The Greatest Beer Run Ever

As you probably know, most bets that originate in a bar aren’t the best ones around, but sometimes there are exceptions. One night in November of 1967 was definitely one of them, as a remark by a bartender sent John “Chickie” Donohue on a beer run that became known as the greatest beer run ever.

One day, in response to the growing population of anti-war protesters, the bartender at a bar Donohue frequented remarked that the troops in Vietnam deserved a pat on the back and a cold beer.  Upon hearing that, Donohue was determined to go to Vietnam and crack a cold one with the boys.

Donohue was a veteran who served four years in the Marine Corps and was working as a merchant seaman, a civilian seaman who worked on tankers and other commercial ships. Since he held a seaman’s card (“Z” card), he was one of the few civilians who could legally go to Vietnam. Donohue heard that the next ship was leaving soon, so he threw on a plaid shirt and light blue jeans, brought two cases of bear stuffed in his duffle bag, wrote down a list of people he was to give beer to, and headed off to Vietnam on the Drake Victory, a merchant ship transporting ammo.

Donohue drank all of his beer during the two months on the Drake Victory, but stocked up again upon landing in Qui Nhon harbor. Shortly after pulling in to the harbor, Donohue noticed that the insignia of the group of officers who were examining the Drake Victory was that of the 127th Military Company: the same unit one of his friends, Tom Collins, was in. After pulling aside one of the Military Police and spinning up a sob story about looking for his “brother-in-law”, Collins arrived, shocked to see Donohue. After sharing a few drinks, Donohue set off to meet up with the other people on his list.

Donohue (left) sharing a beer with four of his friends

Donohue traveled from Qui Nhon to Khe Sahn and Saigon handing out beers, crossing off the names on his list, and restocking. However, getting around Vietnam wasn’t the easiest thing for Donohue to do, as he had to stay out of sight while wearing a colorful plaid shirt and jeans. To get around the issue of transportation, Donohue talked his way onto convoys, transport helicopters, planes, and trucks.

Despite his best efforts to get rides, Donohue was once stranded when his ship left port without him, causing him to get stuck in the Tet Offensive, a series of surprise attacks launched by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces against the US and South Vietnamese forces. However, Donohue wasn’t particularly concerned, as he just hung around and caught up with his buddies on the frontline for a while longer.

By March of 1968, Donohue made his way back home where his beer run made him a local legend. Even though there were, and still are, many skeptics of Donohue’s story, the idea of him committing his life to deliver beer and instill hope within his friends that they were going to make it back alive is what makes this story impressive.


Short documentary for this beer run by Pabst Blue Ribbon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4WAUmyKDq0
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/nyregion/a-daring-beer-run-to-soldiers-in-vietnam-recounted-yet-again.html?_r=0
https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Beer-Run-Ever-Friendship/dp/0998686816
https://taskandpurpose.com/chick-donohue-vietnam-greatest-beer-run-history
https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/greatest-beer-run-ever-donohue?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

Muhammad Ali and the civil rights movement

He is considered by many to be on of the greatest athletes of all time. Muhammad Ali even said that himself in one of his many famous quotes. Part of the reason why he is so remembered was his boxing ability and talent. But he also known for his contribution to the civil rights movement. 

Mentored by another civil rights leader in Malcolm X, Ali helped Black Americans feel prideful of who they are as well as promoting racial justice. Perhaps the naming of this blog is inaccurate, because he wasn't just an advocate for civil rights, he was an advocate for peace during the Vietnam war. 

When he refused to be drafted in the military for the Vietnam War due to religious reasons and opposition to the war, he was arrested and stripped of all his medals. He lost his passport and struggled to find work for a long time. This was also during the peak of his career. He was forbidden from boxing at 26, the ruling wasn't overruled until he was 29. 

His refusal to participate in the Vietnam war was what made him the greatest of all time. The fact he had made it to the highest point in sports, then threw it all away to stand up for what he believed. It made him even more powerful. Others would follow. Especially during a time when African American were fighting against civil rights. Mohammad Ali was proud of being black, and he encouraged other to be just as prideful.

It's Just a Prank, Bro

Lyndon B. Johnson. 36th US president of the Democratic Party. Creator of Medicare and Medicaid. Passed the Clean Air Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ... and a prankster?

During his presidency, Johnson wasn’t just a visionary of the Great Society, but had a vision for pranks as well. On his ranch in Stonewall, Texas, his hometown, he had a sizable car collection. The vehicles he owned ranged from convertibles to drive in his downtime to a small, blue, amphibious car. (aka. The Amphicar).

