Tag: 1935

Oklahoma’s Favorite Sons Die Together

Today in History, August 15, 1935:

“When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read:

“I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like.”

I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.” –Will Rogers.

Oklahoma’s two most favorite sons die together in Fort Barrow, Alaska.

Will Rogers and Wiley Post were good friends, and both proponents of advances in aviation.

Rogers started out as a cowboy doing rope tricks and became an actor, journalist and humorist, becoming world famous and loved by the world.

Post was an aviation pioneer, being the first to fly around the world solo, pioneering the “pressure suit” that would lead to pressurized suits for future pilots and astronauts, and the first to suggest using the jet stream and high altitude flight for commercial aviation.

Rogers was accompanying his friend Post on another around the world flight when they took off from a lake in Fort Barrow…the aircraft’s engine failed and they crashed, and both died.

The entire world mourned, but especially Oklahoma. The aircraft that Post flew to set so many records, the “Winnie Mae” is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and there are memorials to both men from coast to coast. Proud to be an Okie. One has to wonder what impact either of them would have had in the decades that followed (WWII, jet age, politics) had they survived.

Chophouse Massacre – Dewey Lives!

Today in History, October 23, 1935:

The Chophouse Massacre.

Gangster and racketeer Dutch Schultz and several of his crew were gunned down in his “headquarters”, the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey by 2 hit men from Murder, Inc.

I find the interesting part of the story in why he was killed, and the future of another man involved.

Schultz had been prosecuted twice by a very talented and aggressive US Prosecutor, Thomas Dewey. Schultz had gone to his fellow Mafioso and sought permission to assassinate Dewey. When they declined, afraid the full weight of national law enforcement would be brought to bear on them, Schultz was furious and made plans to kill Dewey anyway.

That’s when the decision was made that Schultz had to be eliminated.

Schultz’s death and Dewey’s survival meant that Dewey would become the NY DA, NY Governor, and would run for President 3 times.

In 1948 it was so much assumed he would win that the Chicago Tribune ran the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”, a paper that the real victor, Truman, held up for a famous photo…relegating crusading prosecutor Thomas Dewey, known for his photographic mind that helped him tear apart suspects on the stand, who so angered the Mafia that they wanted to kill him, to a punchline for most.

This is why I like finding the links in history.

Downtown Athletic Club Trophy…aka Heisman Trophy

Today in History, December 9, 1935:

The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy is awarded for the first time to “the most valuable football player in the east”, Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago. The following year, with the death of the Club’s director, John Heisman, the name of the trophy was changed and opened to athletes nationwide.

I counted eight Oklahoma recipients, not including runner-ups!

Luftwaffe Reborn

Today in History, February 26: 1935:

Adolph Hitler secretly signed a decree creating the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, and names Hermann Goering it’s commander. At the end of WWI the Treaty of Versailles signed between the combatants, including Germany, declared that Germany could have no military air service.

Hitler quietly built up what would become a larger, and more modern, air force while the rest of Europe and America let their forces languish.

Lufthansa, the civilian airline that was permitted, was used to provide flight training to the men that would become Luftwaffe pilots.

By September 1939 when the German Blitzkrieg swept across Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France, the Luftwaffe consisted of 1,000 modern fighter planes and 1,050 modern bombers.

This build up, and the build up of the Wehrmacht, all took place while the future allies practiced appeasement and protested verbally (the British had built up the Royal Air Force, but it was still much smaller than the Luftwaffe).

To Key West, By Rail…20th Century Engineering Wonders

Today in History, January 22: 1912 –

The Florida East Coast Railway opens service to Key West, 128 miles from the southern coast of the mainland and the southern most city in the United States.

Built mostly over water between the islands of the Keys, the railroad took seven years to build and was an engineering marvel. It was destroyed by a hurricane in 1935, an interesting story in and of itself. In 1938 it was replaced by the Overseas Highway, which was built on it’s foundations.