The Preacher Whose Creative Thinking Saves a Slave From a Fate Worse Than Death

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 meant that slave owners could chase after their slaves into the free Northern states and recapture them and bring them back to the South.  This meant that the Underground Railroad, which began in Ohio and ended in Ontario, Canada did so to get slaves out of the United States and into Canada where they would be safe and free.

In 1853 Reverend William Troy, a free black man in Cincinnati, Ohio has decided to break out of prison the slave Lewis Williams who has escaped from his masters down South but was caught and was going to be sent back South.  Troy had a plan to free him and get him on the Underground Railroad.

When Lewis Williams went before the judge for his trial where he would be sentenced to go back to his masters, Troy had the courthouse filled with members of his church.  He also had the lawyer make a long argument.  When the signal was given Williams would duck down and crawl out of the courthouse and walk to the Reverend William Troy's house and wait for him to appear.

Later when Troy appeared they planned on sneaking him out but the police were doing a house to house search. So, Troy had Williams dress up in one of Troy's daughter's dresses and called a male friend of his to escort his "daughter" out for a walk on the town.  It worked and later Troy was able to get Williams to the Underground Railroad and Williams was able to get to Canada.  With his quick and creative thinking, Revered Troy was able to save the life of Lewis Williams and go on to save others like him.

The First Driverless Car--In 1925

1925--two decades after Ford rolled out the first assembly lined car--there were problems with car crashes and people dying.  Francis Houdina believed that people were the problem, not the car.  He was an engineer who took it upon himself to look for the newest innovation--get rid of drivers.  Cars should be operated by professional drivers via remote control. He didn't believe the average person should be behind the wheel of a car.

Radio waves are new technology and when he gets enough money for a prototype they will feature prominently in his design.  He places an antenna on top of the 1926 Chandler automobile that connects to a receiver.  The receiver is linked to a special device that can move the steering wheel, press the accelerator, and engage the break.  However, the receiver must remain close to the car at all times in order to retain the link.  A professional driver would operate the car while following in a car of his own.  He called it The American Wonder.

On July, 27 he conducted a public demonstration on the streets of New York City.  Houdina stood on the running board of the controlled car while an assistant operated the car that controlled his.  The driverless car started up on its own and pulled into traffic like it was being driven by a ghost.  The crowd was amazed.  The cars were given a police escort down Broadway.  Members of the press followed behind them in another car.  The car effortlessly turned down Columbus Circle and glides along 55th Street.

When the remote car turns onto 5th Avenue and approaches 47th Street it begins to weave wildly back and forth.   Houdina is grabbing hold of the side of the car while running down two trucks and a milk wagon which took to the side of the edge of the road for protection.  The assistant, John Alexander, tries to wrestle control of the car back but fails and the car crashes into a press car filled with cameramen.  People hurry to see what has happened.  The press has a field day with the car's lack of success.

Houdina investigated the steering wheel which is where the problem seemed to lie since it controlled the car's movements.  It turned out the steering wheel contraption had become detached and that is what caused it to go out of control.  It was such a simple thing that seemed to sink his whole operation in one day.  But Houdina did not give up.  He went around the United States and gave many demonstrations but the car was never seen as anything more than a novelty item.  A little less than a hundred years later and we now have driverless cars only the professional driver is a computer and doesn't have to drive another car a little way down the road to control our cars. It controls our cars from within.  But one visionary had an idea of how to make our roadways safer by taking out the bad drivers and saving lives in the process.

The Tree That Almost Caused World War III in North and South Korea

On a slice of wood reads "It is a piece of the Normandy Poplar Tree which was thee Aug 18, 1976 incident in which two UNC officers were murdered by the NKA at Panmunjom, Korea."  The story behind it is terrifying in that World War III could have broken out at any time during this incident.

It's been more than twenty years since the Korean War that left a line marking the communist North from the democratic South called the Demilitarized Zone or the DMZ, which was a two and a half mile wide strip of land.  These two countries could go to war in an instant.  Just recently an American soldier had been kidnapped and rescued.  50 American soldiers and 1000 Korean soldiers had been killed along the DMZ over the past ten years.  In the South, the border is guarded mostly by South Korean soldiers and American soldiers.

But in 1976 there was an object that stood in the way of the South's view of the North. A Normandy Poplar tree.  There is no telling what nefarious machinations the  North Koreans could be hiding behind that tree which is over 80 feet tall.  On August 18 a group of soldiers goes in to prune the branches.  A group of North Korean soldiers go in and order the team to stop that the tree is sacred to Kim Il Sung, which everyone knows to be false. But the team refuses to back down.  A scuffle breaks out and two American officers, Captain Arthur Bonifas and Lieutenant Mark Barrett are killed, while five South Korean troops are wounded.  This came to be known as the "Axe Murder Incident".

