Quote:Actually, the October 1844 debacle was the second great disappointment for followers of Miller’s chronology and prophecy blueprint. He had previously announced that the coming of Jesus Christ would occur in about the year 1843. The year came and went without Christ’s return. Miller’s prophetic claim had failed and disappointed many people.

Then someone pointed out that he had neglected to take into account the transition from B.C. to A.D., so that his calculations were one year off. Miller then moved the expected return of Jesus forward by one year, this time to Oct. 22, 1844. But the great disappointment happened once again to the thousands of followers who had given away their possessions and waited in expectant belief — for nothing.

William Miller, as all Christians do, yearned for the coming of God’s kingdom. However, this yearning was translated by him into a misguided belief that Christ’s return would occur in his time on a specific date. Miller thought he had discovered in the Bible certain prophecies, which if rationally studied, could provide him with a certain date for Jesus’ return. His study and calculations of various prophecies, such as the 70 weeks prophecy of Daniel 9 and the 2300 days of chapter 8, brought him, he believed, to Oct. 22 as the date for Christ’s return.

The Great Disappointment

Quote:Wetter-Funkgerät Land–26 (WFL-26), which was placed on Labrador, was a simple array of ten one-meter-high drums. One of the drums contained the meteorological instruments and radio transmitter. Out of that canister sprouted a 33-feet antenna and a weather vane. The other drums contained nickel-cadmium batteries weighing 220 lbs each. The batteries were designed to power a two-minute broadcast every three hours around the clock for six months.

Weather Station Kurt never lived up to its promise. The Germans stopped receiving transmissions after about a month. No one knows what went wrong. Perhaps the batteries drained, or maybe the transmissions were jammed. There’s no record of the Allies discovering and disabling Kurt.

“Weather Station Kurt”: The Only Armed German Operation on North American Soil in WWII

Quote:That strategy, part of a “build Haiti back better” vision, took a crowning if controversial step this week. On Monday, Haitian President Michel Martelly, joined by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a host of political and business luminaries that included her husband (and U.N. special envoy to Haiti) former U.S. President Bill Clinton, inaugurated the Caracol Industrial Park, a $300 million, 600-acre (246-hectare) facility near the country’s north coast, east of the seaport city of Cap Haitien. The Caracol inauguration was the first joint trip to Haiti by the Clintons since they visited the Caribbean nation shortly after they wed in the 1970s. Now they’re hoping Caracol will be the start of a more productive marriage between Haiti and the international donors and investors it so desperately needs just to build back, let alone build back better.

A mock Haitian village was erected for the occasion, as celebrities like British tycoon Richard Branson looked on beneath banners proclaiming “A New Day in Haiti.” Martelly, whom Hillary Clinton gushingly praised as the “chief dreamer and believer,” declared the modern plant and the 130,000 jobs it’s expected to create as proof that despite the usual “sad images of Haiti,” the country “is open for business, and that’s not just a slogan.”

Like Martelly, the U.S., which is leading the international effort to rebuild Haiti, has been eager to present an accomplishment of Caracol’s magnitude amidst what critics have called a slow reconstruction effort. Reassuring evidence of progress is crucial to getting the billions of dollars that international donors have pledged to Haiti—but half of which has yet to be delivered, largely because of the uncertainties on the ground—into the pipeline. “The people of this country have made real progress in a short time,” Hillary Clinton told investors after touring the park, “and we’ve reached a critical moment.”

The Clintons in Haiti: Can an Industrial Park Save the Country?

Quote:(Bloomberg) -- The plot of A House of Dynamite, the new thriller from Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow, hinges on — spoiler alert —  US missile defenses failing to knock down a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile headed for Chicago.

The Pentagon agency responsible for the more than $50 billion system of ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California designed to avoid just such a scenario isn’t happy about it. The movie, starring Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, had a limited theater release and is now streaming on Netflix.

A Missile Defense Agency internal memorandum argues that the doomsday scenario depicted in the movie is inaccurate. The Oct. 16 memo, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News, is meant to make sure agency leadership “has situational awareness and is not ‘surprised’ by the topic, which may come up in conversations or meetings.”

The object of the Missile Defense Agency’s angst is depiction of US missile defense as ineffective, especially in light of the fact that President Donald Trump wants to spend tens of billions of dollars on missile defense, including with his bid for a “Golden Dome” defensive umbrella.

The document, labeled “Only For Internal MDA and Department of War use and is not public releasable,” is dated a day after almost every member of the Pentagon press corps, including Bloomberg News, vacated the building rather than agree to rules that could restrict news gathering of documents such as the MDA assessment.

It was prepared to “address false assumptions, provide correct facts and a better understanding” of the US’s currently deployed system, it said. While the film “highlights that deterrence can fail, which reinforces the need for an active homeland missile defense system,” its fictional portrayal also underestimates US capabilities, according to the memo.

“The fictional interceptors in the movie miss their target and we understand this is intended to be a compelling part of the drama intended for the entertainment of the audience,” but results from real-world testing “tell a vastly different story,” the Pentagon says in the memo.

As guidance for questions about the system’s cost, the memo avoids a dollar amount, saying “the cost is high but not nearly as high as the cost of allowing a nuclear missile to strike our nation.”

A Government Accountability Office report in 2020 said the Pentagon had spent about $53 billion on the ground-based system and planned to spend about $10 billion through this year to continue developing, producing and sustaining it. The system is managed by Boeing Co. and operated by personnel under the US Northern Command.

