This is the place to showcase my book collection of primarily of Nick Carter and Carter Brown books. I started collecting with these two authors back in 1980 while on a fishing trip with my father and grandfather to Northern Minnesota.
Independence Day, also referred to as the Fourth of July or July Fourth, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as a new nation, the United States of America, and were no longer part of the British Empire. The Congress actually voted to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2.
On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on the Germany Empire,
thus joining the world war that began in August 1914. The US was an associated power with the Allied Forces and entering into one of the bloodiest conflicts to ever grip Europe. Fifteen nations and empires saw 65 million men under arms,
including 4.3 million Americans. When the conflagration ended in 1918,
the Ottoman, Russian, Austria-Hungarian and German empires had fallen.
More than 10 million combatants had been killed out of some 38 million
casualties. The last American veteran of the Great War, Corporal Frank
Buckles, died just over six years ago, at the age of 110.
The daring missions and cloak-and-dagger skullduggery of America's World
War II intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), are
well documented and have become the stuff of legend. Yet the
contributions of the four thousand women who made up one-fifth of the
OSS staff have gone largely unheralded.
A
seasoned journalist and veteran of sensitive OSS and CIA operations,
Elizabeth McIntosh draws on her own experiences and interviews with more
than a hundred other OSS women to reveal some of the most tantalizing
stories and best-kept secrets of the war in Europe and Asia. McIntosh
weaves intimate portraits of dozens of remarkable women into the storied
development and operation of the OSS in the 1940s. Along with famous
names like Julia Child and Marlene Dietrich, one will discover such
intrepid agents as Amy Thorpe, who seduced a Vichy official
and stole naval codes from the French embassy. And Virginia Hall, who earned
a Distinguished Service Cross for her work with the French resistance
running an underground railroad for downed fliers; and others who
recruited double agents, pioneered propaganda and subversion techniques,
and tracked the infamous Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny.
26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance and Rescue
Noor Inayat Khan was
the first female radio operator sent into occupied France and
transferred crucial messages.
Johtje Vos, a Dutch housewife, hid Jews in
her home and repeatedly outsmarted the Gestapo.
Law student Hannie
Schaft became involved in the most dangerous resistance work sabotage,
weapons transference, and assassinations.
In these pages, readers
will meet these and many other similarly courageous women and girls who
risked their lives to help defeat the Nazis. Twenty-six engaging and suspense-filled stories unfold from across
Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Denmark, Great
Britain, and the United States, providing an inspiring reminder of women
and girls’ refusal to sit on the sidelines around the world and
throughout history. An
overview of World War II and summaries of each country’s entrance and
involvement in the war provide a framework for better understanding each
woman’s unique circumstances, and resources for further learning follow
each profile.
A book of the writings from the Dutch language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended on this day in 1944 by the Gestapo. Anne Frank would die of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945.
Otto Frank,
the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to
find that Anne's diary had been saved by one of the helpers, Miep Gies,
and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It has since been
translated into many languages. It was translated from its original
Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The diary, which was given to Anne on her thirteenth birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944.
Printing History
Written by Annelies Marie Frank (1929-1945)
as
Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944
(The Annex: Diary Notes 14 June 1942 – 1 August 1944)
Contact Publishing
Amsterdam
1947
as
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Doubleday & Company
1952
Play
Screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
1955
Movie
1959
Directed by George Stevens
Screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
Cast
Millie Perkins as Anne Frank Joseph Schildkraut as Otto Frank
Shelley Winters as Petronella van Daan Richard Beymer as Peter van Daan Gusti Huber as Edith Frank Lou Jacobi as Hans van Daan Diane Baker as Margot Frank Douglas Spencer as Kraler Dodie Heath as Miep Ed Wynn as Albert Dussell
Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering the men and women who died while serving in the country's armed forces. Memorial Day is observed every year on the last Monday of May. Originally it was called Decoration Day after the American Civil War in 1868, when an organization of Union veterans called the Grand Army of the Republic established it as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers.
Early women's rights activist Annette Kellerman posed in this fitted,
one-piece bathing suit to protest the restrictive clothing of the day.
