HISTORY BREAK: REMEMBER 9/11

Never forget this.

 
On 9/11, just three minutes before United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower, passenger Brian Sweeney called his wife Julie one last time.

“Jules, this is Brian. Listen, I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have good times. Same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I’ll see you when you get there.”

Julie missed the call while teaching her high school class that morning. She only heard his final message when she returned home and learned he was gone.

A husband’s last words. A love that endures forever. We remember.

HISTORY BREAK: FIRST DRIVE UP GAS STATION

The first drive-up gas station was created in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in 1913.

It was on Baum Boulevard, which at the time was known as automobile row because of all of the auto dealerships in that area.

So next time you stop at a Wawa or a Rutters or a Sheetz and think about why our gas stations in PA are so much nicer than other states, remember it's because we've had more time to refine the business model

HISTORY BREAK: TITANIC GRUESOME DISCOVERY

A macabre account of how bodies of Titanic victims were found in the doomed vessel’s final missing lifeboat a month after the disaster has surfaced after 104 years. The three male corpses were discovered in the collapsable boat 200 miles from the wreck site by the passing British liner RMS Oceanic on May 13, 1912. The small craft was later identified as Collapsible Boat A, the last available lifeboat from the Titanic.The boat was never launched from the ill-fated liner after it struck an iceberg and started sinking on the night of April 14, 1912.

It was washed over the side when the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves and about 30 people in the freezing water climbed on it in a desperate attempt to survive. Most of them succumbed to exposure and died and 12 were rescued by another lifeboat before the collapsible boat was allowed to drift away.

The three corpses are believed to be two firemen from the engine room and first class passenger homson Beattie, 37, who was dressed in his dinner jacket. After seeing the lifeboat drifting in the water, the Oceanic’s captain manoeuvred the ship towards the object in the water.The crew and passengers goulishly watched with binoculars as it dawned on them there were bodies still on board. The eye-witness account described how the corpses were unrecognisable. It is not known who the Oceanic passenger was who wrote the description, which states: “I crossed the Atlantic one month after the Titanic catastrophe.

"We picked up one of the lifeboats with two minorities unrecognisable corpses of a passenger in evening dress and two firemen.

“The arms came off in the hands of the Oceanic boarding officer.

“The bodies were buried and a prayer service read. The lifeboat then hauled on to our deck.”

One picture shows six crew members being lowered on an Oceanic lifeboat into the Atlantic while a second shows the small boat rowing towards the object in the water in the distance. A wedding ring bearing the inscription ‘Edward to Gerda’ was also found on the boat....

HISTORY BREAK: EVA PERON

“Evita! Evita! La santa Peronista!” Anyone who has seen Andrew Lloyd Weber’s operetta Evita knows at least a little something about the life of Eva Perón, one of Argentina’s most beloved and controversial political figures. While she was never an elected official, Evita had a profound and lasting impact on the social and political landscape of Argentina.

Born in 1919 in the town of Los Toldos, Argentina, Maria Eva Duarte grew up with her parents and four siblings. Her family was quite prosperous at the time she was born. Evita’s father, Juan Duarte, was given the role of Deputy Justice of the Peace in 1908, and the family enjoyed a great deal of prominence. At this time, the leftist Radical Party had won the presidency, and conservative ideologies continued to become increasingly unpopular: bad news for Juan Duarte, who was solidly affiliated with the Conservatives.

After moving to Buenos Aires, Evita worked as an actress, and made her way in the big city as best she could without any real financial stability. It wasn’t until 1944 that Evita would meet Juan Perón, who, as a result of his involvement with a military coup that resulted in a takeover of the Argentine government, was currently the Secretary of War and Labor.

Evita and Juan Perón were married in 1945, and in that same year, Juan Perón was imprisoned by opposition from within his party over fears that he would eclipse the presidency. Released a short time later, Juan Perón went on to win the presidency, and thus came the rise of Evita as an influential political figure.

The Peróns were both popular among the poor and working classes and unions in Argentina. The particular set of policies and beliefs held by Juan Perón eventually became a political party and political philosophy known as Perónism. While Perónism was popular among lower socioeconomic classes in Argentina, Argentina didn’t necessarily have too many sympathetic friends abroad, particularly in Europe.

As first lady, Evita was tasked with meeting foreign leaders in Europe, and in 1947, an invitation by the president of Spain lead Evita on a trip known as the Rainbow Tour. On this tour, Evita met with leaders in Italy, Portugal, France, Switzerland, and Monaco, as well as Argentina’s South American neighbors, Brazil and Uruguay. Evita used these special visits to promote her husband’s agenda abroad. She was also accompanied by a huge entourage, and traveled in style.

Despite criticism against her (some justified, some not), Evita is credited with many wonderful accomplishments. She was instrumental in passing a law that gave women the right to vote in Argentina in 1947. In 1948, she established the Maria Eva Duarte de Perón Foundation, which served poor children and elderly people. Evita is perhaps best known for championing the rights of the descamisados (meaning “the shirtless ones,” referring to working class laborers). Throughout her political career, Evita supported legislation that would improve working conditions and wages for some of Argentina’s poorest workers.

Eva Perón experienced and accomplished all of this on only 33 years, the age when she died of cervical cancer. Evita died in 1952, but the legacy she and Juan Perón left behind when they started the Peronist movement is every bit as active in Argentina today as it was when they first rose to prominence. The subject of endless debate, Evita’s Peronism (and its opposition) is still very much a defining political and social feature of Argentina. Because of this, Argentina’s future will forever be entwined with the history of La Santa Peronista...

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HISTORY BREAK: AMELIA EARHART

Just hours after her plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean, Amelia Earhart — the woman who, in 1937, set out on a mission to be the first to circumnavigate the globe — sat in her defunct Lockheed Electra surrounded by knee-deep water, stranded amid the reef of a tiny, uninhabited island, new research suggests.

Earhart’s disappearance has been shrouded in mystery for decades; her death was declared in absentia two years after she was lost at sea. Now, over 80 years later, researchers have a new theory as to what may have happened. According a recent paper, which analyzed radio distress calls in the days after Earhart vanished, she may have spent her last days marooned on a desert island after her plane crashed on July 2, 1937.

To arrive at this theory, experts at the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) sourced from government and commercial radio operator records to find 57 credible radio signals. Through research analysis, they came across a slew of messages that they believe to have come from Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. One, transcribed by a 15-year-old girl listening to the radio in Florida, contained chilling phrases like, “waters high,” “water’s knee deep — let me out” and “help us quick.” Another, recorded by a housewife in Toronto: “We have taken in water … we can’t hold on much longer.”

From the available evidence, TIGHAR thinks that Earhart and Noonan likely took refuge on Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro, a then-uninhabited small island located 2,600 miles off the cost of New Zealand. According to the group’s hypothesis, the pilot and her navigator could only call for help when the tide was so low that it wouldn’t flood the plane’s engine, which would mean the distress calls would have occurred in short bursts.

“These active versus silent periods and the fact that the message changes on July 5 and starts being worried about water and then is consistently worried about water after that — there’s a story there,” TIGHAR director Ric Gillespie told the Washington Post.

Notably, these radio messages form evidence that runs counter to the U.S. Navy’s official conclusion — that Earhart and Noonan died shortly after crashing into the Pacific — Gillespie said.

The group is releasing more information to the public in “bite-sized chunks,” Gillespie added, but he believes the evidence is adding up. Not only does the group possess dire messages recorded over the span of six days, but several bones were found on the island in 1940, along with parts of a woman’s shoe and a man’s shoe. Gillespie hopes that when the information is all released, “people will smack their foreheads like I did.”

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