USS WILLIAM R RUSH ASSOCIATION
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Best wishes to all Mothers on Mother's Day, May 11, 2008
What a beautiful day!!
Please visit the REUNION 2009 page for information on Portland, Maine. This is the city you have selected for our next reunion! Check the REUNION 2009 page or NEW & UPDATED page.
Jim Kelly, USS William R. Rush Association Historian, has announced the release of a new book, "Scurvy Dogs, Green water & Gunsmoke," edited by Bob Cohen and Terry Miller. Jim has FOUR RUSH related stories of his included in the book!! Visit our SCURVY DOGS, GREEN WATER & GUNSMOKE page for more information! The link for the page can be found after selecting TOUR THE SHIP above.
Both Great Britian and the United States celebrated Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) on May 8, 1945. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine. Although the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was signed on May seventh, May eighth marked the day when German troop throughout Europe finally laid down their arms.
Twenty-two years and 10 days after the fall of Saigon on May 9, 1997, former Florida Representative Douglas "Pete" Peterson became the first ambassador to Vietnam since Graham Martin was airlifted out of the country by helicopter in late April 1975. Peterson himself served as a
U.S. Air Force captain during the Vietnam War and was held as a prisoner of war for six and a half years after his bomber was shot down near Hanoi in 1966. Thirty-one years later, Peterson returned to Hanoi on a different mission, presenting his credentials to Communist authorities in the Vietnamese capital.
On May 10, 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met in Promontory, Utah, and drove a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connected their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the West would surely lose some of its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized East.
On May 11, 1934, a massive storm sents millions of tons of topsoil flying from across the parched Great Plains region of the United States as far east as New York, Boston and Atlanta. The dust storms forced thousands of families from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico to uproot and migrate to California, where they were derisively known as "Okies"--no matter which state they were from. These transplants found life out West not much easier than what they had left, as work was scarce and pay meager during the worst years of the Great Depression.
On May 12, 1975, the U.S. freighter Mayaguez and its 39-man crew was captured by gunboats of the Cambodian navy. Cambodia had fallen to communist insurgents, the Khmer Rouge, in April 1973. The Cambodian authorities imprisoned the American crew, pending an investigation of the ship and why it had sailed into waters claimed by Cambodia. The response of the United States government was quick. President Gerald Ford called the Cambodian seizure of the Mayaguez an "act of piracy" and promised swift action to rescue the captured Americans.
Upon landing at Jamestown, the first colonial council was held by seven settlers whose names had been chosen and placed in a sealed box by King James I on May 13, 1607. The council, which included Captain John Smith, an English adventurer, chose Edward Wingfield as its first president. After only two weeks, Jamestown came under attack from warriors from the local Algonquian Native American confederacy, but the Indians were repulsed by the armed settlers. In December of the same year, John Smith and two other colonists were captured by Algonquians while searching for provisions in the Virginia wilderness. His companions were killed, but he was spared, according to a later account by Smith, because of the intercession of Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's daughter.
On May 14, 1804, one year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Louis, Missouri on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.
On May 15, 1963, Gordon Cooper was launched into space aboard Faith 7 on the longest American space mission to that date. Faith 7 was the capstone of Project Mercury, the NASA program that put the first American into space in 1961 and the first astronaut into orbit in 1962. Cooper completed 22 orbits of the earth and spent 34 hours in space. He was the first American astronaut to spend more than a day in space. On the afternoon of May 16, Faith 7 landed safely in the Pacific Ocean, four miles from the recovery ship Kearsarge.
Donald E. Ballard, Corpsman U.S. Navy, was awarded the Medal of Honor for action on May 16, 1968, in Quang Tri Province. Ballard, from Kansas City, Missouri, was a corpsman with Company M, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. He had just finished evacuating two Marines with heatstroke when his unit was surprised by a Viet Cong ambush. Immediately racing to the aid of a casualty, Ballard applied a field dressing and was directing four Marines in the removal of the wounded man when an enemy soldier tossed a grenade into the group. With a warning shout of, "Grenade!" Ballard vaulted over the stretcher and pulled the grenade under his body. The grenade did not go off.
Nevertheless, he received the Medal of Honor for his selfless act of courage.
On May 17, 1970, Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl and a multinational crew set out from Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean in Ra II, a papyrus sailing craft modeled after ancient Egyptian sailing vessels. Heyerdahl was attempting to prove his theory that Mediterranean civilizations sailed to America in ancient times and exchanged cultures
with the people of Central and South America. The Ra II crossed the 4,000 miles of ocean to Barbados in 57 days.
At 8:32 a.m. PDT, on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens, a volcanic peak in southwestern Washington, suffered a massive eruption, killing 57 people and devastating some 210 square miles of wilderness. Called Louwala-Clough, or "the Smoking Mountain" by Native Americans, Mount St. Helens is located in the Cascade Range and stood 9,680 feet before its eruption.
On May 19, 1934, T. E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, died as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before.
On May 20, 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis were given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of the of the world's most famous garments: blue jeans.
Born on date: 12/1/1995
And still going strong!
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