We all know the United States has an interesting history and through less than 250 years this country and it's people have become a world superpower. This blog is dedicated to everything American History from Presidents to State trivia to the Cold War and beyond.Please follow, read, contribute and reblog. And be sure to remember to pe proud to be an American!
American History: Kicking Butt Since 1776
Why history is important to me, summed up in four images.
I love this “Know Where You Stand” deal.
(Source: photojojo, via anchors-aweighlove)
Nikola Tesla, the eugenicist, the following is taken from the Paleofuture blog at The Smithsonian website,
Like any man, Tesla was far from perfect and sometimes had very warped ideas about how the world should operate. One of Tesla’s most disturbing ideas was his belief in using eugenics to purify the human race. In the 1930s, Tesla expressed his belief that the forced sterilization of criminals and the mentally ill — which was occurring in some European countries (most disturbingly Nazi Germany) and in many states in the U.S. — wasn’t going far enough. He believed that by the year 2100 eugenics would be “universally established” as a system of weeding out undesirable people from the population.
The February 9, 1935 issue of Liberty magazine includes many other fascinating predictions by Tesla for the future of humanity, which we’ll no doubt look at in the weeks ahead. But for the time being I’ve transcribed only the eugenics portion of Tesla’s predictions below, to remind us that we should be cautious when making gods of men:
The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.
The ideas behind eugenics would become substantially less popular after World War II, for obvious reasons. I doubt that Tesla understood the scope of the atrocities that were being committed in Europe (and at the hands of the California eugenics movement) at the time. But again, his ideas were clear: the world should be rid of so-called undesirables. However unpleasant the idea of eugenics is to reasonable people on its surface, this notion seems particularly strange coming from a man like Tesla, whose own mental illnesses would have likely put him in the “undesirable” category under any authoritarian regime.
That Nikola Tesla held these beliefs has been known for years, this is why his designation as “the greatest geek who ever lived” or the subsequent conversion of his life into some moral tale has always made me cringe.
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
I’m sorry, but tumblr isn’t letting me reply/post your message, so I have to do it this way.
I seriously typed up a huge reply to this, but accidentally clicked away from this page. I’ll try to reanswer it, though I doubt it’ll be as good as my original reply. =[
I love aviation history. This includes plane specs, dogfights, nose art, etc. I have a major love of B-17s. As a child, I would play dogfight simulation games on the computer religiously. I find it fascinating- machine vs machine with such skilled pilots in the cockpits. I love hearing stories about dogfights from pilots and have watched several documentaries about planes in WWII. I totally fangirl when I go to the Nat’l Naval Aviation Museum in Florida(something we HAVE to do when we vacation anywhere near there).
I love learning about war strategies and how technology and machines have influenced the battles won and lost. The Schlieffen Plan, DDay Invasion and the like are so interesting to learn about and there are a lot of information out there for people wanting to know details about these things(not limited to the two strategies listed there).
On top of that, there are a plethora of photographs and videos about WWII(not as many videos of WWI) which provide you with a lot of resources.
The Homefront was amazing during WWII. My grandfather and grandmother talk about it a lot with me, showing me their rations books leftover and talking about scrap metal drives. It’s amazing to learn about how an entire country put aside differences in order to help provide for the boys overseas, in hopes they’d return home.
Those are just the main reasons. If you have any more questions, don’t be a stranger!
And I apologize.
I couldn’t keep up with it because of my job and other circumstances.
I will, however, be doing a bigger version of it starting sometime soon in which a whole weekend will be dedicated to certain presidents.
