Volume 12 , Issue 44

This Day In History - November 1st

On this day in 1930, President Herbert Hoover turns a telegraphic "golden key" in the White House to mark the opening of the 5,160-foot-long Detroit-Windsor Tunnel between the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan, and the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. The tunnel opened to regular traffic on November 3. The first passenger car it carried was a 1929 Studebaker.

* On this day in 1861, President Lincoln names George Brinton McClellan general in chief of the Union armies, replacing the aged and infirm Winfield Scott. In just six months, McClellan had gone from commander of the Ohio volunteers to the head of the Union army.

*On this day in 1952, The United States detonates the world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Following the successful Soviet detonation of an atomic device in September 1949, the United States accelerated its program to develop the next stage in atomic weaponry, a thermonuclear bomb.

Popularly known as the hydrogen bomb, this new weapon was approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices. Opponents of development of the hydrogen bomb included J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb. He and others argued that little would be accomplished except the speeding up of the arms race, since it was assumed that the Soviets would quickly follow suit.

The opponents were correct in their assumptions. The Soviet Union exploded a thermonuclear device the following year and by the late 1970s, seven nations had constructed hydrogen bombs. The nuclear arms race had taken a fearful step forward.

* On this day in 1924, On this day, William Tilghman is murdered by a corrupt prohibition agent who resented Tilghman's refusal to ignore local bootlegging operations. Tilghman, one of the famous marshals who brought law and order to the Wild West, was 71 years old.

Known by friends, enemies as "Uncle Billy." Tilghman, an honest and effective lawmen, was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1854. He moved west when he was only 16 years old. Tilghman earned a reputation for treating even the worst criminals fairly and protecting the rights of the unjustly accused. Tilghman had little tolerance for those who took the law into their own hands. In 1898, a wild mob lynched two young Indians who were falsely accused of raping and murdering a white woman. Tilghman arrested and secured prison terms for eight of the mob leaders and captured the real rapist-murderer.

In 1924, Tilghman did not quietly retire. Here was an the old lawman, unable to hang up his gun. He accepted a job as city marshal in Cromwell, Oklahoma. Tilghman was shot and killed while trying to arrest a drunken Prohibition agent. READ MORE about William "Billy Tilghman>

* On this day in 1914, a German naval squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee sinks two British armored cruisers with all aboard off the southern coast of Chile on November 1, 1914, in the Battle of Coronel.

* On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt announces that the U.S. Coast Guard will now be under the direction of the U.S. Navy, a transition of authority usually reserved only for wartime. The Coast Guard was established as the Revenue Marine Service by Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, in 1790. In 1915, the U.S. Lifesaving Service, formed in 1878, and the RMS combined to become the Coast Guard. During peacetime, the Guard was under the direction of the Department of Treasury until 1967, when the Department of Transportation took control. But during war, it was under the control of the U.S. Navy.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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