The North Koreans believe that the Americans will leave Korea now like they left Vietnam.  They certainly did not believe that they would be doing any tree trimming after Kim Jong-Il spun a story that the Americans started the whole thing and are at fault. Ford and Kissinger believe differently and demand an apology.

When news of this reaches the ears of the head of United Nations command General Richard Stillwell of the U.S. Army he doesn't overreact.  Many find that the General was a paragon of military officials, highly experienced, and very professional.  Some of his men feel a call of realization is necessary with air strikes and a land invasion.  Stillwell believes this could spiral out of control and lead to World War III.

His solution is to chop down the tree.  On August 21 he sends in a tree felling crew commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Victor Verra along with an escort of 23 armored trucks, 27 helicopters, and dozens of fighter jets.  The missions is named Operation Paul Bunyan.  Stillwell initiated the largest, most expensive tree trimming in history.  The North Koreans sent 150 sharpshooters to the edge of the DMZ.  The military in Korea was put on DEFCON 3, the highest state of military readiness. Only one of three times that has happened with September 11, 2001, being the most recent. 

Despite armed sides, the lumberjacks focused on their mission without anyone firing a single shot.  A few days later Kim Il Sung expresses regret over the loss of the American lives, something he had never done before and no member of the Kim Dynasty has done since.  The military promoted Bonifas posthumously to Major and renamed Camp Kitty Hawk Camp Bonifas at the DMZ after him.  Slices of the tree with the text are handed out to commanders in the mission as thanks for cool heads that World War III was averted.  So because of a simple tree, we came so close to a world war of epic proportions.  It's a good thing we had calm heads like General Stillwell to guide us through such a difficult time.  It also reminds us why we have soldiers along the DMZ at a time when people were wondering why it was necessary.  Today we know why as Kim Jong-Il is a dangerous threat all on his own.  But once we had no idea how dangerous the North Koreans were and how easy war could come to us.       

How the B17 Revolutionized Aircraft Safety

The Boening Flying Fortress was nineteen feet high, seventy-five feet long and had two wings that were one hundred and three feet wingspan.  Containing several machine guns and 4,800 pounds of a payload of bombs the B17 was the most important bomber plane in World War II and was born of a fiery catastrophe that revolutionized aviation.

In 1935 aircraft engineers were busy building the next generation of war airplanes. After months of testing the greatest one is set to make its debut on October 30.  The U.S. Army Air Corp rolls out Boening's Flying Fortress, the most technically advanced aircraft ever built. A four-engine plane that can travel farther distances and carry much larger payloads.  This plane will be a gamechanger. 

Army test pilots Major Ployar Hill and Lieutenant Donald Putt and three other crew members aboard the plane for the test flight.  It takes off but something goes wrong and it crashes to the ground killing Hill and crew member Les Howard and leaving Putt badly burned with a head injury.  This was the finest plane ever built and was flown by the best pilots available. So what went wrong?

When Putt was able to talk he explained that Hill forgot to unlock the plane's "gust locks" which locked control surfaces in place and by the time they took off it was too late to fix it which messed up the altitude on the plane causing it to stall and crash.  Normally there are only three or four items to check off before take off, but the B17 was a much more complicated plane and it required thirty-eight items to check off in a particular order which was too much for one man to remember. 

The Army Air Corp solved this by coming up with a pre-flight checklist that the pilot goes over with the co-pilot.  This now standard safety item is all due to the B17 Flying Fortress which incidentally we wouldn't have won World War II without.  Now even aircraft as small as two-seaters use them all the way up to big airliners.  They are an integral part of flying and we can't do without them. 

Marvel Vs DC: Where We Stand Now

It's been a while since I've chronicled my daughter and I and our battles with Marvel and DC.  Since then we have started watching The Flash together and I watch The Arrow by myself. We both enjoy The Flash and I enjoy The Arrow as well.  Sadly, Batman has fallen by the wayside.  She has outgrown him and no longer wants to watch his movies or his TV shows or cartoons.   I kinda miss the guy.  We both like the new Aquaman. She doesn't know the Aquaman of my childhood from the Justice League cartoon where he was one of the lamest characters there. Only the Wonder Twins could outdo him.  Ond of them would turn into a water object like a pail of water and the other would transform into some kind of dumb useless animal.  No, DC made a wise character move and hired the sexiest actor they could find to play the part, Jason Momoa, who also had a real sense of comic timing that helped make up for his lack of experience.  I believe he'll get better the more he acts as he has a natural instinct for it.  I will say I'm looking forward to the Flash movie if they can ever get it together.

