Author: Ben Nussbaum

1. Bloody Sunday is the name given to a massacre that took place January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland. British Army soldiers fired on a crowd, killing 14 men, none of whom were armed.

2. Bloody Sunday was part of the Troubles, a decades-long campaign of violence surrounding the identity of Northern Ireland. Unionists, who were mostly Protestant, wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom. Republicans, who were mostly Catholic, wanted Northern Ireland to be part of a united Ireland.

3. Starting in the late 1960s and continuing until 1998, the Troubles were defined by tit-for-tat violence between paramilitary groups on both sides. More than 3,500 people lost their lives, including more than 1,500 civilians slaughtered as part of the cycle of killings and retaliations. Many British solders also lost their lives.

4. The massacre on Bloody Sunday started as a civil rights march to protest internment, the practice of jailing people without a trial. The British Army, trying to squell the Troubles, had resumed the practice in 1971, using it against suspected members of Republican paramilitaries. The number of people who attended the march is disputed, although 10,000 is a consensus estimate.

5. The march became confrontational — which was expected. The British Army used a water cannon and rubber bullets to dispense the crowd, then brought in soldiers to arrest any remaining marchers. It was these soldiers — members of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment — who fired on the civilians.

6. The Widgery Report, completed months after the event, criticized the soldiers but insisted that march organizers were mainly to blame. It accepted the soldier’s story that they had been fired upon first. The Widgery report is discredited today, seen mainly as an attempt to whitewash the massacre.

7. The Saville Report, initiated in 1998 and completed in 2010, overturned the Widgery Report. It said the soldiers had not been fired upon and were not in danger, and that five of the soldiers knowingly fired at civilians who they knew did not pose a threat.

8. After the Saville Report was published, British Prime Minister David Cameron officially apologized for Bloody Sunday. “For someone of my generation, Bloody Sunday and the early 1970s are something we feel we have learnt about rather than lived through. But what happened should never, ever have happened,” he said.

9. Bloody Sunday is also the name for events in Dublin on November 21, 1920, when 31 people were killed in a day of violence between the British and Irish nationalists fighting for independence.

Click here to share your memories of this tragic event with Witnify.

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[Blog] 9 Facts about Bloody Sunday appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Ben Nussbaum

It was a cold morning at Cape Canaveral on January 28, 1986. Crews had worked the night before clearing ice from the launch tower that held the Challenger Space Shuttle.

Inside the Shuttle, five men and two women waited to lift off. They would spend six days in space. The vast apparatus of Cape Canaveral, the ornate prelaunch routine, and the many hundreds of millions of dollars that had been spent to put the crew inside the Shuttle and ready it for launch disguised the fact that for most of the nation the launch was no big deal.

In 1985 alone there had been nine Space Shuttle missions, and Columbia had already completed a mission earlier in January of 1986. The Challenger crew included Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher from New Hampshire; the Teacher in Space program was a way to drum up continued buzz about the Shuttle program.

The fact that Shuttle flights were becoming commonplace meant the vehicle was working. Originally the Shuttle was meant to fly as many as 50 times in a year, making space travel routine — even affordable.

In some schools students watched a live telecast, provided by NASA to celebrate McAuliffe’s launch. The major networks ignored the launch, continuing with their regular programs. Only CNN carried the broadcast live.

At 11:38 Challenger blasted off, leaving a trial of white vapor in a clear blue sky. CNN patched into audio of NASA public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt, who clicked off constant updates: “Roll program confirmed. … Engines beginning throttle down now. … Three good fuel cells.” The network’s Tom Mintier broke in to say the mission was on its way. As Mintier started to recount the delays Challenger had faced (the flight had been postponed five times), he paused. It was 73 seconds after blastoff. On screen the Shuttle — 10 miles up in the sky — had exploded. Mintier stuttered something about an explosion and waited. The voice of NASA’s Nesbitt returned, saying “flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. obviously a major malfunction.”

