THE UNITED STATES TAKES POSSESSION OF PUERTO RICO

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Puerto Rico, that was taken by the United States in possession on a day like today in 1898.

Puerto Rico is a self-governing Caribbean archipelago and island organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth.

Located about 1,600 km southeast of Miami, Florida, between the Dominican Republic in the Greater Antilles and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Lesser Antilles, it consists of the eponymous main island and numerous smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, and Mona.

With approximately 3.2 million residents, it is divided into 78 municipalities, of which the most populous is the capital municipality of San Juan, followed by those within its surrounding metropolitan area. Spanish and English are the official languages of the government, though Spanish predominates.

Puerto Rico was settled by a succession of peoples beginning 2,000 to 4,000 years ago; these included the Ortoiroid, Saladoid, and Taíno. It was claimed by Spain following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493 and colonization by Juan Ponce de León in 1508.

Puerto Rico was contested by other European powers, but remained a Spanish possession for the next four centuries. An influx of African slaves and Spaniard settlers, primarily from the Canary Islands and Andalusia, vastly changed the cultural and demographic landscape of the island. Within the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico played a secondary but strategic role compared to wealthier colonies like Peru and New Spain.

By the late 19th century, a distinct Puerto Rican identity began to emerge, centered around a fusion of indigenous, African, and European elements.

In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States.

Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, and can move freely between the island and the mainland. However, Puerto Ricans who do not reside in a U.S. state are disenfranchised from federal elections and generally do not pay federal income tax.

In common with four other territories, Puerto Rico sends a nonvoting representative to the U.S. Congress, called a Resident Commissioner, and participates in presidential primaries; as it is not a state, Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the U.S. Congress, which oversees it under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950. 

Congress approved a territorial constitution in 1952, allowing residents of the archipelago and island to elect a governor in addition to a senate and house of representatives. The political status of Puerto Rico is an ongoing debate.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, the U.S. government, together with the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, launched a series of economic projects to develop Puerto Rico into an industrial high-income economy. It is classified by the International Monetary Fund as a developed jurisdiction with an advanced, high-income economy; it ranks 40th on the Human Development Index. The major sectors of Puerto Rico's economy are manufacturing (primarily pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and electronics) followed by services (namely tourism and hospitality).

Puerto Rico is Spanish for rich port. Puerto Ricans often call the island Borinquen, a derivation of Borikén, its indigenous Taíno name, which is popularly said to mean Land of the Valiant Lord. The terms boricua, borinqueño, and borincano are commonly used to identify someone of Puerto Rican heritage, and derive from Borikén and Borinquen respectively. The island is also popularly known in Spanish as La Isla del Encanto, meaning the island of enchantment.

Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista, in honor of Saint John the Baptist, while the capital city was named Ciudad de Puerto Rico (Rich Port City). Eventually traders and other maritime visitors came to refer to the entire island as Puerto Rico, while San Juan became the name used for the main trading/shipping port and the capital city.

The official name of the entity in Spanish is Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico (Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), while its official English name is Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was invaded and subsequently became a possession of the U.S. The first years of the 20th century were marked by the struggle to obtain greater democratic rights from the U.S.

The Foraker Act of 1900 established a civil government, ending rule by American generals and the Department of War. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Ortega v. Lara, 202 U.S. 339, 342 (1906), involving the Foraker Act and referring to the island as the acquired country, soon affirmed that the U.S. Constitution applied within its territory and that any domestic Puerto Rican laws which did not conflict with it remained in force.

The Jones Act of 1917, which made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens, paved the way for the drafting of Puerto Rico's Constitution and its approval by Congress and Puerto Rican voters in 1952. However, the political status of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth controlled by the U.S., remains an anomaly.

More information: Puerto Rico

You know, you may not be born in Puerto Rico,
but Puerto Rican is definitely born in you.

Rosie Perez

A COLD WAR LINK: THE MOSCOW-WASHINGTON HOTLINE

John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev

The Moscow–Washington hotline, in Russian, Горячая линия Вашингтон -Москва, is a system that allows direct communication between the leaders of the United States and the Russian Federation. This hotline was established in 1963 and links the Pentagon with the Kremlin, historically, with Soviet Communist Party leadership across the square from the Kremlin itself. Although in popular culture known as the red telephone, the hotline was never a telephone line, and no red phones were used. The first implementation used Teletype equipment, and shifted to fax machines in 1986. 

Since 2008, the Moscow–Washington hotline is a secure computer link over which messages are exchanged by email.

