1933: The Core of Time

An old-time publication that still jealously guards its content- the National Geographic magazine. Famous for photos of bare-breasted women from exotic places, and with a cult following of collectors who trade and sell decades worth of the thing, I seldom find scans from it online. It's an education. There's going to be a Halloween dance tonight in Breckenridge. No mention of costumes, but imagine staying out until 1 in the morning on a Thursday night! Shameful. The Juedische Kinderhilfe, a relief organization founded in Berlin in the 20's for poor Jewish children, rapidly became a relief organization for all Jewish children in '33. The nursing staff were often women who were no longer permitted to work elsewhere. Somehow this place remained in operation right up into the early 19...

Things are coming together. Those Russians are crazy about rotors. I'd always thought that Igor Sikorsky had invented the helicopter, and it seems that he designed and built one in 1909, but he realized that the technology wasn't up to the task, and it never flew. I never heard about Nicolas Florine before, but he had been building choppers throughout the 1920's, and on this date his bi-rotor craft set a record by remaining airborne for all but ten minutes. Yes, there's a man sitting in there flying that thing. Must have been the longest ten minutes of his life. These nurses look happy to have a new hospital to work in. You can tell who's working this shift- their pockets are bulging with stuff. Something made a ship-shaped hole in the side of our warship, out in the fog. You oug...

TIL is that not everyone in France was delusional about Hitler's aims and capabilities in 1933. Prime Minister Édouard Daladier was forced to step down on this date because of the unpopularity of measures he was taking to prepare the nation for war. He'd be back in the lead in three months due to the fact that the right couldn't hold a government together. He was doing his best to counter the growing strength of Germany, and had he been able to obtain the 3,000 warplanes he wanted, he might have succeeded. Sometimes it just be that way- there's a second major French train wreck on the same day! Another thing I learned is that the English-speaking traders and businessmen scattered around the Pacific Islands were numerous enough to warrant having a magazine of their own. The Walter Ec...

Surprised to see that the Crystal Palace is still standing in 1933. I thought it had burned down. Well, it will burn down if it hasn't yet done so. I believe there's talk of erecting a new one in our times. It's sort of iconic- like, if the Eiffel Tower fell over, you know they'd build a new one. Next, an angel and a Martian wrestle for control of the course of the Earth. Have no fear- they'll come to an agreement which satisfies everybody. I know it's hard to believe that the pacifists would back down. You know, nobody could have accepted a deal like the one the world offered Germany. No tanks, no planes, but plenty of rifles and trench mortars so you can defend yourselves in the last war. The world promises not to send any tanks or planes in when they invade. This is the sort...

It seems that the role of center has changed. This guy is built more like a running back- but seeing as his team has 2 more men on it than the Dodgers, it should all even out. Even in Turkish, newspapers are newspapers. The cartoons are nationalistic, promoting hard work, intellectual labor, and communication. This is modern Turkey! I wonder what the connection was between Baltimore and Easton? I mean, other than this little airline service. I wonder if the coming restrictions on single engine passenger aircraft will affect planes traveling over open water? Here's a photo from one of those US Government make work projects. I think it's great to have photos like this one- there's no reason that a plain little home like this would have its picture taken, and we'd only have some vag...

It's a whirlwind today, starting with the future, which, in 1933 Los Angeles, means strip malls. It's hard to believe that there's so little parking out front. This will soon change, but once upon a time there was functional mass-transit in LA. El Segundo is part of sprawling Los Angeles county, and it's where Northrop was building planes in the early 30's. Things might have continued there, but single-engine passenger planes would soon be prohibited from night or mountain flight, and the Delta line was discontinued. Back East the focus trends toward the past, as this Society photo attests. What a bunch of sour-pusses! All except for the black sheep of the Westcott clan, grinning like idiots in the back row. The Great White North looks a lot like the White Mid-West. WWI veterans ...

For some reason the Baron Munchausen fable has never really caught on in America. Probably because we have our own history of exaggerated legends like Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, and every religious grifter to pull into town with a tent. Munchausen is simply the way we roll here, and it's both impolite and unAmerican to point it out. So a guy like Maurice, one of the many bandits plying his trade in the Midwest in '33 gets inflated in a few years into Public Enemy #1. He was part of a daring robbery of an armory, where he and his gang obtained the weapons they needed to knock off a few banks. He was never captured, but that's probably because he and his girlfriend were murdered by a disgruntled co-worker and their remains well disposed of. The really big crime is years old by now, b...

Morgenthau was Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, here depicted standing outside the White House with his daughter. He must have had a lot on his mind. Bullitt was Ambassador to France, nicknamed "The American Mayor of Paris", a bon-vivant and former communist. The two of them were tasked to commence the process of establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union on this date. Finally. "Very special friend" in quotes like that meant just what you think it would in 1933. These women were ensconced in academia, respected and honored by their peers- or at least, allowed to pursue their love with a minimum of prejudice. It was a thing. Andrew Carnegie's hobby, or maybe tax-dodge, was still going strong after 31 years. It's the price the hard put-upon 1% must pay f...

All American day today. The "Flying Barrel" F2F fighter had its first flight today. It's such a goofy looking plane, and if you've been following along here, you've seen the future path of aeroplane design- single wing, all metal monocoque fuselage construction. But the military was conservative, and had its own idea of what made a good airplane. The Grumman F2F could land on carriers- nuf said.Even if it did look like the flying ocean liner. Woof!Welfare Island has had a lot of names since the Dutch owned it. It's now Roosevelt Island, and is much more upscale than it was in '33. Here you see a coal barge being offloaded. Considering that the photo was taken in summertime, it shows that the big hospitals, prisons and asylums there required a lot of energy to heat in the coming w...

Crossing over, Albert Einstein arrives in America. They rush him over to New Jersey on a tug, possibly worried about an assassination attempt by the SA. The guy had a rather large price on his head. Egghead. Some folks can make the crossing under their own power. The irony of a 17 year old girl swimming to San Fransisco from her home on inescapable Alcatraz Island wasn't lost on the press at the time. She had pep. Santa Monica is developing the iconic Southern California spread. The hills are already lost in haze. The Three Diamonds company is racing into the future. When I was growing up, everyone put the Japanese down by saying that they only knew how to copy Western technology, that they weren't inventors like us Yankees, nor did they have the genius for theory like Einstein....