On this day in 2005 the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States occurs when Hurricane Katrina makes landfall on the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. It caused devastating floods in lowland areas, especially hard hit was the city of New Orleans. The storm brought with it sustained winds of 145 mph and a huge storm surge that caused Lake Pontchartrain to overflow into the city, submerging 80 percent of it under water. In a city built below sea level, wouldn't you think a hurricane might hit at some point? Wouldn't you want to protect the city by, I don't know, building large, secure levies that could withstand a storm surge? I came up with these questions up to ten years prior whenever a hurricane had a near miss with the city of New Orleans. If a 15 year old in Oregon thought these things, why couldn't someone with some political clout think it too?
On this day in 1911 Native American Ishi is discovered in California. He was the last stone aged Indian in America, and had been wandering the hills of Northern California for his entire life. He had made very little contact with the outside world and was unaware of so-called white culture. Anthropologists at the university of California, Berkley took him in and studied him. He would go on to live in the Bay area for the next five years before white culture killed him in the form of tuberculosis.
On this day in 1966 the Beatles performed their last live concert not on a rooftop in San Francisco's Candle Stick Park. The members of the band were too full of themselves to play the same songs in front of the screaming girls who made them famous. They'd rather learn eastern culture, drop acid, marry shady artists, inspire serial killers, and make movies. Oh yeah, and fight amongst themselves.
On this day in 1949 the arms race became just that when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in Kazakhstan. They had been getting nuclear secrets from some of the Manhattan scientists for some time. Those who participated in the espionage went undetected until the Soviets had the bomb. Then security measures were boosted and an investigation was started. See my June 23rd post.
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