Tag: august 15

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.

Strategy and Commerce…The Panama Canal

 

Today in History, August 15: 1914 – The Panama Canal opens for business as the cargo ship Ancon becomes the first ship to transit the series of locks. A long and complex history led to the canal’s opening. The French tried first, but failed after malaria and the huge cost ended their venture. The Canal was important to the US. After the Spanish-American War, the US had interests in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and they had always needed a faster, less dangerous route to the nation’s coasts for shipping than the Strait of Magellan at South America’s Southern tip. President Theodore Roosevelt ramrodded the building of the canal. When a treaty with Columbia fell through, the Panamanians, who wanted the canal, declared their independence from Columbia and TR sent the US Navy to support their efforts. After they won their independence they signed the Hay-Bunua-Varilla Treaty, giving American ownership of the canal in exchange for rent.  John Hay was the Secretary of State for the US, who had been a secretary to President Lincoln many years before.  Was their some skullduggery involved in these dealings? Of course. For years after it’s opening, the Canal served it’s purpose…commerce between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and a quick route for American warships (in the photo, the USS Missouri transits the Canal in 1945) to defend the country in both oceans (WWII was known as the Two Ocean War). In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty giving away the Canal to the Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos. Today, the Chinese are bankrolling the expansion of the Canal. Which means the nation that we are likely to have conflict with in the next century has control of the route our Navy would need to defend our country. So. Who do you favor? President Theodore Roosevelt? Or President Jimmy Carter? I vote for Teddy. Would love to see them in a debate, or in a ring together.