U.S. Presidents Who Served Less Than Four Years-- Part 5: Kennedy and Arthur

JOHN F. KENNEDY  (January 1961-November 22, 1963)

Arguably, the best-known president on this list, John F. Kennedy served as the 35th president.  At age 43, he was the youngest person ever elected.  His biggest challenge was the Cold War with the Soviet Union and faced crisis after crisis, including the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In addition to the international crises, he was in poor health, despite  maintaining an image of youthful vigor.  He served for two years and ten months and was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR  (September 1881-March 1885)

When President James A. Garfield was assassinated on his way to New England in 1881, Vice President  Chester A. Arthur became president.  Initially unpopular, he gained points with the American public by introducing the Pendleton  Civil Service Act, that held  federal employment would be based on merit instead of  political party affiliations.

Suffering fro  a kidney-related disease, the 21st president  managed to finish his partial term of three years and five months before moving to New York City and dying the following year.

--CootPres

Tourists Find a Section of the Berlin Wall Under Vegetation

From the August 15, 2018, Chicago Tribune by Erik Kirschbaum LA Times.

Nearly 30 years after it was toppled, a 20-yard-long section of the Berlin Wall has been discovered, hidden behind bushes, weeds and overgrown trees that over the years obscured it.

The Berlin Wall is one of the Cold War's most divisive symbols.  (I personally never thought it would come down.)

It is 11-feet high cement slabs and was found in the heart of Berlin.  It had once been part of an interior security barrier to keep East Germans from getting close to the outer wall separating East Berlin from West Berlin.  It is covered with graffiti and is now under monument protection status.

The tourists discovered it in June but it was just determined to be authentic this week.

Another, longer piece of the wall, about a 260-foot section, was discovered in similar fashion in January in a northern district of East Berlin in a forest area.

This occurred just one day after Berliners marked the anniversary of the wall's construction in 1961.

I  have a very small piece of the wall.

--Cooter

August 15, Quite a Day in History

From the August 15, 2018, Kenosha (Wis.) News "Today in History."

1812--  The Battle of Fort Dearborn took place.  Fort Dearborn is where Chicago is today, but back then was just a frontier fort.  This took place during the War of 1812 and is also called a massacre.

1914--  The Panama Canal officially opens as the SS Ancon crossed between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

1935--  Humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post killed in airplane crash near Point Barrow in Alaska Territory.

1944--  Allied forces landed in southern France in Operation Dragoon during WW II.

1945--  In a pre-recorded radio address, Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced that Japan had accepted terms of surrender ending WW II.

1961--  As workers begin constructing the Berlin Wall, East German soldier Conrad Schumann lept to freedom over barbed wire in a scene made famous in a photograph.

1965--  The Beatles played to a crowd of 55,000 at New York's Shea Stadium.

1969--  The Woodstock Music and Art Festival opened in upstate New York.

Like I Said, a Pretty Important Day in History.  --DaCoot

A Lot Happened Today-- Part 2: Came the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Opening of the Berlin Wall

1969--  Children's educational show "Sesame Street" made its debut on PBS.

1975--  The ore-hauling ship Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew of 29 vanished during a storm on Lake Erie.

1982--  The newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to its first visitors in Washington, D.C.

1989--  Workers began punching a hole in the Berlin Wall, a day after East Germany abolished its border restrictions.

--Cooter

Celebrating a "Miracle": The Wall Comes Down

From the November 9, 2014, Chicago Tribune.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that an irrepressible yearning for freedom brought the Berlin Wall and called it a "miracle" the Cold War barrier was breached without a shot fired.  Germany would always be grateful for the courage of East Germans who protested the Communist dictatorship.

Photographs:

To mark the 25th anniversary a 9.3-mile-long "Border of Lights 2014" was switched on where the wall once stood.

From a 1989 photo: East Germans pour through the newly-opened Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz.  There are also people atop the curved top, one bravely standing (easy to fall off) and the rest straddled on it.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was there and waving to onlookers as he walked across Pariser Platz.  Earlier he had had strong words warning the U.S. and Russia over the current growing tensions that he believes will put the world "on the brink of a new Cold War."

One of the world's greatest statesmen.  he could have ordered mass shootings when all of this was taking place 25 years ago, but didn't.  And still looking for peaceful coexistence.

Like I said earlier, I never expected to see this happen.  At various parts of my life, I thought the Vietnam War was going to last forever and that there would always be a Cold War and a Berlin Wall.

--Cooter

Five Myths About the Berlin Wall: Germans Are Enthusiastic As the Rest of the World in Celebrating the Wall's Fall

5.  Actually, Germans have been far more ambivalent about the wall.  Germans shot their own people and, as a result of the opening, there have been economic problems like high levels of unemployment

Another factor complicating the fall of the wall is that Nov. 9th was the date when Nazis attacked Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes on the Night of the Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht.

