Stephen's Untold Stories

A large photo gallery of Normandy with photos from just after the Allied landing contrasted with photos of the same locations today.

Click here for the entire gallery.

Brainpop has a nice 9/11 movie you can watch for free today.

• http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/september11th/

October 7, 1921. “School in Session. Sunset School, Marey, West Virginia.

Click the image for a larger version.

That boy on the far left looks like he’s up to no good.

Click here for the original.

Very interesting video. Well worth 8 minutes of your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4

Head over to the NASA Apollo 40th Anniversary Page!

Link to video

(click for larger version)

This happened in the county where I grew up.

It was June 28, 1959. A normal summer Sunday afternoon in rural Georgia.

The first hint Saturday had that something was wrong came from the wooden train trestle.

Falling rail cars came down next, 16 in all – two with deadly cargo.

It was 3:40 p.m. and, with the train’s fall, life for scores of families would never be normal again.

At first sight of the derailment, some at the river that day stopped in their tracks, some moved away and some moved closer, natural curiosity taking over.

The danger came from propane gas, which started to seep from one of the ruptured rail cars.

“It settled like a fog,” one witness account from news reports at the time said.

A spark, some said maybe from a nearby barbecue grill, or from the train itself, caused the gas to explode. The second propane car loaded with 10,000 gallons of the gas ignited next.

News reports said the fire created a “raging inferno” within 30 seconds, killing 14 people, injuring dozens and reducing a 5-acre area to a pile of ash in a matter of minutes.

The fire was described as a “great red sheet of flame” that swept across the river and into the woods. Its path destroyed a clubhouse and cars parked nearby, and left a pile of gray ash where trees once stood.

When the dying finally stopped 10 days later, a total of 23 men, women and children had been buried.

Link to article.

Here is what it looks like today.

(click for larger version)

Here is more information, as well as a lot more photos and news clippings.

http://www.meldrim.com

The D-Day invasion was 55 years ago today. Here is some rare color footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvZCDfhoNxA

Head over to the Big Picture Blog to see more of these.

Okay, I find this completely fascinating. Someone took MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and put it to music using an auto-tuner. It’s very similar to the recent work of Kanye West.

Pearl Harbor Memorial

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last known living American-born veteran of World War I, was honored Sunday at the Liberty Memorial during Memorial Day weekend celebrations.

“I had a feeling of longevity and that I might be among those who survived, but I didn’t know I’d be the No. 1,” the 107-year-old veteran said at a ceremony to unveil his portrait.

His photograph was hung in the main hallway of the National World War I Museum, which he toured for the first time, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States presented him with a gold medal of merit.

Buckles, who now lives in Charles Town, W.Va., has been an invited guest at the Pentagon, met with President Bush in Washington, D.C., and rode in the annual Armed Forces Day Parade in his home state since his status as one of the last living from the “Great War” was discovered nearly two years ago.

Federal officials have also arranged for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States entered the “war to end all wars” in April 1917.

He was rejected by the Marines and the Navy, but eventually persuaded an Army captain he was 18 and enlisted, convincing him Missouri didn’t keep public records of birth.

Buckles sailed for England in 1917 on the Carpathia, which is known for its rescue of Titanic survivors, and spent his tour of duty working mainly as a driver and a warehouse clerk in Germany and France. He rose to the rank of corporal and after Armistice Day he helped return prisoners of war to Germany.

Link to article

A Georgia man has made an amazing mini replica of the Alamo.

Story and more pictures here!

Nice!

Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod.

The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

Experts on Keller’s life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll — the first word Keller spelled for Sullivan after they met in 1887 — according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.

“It’s really one of the best images I’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Federation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. “This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie.”

For more than a century, though, the photograph was hidden in an album that belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.

Link to article

I took a trip out to Barnsley Gardens yesterday with the new camera.

Larger version

Okay, any of you old timers remember going to school in the back of a truck? They didn’t have these in the 70′s and 80′s when I rode the bus. This is from 1935 in West Virginia.

That girl doesn’t look too excited about getting in there. Do you blame her?

Full sized image

September 13, 1916. Henderson County, Kentucky. “Colored School at Anthoston. Census 27, enrollment 12, attendance 7. Teacher expects 19 to be enrolled after work is over. ‘Tobacco keeps them out and they are short of hands.’ Ages of those present: 13 to 5.”

Full sized image here

What an amazing way to share these amazing pictures with the world. Here is the entire gallery.

A few favorites.

Crowds of French patriots line the Champs Elysees to view Allied tanks and half tracks pass through the Arc du Triomphe, after Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944.

Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Shown checking electrical assemblies – June, 1942.

Tris Speaker – 1911.

I recently rediscovered the Shorpy Photo Blog. It has some of the best vintage American photos I’ve ever seen. Here is a shot of the crowd during game 1 of the 1912 World Series between the New York Giants and Boston Red Sox. This is the old Polo Grounds stadium in New York.

Here is a link to the full sized version.