The Amphicar was developed in Germany where only 3,878 cars were built in four colors, Johnson chose Lagoon Blue

One day on the ranch, Johnson, along with Joseph A. Califano Jr., the president’s domestic affairs assistant and white house secretary at the time, Vicky McCammon, were in said Amphicar.

The group was on a hill incline near a lake, the perfect setup for Johnson. From Califano’s recollection, the President started shouting, “The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going under!”. From there the car rolled into the lake, Califano (understandably) tried to escape out of the car. The Amphicar then began to level, soon putting around the lake. At the expense of his domestic affairs assistant, Johnson teased, "Vicky, did you see what Joe did? He didn’t give a damn about his President. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car”. 

We all know Johnson declared a War on Poverty, but after learning about his Amphicar incident, I wouldn’t be surprised if he declared pranks wars as well.

Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/lyndon-johnson-played-terrifying-prank-with-his-amphicar-2014-8

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/lyndon-b-johnson

https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/lyndon-b-johnson-loved-pranking-people-his-amphicar-274655

The Polygon

It is easy to say the the Soviet Union and the US have moved past the Cold War by now, but smaller countries still bear the consequences. Semipalatinsk-21, a secret city, was created for the Soviet Union’s military presence and later developed into the Semipalatinsk Test Site during the Cold War. This site was created at its location due to the sole claim claim that it was uninhabited. In reality, however; there were many villages around the border and there was a major city, Semipalatinsk within 160 km. In total, there were 456 nuclear tests, which included 340 underground and 116 atmospheric tests carried out here (Stanford).

These tests devastated the local population due to radiation. People in near villages were estimated to have received average doses around 2000 milli-Sieverts (mSv). Even people 160 km away in Semipalatinsk received doses of several hundred mSv (Stanford). According to Kazakhstan's Institute of Radiation Medicine and Ecology, the total number of people exposed to "substantial radiation doses" from 1949-1962 is estimated to have been between 500,000 and a million. These substantial doses killed cells, damaged organs, and caused rapid death. Even if they were lower doses, they still caused other long-term health issues (ICANW).

The reason for the sheer amount of people that were exposed to substantial radiation doses was that of the concealment of the testing site to the public. When explosions occurred, the 200,000 residents of the Semipalatinsk area, weren’t evacuated or warned (Atlas Obscura); however, local residents became aware of the site to their rising number of health problems. By the year 1960, there was a large rise in the number of birth defects in newborns, and a 300% increase in infant mortality (NIIA). Additionally, cancer mortality rates in local residents had nearly quadrupled by 1975 and there were increases in respiratory and breast cancers (Stanford). Unfortunately, these terrible effects expanded beyond the local population. In Oskemen, 400 km from the explosion, citizens were exposed to fallout so severe that 638 people were hospitalized due to acute radiation sickness (Stanford).

Not only did the Soviet Union not warn the public about the health hazards of the nuclear tests, but they also used them as human guinea pigs. About 200,000 villagers that lived close to the sight essentially became human guinea pigs, as scientists wanted to research the potential dangers of nuclear weapons. Residents were ordered to stay outside during test blasts so that they could later be examined to determine the effects of radiation. This resulted in many later struggling with different types of cancer and more than half of the villagers died before reaching the age of 60 (RFERL).

Unfortunately, despite Kazakhstan trying to repair what occurred, the radiation will continue to harm it. Dr. Talgat Muldagaliyev, a professor at the Radiation Medicine Institute in Semey, the closest city to the Polygon, says,  “our studies show that radiation damages genetic code and the exposed person can pass it onto [the] second or third generation.” This is an important example of the catastrophic impact that nuclear weapons can have on the people.

The US holds a lot of responsibility for what happened in Kazakhstan as it was our bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that led to the USSR into the arms race. It was our escalation of the arms race due to our missile gap fear, that resulted in innocent Kazakhs being used as nuclear guinea pigs. Despite the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement protests, Nazarbayev was unable to shut down the Polygon until after the Cold War had ended in 1991.

