The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Amy Elizabeth Thorpe: WWII's Mata Hari -Dec. 26th, 2004

see educational sources

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Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

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Amy Elizabeth Thorpe:



WWII's Mata Hari

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, code-named 'Cynthia,' was a World War II version of the legendary Mata Hari.
by Wilfred P. Deac

She was born Amy Elizabeth Thorpe on November 22, 1910, in Minneapolis. Family and friends called her Betty. William Stephenson, who ran Great Britain's World War II intelligence activities in the Western Hemisphere, would one day give her a code name--"Cynthia." She reputedly was one of the most successful spies in history.

Amy Thorpe's father was a U.S. Marine Corps officer, which put travel high on the family agenda. By the age of 11, she had used postcards and guidebooks to provide the Neapolitan setting for a romantic novel she wrote, titled Fioretta. A copy found its way to a young-at-heart naval attaché named Alberto Lais at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Her father's resignation from the service to study law brought Amy Thorpe to the U.S. capital, where she met Commander Lais. The Italian officer's platonic relationship with the adolescent he called his "golden girl" undoubtedly contributed to her appearance of maturity. By the time she made her debut in Washington society, 18-year-old Thorpe was beautiful, well-bred and graceful, with green eyes and amber-colored hair. She exuded a magnetism that drew men to her.

An affair with Arthur Pack, second secretary at the British Embassy and 19 years her senior, evolved into a mismatched marriage and gave her a second citizenship. Amy Thorpe Pack gave birth to a son five months after the wedding, but for a variety of reasons she turned the infant over to foster parents. A daughter, born in 1934, did nothing to help the eroding union.

Arthur Pack was transferred to Madrid on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, where Amy Pack immersed herself in secret operations. She helped smuggle rebel Nationalists to safety, transported Red Cross supplies to Franco's forces, coordinated the destroyer evacuation of the British Embassy staff from northern Spain, and meddled in diplomatic affairs. Those activities ceased when she was denounced to her Nationalist friends as a Republican spy, apparently by a jealous woman.

In the fall of 1937, accompanied by her young daughter and a nanny, Amy Pack boarded the Warsaw Express in Paris to, in her words, "become a member of his Britannic Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service." She was quickly "adopted" by a group of young men working for the Polish foreign ministry, a situation facilitated by her husband. Arthur Pack, now an official at the embassy in Poland, had informed her he was in love with another woman. Shortly afterward, he suffered an attack of cerebral thrombosis that landed him in an English nursing home.

Amy Pack was recruited by the British intelligence and allotted an entertainment allowance of 20 pounds sterling to cultivate her high-placed Polish sources. Of her first official male conquest, she would later tell a biographer and future lover, "Our meetings were very fruitful, and I let him make love to me as often as he wanted, since this guaranteed the smooth flow of political information I needed." Pack met her next target at a dinner party hosted by the American ambassador. The handsome Pole seated next to her was a personal aide to foreign minister Jósef Beck. Although married, the aide was sufficiently impressed by his dinner companion to send her pink roses the next morning.

From him Pack learned Polish experts were working on overcoming the threat posed by Germany's Enigma enciphering machine. The extent of her contribution to the "Ultra secret" that gave the Allies a crucial edge over the Nazis remains a matter of conjecture. In fact, however, Britain would owe its ability to decode so much of Germany's World War II radio traffic to the efforts of the Poles, who had cooperated with the French in working out the Enigma system.

In Prague, Pack obtained conclusive proof of Hitler's plans to dismember Czechoslovakia. For reasons that remain unclear, in the fall of 1938 the ambassador ordered her to leave the country. The following April, having called a domestic truce, a recuperated Arthur Pack and his wife traveled to South America, where he took over his embassy's commercial section in Santiago, Chile.

When World War II started, Amy Pack offered her talents to the British intelligence service. She soon was writing political articles for Spanish- and English-language newspapers in Chile. Britain was then gearing up its intelligence and propaganda efforts in the hemisphere, placing them in the spring of 1940 under the British Security Coordination (BSC), headed by Canadian William Stephenson.

