This Week In History

This Week In History

April 12th

  1872 Jesse James gang robs bank in Columbia, Kentucky.

 1937 Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft at Rugby, England. 

 1945 Canadian troops liberate Nazi concentration camp Westerbork, Netherlands.

  1945 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office and Vice President Harry Truman is sworn in as 33rd US President.

 1955 Polio vaccine tested by Jonas Salk announced to be 'safe and effective' and is given full approval by the US Food and Drug Administration.

  1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth.

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April 13th

 1796 First elephant arrives in US from India 

 1860 1st Pony Express reaches Sacramento, California.

  1954 Physicist and Father of the Atomic Bomb
Robert Oppenheimer  accused of being a communist.

 1994 Asteroid 7373 Takei discovered and named after Star Trek actor George Takei. 

 2019 World's largest plane by wingspan at 117m (385 ft), the Stratolaunch, built as a flying launch pad for satellites, takes its first flight from Mojave, California. 

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April 14th

 1865 US President Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington. 

 1903 Dr Harry Plotz discovers vaccine against typhoid.

 1912 RMS Titanic hits an iceberg at 11.40 p.m. off Newfoundland

 1981 1st Space Shuttle, Columbia 1, returns to Earth.

 2003 The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99% 

 2015 Archeologists announce they have found at Lomekwi in Kenya 3.3 million-year old stone tools, the oldest ever discovered and which pre-date the earliest humans 

 2018 Beyoncé is the first black woman to headline the Coachella Music Festival, her performance on this day the most-watched performance ever on YouTube 

 2019 South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg officially announces his presidential campaign in Indiana, first openly gay candidate to run for US president 

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April 15th

 1877 1st telephone installed: Boston-Somerville in Massachusetts 

 1912 RMS Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people 

 1941 1st helicopter flight of 1 hr duration, Stratford, Ct 

 2013 Boston Marathon bombings: 3 people are killed and 183 injured after two explosions near the finish line 

 2019 Measles cases jump 300% in first three months of 2019, according to World Health Organization, largest rise in Africa (700%) with 800 deaths in Madagascar 

 2019 Aretha Franklin posthumously receives the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation honor, first individual woman to win it since 1930 

 2019 Paris cathedral Notre Dame catches fire, toppling its spire and destroying its roof 

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April 16th

 1789 George Washington heads for 1st presidential inauguration 

 1922 Annie Oakley sets women's record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row 

 1929 NY Yankees become 1st team to wear uniform numbers 

 1993 Jury reaches guilty verdict in Federal case against police officer who beat Rodney King, 

 2007 Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. The gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, kills 32 people and injures 23 others before committing suicide. 

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April 17th

 1492 Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish monarchs to find the "Indies" with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism. 

 1961 1,400 Cuban exiles land in Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro

 1969 Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating US Senator Robert F. Kennedy 

 2001 A letter between Gale Norton and Jeb Bush is released, stating that the Bush administration has decided to go ahead with plans to auction 6 million acres of potentially oil-and-gas-rich seabed in the Gulf of Mexico 

 2002 Four Canadian Forces soldiers are killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire from two United States Air Force F-16s, the first deaths in a combat zone for Canada since the Korean War 

 2019 Research showing pigs brains partially brought back to life at Yale University, published in "Nature" 

 2019 10 babies with "bubble boy disease" cured using a gene therapy made from HIV at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, according to new study 

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April 18th

 1775 Paul Revere and William Dawes ride from Charlestown to Lexington warning the "regulars are coming!" 

 1783 Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day when it began 

 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire kills nearly 4,000 while destroying 75% of the city 

 1983 A lone suicide bomber kills 63, at US Embassy in Lebanon 

1986 IBM produces 1st megabit-chip 

 2013 Two earth-like planets are discovered orbiting the star Kepler-62 

You Probably Didn't Know That Vice Admiral Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov Saved Our World.

Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov

He was a Soviet Union Naval Officer who prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo during the Cuban Missile Crisis and therefore possibly a nuclear war.

He was a very shy and modest person, intelligent and smart, very polite. He was always in touch with the modern world. Vasili was born on January 30th, 1926 into a peasant family in Staraya, Kupavna.  At the age of 16, he enrolled into Pacific Higher Naval School and participated in the Soviet–Japanese War in August 1945, serving aboard a minesweeper. The Soviet Union's defeat of Japan's Kwantung Army in the Soviet-Japanese War helped in the the termination of World War II.

Later, Vasili transferred to the Caspian Higher Naval School where he  graduated in 1947. Right after graduation, Vasili served in the submarine service aboard boats in the Black Sea, Northern and Baltic Fleets. 

