David I. Walsh
David Ignatius Walsh was a United States politician from Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 46th Governor of Massachusetts before serving several terms in the United States Senate. Born in Leominster, Massachusetts to Irish Catholic immigrants, Walsh practiced law in Boston after graduating from the Boston University School of Law, he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1900 to 1901, establishing a reputation as an anti-imperialist and isolationist. In 1912, he won election as the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, becoming the state's first Democratic lieutenant governor in seventy years, he served as governor from 1914 to 1916 and led a successful effort to call for a state constitutional convention. Walsh won election to the Senate in 1918, lost his re-election bid in 1924, returned to the Senate with a victory in the 1926 special election to succeed Henry Cabot Lodge. Walsh became opposed to an activist government after 1924, he supported Al Smith over Franklin D. Roosevelt at the 1932 Democratic National Convention and gave lukewarm support to President Roosevelt's agenda.
Walsh introduced and helped pass the Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act of 1936, which established labor standards for employees of government contractors. Prior to the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, Walsh opposed American involvement in World War II and was a leading member of the America First Committee, he died the following year. Walsh was born in Massachusetts, on November 11, 1872, the ninth of ten children, his parents were Irish Catholic immigrants. Walsh attended public schools in his birthplace and in Clinton, Massachusetts, his father, a comb maker, died. Thereafter, his mother ran a boarding house. Walsh graduated from Clinton High School in 1890 and from Holy Cross in 1893, he attended Boston University Law School, where he graduated in 1897. Walsh was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1897 practicing in Boston. Walsh was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for two terms in 1900 and 1901, elected from a longtime Republican district.
From the start of his political career, he was anti-imperialist and isolationist and opposed America's authority over the Philippines as part of the settlement of the Spanish–American War. Walsh's vote to restrict the hours that women and children could work to 58 led to his defeat when he sought another term, he next lost the race for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in 1910, but ran again and won in 1912, becoming the state's first Democratic lieutenant-governor in 70 years. He became the first Irish and the first Catholic Governor of Massachusetts in 1914, served two one-year terms, he offered voters an alternative to boss-dominated politics, expressing a "forthright espousal of government responsibility for social welfare". Walsh proposed increased government responsibility for charity work and the care of the insane and reorganized the state's management of these areas with little opposition. In his 1914 campaign for re-election, he cited as accomplishments an increase in the amounts paid for workman's compensation and improved administration of the state's care for the insane.
As governor, Walsh fought unsuccessfully for a Women's Suffrage Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution. He campaigned for film censorship in the state after large protests were mounted against the racial depictions in D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation, he supported the work of the Anti-Death Penalty League, a Massachusetts organization founded in 1897, active and nearly successful in the decade preceding World War I. As governor he asked the legislature to call a Constitutional Convention without success; when the legislature called a convention, Walsh won election as a delegate-at-large as part of a slate of candidates who endorsed adding provisions for initiative and referendum to the state constitution, key Progressive-era reforms. He served as a delegate-at-large to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1917 and 1918 that saw those reforms passed, his speech on behalf of initiative and referendum shows him in the role of populist and reformer: There are men—and you and I know them—who, though proclaiming their belief in democracy are believers in autocracy.
There are men within the knowledge of us all who believe in a government of the few, of the college bred class only, of those only who have been successful in the commercial world, or those only who have been fortunate enough to have been born in an environment of ease and luxury. To this class of men no argument on the initiative and referendum can be addressed with any confidence of success. Consciously or unconsciously, they are recreant to the principles upon which this republic was founded. After serving as governor, he practiced law with his older brother Thomas in his hometown of Clinton. In 1918, Walsh was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1919, to March 3, 1925, he was the first Irish-Catholic Senator from Massachusetts. A noted orator, he introduced Irish Republic President Éamon de Valera at Fenway Park on June 29, 1919. At the Democratic National Convention in 1924, he spoke in favor of condemning the Ku Klux Klan by name in the party platform: "We ask you to cut out of the body politic with the sharpest instrument at your command this malignant growth which, means the destruction of everything which has made America immortal.
