history
historisch-technisches-museum
from space exploration posted in history by tacopolis
Founded in 1937, the Peenemünde Army Research Center was the military proving grounds for Nazi aeronautics. The location is widely considered the birthplace of modern rocketry and spaceflight. It also helped create the V-2 rockets that rained hellfire on London and Antwerp.
Legendary scientist Wernher von Braun was the technical director at the facility, before his team surrendered to the United States and worked for NASA.
Today, the location is home to the
Historisch-Technisches-Museum that traces:
"the path of the dreams of the first rocket pioneers of civilian space travel to the systematic development of the first major military rocket." (from the museum website).
molton hotel
from civil rights posted in history by donkeyoti
Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama and über-racist, Eugene "Bull" Connor, liked to spend his mornings at the Molton Hotel, drinking shots of Ol' Grand-Dad bourbon at the bar.
When Martin Luther King and his entourage decided to bring the civil rights struggle to Birmingham, the plan was to get Bull Connor to "tip his hand" as a reaction to peaceful protests.
Bull Connor did. His troops responded to a walk-out of students with fire hoses and snarling German Shepherds. This was captured in photos that landed on the cover the major papers in America the next day. The civil rights movement gained support from the shocked moderates of the country, and within a year a series of civil rights laws were passed.
The Molton was torn down in 1979, replaced by the Financial Center which stands there today.
*source: David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.
white sands missile range
from space exploration posted in history by tacopolis
Nazi rocket scientists had their work brought back to the United States after the fall of the Third Reich. The rockets were reverse engineered at the White Sands Proving Grounds (now called the White Sands Missile Range). Within months, the U.S. were testing rockets that traveled so far that they couldn't be tracked with conventional cameras, so they used anti-aircraft turrets mounted with lenses.
The U.S. troops scorched the Nazi rocket-making facilities so they wouldn't fall into other countries hands, but the Russians managed to get some of their own V-2 rockets. They followed the same process as their U.S. counterparts and the space race began...
the barrow’s gas station
from bonnie and clyde, american outlaws posted in history by donkeyoti
Henry and Cumie Barrow (parents of Clyde and Buck Barrow) owned and operated this location when it was a Star Service Station. The address at the time was 1620 Eagle Ford Road.
Clyde and Buck Barrow spent time living in the home attached to the station. Currently, the building is vacant.
bonnie parker’s grave
from bonnie and clyde, american outlaws posted in history by donkeyoti
Although Bonnie and Clyde wanted to be buried together, Bonnie Parker's family would have nothing to do with it.
Funeral services were held separately for Bonnie Parker at McKamy-Campbell Funeral Home on May 26, 1934. It was a Saturday, and over 20,000 people attended the funeral. The funeral director's son recalls cards being sent by Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger.
Although originally buried in Fishtrap Cemetery, Bonnie Parker was moved to Crown Hill Memorial Park in 1945. She was 23 years old.
Her epitaph reads:
"As the flowers are all made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew, so this old world is made brighter by the lives of folks like you."