Draft Cards: Moe, Larry, Curly, and Shemp

Here are WWII-era draft cards for Jerome Horwitz, Louis Feinberg, Moe Horwitz, and Samuel Horwitz (AKA Curly Howard, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, and Shemp Howard, all members of the Three Stooges, in various lineups -- along with Joe Besser, and Curly Joe De Rita). The draft cards have a straightforward, sober feel, in contrast with the Stooges' comic personae. Source: Ancestry .com

Enigma Cipher Machine

I witnessed this Enigma Cipher Machine at the Oregon Historical Society Museum yesterday. In line before me to get in was a man, appearing to be in his 90s, who identified himself as a British WWII vet. Outside later on the street I glimpsed NBA player Kobe Bryant on a bus with his teammates.

Hirohito's Speech of Surrender

70th Anniversary of VE Day

 

T-34 tank outside Soviet War Memorial, Berlin, April 2015

 

Reichstag, Berlin, April 2015

January 21, 1943

On January 21, 1943, the Soviet army had only just opened a corridor to besieged Leningrad, the first actions leading to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began, and the Japanese fought in Guadalcanal to maintain their Pacific empire, among other events: January 1943.

Snow also coated the ground, in the view seen from someone's front porch.

D-Day

Seven decades have passed since the Normandy landings (it's still June 6th here anyway).

The transitions in these photographs from now to 70 years ago are powerful:

D-day sites

I recall seeing a documentary which referenced the landings, which mentioned that a number of reels of film shot during that day fell from a boat into the ocean.  This is why relatively little film footage of D-Day exists. Those sequences, had they survived, would have gelled into icons.

Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil

Patent for the spread spectrum torpedo guidance system of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil

source:  patent

Collage by Jonathan

Hedy Lamarr:  actor and driver of communication technology, along with George Antheil: