the medallion and distributed them for free through the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Fashionable women started wearing them as jewelry and men smoked pipes with the image on the side. It became the most widely recognized image of a black person during the 1700s. Sadly, Josiah died before slavery was abolished in England. However, he also has the distinction of being the grandfather of Charles Darwin.

10. William Henry “Boss” Hoover – Vacuums

Boss’s last name is so synonymous with vacuum cleaners that in the UK it is both the go-to noun and verb; there they hoover the house with a hoover. But it wasn’t Boss who came up with the idea. James Murray Spangler invented the first upright vacuum in 1908 because his asthma was exacerbated by the dust the carpet sweeper used at his work stirred up. He was making one every 2-3 weeks when he loaned a model to his cousin Susan Hoover. Her husband, Boss, was looking for a new business venture since he was a leatherworker and the popularity of the car was reducing people’s need for his goods. He seized the opportunity and bought Spangler’s patent from him. But if only a few people had been interested in Boss’s leather goods, absolutely no one was interested in his weird sucking machine. Desperate, he put an ad in a popular magazine allowing what was possibly the first ever “free at home trial.” The gimmick worked and within four years the Hoover Company was an international brand.

11. Linus Yale, Jr. – Locks

Linus was originally a gifted portrait painter. But in 1858, his father died and Linus started working at the lock company his dad had founded. Once there, Linus used his drawing skills to envision ever more complex and secure locks. In order to make sure companies bought from him and not his competitors, Linus learned how to pick their locks and would demonstrate how easily they could be broken into at banks and businesses. He died of a heart attack in 1858 1868 while in the middle of negotiating the use of his locks in a new skyscraper. Yale went on to be the #1 lock manufacturer in the US.
* * *
There are plenty more where these came from. If there’s an eponymous brand whose history you’d like to know more about, leave a comment and we’ll talk about a sequel.

The American Civil War was a very misunderstood historical event

American Civil War, aka War Between the States, aka the War of Northern Aggression, aka the War Between Southern Confederacy and Northern States' Federal Government.

1. First, it wasn't a civil war.

It was not a war between two parties trying to control the same government. It was an attempt of the Southern States to secede from the Union. You may say that it was a rebellion, but see the next part.

2. The Southern States had the right to secede.

The Constitution (10th Amendment) reserved all rights for the States and their people except those that were reserved for the Federal Government or were explicitly denied to the States (right to coin money, right to form international treaties, etc.). A right to secede from a union between sovereign nations is a right that was not explicitly denied to the States by the Constitution; nor was it reserved for the Federal government (a right to expel a state from the Union). Therefore, constitutionally, the States had that right.

Were the States sovereign nations before the signing of the Constitution? Historically, after the Colonies broke away from the United Kingdom, they reverted to the state of nature. Afterwards, they each re-formed into states, each with its constitution and legislature. Afterwards, the States formed a union, in which their sovereignty was preserved. (Also, what is the very last thing that you see if you look at the back of the Constitution? That's right: you see signatures of the representatives of the specific States.) The Constitution was ratified as a contract between sovereign nations and a government they were creating.

Claiming that the States had no right to secede is the same as claiming that when two people enter into a contract or a treaty (without specified time limits), they have no right to terminate the contract whenever they wish. It contradicts the accepted practices of contracts.

Therefore, the Civil War was an attempt of the Southern States to secede from the Union. It would be no different from, say, Spain deciding today that it wants to secede from the European Union and EU invading Spain to make it a "subject" of Brussels. I.e., your regular expansionist invasion.

3. Was the war about slavery?

Well, yes and no. It was in the sense that the Southern States seceded when it became clear that the Congress would be dominated by the anti-slavery Northern States. But it's not so simple as to say that the war was a crusade to end slavery in the South.

First, Lincoln and many other Northerners did not care about the slavery per se. They cared about preserving the Union. Lincoln is known for saying that if he could preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves, he would do that; if he could do it by freeing half the slaves, he would do that; if he could do it by freeing none of the slaves, he would do that too.

