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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. Also visit our general discussion thread

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
North Africa – Rommel’s First Offensive, 24 March-15 June 1941
Marcks’ Plan, August 5, 1940
Operation Barbarossa (Dir. 21), December 18, 1940
The Mediterranean Basin (Map 33)
The Far East and the Pacific, 1941 – The Imperial Powers, 1 September 1939

Are we more able students today - or were the folks who sat and read the NY Times in 1941 a more able student(s)?

I wonder many times as I read the news from 1941, what did the average reader understand - let me elaborate a bit. If I pickup a NYT and read it today, I know I am getting bias information and I filter it with that bias in mind. This filtering goes for the Washington Post, St. Pete Times, Politico, Free Republic, etc. Did the FOLKS do the same? What did they understand?

I know that so many people today who do read the NY Times see no bias in it at all. I find it very hard to believe so many either refuse to admit the bias or are just so lacking intelligence to understand.

Sorry for the rant, just thinking out loud.

Also today:

Glenn T. Seaborg who has been working with the tranmuted element of Neptunium which he recently determined was element 94 (to be named Plutonium next year) discovers that the new element undergoes fission with slow neutrons. This is important since it makes it more readily fissionable just like the difficult to obtain Uranium 235. Seaborg recorded the following:

This morning Kennedy, Segrè and I made our first test for the fissionability of 94²³⁹ using Sample A…
Kennedy has constructed during the past few weeks a portable ionization chamber and linear amplifier suitable for detecting fission pulses…Sample A (estimated to contain 0.25 micrograms of 94²³⁹) was placed near the screened window of the ionization chamber embedded in paraffin near the beryllium target of the 37-inch cyclotron. The neutrons produced by the irradiation of the beryllium target with 8 MeV deuterons give a fission rate of 1 count per minute per microampere. When the ionization chamber is surrounded by a cadmium shield, the fission rate drops to essentially zero…
This give strong indication that 94²³⁹ undergoes fission with slow neutrons.