Amy Pack left her husband and sailed to New York, where she was given her code name, "Cynthia," and an assignment to set up shop in Washington, D.C. As her cover, she posed as a journalist. Her first major assignment was obtaining the Italian naval cryptosystem. Given her mission, it was only logical that Cynthia look up her old friend Alberto Lais, now an admiral and naval attaché at Italy's Washington embassy. Virtually all published accounts say that Cynthia pried from the 60-year-old admiral the Italian navy's code and cipher books, as well as plans to disable Italian ships in U.S. ports to prevent their seizure. The literary consensus is that Cynthia's amorous success contributed to British victories in the Mediterranean. The lady herself, who described her relationship with Lais as "sentimental and even sensual rather than sexual," said she received the ship sabotage information directly from the admiral and access to the sensitive books from his assistant with Lais' full cooperation.

Heirs of the admiral sued a British author in an Italian court for defamation in 1967, insisting Lais (who had died in 1951) had not betrayed military secrets, and won. In 1988, Lais' two sons protested publication of the seduction account in David Brinkley's best-selling Washington Goes to War and persuaded the Italian defense ministry to publish denial ads in three leading East Coast newspapers.

Cynthia's next assignment was one that assured her place in the intelligence hall of fame. The Vichy French government, established after France's collapse in 1940, was vehemently anti-British. Posing as an American journalist, Cynthia phoned the French Embassy in May 1941 and introduced herself to Charles Brousse, the press attaché. Right away, Brousse--49 years old, several times married and anti-Nazi--was besotted with Cynthia.

The relationship began with elicited material and intelligence tidbits. But by July, Cynthia felt confident enough to make a false flag recruitment, telling Brousse she worked for the Americans. The French official soon was offering his mistress embassy cables, letters, files and accounts of embassy activities and personalities. Before long, to foil FBI surveillance, she moved into the hotel where Brousse and his wife lived.

"London would like to have the Vichy French naval ciphers," Cynthia was told in March 1942. Informed of her latest request, Brousse threw up his hands. Only the chief cipher officer and his assistant had access to the code room. The cipher books were in several volumes, locked in a safe. A dog-escorted watchman guarded the premises at night.

After a series of stymied efforts, Cynthia finally tried the direct approach--burglary. Tapping his friendship with William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of America's Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), the BSC's Stephenson acquired the services of a thug nicknamed "the Georgia Cracker." Brousse was to tell the embassy night watchman that he needed a discreet place to conduct an affair and was prepared to pay him to look the other way. The couple would then visit the embassy for several nights to get the guard used to their presence. On the night of the burglary, they planned to slip the watchman a drugged glass of champagne. After that, they would admit the safecracker, go to the ground-floor code room, open the safe, pass the cipher books to a BSC man waiting on the tree-shaded lawn below and then wait for the volumes to be returned after they were photographed.

All seemed to go as planned. The pentobarbital knocked out the guard as well as his dog (whose food had been drugged). The Georgia Cracker coaxed open the old Mosler safe, but there was not enough time to remove and copy the books, and the intruders had to beat a hasty retreat. A second attempt, made without the Georgia Cracker, was foiled when Cynthia could not get the safe open, even with the combination.

Entering with Brousse's key for a final try, the couple had nervously positioned themselves on their usual sofa in the embassy when Cynthia's intuition told her something was wrong. Impulsively, she arose and removed her clothes. "You haven't gone mad?" asked Brousse, looking at his lover, who was by then clad only in a necklace and high heels. She persuaded him to also start undressing. A door suddenly opened, and a flashlight beam stabbed the darkness. As it focused on her, Cynthia quickly placed her slip in front of her.

"I beg your pardon a thousand times," said the watchman. He turned his flashlight aside and, suspicion allayed, returned to his basement room. Cynthia let in the safecracker. The rest was a milk run.

The Vichy ciphers, whether those obtained by Cynthia or from another source, were used to great effect when the Allies landed in French-held North Africa in November 1942. With the United States now in the war, Cynthia worked for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services as well as for the British. She considered herself a patriot. "Ashamed? Not in the least," she once said. "My superiors told me that the results of my work saved thousands of British and American lives....It involved me in situations from which 'respectable' women draw back--but mine was total commitment. Wars are not won by respectable methods."

The rest of Cynthia's story pales after her earlier adventures. Arthur Pack killed himself in 1945. Brousse and his wife divorced, and the modern Mata Hari married Brousse. In storybook fashion, they settled in a medieval castle on a mountain in France. The end of their story was tragic, however. On December 1, 1963, Amy Thorpe Brousse died of mouth cancer. Her husband was electrocuted about 10 years later by his electric blanket. Part of their fairy tale castle was also consumed in the ensuing fire.