She arrested for indecency because of this picture. Australians can thank Annette Kellerman every time they take a swim. In
1905 she invented the streamlined one-piece swimming costume for women, a
liberating garment, which became her trademark. But more than that, she
re-awoke the pleasure of swimming for everyone including men, women and
children. Known as the Diving Venus and the Australian Mermaid, Annette
Kellerman (1887–1975) was an athlete as well as a vaudeville and movie
star, one of the most famous women of her day.
Kellerman set out to challenge the legal restrictions on women's bathing
clothes in the United States. In 1907, preparing for a promotional
coast swim, she was arrested for indecency on Revere Beach, Boston. She
was wearing one of her fitted one-piece costumes that had no skirt,
clung to her body and revealed her thighs. The judge accepted her
arguments in favor of swimming as healthy exercise and against
cumbersome bathing suits, provided she wore a robe until she entered the
water. Her arrest generated worldwide publicity. She continued to wear
her one-piece swimsuit in her stage shows and public swimming events.
Film Career The Bride of Lammermoor: A Tragedy of Bonnie Scotland (1909) Jephtah's Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy (1909) The Gift of Youth (1909) Entombed Alive (1909) Siren of the Sea (1911) The Mermaid (1911) Neptune's Daughter (1914) A Daughter of the Gods (1916) National Red Cross Pageant (1917) Queen of the Sea (1918) What Women Love (1920) Venus of the South Seas (1924)
The Smithsonian is home to 137 million artifacts works of art, and speciments
James Smithson was an English chemist, mineralogist and an Oxford graduate. He devoted his life to science, as well he authored 27 published papers on mineralogy. Smithson did not even visit the USA, but when he died in 1829 he left his entire estate to the United States to found an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. This establishment was to be founded in Washington D.C. and to be called the Smithsonian Institution.
His bequest was sent to the US in the form of gold sovereigns filling 11 boxes, along with his personal papers, minerals, and library. The gold was sent to the Treasury in Philadelphia for a total over $500,000.
There are 19 different museums and galleries in the Smithsonian complex. One of the most popular exhibits in the Smithsonian is the Star Spangled Banner Flag, also called the Great Garrison flag. The flag flew over Baltimore's Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. The flag was sewn by Mary Pickergill with 15 star and stripes in 1813 for the sum of over $405. The flag has undergone several restorations, first in 1914 and the most recent in 1999.
The National Air and Space Museum is home to a lunar roving vehicle, The B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, and Eugene Cernan's spacesuit. Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon on December 14, 1972.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI or the Great War, also call the War To End All Wars. Germany invaded neutral Belgium on Aug. 4, 1914, as part of a planned
attack on France. By nightfall, Britain had joined the war. The prelude to the war happened on June 28th 1914, when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. A group of six assassins from a nationalist group had gathered on the street where the Archduke's motorcade would pass. One of the assassins threw a grenade
at the car, but missed. The other assassins failed to act as
the cars drove past them quickly. An hour later, when Franz
Ferdinand was returning from a visit at the Sarajevo Hospital, the
convoy took a wrong turn into a street where one of the assassins
stood. He shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his
wife. At the end some 7 million lives lost. On November 11th, at 5:00 am, an armistice with Germany was signed in a railroad carriage at Compiègne France. At 11 am on November 11th, 1918 (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) a ceasefire came into effect.
Note
One of my grandfathers served in the 91st Infantry Division (The Wild West Division), 364
Infantry Regiment. He first saw action in the Battle of
Saint-Mihiel (September 1918) and fought in the battles of The
Meuse-Argonne Offensive and The Fifth Battle of Ypres. He died in March 1977.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy France
The Allied invasion of the European continent through Normandy began
about 12:15 a.m. on June 6, 1944 (D-day). The plan, known as Operation
Overlord, had been prepared since 1943; supreme command over its
execution was entrusted to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Just after midnight on June 6, British and American airborne forces
landed behind the German coastal fortifications known as the Atlantic
Wall. They were followed after daybreak by the seaborne troops of the
U.S. 1st Army and British 2d Army. While the naval guns and Allied bombers assaulted the beach fortifications,
the men swarmed ashore. At the base of the Cotentin peninsula the U.S.
forces established two beachheads, Utah Beach and and
Omaha Beach, the scene of the fiercest fighting. British
troops, who had landed near Bayeux on three beaches called Gold, Juno,
and Sword, advanced quickly but were stopped before Caen.
a deadly tornado ripped through my hometown in Iowa.