K-19 "Hiroshima"

In July 1961, Vasili was appointed deputy commander and also acted as the executive officer of the submarine K-19. It was a first generation nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear ballistic missiles. It was also one of the first two of the Project 658 class and was hastily built as a part of the arms race against the United States.

As the crew conducted exercises off the south-east coast of Greenland, an extreme leak in the reactor coolant system of the submarine was detected. On July 4, 1961, the leak eventually caused cooling system failure and also damaged the radio communications systems. 

Unable to make contact with Moscow, Commander Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev ordered the entire engineering crew to come up with a solution to avoid nuclear meltdown. This entailed them to work in high radiation levels for extended periods. After Vasili helped to stop a mutiny, the engineering team was able design a secondary cooling system,  preventing the reactor from a meltdown. The crew survived, but they were all exposed to high levels of radiation. The exposure to high radiation caused the deaths of all the members of the engineering team, as well as their divisional officer, within a month of the incident. 15 more members of the crew died during the next two years, and Vasil later developed kidney cancer. He also received a medal for his loyalty, bravery, and calm demeanor.

The tragic story of of K-19 and the crew was adapted into a 2002 movie called "K-19: The Widowmaker." It stars Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson and Peter Sarsgaard. The most significant difference between the plot and the historical events is the scene that replaces an incident where the all the submarine's small arms were thrown overboard out of concern about the possibility of a mutiny; the film instead portrays an actual attempt at mutiny.

The Cold War And The Cuban Missile Crisis

As World War II ended the Cold War began. The Cold War was an ongoing series of largely political and economic clashes between the United States and the Soviet Union.

During this time, a Latin American country openly allying with the Soviet Union was regarded by the US as unacceptable. So, when leftist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro aligned himself with the Soviet Union, the United States was less than thrilled. 

By October 1st, 1962, Vasili was the commander of an entire submarine fleet of four diesel-powered, nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot-class submarines. The fleet left the base on the Kola Peninsula and was carrying nuclear weapons that the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had agreed to secretly place in Cuba.

The Kennedy administration had previous launched a failed attack on the island, the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and Castro and  Khrushchev hoped the missiles would deter further U.S. attacks.

On October 14th, Vasili, aboard the flagship B-59 and acting as its second-in-command to Captain Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, reached the Caribbean the day Tropical Storm Ella hits. Trailing him are a B-4, a B-36, and a B-130. They were all diesel-powered and became saunas in the tropical waters.

Also on the 14th, a pilot of an American U-2 spy plane making a high-altitude pass over Cuba, photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation.  

The fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were being installed, just 90 miles south of Florida meant that they were capable of quickly reaching targets in the eastern U.S. This didn't sit right with Kennedy and ExCom and they wanted to orchestrate their removal without initiating a wider conflict–and possibly a nuclear war. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously agreed that a full-scale attack and invasion was the only solution, but Kennedy was skeptical. He didn't want U.S. allies thinking of the country as "trigger-happy cowboys". However, less than a month before the crisis, Kennedy had promised the American people, "if Cuba should possess a capacity to carry out offensive actions against the United States... the United States would act," so he had to do something.

Kennedy decided he would employ the U.S. Navy to establish a blockade, or quarantine, of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. He also raised the country’s defense readiness condition (DEFCON) from 4 to 3 (in readiness for war), a first in its history.

On the 15th, Moscow ordered Vasili and his fleet to leave Cuban waters and head east to the Sargasso Sea. With no more messages arriving from Moscow, the fleet relies on American radio broadcasts for information. They heared about a U.S. invasion of Cuba, the launch of U.S. warships and planes, and the possibility of Soviet submarines in the area.

On the 24th, By October 24, the U.S. is on DEFCON 2, the final step before a nuclear war, and the Soviet fleet neared the line of U.S. vessels enforcing the blockade. 

The air conditioning in the vessel that Vasili and his men were in failed and temperatures rise to 65°F. In the diesel section, it was over 70°. Since they never arrived at Cuba, they were short on supplies and men were limited to one glass per man a day. High levels of carbon dioxide were also present in the submarine.

The fleet stayed hidden just below the surface to charge their batteries and hoped not to be detected.

On the 27th, an U.S. reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, and a U.S. invasion force was readied in Florida. 

Also on the 27th, Vasili and his fleet of ships were discovered by a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. They began dropping non-lethal depth charges to encourage the Soviet submarines to surface. The submarines were submerged too deep to even hear the radio communications of the U.S. ships and the crew of B-59 thought they were witnessing the beginning of a third world war. 

Unknown to the U.S. forces, the Soviets had a ten kiloton nuclear torpedo on board and the officers had permission to launch it without waiting for approval from Moscow. Temperatures in the B-59 exceeded 120 degrees and the batteries were about to go out.  They had to do something soon or perish. Two of the vessel’s senior officers wanted to launch the missile, but all three senior officers on board had to agree to deploy the weapon. Vasili refused to sanction the launch of the weapon and calmed the captain down. The torpedo was never fired. 

They contacted the the U.S. ships, who gave them permission to surface, then they were ordered back in to head home. One of Vasili's superiors told him that it would have been better had he died.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vasili commanded submarines and later submarine squadrons. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1975, and became head of the Kirov Naval Academy. He was promoted to vice admiral in 1981 and retired in the mid-1980s.

He settled in Kupavna (which was incorporated into Zheleznodorozhny, Moscow Oblast, in 2004). He died there on August 19th, 1998 from kidney cancer. Vasili Arkhipov leftt behind his wife, Olga and their daughter named Yelena.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev died nine days later. Both Vasili and Nikolai were 72.

Vasili received the first "Future of Life Award," which was presented to his family in 2017. The award recognizes exceptional measures, often performed despite personal risk and without obvious reward, to safeguard the collective future of humanity.

Rainbow Valley’s Stardust Ranch AKA Alien Ranch

Stardust Ranch

In 1996, Joyce and John Edmunds, retired and bought a ranch in Rainbow Valley Arizona. 

Joyce had worked at the FBI and John was a psychiatric therapist. 

They took care of rescue horses and dogs at the ranch. When they moved to this place way out in nowhere, the couple thought it would be a nice quiet life, things didn't turn out that way.

The previous owners had left pretty much all their belongings behind and in an empty pool on the property. When John called the real-estate agent to complain, the agent informed him that the old tenants had came by to get their belongings, but thought that John was the one who put them in the pool out of a fit of rage. The old tenants refused to come get their stuff, so John had to take care of it.

A few days later, a man with a machete came to the ranch claiming that he lived there as well. After John told the man to leave, the stranger replied, "You are going to wish i was here. You are really going to be sorry. There are monsters on this property and i kill them." The man left and never returned.

John and Joyce claimed that shortly after these events they started being harassed by entities unknown. 

Strange orbs and lights started appearing in the sky with Military jets and helicopters seeming like they were interacting with them. Figures John called "Greys" started visiting the ranch as well. 

They were 40" tall with large eyes similar to that of a fly and grey snake like skin that was cold to the touch. They always showed up in groups of three in the evening and to invade the couple's home.

Over the years, allegedly Joyce was attacked and molested by the "Greys". She claimed that she can't scream when this is going on and they leave her with syringe like marks as well as bruises on her stomach, thighs and shoulders. John lost time and ended up in places that he didn't remember going to. He said that that is because he kept getting abducted.

The couple also kept finding their horses mutilated with their tongue and eyes removed. John said that three rottweilers of his died a week after fighting a "Grey", despite having no visible injuries. 

There is pictures of the mutilations, but i don't want to post them.

John, frustrated by all of this, bought a bunch of weapons. 

One night, an alien aircraft tried to pull Joyce out of their house with a cone of light, so John fired and it and the "Greys" with a rifle until they let Joyce go and left.

Afraid that they would be labeled as "crazy" the couple didn't come forward for years with the activities that had been happening at their ranch. They did however collect items, so that they would have proof if and when they did. 

They were able to acquire some liquid and a chunk of tissue that were left on the end of his sword after he had killed a "grey." Apparently, after a "Grey" was killed, its body would disappear, so this is the only evidence that the couple had and they sent it off for testing. 

Biophysicist W.C. Levengood did the analysis in his lab in Michigan. 

When the tests came back, the fluid appeared to be pure hemoglobin, which were similar to other samples that have been linked to other cattle mutilations. The blood also didn't match any creature on earth. The skin was an unknown plant and animal based material that had never been previously discovered.

Levengood seemed over the moon at first, but then fell out of contact. Levengood then died and the samples went missing. i only can find one resource that said how he died, so i'm not sure if it is true. But it says that he died in a freak accident in his lab..

A team of researchers has been out to the ranch. They claimed they saw a "Grey" that dropped a stone, which when analyzed, was said to be near to impossible to recreate on earth. 

A strong magnetic field was also found on the ranch. It was similar to that found not far from the ranch, around the site Travis Walton claims he was abducted from by aliens in 1975. A previous tenant of the Stardust Ranch had also killed himself in the house.

John ended up selling the Stardust Ranch for 5 million dollars.