Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

October 30, 1938: "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. Did Ramon Raquello and his Orchestra survive?

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

The Rockefeller experiment on Americans...

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”

Oct 30, 1953: President Eisenhower approves the top-secret document NSC 162/2 concerning the maintenance of a strong nuclear deterrent force against the Soviet Union. NSC 162/2 stated that the United States needs to maintain "a strong military posture, with emphasis on the capability of inflicting massive retaliatory damage by offensive striking power", and that, in the event of hostilities, the United States" will consider nuclear weapons as available for use as other munitions."


NSC 162/2 was based upon NSC 162, which was the final synthesis of the task force reports of Project Solarium. Project Solarium was an American national-level exercise in strategy and foreign policy design convened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the summer of 1953. It was intended to produce consensus among senior officials in the national security community on the most effective strategy for responding to Soviet expansionism in the wake of the early Cold War. Ironically, today and the past 4 years the Russians have been doing similar concerning NATO expansionism.

NSC 162/2 (PDF)

Project Solarium


Oct 30, 1956: To you whose grandchildren will be living in 2056, A.D.
"We do believe strongly that you will be living in a still free & strong America, in a world in which the nations have become neighbors in the truest & finest sense of the word."


I wonder if that time capsule is still there? Does Wells Fargo know??



Oct 30, 1961: the Soviet Union detonated the "RDS-220" hydrogen bomb variously known as “Big Ivan” or “Tsar Bomba” (King of Bombs), the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever tested. The bomb with an estimated yield of 57 Megatons was dropped from a Tu-95 bomber and detonated at an altitude of 4 km over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. 

Meanwhile, JFK assures 8-yr old girl that Santa is safe. Supposedly, it was the "cleanest," with 97% of the energy yield produced by fusion. Relative to the size of the explosion, very little fallout was produced.



KabOOm! A second sun!!


Mother of all Nukes


Oct 30, 1961: 'Clearly Compelled' - "Gov Rockefeller of NY has spoken out with eloquent common sense in favor of having the United States resume atmospheric nuclear experiments as quickly as possible." "Nuclear Tests and Common Sense"




Meanwhile, after 33 years of nuclear detonation silence, here we go again...


https://x.com/atrupar/status/1983976854479352161

What kind of testing, exactly? Not to worry, on "equal basis" meaning testing of delivery vehicles as a nuclear test... (reading in between the lines of what JD Vance said above) this will be out of the headlines in a few days. Also, Russia has more nuclear weapons than the United States and this has been known for decades.

The nuke modernization program currently underway was initiated by Obama, Trump didn’t finish it, and it will continue for another two decades. China has about 700 nuclear warheads and in five years the intelligence community estimates they will have over 1,000.

Here is the NNSA announcing a milestone for the new W80-4 cruise missile warhead...with a picture of the old B83 nuclear bomb that has been retired.




Oct 30, 1961: Navy Computing Earth's Real Shape
"Today," says a Navy report, "the exact shape of the earth must be known to direct our missiles, satellites & inertial guidance systems."