Many Northern abolitionists were in favor of letting the Southern states secede for three reasons: a) they did not want to be in the same Union with the states involved in the abominable practice, b) they believed (correctly) that Southern states were adamantly pro-slavery due to the reasons of honor and politics, c) they knew that the economic forces would make slavery unprofitable very soon (as they did in many other countries).

So, what was the war about? In no order of importance:

a) Southern States' rights and honor. Southerners felt that they had the right to self-government in the areas that locally concerned the individual states, not the Union altogether, and the the Federal government was abusing its powers. Plus, the Southerners felt that the Northerners were disdainful of the Southern culture and were trying to turn the Southerners into second-class citizens. (Yes, I know it's ironic for slave-owners to feel this way. I never claimed they were consistent. Many of the Founding Fathers were also slave-owners and were also inconsistent.)

b) Money. The Northern States wanted to dominate the Congress in order to be able to impose tariffs on the European imports to "protect" Northern manufactured goods. European nations, in retaliation, imposed tariffs on American exports, which were, for the most part, agricultural products (mainly cotton) from the South. So, if the Northern States controlled the Congress, they could make things favorable for the Northern manufacturers and hurt Southern farmers.

c) Northern racism and economic interests. Many Northerners wanted slavery abolished (both in the Southern States and in the Federal territories). Not all of them had humanist motives. Many of them (including the author of the famous Wilmot Proviso which would ban slavery in any territories acquired from Mexico) wanted the labor markets available for the white men.

They were 19th-century version of modern-day opponents of doing business with illegal immigrants and China. There are two reasons to oppose that today: i) one can be concerned about the welfare of the Mexicans and the Chinese, ii) one can be a racist and more concerned about "bona fide Americans" getting the jobs. The same was the case in the North in the 19th century. Many anti-slavery advocates wanted the labor markets secured for white men and former slaves shipped out of the country back to Africa or the Caribbean.

d) Southern racism and economic interest. Yes, obviously, there were Southerners who considered the slaves to be non-humans and who had interest in keeping them working in plantations, cotton gin or not. To ignore that would be intellectually dishonest.

4. Was the War worth it?

This is a complicated question. Obviously, the lives of many slaves became better off as a result of the War. There is no denying it.

Then again: the War remains the bloodiest single conflict in the US history. US remains the only Western nation to end slavery by killing a lot of its own citizens. (Even in Russia the serfdom ended around the same time peacefully.) Slavery was going to end anyway, and very soon: changing economic realities (the invention of the cotton gin, etc.) would make sure of that. Of course, the slaves might not be ok with waiting for another few decades for the markets to change, but it is not clear that all the murder of the soldiers and civilians was justified...

Economically, the War (and the ensuing Restoration) devastated the South, and its effects are still felt.

Politically, the War was a case of freeing the slaves and enslaving the free. It reversed the polarity between the Federal Government and the States. While originally, the Federal Government was a government of enumerated powers, whose sovereigns were the States (who could threaten to nullify the Government's laws if they proved to be unconstitutional or threaten to secede), after the war, it became clear that the ball was in the Federal Government's court.

The size and power of the Federal Government, its involvement in people's personal lives, in the economy, in all aspects of the society started growing and grows still. No American today is free from the tyranny of the majority, one way or another. While before, if one did not like conditions in one state, he could move to another, today, the conditions are made more-or-less uniform by the Federal tyranny. One's choice is to move to another country, which is not as easy as to move, say, from Louisiana to Massachusetts.

Effectively, whatever gains in political freedom for individuals and communities had been accomplished by the War for Independence from Britain were reversed by the Civil War.

The 13 strangest composer deaths in classical music

Jean-Baptiste Lully

(1632–1687) 

This French Baroque master, the favourite opera of King Louis XIV, died from a self-inflicted wound to his foot, which he stabbed with his own pointed staff (used for keeping time) while conducting his Te Deum. Gangrene kicked in, spreading to his leg and finally killing him on March 22, 1687, three months after he had dealt the blow.