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[snippy_about_it]

Washington debutante turned femme fatale

By Joshua Paul Lenner HQ AIA/HO
Lackland AFB, Texas

Late one balmy DC night in June 1942, an OSS safecracker negotiated the top rungs of a ladder in the yard of the French embassy. Once inside, it was hoped, he would remove the Vichy codebooks and pass them to a team of agents waiting in the yard below. These agents would then copy the Vichy ciphers and return the books to the safe with no one the wiser-giving the allies a considerable edge in their imminent invasion of Vichy territory in North Africa.

Of course, the French were not in the habit of leaving their embassy windows open at night, so the operation required a little help from the inside. The task of recruiting such help fell to an alluring young American Mi6 operative named Amy Thorpe, and she approached her assignment with characteristic audacity. In early 1942, posing as a pro-Vichy journalist, Thorpe began a torrid affair with the embassy's press attaché, Charles Brousse. In less than a month he, too, was working for the OSS, under her direction. On the night in question the couple retired to the embassy, telling the night watchman they intended to "discuss world politics" in Mr. Brousse's office. The watchman responded with a suggestive wink, but later became suspicious and decided to check on the two lovers. He burst in on the party just as the operation had begun, surprising all but Thorpe who, hearing the footsteps in the hall, had frantically begun stripping off her clothes. Entering the room, the watchman trained his flashlight on the commotion and caught sight of Thorpe, wearing nothing but a necklace and heels. Suspicions allayed, and visibly moved, he stammered a "Pardonnez moi" and hurried out of the room-failing to notice the open window, the ladder (its top in full view above the sill), and the OSS safecracker straddling both.

With disaster averted, the operation continued and within 24 hours allied code breakers were reading all communications between Paris and North Africa.

This was but the last hurrah in a remarkable career.

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe began life as a military brat. Her father was a Marine Corps captain and the family was always moving. The resulting need to make new friends quickly, biographers have speculated, was key to the development of a famously forceful personality. When Amy was a young teen, her father gave up the military life for a career in Maritime law.

The family settled in Washington, D.C., and his success afforded Amy access to the capitol's circles of social elite. Blessed with remarkable beauty-she was a strawberry blond with stunning green eyes-Amy was also assured the attention of the town's most eligible bachelors. But she was more than just a pretty face. Remembered by friends for her brilliant wit and a larger-than-life character, she had a lust for danger and excitement that would draw her to espionage.

At 19, Thorpe forwent the advances of a number of Washington's finest sons and married a mid-level, middle-aged British diplomat named Arthur Pack. The two had had a scandalous affair, and the union had more to do with Amy's advanced pregnancy than any real chemistry. Pack would prove unsatisfactorily dull for his adventurous young wife, so she compensated with a series of affairs.

In 1936, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, Pack was re-assigned to Spain, and Amy accompanied him. It was there, legend has it, that she was introduced to her true calling. She was approached by a handful of Nationalist soldiers trapped behind Loyalist lines, who in desperation asked her to help them reach more hospitable territory. Thorpe agreed, and with the combination of her good looks and artful conversation she successfully smuggled the men through several checkpoints in the trunk of her car.

She was hooked, and soon took on similar missions like gathering diplomatic intelligence and smuggling Red Cross supplies to Franco's forces.

In 1937 Thorpe's hapless husband was transferred again, this time to Warsaw, where she relentlessly lobbied the Mi6 station chief for work as an operative. As the wife of a British national, she enjoyed dual citizenship. Finally the chief acquiesced, some say simply to get her out of his hair, and within weeks he was rewarded for his suggestibility. In short order Amy seduced two high-level Polish officials. From one she obtained the details of Poland's planned response to German and Russian provocations, and from the other she uncovered the first hints that Polish mathematicians had cracked the German Enigma machine.

Her work with these Polish diplomats laid the foundation for Polish-Anglo-American cooperation on ULTRA-the program for gaining information from high-grade signals intercepts-and likely shortened the war considerably. All were amazing feats, particularly since she had no formal intelligence training.