 But as much as I have a soft spot in my heart for Batman I refuse to watch the latest incarnation of it. I can only go through the beginning of Batman so many times.  I am dying to see the Birds of Prey movie with Margo Robbie as Harley Quinn and Black Canary and Huntress.  I do wish Lady Gaga would change her mind about playing Huntress, though.  She would be perfect.  I'm also looking forward to the James Gunn written Suicide Squad.  My daughter is looking forward to these movies too, but right now she is most looking forward to Shazam!  I'm not sure what to make of Shazam!  When I was a kid he was one of the many superheroes shows that were on TV and he was also the lamest.  So I'm a little apprehensive about watching the movie based on a lame superhero.  I hope I'm proved wrong and that it's great.

But enough about DC because while I watch Arrow and Gotham and Flash and am looking forward to a couple of their movies, at heart I'm a Marvel girl. I watch Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Gifted, Cloak and Dagger TV shows. And while Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil and I believe Jessica Jones have all been canceled I don't know that this is the end of the shows.  For one thing, Daredevil was the second highest rated show on Netflix when they canceled it.  The writers of the show had already written season four so it came as a huge surprise when they found out the show was canceled.  They plan on shopping the show elsewhere and I know of one place that would probably take it and that place would be the new Disney channel which is airing shows that I can't wait to see such as a Scarlet Witch show and a Loki show.   Cloak and Dagger have just started its second season and I can't wait to watch it on HULU.  The Gifted has just finished its third and perhaps best season about the mutant underground.

We saw Black Panther twice and the Avengers movie twice and we both loved the Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse movie. Her favorite character was Mile while mine was of course Gwen.  We thought the Antman and Wasp movie wasn't too bad.  I also can't wait to see the Phoenix movie which I've been dying to see ever since I heard about it oh, so many years ago.  And now it is upon us.  Also, of course, we can't wait to see Avengers Endgame and Spider-Man Far From Home. Though for me Toby McGuire is the true Spider-Man, Tom Holland is not bad as the webhead. I'm also dying to see the Black Widow movie and the Dr. Strange movie coming out next year.  Those are two of my favorite characters in the MCU.  I'm also intrigued by the movie The Eternals which would have a gay superhero in it a first in superhero movie history.  On the TV show Supergirl there is a transgender superhero named Dreamer and the Canary is bisexual. These barriers seem so much easier to break on TV than on the big screen for some reason.

Anyhow, my daughter has pretty much come back over to the Marvel side. When they started advertising Captain Marvel I was like we're going to see this movie if I have to drag her to it. But she surprised me by asking to take her to see it.  And being really excited about the movie.  Which for her is odd in that she hates movies about women superheroes.  But she seemed to love this one as did I, though Thor is still her favorite Marvel character.  I have my Marvel girl back and that's all a mother can ask for.         

Anne Morgan's War In France

                                           
Anne Morgan was born on July 25, 1873, into the lap of luxury as the youngest of four of rich and savvy banker John Pierpoint Morgan's children in Highland Falls, New York.  In 1902 she became acquainted with Jane Adams of Hull House in Chicago and she was a woman concerned with the issues affecting women. She also combined her humanitarian works with a business discipline that she got from her father who passed away in 1913 leaving her very wealthy.  She left for France to set up house near Versailles with two other women.  When war broke out she tried to raise money to help France out.

In July of 1917, she formed CARD or the American Committee for Devastated France (known by its French acronym).  Dr. Anne Murray Dike was president of the organization and she was Vice President and Treasurer.  Over the course of seven years, they had 350 American women who came over to help with the reconstruction of the Red Zone of France.  They believed in helping France because France helped us out during the Revolutionary War.

In the Red Zone, six out of twenty towns escaped any damage.  110 houses were destroyed, 3,000 factories were totaled, and only 196,000 people were left out of 530,000.  In 1917 the Germans liberated an area of it, Picardy, where they worked.  They were given authority by French General Phillipe Petain and set up headquarters at the Chateau de Blerancourt.  The soldiers built on seven barracks for the women.

Their first duty was to see to the immediate needs of the people with food and medical attention.  While the women were called nurses and they were trained as nurses, a first for the times, some of the women were actual doctors, dentists, and surgeons.  They had offered up their services to the military but the French who don't have many female doctors were against women working in the military hospitals so the women went to work with private organizations with the civilian population.  These women had to pay their own way over so many of them came from a certain social standing in society and they had to be able to drive a vehicle because they would be driving trucks around the countryside and repairing them as well in order to get to the people in need of their services.   People were living in shacks next to their bombed out homes, in trenches, and in caves so their needs were great.