Henry Purcell(1659–1695) 

The English composer who penned the opera Dido and Aeneas was taken too soon; he was just 36, and at the height of his career. He died at his home in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, having caught a chill after returning home late from the theatre (or tavern) one night to find that his wife had locked him out… Or so the story goes. He is buried adjacent to the organ in Westminster Abbey, and his Funeral Music for Queen Mary was played at his own funeral.

Alexander Scriabin(1871–1915)

Teenagers often say they could “just die” when acne takes over their faces, but in Scriabin’s case this is precisely what happened. The Russian composer-pianist made his last public appearance in St Petersburg on April 2, 1915. Just a few days later he noticed a pimple on his upper lip. On April 7 the furuncle was infected and Scriabin was bedridden and febrile. By the 11^th, well-wishers crowded the staircase of his flat, for two types of blood poisoning had set in. Scriabin died a few days later, with his manuscript containing sketches for the Misteriya open on the piano.

Alban Berg(1885–1935)

An insect bite was the undoing of this pupil of Schoenberg. A sting gave rise to a carbuncle on his back; since the Bergs were poor his wife attempted a home operation using a pair of scissors. As a result, the Austrian composer died from blood poisoning on Christmas Eve, at the age of 50.

Anton Webern(1883–1945) 

Berg wasn’t the only pupil of Schoenberg to die in particularly unfortunate circumstances; fellow serialist composer Anton Webern also met a tragic fate. It was September 15, 1945 – World War II had just ended. Webern had stepped outside to enjoy a cigar without waking his sleeping grandchildren, unaware that a curfew was being enforced by the Allied occupying forces. He was shot dead by an American soldier who saw him light up.

Jean-Marie Leclair(1697-1764)

This French Baroque composer and virtuoso violinist separated from his second wife in 1758, moving into a bachelor pad in a rough neighbourhood in Paris. There, in 1764, he was found stabbed to death. The mystery of his murder was never solved but it is believed that his estranged wife was responsible and stood to gain financially. Leclair’s nephew, Guillaume-François Vial, was the primary suspect at the time.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart(1756 – 1791)

Mozart’s untimely death while he was composing his Requiem has been the subject of rumour, speculation and wild accusations for more than 200 years. One of the lesser-known legends to have done the rounds is that Mozart was poisoned with mercury by the Freemasons, assassinated for publicly revealing the secrets of their Craft in the libretto and plot of his opera The Magic Flute. The claim persisted in Nazi-era Germany in a 1936 article entitled Mozart’s Life and Violent Death, which aligned the Jewish faith to suspicious Masonic practices. However, there is no evidence that Mozart’s efforts were met with disapproval from the Freemasons.
Another rumour has it that Franz Hofdemel, Mozart’s lodge brother, murdered the composer for having an affair with his wife Magdalena, a 23-year-old student of Mozart’s. Hofdemel is said to have attacked the pregnant Magdalena and committed suicide on the day of Mozart’s funeral.
The most frequently cited, romantic theory is that Antonio Salieri was so insanely jealous of Mozart’s genius that he conspired to kill him. Mozart endured 15 days of excruciating pain, swelling and discomfort before his death, but his symptoms on the whole were not consistent with poisoning.
As there were no signs of foul play no autopsy was conducted, historians and medical professionals today can only speculate on the condition that claimed him. The most commonly held belief is that Mozart died of rheumatic fever – indeed, there was a fever epidemic in Vienna at the time – but in the past ten years a new theory has emerged: that Mozart died from a disease caused by a parasitic worm called trichinella, spread by tainted meat. The offending dish? Pork chops – Mozart’s favourite, which he referred to in a letter dated October 7-8, 1791.

Charles Valentin Alkan
(1813-1888) 

This French pianist-composer extraordinaire also had a keen interest in the Bible and the Talmud. For many years it was believed that he died a suitably erudite death, crushed under a pile of books after reaching for the Talmud on a high shelf. But a recently discovered letter, written by Alkan’s concierge, casts doubt on this anecdote. Apparently the concierge discovered Alkan in his kitchen, trapped under a coat rack, perhaps having suffered a stroke or heart attack. He was 74 at the time of his death.