If you want to see just how devastating our decision to start a nuclear arms race was... just look at the images below:

Nurse Larissa Soboleva holds two-year-old Adil Zhilyaev in an orphanage in Semey, Kazakhstan November 24, 2008. Adil was born blind and afflicted with Infantile Cereberal Paralysis (ICP) and hydrocephalia, as a result of his mothers exposure to radiation during years of Soviet weapons testing during the Cold War. He was abandoned by his parents, and is now cared for in an orphanage. (Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images)

Mayra Zhumageldina bathes her daughter, Zhannoor, in Semey, Kazakhstan on March 2, 2009. Zhannoor, 16, was born with microcephalia and sixth-degree scoleosis - a twisted spine because of exposure to high levels of radiation. The defect harmed Zhannoor's brain development as if she were in a permanent vegetative state. She cannot think, speak or perform basic functions. Mayra must bathe her every day because she cannot afford diapers. (Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images) 

Berik Syzdykov sits in bed in his mother in law's home inside the nuclear polygon in Kazakhstan February 25, 2009. He was born deformed, and blind as a result of radiation exposure in the womb. (Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images) 

Nikita Bochkaryov, 18, is bathed by his father in Semey, Kazakhstan January 12, 2009. Nikita, who has infantile cerebral palsy as a result of radiation exposure in the womb, cannot control his limbs and requires his parents' constant care. (Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images) 

One of Kazakhstan's many nuclear orphans. (Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images) 

http://archive.boston.com/bigpicture/

https://www.didierruef.com/

A-Bomb & The Cold War

The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a topic that has been debated for decades and remains a subject of controversy. A key issue that has been brought up by multiple historians is that the bomb was mainly directed towards the Soviet Union and was a major cause of the Cold War.

Some historians argue that the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had less to do with Japan and more about its use as a diplomatic tool against the USSR. “Stimson [the Secretary of War] had a virtual obsession with the matter” (The Most Controversial Decision) and Groves, the army general in charge of the Manhattan project, further describes how the bomb was made on “the premise that the USSR is our enemy” and was to be used as an “advantage” when dealing with them (Hiroshima). The fact that two key people in charge of building the bomb both saw it as a tool to be used with the USSR indicates that the bomb was indeed a diplomatic device.

This is further solidified by the fact that the US delayed the Potsdam Conference for two weeks in order to wait for Trinity, the first successful detonation of a nuke (Prompt and Utter Destruction). He did this in attempt to “defer consideration of major issues with Soviets until he had the weapon to impute coherence to his foreign policy.” Truman also developed a new attitude of confrontation during the meetings as he had “an atomic bomb up his sleeve” (Takaki). Alperovitz further argues that when the bomb was dropped it was done to prevent Soviet expansionism and make, as Takaki describes, the USSR “more manageable.”

On the contrary, many believed that the bomb was not used as a diplomatic tool. Hiroshima describes how the US wanted international control of nukes and the ability to cooperate with the USSR based on “quid pro quo”. Essentially, if the US was not trying to keep a monopoly over nuclear weapons and was actively working with the Soviet Union regarding nuclear power, it is unlikely that he would try to use it as a diplomatic tool to pressure the Soviets. The Most Controversial Decision further describes how Truman had “no intention to engage in atomic diplomacy”, and did not focus on the geopolitical considerations of having the bomb, as he was “unwilling to build his foreign policy upon the potential of an untested weapon.” Prompt and Utter Destruction strongly supports this through its description of how Truman and his staff “never used diplomatic advantage in a deliberate way.”

Something that cannot be debated; however, is the fact that the A-bomb led to the nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR. Immediately after Potsdam, Stalin went to his advisors and said "we need to get Kurchatov working faster on this" (referring to the Soviet a-bomb development). Stalin saw U.S. possession of the atomic bomb as a direct threat to the Soviet Union and he was determined to level the playing field. Additionally, through atomic espionage, Soviet scientists were well on their way to developing their own bomb.

The Soviets also refused to cooperate with the US designated by their rejection of the Baruch Plan (1946), during the first meeting of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), which called for the Soviets to share every detail of their atomic energy program; including opening their facilities to international inspectors. By August 1949, the Soviets had successfully tested their own nuclear device and the nuclear arms race that would define the rest of the Cold War was on.

The Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers were reports that contained the history of the US involvement in Southeast Asia, most notably Vietnam, from World War II up until the Vietnam War. They were commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967 and turned over to the New York Times in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst at MIT's Center for International Studies. Ellsberg had originally been a supporter of the US involvement in Indochina, but had changed his mind and become seriously opposed to it. He thought the war in Vietnam was unwinnable, and believed the information regarding US decision-making about Vietnam in the Pentagon Papers should be known to the American public.

