Boom!
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History August 4 - 10.
On the flight back from London last week, I experienced some severe claustrophobia. Pushing your seat back in a coach on an international flight should be a crime.
Coach is already cramped, but when someone leans back, you suddenly feel like you are flying in an MRI tube. The guy next to me was 6” 5’, and his legs needed to go somewhere. I had moments of genuine freaking out.
So instead of continuing to read my book about prisoners of World War II, I decided to check out some movie options.
I settled on Oppenheimer.
If you haven’t seen the best movie of 2023, I won’t spoil the entire story, but I will share the connection to historical events that took place this week.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was a great guy if you like dudes who run around on their wives, are insanely smart, and invent the most dangerous weapon ever created. Seriously, it was an excellent movie. Emily Blunt is in it, and I’m a fan of Emily Blunt.
Oppenheimer and his crew of smart guys invented the atomic bomb for the United States government in a race to win World War II. After a successful test in New Mexico, it was decided to drop a couple of these bombs on Japan to save more American lives in the fight against the Empire of the Rising Sun.
And so this week, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Three days later, another one was dropped on Nagasaki.
By the end of 1945, over 200,000 people died, either from the direct hit or from radiation and exposure.
Thankfully, we have never used this horrible thing since, but it hangs around as a threat that you never want to see fulfilled.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:
1. Freedom of the press was established on August 4, 1735. John Peter Zenger was a German printer and journalist who wrote some nasty stuff about the royal governor of New York, William Cosby. Cosby sued Zenger for libel. After his first counsel was removed for being corrupt, our boy, Alexander Hamilton, stepped in and won the case. This is the beginning of the concept of Freedom of the Press. It had a good run.
2. President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. Highly ranked OKH president LBJ continued his streak of implementing life-changing legislation. The law was created to enforce the highly rated Fourteenth and Fifteenth OKH Constitutional Amendment rankings. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that a few sections of this law were unconstitutional, which is why Texas is taking an Etch – A- Sketch with redistricting.
3. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was selected as the vice presidential nominee on August 7, 2000. Democratic nominee Al Gore tapped Lieberman, who would become the first Jewish candidate on a presidential ticket. Gore chose Joe over John Kerry, John Edwards, and Barbara Boxer, among others. Gore/Liebermann would go on to lose the highly contested election that fall to Texas Governor and Evil Goober, George W. Bush, and his sidekick, Darth Vader Impressionist, Dick Cheney. Can you believe that was 25 years ago? Cause it was.
I spent this weekend in Cincinnati, celebrating the life of my college friend, Christy, who would have turned 50 this past July. You would remember her by my tradition of flying a flag every year in her memory and my determination not to have that flag co-opted by wannabe GI Joes with Trump tattoos.
Her father, Greg, passed away unexpectedly this past December. Greg was a subscriber and frequent commentator on Okay History. There is no doubt that father and daughter are celebrating with unlimited pints of Guinesses. It was a wonderful Saturday evening catching up with family and friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.
I stayed with friends, hung out with other friends, and then came home and hung out with more friends yesterday. It was a reminder of how awesome it is to have friends, and like the Seinfeld episode about car reservations, it’s imperative to hold onto friends. People like Christy can profoundly impact your life, and friends like Greg make you laugh while supporting an important personal project.
I remain grateful for all my friends.
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Thank you for supporting Okay History. I’ll be taking Friday off. Too much is going on right now, and I hope to use the weekend to get organized. Plus, Anonymous’s birthday is Sunday (it’s Sunday, right?), and clearly I need to get my act together.
Please continue to pray for my Father-in-law, who will be going through weeks of treatment. Yesterday was his birthday, and his spirits have been lifted, so all those thoughts and prayers are working. Thank you!
Appreciate you!
Okay,
Chris