More information: US. Department of State

Several people came up with the idea for a hotline. They included Harvard professor Thomas Schelling, who had worked on nuclear war policy for the Defense Department previously. Schelling credited the pop fiction novel Red Alert, the basis of the film Dr. Strangelove, with making governments more aware of the benefit of direct communication between the superpowers. 

The Moscow–Washington hotline

In addition, Parade magazine editor Jess Gorkin personally badgered 1960 presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and buttonholed the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during a U.S. visit to adopt the idea. 

During this period Gerard C. Smith, as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, proposed direct communication links between Moscow and Washington. Objections from others in the State Department, the U.S. military, and the Kremlin delayed introduction.

More information: Crypto Museum

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis made the hotline a priority. During the standoff, official diplomatic messages typically took six hours to deliver; unofficial channels, such as via television network correspondents, had to be used too as they were quicker.

The Moscow–Washington hotline

During the crisis, the United States took nearly twelve hours to receive and decode Nikita Khrushchev's 3,000-word initial settlement message, a dangerously long time. By the time Washington had drafted a reply, a tougher message from Moscow had been received, demanding that U.S. missiles be removed from Turkey. White House advisers thought faster communications could have averted the crisis, and resolved it quicker. The two countries signed the Hot Line Agreement in June 1963, the first time they formally took action to cut the risk of starting a nuclear war unintentionally.

More information: History.com

The first message transmitted over the hotline was on August 30, 1963. Washington sent Moscow the text: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back 1234567890. This included all the Latin alphabet, as well as all Arabic numerals and the apostrophe, to test that the keyboard and printer were working correctly.

Today's difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal. 

Friedrich Durrenmatt

NIKOLA TESLA: INNOVATION IN THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE

Никола Тесла or Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856-7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla received an advanced education in engineering and physics in the 1870s and gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. 

More information: Biography.com

He emigrated to the United States in 1884, where he would become a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His alternating current (AC) induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company would eventually market.

Nikola Tesla with his equipment in 1900

Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators or generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited.

Throughout the 1890s, Tesla would pursue his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter, but ran out of funding before he could complete it.

More information: History.com

After Wardenclyffe, Tesla went on to try and develop a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, he lived in a series of New York hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills. 

Nikola Tesla's Laboratory in 1917

The nature of his earlier work and the pronouncements he made to the press later in life earned him the reputation of an archetypal mad scientist in American popular culture.

Tesla died in New York City in January 1943. His work fell into relative obscurity following his death, but in the year 1960, the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor. 

There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.

More information: Activist Post

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. 

Nikola Tesla

JULY, 9 1937: FOX VAULT FIRE IN LITTLE FERRY, NJ

Diagram of the 1937 Fox vault fire

On 9 July 1937, a major fire broke out in a 20th Century Fox film storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, United States. It was caused by the spontaneous combustion of nitrate film stored in inadequately-ventilated vaults. The fire resulted in one death and two injuries, and destroyed all of the film in the vault.

This fire was responsible for the loss of most of the silent films produced by Fox Film Corporation before 1932. Also destroyed were Educational Pictures negatives and films of several other studios. It brought attention to the potential for decaying nitrate film to spontaneously ignite, and changed the focus of film preservation efforts to include a greater focus on fire safety.

The early motion picture industry primarily used nitrocellulose film stock, commonly called nitrate film. This film is flammable, and produces its own oxygen supply as it burns. 

More information: Pubchem

Nitrate fires burn rapidly, and cannot typically be extinguished, capable of burning even underwater. Additionally, nitrocellulose is subject to thermal decomposition and hydrolysis, breaking down over time in the presence of high temperatures and moisture. This decaying film stock releases nitrogen oxides that themselves contribute to the decay and make the damaged film burn more easily. Under the right conditions, nitrate film can even spontaneously combust. 

Nitrocellulose Motion Picture Film Decomposition

In part because of substantial variability in the manufacturing of early film, there is considerable uncertainty about the circumstances necessary for self-ignition. Sustained temperatures of 41 °C or higher, large quantities of nitrate film, increased humidity, poor ventilation, and aged or decaying film have all been considered risk factors. 

Most such fires in film archives have taken place in heat waves during summer months, in closed facilities with limited ventilation, exacerbating several of these variables. Especially in confined areas, such fires can result in explosions.

More information: Revolvy

Although 20th Century Fox officials at the time remarked that only old films were destroyed, the 1937 Fox vault fire is now understood as a significant loss of American film heritage. Film historian Anthony Slide called the destruction of the Fox Film Corporation vault the most tragic American nitrate fire. The highest-quality examples of every Fox film produced prior to 1932 were destroyed. Although copies located elsewhere allowed some of these films to survive, mostly as lower-quality prints or mere fragments of film, more than 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost. 