A year later she came through again, this time in Prague, providing her handlers with German plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Soon after this feat, however, her husband was re-assigned to Santiago, Chile, which at that time was effectively off the radar for Mi6. With no outlet for Amy's adventuresome impulses, their marriage quickly fell apart and she left Pack in 1941.

Thorpe moved to New York and had just about resigned herself to a normal life when she met William Stephenson, Mi6's chief liaison with the American OSS. It was no accident. Stephenson had heard much of her work in Europe, and he'd tracked her down to try and coax her back into service. It didn't take much. Soon Thorpe was at it again-this time for the Americans, too-legging her way into the hearts and minds of foreign diplomats in Washington, D.C. One was the Italian embassy's Military Intelligence chief, whom she relieved of Italy's naval ciphers. Waxing romantic, so the story goes, he asked her what she really wanted from life. "The Italian navy cipher," she replied and, incredibly, he gave it to her. Then came the Vichy embassy operation. This proved to be Amy's last because she had fallen in love with the French diplomat she recruited. Sometime around 1944 she finally divorced Arthur Pack and married Charles Brousse. The two retired to a medieval French castle, where most sources will tell you they lived happily ever after. But according to Columbiad.com, the story has a darker ending. Pack killed himself shortly after their divorce, and Amy died of mouth cancer in 1963. Ten years later Mr. Brousse was electrocuted by an electric blanket and sparked a fire that burned down half of the castle.

Thorpe's supporters have suggested that her escapades saved hundreds of thousands of allied lives during World War II. Stephenson himself suggested that many were saved in the invasion of North Africa by the French embassy operation alone-and the Italian naval ciphers she acquired through the love-struck MI officer proved decisive in the pivotal British victory at the battle of Cape Matapan later that year.

"Ashamed? Not in the least," she once responded to criticism of her M.O. "My superiors told me that the results of my work saved thousands of British and American lives…. It involved me in situations from which 'respectable' women draw back-but mine was total commitment. Wars are not won by respectable methods."

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Today's Educational Sources and suggestions for further reading:

http://www.historynet.com/wwii/blamyelizabeththorpe/
http://aia.lackland.af.mil/homepages/pa/spokesman/Nov02/heritage.cfm

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The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul

Click on Hagar for
"The FReeper Foxhole Compiled List of Daily Threads"

[Aeronaut]

Good morning Snippy.

[radu]

Good morning everyone!

To all our military men and women past and present, military family members, and to our allies who stand beside us
Thank You!

[Samwise]

Good morning! I survived another Christmas. I need to clean, but I don't want to wake the family. Yeah, that sounds good. I'm on the computer so I won't disturb others.

[Samwise]

While looking for more inforamtion, I found this:

The National Women's History Museum exhibit, Clandestine Women: The Untold Stories of Women in Espionage, also features the story of another unlikely operative, Julia Child.

Decades before becoming a famous chef, she worked for the Office of Strategic Services. (The OSS was the predecessor to the CIA.) She was assigned to solve a problem for U.S. naval forces during World War II: Sharks would bump into explosives that were placed underwater, setting them off and warning the German U-boats they were intended to sink.

"So... Julia Child and a few of her male compatriots got together and literally cooked up a shark repellent," that was used to coat the explosives, McCarthy says.

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning everyone.

[The Mayor]

December 26, 2004

Letdown

Read: Luke 2:8-20

Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God. —Luke 2:19-20

Bible In One Year: Haggai 1-2; Revelation 17

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The night of Jesus' birth was exciting for Mary and Joseph. There before their eyes was the miracle Baby whose coming into the world had been announced by an angel. The shepherds too were excited when they saw and heard "a multitude of the heavenly host praising God" and heralding His birth (Luke 2:13).

But it wouldn't be long before Mary and Joseph would face the ordinary tasks of caring for a new baby and all the accompanying responsibilities. The shepherds would be back on the hillside tending their sheep. All the elements were in place for an emotional letdown, which often follows an emotional high.

I don't believe they experienced any "after-Christmas blues," however. Mary didn't quickly forget all that had happened, and the shepherds couldn't easily forget what they had heard and seen (vv.19-20). The angelic message had proven true, and their lives were filled with new hope and anticipation.