Ernst Chausson(1855-1899)

The French Romantic composer who penned the ravishing Poème for violin was out for a bicycle ride outside his property in Limay when he lost control on a downhill slope and crashed into a brick wall, dying instantly.

Hugo Wolf

(1860-1903) 

In early 1897, the great lieder composer began to show signs of mental derangement brought on by his syphilis, forcing him to stop composing altogether. After an attempt to drown himself, he admitted himself into an insane asylum, where he died in 1903 at the age of 43.

Enrique Granados

(1867–1916)

At the height of his success, during WWI, the Spanish nationalist composer was invited was invited by President Woodrow Wilson to give a piano recital at the White House. When Granados and his wife missed the boat back to Spain, they travelled to England, then boarding the “Sussex” ferry to take them on to France. On March 24, 1916, while crossing the English Channel, the Sussex was hit by a German U-boat torpedo. Granados, who had a life-long fear of the ocean, drowned after he jumped out of his lifeboat in a valiant but futile attempt to save his wife.

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky(1840–1893) 

Tchaikovsky's death remains a mystery to this day. He fell ill just days after conducting the premiere of his deeply personal Sixth Symphony, the Pathéthique. Eyewitnesses including his brother Modest suggest that he had taken a "fateful sip of unboiled water" that led to cholera. But it is widely believed that the Russian composer had been having an illicit relationship with a young nobleman he was tutoring. In 1980 musicologist Aleksandra Orlova published a theory proposing that Tchaikovsky committed suicide rather than live with the scandal of th

Claude Vivier

(1948–1983) 

With the murder of Montreal-born composer Claude Vivier, a student of Stockhausen, the music world lost one of the most original voices to emerge in the late 20^th century. Vivier was 34 when he was fatally stabbed in his apartment by a male prostitute he met in a bar. On the worktable was the manuscript of the composer’s final, incomplete work, Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? (Do You Believe in the Immortality of the Soul?) In this hauntingly prophetic dramatised monologue, Vivier describes a journey on the Metro during which he becomes strongly attracted to a young man. The music ends abruptly after the sung line, “Then he removed a dagger from his jacket and stabbed me through the heart.”

Titanic: The final messages from a stricken ship

By Sean Coughlan BBC News

The Carpathia was one of the ships that received the Titanic's calls for help

Continue reading the main story

In today's Magazine

• My dad, Bob Marley
• News tweets: Tupac, Secret Service and Seacrest
• French candidates recall glorious past
• Are language cops losing war against 'wrongly' used words?

On the night the Titanic struck an iceberg, a network of wireless operators on ships and land stations frantically communicated with each other across the expanses of the North Atlantic in an effort to mount a rescue mission. The surviving messages form a real-time record of the events of that night.

The story of the Titanic is barnacled with myths and legends.
It has become part of the popular imagination, a symbol for the most epic and glamorous failure. It is tragedy with tea dances.
But there is really only one first-hand, real-time record of what happened that night - the collection of wireless messages sent between the Titanic and the other ships which hurriedly tried to organise a rescue operation, during that freezing night in April 1912.
It is a telegraphic narrative showing how the Titanic had been given warnings of ice by other ships - and which records the increasingly frantic calls for assistance after the collision with the huge iceberg.
And to mark the Titanic's centenary, the BBC World Service's Discovery programme is broadcasting an unusual re-creation of these conversations.

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

Titanic - In Her Own Words, a Discovery special on the BBC World Service is presented by Sean Coughlan. Transmission times and dates can be found here.

Audio artist Susanne Weber has used speech synthesis software to translate these Morse messages into spoken words.

