WHAT YOU MUST KNOW

 Biddy Bridget Mason (1815-1891) was born into slavery and given as a wedding gift to a Mormon couple in Mississippi named Robert and Rebecca Smith.  In 1847 at age 32, Biddy Mason was forced to walk from Mississippi to Utah tending cattle behind her master’s 300-wagon caravan. After four years in Salt Lake City, Smith took the group to a new Mormon settlement in San Bernardino, California in search of gold.  Biddy Mason soon discovered that the California State Constitution made slavery illegal, and that her master planned to move them all to Texas to avoid freeing them.  With the help of some free blacks she had befriended, she and the other slaves attempted to run away to Los Angeles, but they were intercepted by Smith and brought back.  However, when he tried to leave the state with his family and slaves, a local posse prevented his flight.  Biddy had Robert Smith brought into court on a writ of habeas corpus.  She, her daughters, and the ten other...

 Annie J. Easley (April 23, 1933 – June 25, 2011) was an African-American computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. She worked for the Lewis Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).  She was a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage and one of the first African-Americans in her field. Annie Jane Easley was born to Bud McCrory and Willie Sims in Birmingham, Alabama. In the days before the Civil Rights Movement, educational and career opportunities for African American children were very limited.  African American children were educated separately from white children and their schools were most often inferior to white schools.  Annie was fortunate in that her mother told her that she could be anything she wanted but she would have to work at it.  She encouraged her to get a good education and from t...

 7 AUGUST 1990 - OPERATION DESERT SHIELD BEGINS: Operation DESERT SHIELD began on 7 August 1990 in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.  When completed, U.S. and coalition forces launched Operation DESERT STORM to liberate Kuwait, which resulted in an overwhelming victory in the Persian Gulf War. On 7 August, a coalition of 35 nations began operations to defend Saudi Arabia and ultimately liberate Kuwait.  The XVIII Airborne Corps, with its elite 82d Airborne Division, began to move to Saudi Arabia the next day, beginning a buildup of combat power in the region reaching at its peak about 600,000 U.S. personnel. In rapid succession, the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), the 197th Infantry Brigade, and the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) moved to the Gulf.  The U.S. Army Reserve began its largest mobilization since the Korean War.  By early November, with the addition of the 1st Cavalry Division (Armored), the 2d Armored Division's 1st (or Tiger) Brigad...

 🇺🇲 A Salute to Barney F. Hajiro.. a Hero Remembered: In March 1943, Hajiro volunteered to be part of the Army's all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team.   The 442nd was mostly made up of second-generation Americans citizens of Japanese descent from Hawaii and the mainland.   The unit was sent to Europe and in May 1944 fought the Germans in Italy, north of Rome. From there the 442nd was redeployed to France. On October 19, 1944, the 442nd was fighting near Bruyères and Biffontaine in eastern France.   PFC Hajiro, of Company I, repeatedly distinguished himself in battle.  He exposed himself to enemy fire while assisting an Allied attack on October 19, and three days later he and a comrade ambushed an 18-man enemy patrol.  On October 29, during the rescue of the "Lost Battalion", which had been surrounded by German forces in the Vosges Mountains, he single-handedly destroyed two German machine gun emplacements.  Barney was then shot in the sho...

 Reg Curtis, No. 2 Commando, 11th SAS, 1st Parachute Battalion: Reg Curtis fought through France and Belgium to Dunkirk as a Grenadier Guardsman before volunteering in 1940 to join No. 2 Commando and become one of Britain’s first paratroopers.  He took part in experimental parachute training as a member of the 11th SAS Battalion, later to become the 1st Parachute Battalion, the founding battalion of The Parachute Regiment.  In 1942/3 he fought with 1st Para as part of the 1st Parachute Brigade in Tunisia, where they earned the name ‘Red Devils’ from the enemy. He was part of the group who held the Primosole Bridge in Sicily in 1943.  He was badly wounded trying to reach the Arnhem Bridge during the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 and after the battle had his right leg amputated.  He was one of the few members of the original 1st Parachute Battalion to survive the war and when he passed away in 2016 was the last man standing from the small group who remained close-knit ...

