Stephen’s Untold Stories

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.

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

Story and more pictures here!

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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.

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

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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30 years ago an earthen dam broke in the northeast Georgia town of Toccoa. 39 people were killed when 175 million gallons of water flooded the campus of Toccoa Falls College. This was written by the man who the coroner at the time.

This was just the most shocking thing that could have happened to this community. It was the most horrible time of our existence.

It was raining. It was cold and dark. It was just a dreary, dreary night. I had just taken my shoes off and sat down in my recliner when the call came. I put my shoes back on and told my wife to call my other employees and tell them we had an emergency going on.

I was in my 1970 Ford pickup truck, following the ambulance. I got to the scene minutes after the dam break.

A 15-acre lake came rushing down the valley. It hit a little trailer park on the campus that they put the married couples in. The water took everything.

It was just like a bombing. Stuff everywhere. We could see cars where cars shouldn’t be. We could see headlights of cars floating on the water before they would sink. There were propane tanks floating, roofs of houses hitting [a bridge by the main road] and mobile homes hitting the bridge. Everything started piling up by the bridge, and it created another dam.

By the time the sun came up, the water was going down. So we could function and get around. The people who were hurt, we would give them sheets, wrap them up and get them to the emergency room. They had cuts, bruises, fractures. They had swallowed water. It was just a horrible mess. A lot of people were crawling up the banks to our hospital.

We had 39 victims killed. We found 37 of them within 72 hours. The last one took about two weeks to find. He was about a mile away. He was one of the professors in the college.

Click here for the full story

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The New York Times has a cool Flash animation showing the richest Americans who ever lived, adjusted for the time in which they lived. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are the only two living members of the list.

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Thanks to all those who did their job!

Larger version here

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Parade in Washington D.C.

Original version here

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If you haven’t seen Shorpy.com, you need to head over there. They have one of the best collections of vintage photos I’ve seen on the web.

P-51 Mustangs of the 332nd Fighter Group (Tuskegee Airmen). Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945.

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Here are some powerful photos taken the day before some of the most famous (or infamous) dates in history.

Sept. 10th, 2001

August 5th, 1945

November 21, 1963

June 15, 1976

Thanks to Cherryflava

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I’ve been so busy with grad school stuff that I haven’t had much time to find many really good sites for students, but this looks like a good one. This might be one a lot of you already know about, but it’s new to me.

History for Kids began in 1995 as a community service learning project for sophomores at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Since 2000, however, it has been entirely organized and run by Karen Carr. Dr. Carr holds a PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is an associate professor of History at Portland State University. Her interests lie especially in the Greek and Roman worlds, which is where this site began; we have been gradually expanding into other periods in response to audience demand. If you would like to help with this expansion by writing a page, or a whole section, we’d be delighted. Thanks to the ads, we’d even pay you if we used your page. We’d also be willing to pay for peer review. If you’ve got a PhD in a relevant area, or similar experience (ABD is fine), and would be willing to do peer review, let us know.

Check them out!

You can now vote on the New 7 Wonders of the World. Here are my top two candidates: (click each for a larger version)

Thanks to Damn Cool Pics!

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Atlanta has seen an almost unprecedented amount of growth in the last 50 years or so. This site has some very interesting photos of the past and today.

The large building in the center is the Sears Building. The ballpark on the right is the Ponce Ballpark, which was the home of the Atlanta Crackers. Sadly, the stadium is no longer, as you can see in this next photo.

And here is a view of downtown from 1958.

And here it is today,

Link to site

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Very nice! I don’t remember seeing many good ones in color like these.

Here are the rest

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