These are mechanical voices recreating the exchange of wireless messages, rather than actors performing a script, and it produces an eerie representation of how these overlapping messages crackled out over the airwaves.
It is something like hearing the urgent and confused text messages sent from a disaster.
Unlike in the Hollywood films of the tragedy, these wireless messages are stoically understated. Copied out in neat copperplate handwriting, and kept on the ships that had been in contact with Titanic, they are the actual words of the crew and passengers.
It's the Titanic in her own words.
Wireless was still a relatively young technology at the time of the Titanic's maiden voyage.
The Marconi company, the Edwardian equivalent of a top technology brand, had put its wireless operators on board some of the more prestigious ships.
The Titanic, as the showcase of an ambitious, optimistic era, had the biggest and best wireless equipment in the world.
It was still something of a novelty and much of the initial wireless traffic was from first class passengers sending messages to their friends, rather like text messages showing off about a glamourous trip.

Italian electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi's equipment was on board many prestigious ships

"Hello Boy. Dining with you tonight in spirit, heart with you always. Best love, Girl," read one message sent on to New York, the Titanic's intended destination.
A message sent on to Los Angeles said: "No sickness. All well. Notify all interested in poker."
"Fine voyage, fine ship," wrote another, unaware of the awful irony of how that might later sound.
The wireless operators sending these messages were independent young men of the modern age, who had been recruited with the promise of escaping "blind alley careers".
They chatted to wireless operators in other ships in a jaunty, mock public school slang, calling each other "old man".
As well as letting passengers send personal messages, they provided the first wireless news service for ships.
As the Titanic crossed the Atlantic, the news headlines were about industrial unrest on the railways and a high-profile murder in France.

A message from the Olympic reports that it has received word from the Titanic

But the wireless was also beginning to be used for more serious purposes.
Ships gave each other safety information - and the Titanic received detailed advice about the location of icebergs - or "bergs, growlers and field ice" as one ship's captain described them.
Investigations after the sinking would never satisfactorily establish why these warnings had been ignored.
The senior wireless operator, Jack Phillips, had still been sending passengers' messages when the ship struck an iceberg. The collision was described as sounding like the tearing of calico.
With only enough room in the lifeboats for half the passengers and crew, the Titanic's captain turned to his only lifeline - the wireless - and asked the two Marconi operators to call for assistance.

Continue reading the main story

The famous SOS

Wireless operators originally used Marconi's "CQD" distress signal. "CQ" was the signal to stop transmission and pay attention. The "D" was added to signal distress. In 1906 the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin created the signal "SOS" for summoning assistance. The letters were chosen for their simplicity in Morse Code - three dots, three dashes and three dots. While the "SOS" superseded "CQD" in 1908 Marconi operators rarely used it. It became standard after the sinking of the Titanic.

• Survivors of the Titanic - I was there

The distress signal used by Marconi operators - CQD - boomed out over the Atlantic. The wireless operators joked they may as well also try another new distress signal that had been introduced - SOS - because they might never get a chance to use it again.

While the lifeboats were lowered, with awful goodbyes between husbands, wives and children, the wireless operators stuck to their task.
"Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD, old man," the Titanic called to another ship, the Carpathia.
"We have struck an iceberg and sinking by the head," she told a German ship, the Frankfurt.
The Titanic's messages caused consternation and disbelief among other ships.
They called back to the Titanic struggling to grasp what was happening, then urgently forwarded the distress signals in the hope that someone would be near enough to help.
It was like trying to organise a rescue by Twitter, with operators trying to make sense of the stream of sometimes contradictory information.
"We are putting passengers off in small boats. Women and children in boats. Cannot last much longer. Losing power," said the Titanic as the situation grew ever more desperate.
"This is Titanic. CQD. Engine room flooded."

