Posted on 08/31/2009 4:44:12 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
The transatlantic cable was a marvel of technology, done with old world technology. Can you imagine the trouble they got into putting down that much cable? It did not work the first time either!
Even Shirer fell for that myth, wow
Hats off to the men and women who made it happen. :)
Oh yes. It was an amazing feat of engineering and bravery, we still use underwater cables today of course.
On July 21, 1858, the NY Times reported on the failure of the second attempt to lay the transatlantic cable. I don’t know if its the first or not.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9C0CE4D81331EE34BC4951DFB1668383649FDE
Shorter cables were laid first of course. Meanwhile efforts to bridge the area from New Foundland to Ireland were rough going.
A lot of this was going on while the US was having a Civil War. It took a while but they pretty much got the world linked up by undersea cable. They were still laying them in the 1950’s, heck maybe still do.
Five attempts to lay it were made over a nine-year period - in 1857, two in 1858, in 1865, and in 1866 - before lasting connections were finally achieved by the SS Great Eastern captained by Sir James Anderson with the 1866 cable and the repaired 1865 cable. Additional cables were laid between Foilhommerum and Heart's Content in 1873, 1874, 1880 and 1894. By the end of the 19th century, British-, French-, German- and American-owned cables linked Europe and North America in a sophisticated web of telegraphic communications.On August 16 (1858?), the first message sent across the cable was, "Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and good will toward men." Then Queen Victoria sent a telegram of congratulation to President James Buchanan through the line, and expressed a hope that it would prove "an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and reciprocal esteem." The President responded that, "it is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. May the Atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world."
Humans are awesome.
We can be sometimes.
On the profile of the bottom of the Atlantic, you notice the mid-Atlantic Ridge is missing. Still no clue about plate tectonics.
I was somwhat taken aback this morning while cruising the news stories; apparently I’m not alone in questioning the beginnings of WWII: Food for thought.
See:http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53332
“Did Hitler Want War?” Pat Buchannan:
“On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.
Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?
Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland’s turn, then Russia’s, then France’s, then Britain’s, then the United States. We would all be speaking German now.
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world—Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia—why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?
If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?
Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?
Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser’s fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.
Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Miklos Horthy’s Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso’s Slovakia.
Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.
As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?
Winston Churchill was right when he called it “The Unnecessary War”—the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.”
That was funny.
If you are truly interested in higher learning on neo-Nazi propaganda, then I'd recommend two books for you to read.
The first will make you a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) expert in the causes of WWII -- focusing on British stupidity.
The second, focusing on British culpability, is essential for a Piled higher & Deeper (PhD) degree.
In "Unnecessary War" Buchanan explains how, not Adolf Hitler, but British stupidity caused WWII, and why the Allies should have let Hitler have Poland.
In "Conjuring Hitler" Guido Preparata explains how the real cause of WWII was not British stupidity, but the British Master Plan to IMPOSE Hitler on Germany for the sole purpose of destroying innocent Germans.
Then, after you've acquired the necessary B.S. & PhD degrees, you'll be fully prepared for postgraduate studies at the Institute for Historical Research.
Those lunatics will teach you that it was neither British stupidity, nor a British Master Plan which caused Hitler to destroy Germany. Instead, it was the secret powers that rule Britain, America and Communist Russia, the J E W S.
Just be cautioned before hand: once you start down that road to insanity, might be hard to come home again... ;-)
Interesting references; I have no interest in pursuing insanity, nor am I in any sense of the word a “Neo-Nazi”. I am however extremely suspicious of the British and their motives. And I love history. I guess what’s caught my attention are several things that have come out since the war; 1) that the German people themselves had absolutely no interest in going to war and I believe, Hitler knew that; 2) the German General staff and military advisors were compeletly against it and 3) a pervasive British fear of a United Europe and 4) a great fear that the Nazi regime was “leveling” society in Germany, eliminating the class structure, a “class” structure that the British ruling class desperately neeeded to maintain in order to retain their power.
Of course you are, as your remaining comments amply demonstrate:
Which is it?
Ha! ;-)
You know, back in my paperboy days (long long time ago) when I used to deliver the morning San Francisco Examiner, if I missed the porch, I got off my bike and put the paper where it belonged. And if, occasionally, I couldn't find it, I gave them another one.
Result was, after a year & a half, doubled circulation.
Did you ever notice the fact that the decline of American newspapers began right around the time they changed the title of "paper boy" to something more gender, age & race neutral? Today, literally, they don't make them like they used to. ;-)
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