The screen showed fireballs and falling debris, but no one on CNN’s coverage spoke. Finally, almost a minute later, Nesbitt was back on, saying the inevitable: “We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded. Flight director has confirmed that.”

Before NASA confirmed the explosion, the few people watching live on CNN that day had already shifted into mourning — the images on the television screen were undeniable. What no one knew then was that the seven crew members were almost definitely still alive, hurtling to Earth inside the cabin of the Space Shuttle. They may or may not have lost consciousness, but if they did they almost certainly regained awareness at some point during the nearly three minutes that the cabin plummeted downwards. It hit the sea going over 200 miles per hour, killing all seven crew members immediately; CNN was already airing a replay of the initial explosion.

The cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion was an O-ring that malfunctioned in the cold. Engineers were aware of the problem; their warnings had been lost in NASA’s bureaucratic maze. The result: The Shuttle program was grounded for nearly three years. The program rebounded, then suffered another devastating blow in 2003 with the Columbia disaster. U.S. space exploration is now a private-public partnership, with SpaceX leading the way.

Ronald Reagan, scheduled to give the State of the Union address that night, instead appeared on television to commemorate the Challenger crew. He quoted a World War II era poem written by an airman shot down at the age of 19: The crew had “slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” he said, “to touch the face of God.”

Where were you when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded? To share your memories of the event with Witnify, click here.

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[Blog] Remembering the Challenger Disaster appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh-ZweQf_aM

Bruce Springsteen talks about his early days of learning to love rock-n-roll and the excitement of performing in a 1978 interview. Springsteen was an established star by this time, albeit not a mainstream icon like he became after 1984’s Born in the USA album. This clip combines archival footage with a backstage interview after a three-hour show. In 1978 he released Darkness on the Edge of Town, his fourth album and the follow-up to 1975's  Born to Run. 

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Bruce Springsteen on Music: "It Was the Only Thing That Was Ever True" appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVSoilSuXO4

Bruce Springsteen gave the keynote speech at the 2012 South by Southwest festival. One topic: The influence that 1960s folk-rock band the Animals had on him. Part of the mid-1960s British Invasion, the Animals were popular during Springsteen’s teenage years. Springsteen plays a portion of “We Gotta Get out of This Place,” a song that captures many of the same images and emotions that Springsteen has highlighted in his own music.

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Bruce Springsteen Describes the Influence of the Animals appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Sarah Dejak

The friendly rivalry between Peyton Mannning and Tom Brady continues with their showdown in the American Football Conference (AFC) championship game on January 19, 2014. Here is a primer:

• The two have met 14 times, with Brady’s New England Patriots winning 10 of those games.

• They first met September 30, 2001. Manning passed for 196 yards, Brady 168, but Manning’s three interceptions were the story of the game as the Patriots easily beat the Indianapolis Colts.

• In their most recent meeting, November 24, 2013, Manning struggled, throwing for just 150 yards, and New England won in overtime.

• Both players have hosted Saturday Night Live, won a Comeback Player of the Year award, and been namedSportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated.

• Neither player led the league in jersey sales in 2013, at least during the regular season. Manning ranked second overall, Brady seventh. The most popular jersey: Colin Kaepernick.

• Brady has the most playoff wins ever by a quarterback, with his 18 victories two more than Joe Montana’s 16. Manning has 10 playoff wins.

• The two have earned $341 million in just their football salaries – not counting endorsements. Manning holds the earnings edge, $207 million to $134 million.

• The two last met in the playoffs in January 2007, when Manning’s Colts won 38-34 en route to the quarterback’s only Super Bowl title.

• The two have combined to quarterback their teams to 315 regular-season wins. Manning is 167-73 as a starting quarterback while Brady is 148-43.

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[Blog] 9 Facts on the Peyton Manning & Tom Brady Rivalry appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2dFelIQxNc

Tom Brady gushes about Peyton Manning and discusses what makes him such a great player in this clip from 2012.