If you can denounce Republicanism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism. If you can denounce Bolshevism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism." Walsh failed to win reelection by just 20,000 votes in 1924, the year of the Coo
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States government. Its official mission is to provide social and economic development abroad through technical assistance, while promoting mutual understanding between Americans and populations served. Peace Corps Volunteers are American citizens with a college degree, who work abroad for a period of two years after three months of training. Volunteers work with governments, non-profit organizations, non-government organizations, entrepreneurs in education, information technology and the environment. After 24 months of service, volunteers can request an extension of service; the program was established by Executive Order 10924, issued by President John F. Kennedy on March 1, 1961 and authorized by Congress on September 21, 1961 with passage of the Peace Corps Act; the act declares the program's purpose as follows: To promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower.
Since its inception, more than 235,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps and served in 141 countries. The Peace Corps shows "the willingness of Americans to work at the grassroots level in order to help underdeveloped countries meet their needs"; the Peace Corps has affected the way people of other countries view Americans, how Americans view other countries, how Americans view their own country. Following the end of World War II, various members of the United States Congress proposed bills to establish volunteer organizations in developing countries. In December 1951 Representative John F. Kennedy suggested to a group that "young college graduates would find a full life in bringing technical advice and assistance to the underprivileged and backward Middle East... In that calling, these men would follow the constructive work done by the religious missionaries in these countries over the past 100 years." In 1952 Senator Brien McMahon proposed an "army" of young Americans to act as "missionaries of democracy".
Funded nonreligious organizations began sending volunteers overseas during the 1950s. While Kennedy is credited with the creation of the Peace Corps as president, the first initiative came from Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr. who introduced the first bill to create the Peace Corps in 1957—three years before Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, would raise the idea during a campaign speech at the University of Michigan. In his autobiography The Education of a Public Man, Humphrey wrote, There were three bills of particular emotional importance to me: the Peace Corps, a disarmament agency, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; the President, asked me to introduce legislation for all three. I introduced the first Peace Corps bill in 1957, it did not meet with much enthusiasm. Some traditional diplomats quaked at the thought of thousands of young Americans scattered across their world. Many senators, including liberal ones, thought it an unworkable idea. Now, with a young president urging its passage, it became possible and we pushed it through the Senate.
It is fashionable now to suggest that Peace Corps Volunteers gained as much or more, from their experience as the countries they worked. That may be true, they made them better. Only in 1959, did the idea receive serious attention in Washington when Congressman Henry S. Reuss of Wisconsin proposed a "Point Four Youth Corps". In 1960, he and Senator Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon introduced identical measures calling for a nongovernmental study of the idea's "advisability and practicability". Both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed the study, the latter writing the Reuss proposal into the pending Mutual Security legislation. In this form it became law in June 1960. In August the Mutual Security Appropriations Act was enacted, making available US$10,000 for the study, in November ICA contracted with Maurice Albertson, Andrew E. Rice, Pauline E. Birky of Colorado State University Research Foundation for the study. John F. Kennedy was the first to announce the idea for such an organization during the 1960 presidential campaign, on October 14, 1960, at a late-night speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on the steps of the Michigan Union.
He dubbed the proposed organization the "Peace Corps." A brass marker commemorates the place. In the weeks after the 1960 election, the study group at Colorado State University released their feasibility a few days before Kennedy's Presidential Inauguration in January 1961. Critics opposed the program. Kennedy's opponent, Richard M. Nixon, predicted it would become a "cult of escapism" and "a haven for draft dodgers."Others doubted whether recent graduates had the necessary skills and maturity for such a task. The idea was popular among students and Kennedy pursued it, asking respected academics such as Max Millikan and Chester Bowles to help him outline the organization and its goals. During his inaugural address, Kennedy again promised to create the program: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country". President Kennedy in a speech at the White House on June 22, 1962, "Remarks to Student Volunteers Participating in Operation Crossroads Africa", acknowledged that Operation Crossroads for Africa was the basis for the development of the Peace Corps.
"This group and this effort were the progenitors of
Robert E. Wood
Robert Elkington Wood was an American military officer and business executive. After retiring from the U. S. Army as a brigadier general, Wood had a successful career as a corporate executive, most notably with Sears and Company. A Republican, Wood was a leader in the Old Right American Conservatism movement from the 1920s through the 1960s as well as a key financial backer of the America First Committee prior to the United States' entry into World War II. Wood was born to parents Robert Lillie Wood in Kansas City, Missouri. Following graduation from Kansas City Central High School in 1895 he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1900 as a Second Lieutenant of Cavalry; as an officer in the United States Army, he was stationed in the Philippines participating in field service during the Philippine insurrection. From 1902 to 1903 he was assigned to Fort Assiniboin and for three years as an instructor at West Point. In 1905 he became the Assistant Chief Quartermaster and the Chief Quartermaster and Director of the Panama Railroad Company.