In June of 1971, the New York Times began to publish articles about the information uncovered in these papers. The US Department of Justice obtained a temporary restraining order against the revealing of this classified information, but the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, freed the newspaper to continue publishing the material. The portions revealed to the public demonstrated that Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson had all been dishonest towards the public regarding the role of America in Vietnam and the degree to which it would extend.

As one would imagine, the Pentagon Papers caused nation-wide and international controversy over the legal and moral issues with Vietnam and the US actions taken. Many dissenters of the war had their suspicions confirmed. However, despite the newfound information at hand about these previous presidents, arguably the biggest impact was made on President Nixon, even though none of his policies were covered in the in-depth study. Nixon was understandably concerned about the situation, because it was a threat to the secret diplomacy he had going on at the time. People were beginning to become more suspicious of Nixon as well due to the revelations made in the papers, and he was worried that would affect his re-election that was coming up. Overall, Nixon and his administration were embarrassed, and Nixon's worst fears about the press and media were confirmed.

After the Supreme Court decision, Nixon's paranoia led him to try and have Ellsberg and one of his accomplices indicted of criminal charges. However, these charges were dismissed once it came to light that Nixon also had Ellsberg's psychiatrist office burglarized by a secret White House team, known as "The Plumbers", in an attempt to find discrediting information about him. This team was also involved in the Watergate break-in scandal that would lead to Nixon's resignation later on.

The Pentagon Papers were released in book form in 1971, but did not feature the complete documents. In 2011, the previously classified portions were released, and the public could view the study in its entirety.



The Pentagon Papers shocked the world, making front-page headlines.

Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/pentagon-papers
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pentagon-Papers

The Chicano Movement (1960s Civil Rights)

Chicano Movement Protests 

       
          Though we most often hear about African Americans’ civil rights, we often overlook the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was fighting for civil rights for all Americans of color. In particular, the Chicano Movement was a subsect of the civil rights movement that aimed to achieve three goals for Hispanic Americans: restoration of their land, rights for farmers, and creating reforms for their education.

          As context to this movement, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, making the Mexicans that lived in the territory that the U.S. gained automatic American citizens. These new Mexican-Americans assumed that they would be given full civil rights and treated with respect, but, ultimately, were not.

       The earliest and some of the most integral events in the Chicano Movement were Supreme Court cases. In 1947, the Supreme Court case Mendez v. Westminster that ruled that Latino children could not be segregated from white children in schools. Similarly, in 1954, the Supreme Court case Hernandez v. Texas ruled that all racial groups must have equal protection under the law, not just African Americans and whites.

California Grape Boycott

          Strikes and demonstrations complemented the numerous legal challenges Hispanics made in court, showing their dedicated activism. In the 1960s, to achieve the right to unionization for farmworkers, a national boycott on grapes was organized, where grape pickers went on strike and Americans refused to buy grapes. Eventually, in 1970, the UFW, or United Farm Workers, was acknowledged as a union. Some students staged school walkouts in the late 1960s to protest issues in the American education system, such as Eurocentric curriculums and a ban on speaking Spanish in school. Consequently, Congress passed eventually passed the Equal Opportunity Act in 1974 that created more bilingual programs in public schools.

          Through their actions, inspired by the demonstrations African Americans created, Hispanics were able to achieve more civil rights throughout the 1960s and 1970s. 

1968 Los Angeles school walkout

Sources

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197398/

https://www.thoughtco.com/chicano-movement-brown-and-proud-2834583 

https://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol3/chicano/chicano.html 

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Coachella/chicano.html 

Richard Nixon: Environmental Activist?

Nixon's presidency is remembered for many things: not all of them positive.  He faced major protests against his methods used in Vietnam and was disgraced by the Watergate Scandal, which lead to his resignation.  But Nixon's tainted legacy overshadows one of the key facts about his presidency: he was the most environmentally conscious president since Teddy Roosevelt.