The duels between the two quarterbacks have been must-see TV for over a decade. Brady became a starter in 2001, his second season, and led the Patriots to a Super Bowl win. Manning entered the league as the No. 1 draft pick in 1998 and was immediately one of the league’s superstars.

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Tom Brady on Peyton Manning appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZlP748K_vs

Ken Morrow played for the Miracle on Ice hockey team and won a Stanley Cup a few months later. It was the first of four straight Stanley Cups Morrow would celebrate as a member of the New York Islanders. After a successful NHL career was cut short by injuries, he has worked as a coach and a scout. He currently works as the Director of Pro Scouting for the Islanders. In 2011 he auctioned off the jersey he wore on February 22, 1980, against the Soviets. It sold for slightly more than $100,000.

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Ken Morrow Remembers His Incredible Year in 1980 appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Ben Nussbaum

The March on Washington in 1963 has become identified with Martin Luther King, Jr., who delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech in front of a quarter of a million people gathered on the National Mall.

But as the March was being organized, King was just one piece of the puzzle. The March had 10 chairmen, including King but also representatives from other civil rights and religious groups, as well as the head of the United Automobile Workers (UAW).

Six of the ten chairmen were African American. This group came to be known as the Big Six. In addition to King, it included the leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League, as well as the heads of two new, activist civil rights, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The man who led the Big Six wasn’t King. It was A. Philip Randolph.

Randolph was a leftist union organizer; he twice ran for office in New York as a socialist. In 1925 he was elected president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a position he held until 1968. As head of the Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph became one of the best known African Americans in the country.

This raises a couple obvious questions: What are sleeping car porters and why was the head of their union so powerful?

The answer starts with a man named George Pullman, who developed the concept of a luxurious sleeping car that could be attached to existing trains. The Pullman company quickly became a household name; the cars it made were called Pullman cars. The Pullman company was also known for viciously breaking a bitter, protracted strike in 1894. That strike grew to involve 250,000 workers across the country. Thirty-four strikers were killed in the violence spawned by the strike, and it remains a defining moment in the history of American labor unions.

The Pullman Company continued to grow after breaking the strike. By 1925, 12,000 porters were employed by Pullman. These porters, who attended to the needs of the customers in the Pullman cars, formed the membership of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. They were all men. And they were all black.

Being a porter was glamorous. The job paid well. On account of their travel and contact with other porters, the Pullman men became an important pathway of information among African Americans. In an era when African Americans had few jobs opportunities, the Pullman porters were stars.

So when the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters actually succeeded in signing a collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Company in 1937, it was major event both because of Pullman’s famous strike-breaking history and the prominence the porters had in the African American community. The collective bargaining agreement launched the porters’ president, A. Philip Randolph, to fame.

By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, the railroads had already lost much of their power and the membership in Randolph’s union had dwindled. But it’s a testimony to the power of the porters that the man who led the March still proudly identified himself, first and foremost, as their president.

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[Blog] A. Philip Randolph & the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Ben Nussbaum

The Berlin Wall is remembered as one of the 20th century’s great monstrosities: A literal wall that cut a city in half–separating families and friends, cutting off West Berlin from Communist East Berlin. It was the site of about 100 deaths (some estimates are much higher) as East Berliners tried to escape to freedom and were killed by their own military. The most famous victim was 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who was shot by the East German guards and allowed to slowly bleed to death in front of Western witnesses. The last person killed trying to cross the wall, Chris Gueffroy, was shot ten times in the chest by East German guards who were later given an award and a cash prize.

When the wall finally fell in November of 1989 it signaled the eventual reunification of Germany, the fall of communism, and a radical reshaping of world politics.

David Hasselhoff is best known for his role on as a lifeguard on Baywatch.

So why is David Hasselhoff connected to the history of the Berlin Wall?

