Steve Goddard's History Wire

Connecticut Remembers a Watery Tragedy

One of Connecticut's worst tragedies in terms of monetary damage and loss of life was a monumental flood that happened in August of 1955. Trying to do justice to the 50th anniversary of the event that wreaked devastation across the Nutmeg State, The Hartford Courant shows how it goes about preparing for its coverage, as it unveils a gallery of photos and invites readers to send more along with their personal recollections.

In the Shadow of George Wallace

Former Ala. Sen. Howell Heflin, who came to Congress in the years after George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to defy attempts at integration, died yesterday at 83. He cut a very different figure than the Wallacites. The Associated Press reports:

"Heflin, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978 and retired after 18 years. He served on the Judiciary and Ethics committees and the panel that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal. He was viewed as the chamber's top authority on ethics, heading the ethics panel for nearly a decade when Democrats were in the majority. On the judiciary panel, he was remembered for joining in the votes that rejected the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court and Alabama federal prosecutor Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The tables eventually turned, with Sessions, a Republican, winning Heflin's seat when he retired."

Your Grandfather's Duesenberg

The Detroit News is to automotive news what the Seattle Times is to computers. On any given day of the week, you can find not only news about the pulse of the auto industry and its latest products but pieces on its antiquities as well. Today is no exception, as the paper profiles a rare 1932 Duesenberg, from the days before the excesses of autocentric America caught up with it:

"(Auto restorer Ed ) Lucas recently finished the long and arduous restoration of a rare 1932 Duesenberg SJ Boattail Speedster. Duesenberg was a legendary car built in Indiana in the '20s and '30s, first in Indianapolis. The Duesenberg was America's answer to the British Rolls-Royce and the French Bugatti."There were only 475 Duesenbergs built in 10 years in Indianapolis," he said. About 200 exist today as complete cars, he said, with perhaps another 100 in various conditions."

Say It Ain't So, Ptolemy

Studying a statue of Atlas holding the sky, an American astronomer finds key evidence of what could be a major fraud in science history. The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Historians have long looked on the Atlas as a postcard from the past — interesting largely as astronomical art. But as (astronomer Brad) Schaefer approached, he began to notice subtle details in the arrangement of the constellations. It wasn't that anything was wrong with the statue. If anything, the positions of the constellations were too perfect to be mere decoration. He was more than a little intrigued. No, this was no mere piece of art. Taking out his camera, he was about to take a journey through the centuries to unravel one of the great mysteries of the ancient world and uncover key evidence in what may be one of the biggest cases of fraud in the history of science."

Passing of a Colorful Man of Color

Am I the only one who still thinks, when trying on a new pair of gloves, of the immortal words "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit?" It was just 10 years ago when Johnny Cochran, hardly a household name in those days, said the words that ultimately turned around the jury in the O.J. Simpson trial and led to his acquittal. The New York Times reports on the evolution before and since then of one of America's most celebrated trial lawyers:

"Mr. Cochran was already a prominent Los Angeles lawyer in 1994, when Mr. Simpson, the former football star, asked him to join and then lead the lawyers defending him on charges that he had killed his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a friend of hers, Ronald L. Goldman. The televised trial riveted the nation for most of 1995 and rocked it that October, when the jury acquitted Mr. Simpson. He was later held responsible for the killings in a civil case, where another jury evaluated much of the same evidence against a more relaxed standard of proof."

    Steve Goddard

Can Mayor Mike Learn From Fiorello?

With a re-election campaign looming, Gotham's Michael Bloomberg is shoring up his support among the diverse elements of the New York electorate. By way of contrast, The New Yorker recalls the tenure of an earlier mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, in a reprint of a 1937 profile:

"At five minutes to nine Mayor LaGuardia, a dark grig of a man overshadowed by a floppy black hat, bustled out of his apartment building at 1274 Fifth Avenue and walked rapidly toward his automobile, which waited at the curb. An after-breakfast cigar was thrust upward toward his hat brim, and in one hand he clenched a fat packet of letters. A policeman standing at the entrance saluted and the Mayor said “Good morning” in acknowledgment, without looking around. As the Mayor was setting foot on the step of his car, a newsreel cameraman tugged at his sleeve. The cameraman was a medium-sized young fellow, but he towered over the Mayor like a giant. He said that he wanted to make a film of the Mayor in the act of leaving for work, and asked if the Mayor would go back inside the building and come out again. The Mayor agreed to this and had started back for the apartment entrance when the cameraman once more interrupted to say that his equipment truck had not yet arrived, but would be along any minute."

Iran Revisionists Unmasked?

In a Sunday piece, The Washington Post noted the irony that while Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld strongly oppose Iran having nuclear weapons, they were part of an effort in the 1970s to foster their development in Iran. Count on The Weekly Standard to counter this argument:

"There are many things upsetting about this history. But the worst of it is not the hypocritical flip-flop that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are accused of by the

Washington Post. Instead, it's what the article fails to tell the reader.

"First, whatever dubious approach to Iran Ford may have grudgingly endorsed in April 1975, he clearly reversed 18 months later. In October 1976, Ford, at the urging of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the National Security Council, and his White House staff, which was under Cheney's command, made a major statement on nuclear policy. Ford explained that several months before he had ordered a thorough review of U.S. nuclear policy and concluded that "reprocessing and recycling of plutonium should not proceed unless there is sound reason to conclude that the world community can effectively overcome the associated risks of proliferation." He went on to explain that he had reached this conclusion because he believed "that avoidance of proliferation must take precedence over economic interests."

Introducing Professor Barbie

Merchandisers will stop at nothing! Now Mattel has teamed up with Golden Books to make a history professor out of....hold on to your hats....Barbie! Ken's watching the game on the tube, we suspect, but a more serious, purposeful Barbie will take companions on a tour of the '60s and '70s, reports ClickOnDetroit.com:

"The '60s diary has Barbie hosting a Beatles party the first night they appear on the "Ed Sullivan Show." Barbie also learns about the Civil Rights Act with her African-American friend, Christie.

In the '70s volume, Disco Barbie plans a dance and travels to Philadelphia to celebrate the Bicentennial and see Rocky on the art museum steps."

Biology Lab Was Never Like This!

Ever want to dissect a dinosaur? Well, get yourself to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh some time in the next three years, where you can watch museum staff disassemble skeletons of dinosaurs housed in its collection, some of which have been there a century or more. The Associated Press explains what it's all about:

"Starting Tuesday and for the next three years, visitors will be able to watch as five fossilized skeletons are disassembled as part of a $35 million renovation of the Pittsburgh museum's almost century-old Dinosaur Hall. The skeletons of the allosaurus — along with a diplodocus, an apatosaurus, a tyrannosaurus rex and a protoceratops — will be reassembled in more dramatic and scientifically accurate poses."

How Test Tube Babies Came to Be

Dr. Georgeanna Seegar Jones, who pioneered the concept of the test-tube baby, has died at age 92. The Associated Press recalls the career of a medical pioneer:

"Jones and her husband, Dr. Howard Jones, established the in-vitro fertilization program at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 1978 in Norfolk. In 1981, the couple announced the birth of Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the country's first baby conceived outside the mother's body. "They definitely hold a special place in my heart. I always considered them to be my second set of grandparents," Carr told The (Baltimore) Sun."