W/NW History

Cueto, Cuba 2019 - living history. Raul Bayarte's homemade armband reads "M-26-7" which was the official designation and uniform for the "26th of July Movement" now referred to as the Castro led Revolution that deposed the dictator, Batista, in 1959.

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Grave of British Soldiers, ‎⁨Minute Man National Historical Park⁩, ⁨Concord⁩, ⁨Massachusetts⁩, ⁨United States⁩

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A memorial in the Chapel Hill cemetery, Troy Michigan, to the 339th Infantry Regiment (Polar Bears) who were sent to Russia in 1918 as part of an unsuccessful Allied effort to defeat the Russian communists.


The 339th Regiment was created in June 1918, composed mainly of young draftees, for the purpose of fighting on the Western Front in France. Most of the 4,487 men were from Michigan, but some 500 draftees from Wisconsin were included. It was commonly referred to as "Detroit's Own". They were sent to fight the Bolsheviks in Northern Russia. They were nicknamed the "polar bears" because of their service there.


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Raul Bayarte - combatant in the 26th of July movement, the official name for the Castro led revolucion that deposed the Cuban dictator Batista in 1959. He fought in the Secundo Frente with Raul Castro (Fidel's brother) as his commander. I cherish the times we spent over some rum with him casually telling me about those times. Sadly he died early this year. To me, this is history.
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The Hung King Temple in Saigon has a peculiar colonial history: inaugurated in 1929 under the tutelage of the French administration to remember 12,000 Vietnamese soldiers who died in the trenches 'for the glory of France' during WW I. The French thought it was sufficient to honor the dead with a statue of a French General on horseback in a Saigon square but the Vietnamese thought otherwise. The Hung King Temple became the compromise where Vietnamese family members could honor their dead, instead.
 
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Ho Chi Minh is one of the enigmatic men of the 20th Century. As is the problem with enigmatic men, fact and fiction tend to intermingle. For an intriguing and revealing biography have a look at William J. Duiker: "Ho Chi Minh: A Life". Duiker, a former US Foreign Service Officer and Professor of Asian history spent 30 years delving into Vietnamese and European archives, as well as interviewing Minh's surviving colleagues in order to write a definitive biography. Cheers, OtL
 
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How about some history in the form of old negatives? Here's a glass plate 4X5 an old friend of mine from New York gave me a few years ago.

It's a view across the Hudson River from the New Jersey side looking towards Manhattan. That's the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet laying at anchor, at least a good portion of it, about a month before the US declared war on Germany.
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Here's a detail from the edge. Looks like November 2, 1917. The US declared war December 7, 1917.
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And from the same stash of plates is the image below of a group of people. This appears to be the parents of the two younger ladies and their husbands. Could the photographer in this image be the one who snapped the photo of the fleet? Hint: Packard Shutter.
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HERE FORMERLY STOOD

GRIFFINS WHARF

AT WHICH LAY MOORED ON DEC. 16,1773, THREE BRITISH SHIPS WITH CARCOES OF TEA TO DEFEAT KING GEORGE'S TRIVIAL BUT TYRANNICAL TAX OF THREE PENCE A POUND.

ABOUT NINETY CITIZENS OF BOSTON, PARTLY DISGUISED AS INDIANS, BOARDED THE SHIPS THREW THE CARCOES, THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO CHESTS IN ALL, INTO THE SEA, AND MADE THE WORLD RING WITH THE PATRIOTIC EXPLOIT OF THE

BOSTON TEA PARTY

"NO! NEER WAS MINGLED SUCH A DRAUGHT IN PALACE, HALL, OR ARBOR, AS FREEMEN BREWED AND TYRANTS QUAFFED THAT NICHT IN BOSTON HARBOR​
 
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