The Titanic's captain Edward Smith gave the orders for the distress signals to be sent out

In response her sister ship, the Olympic called back: "Am lighting up all boilers as fast as we can."
There were also flashes of anger in the confusion. "You fool... keep out," the Titanic barked at a ship almost 200 miles away who had interrupted to inquire: "What is the matter with you?"
The last recorded messages are increasingly desperate and fragmented - although a shore station officer following the exchanges reported there was "never a tremor" in the Morse tapped out by Jack Phillips.
"Come quick. Engine room nearly full," was sent from the Titanic only a few short minutes before the ship finally sank.
When the Titanic fell silent, the chasing ships carried on calling out for news, co-ordinating the rescue of the survivors.
And the wireless became the only way for survivors to contact their families.
"Meet me dock with two hundred dollars, underwear, cap, big coat - am well but slightly frozen," messaged one survivor from the Carpathia rescue ship.
"Completely destitute, no clothes," said one another. Words cost money - and a masterpiece of brevity reported: "Safe, Bert."

One of the messages sent by Jack Phillips says the ship is 'sinking fast'

These poignant, first-hand reactions to the disaster had been gathered in an archive by John Booth, a Titanic historian and expert on old prints. But many were sold off at auction in the early 1990s.
Jack Phillips did not survive the sinking. But his heroism, staying at his post after being released from his duty by the captain, became an enduring part of the Titanic story.
Not least because one of the most influential templates for all future Titanic stories came from Harold Bride, his junior wireless operator.
Bride survived on an upturned lifeboat and then sold his story to the New York Times.
His story was a global media sensation, setting the tone of heroic self sacrifice, with the first accounts of the band playing while the ship sank, with tales of selflessness and cowardice.
And he commemorated the role of Jack Phillips, unflinching, even when he knew better than anyone else that there was no chance of a rescue ship arriving in time.
"I will never live to forget the work of Phillips during the last awful 15 minutes," said Bride.
"I suddenly felt a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about."

How Marilyn Monroe changed Ella Fitzgerald’s life

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If asked “Who  played an important role in the musical career of Ella Fitzgerald?” you might respond with names like Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Norman Granz, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The name Marilyn Monroe (who passed away 50 years ago this August), however, might not come to mind.
While touring in the ’50s under the management of Norman Granz, Ella, like many African-American musicians at the time, faced significant adversity because of her race, especially in the Jim Crow states. Granz was a huge proponent of civil rights, and insisted that all of his musicians be treated equally at hotels and venues, regardless of race.
Despite his efforts, there were many roadblocks and hurdles put in to place, especially for some of the more popular African-American artists. Here is one story of Ella’s struggles (as written in chicagojazz.com):

Once, while in Dallas touring for the Philharmonic, a police squad irritated by Norman’s principles barged backstage to hassle the performers. They came into Ella’s dressing room, where band members Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were shooting dice, and arrested everyone. “They took us down,” Ella later recalled, “and then when we got there, they had the nerve to ask for an autograph.”

Across the country, black musicians, regardless of popularity, were often limited to small nightclubs, having to enter through the back of the house. Similar treatment was common at restaurants and hotels.
Enter Marilyn Monroe
During the ’50s, one of the most popular venues was Mocambo in Hollywood. Frank Sinatra made his Los Angeles debut at Mocambo in 1943, and it was frequented by the likes of Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Lana Turner.
Ella Fitzgerald was not allowed to play at Mocambo because of her race. Then, one of Ella’s biggest fans made a telephone call that quite possibly changed the path of her career for good. Here, Ella tells the story of how Marilyn Monroe changed her life:

“I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt … she personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.”

Learning from Ella
Ella had an influence on Marilyn as well. Monroe’s singing had a tendency to be overshadowed by dress-lifting gusts of wind and the flirtatious “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” not to mentions her movies and marriage to Joe DiMaggio. But years prior to the Mocambo phone call, Monroe was studying the recordings of Ella.
In fact, it was rumored that a vocal coach of Monroe instructed her to purchase Fitzgerald’s recordings of Gershwin music, and listen to it 100 times in a row.
Continued study of Ella actually turned Marilyn into a relatively solid singer for about a decade, but again became overlooked as her famous birthday tribute song to JFK in 1962 ends up being the vocal performance that is widely remembered.

We will never see this again

Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House. The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri .. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there. When he retired from office in 1952 his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year. After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There was no Secret Service following them. When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale." Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise." As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food. Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale (cf. Illinois ). Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, "My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!