Weather Plane-ish
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History August 18 - 24.
In May 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was retreating at Camp David when the news arrived that a U-2 spy plane had gone missing. Soon it would be made clear – the Dragon Lady, as the aircraft was known, had been shot down over Russia.
This would not help matters, as President Eisenhower was scheduled to meet with Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khruschev in Paris in a few weeks. Eisenhower and his team devised a public relations campaign, telling everyone the plane was just a “weather plane” that had gone missing over Turkey. However, one week later, Khrushchev announced he had the U-2 plane and its pilot, 31-year-old Francis Gary Powers.
Beginning in 1956, the United States flew planes over the Soviet Union. The aircraft were at an altitude that made them impenetrable to Soviet anti-aircraft weapons, which, unfortunately for Powers, they eventually developed in 1960.
The U-2 planes were equipped with state-of-the-art cameras that could snap high-resolution photos of the Soviet missile programs and send them back to Washington.
Now that Powers and his plane have been shot down, the entire undercover operation was exposed, and peace was in serious trouble of being thrown out. Powers was immediately charged with espionage, and on August 19, 1960, Powers was convicted of spying for the United States in the Soviet Union.
Powers was sentenced to ten years in prison but released after two during a prisoner exchange for Russian spy Rudolf Abel. The federal government did not give him a hero’s welcome and instead gave him the cold shoulder. In 1977, he was a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles TV station when, on August 1, the helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed, killing him and his cameraman. He was 47.
It wasn’t until 2000 that the United States awarded him medals of distinction, including the CIA Director’s Medal for extraordinary courage in the line of duty.
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. Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920. Congress proposed the 5th-best amendment in the OKH Amendment rankings on June 4, 1919. It needed 36 states to be ratified, and within the first month, it secured nine votes. By the end of 1919, 22 states had ratified. Washington state ratified on March 22, 1920, making it the 35th state, meaning it took another five months to cross the finish line. Mississippi would ratify in 1984, making all the states in the union at the time adopt it.
2. NASA launched Viking 1 on August 20, 1975. NASA’s Viking program consisted of two spacecraft that would attempt to land on Mars. Viking I would take 11 months to reach the Red Planet, land on its surface, and send back images of Earth, rocks, and dust. This is the perfect place for humans to live once we are finished destroying Earth.
3. Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship on August 20, 2000. Woods would win his second straight PGA championship at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, by defeating Bob May in a playoff. Woods’ victory would be the first time since Ben Hogan in 1953 that a golfer won three majors in one year. Woods, who is seven days older than I am, would win two more PGA championships. Woods now dates Vanessa Trump, the ex-wife of Donald Trump Jr. Vanessa still uses the Trump name, showing she is loyal to the brand no matter what. Weirdos.
I’ll be doing a lot of cleanup on the Okay History site over the next few weeks as the final days of summer wind down. One thing I’m working on is a survey that I will be sending out to see what everyone likes and dislikes. My ADHD brain has spun in a bunch of directions, and as we approach OKH’s fifth anniversary (can you believe it!), any insight from you, wonderful readers, will be invaluable as we move forward. So thanks in advance for your patience and feedback as I figure out this next project.
Also, just in terms of the state of the site, if you will, OKH readership remains steady, and I am growing in followers on Substack's Notes platform. Interestingly, that growth in followers has not increased views of posts or engagement of brilliant takes I post in Notes.
I’m also growing in concern that the most popular history site on Substack is a Neo-Nazi sympathizer (at best) who last year went on Tucker Carlson’s fantasy show to make outrageous and flat out incorrect statements about Winston Churchill – blaming him for making protection agreement with countries when he wasn’t even in office, and arguing that Hitler was forced to attack the east, among other things.
I’m keeping an eye on this as Substack becomes less about writers and more about monetization due to getting more and more funding from guys I have written about who want to erase democracy.
Finally, as the military presence in Washington, DC, continues to increase, I’m reflecting on what I need to do during this time in history and whether supporting a platform that sees someone as a “historian” who doesn’t have any formal education to be one, while promoting fascism in the middle of actual fascism, is a good idea.
I hope this transparency is helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions.
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Thank you for supporting Okay History. Have a great week!
Appreciate you!
Okay,
Chris