Most of the reconstruction would have to wait until the end of the war to begin and once that happened they began in earnest.  They didn't stop at food or sanitary conditions but they also gave people back their will to live.  They handed out hoes and seed and later agriculture equipment to get people farming again.  With the children, they got them back in school as soon as possible.  Back then for boys that meant learning a trade and for girls that meant the domestic arts. For the girls, they also taught them canning and sterilization.  But most importantly they showed them that there was an education to be had beyond what they were being taught.

Milk stations were set up as soon as possible in Soisson so mothers could bring their children there to get fresh sterilized milk for their babies.   They also handed out free baby carriages to the mothers.  Libraries opened up for people to check out books and bookmobiles began cruise along the back roads to lend out books to people and to those who couldn't read the women went out to read to them.  270,000 loans were made in two years.

On December 24, 1919, Santa Claus came to visit the area and hand out presents and candy to the children though he didn't have his sled--he came in one of the CARD trucks.  475 children were seen by Santa that day.  She also introduced basketball to the children and had the girls participating in sports along with the boys.

While Anne Morgan certainly donated money to the cause, she was not the main donater.  She would fly to the United States and have fundraisers. She had organizations in 25 cities that were devoted to raising money to the cause.  One night a boxing match at Madison Square Garden between Benny Leonard and Ritchie Mitchell raised $80,000 for the cause.

But she had a motto and it was "I will provide emergency aid but then God helps those who help themselves".  CARD was not meant to be permanent.   They trained French nurses to take over for when they left and they left a sizable treasury in place.  Anne Morgan and Dr. Anne Dike both became the first American women to receive the Legion of Honor by the French government. For Anne, the work would not be finished as when World War II came around and she would help out as much as her health would let her.  She would die in 1952.  Her work lives on in A.M.S.A.M. (Association Medico Sociale Anne Morgan) in Soisson, France.
  

Nzingha: The Female King of Angola

Born around 1580 in Portuguese West Africa, or modern-day Angola, Nzingha was one of five children of King Ndongo of the Mbundu and Ndongo people who put up with decades of invasions by Portuguese slavers.  Her father had her trained in war and diplomacy and she was well educated in that she could read and speak Portuguese.  In 1624, her brother took the throne then killed her son. She didn't stand for that so she poisoned him to get him back and killed her nephew and ate his heart.  This left her as ruler of the land at the age of forty-two. She forbade her people to call her queen but to call her king and immediately went to war for her country's independence.

She could be a diplomat or a total barbarian creating chaos to the invading armies.  She was smart in that she found unique ways to add to her army by freeing any slave that made it to Angola and asking that they become a soldier.  She had her soldiers get captured by the Portuguese and then steal arms from them and escape.  She formed alliances with other area tribes and the Dutch. This increased her strength and earned her respect from these other countries who looked down on Africans as less than human. The Dutch proved to be just as treacherous as the Portuguese in that they wanted to use the Mbundu for slavery too. 

She once let peace treaty negotiations go on for eight years because she wanted them to.  Religion was something to be used to help in her cause.  She was baptized as a Christian under the name Anna to please the Portuguese but then tried cannibalism to gain the respect of the fiercest tribe around.  She was brutal in war and was utterly fearless.  She was as agile as someone much younger than her years and would rally her troops by striking two iron bells.  She would dress as a man in the skins of wild animals strapping herself with a sword, ax, and bow and arrows.  She would lead the enemy inland into a trap where she had the favored ground.  She would be cornered and always find a way out.  She was merciful to the prisoners she took and made sure none were hurt by anyone who was under her. 

Enemies hated her for her race, sex, and old age.  One story tells of a peace conference she attended with the Portuguese who believed they had the upper hand.  They also had all the chairs. When she arrived in the room to find no chair to sit in she called over a servant and had him bend over on the ground and provide her a place to sit upon.  They could try to insult her but she proved to them that she was the ruler in the room.  Shocked, the Portuguese signed the peace treaty without a thought. 

She never married but had fifty or sixty young men as bodyguards that she had to wear women's clothes.  If one of them displeased her he was never seen from again.  She placed women in the highest government spots and exalted her sisters Mukumbu and Kifunji to top spots.  When the Portuguese kidnapped one sister she gave 130 slaves for her release.  When another sister was kidnapped and kept, she used her to get information about the Portuguese for years until they drowned her. 

Ruling the politics of the region for forty years, Nzingha fought till her death at the ripe old age of eighty-two. Her body was put on display with royal robes that had jewels in them and a bow and arrow in her hand.

No strong ruler followed her and the Portuguese took over West Africa causing the area to suffer more damage from the slave trade than any other area.  It would be 1975 before Angola would get its independence from Portugal.  Today Nzingha is celebrated as a hero in the People's Republic of Angola.