This event was would be later known as the May 1968 tornado outbreak.
The May 1968 tornado outbreak was a significant and deadly tornado outbreak that struck most of the central and southern United States on May 15 to May 16, 1968. Producing 46 tornadoes, the outbreak killed at least 72 people including 45 in Arkansas alone. The outbreak also produced two F5s in Iowa. It was one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in the United States since the 1960s and is one of the deadliest outbreaks in Iowa history.
The Charles City Tornado of May 15, 1968
On the afternoon of May 15, 1968, an F5 tornado moved through Butler, Chickasaw, Floyd, Franklin, and Howard
Counties in northeast Iowa. The tornado moved northeast from north of Hansell, passing east of Aredale, west
of Greene, east of Marble Rock, and devastating Charles City. The tornado grew larger and more intense
as it approached Charles City, striking the city at approximately 4:50 pm. The huge tornado passed directly
through town, destroying 337 homes and 1250 vehicles, and causing about $30 million in damage. Ironically, the
tornado damaged 8 churches in town, but left the bars standing. Debris from Charles City was found as far away
as LeRoy, MN, nearly 35 miles to the north. The tornado continued to the northeast hitting Elma, where it caused
another $1.5 million in damage. From Elma the tornado turned to the north and dissipated south of Chester, 4 miles
south of the Minnesota border. The tornado was on the ground for 65 miles, reaching a width of 400 yards.
Nearly 2000 homes were damaged or destroyed. All 13 deaths occurred in Floyd County. 450 injuries were
reported in Floyd County and 12 injuries in Howard County.
Approximate path of the F5 tornado that struck Charles City, IA on May 15, 1968.
On the same day, another F5 tornado moved north-northeast from southwest of Oelwein to Maynard and east of
Randalia in Fayette County, IA. Homes were leveled and swept away in both Oelwein and Maynard. The warning
sirens sounded for only 15 seconds before power failed in Oelwein. Nearly 1000 homes were damaged or destroyed
along the path, and 34 people had to be hospitalized. Almost 1,000 families were affected. The damage from this
tornado totaled $21 million.
Photo by then Floyd County Sheriff L.L. Lane, along Highway 14 just before the
tornado hit Charles City, IA
In addition to these F5 tornadoes, an F2 tornado touched down 6 miles south of Cresco, IA, two weak F1 tornadoes
touched down in Dodge County, MN, and F1 tornadoes occurred in Fillmore County, MN and Chickasaw County, IA.
Baseball size hail (2.75") also fell in Fayette County, IA.
The Lewis And Clark Expedition (May 1804-September 1806)
Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark led an expedition that was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It became known as The Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States, departing in May, 1804 from St. Louis on the Mississippi River, making their way westward through the continental divide to the Pacific coast.
William Clark (l) and Meriwether Lewis (c) with Sacagawea,
The Corps of Discovery departed from Camp Dubois at 4 p.m. on May 14, 1804, and met up with Lewis in St. Charles, Missouri, a short time later, marking the beginning of the voyage to the Pacific coast. The Corps followed the Missouri River westward. Soon they passed La Charrette, the last Euro-American settlement on the Missouri River.
References to Lewis and Clark scarcely appeared in history books even during the United States Centennial in 1876 and the expedition was largely forgotten. Lewis and Clark began to gain new attention around the start of the 20th century. Both the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in St. Louis, and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition,
in Portland, Oregon, showcased Lewis and Clark as American pioneers.
However, the story remained relatively shallow a celebration of US
conquest and personal adventures, until the mid-century, since which time
it has been more thoroughly researched and retold in many forms to a
growing audience. In the 2000s the bicentennial of the expedition further elevated popular interest in Lewis and Clark. Today, no U.S. exploration party is more famous, and no American expedition leaders are more instantly recognizable by name.
In 1942, Leo Marks left
his father's famous bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to
fight the war. He was twenty-two and soon to be recognized as a cryptographer of
genius He became head of communications at the Special Operations
Executive (SOE), where he revolutionized the codemaking techniques of
the Allies and trained some of the most famous agents dropped into
occupied Europe.