 🇺🇸🇺🇸 HONORING THE HERO WE LOST:HAYES WAR HERO—Saluting a man who you’ve seen many times but you may not have known it. Today would have been his 100th birthday. Ira Hamilton Hayes was born on January 12, 1923, an Akimel O'odham Native American and member of the Gila River Indian Community in south central Arizona.  He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on August 26, 1942. He was 19 years old.   Hayes completed basic training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego and then went on to complete Marine Airborne training at nearby Camp Gillespie.  From there he was assigned as a Private First Class to the U.S. Marine 3rd Parachute Battalion—later the 3rd Parachute Regiment—part of the Divisional Special Troops of the 3rd Marine Division. PFC Hayes' first combat assignment in WWII was on Guadalcanal. He then went ashore at Bougainville on December 4, 1943.  For the Paramarines it was a trial by fire. PFC Hayes carried a Browning Automatic Rifle and wa...

 🇨🇦 WWII uncovered: Heroes of the Great Escape: Flying Officer Henry Birkland of the Royal Canadian Air Force: Four Canadian POWs at Stalag Luft III, Sagan. Top, left to right - Sam Sangster; John Gordon "Scruffy" Weir.  Below, left to right - Flight Lieutenant Clarke Wallace "Wally" Floody and Flying Officer Henry "Hank Birkland, one of six Canadian Great Escapers that were shot after being recaptured.  Sangster, Weir and Floody all survived the war. Soon after the war began, Henry Birkland enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force.  He was called to Toronto in September 1940 for training and assigned to 72 Squadron in England. "While flying his Spitfire over Dunkirk on a diversionary operation, Birkland was shot down and crashed on a beach.  Pulled from the wreckage, Hank was taken to a hospital and then sent to Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Poland. "In June 1943, Birkland was part of a mass escape attempt known as the delousing break.  Two dozen offic...

 🇺🇲 WWII uncovered: Honoring Sergeant Lena Mae Riggi Basilone of the US Marine Corps: On this day we honor WWII veteran and US Marine Corps Sergeant Lena Mae Riggi Basilone, wife of World War II hero John Basilone. During World War II Lena was serving as a field cook in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve - stationed at Camp Pendleton where she met her future husband John.  A true love story from the beginning the couple married just weeks after their initial meeting. After a short romance John was ordered to go back to the Pacific. Lena and John were married on July 10, 1944 at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea Church in Oceanside, California.  A month after their wedding, in the same setting where they first met, the couple said their goodbyes in a Camp Pendleton chow hall. Basilone returned to the Pacific.  Lena would become a widow on February 19, 1945.  Lena would not be notified of John's passing until her 32nd birthday on March 7.  After the war Lena settled...

 🇳🇱WWII uncovered: Catharina Koopman: The Model Spy: Former Chanel model, Catharina Koopman, worked as a successful model in Paris before moving to London.  Catharina left London in 1939 to live in Italy.  There she began a relationship with a leader of the Italian resistance.  When World War II broke out, she agreed to use her contacts and language skills to spy for the Italian Resistance.  During her education in a boarding school in the Netherlands Catharina studied various languages.  She spoke Dutch, French, English, German and Italian. Catharina infiltrated meetings of the Black Shirts but was captured.  After spells in prisons in Milan and Lazio she was sent to the Massa Martina detention camp but escaped and hid in the mountains around Perugia, where she worked with a local resistance group.  She was recaptured, promptly escaped again and made her way to Venice.  There, in October 1944, Koopman was caught spying on high-ranking Germ...

 🇺🇲WWII : Richard Crenna: From the Battle of the Bulge to Rambo: In 1944 following his graduation from Belmont High School in Los Angeles California, Richard Crenna enlisted in the US Army.  Citing that he had prior experience as a child radio entertainer, Richard was assigned to the US Army Infantry as a radioman and saw action during the Battle of the Bulge.  Crenna was later reassigned to the Signal Corps as a Japanese intercept decoder in the Pacific Theater" - Archive of American Television Interview. After the war Richard Crenna enrolled in the University of Southern California and continued his career in radio.  According to the IMDb database: "Richard was cast as Walter Denton in the radio show "Our Miss Brooks" and stayed in the part when the show moved from radio to television (Our Miss Brooks in 1952).  Crenna went on to star in another early television series, The Real McCoys (1957), but it was his role as the dedicated state legislator in the shor...