Nixon was accused of using his environmental stances for show due to controversy surrounding his Vietnam policy, but he ended up signing some very concrete laws that still affect how we all live today.  Arguably the most important thing he did was create the Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) by executive order in 1970.  This agency still exists today and is responsible for many environmental laws in the U.S.  The first piece of legislation passed by the EPA was the Clean Air Act, which allows the EPA to set and enforce regulations about certain air pollutants that are known to be harmful to humans.  This law is still "The most significant air pollution control bill in American history."  This bill is credited with reducing air pollution in the United States significantly. 
Nixon was also passionate about protecting the species we share the planet with.  He passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which was designed to protect marine mammals from human threats.  The act still allowed native hunters to hunt whales if it was done in a sustainable manner.  Nixon also passed the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries act of 1972, which is more commonly known as the Ocean Dumping Act.  This law prevented anyone from putting anything in the ocean that could harm human health or the environment.  In 1973, he passed the Endangered Species Act which established the list of federally endangered species and gave various agencies tools to help protect these animals and the lands they live on.
One more important act was passed by Nixon near the end of his presidency.  The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 helps protect various freshwater sources to allow safe and clean drinking water for all communities across the nation.  This act means that over 92% of the population is receiving drinking water that meets all the health-based standards set by the EPA.
Nixon's legacy may be overshadowed by Watergate, but his environmental policies are what really affect all of us now.  Without these groundbreaking pieces of legislation, our world could be a very different place today. Nixon may not have been a saint, but his impacts on the environment should not be forgotten.
Sources:
https://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Richard_Nixon_Environment.htm
https://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/richard-nixon-the-environmentalist-resigned-38-years-ago-today-14776
https://www.thoughtco.com/richard-nixons-environmental-legislature-1181980
https://www.epa.gov/sdwa

Ping Pong Diplomacy

In later years of the Cold War, relationships between the U.S and China were especially tense in large part due to diplomatic silence. China and the U.S. had not had direct contact for decades. However, as relationships between China and the Soviet Union went soured during the early 1970s, both the U.S. and China were open to potential communication and diplomacy. On the Chinese side, Chairman Mao thought that alliance with the U.S. could prove beneficial to keeping the Russians out, while on the U.S. side, Nixon had heavily prioritized China in his foreign policy.

Glenn Cowan and Zhuang Zedong Exchanging Gifts

Although the countries commenced secretive communications, a surprising encounter occurred during the World Table Tennis Championships in Japan that became widespread news. 19 year old Glenn Cowan, representing the United States, boarded a bus that was shuttling the Chinese national time. Zhuang Zedong, one of the team's best players, greeted Cowan and shook his hand. They exchanged gifts, Zhuang gifting a picture of the Huangshan mountains, and Cowan, a hippie, gifting a shirt with a peace symbol and the lyrics "Let It Be," written by the popular Beatles. This incident was photographed and transformed into a popular topic.

Chairman Mao initially wanted the Chinese team to avoid the Americans, but after receiving news about the exchange between Cowan and Zhuang, decided to invite the American team to China, reportedly claiming that "Zhang Zedong is not just a good table tennis player, he's a good diplomat as well." President Nixon was understandably surprised, especially that potential diplomacy would come as a result of a ping-pong team, but he accepted.

The U.S. ping-pong team was filled with people anywhere from hippies, college professors, and high school girls. No one on the team was quite established, yet in the span of a few days they changed from relatively unknown people to the most important American diplomats at the time.

The event proved to be a major player in the thawing of Chinese-American relationships, as a short time later, President Nixon eased travel bans and trade embargoes towards China. Back-channel communication between the two countries opened, and eventually, President Nixon met Chairman Mao and began to ease the countries' relationship. The Chinese national team also traveled to the United States to tour.

Looking back at the heavy chain of events, it's intriguing to consider what would have been different if it weren't for the impromptu camaraderie that existed between a U.S. hippie ping-pong player and a Chinese three-time world champion.


Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/ping-pong-diplomacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zedong
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-25836922/how-ping-pong-diplomacy-brought-nixon-to-china
https://www.si.com/more-sports/2008/06/11/opening-volley0616

The Lava Lamp: a Lasting Creation of the 1960s

The mesmerizing light fixture has risen, sunk, and wobbled it's way through cultural consciousness for decades. The lamp was invented by Edward Craven Walker, a British entrepreneur whose other claim to fame was making underwater "naturist" videography, or in more stark terms, nudist films.

During the late 1960s, these lava lamps came to symbolize all things countercultural and psychedelic—although, as you might expect, those mesmerized by its relaxing glow sometimes had trouble recalling why. It’s like asking, “Why did I just eat an entire bag of dried mangoes?" And while the lamps are peculiar in that they don’t cast much light, the sleek, rocket-like exterior was perfectly pitched to the space age.

However, Craven Walker didn’t envision the lamps as paragons of grooviness. “They weren’t marketed like that—they were almost staid,” Granger says. Indeed, an ad in a 1968 edition of the American Bar Association Journal touted the “executive” model—mounted on a walnut base alongside a ballpoint pen.