The title is derived from an incident related in the book Marks
was asked why agents in occupied Europe should have their cryptographic
material printed on silk (which was in very short supply). He summed his
reply up by saying that it was "between silk and cyanide", meaning that
it was a choice between the agent's surviving by making reliable coded
radio transmissions with the help of the printed silk, and having to
take a suicide pill. Unlike paper, which would be given away by rustling, silk would not be
detected by a casual search if it was concealed in the lining of
clothing. Many of the incidents described in the book are humorous, a major theme
is Marks' inability to convince his superiors that apparent mistakes
made in radio transmissions from agents infiltrated into Nazi-occupied Holland were prearranged duress codes. S.O.E.
management, unwilling to face the possibility that their Dutch network
was compromised, insisted that the errors were attributable to poor
operation by the recently trained Morse code operators and continued to
parachute in new agents to sites prearranged with the compromised
network This lead to their immediate capture and later execution by the
Nazis. Marks' interest in cryptography dated from reading Poe's The Gold-Bug as a child. As a boy, Leo had begun his code-breaking with that of the used book store his father was a partner of, in noting the prices in his second-hand books.
Witness a journey to share an untold story of courage about a Muslim
woman hero who stood up against the Nazis and risked her life.
Noor Inayat Khan was the daughter of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Ora Ray
Baker. She was born in Moscow on Jan 1, 1914. She was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore. Her father was a musician
and Sufi teacher, playing a major role in her spirituality and religious
upbringing. She grew up in Paris and following the fall of France in
1940, she escaped to England and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
In 1942, she joined the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.), an organization
whose main goal was to sabotage and bring down the Axis powers. Khan
worked as a telegraph operator and helped transmit information back to
Britain from France under the alias ‘Madeleine.’ Following a betrayal from her French comrades, she was arrested by
the Nazi secret police. She made several attempts at escaping from
prison but she was recaptured and, finally, sent to the Dachau
Concentration Camp in Germany. She never cooperated with her captors nor
revealed any names or secrets leading up to her execution in September
of 1944, just before the end of World War II. She and three other female SOE agent were shot on 13 September. For her courage, Noor Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949.
In June 2013, Robert H. Gardner began directing a 60-minute biographical docu-drama to air on PBS in 2014. Unity Productions Foundation is scheduled to release this production.
A story of the men and women who waged Churchill's secret war
Once rumored to have been
the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, Vera Atkins climbed
her way to the top in the Special Operations Executive, or SOE:
Britain’s secret service created to help build up, organize, and arm the
resistance in the Nazi-occupied countries. Throughout the war, Atkins
recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE’s French
Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into
occupied France, at least one hundred of whom never returned and were
reported “Missing Presumed Dead” after the war. Twelve of these were
women and among Atkins’s most cherished spies. When the war ended in
1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them
and the other agents lost behind enemy lines, tracing rigorously their
horrific final journeys. But as the woman who carried out this
astonishing search appeared very English, Atkins was nothing
of the sort. As the reader follows her through the devastation of postwar
Germany, we learn Atkins herself covered her life in mystery so that
even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past.
Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were the first players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
He as one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany.
Noah Webster establishes NY's 1st daily newspaper, American Minerva
1793
Noah Webster (1758-1843)
1793, Alexander Hamilton lent him $1,500 to move to New York City to edit the leading Federalist Party newspaper. In December, he founded New York's first daily newspaper, American Minerva (later known as the Commercial Advertiser), and edited it for four years, writing the equivalent of 20 volumes of articles and editorials. In 1806 he published his first dictionary.
1st Christmas Seals sold at the Wilmington Delaware post office
1907
Emily Bissell (1861-1948)
Contributions for the original seals, which was designed by Emily
P. Bissell, helped in the fight against tuberculosis. A hospital in Wilmington is named in
honor of Bissell.
General Electric announces all Communist employees will be fired
1953
McCarthy's Un-American hearings had huge impact across the United States in political, industrial and academic spheres. General Electric announces that all communist
employees will be fired and anyone who refuses to testify under oath
"before a competent government authority" on their political
affiliations will be suspended.
Phoenix Arizona, gets 3" of snow
1985
Winter
storms are not unheard of in Phoenix in the winter months but at times
it does actually snow. While the Phoenix area is known as the "Valley of
the Sun" on December 9, 1985 the basin did receive a record 3 inches of the white fluffy cold stuff.