The Forbidden Path one of the Fox lost films

Total or near total losses occurred for many Fox performers including Theda Bara, Valeska Suratt, William Farnum, George Walsh and notorious celebutante performer Evelyn Nesbit, who made roughly a dozen films for the studio. As he had moved to Fox in 1918, much Tom Mix material was also lost. 

The destruction of the Little Ferry facility spurred an interest in fire safety as an aspect of film preservation. Unlike previous large nitrate film fires, the spontaneous combustion of decomposing film stock was determined to be responsible. Investigators suggested that the older nitrocellulose film stored in the archive was of lower quality than then-current film and thus more prone to instability. 

More information: Atlantis on line

The Society of Motion Picture Engineers's Committee on Preservation of Film, three months after the vault fire, cited recent and rather extensive film fires as evidence that existing preservation efforts had failed to adequately address the fire problem. More heavily reinforced film vaults were suggested, to prevent fires in a single vault from destroying entire archival facilities. Film storage cabinets with ventilation and cooling systems were also proposed, as was further research into improving the quality of cellulose acetate film to encourage its use as a safer replacement for nitrate film.

To be good is to be forgotten. 

I'm going to be so bad I'll always be remembered. 

Theda Bara

JULY 4, 1776: THE UNITED STATES INDEPENDENCE

The US Declaration of Independence

Independence Day, also referred to as the Fourth of July or July Fourth, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as a new nation, the United States of America, and were no longer part of the British Empire. The Congress actually voted to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, and political speeches and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the National Day of the United States.

More information: History.com

During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain in 1776 actually occurred on July 2, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia declaring the United States independent from Great Britain rule. 

After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. 

Signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776

Congress debated and revised the wording of the Declaration, finally approving it two days later on July 4. A day earlier, John Adams had written to his wife Abigail:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

Adams's prediction was off by two days. From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July 4, the date shown on the much-publicized Declaration of Independence, rather than on July 2, the date the resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress.

More information: The Declaration of Independence

Held since 1785, the Bristol Fourth of July Parade in Bristol, Rhode Island is the oldest continuous Independence Day celebration in the United States.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. 

Thomas Jefferson

APOLLO 7: A CREW INTO SPACE FOR FIRST TIME

Apollo 7 Spacecraft

Apollo 7 was a 1968 human spaceflight mission carried out by the United States. It was the first mission in the United States' Apollo program to carry a crew into space. It was also the first U.S. spaceflight to carry astronauts since the flight of Gemini XII in November 1966. 

The AS-204 mission, also known as Apollo 1, was intended to be the first manned flight of the Apollo program. It was scheduled to launch in February 1967, but a fire in the cabin during a January 1967 test killed the crew. 

Manned flights were then suspended for 21 months, while the cause of the accident was investigated and improvements made to the spacecraft and safety procedures, and unmanned test flights of the Saturn V rocket and Apollo Lunar Module were made. Apollo 7 fulfilled Apollo 1's mission of testing the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) in low Earth orbit.

The Apollo 7 crew was commanded by Walter M. Schirra, with senior pilot/navigator Donn F. Eisele, and pilot/systems engineer R. Walter Cunningham. Their mission was Apollo's 'C' mission, an 11-day Earth-orbital test flight to check out the redesigned Block II CSM with a crew on board.

More information: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

First Crew of the Apollo 7

It was the first time a Saturn IB vehicle put a crew into space; Apollo 7 was the first three-person American space mission, and the first to include a live TV broadcast from an American spacecraft. It was launched on October 11, 1968, from what was then known as Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida.

Despite tension between the crew and ground controllers, the mission was a complete technical success, giving NASA the confidence to send Apollo 8 into orbit around the Moon two months later. 

The flight would prove to be the final space flight for all of its three crew members, and the only one for both Cunningham and Eisele, when it splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on October 22, 1968. It was also the final manned launch from Cape Kennedy.

The Apollo program had its best success with the Apollo 11, which was the first spaceflight that landed humans on the Moon.

Download Apollo 7 Mission Report

There are extraordinary men and women and extraordinary moments when history leaps forward on the backs of these individuals that what can be imagined can be achieved that you must dare to dream but that there's no substitute for perseverance and hard work and teamwork because no one gets there alone and that, while we commemorate the greatness of these events and the individuals who achieve them, we cannot forget the sacrifice of those who make these achievements and leaps possible. 

Dana Scully talks about Apollo 11, The X Files, Max