There's no reason for an after-Christmas letdown. We have the full story. Jesus came to die for our sins, then conquered death for us by rising from the grave. We have more truth to ponder and more reason to glorify God than Mary and the shepherds did. —Herb Vander Lugt

Life's ebb and flow that moves our hearts
From heights of joy to feelings low
Cannot exhaust God's matchless grace
Nor stem that never-ending flow. —D. De Haan

Feeling let down today? Try looking up.

[E.G.C.]

Good morning Snippy and everyome at the Freeper Foxhole.

[Valin]

On this Day In history


Birthdates which occurred on December 26:
1194 Frederick II, Iesi Italy, German Emperor (1212-1250)/King of Sicily
1716 Thomas Gray (poet: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."; also: "...where ignorance is bliss/'Tis folly to be wise.")
1738 Thomas Nelson merchant, signer of the Declaration of Independence
1792 Charles Babbage, English inventor (calculating machine)
1809 William Nelson Pendleton Brigadier-General (Confederate Army), died in 1883
1837 George Dewey (Admiral of the Navy: Spanish-American War: hero of Manila: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.")
1861 Friedrich Engel, German mathematician (group theory)
1891 Henry Miller (author:Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer)
1893 Mao Tse-Tung (communist-revolutionist: founding father of the People's Republic of China) (mass murder)
1914 Richard Widmark (actor-The Bedford Incident, The Frogmen)
1917 Rosemary Woods, Nixon's secretary
1921 Steve Allen (comedian, author, musician, composer, TV host: The Tonight Show, The Steve Allen Show)
1927 Alan King (Irwin Kniberg) (comedian)
1936 Kitty Dukakis 1st lady of Massachusetts/wife of Michael (Governor-MA)
1940 Phil Spector (record company producer: originator of Wall of Sound)
1947 Carlton Fisk (baseball: Boston Red Sox catcher: American League Rookie of the Year (1972)
1954 Ozzie Smith Mobile AL, infielder (St Louis Cardinals)

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Deaths which occurred on December 26:
0267 Dionysius, bishop of Rome/saint, dies
1476 Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Il Sforza del Destino), duke of Milan, murdered
1530 Zahir al-Din Mohammed Babur Shah, founder Mogols dynasty, dies at 47
1776 Johann Gottlieb Rall, Hessian colonel/mercenary, dies in battle of Trenton
1861 Philip St George Cocke Confederate Brigadier-General, commits suicide at 52
1862 38 Santee Sioux Indians hanged in Mankato (Sioux uprising)
1890 Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist (Seven Cities of Troy), dies at 86
1963 "Gorgeous George" Wagner, perfumed and pampered wrestler, dies
1972 Harry Truman, 33rd US Pres (1945-53), dies in KC Mo at 88
1974 Jack Benny, comedian (Jack Benny Show), dies at 80. He was 39 years old.
1977 Howard Hawks director (Rio Lobo, Hatari!), dies at 81
1985 Dian Fossey, zoologist (Gorillas in the Mist), murdered at 53

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Reported: MISSING in ACTION
1961 FRYETT GEORGE FREDRICK---LONG BEACH CA.
[06/24/62 RELEASED, ALIVE 98]
1969 TROWBRIDGE DUSTIN C.---WAYNE IL.
1971 GUENTHER LYNN---THE DALLAS OR.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV INJURED, ALIVE IN 98]
1971 KOONS DALE F.---EATON OH.
["DEAD, PHOTO OF ID", REMAINS RET 1/03/90]
1971 STOLZ LAWRENCE G.---HAUBSTADT IN.
["DEAD, PHOTO OF ID", REMAINS RETURNED 1/03/90]
1972 COOK JAMES R.---WILMINGTON NC.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV INJURED, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1972 HUDSON ROBERT M.---SHAWNEE MISSION KS.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1972 LABEAU MICHAEL M.---LINCOLN PARK MI.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV,ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1972 MORRIS ROBERT J. JR.---ST CHARLES MO.
[09/30/77 REMAINS RETURNED BY SRV]
1972 VAVROCH DUANE P.---TAMA IA.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1972 WIMBROW NUTTER J.---WHALEYSVILLE MD.
[09/30/77 REMAINS RETURNED BY SRV]

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

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On this day...
0268 St Dionysius ends his reign as Catholic Pope
0418 St Zosimus ends his reign as Catholic Pope
0795 St Leo III begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1198 French bishop Odo van Sully condemns Zottenfeest
1492 1st Spanish settlement in New World founded, by Columbus
1620 Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth MA
1659 Long Parliament reforms in Westminster
1773 Expulsion of tea ships from Philadelphia