His inspiration for the lava lamp came while he was passing the time in a pub: he noticed a homemade egg timer crafted from a cocktail shaker filled with alien-looking liquids bubbling on a stove top. Determined to perfect the design, and to install a light bulb as the heat source, he settled on a bottle used for Orange Squash. He then hired someone named David George Smith to develop the chemical formula needed to make his idea work. The exact recipe is classified information.

The way it works? His lamp paired two mutually insoluble liquids: one water-based, the other wax-based. The heat source at the bottom of the lamp liquefies the waxy blob. As it expands, its density decreases and it rises to the top—where it cools, congeals and begins to sink back down. 

By the end of the decade, Craven Walker’s company was manufacturing millions of “Astro Lamps,” as he called them, per year. In 1965, he sold the U.S. manufacturing rights to a company called Lava Lite. Even though sales declined in the 1970s, today, Lava Lite sells millions each year to retailers such as Walmart or Target. The lava lamp has proven its staying power: The company still takes orders from original 1960s-era owners who need replacement bulbs.

Source:

https://www.mathmos.com/Our-story.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-history-of-the-lava-lamp-21201966/

Is It Physically Feasible to Haul Ass?

Donkeys were actually widely used in the wars, and not just ones in ancient history. During the two world wars, they played a key role in transporting supplies over rugged mountains and jungle terrain inaccessible to motorized vehicles. They've also played a large role in more recent wars.

During the World War I Battle of Gallipoli, a medic from New Zealand named James Gardiner Jackson took a photograph of a fellow countryman transporting a wounded soldier to a field hospital on donkey back. The photograph became immortalized when artist Horace Moore-Jones, another New Zealander who also fought in Gallipoli, drew a number of paintings based on that image. It turned out that the stretcher-bearer, Dick Henderson, had used his donkey to save many other wounded soldiers.

Mules were also heavily used in World War II. In the Allied campaign against the Japanese in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, the animals were used to carry heavy loads through the jungle. They were also often the first line of defense protecting soldiers from shrapnel when bombs landed nearby.

Donkeys and mules continue to be used in recent conflicts such the war in Afghanistan. In this country’s rocky and steep terrain, donkeys are often the only means available to transport supplies and weapons. They are indispensible when mountain passes are closed or when flooding knocks out roads and bridges.

While they may not seem the striking manifestation of a veteran, donkeys and mules have proven to be reliable, hard-working, patient and even heroic companions.

But the question remains unanswered: Can you haul ass?

Upon doing some research, the weight of an adult donkey can range from 180 to 1,100 pounds, with the median wartime donkey weighing around 260 pounds. And, as you can tell by the picture above, it is clearly feasible to haul ass.

Postscript: The situation in the picture shown above was likely soldiers walking through a minefield, and a soldier leading a donkey is six legs' worth of mines, whereas a soldier carrying a donkey is only two legs' worth of mines. Hauling ass might be the best choice given the situation. 

Sources:
https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-soldier-carry-a-donkey
http://www.photorientalist.org/donkey-soldiers-unsung-heros/

Anti-War and Protest Music in the 60s and Today

Following the development of rock and roll and youth rebellion in the 50s, the 60s were a time of musicians using their art to express the counterculture's opinions on what the US government was doing in Vietnam. Civil rights and anti-war activists had a lot of crossovers, which created counter-culture movements much like what we discussed with the "Make Love, Not War" documentary.
Protest music in the United States has been around since the Revolutionary War when it was largely used to place blame on the British rather than dispute the existence of the war itself because those who were most negatively affected by the fighting were more easily silenced due to the analog nature of the time. Anti-war music as we would know it today truly began leading up to World War One, with songs like "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier," made popular by the isolationists. The growing popularity of record players and radios allowed many more musicians to make their voices heard in the time following the Great Depression, but World War Two managed to avoid heavy dissent due to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and general enthusiasm to retaliate and gain freedom around the world.
When television became widespread across America, American citizens once again had cause to protest war. The introduction of the horrors of war into everyone's living rooms was a wake-up call to what was actually happening, so the counterculture movement of the 60s evolved from acoustic folk music to rock-based tunes. The youth that had grown up on rock-and-roll used their passion and energy to protest the burden of war that was being placed unfairly on them, and that, in their opinion, wasn't necessary at all. As the toll of the war increased, the boldness of the songs increased as well, with the best-remembered song being “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” by Country Joe, a Navy veteran himself, who wrote "Send your sons off before it’s too late./Be the first one on your block/To have your boy come home in a box.".



