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Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile.

Day 91 of the Winter War, February 28, 1940

During the course of the day Finnish troops beat back three enemy attacks on the Taipale strongholds.
Photo: SA-KUVA

Finnish troops pull back on the Isthmus

The Soviet Union launches a massive general offensive.
The Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus withdraw from Pulliniemi and Lihaniemi.
During the course of the day Finnish troops beat back three enemy attacks on the Taipale strongholds.
In the north, the Swedish volunteer corps, Svenska Frivilligkåren, takes over responsibility for the front at Märkäjärvi in Salla in the early hours of the morning.
The Defence Union of Finland, Lotta Svärd (the women's voluntary defence organization) and the Central Organisation of Social Democratic Women decide to organize a joint collection of gold rings and other valuables to buy fighter aircraft for the Finnish Air Force.
Foreign Minister Tanner returns from Stockholm. He says Finland has no choice but to accept the Soviet Union's peace terms.
A majority of the Finnish Government are inclined to agree, but nevertheless want first to hear the views of the Commander-in-Chief.
The Western Allies promise to send Finland 10,000 troops in April.
France's diplomatic representative in Helsinki, Monsieur Magny urges Finland to make a formal appeal for assistance.
Today, Kalevala Day in Finland, is being celebrated in Norway as Finland Day.
In Washington, the US House of Representatives approves legislation for a 20 million dollar loan to Finland.
Oy Karl Fazer Ab buys Frans Emil Sillanpää's Nobel Gold Medal, donated by the author to raise money for Finland's defence. The Finnish confectioners pay 100,000 markkaa for the medal, which they then return to the author.

Here's a nuclear update as there have been some significant developments today.

Alfred Neir at the University of Minnesota had gone to work, after Fermi wrote urging him again to do so, to prepare to separate measurable samples of U235 and U238. John Dunning sent him uranium hexaflouride, a highly corrosive compound that is a white solid at room temperature but volatilizes to a gas when heated to 140°F. "I worked with this for a couple of months in late 1939," Nier remembers. Unfortuanately the gas was too volatile; it dispersed through Nier's three-foot glass spectrometer tube despite the best efforts of his vacuum pump to clear it and contaminated the collector plates:
Finally I said, "This won't do." A new instrument was built in about 10 days in February 1940. Our glass blower bent the horseshoe-shaped mass spectrometer tube for me; I made the metal parts myself. As a source of uranium, I used the less volatile uranium tetrachloride and tetrabromide left over from [his earlier] Harvard experiments. The first separation of U-235 and U-238 was actually accomplished on February 28 and 29, 1940. It was a leap year, and on Friday afternoon, February 29, I pasted the little samples [collected on the nickel foil] on the margin of a handwritten letter and delivered them to the Minneapolis Post Office at about six o'clock. The letter was sent by airmail special delivery and arrived at Columbia University on Saturday. I was aroused early Sunday morning by a long-distance telephone call from John Dunning [who had worked through the night bombarding the samples with neutrons from the Columbia cyclotron]. the Columbia test of the samples clearly showed the U-235 was responsible for the slow neutron fission of uranium. -Richard Rhodes "The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p.332

Looks like we are homing in on the source material.