1776 George Washington defeats Hessians at Trenton

1799 George Washington is eulogized by Colonel Henry Lee as "1st in war, 1st in peace & 1st in the hearts of his countrymen"
1805 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts established, Philadelphia
1805 France & Austria sign Peace of Pressburg
1825 Erie Canal opens
1848 1st gold seekers arrive in Panamá en route to San Francisco
1848 William & Ellen Craft escape from slavery in Georgia
1854 Wood-pulp paper 1st exhibited, Buffalo
1860 Maiden voyage of 1st steamship owned by 1 man (C Vanderbilt)
1860 Major Robert Anderson, under cover of darkness, concentrated his small force at Fort Sumter
1862 1st US navy hospital ship enters service
1862 38 Santee Sioux Indians hanged in Mankato MN, due to their uprising
1862 -Dec 28th) Battle of Dumfries, VA.
1865 James H Mason (Massachusetts) patents 1st US coffee percolator

1872 4th largest snowfall in NYC history (18")
1877 Socialist Labor Party of North America holds 1st national convention
1878 1st US store to install electric lights, Philadelphia
1902 Most knock downs in a fight, Oscar Nelson (5) & Christy Williams (42)
1916 Joseph Joffre becomes marshal of France
1917 Federal government took over operation of American RR for duration of WWI
1917 1st NHL defensemen to score a goal: Toronto Maple Leaf Harry Cameron
1919 Yankees & Red Sox reach agreement on transfer of Babe Ruth (Curse needs 2004)
1924 Judy Garland, age 2½, billed as Baby Frances, show business debut
1925 1st East-West football game at Ewing Park before 25,000 fans
1925 Turkey adopts Gregorian calendar
1928 Johnny Weissmuller announces his retirement from amateur swimming
1931 SS-Sturmbannführer Reinhard Heydrich marries Lina von Osten
1932 Earthquake kills 70,000 in Kansu China
1933 US forswears armed intervention in the Western Hemisphere (except when we want to)
1934 Yomiuri Giants, Japan's 1st professional baseball team forms
1936 Israel Philharmonic Orchestra forms
1941 Winston Churchill becomes 1st British PM to address a joint meeting of Congress, warning that the Axis would "stop at nothing"
1943 British sink German battle cruiser Scharnhorst
1943 Chicago Bears win NFL championship
1943 Count Claus von Stauffenberg tries in vain to plant bomb in Hitler's headquarters
1944 Budapest surrounded by soviet army
1944 Tennessee Williams' play "Glass Menagerie" premieres in Chicago
1946 Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas opens (start of an era)
1947 British transfer Heard & McDonald Islands (Indian Ocean) to Australia
1947 Heavy snow blankets Northeast, buries NYC under 25.8" of snow in 16 hours; That same day, Los Angeles set a record high of 84º F(More proof of global warming)
1948 Hungarian cardinal Mindszenty arrested
1950 Gillette & Mutual buy All Star & World Series rights ($6 million for 6 years)
1954 "The Shadow" airs for last time on radio
1955 Cleveland Browns beat Los Angeles Rams 38-14 in NFL championship game
1955 RKO is 1st to announce sale of its film library to TV
1963 Beatles release "I Want To Hold Your Hand"/"I Saw Her Standing There"
1963 US furnishes cereal to USSR
1964 Moors Murderers claim last victim
1966 Maulana Karenga establishes Kwanzaa (1st fruits of harvest) holiday
1967 The BBC broadcasts "The Magical Mystery Tour"
1967 Dave Brubeck Quartet formally disbands
1968 Bruin Ted Green sets NHL penalty record of 3 minors, 2 majors & 2 game misconducts in a game against the New York Rangers in New York's Madison Square Garden
1968 Arab terrorists in Athens fire on El Al plane, kills 1
1968 Led Zeppelin's concert debut in Boston as opener for Vanilla Fudge
1973 2 Skylab 3 astronauts walk in space for a record 7 hours
1973 Soyuz 13 returns to Earth
1973 "The Exorcist", starring Linda Blair & rated X, premieres
1975 1st supersonic transport service (USSR-Tupolev-144)
1978 India's former PM, Indira Gandhi, released from jail
1982 TIME's Man of the Year is a computer
1986 TV soap "Search for Tomorrow" ends 35 year run
1986 Doug Jarvis, 31, sets NHL record of 916 consecutive games
1986 Hijackers take over an Iraqi Airways Boeing 737 with 91 people on board during a flight from Baghdad to Amman - it lands in Arar, Saudi Arabia where it explodes, killing 62 people.
1988 Anti African student rebellion in China People's Republic
1990 Garry Kasparov beats Antatoly Karpov to retain chess championship
1991 Chuck Knolls retires as NFL coach after 23 years
1991 Jack Ruby's gun sells for $220,000 in auction
1991 Militant Sikhs kill 55 & wound 70 in India
1993 Comedian Rodney Dangerfield (72) weds Joan Child (41)
1994 French commando's terminate Air France hijacking in Marseille
1994 President's ½ brother Roger Clinton (37) weds 8-month pregnant Molly Nartin (25)
1996 Child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, age 6, was found slain.