Closer to the present, in the 2000s, during the war in Iraq, bands like Green Day and Bright Eyes wrote songs directly attacking the president for his choices, like "Both Sides of the Gun" by Ben Harper which refers to Bush as a "One-dimensional fool in a three-dimensional world," and more general songs, like 21 Guns by Green Day, which criticized the war on terror in a broader sense.
As long as there are choices to be made in government, there will be people opposing it and using whatever medium they can to get those messages out into the world. Much like how television gave people a window into what was happening, this music gave people a way to see a point of view on war that wasn't widely supported, and attempted to bring America back to a more democratic state after the quasi-autocratic takeover of the Vietnam War.

Sources:
https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/sixties/essays/protest-music-1960s
https://www.shsu.edu/~lis_fwh/book/american_renaissance/Protest%20Music2.htm
https://harvardpolitics.com/covers/songs-of-war-the-evolution-of-protest-music-in-the-united-states/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/country-joe-vietnam-woodstock.html
https://www.liveabout.com/iraq-war-protest-songs-1322766

National Organization for Women

 Founded in 1966, the National Organization for Women has become the largest feminist group that advocates for equal opportunity for women.

Although it has now reached 500,000 members, NOW was created by a small group of feminists including Betty Friedman, the author of the Feminine Mystique, actively challenged society's discrimination against women.

They were frustrated by the government's lack of action in enforcing anti-discrimination laws, particularly during a discussion of the status of women during the third National Conference of Commissions. After they left feeling frustrated that women's issues were being discussed or acted upon, the group met in Friedman's hotel room to plan out the foundation of the organization.

The organization helped give women jobs in political posts, increased educational and employment opportunities for women, and created laws against harassment of women. In the past, the organization has addressed issues about abortion rights, child care, and pregnancy leave.

To help women receive the recognition that they lacked for their work in the home and workplace, the organization worked to popularize the slogans "Every Mother is a Working Mother" and "women who work outside the home". Additionally, in 1967, NOW became the first organization to advocate for the legalization of abortion laws and the repeal of anti-abortion laws. In an effort to stop violence against women in all spheres of influence, the group aided the federal government in passing the Violence Against Women Act in 1994.

Since its beginnings, one of the organization's main missions has been to get the Equal Rights Amendment of the Constitution ratified. Its purpose is to guarantee equal rights for all US citizens regardless of sex and end all legal distinctions between men and women for divorce, property, and employment. Although the organization hasn't been successful in the ratification yet, NOW continues to fight for its ratification to this day to guarantee legal equality between men and women.



https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Organization-for-Women
https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/national-organization-women
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-organization-for-women/
https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/6334
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111now.html

Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh was the leader of North Vietnam and a proponent for Vietnamese independence. He lived in France during World War I and was later inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution. He traveled extensively to the Soviet Union and declared himself a communist. He eventually helped develop the Indochinese Communist Party and the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh).

In 1941, Viet Minh forces took Hanoi in the North of Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh would become the president of North Vietnam, leading his forces in the long war against South Vietnam and the United States.

Ho Chi Minh means "Bringer of Light," and he adopted this name as a way to support the Vietnamese nationalist cause. After Japanese forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1945, Vietnamese forces seized the French-educated emperor, Bao Dai, in Hanoi. These forces announced that the region was the Democratic State of Vietnam, which is commonly known as North Vietnam. At a speech in Ba Dinh Square, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent. He said that "All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life liberty, and happiness!"

Although this was ironically similar to the US Declaration of Independence, his message stood and became widely known throughout North Vietnam. Obviously, the relations between the US and North Vietnam were strained. The US was fighting against the Viet Minh and the northern-backed Viet Cong. This war led to a massive amount of casualties on both sides, and relationships remained tense throughout the remainder of the twentieth century.

Ho Chi Minh, despite the US's highly unfavorable opinion of him, has left a huge legacy. Although Americans viewed him as a communist, to the Vietnamese he was a revolutionary who fought for Vietnam and the nationalist cause. Today, Vietnam's largest city is Ho Chi Minh City, named after him. He was one of the leading national communists of the twentieth century, and he emphasized the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary struggle. His legacy is even more far-reaching as Vietnam has held on to many communist ideologies today.

Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/ho-chi-minh-1
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ho-Chi-Minh/The-Geneva-Accords-and-the-Second-Indochina-War
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/evolution-us-vietnam-ties
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ho_chi_minh.shtml
https://www.biography.com/political-figure/ho-chi-minh

Elite American Colleges and their Historic Ties to Slavery

       



          America, like most other countries, has parts of their history they take pride in and others that they would rather conceal. Yet these mistakes made in history should never be overlooked, as they can provide guidance for the future. Recently, it was publicly announced that dozens of elite American colleges have ties to the slave trade. In particular, the slave trade helped fund very prestigious schools like Yale, Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton. Though the slave trade was vastly integrated into American society over a century ago, numerous establishments that still exist today have apologized and acknowledged their past. Still, the majority of these elite colleges were, and still are, hesitant to confront their history.
          Brown and Harvard, for example, profited from sending slave ships to Africa and using slave labor to mill cotton plantations in the South. Similarly, Georgetown University could offer free tuition to its first students because of the unpaid slave labor on their campus that was used to cook and clean. Yale even owned a slave plantation that was used to fund its graduate programs.

Former Harvard Law School Logo

          Most of these colleges started paying reparations for their past in the last two decades. Brown was the first university to acknowledge its historic ties to slavery by establishing and publishing a full investigation to learn about its involvement in the slave trade. Georgetown University offers free tuition today to the ancestors of the 272 slaves they owned and abused. Harvard Law School abandoned its logo featuring the crest of a slave-owning family.
          Though progress has begun to be made, many people still believe that the reparations paid aren’t enough, while some people believe that universities should simply just confront and acknowledge their pasts. Regardless, there are still establishments today that unfortunately refuse to do either of these.

https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/04/shackled-legacy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/18/how-can-elite-colleges-atone-their-history-with-slavery-invest-historically-black-schools/ 
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html 
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-12-14/reparations-mark-new-front-for-u-s-colleges-tied-to-slavery 

Agent Orange

There’s no doubt that the US has had its run with pesticides and herbicides. Before the environmental movement gained traction in the 60’s and 70’s, pesticides were extensively used both domestically and abroad. For example, one of the more well-known herbicides used in Vietnam was Agent Orange, a strong chemical mixture containing dangerous levels of dioxin that has been proven to cause several chronic diseases. About two-thirds of the herbicides used in Vietnam were Agent Orange; around 13 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over 4.5 million acres of land (around 20% of Vietnam's forests).

In 1961, President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam asked the US to conduct aerial herbicide spraying, to which the US initially hesitated to help. For months, US officials analyzed a British herbicide operation during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s and used its success as a precedent for the US’s own herbicide-spraying mission. Soon after in November 1961, President Kennedy authorized the start of Operation Ranch Hand.

The campaign’s intentions were to deprive Vietnamese forces by defoliating dense forest areas that might conceal Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces, and destroying crops that fed civilians and soldiers. Destroying food sources had two main impacts on the Vietcong: 1) they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves, which forced them out of hiding, and 2) they would be deprived of their rural support bases as the peasants who once inhabited those rural villages would flee to US-dominated cities in need of food.

Initially, the US said that there was no lasting harm and justified the use of the herbicide as a “form of conservation” that saved GI’s lives. In fact, when the North Vietnamese initially reported the impacts of Agent Orange on their soldiers and civilians, the US dismissed their comments as communist propaganda. However, after US labs performed experiments that linked the exposure to dioxin to several congenital birth defects in lab animals, Agent Orange was discontinued in 1970.

Following the end of the Vietnam War, the US government did little to support veterans affected by Agent Orange, claiming that there was a lack of scientific consensus that got in the way of the government doing anything to help. However, these comments didn’t discourage veterans from fighting for their rights. For example, after a sharply critical report from the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1990, the government agreed to allocate $8 million a year to pay veterans who were affected.

Although the production of Agent Orange was outlawed in 1971, it continues to have a harmful impact on the environment and those exposed to it. The US government has helped clean up some dioxin hotspots such as the vicinity of the Danang airport, but several large hotspots still remain. To this day, millions of Americans and more than 3 million Vietnamese have developed cancer and other similar diseases due to their exposure, and more than 150,000 children have been born with severe birth defects.


https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/agent-orange-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/agent-orange-in-vietnam-program/what-is-agent-orange/
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/us/agent-oranges-long-legacy-for-vietnam-and-veterans.html