Leslie Schmidt's Blog – February 2011 Archive (26)

On February 28, 1969, Airman First Class John Levitow was lying in a hospital bed, his body covered with forty shrapnel wounds, trying to piece together exactly how he had ended up there.  Meanwhile, seven Air Force buddies in South Vietnam were telling themselves they…

On February 27, 1776, the newly established Continental Navy was at sea on its first operation, an expedition to the Bahamas to capture some badly needed munitions.  The flagship of the little fleet flew a new ensign presented by…

The House voted today on HB 2101 and will vote in the morning in final action. HB 2101 will change how the Kansas Court of Appeal judges are selected by eliminating the nominating commission which has been stacked with liberals. This bill  will allowing the governor to appoint a candidate, the Kansas Senate would then confirm the candidate. …

"I AM TOO OLD!" protested John Quincy Adams, congressman and former president of the United States, when admirers asked him to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The situation was this.  In 1839 the Spanish schooner Amistad left Havana, Cuba, for another Cuban port, carrying fifty-three African slaves.  Under the leadership of an African named Cinque, the captives revolted, killed the captain, and seized the ship.  They…

On the morning of February 19, 1945, some 70,000 U.S. Marines began to swarm onto a tiny island in the northwest Pacific called Iwo Jima-a name that mean "Sulfer Island" in Japanese.  Twenty-one thousand Japanese defenders lay waiting for them, burrowed into volcanic rock…

A friend and political ally of Thomas Jefferson asked the retired president to give some advice to his young son, Thomas Jefferson Smith, who had been named after Jefferson. A little more than a year before he died, Jefferson composed a letter to be given to Smith when he was old enough to appreciate it. He enclosed some practical advice, such as "Pride cost us more than hunger, thirst and cold," and "When angry, count to ten…



George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County in eastern Virginia.  In three crucial ways he shaped our nation.  First, he led American forces during the fight for indepedence.  Second, he presided over the writing of our Constitution.  Third, he served as our first president.

At times, it was Washington's character alone that seemed to hold the fledgling United States together.   He became a symbol of what…

Those words sent Marine Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn on his way as his Atlas rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral and roared into the sky on February 20, 1962.  They came from fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, on the ground.  Tom O'Malley, General Dynamics Corporation project director, added his prayer:  "May the good Lord ride with you all the way."

The young test pilot could hear none of this encouragement over the sound of…

A sea captain from Salem, Massachusetts, named William Driver first called the U.S. flag "Old Glory."  In 1824, when Driver turned twenty-one, his mother and several young ladies sewed a large American flag for his merchant ship.  The captain was delighted witht he birthday gift.  "I name thee Old Glory!"  he declared when he saw it unfolding on the breeze.  In the 1820s and '30s, he flew it on his ship during his sea voyages.

In 1837 Driver…

"I am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way,"  Mark Twain write his family in 1883.  "I believe I shall complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for seven years.  This summier it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to lie."  The…

On February 17, 1817, the first public gas streetlight in the United States was lit in Baltimore, Maryland.  Artist Rembrant Peale brought the idea of gas lighting to the city.  He had learned about it during a visit to England, and on his return had displayed a…

NO MORE.  That was President Thomas Jefferson's answer to the rulers of the Barbary States of North Africa.  For centuries, the Barbary States hid licensed pirates to attack merchant ships in the Mediterranean.  The pirates not only captured booty but also held crews for ransom or sold them in the market as slaves.

European nations and the young United States had been paying the Barbary rulers huge sums of money to "protect" their ships from the…

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in an age when women in the United States and the rest of the world were considered inferior to men.  Most colleges weren't open to women.  Many restaurants had signs saying, "No Females Allowed."  Husbands by law controlled…

Fossils reveal that they've grown as a wildflower in America for more than 35 million years.  George Washington bred them and named a variety after his mother.  The White House has a famous garden…

February 12 is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, born in 1809 in a log cabin near Hodgernville, Kentucky.  Long before he became president, Lincoln's friends and aquaintances called him "Honest Abe."

When he was a boy in Indiana, he borrowed a book about George Washington from a neighbor, Josiah Crawford.  After rainwater ruined it, he went straight to Crawford, owned up to what had happened, and spent three days in Crawford's cornfield…

Every day, millions of children across the country and around the world cuddle up with their favorite teddy bears.  How did toy bears come to be so popular, and how did they come to be called "teddy"?  Credit Teddy Roosevelt, our twenty-sixth president, as well as a…

On February 9, 1950, during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin waved a piece of paper in the air and claimed that he had a list of Communists who had infiltrated the U.S. State Department.  It was a time of heightened Cold War tensions.  Communism had robbed millions around the world of their freedom.  McCarthy's shocking claim hit a nerve with the American people.

Over the next few years, the…

February 8, 1693 saw the birth of the College of William and Mary, one of the nation's oldest colleges.  At the request of Virginia colonists, King William III and Queen Mary II granted a charter that established "a certain place of universal study, a perpetual college of divinity, philosophy, languages, and the good arts and sciences....to be supported and maintained, in all time coming."

Americans have long recognized the importance of a…

Ronald Wilson Reagan, born February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, became the nation's fortieth president at a time when many said that America's best days were behind us, that the future would be one of fewer opportunities.  He spent much of his presidency (1981-89) reminding Americans, again and again, that this country is still a land of boundless potential, a beacon of freedom and hope for the…