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Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Africa(?), US : Kwanzaa (1966)
China People's Republic : Mao Tse-Tung's Birthday
Czechoslovakia : Day of Rest
West Germany : 2nd Day of Christmas
Canada, United Kingdom (except Scotland), Australia, New Zealand : Boxing Day (Monday-Friday)
Bahamas : "Junkanoo" (carnaval)
US : God-Awful Tie Day
Read A New Book Month

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Religious Observances
Seventh Day of Hanukkah
Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran : Feast of St Stephen, deacon, the 1st martyr
Roman Catholic : Commemoration of St Vicenta Maria Lopez y Vicuna, foundress

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Religious History
1531 German reformer Martin Luther declared: 'The inner man is a saint; the outer man is a sinner. That is why we confess in the Creed that the church is holy but pray for forgiveness of sins in the Lord's Prayer.'
1620 Plymouth Colony was settled by the "Mayflower" colonists. (In 1691 Plymouth joined other neighboring settlements to form the royal colony of Massachusetts.)
1830 Birth of William Caven, Scottish_born Canadian Presbyterian leader. He taught at Knox College, in Toronto, the last 39 years of his life. Though staunchly conservative, Caven was genuinely interested in social issues and thoroughly committed to missions.
1887 Birth of Charles Brandon Booth, American social reformer and head of the Volunteers of America, 1949_58. Booth was the grandson of Salvation Army founder William Booth.
1970 American missionary and apologist Francis Schaeffer wrote in a letter: 'We can fail after we are truly Christians because becoming a Christian does not rob us of our true humanity.'

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

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Thought for the day :
"To shorten winter, borrow some money due in spring."

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Snappy anwers to stupid questions
(waiter to man and wife)
Q: Table for how many?
A: One. My wife will sit on my shoulders.
A: One hundered and twenty. We like to change seats often.

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Dog Rules, Simplified for Humans
Visitors
Quickly determine which guest is afraid of dogs. Charge across the room, barking loudly and leap playfully on this person. If the human falls down on the floor and starts crying, lick its face and growl gently to show your concern

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You Know Your Life Stinks When...
The bride's family throws rocks instead of rice.

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Things NOT to say to a cop
I'm on the phone, I'll be with you in a minute

[alfa6]

Day after Christmas Bump for the Freeper Foxhole

The absolute last Santa Cartoon for 2004

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[stand watie]

GM, snippy!

i see you SURVIVED Christmas!

free dixie,sw

[w_over_w]

Morning Glory Snip & Sam~

Fascinating read! From military brat to Mi6, this gal found her purpose in life.

Wars are not won by respectable methods.

If only the MSM could figure that out . . . but then that would require logical thought in place of emotional retardation.

Hope you two had a wonderful Christmas day, I'm off to fellowship but will check in later and with some pics I think you'll enjoy.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Hi all.

The day after Christmas.

[Professional Engineer]

Good afternoon ladies. Flag-o-Gram.

The Allen Police Honor Gaurd carry the colors to kick of the town Christmas parade.

[Professional Engineer]

Spiderboy checks out the hardware at the parade staging area.

[Professional Engineer]

Hobbit holidays

[Professional Engineer]

Hi miis Feather

[Professional Engineer]

Howdy ma'am

Sniff any cedar lately?