Pentagon Frets Over ‘A House of Dynamite’ Nuclear Doomsday Film

Quote:Since the United States Army turned to Hershey for help in developing its survival Field Ration D bar, it was only natural that in 1943, the Procurement Division of the United States Army approached Hershey Chocolate Corporation about the possibility of developing a heat resistant confectionery chocolate bar with an improved flavor. After a short period of experimentation, Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, in one and two ounce sizes, was added to the list of war production items. The label was a type of glassine paper, white or tan, printed with brown ink with the exception of the word “Tropical” which was printed in red.

Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate bars were developed to provide military personnel with access to a confectionery treat in parts of the world where Hershey’s traditional products would readily melt. The Tropical bar’s product formula was designed to allow the bar to hold its shape after one hour in 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

This bar was destined to exceed all other items in tonnage produced and along with the Field Ration D bar, became part of Hershey Chocolate’s history. By the end of World War II, almost 380,000,000 two ounce Tropical bars had been produced for the United States military.

In July of 1971, Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar went to the moon with Apollo 15 astronauts.

Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar

Quote:    1937 - Army requests Hershey develop a heat-resistant emergency chocolate ration
    1939 - Ration D bars join Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic expedition
    1941 - Pearl Harbor attack prompts gas-proof coating requirement
    1943 - Hershey introduces improved-taste Tropical Bar variant
    1945 - Production peaks at 3 billion total wartime bars
    1957 - Formula revised: oat flour removed for better taste
    1971 - Tropical Bar reaches the moon on Apollo 15 mission
    1980s - Army develops “Congo Bar” withstanding 140°F heat
    1991 - Desert Bar was created for Operation Desert Storm
    2000s - Original Ration D bar discontinued

When developing the Ration D Bar, Hinkle discovered that standard chocolate manufacturing equipment couldn’t handle the thick paste. Normally, chocolate flowed when warm, but the military formula wouldn’t flow at any temperature.

For the first 90,000-bar production run in June 1937, workers had to manually weigh, knead, and press each four-ounce portion into molds. It was a labor intensive three-week process that required entirely new machinery and methods for mass production.

The Ration D Bars were first tested during Admiral Byrd’s 1939 Antarctic expedition, proving they could sustain themselves in severe weather conditions.

U.S. Congress later moved to classify candy production as non-essential during WWII. During the hearings, Milton Hershey successfully defended chocolate’s military importance before Congress.

Congress gave the green light, and production scaled dramatically—from 100,000 ration bars daily in 1939 to 24 million weekly by 1945. Over 3 billion Ration D Bars were produced during the war years.

On a funny side note, Troops nicknamed the bar “Hitler’s Secret Weapon” due to its severe gastrointestinal effects. The rock-hard chocolate also required a knife to shave into edible portions, making it particularly problematic for soldiers with dental issues. Even those with healthy teeth had to carefully slice thin shavings and let them dissolve slowly.

Later on, The Ration D Bar found an unexpected use in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater.

Medical officers discovered that soldiers suffering from dysentery could digest the D-ration bars when all other foods proved intolerable, leading to its nickname as the “dysentery ration” among CBI personnel.

The Ration D formula saw a significant revision in 1957 with the removal of oat flour to improve the taste.

The Tropical Bar joined the Apollo 15 lunar mission in July 1971, a key ration for astronauts.

The candy bar continued to be served to soldiers in modern conflicts. In the 1980s, the Army developed the “Congo Bar,” capable of withstanding 140°F heat.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Hershey produced the “Desert Bar” for troops in Southwest Asia. However, this would be the last time The Hershey Company would collaborate with the U.S. military. It would later be discontinued in the early 2000s.

HERSHEY’S RATION D BAR: THE NASTY CANDY BAR THAT HELPED WIN WW2

Quote:Unfortunately, Raquello disappeared sometime before dawn on Oct. 31, 1938, just hours after the band's first remote radio broadcast. Friends and associates, worried after he failed to appear for rehearsal that afternoon, broke down the door of his suite at the Park Plaza Hotel. The only clue was a note on the dresser in Raquello's handwriting which read: "Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast."

Ramón Raquello and His Orchestra

Quote:Raquello, as the Radiolab team makes clear, didn’t exist, and his “orchestra” was just an anonymous phonograph recording of the famous tango “La cumparsita.” Welles apparently chose the song for its “tedium,” hoping it would make believable the lunacy to come. That the music of the Southern Cone set up listeners in the United States for the greatest hoax in history might have been yet another of the inside jokes Welles left us to listen for.

The sounds of Ramón Raquello and the settings of some of Welles’s most famous films—The Lady From Shanghai (1947); Touch of Evil (1958)—remind us how Latin America, and its relationship to the United States, fascinated Welles in the late 30s and 40s. Five years after War of the Worlds, he began the final episode of his CBS program Hello Americans by recalling the show’s mission: “It is important for the people of this hemisphere to get better acquainted, and the Mercury [Theater] has been given the job of helping out with the introductions.”

An artful propagandist, Welles told Nelson A. Rockefeller, FDR’s head of Inter-American Affairs and Welles’s boss at RKO studios, that radio and film were the best way “to sell South America to North America.” Between 1938 and 1943 his technical innovations in film and radio, in addition to a 1942 stint as a “good will ambassador” to Latin America, created for him by Rockefeller, were meant to convince U.S. audiences of FDR’s claim in his first inaugural that the United States should follow the policy of the “Good Neighbor.” Whether listening, watching, or reading his work during World War II, Welles’s U.S. audiences were constantly reminded that they were residents of the Americas, rather than an exceptional and isolated America.

Hello, Americans: Orson Welles, Latin America, and the Sounds of the “Good Neighbor”