He served in the Panama Canal Zone during the construction of the canal. Wood retired by special act of Congress as a major. Following this retirement he worked as assistant to the vice president of the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company and headed operations in the United States and Trinidad for the General Asphalt Company. He served as Purchasing Agent of the Emergency Fleet Corporation in early 1917. In 1917, on the eve of America's entry into the First World War, Wood returned to the Army as an Infantry Lieutenant Colonel, he was promoted to colonel. In the war Wood would serve as transportation director for the entire American Expeditionary Forces in France. Toward the end of the war, he was promoted to brigadier general and made acting Quartermaster General of the Army. In June 1916, prior to America's entry into the war, Wood's brother, Captain Stanley Wood, was killed in action while serving as a volunteer in the Canadian Army. After the leaving the army again in 1919, Wood became an executive at Montgomery Ward becoming a vice-president of the company.
In 1924, he left Montgomery Ward to take a position of vice-president of Sears Roebuck. He became one of the most important leaders in that company's history, serving as president from 1928 until 1939 and as chairman from 1939 until 1954. Under his leadership, Sears shifted the focus of its operations from mail-order sales to retail sales at large urban department stores. Wood created Allstate Insurance as a subsidiary of Sears. In 1950, he was admitted as an honorary member of the New York Society of the Cincinnati. Wood, once again, served as an honorary chairman for Sears from 1968 until shortly before his death in 1969, leaving a good portion of his stocks to family members. Wood was politically active and was noted as a conservative Republican. In 1940, he helped found the America First Committee to oppose U. S. involvement in the Second World War. In 1954, Wood funded the creation of the Manion Forum, a conservative radio program hosted by Clarence Manion. Robert Wood married Mary Butler Hardwick of Augusta, Georgia on April 30, 1908.
They were the parents of five children: a son. Daughter Frances Elkington Fentress, was married to Calvin H. Fentress, who became president and chairman of Allstate Insurance Company. Daughter Sarah Stires Armour, was twice-married, first to James R. Addington, to Andrew Watson Armour III of the Armour meatpacking family, she was involved in music philanthropy in the Chicago area, including serving as a board member for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Ravinia Festival. The other children were Anne Hardwick Wood, Mary Stovall Wood, son Robert Whitney Wood II. A great grandson, Keene Addington, is a Chicago restaurateur who runs the Tortoise Supper Club. Distinguished Service Medal, United States Knight of the Legion of Honor, France Companion Order of St Michael and St George, Great BritainBronze busts honoring Wood and seven other industry magnates stand between the Chicago River and the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago, Illinois. General Wood had a Boys and Girls Club in Chicago named after him.
Gen. Wood was inducted into the Junior Achievement U. S. Business Hall of Fame in 1979. Chang, Myong-Hun, Joseph E. Harrington Jr. "Organizational structure and firm innovation in a retail chain." Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory 3.4: 267-288. Compares Wood with Montgomery Ward's Sewell Avery online Doenecke, Justus D. "General Robert E. Wood: The Evolution of a Conservative." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 71.3: 162-175. In JSTOR Emmet and John E. Jeuck. Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears and Company Worthy, James C. Shaping an American institution: Robert E. Wood and Sears, Roebuck. Robert E. Wood bio at SearsArchives.com Robert E. Wood bio at Spartacus International "Microsoft and Google Grapple for Supremacy" by Steve Lohr, New York Times.
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Chicago
Chicago the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450, it is the most populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area referred to as Chicagoland, the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States; the metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States, the fourth largest in North America and the third largest metropolitan area in the world by land area. Located on the shores of freshwater Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed and grew in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, the city made a concerted effort to rebuild; the construction boom accelerated population growth throughout the following decades, by 1900 Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world.
Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and zoning standards, including new construction styles, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, the steel-framed skyscraper. Chicago is an international hub for finance, commerce, technology, telecommunications, transportation, it is the site of the creation of the first standardized futures contracts at the Chicago Board of Trade, which today is the largest and most diverse derivatives market gobally, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures. O'Hare International Airport is the one of the busiest airports in the world, the region has the largest number of U. S. highways and greatest amount of railroad freight. In 2012, Chicago was listed as an alpha global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, it ranked seventh in the entire world in the 2017 Global Cities Index; the Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products in the world, generating $680 billion in 2017. In addition, the city has one of the world's most diversified and balanced economies, not being dependent on any one industry, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.
Chicago's 58 million domestic and international visitors in 2018, made it the second most visited city in the nation, behind New York City's approximate 65 million visitors. The city ranked first place in the 2018 Time Out City Life Index, a global quality of life survey of 15,000 people in 32 cities. Landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Grant Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago's culture includes the visual arts, film, comedy and music jazz, soul, hip-hop and electronic dance music including house music. Of the area's many colleges and universities, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago are classified as "highest research" doctoral universities. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams; the name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum and known more as ramps.
The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the eponymous wild "garlic" grew abundantly in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687:...when we arrived at the said place called "Chicagou" which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region. The city has had several nicknames throughout its history such as the Windy City, Chi-Town, Second City, the City of the Big Shoulders, which refers to the city's numerous skyscrapers and high-rises. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples; the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable arrived in the 1780s, he is known as the "Founder of Chicago".
In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area, to be part of Chicago was turned over to the United States for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn and rebuilt; the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis; the Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. Receiver of Public Monies; the City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city. As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States.
Chicago's first railway and Chicago Union Railroad, the Illi
Lend-Lease
The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, was an American program to defeat Germany and Italy by distributing food and materiel between 1941 and August 1945. The aid went to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, Free France, other Allied nations, it included warplanes, along with other weaponry. The policy was signed into law on March 11, 1941, ended overnight without prior warning when the war against Japan ended; the aid was free for all countries, although goods in transit when the program ended were charged for. Some transport ships were returned to the US after the war, but all the items sent out were used up or worthless in peacetime. In Reverse Lend Lease, the U. S. was given no-cost leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory during the war, as well as local supplies. The program was under the direct control of the White House, with Roosevelt paying close attention, assisted by Harry Hopkins, W. Averell Harriman, Edward Stettinius Jr..
Roosevelt sent them on special missions to London and Moscow, where their control over Lend Lease gave them importance. The budget was hidden away in the overall military budget, details were not released until after the war. A total of $50.1 billion was involved, or 11% of the total war expenditures of the U. S. In all, $31.4 billion went to Britain and its Empire, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, the remaining $2.6 billion to the other Allies. Reverse lend-lease policies comprised services such as rent on bases used by the U. S. and totaled $7.8 billion. The terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until destroyed. In practice little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to Britain at a large discount for £1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the United States. Canada was not part of Lend Lease; however it operated a similar program called Mutual Aid that sent a loan of C$1 billion and C$3.4 billion in supplies and services to Britain and other Allies.
This program ended the United States' pretense of neutrality and was a decisive change from non-interventionist policy, which had dominated United States foreign relations since 1931. After the defeat of France during June 1940, the British Commonwealth and Empire were the only forces engaged in war against Germany and Italy, until the Italian invasion of Greece. Britain had been paying for its material with gold as part of the "cash and carry" program, as required by the US Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, but by 1941 it had liquidated so many assets that its cash was becoming depleted. During this same period, the U. S. government began to mobilize for total war, instituting the first-ever peacetime draft and a fivefold increase in the defense budget. In the meantime, as the British began becoming short of money and other supplies, Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed President Franklin D. Roosevelt for American help. Sympathetic to the British plight but hampered by public opinion and the Neutrality Acts, which forbade arms sales on credit or the lending of money to belligerent nations, Roosevelt came up with the idea of "lend–lease".
As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was no moral one either. Britain and the Commonwealth were carrying the battle for all civilization, the overwhelming majority of Americans, led in the late election by their president, wished to help them." As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."In September 1940, during the Battle of Britain the British government sent the Tizard Mission to the United States. The aim of the British Technical and Scientific Mission was to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development work completed by the UK up to the beginning of World War II, but that Britain itself could not exploit due to the immediate requirements of war-related production; the shared technology included the cavity magnetron, the design for the VT fuze, details of Frank Whittle's jet engine and the Frisch–Peierls memorandum describing the feasibility of an atomic bomb.
Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were transported, including designs for rockets, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosives. During December 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed the U. S. A. would be proposed selling munitions to Britain and Canada. Isolationists were opposed, warning it would result in American involvement with what was considered by most Americans as an European conflict. In time, opinion shifted as increasing numbers of Americans began to consider the advantage of funding the British war against Germany, while staying free of the hostilities themselves. Propaganda showing the devastation of British cities during The Blitz, as well as popular depictions of Germans as savage rallied public opinion to the Allies after the defeat of France. After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that th
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician and journalist who served as the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. He served at the height of the Cold War, the majority of his presidency dealt with managing relations with the Soviet Union. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in the U. S. House of Representatives and Senate prior to becoming president. Kennedy was born in Brookline, the second child of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Kennedy. He graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the U. S. Naval Reserve the following year. During World War II, he commanded a series of PT boats in the Pacific theater and earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his service. After the war, Kennedy represented the 11th congressional district of Massachusetts in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953, he was subsequently elected to the U. S. Senate and served as the junior Senator from Massachusetts from 1953 to 1960.
While in the Senate, he published his book Profiles in Courage, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Biography. In the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy narrowly defeated Republican opponent Richard Nixon, the incumbent vice president. At age 43, he became the second-youngest man to serve as president, the youngest man to be elected as U. S. president, as well as the only Roman Catholic to occupy that office. He was the first president to have served in the U. S. Navy. Kennedy's time in office was marked by high tensions with communist states in the Cold War, he increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam by a factor of 18 over President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In April 1961, he authorized a failed joint-CIA attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs Invasion, he subsequently rejected Operation Northwoods plans by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to orchestrate false flag attacks on American soil in order to gain public approval for a war against Cuba.
However his administration continued to plan for an invasion of Cuba in the summer of 1962. In October 1962, U. S. spy planes discovered. Domestically, Kennedy presided over the establishment of the Peace Corps and supported the civil rights movement, but was only somewhat successful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Texas. Pursuant to the Constitution, Vice President Lyndon Johnson automatically became president upon Kennedy's death. Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the state crime, but he was killed by Jack Ruby two days and so was never prosecuted. Ruby was sentenced to death and died while the conviction was on appeal in 1967. Both the FBI and the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone in the assassination, but various groups challenged the findings of the Warren Report and believed that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. After Kennedy's death, Congress enacted many of his proposals, including the Civil Rights Act and the Revenue Act of 1964.
Kennedy continues to rank in polls of U. S. presidents with historians and the general public. His personal life has been the focus of considerable public fascination following revelations regarding his lifelong health ailments and alleged extra-marital affairs, his average approval rating of 70% is the highest of any president in Gallup's history of systematically measuring job approval. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, at 83 Beals Street in suburban Brookline, Massachusetts, to businessman/politician Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy and philanthropist/socialite Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy, his paternal grandfather P. J. Kennedy was a member of the Massachusetts state legislature, his maternal grandfather and namesake John F. Fitzgerald served as a U. S. Congressman and was elected to two terms as Mayor of Boston. All four of his grandparents were children of Irish immigrants. Kennedy had an elder brother, Joseph Jr. and seven younger siblings: Rosemary, Eunice, Robert and Edward.
As of 2019, he has been the only Catholic U. S. President. Kennedy lived in Brookline for the first ten years of his life and attended the local St. Aidan's Church, where he was baptized on June 19, 1917, he was educated at the Edward Devotion School in Brookline, the Noble and Greenough Lower School in nearby Dedham and the Dexter School through the 4th grade. His father's business had kept him away from the family for long stretches of time, his ventures were concentrated on Wall Street and Hollywood. In September 1927, the family moved from Brookline to the Riverdale neighborhood of New York City. Young John attended the lower campus of Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys, from 5th to 7th grade. Two years the family moved to suburban Bronxville, New York, where Kennedy was a member of Boy Scout Troop 2 and attended St. Joseph's Church; the Kennedy family spent summers and early autumns at their home in Hyannis Port and Christmas and Easter holidays at their winter retreat in Palm Beach, Florida purchased in 1933.
In September 1930, Kennedy—then 13 years old—attended the Canterbury School in New Milford, for 8th grade. In April 1931, he had an appendectomy, after which he withdrew from Canterbury and recuperated at home. In September 1931, Kennedy started attending Choate, a prestigious board
