Heather Penney:
"Heather Penney
Major Heather “Lucky” Penney.jpg
Occupation United States Air Force pilot
Known for flying a ramming mission to prevent United Airlines Flight 93 from reaching Washington DC during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
Heather Penney is the director of United States Air Force Air Superiority at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company. She is best known for her role as a USAF lieutenant who was one of two pilots ordered to ram and down United Airlines Flight 93 before it reached Washington, DC, during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Penney

When I was pretty young, elementary age I'd guess, I remember hearing my grandmother, Helen Speed Pickens, say something about a family member that had been in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. It wasn't until after both of my father's parents passed that we went back and began digging into some of the family history, beginning with the very old, very large family Bible that has always been on a stand at their house. It had genealogy that went back to the late 1700's I think. We discovered that James Speed had been Lincoln's Attorney General. But probably the most interesting story we found was about Joshua Speed, James' brother and actually a much closer friend to Lincoln. Below is his story of how he met Lincoln and how Lincoln started his law practice on his way to becoming President.

“In 1837, after his return from the legislature, Mr. Lincoln obtained a license to practice law,” recalled the man who was probably Mr. Lincoln’s closest friend, Joshua F. Speed. “He lived fourteen miles in the country, and had ridden into town on a borrowed horse, with no earthly goods but a pair of saddle-bags, two or three law books, and some clothing which he had in the saddle-bags,” recalled Joshua Speed. “He came into my store (I was a merchant then), set his saddle-bags on the counter, and asked me ‘what the furniture for a single bedstead would cost.'”1

Speed had started the general store three years earlier. “I took slate and pencil, and made calculation, and found the sum for furniture complete, would amount to seventeen dollars in all. Said he, ‘It is probably cheap enough; but I want to say that cheap as it is I have not money to pay. But if you will credit me until Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you then. If I fail in that I will probably never be able to pay you at all. ‘The tone of his voice was so melancholy that I felt for him. I looked up at him, and I thought then as I think now, that I never saw so gloomy, and melancholy a face,” Speed later wrote.2

“I said to him; ‘The contraction of a small a debt, seems to affect you so deeply, I think I can suggest a plan by which you will be able to attain your end, without incurring any debt. I have a very large room, and a very large double-bed in it; which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose’. ‘Where is your room’? asked he. ‘Upstairs’ said I, pointing to the stairs leading from the store to my room. Without saying a word, he took his saddle-bags on his arm, went up stairs, set them down on the floor, came down again, and with a face beaming with pleasure and smiles exclaimed ‘Well Speed I’m moved’. Mr. Lincoln was then twenty-seven years old, almost without friends, and with no property except the saddle-bags with clothes mentioned within,” Speed reported.3 For the next three and a half years, Speed and Mr. Lincoln shared the upper room over the store.

“Mr. Lincoln was then…a lawyer without a client, no money, all his earthly wealth consisting of the clothes he wore and the contents of his saddlebags,” Speed wrote several decades later. “For me to have seen him rise from this humble position, step by step, till he reached the Presidency – holding the reins of government in as trying times as any government ever had – accomplishing more during the four years of his administration than any man had ever done – keeping the peace with all foreign nations under most trying circumstances – putting down the most gigantic rebellion ever known – assassinated at fifty-six years of age – borne to his final resting place in Illinois, amid the tears of the nation and of the civilized world, and even his former foes in arms acknowledging they had lost their best friend – seems more like a fable than fact.”4

David Marshall Williams (November 13, 1900 – January 8, 1975) was a convicted murderer and was the American firearms designer of the floating chamber and the short-stroke piston. Both designs used the high-pressure gas generated in or near the breech of the firearm to operate the action of semi-automatic firearms like the M1 Carbine. Designed in prison, the warden convinced he was more valuable to the war effort got him released after only 8 years of a 30 year sentence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marshall_Williams

Bannerman's Castle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollepel_Island

"The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, is the name given by contemporary sources to the rumored enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late February 24 to early February 25, 1942, over Los Angeles, California.[2][3] The incident occurred less than three months after the United States entered World War II as a result of the Japanese Imperial Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one day after the bombardment of Ellwood on February 23. Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but speaking at a press conference shortly afterward, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called the incident a "false alarm." Newspapers of the time published a number of reports and speculations of a cover-up."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles

Pappy Boyington of the Black Sheep Squadron was a Tacoma local.
https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/ ... 73260.html
"Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, a Medal of Honor recipient, is one of Tacoma’s most famous sons."

Yes sir he was. Many good books out there on his life. I absolutely love that period of our history, WW2 Airmen.

I was purely envious of WW2 airmen as a young lad. If I'd have found a time machine, I would have shot back to 1932 as a 12 year old so that I could be working hard to be a pilot in the war.
My father and I used to watch Baa Baa Black Sheep. One of the very few TV shows that I tried to watch as a boy.

Most of you remember the 1984 Olympic Winter Games, but do you know what happened to the facilities? Very sad indeed.

"The second life of Olympic structures is a challenge to manage for any host city. But none, perhaps, offer as stark an image as Sarajevo's battle-scarred Olympic buildings. Eight years after the 1984 winter games, the Bosnian War left the city with buildings full of bullet holes, ski slopes dotted with land mines, and a graveyard just outside the very stadium that once held the opening ceremonies."

https://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-y ... 1521465158

Jannyerry 15th 1919. The great Bahstin Mole-asses flood.

Big vat of molasses burst and 2.3 MILLION gallons of heated molasses flowed down Boston streets. 21 dead, 150 injured.

https://www.history.com/news/the-great- ... od-of-1919

I remember reading that story from a different source a few years ago! What a sticky mess!

D-Day:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/o ... rs-of-wwii

25 Missions:
https://www.midamericamunitions.com/

My father laughed when I asked him about the Memphis Bell.

"Shit, when I hit 25 missions they just made the rest classified. I did 52 missions when they decided I had enough."

Captain Harry M. Story US Air Corps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_B-26_Marauder

Capt Ed Freeman



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Freeman