Hasselhoff long had ambitions to be a singer. In the U.S., those ambitions amounted to very little – mainly a guest spot singing “Do You Love Me” on Kids Incorporated. In Germany, though, Hasselhoff had a huge hit in 1989 with “Looking for Freedom,” which topped the German charts for eight weeks. The song—a clichéd, forgettable rocker to American ears—become something of an anthem on both sides of the wall that summer as Germans felt the first rumblings of what would become the fall of communism.

Late in the summer, Hungary and Czechoslovakia loosened or dismantled travel restrictions, allowing East Germans an easy passage to the West. As the East German government responded by cracking down on all travel, massive demonstrations broke out, with chanters shouting, “We want out.” The wall fell on November 9.

On New Year’s Eve, Hasselhoff was in Berlin to perform the song standing on top of the wall, with East Germans and West Germans celebrating below. He was a hit with the crowds and the performance remains memorable today. The footage of Hasselhoff singing on the Berlin Wall became one of the viral videos in the late ’90s when it was rediscovered.

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[Blog] David Hasselhoff & the Berlin Wall appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Ben Nussbaum

In the aftermath of the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy became a national focal point, a single person whose grief and grace seemed to sum up the entire tragedy.

The nation suddenly wanted to hold her in its collective arms. After her husband died, 800,000 people sent condolence cards to her at the White House.

But to the nation that watched her mourn, Jackie was also a mystery.

She grew up wealthy, cloistered, but also shaken by a tumultuous family life. Her father, Black Jack Bouvier, was a wealthy Wall Street stockbroker, a drinker, and a womanizer. Her parents divorced when she was 10. Jackie later moved with her mother and sister to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., when her mother remarried, this time to an heir to the Standard Oil fortune.

Jackie spent much of her childhood moving around the Atlantic Seaboard, spending time in New York City, Long Island, Rhode Island, and the D.C. suburbs. She spent two years of college at Vassar, one year in France, and then one year at George Washington in D.C, graduating in 1951. Two years after that Jackie was married to John Kennedy, then newly elected to the Senate. She was 24; he was 36.

The senator was handsome and charming, wealthy and a war hero. His wife was beautiful and sophisticated. By 1956 — just three years after their marriage — he would come close to being the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee. Four years after that John and Jackie, with three-year old Caroline and infant John Jr., would move into the White House.

On Nov. 22, 1963, John Kennedy died instantly when a bullet tore through his brain. Jackie Kennedy cradled her dead husband’s body in her arms and stayed with the body through that day and night.

Forgotten now in the tragedy of her husband’s death and those of her son John Jr. (who died in a plane crash in 1999) and her brother-in-law Robert Kennedy (assassinated in 1968) is that Jackie suffered a miscarriage in 1955, gave birth to a stillborn daughter (Arabella) in 1956, and had just seen her two-day old son Patrick die in August of 1963, the victim of infant respiratory distress syndrome. She also was well aware of her husband’s affairs and had nursed him through several debilitating health crises, including a coma in 1954 following a surgery.

So as the nation turned its gaze to Jackie Kennedy — a woman who had mostly stayed away from the media, a woman whose voice many Americans had never heard — her youthful face and delicate manner hid the fact that in many ways she was far older than her 34 years. With resolve she began constructing her husband’s legacy, guiding the plans for his funeral and prodding John Jr. to give his iconic salute as his dead father’s body rolled past. In fact, the term Camelot, so frequently used to describe the Kennedy years, is one that Jackie herself strongly suggested to Life magazine’s Theodore White, who first used the term in print to describe JFK’s brief presidency.

Jackie went on to safeguard her husband’s legacy for another 30 years while also resisting the prison of forever being the grieving widow. Fifty years after her husband’s death, it’s worth remembering Jackie Kennedy as well. The woman in the ambulance with the stricken face.

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[Blog] Remembering Jackie Kennedy Onassis appeared first on Witnify.