On Nov. 9th, Germans celebrated the 25th anniversary with 8,000 illuminated balloons forming a "Border of light" along the former path of the wall in central Berlin..

--DaCoot

Five Myths About the Berlin Wall: The Wall Fell Nov. 9, 1989

4.  That night and in the weeks following, East German officials removed pieces of the wall to create more crossing points between East and West.  Countless "wall peckers" with hammers and chisels came to take home their own pieces (some to be sold for profit.  I bought one of these little pieces for an exorbitant price, but a real, I hope, piece of history.).  But most of the wall was left standing.

Official demolition of the wall began in the summer of 1990.  It took almost two years to remove all of the border fortifications around Berlin and four years to dismantle them along the full length of East and West Germany's borders.

Even today, hundreds of mines have not been found.  In Berlin, a little over a mile of the wall remains, spread out over several sites.

But now, there are more segments of the wall on display in the United States than Berlin.

I've seen two in Missouri, one at a fort and the other at the town where Winston Churchill gave his "Iton Curtain" speech.

--Cooter

Five Myths About the Berlin Wall-- Part 3: President Reagan Brought Down the Wall

Many Americans believe that President Reagan's June 1987 speech in berlin ("Mr.Gorbachev, tear down this wall!") led to its coming down in 1989.  However, Gorbachev's reforms had far more to do with it.

The wall started to fall on November 9th as a result of a mistake.  In face of mass protests against its government, East Germany waived the old visa rules stating that citizens needed a pressing reason for travel to the west.  East Germans still had to apply, but they would be granted much faster.

The Communist official who announced this decision didn't know much about it and when in response to a reporter's question as to when it would take effect replied immediately and it kind of sounded like he meant the border could be crossed immediately.

Over the next several hours, thousands of East Berliners gathered at the check points along the wall.  They were held back, but the crowds continued to grow and get more angry.

At 11:30 p.m. the Bornholmer Street checkpoint allowed people to cross en masse.  Guards at other checkpoints  soon followed suit and the East German government never fully regained control.

--Cooter

Five Myths About the Berlin Wall-- Part 2: Key Move in the Cold War?

2.  KEY MOVE IN THE COLD WAR?  In 1952, the Soviets closed the East-West German border, but since Berlin was still 3/4 under the control of the U.S., Britain and France, they left the city alone.  West Berlin became an escape hatch for East Germans.

East Germany and the Soviet Union argued for 8 years about closing off West Berlin.  The Soviet Union argued that such a move would would make them look bad.  During that time, East Germany began stockpiling barbed wire and cement posts and formed a top secret working group to build the wall.  Plans were made to do this.

In the summer of 1961, with more than 1,000 East Germans a day leaving to West Berlin, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev gave the east Germans the go-ahead and were greatly surprised at how fast they acted.

--Cooter

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Five Myths About the Berlin Wall-- Part 1: 25 Years Ago This Month

From the November 2, 2014, Chicago Tribune by Hope M. Harrison.

November 9, 1989, was an amazing day in history for me.  Something that I thought would always be there essentially came down with its opening.  I'm talking about the Berlin Wall.  This also was the death knell of the Soviet Union and to a large degree, Communism.  Two other things I thought would always be with us.  I was able to get a very small piece of it from friends who went to Germany shortly afterwards.  I would pass it around in my classes after that so the kids could touch some real history.

This was always a point in the very real Cold War.

These are some interesting things about the wall that most people don't know:

1.  THE BERLIN WALL WAS ONE WALL.  In fact, it was two walls separated by up to 160 yards of a death strip with guards (with shoot-to-kill orders), towers, dogs, floodlights, tripwires.  There were also over a million mines along the border between East and West Germany.

More than 5,000 East Germans managed to escape despite these obstacles.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died.

--Cooter

Quite an Anniversary-- The Berlin Wall

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. I remember just looking at the TV in wonder of those East Berliners standing on top of the wall, a place wherethey would have been shot had they done it just 24-hours earlier.

I never thought I'd see this as the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and fall of Communism.

Some friends of ours who ran the Black Bear Restaurant in Ingleside, Illinois, which featured German food, were returning home for a visit to Berlin and I asked if they would get me a piece of it, figuring this would be a way for my students to actually touch history. They came back with a small bag with a piece of it for $15.

It was a really small piece, but had paint on one flat piece which I figure must have faced the West Berlin side unless it had been painted on after the wall opened.

I understand there are some sections of the wall left in place.

I have also seen sections of the wall at a fort out in Kansas and at Westminister College in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech.

An Important Wall. --Cooter